MUSIC--PLUS AND MINUS

The report of the concentrators in the field of music last year revealed two serious weaknesses in the Music Department: one of these is being successfully corrected this year, but the other is even more apparent than before. The Department was criticized for offering a variety of courses, several of which were justly described of "snaps", which covered a considerable amount of ground, but left unnecessary and harmful gaps in what should have been a unified whole. This year a new course, Music 1, combines some of these in a general survey course: inasmuch as there are three hundreds members of this course, the wisdom of the change speaks for itself. The entire curriculum is organized according to a new plan which took four years to evolve, the aim of which is to supply the student with a more satisfactory method of approach and study. Courses on a specific man or period are given in such a way that the knowledge thereby acquired may be applied to any other period; and a better correlation between these historical courses and the technical courses is being achieved.

These changes has vastly improved the Department academically; but there is still much to be done. The appalling state of the general facilities for the study of music at Harvard still appals, and this year is complicated by further needs which demand immediate action. There are no real practice rooms; the music library in Paine Hall is a disgrace to the University in its gross inadequacy--and this all the more unnecessary when Harvard possess one of the best music libraries in the country. A petition circulated by students in music last year, requesting the transfer of the collection in Widener to the music building, where there is space for it, was apparently unheard.

The most immediate need of the department is for more men to cope with the students taking its course. Music 1 has three hundred members: a professor and an assistant give this course, which means that one man has to teach six sections of fifty men each. The advanced study of music requires individual attention almost entirely, and this it is next to impossible to provide; the seven men on the staff of the department are over-worked, and it has been necessary to group the graduate students together in small courses under the general heading of Music 20.

The Music Department is apparently ready and eager to teach music: this is cannot do with any conspicuous degree of success while it is struggling to function with inadequate facilities, and an under-manned personnel. The panacca for these ailments is, of course, more money. The problem of who is to get what share of tercentenary spoils is a ticklish one: there are certain crying needs which cannot be overlooked, and the Music Department's is one of them.