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N E W S L E T T Harvard University Department of M usic MUSICnewsletter Vol. 12, No. 1/Summer 2012 Levin on 180, Musical Truth, and the Practice of Performance Music Building f it weren’t for a tiny post office in a Black For- North Yard est German town, Professor Robert Levin may Harvard University not have spent the last twenty years teaching Iperformance at Harvard. Cambridge, MA 02138 617-495-2791 “I was senior professor of piano at the Musik- hochschule in Freiburg,” recounts Levin. “One morning I was heading towards the post office—it Office, 2006 News Harvard Kriss Snibbe, www.music.fas.harvard.edu was very small, with just one window—and I saw a man with a stack of packages heading in the same INSIDE direction. I thought, ‘I’ve got to get there first or I’ll be here all morning.’ As I got closer I recognized 3 Faculty News him. It was Christoph Wolff.’” schule für Musik was becoming too time-consuming 4 Broadway Artists Visit Oja Class Harvard music professor Wolff and his wife for his increasingly demanding performance sched- Barbara, it turns out, loved Freiburg so much they’d ule. His future wife, pianist Ya-Fei Chuang, told 6 Library News: APS Collaborates bought a condo there. The Levins and Wolffs lived him: “Don’t torment yourself. You have an offer on Folk Documentary but 150 yards from each other. They began to share from the world’s premier university! Go!” dinners when the Wolffs were in town, and when Exactly 25 years after he graduated from Har- 7 Alumni News Leon Kirchner announced his retirement, Wolff asked vard, Levin landed in Cambridge, was featured at 8 Graduate Student News Levin if he would consider the position. Symphony Hall’s Harvard Night at the Pops, and 9 American Identities in the “It would have been a break with tradition to closed on a house. hire me,” Levin states. “Leon was a composer and Musical Atlantic World a performer. Harvard wanted to perpetuate this Music 180 10 Heller Digs into 70s Loft Jazz tradition by having a composer/performer teach Although Levin was not a student in Music 180 Music 180 [Performance and Analysis]. As Chris- (he graduated in 1968, and Kirchner offered Music 11 Remembering John Ward toph Wolff described the position, the University 180 for the first time in 1969–70), he considers 12 Calendar of Events was looking for a performer with an international himself very close to Kirchner, both personally and career, but not just a pianist. My extensive work in curricularly. theory and musicology seems to have appealed to “I took on the ideals of the course as well as the powers that be.” the mechanics,” he says, “with some modifications. Levin’s first instinct was to defer. “I don’t have Leon taught with a preceptor (Lucy Stoltzman), and to explain how wonderful Freiburg is,” he told Leon took on the group settings with all the coach- Wolff. “I look out my windows at the Black Forest ings done by Lucy. I wanted to have a more col- and the Vosges moun- legial arrangement tains in France. I have with my precep- plum, quince, apple, tor—violinist Dan cherry trees, and rose Stepner—so we bushes. Why on earth both participated should I leave and go to in the group ses- Department Chair Harvard?” sions and we both Alexander Rehding Fate intervened coached the indi- Director of Administration again. Within a few vidual groups.” Nancy Shafman years of Wolff’s query, In 180, ev- Newsletter Editor Levin’s teaching load eryone studies all Lesley Bannatyne at the Staatliche Hoch- the scores. Then, [email protected] Kriss Snibbe, Harvard News Office, 2006 Levin continued students play and the others comment. Stepner example, wanted to write cadenzas for one can, but when you walk out and play you’re speaks, then Levin, sketching broad ideas and new of the Haydn cello concertos for an upcom- not reading a cookbook. You have to risk ev- artistic suggestions. The students perform again, ing tour. Hazel Davis ’03 wanted to prepare erything. If I have a new idea on stage during incorporating the feedback. an authentic performance of Strauss’ Second a performance I cannot resist the lure of trying “I wanted the course to work like a labo- Horn Concerto. Julia Glenn ’12 wanted to it out then and there. I can’t help it. I may fall ratory,” says Levin. “Every interpretation has A composer puts a mirror to the audience and asks us to recognize emotional and intellectual consequences. The power of performance derives from these deci- ourselves. It’s the same as with great plays. Music is no less serious sions.” just because it is composed of tones, not words. Thestructure of 180 has remained con- stant during Levin’s tenure of nearly a genera- reconstruct the original performance style of the tion of student musicians. Sixth Bartok Quartet to reveal how values and “The course is a life-changing experience,” sounds changed. I tried to steer them to relevant he says. “I find 180 alumni everywhere I tour. literature: manuscripts, periodicals, documents. At nearly every performance one former student The entire seminar would give the individual is in that orchestra—not all from Harvard, but students insights into a variety of topics they a lot are 180 students. They tell me they feel might not otherwise have discovered. tremendously warm about that course and the “I’m always amazed at what a hands-on decisive role it had in steering them towards experience is possible when researching music their paths in life. There are even numerous from 100 or 150 years ago. Artistic, physical, 180 marriages. I’ve seen probably a half dozen spiritual—all these areas underlie the perfor- on my watch. mance of music.” “Some students take 180 once. Some have Students at Harvard, according to Levin, taken it eight times. I want to give them something are extremely talented and smart; they want to that sustains them throughout their lives.” play. They love details such as how much pres- Levin feels the same way about the Core sure to put on the pedal or which finger to use. courses he’s taught—such as Chamber Music But if he talks about how music is put together, from Mozart to Ravel. there’s more restlessness. 2012 Imtelligencer Musical Boston The of Courtesy “I thought teaching in the Core cur- “To that I would invoke the Latin motto in flat on my face, but there’s no question I’ll take riculum was an extraordinary opportunity. For the Gewandhaus in Leipzig: ‘Res severa, verum that risk.” anyone afraid of classical music dying, anyone gaudium’: ‘A serious thing is true joy.’ interested in the future world, to try and create “I hope in my tenure at Harvard I have Robert Levin studied piano with Louis Martin and a love of classical music in the elite of Harvard persuaded students that one derives joy from composition with Stefan Wolpe in New York. He was extremely important to me. If, within a passionate advocacy of what is truly serious. A worked with Nadia Boulanger in Fontainebleau and generation those people could support the arts, composer puts a mirror to the audience and asks Paris while still in high school, afterwards attending that would be critical to their survival. us to recognize ourselves. It’s the same as with Harvard. Upon graduation he was invited by Rudolf “I’m optimistic. I heard from a Pakistani great plays. Music is no less serious just because Serkin to head the theory department of the Curtis student at Columbia Medical School—a for- it is composed of tones, not words. One reads Institute of Music, a post he left after five years to take mer Chamber Music student—that classical music just as deeply inside. up a professorship at the School of the Arts, SUNY music was now his lifeline. It was music I’d “When Nadia Boulanger played a Bach Purchase. In 1979 he was Resident Director of the taught him to love.” piece, even if it was the 60th time she played Conservatoire américain in Fontainebleau, France, it, she was moved by some basic musical truths. at the request of Nadia Boulanger, and taught there A Serious Thing is a True Joy As a twelve-year-old boy listening to her I felt a from 1979 to 1983. From 1986 to 1993 he was Soon after his arrival at Harvard, Levin began sense of wonder. I perceived, as I shall forever Professor of Piano at the Staatliche Hochschule für to teach a series of undergraduate courses in pe- do, how deep the spiritual nature of music was. Musik in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. President riod performance practice. It started with 18th Music is created within a structure; Bach was of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competi- century, expanded back to the 17th, alternated a great architect. But that’s not why we listen; tion and a member of the American Academy of Arts with the 19th, which then bled in to the 20th. we listen because it tells a great story. and Sciences and the Akademie für Mozartforschung “They all elatedr to 180. I didn’t want to “Thinking about art and performing it are [Academy for Mozart Research] in Salzburg, he has assign anything, but rather have each student inseparable. Knowledge and instinct fuse into been the Dwight P. Robinson, Jr. Professor of Music select a problem. Matt Haimovitz ’96, for intuition. You need to study everything you at Harvard since 1993.
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