September 1, 2020 [or: March 172, 2020]

Dear Tufts Music Students,

Having just digested an email from winds and brass-playing Tufts students concerned about returning to school in a week without the permission to play their instruments on campus, I found myself sprouting a few ideas given the fact that, at least at the beginning of the Fall 2020 semester, singing and the playing of wind and brass instruments on campus has been determined too risky to permit for the time being.

Have ANY of us been able to call sufficiently upon our considerable creative energies and resources as we contend with Covid-19 strictures? Are we trying too desperately to solve problems that will pass or at least alter or ease their dangerous components, but not please us by subsiding when we want them to? Are we looking too directly at these problems instead of to the side of, around, or behind them?

Regarding the currently forbidden singing, wind, and brass playing, what alternatives can we pursue while sticking somewhat closely to our customary patterns, our inspiring teachers, or our “proven methods” when our vocal or instrumental outlets are “off limits?” What musical acts can we study when we can’t sing or play?

First off, PLEASE keep studying with your teacher or with a new teacher. Don’t forego the brilliance of your instructors; since they are here to work with you, and to think about and practice their art, please consider sticking with a set of lessons or an ensemble through these difficult days. They might still prove productive.

I’m reminded of a time when I advised a music major who played the ocarina, an instrument for which they sought private instruction for credit. We could not find a teacher anywhere in the Boston area who felt qualified to teach ocarina. Then I thought about something my secondary-school mentor William Appling regularly suggested: study with someone who plays a different instrument from yours. With this in mind, I asked our classical saxophone instructor Philipp Staudlin if he could see himself teaching someone the ocarina? He complied with enthusiasm, and the music major presented a novel, full-length senior recital on the ocarina.

Consider this story I recently wrote up as part of the early-life story of composer TJ Anderson, Jr., former Tufts Music Department Chair and Austin Fletcher Professor of Music Emeritus:

In the early 1940s, TJ Jr attended public grammar schools in DC and Cincinnati, continuing the developing practice of staying out all night to hear jazz bands. Listening to live music emerged as a primary learning tool for Anderson, and in 1941 he formed his own jazz group in junior high school in Cincinnati, where he also sang in an Episcopal Church choir and continued violin studies with Charles Keys. When Andy returned to professional life in Coatesville, resuming his role as Principal of the James Adams School after thirteen years teaching at Howard University, TJ Jr attended Coatesville High School and soon (circa 1945) auditioned on baritone sax for the Veterans Jazz Band (Veterans Hospital, Coatesville); he passed the audition using the method of practicing with a broomstick (in the absence of the baritone sax itself). He credits his ability to read music as the essential reason he passed the audition, calling it “a good experience.”

Thinking of Anderson’s youthful resourcefulness and the broomstick-as-bari sax, the possibilities below came to mind. Perhaps they’ll give you an idea or two to make up for yourself and perhaps pursue with your teacher?

If you’re a singer: could you work on Melodramas (spoken word with instrumental accompaniment; Schubert wrote some; Satie’s Sports et Divertissements can be performed as spoken word and piano; there are lots more); make studies of diction/declamation or rhythm in the vocal repertory you’re learning?

In NME (Tufts New Music Ensemble) rehearsals—ask NME Director Donald Berman—we’ve spent many rehearsal hours playing instruments we’ve never tried and don’t know how to negotiate. We would often just switch instruments deliberately. Perhaps this is a time to pick up a new “axe?” Might you think about how an instrument that is not yours breathes differently from yours, practice that, and devise ways it could positively change breath support and/or other ways you might re-approach your own instrument when you can get back to it?

However you might ordinarily function as a musician, make up some listening activities for yourself, some of which you might be able to do with others. The Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer has written many fascinating text-based musical etudes that involve truly experimental listening. I’ve sent some of them around recently. A Sound Education: 100 Exercises in Listening and Soundmaking (1992) is my favorite. Try taking a piece of paper and “playing it.” Could you get a good “flute tone” out of it?

Learn your repertory as if it were unpitched percussion music? I’m considering making up a project for the composers studying this semester to write for the student in Advanced Musicianship (Music 116)—pieces involving clapping, beating, and rhythmical spoken word?

Could you study and internalize the rhythm and phrasing of instrumental or vocal parts you need to learn?

In re-thinking the physical moves necessary to play your trombone slide, could you mime it? Imagine the music as you read the part; study the score and other instrumental parts if there are any.

Devise techniques of silent mental practice? According to his memoirs, Artur Rubinstein learned César Franck’s Symphonic Variations on a train on his way to the concert. As there was no piano on the train, he practised passages in his lap. 

***

I apologize if what I’ve written here comes off like a manifesto or as something similarly heavy-handed. I don’t mean to be like that. These don’t replace the joy of playing and getting better at the skills you seek, but they may deepen the enterprise for the time being.

On campus or off, the limits that have been imposed are stringent for many of us, but if they mitigate the psychological and physical tolls of getting sick or the fear of falling ill, so be it (I admit a fear of teaching in person because I’m in a vulnerable age-zone, but I’m going to try). These factors have created real hardships and continue to do so.

Much is lost at the moment, but not all of it. If we do something usefully different now—even if it feels somewhat disappointing—but think ahead to where the activity might lead later, how will it feed our long-term aspirations?

Thanks for reading. The Tufts Music Department faculty is with you all the way. We will always try to fill our days and yours with the most elevating music-making we can find together.

John McDonald, Composer and Pianist
Professor of Music and Director of Graduate Music Studies

Tufts University