The University orchestra as an educational model

I hope I shall not have to surrender my license as a 'Prince' columnist if I this week cease to grump about the decline of practically everything long enough to praise one of the most significant ameliorations in the Princeton educational climate of the last two decades. On Friday, prodded by an e-mail from a student friend among the first violin section, my wife and I went along to hear the Princeton University Orchestra in Alexander Hall (known in Princeton Newspeak as "Richardson Auditorium"). Actually I wanted to seize the rare opportunity of hearing Stravinsky's "Symphonies of Wind Instruments," and though I was to discover that the full appreciation of that particular piece may require a gene I lack, or at least a more practiced ear, I found myself nearly transported by the orchestra's renditions of Mozart's fifth violin concerto and Rimsky-Korsakoff's "Scheherezade." The accuracy and symphony of the orchestra were remarkable, and the two violinists — Alexis Kende '05, in the former piece and concertmaster Jennifer Greenman '02, in the latter — were simply quite brilliant. This was by no means the first such evening of the year at Richardson. The quality of vocal music on campus is likewise nearly off the charts. No one who heard the sparkling student production of "The Magic Flute" will soon forget it.

Such electrifying performances are becoming nearly routine under the direction of Michael Pratt. Talent amplifies other talent, like dynamos wired in series; but the underlying educational reform was volitional and structural: the introduction of a "performance track" in the Music Department. Admissions policy should serve an educational vision rather than confine one, and it turns out that world-class musicians are as likely as Ivy-class athletes to respond when Princeton beckons. Perhaps the days of the familiar "well-rounded" Princeton admitees, seemingly chosen like bowling balls for their capacity to hurtle straight down the middle of the lane, careering with unerring course past all intellectual subtlety and over all cultural nuance, are numbered.

Of course, leading the horse to water is only half of the university's task. Some years ago I was in an audience that packed Alexander Hall to hear the Tokyo Quartet; and I remember the keen irony in the brief remarks with which Barbara Sand, who presided over the event, introduced the program, a program made possible by a generous and visionary benefactor whose wish, according to the deed of gift, was to allow "every Princeton undergraduate the opportunity to hear in live performance all of the Beethoven string quartets." The irony resided in the fact that although Alexander Hall was packed, I could not discern a single undergraduate in the throng.

There must have been one or two, surely; and there was a sizable undergraduate presence in the half-full hall on Friday night. Still, extra-curricular education — of which the increasingly exciting music scene is but one conspicuous feature — has to represent the most sadly squandered of opportunities on this intellectually wastrel campus. I was for several years the chairman of the University's Committee on Public Lectures — an entity quite unknown to the vast majority of undergraduates and, indeed, even to some faculty members. There are of course literally hundreds of extracurricular lectures on campus each year, most of them sponsored by academic departments or programs or student groups, but there is also a series of "official" university lectures, often organized around a unifying theme, carefully planned by a broad-based, thoughtful, energetic, and very well-funded committee and explicitly designed for general audiences. The lecturers invited include not merely eminent academic experts but notables from the world of popular culture and semi-celebrities from politics, the professions, the arts and industry. Healthy audiences showed up from the community, but I soon discovered that the only way I could guarantee at least a gesture of undergraduate presence was by inviting a few students to dine with the lecturer beforehand.

Last Thursday one of Princeton's many five-star physicists, Stu Smith, gave the third and final of the first year's sequence of new "presidential lectures" instituted by Shirley Tilghman. I assume it was wonderful; but I cannot say for certain, since I wasn't there. I missed it not because I attended a competing lecture given at the same hour under the sponsorship of my home department (English) — I blew that one off, too — but because I felt morally obliged to attend one sponsored by the department which I am temporarily chairing (Comparative Literature). Even a casual examination of the "Weekly Bulletin" will reveal that such an intellectual trifecta is by no means unusual for the four-thirty hour on any of the three central weekdays. It is quite easy to be intellectually overwhelmed; but the fact that one cannot take advantage of every opportunity is a lame excuse for taking advantage of none. One indefatigable undergraduate intellectual (Vincent Lloyd, '03) showed up at "my" talk — an analysis of Achebe's "Things Fall Apart," with occasional reference to the ethics of Nietzsche. I haven't had the chance to inquire whether the experience changed his life, but the fact that he showed up reminded me once again that we have to be doing something right around here. John V. Fleming is the Louis W. Fairchild '24 professor of English. He can be reached at jfleming@princeton.edu.