Experience Music, Discover Ideas
University of Pittsb U r g h Winter 2010–11 Volume 7, issue 3 Department of m u s i c : Experience Music, Discover Ideas “Music is the universal language of mankind.” Students interested in continuing their music education have Henry Wadsworth Longfellow been steadily increasing. Since 2004, the number of double majors has tripled, with 60 percent of all music undergraduates Or is it? According to ethnomusicologist John Blacking, a declaring a double or triple major. Students combine music former Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music at Pitt, “Music with majors as diverse as business, mathematics, neuroscience, is not a universal language. … Musical systems are more physics, political science, computer engineering, and esoteric and culture-specific than any verbal language.” English literature. Around the world, a wide cross section of music emanates from The department encourages students to participate in a wide iPods, radios, and computers as people begin and end their day variety of performance activities, including private lessons, listening to music. Televisions are faithfully set to record the concerts, and ensembles. “The performance opportunities that the next episode of the smash musical drama series Glee or a variety Department of Music offers just do not exist at competing colleges of music and dance reality shows. Music plays in concert halls, and universities because those institutions have music schools churches, schools, grocery stores, department stores, offices, and that reserve ensemble enrollment for the core music majors,” elevators. Music is everywhere, woven into the very fabric of our explains Rosenblum. “The talent in our ensembles is some of the lives, but is it in fact a universal language transcending cultural, best I have ever encountered, intellectually and musically, from all religious, and political beliefs? departments.
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