"I hate Freshmen!"
Hollis yells this, slamming the door to his classroom shut with the heel of his shoe. A flamboyant, balding man, he apparently yells this every year as an ice breaker. He gets a timid giggle out of some of the women by way of response. He needs an ice breaker because his subject is the Organic Chemistry of music school: Harmony One. His textbook is the work of composer Walter Piston. Its green dust jacket has but one word besides the author's name: "Harmony." Oh, sure, there are other harmony textbooks. I'll be poking my nose into most of them as the years in music roll by. Still, from this distance, I admit that Piston's is closest to boilerplate.
The syllabus follows the textbook. Each class, there is a demonstration on chalk board of the week's lesson. In each case, a new progression is studied, moving from simple to complex. In each case, the goal is a little four part chorale. The chorales begin in simple textures and gradually add more notes, more movement in the parts per beat. These chorales will never be sung. They are notated and marked up by Hollis. He takes off five points for each mistake; a simple, potentially devastating rubric. The rules seem simple enough, their reasons plain. Any movement of the voices that creates anything but a clear four voice texture is banned. Voice-leading that moves from moment to moment in parallel octaves or fifths causes the pitches to blend together so well that for the moment they don't exist. The two offending parts are effectively reduced by one. There are a few other things to be vigilant about, of course. The interval of a fourth between the bass and tenor must be treated as a dissonance. Dissonances must resolve properly. Care must be taken to avoid doubling the "third" of a triad. (Doublings are necessary with four voices and three note chords.)
"Can you double the fifth?"
"Under certain circumstances, yes, Mr. Jackson, you can double the fifth. But you're getting a bit ahead of us, Sir."
"Watch out for the diminished fifth (or, when spelled as such, the augmented fourth), la diabolos in musica. The devil in music must be resolved in a particular way..."
Although all of this suggests an aesthetic, the one thing we do not worry about is how our little chorales sound. Among the many things I wonder about my nascent conservatory education, this is one of the foremost: why, if we are making music (or learning how to do it) do we not care about the result when it ultimately sounds in the atmosphere in the presence of humans with ears? In my Sophomore year, I would argue for this or that ambiguity of sound, despite the prediction of this or that rule. As a Freshman in Mr. Holling's Harmony class, I did my best to avoid breaking the rules. It didn't take long to drop a grade or two: one was only two errors a way from sinking down another letter. Too many letters down, and the Dean's List became the distant, unobtainable Grail.
Each class had it's first session. Nobody's ice breaker made as much of a mark as the bellowing of "I hate Freshmen."
The evening and morning of each day began with the institutional food in the cafeteria shared by those of us in the dorms. We were on our own for lunch, and most of us discovered the pizza joint around the corner. An Italianesque dish prepared and sold by Greeks at a place with the unlikely nickname "Charlie's" that was actually called "Mike's" on the storefront, I often ditched the institutional food in favor of a slice.
In that first week, however, we were paralyzed by the overwhelming novelty of it all. The evening of the first day, as I sat with my plastic plate of whatever it was, my freakout dimmed enough that I could begin to notice my classmates. Musicians parodying their teachers, sharing war stories about the band back home with its bus, and generally slapping backs collegiate and sophisticated; actors of various types standing tall and monologuing or huddling over plates in moody contemplation, a script nearby open to a scene to be learned by heart...these were all new people to me. There was another class of student that made the most impression on me from that first day on into my future. There were gorgeous, athletic dancers, stretching and moving in odd ways, speaking and eating a bit less than the rest of us. These are caricatures. The impression solidified after the fact. On day one, I sat at a table with a stunningly beautiful woman named Mara.
"Mind if I join you?"
"Certainly not!"
"I'm Mara."
"Cal."
"Where from?"
"D.C. You?"
"Brattleboro."
"Where's that?"
"Vermont."
"Uh. Let me guess. You're a Dance major."
"Very good. Did my fat ass give me away?"
"Very funny."
Another dancer joins Mara. Then more. I'm surrounded on cloud nine. The funny thing is, these people are funny.
"Great! Six dancers and the composer. Perfect!"
That's Xenia, the exotic, tall, and red-headed angel from Arkansas.
"I found him first."
"Mara, you gotta share."
"Look. He's turning purple."
There's Rod. Back so straight they call him 'Ram Rod.'
"We don't mean to embarrass."
"We can't help it. We're just bare assed."
"OK. Let's keep it on the up and up."
"Up! Up! Uuuup!!
"God, that was a biotch."
"What? Mara, you did great!"
"Yeah, he didn't humiliate me like he did..."
"Oh, God...what was her name?"
"Suzanne, I think. She won't make it."
"Ram, she just might."
"Tears on day one does not bode well."
"When I saw the price of that Harmony book, I cried."
"Ah. The suffering composer's hard life."
How far away my former life was at this moment! Adelle and her torments, Pennelope pit key, Linda Litman, all shrinking into the vanishing point past. This was a rich crowd and I had found so much to devour. The whole place was institutional food for thought. And Mara, the most delicious laugh ever, the dark voice and matching hair, straight in bangs, rocking back in her chair beyond the tipping point for mere mortals, the muscles in abdomen doing the balancing act over strong legs...this might be a very interesting year.
My dorm mates were diverse as well. There was Morris the trumpeter.
"It's a piccolo trumpet. Like the one on "Penny Lane."
Then the priest. Nathan, not much faith in.
"Bach's organ didn't have any stops."
"Old! Lame! Boo!"
"Do you actually play a lot of Bach?"
"No, it's too dry for me. I just love Widor. The 'Toccata!' Marvelous. Just marvelous."
"I don't know this guy. It is a guy, right?"
"Of course! A French guy."
"Well, that calls his masculinity into question for sure."
"Morris!"
"What? It's a joke. Beats 'no stops,' all stops pulled."
"Well, when do we get to hear this Widor 'Toccata?'"
"Who's got a turntable?"
"Who's got the record?"
"Just come up to Framingham some Sunday afternoon. I'll play it for you."
He never did, because I never went. But the Organ Symphony rocks. Especially the 'Toccata.' I doubt that Nathan could really play that piece worth a damn. It involves stamina and coordination.
