Music Dept. Offers Post To Orchestra Conductor

The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra has unanimously accepted a Music Department offer to establish an Instructorship in Music for the post of conductor next year.

Rollin T. Kearns '59, president of HRO, said yesterday, "An appointment to the post will be announced within a month. It is not yet known who the person will be, but possible choices include Attilio Poto, present conductor."

The selection, Kearns reported, is to be made jointly by the Music Department and orchestra members. In the past, the Music Department has not had a share in choosing the conductor. The instructor will divide his time equally between directing the orchestra and teaching, he explained.

Kearns noted that the new link between the Music Department and the orchestra would "roughly parallel the relationship of the Department to the Glee Club." It would involve, he added, a change in the written constitution of the HRO.

Conductor University Employee

"An advantage of this arrangement," declared Kearns, "is that the conductor, through working full-time in the University, will have more contact with orchestra members, as well as with the musical community in Cambridge."

Under the new plan, Kearns observed, the HRO would no longer pay the conductor out of its own funds. This, he said, would remove a burden which had caused "financial difficulties in the past."

In previous years, the conductor has been engaged annually by the Pierian Sodality of 1808, sponsors of the HRO. He has been paid $400 a year by the latter, in addition to $600 by Radcliffe College for conducting it own orchestra. Compared with this, the basic University salary for instructors in $5500.