Rochester Letters Review University ofRochester Fall 1981 Right Here in River City 2 The Review welcomes lettersfrom readers and will Lewis Thomas What Rochester is like today print as many ofthem as space permits. Letters may be "The Value ofBasic Science" by Lewis editedfor brevity and clarity. Thomas in the Summer 1981 Rochester Review is What Ivory Tower? 8 worth the enclosed Voluntary Subscription. The University in Rochester Many thanks. Virginia MoffettJudd '45 On Learning Twice 17 Jacksonville, Illinois One ofthe pleasures ofteaching N on sequitur The View from the Top 18 There I was, rapt, totally absorbed in Lewis Asish Basu's trek to Tibet Thomas's article-he is by all odds my favorite author, I give his books (chiefly Lives ofA Cell) to all my favorite people-when the non sequitur Departments hit me. Quite literally. I could not find the rest Rochester in Review 22 ofhis article, hunt as I might through every page. Alumnotes 29 I then began to use my head (as UR once In Memoriam 38 taught me) and looked at page numbers. They Travel Corner 40 went from four to thirteen. Robbed. Can you send me another, so I can at least copy that delightful article for all those people who richly ROCHESTER REVIEW (USPS 715-360). deserved his books (and for me). Editor: Margaret Bond; Copy Editor: Ceil I worked at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Goldman; StaffPhotographer: Chris T. Cancer Center for four years, and a great deal of Quillen; Alumnotes Editor: Janet Hodes; what makes it such a remarkable institution, as a Layout Designer: Joan Hantz. Published hospital and research center, is directly due to quarterly by the University ofRochester and Everybody's dog Lewis Thomas. I hope you gave him still mailed to all alumni. Editorial office, 108 Ad­ Rinky comforts the sick! another honorary degree. Hnot, I'm not speak­ ministration Building, Rochester, New York People coming into my room at St. Ann's In­ ing to you. 14627. Second-class postage paid at firmary are surprised to find Rinky calmly posed Please send Rochester Review posthaste. Rochester, New York 14692. POST­ on my dresser mirror. I am a dog-lover, and Doris W oolfe '48 MASTER: Send address changes to: Roches­ Rinky's pictures and story touched a responsive New York ter Review, 108 Administration Building, chord ofmemories ofmy devoted dog friends through the years. Rochester, New York 14627. Wooife is still speaking to us. We have advised her I have no pictures ofmy own dog friends, but that the University adrkd to Lewis Thomas's well rk­ I have Rinky's cut from the Rochester Review served string ofhonorary degrees in 1974. She is, alas, Opinions expressed are those ofthe authors, [Summer 1981] and I broadcast his story to all not the only reader reporting the receipt ofa mysteriously the editors, or their subjects, and do not who come into my room. dismembered copy ofthe summer Review. Any others necessarily represent official positions ofthe To me, Rinky is an all-purpose dog, repre­ wishing a replacement have only to let us know and we'll University ofRochester. senting learning and loving, and lighting my be happy to oblIge-Editor. room with cheer. Maude E. Kahler '23 Rochester Further 'feathers' Can you take one more comment on the "Feathers" incident [Spring 1981 Rochester The author ofsix published books ofpoetry, Kahler Review]? While I did not attend the concert with recently celebrated her eighty-second birthday by working its notorious performance ofthe 1812 Overture, I on a seventh volume. In 1973, in honor ofthefiftieth reunion ofher college class, the Alumni Association did hear that Mr. Leinsdorfwas livid following published her Autumn Leaves, "rkdicated to two the event. Photos beloved professors ofEnglish: Dr. John R. Slater and However, in 1954 when my wife and I were On the cover: Nineteenth-century Powers RaymondD. Havens "-Editor. making a musical tour ofEurope, we attended a Building, at one time Rochester's tallest struc­ performance ofDon Giovanni in Salzburg con­ ture, reflected in glass wall ofits twentieth­ ducted by Furtwangler, who died later that year. century neighbor; photo by staff photographer As we were heading down the aisle at intermis­ Chris Quillen. Pictures by other photographers as sion Mr. Leinsdorfwas coming up the aisle and, follows: p. 4, top, and p. 7, left, courtesy of City after exchanging greetings, he invited us for Newspaper; p. 8, Bruce Chambers, courtesy lunch the next day with a couple ofhis friends of Rochester Democrat and Chronicle; p. 10, top, Marlene Ledbetter; p. 12, top left, James S. Peck; p. 13, bottom, Joan Hantz; p. 18 and p. 21, Asish Basu; p. 19, Phil Matt. The word "classical" can ofcourse have two meanings. Time used it in the somewhat more dubious sense of "any music which is noncom­ mercial, " i.e., music following in the European tradition or represented primarily by notation rather than improvisation. Hanson would have used the word to mean the tradition itself. So far as I know, he never called his own music (or that ofhis students) "classical." I never had the good fortune to be one ofhis personal students, but I know that Dr. Hanson was an avowed roman­ ticist and would have preferred to be thought of as coming under that aegis. There is a ter­ minology problem here, but when the music of Howard Hanson is performed, "classical" is hardly the term that comes immediately to mind. And in a sense all ofus at Eastman were Han­ son students. Eastman was Hanson's school in a way unlike any other school at that time that I know of. Going to Eastman meant certain things which you stood for, which you believed. Ifyou weren't a Hansonite already, you were almost sure to become one in short order. There was no compulsion about this. Itjust happened, and it happened to most of us. Then too, he had such a way ofmaking us feel part ofa family. We were in this thing together. Greetings: Howard Hanson (left) and Ward Woodbury '45G, '64G, at 1963 "Salute to Howard This was our musical family perhaps, in contrast Hanson" concert to that rather smaller group we left behind us at home. In the best sense he was a surrogate and a relative. On that occasion I brought up Essentially what I believe Dr. Hanson ad­ father. And like all fathers he felt the need to the subject ofthe concert in question, after vocated was a reduced dependency upon the warn us periodically about the perils oflife "out which he entertained his guests with a delightful classics and more emphasis upon music current­ there." Music is a tough 'profession. There is no rendering ofthe story as if it had been the fun­ ly being or recently having been produced. This instant success, no instant wealth. In fact there niest thing that had ever happened to him. was a revolutionary viewpoint to espouse in a is hardly enough ofeither to go around. Some I cannot tell you with what a sense ofpride I country still so dependent, culturally, upon the will make it and some won't. read the Rochester Review faithfully. I am grateful imported European product. When Dr. Hanson Howard Hanson painted no rosy pictures and for my association with the institution first as a was born, in 1896, there was almost literally no fostered no illusions about the musical life. It graduate student and later as a faculty member such thing as an American composer. This is was not going to get suddenly better. I ofthe Eastman School of Music, followed by hard for the younger generations to understand, remember how enthusiastic he was, in one ofhis twelve years as director ofmusic for the River because pivotal figures like Ives and Copland annual addresses to the school, about the Campus colleges. have changed the scene immensely and-one Eisenhower presidency. This seemed to offer Ward Woodbury '45GE, '54GE hopes-permanently. Today one understands new hope, at least to him back in those very op­ Winter Park, Florida that Americans can compose music: The timistic years. But there was always the thought capability has not been bred out ofthem by cen­ that things might get worse. They did. By the time ofHanson's retirement, or shortly Woodbury is now music director and conductor ofthe turies oftransplantation to a harsher soil. It re­ thereafter, it was apparent that an upstart com­ Bach Festival Society of Winter Park. "It is ironic, " he mains latent and must be nurtured. Ifthere is positional philosophy, first seen in Viennese notes in a postcript to his letter, "that on the weekend one activity that requires genuine encourage­ atonality and then re-manifested in Paris under Howard Hanson died the Rollins College Board of ment, it is surely an activ'ity so abstruse as the Boulez in the 1950s, had spread across the Trustees approved our president's recommendation for constructing ofworlds ofsound on silent paper. Atlantic and was now established on most yet another honorary degree for the venerable director Sounds which, ifone is very fortunate, may even university campuses. Administrators now emeritus. " Instead, the Rollins College Concert Series, someday get played. preferred to hire intellectuals to write music. with Woodbury conducting the Bach Festival Choir and It is all very iffy. No animal other than man Hanson was not an intellectual and did not ap­ Orchestra, presented a memorial tribute to the late com­ would consider it. The rewards for highly prove ofthe music that intellectuals (by their poser, educator, and conductor who wasfor forty years unlikely success are the intangible ones: a feeling nature, one supposes) write.