perpetualmotion

Did anyone apply to any of the joint programs this year???
Examples are Harvard-NEC, Juilliard-Columbia, Eastman-Rochester, Peabody-Johns Hopkins

I applied to Harvard-NEC.

Vieuxtemps5

have you heard back yet? I posted about the juilliard-columbia thing... not many people really do that. They're super unhelpful and you're kind of on your own.

perpetualmotion

well i'll know depending on whether or not i get into harvard. i got an email from the piano chair saying the faculty was really impressed w/my playing, so i'm hoping everything's going well with NEC. they'll let me know about my official acceptance to NEC probably around April 1. If i get into both, THEN they'll decide if I can do the joint program. it's so complicated agh. and the head chair said only one pianist (who happens to be my friend) so far has gotten in ever since they started the program 3 years ago.

how's the juilliard-columbia thing going? do u know when they'll let you know?

mamenyu

The Harvard NEC program isn't much of a deal, at least financially, as they charge an additional $6000 for NEC, unlike Columbia-Juilliard, where you just pay one tuition. It also ties you to NEC, which may not be your top choice for an MA. On the other hand, if you were accepted to Harvard, you could take private lessons (including at NEC) and apply to an MA program after you finished at Harvard. Harvard has an excellent academic music department that boasts of its lack of performance faculty, apart from Robert Levin who is there on piano.

Vieuxtemps5

Perpetual...

Just take lessons, seriously... unless you really love music theory or something. Learn lots of cool things at harvard, and work hard on your instrument. No need to do the rest.

perpetualmotion

yahh really good points. i think i just want to focus on my instrument and actually having time to practice instead of being forced to attend a bunch of music history or theory classes. most likely, i will end up staying in cali and going to stanford instead, even though they don't even have decent practice rooms =(

Vieuxtemps5

No that's a good idea I love Stanford. Don't do stupid music courses, learn real things.

You might have to go to SF for lessons but whatever who cares. Stanford is liek the ultimate american university anyways.

team_mom

perpetualmotion,
Keep us up on how that progresses. S1 may be looking in that direction.

vt5,
"stupid music classes" ....no doubt you have a different perspective than some others on theory, music history, etc. Many find a lot of value in them. Brass and woodwind players, for example, live by transposing while sight-reading. Others write music. S1 really enjoys his theory & solfege classes for those reasons and others. He is also interested in the history of the development of musical styles, as a person that is curiosity in understanding the origins of his music. In order to play it more like it was intended, it helps to understand why the composer wrote it a certain way. I can hear from your comment that you don't value these things, but others, particularly in Music CC, may find your characterization of music classes as "stupid" a reflection of a rather "limited" perspective. I know I must sound like a mother giving advice, but comments like that will not serve you well in the real music world. Perhaps you should open your perspective.

-Allmusic-

I agree with team_mom. I actually enjoy the forum substantially less since there have been so many balloon poppers here to tell us all the reasons that music schools are stupid or limiting, with graduates bound for careers as hamburger flippers.

Vieuxtemps5

Dear Team Mom,

First of all, I did all my theory and stuff like that in pre-college, probably before your son did. I did all of it pretty well, thanks. Secondly, a lot of performers find that stuff tedious, and I am not the only one whose teacher has told them they never had to use any of it, ever, in their careers. If you have a natural affinity for that stuff then go ahead, but the person who posted originally said that he doesn't really like it that much and would prefer to just focus on performing.

In terms of the "real music world" it doesn't sound like you really have much of a leg to stand on if you think anyone making a living in music in a good orchestra or as a soloist is going to care that I think theory is dumb. There's so many stories of a young musician getting to collaborate with people like the Guarneri quartet, or some famous conductor, and the pupil saying, ok I have analyzed this work harmonically... and before they could continue people were laughing at them. That's mean I know, but pretty much no one cares about theory unless they're composing. Even Ms. Delay who would have you analyze things would only have you do very superficial analysis... tonic, dominant etc...

Again it comes down to different levels and whatnot but trust me, most kids winning orchestra auditions, playing solos, or in quartets winning Fischoff and Banff hate theory and all that... which is why more and more just end up going to university to learn other things (many of them to Ivy league schools, so these aren't kids who can't handle academics), which in my opinion actually gives you far more context for the music we play. If you want to be a highschool music teacher then yea I guess stuff like that is important, but beyond that I don't think it's necessary to dedicate a huge amount of time to it like some schools have you do.

Performing is extremely difficult and I don't see why people are so antagonistic towards the many of us who don't like the academics of music. It's long and well documented that many of the best musicians, and not even so good musicians don't feel like they benefit whatsoever from any of it (besides history which is fun and quite useful). Would you expect an olympic athlete, like a top gymnast, to study physics? Of course not, and frankly many more talented kids are realizing this, and prefer to go to a great school for history or literature or science, and these fields give them context and greater perspective within music. It can be frustrating to be doing your instrument and then have to sit down and rationalize things and write things down which kind of describe what you know or feel naturally. I have not met one good instrumentalist who needed theory in their lives to make them a better performer.

mamenyu

The context of music certainly includes theory and music history. It sounds, at the very least, unimpressive to be so dismissive of these crucial aspects of musicianship. it would be like wanting to be a poet but finding it too boring to learn anything about rhyme schemes, or a writer but finding it too tedious to read Shakespeare. What will keep classical music alive is not simply an endless supply of fungible rank and file orchestra players with technique, but smart musicians who know the full musical contexts of performance.

nycm

"Don't do stupid music courses, learn real things."

"You might have to go to SF for lessons but whatever who cares. Stanford is liek the ultimate american university anyways."

Hello Vt5, just to add my thoughts to others who have noticed your postings: it may be that you are accustomed to posting on other lists that have a bit of a different tenor, so to speak, but it seems you make many assumptions about music programs and choices that are not necessarily true for many of the regulars on this list. "real things" are of course subjective, and individual students, musicians, parents and teachers who participate on this list have enriched the discussion by recognizing a variety of "real things" and paths to follow, and trying to avoid absolute judgements.

lorelei2702

There are basics that any functional musician needs, but there is a lot of study which found its way into the curriculum because of the permanence of theory and history faculty in music departments/schools versus the applied music faculty. Singers would do much better in an interdisciplinary curriculum. No singer needs counterpoint study to be a better singing musician.....certainly a conductor needs to understand the forms, but spending semesters composing two part inventions is not helpful. Similarly, many instrumentalists would gain little from early music study. IMHO

mamenyu

Each student musician is different, of course, but, for example, understanding historical performance can inform contemporary performance not only of Baroque but of contemporary music.
And by the way, it is a long schlep from Stanford to SF even if you have a car, assuming you can find a teacher in SF. Stanford actually has performance faculty, unlike UC Berkeley, though its orchestra is mediocre. UC Berkeley, by the way, does not have a theory department because the musicology department "macher" Richard Taruskin doesn't think it is a necessary part of the curriculum (they do require musicianship, aural skills, and keyboard for all majors, but counterpoint is optional); on the other hand, the machers at Stanford don't think much of ethnomusicology and don't include it in their department. Harvard musicologists have famously had the attitude that music "should be seen and not heard." So even amongst the academics there is a fair amount of disdain going on...especially toward performers, who many think of as intellectual dilettants, at best.

Vieuxtemps5

Wow thank you Lorelei, you are totally right that a lot of that stuff is not helpful at all. It's just busy work and very time consuming.

You comparison with the poet idea doesn't make any sense, especially since most of the greatest performers of the 20th century hardly even studied theory or any of that. What they knew came from reading books on their own or from their teachers. If you seriously need theory to perform well then you probably aren't a musician, because theory is just a way of notating what we hear, and being able to visually see how different harmonies and counterpoints work. Any half decent musician feels these things. Of course they might need some help and direction but nowadays there's just way way way too much theory and all that other stuff. Way too much. You can learn much more by studying art and history on a high level, not through the lense of music, because when you do it in music history, everything is forcibly related to the music, and things get left out. Study the painter or the politician or philosopher with the same intensity and focus that a regular student would.

I'm sorry but it's true... the current crop of musicians are doing something different. They are finding a great teacher (sometimes in a dual program), and doing some kind of bachelors of arts or science. People are realizing that being totally in music is something that came from the modern idea of university education. It wasn't like that before and really it was all done in many ways to just create jobs for theory teachers. Of course those subjects are crucial, but to spend that much money for 4 years of the same stuff really isn't the best idea for a lot of people.

I come from a background where you have to consider how are you going to make a living. Maybe all of you are really rich and your kids don't have to worry, but I do, and so do most of the kids I know from my school and from summer programs. A very prominent dean said that musicians need to start thinking more like Division 1 NCAA atheletes, except ones who go to class. You do a degree that can get you work in the real world, or at least put you in a decent position for graduate school, and work on your instrument separately. The things you learn will be valuable to your music, and you get a much broader education. It's the newest trend in music (and while it isn't big yet, it will get bigger)... kids go to a top university and just study their instrument on the side, and these are people who want to perform.

If you think theory provides better context than knowing poetry, literature, and art history, then you really need to think things through. Music is about expression at the end of the day, and knowing what trends and counter cultures were going on at the time of the piece you are playing, or even just starting to think about different aesthetics and means of expression by studying past artists from other disciplines is orders of magnitude more valuable than sitting and hearing some guy drone on about secondary 7th chords and 12 tone rows. Again, the history of performance is on my side with this. This whole complete musical education is a fairly new concept meant to make music acceptable academically in this university machine.