Davidovsky Will Join Music Dept. In Tenured Post

In a move that promises to enhance Harvard's studies in electronic music, Columbia professor Mario Davidovsky has accepted a post in the Music Department.

Davidovsky, a modern composer nationally renowned for his work integrating the sounds of electronic and commercial instruments, will begin teaching at Harvard this spring semester.

Davidovsky said yesterday he will expand Harvard's electronic music studio, which has been operating under Senior Lecturer in Music Ivan A. Tcherepnin.

Although Davidovsky has taught mostly graduate students at Columbia and will be teaching two graduate seminars next semester, he said he is excited to teach undergraduates as well.

"I am very interested in developing the electronic music curriculum with undergraduates," Davidovsky said.

"It's an area that offers a whole series of new possibilities originating in sound and transforming sounds. It allows composers to develop new ways of dealing with sound and extending musical language," he said.

Davidovsky also said he hopes to develop close relationships with other Boston area universities which offer programs in electronic music.

Many music concentrators already take classes at MIT, which boasts a strong electronic music program.

"I am very much looking forward to being a part of Harvard and of the musical life in Boston area where I have many friends and many of my students," Davidovsky said.

Davidovsky left Argentina for the U.S. in 1960 "to study a new fledgling field of electronic music."

Besides teaching, he has directed various conferences for international and national composers.

"We are very excited," Music Department Chair Reinhold Brinkmann said yesterday.

"[Davidovsky] is a very devoted teacher...We worked very hard for a year to get him," Brinkmann said.