How Music Matters
Interview with Music Chair Thomas Kelly

The Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music at Harvard, Thomas Forrest Kelly has been chair of the Department of Music since 1999. Kelly’s main fields of interest are chant and performance practice. President of the Fromm Foundation for Music, and past president and board member of Early Music America, Kelly won the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society for The Beneventan Chant (Cambridge University Press, 1989). His most recent book is First Nights: Five Musical Premieres (Yale University Press, 2000), which was named a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year.” Kelly’s Literature and Arts B-51 course “First Nights: Five Performance Premieres”—one of the most popular courses in the Harvard Core Curriculum—is now meeting during the fall 2003 term.
     Arts Spectrum asked Kelly about the state of music education at Harvard, and what his predictions might be for the Department of Music’s future.

ARTS SPECTRUM: Do you foresee the possibility of students receiving credit for applied work in music? Is that a good idea? If so, what challenges unique to Harvard would have to be addressed?

TOM KELLY: There is, in fact, already a fair number of curricular offerings that involve active music-making as part of a course: there are courses in chamber music, courses in performance practice, courses in conducting, and courses in composition. I imagine study and performance are likely to be more and more integrated in the future.
     What Harvard doesn’t have is a regular system of granting academic degree credit for music lessons and for participation in ensembles; many other institutions do grant such credit, sometimes on a reduced credit scale, and sometimes with a stated maximum. (Harvard already has a mechanism for credit-bearing music lessons.) Whether such a system could work at Harvard goes beyond the purview of our department and would have to be considered in a larger curricular review.
     For music concentrators, given the enormous amount they must learn in such a short time, additional credit for performance would probably reduce their instruction in other aspects of music: a serious trade-off. I imagine the same might be true for many other concentrations. The high quality and amazing quantity of student music-making has sometimes been used as an argument against granting credit: they’re doing it anyway, and they’re taking a full load of courses. What’s the problem?

AS: Do you think the music scene at Harvard is in good health? How has it changed, and how have student musicians changed over the years?

TK: As to quality and quantity, the scene is very healthy indeed. Many, many more ensembles are active now than even a few years ago. If you consider the number of student performers, the number of people who are entertained by them, and the number of students who take music courses, either in the Music Department or in the Core, I think you’d find it’s a large portion of the population. Music matters, and it matters to almost everybody here.
     A wider variety of music happens here now than in earlier years, which reflects Harvard’s broad scope and the rich backgrounds of our students. There still is, in some quarters, the Harvard temptation to do everything with ease—sometimes this means putting on performances with minimal (sometimes sub-minimal) rehearsal, and trusting to talent. Fortunately, the talent is usually there.

AS: Does Harvard do enough to support undergraduate music-making and study?

TK: No, but before we complain we need to remember that Harvard does do a great deal. There are professional musicians, really terrific people, whose chief function is to guide undergraduate music-making in orchestra, chorus, band, and jazz. There is the Office for the Arts, continually supporting and advocating for student involvement. There are practice facilities, performance spaces, and funding for special projects.

AS: What are the areas of greatest concern?

TK: There needs to be more of everything; the facilities don’t match the demand. Practice rooms are often unavailable; performance and rehearsal space is a desperate problem. And the infrastructure—that awkward but friendly alliance of the Music Department, Office for the Arts, Memorial Church, and Dean of the College—does what it can, but it’s a structure, like so many here, that grew up in less complicated times. There needs to be more support, more structure, and much more space.
     I wonder, too, how many fine musicians do not come to Harvard, either because they are not admitted (perhaps because talent in music doesn’t weigh enough in these considerations), or because they choose not to come, thinking perhaps Harvard is not the right place to develop their talents. For some of these people, Harvard is certainly not the right place; but perhaps for some of them it is.

AS: If you were to visit Harvard in 20 years, what would you like to discover about its music scene?

TK: I’d like to find it healthy. This means many things: institutional support for major standing ensembles (many more than those founded long ago when orchestras and choruses were all anybody seemed to want), such as the Kuumba Singers, the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, jazz bands, world music, and computer and electronic music. I’d like to see an atmosphere that encourages students to create new ensembles and new kinds of performance. Some of these come and go according to individual talents and the taste of the times—but when they appear they’re great, and we need to retain flexibility to support such innovations.
     The future will be determined by the students at least as much as by the faculty or the institution. We need to watch, to marvel, to support, and to learn.

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