Music for the Ages

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2003 issue of St. Olaf Magazine.

It’s 6 p.m. on a cold Friday night and Christiansen Hall of Music is buzzing with energy. Orchestra practice is over. The doors of the rehearsal room fly open and dozens of students — instruments in hand — stream out, talking and laughing, stepping around empty tuba cases and over bulging book bags. For some, the music is still running through their heads. You can see it on their faces as they climb the stairs to their second-floor lockers or hurry down the hallway with sheet music in hand. From behind the closed doors of practice rooms lining the hall come the muffled sounds of piano, violin, trumpet, clarinet, French horn, soprano voices warming up. Students are expected to be there, developing their craft. They’re also expected to know what is going on in the world. They’re still learning that a complete musician is one who has something to say

Most faculty and staff have gone home for the weekend, but the students whose passion is music are in no hurry
to leave. They linger in the hall’s 40-watt light, in pairs and groups, talking shop. Christmas Festival is right around
the corner. More than 500 students will participate in the annual event, and the demands placed on their time and talent is extraordinary. The performance standards
are very high.

St. Olaf inspires a love of music-making, a clear sense of vocation. The physical make-up of the campus has changed over time, but the college’s love of — and dedication to — music has not wavered since the St. Olaf Cornet Band (14 young men in starched white uniforms) gave their first concert at a Northfield park in the summer of 1893. “We believe music is a calling, a divine gift, and we need to honor it, share it,” says Dan Dressen, a professor of music and chair of the music department.

Professor of Music and St. Olaf Band Conductor Tim Mahr ’77, who also teaches courses in composition, conducting and music education, takes the sanctity of music one step further. “I, along with many of the band members, encounter our Creator at the core of our music-making and believe in the power of this gift to transform our lives.

We are so privileged to have this opportunity,” he says.
Although many colleges and universities have a good choir or a good band or orchestra, St. Olaf has two bands, eight choirs and two orchestras — and all have strength and depth.

“St. Olaf is amazing when we realize how many hundreds of students participate in one or more of its many music organizations. This would not happen if it were not for the strong music department that nurtures this participation,” says Philip Brunelle, artistic director of the world-renowned Plymouth Music Series (recently renamed VocalEssence) and a St. Olaf regent. “I don’t know of another college or university where the level of excellence is so exceptional in its vocal and instrumental areas.”

Across the curriculum, St. Olaf teaches its students to question conventional thought, to dig deeper into human culture and to do the arts, not just learn about them. That’s how they will find beauty and magic — in the music, in themselves and in the world.

St. Olaf offers a conservatory program in a liberal arts college, meaning that music majors have two-thirds of their course work in music and the remainder in general studies. That’s the reverse ratio of music studies at most liberal arts colleges.

“What makes our music program unique is the depth of curricular and performance opportunities, the academic excellence and breadth of instruction for which the college is known, and the significant numbers of non-music majors,” Dressen says. Of the 1,100 students involved in music, 300 are music majors and 800 are non-majors.

So what else will these liberally educated musicians tackle before taking their holiday break? Handbell, percussion, Philharmonia and jazz concerts; a composition recital and string chamber recital; and a tuba Christmas concert. Deadlines also loom for final English papers and science projects. The pressure is relentless.

“The student is ultimately responsible for prioritizing his or her life, making commitments to certain things and putting others on the back burner,” says Marcus Hanson ’02, a tuba performance major from Billings, Mont., and a member of the varsity track-and-field team who currently holds the college’s indoor record for the shot put (50 feet, 8 inches).

Hanson embodies the St. Olaf student-musician. He fell in love with the tuba in eighth grade. “I find an expressive quality, a personality even, in this instrument that I can really connect with,” he says. A four-year member of the St. Olaf Band and St. Olaf Orchestra, Hanson also plays the tuba in a brass quintet and sings with the Limestones, a seven-member student-led group of junior and senior men. Although the juggling act is not easy, Hanson says it helps that faculty communicate with students and with other departments “to ensure we are making the healthiest choices while keeping our priorities in mind.”

Unlike the natural sciences or the humanities — disciplines in which St. Olaf also excels — music carries the college’s message of excellence nationally and even worldwide through performance. “Music is transportable,” Brunelle says, “and it is to the credit of St. Olaf’s leadership, past and present, that this has been recognized, encouraged and used as a means of telling the world about the quality of the whole person that St. Olaf continues to nurture.”

Writer and humorist Garrison Keillor was introduced to the choir and orchestra through Brunelle nearly two years ago when Keillor brought The Young Lutheran’s Guide to the Orchestra to campus as a fund raiser for the Fram! Fram! Forward St. Olaf campaign. So taken was Keillor with the groups’ talent and professionalism that he invited them on his national public radio program, A Prairie Home Companion.

‘Love your kids’
In 1957, Miles “Mity” Johnson joined the St. Olaf music faculty and became conductor of the St. Olaf Band. Johnson was a musical father to countless students, including Tim Mahr.

“From Mity I discovered the beauty in the band sound, whereas before I primarily found excitement. He showed us that an excellent ensemble will respond to the slightest opening of a hand or the softening of the look in the eyes,” says Mahr. “He shared the when, where, why and how of turning a phrase. He reaffirmed my sense of working hard to attain the best results possible and that the reward was in the effort made. He proved that love and what one feels inside are at the center of the musical experience. And I will never forget the simple eloquence of his advice to all of the future teachers in our band: ‘Love your kids.’”

When Mity Johnson retired in 1994, Mahr succeeded him as leader of the band.

Music-making is a labor-intensive exercise, and so is the teaching and learning of music. Currently, St. Olaf has more than 60 music faculty — three times the average of other departments. Fully one-third of the St. Olaf student body takes 900-plus private weekly lessons, in addition to numerous music courses, and participates in at least one
of 23 vocal and instrumental ensembles.

Students model what they see from faculty — their professionalism and their sense of community. “The music faculty is a very cohesive group of people who have a sense of the larger mission of the college and a respect for each other’s opinion,” Dressen says. “The one-on-one relationship between student and teacher exemplifies the significant role music faculty play in the everyday lives of our students.”

Steven Amundson has led the St. Olaf Orchestra in more than 400 performances since becoming its conductor in 1981. He’s taken it on four concert tours in Eastern and Central Europe, and on dozens of tours throughout the United States. He loves the bus trips. Although time is set aside for study and rest, the students play “bus Olympics” (each row passes a pillow from front to back and up again), enjoy “bus treats” supplied by parents and host families, and tell stories, sing songs and share confidences. Some even fall in love.

“Riding the bus while on tour is a great opportunity to find out about my students — their interests, their families, their hobbies, and even their disappointments and frustrations,” Amundson says. “Conversely, my students realize that I am passionate about music and conducting, but they also learn that I love being with my wife and two children, that I love spending time in the woods and on the lakes of northern Minnesota, and that I enjoy doing mime and magic. Bus rides enable my students to know what I think about and what motivates me. I’m no longer just the guy on the podium waving the stick and spewing animated musical exhortations.”

Many of the music faculty are well-known as performers in their own right. This gives their teaching a special perspective and spreads the word of St. Olaf College’s musical uniqueness to a wider population.

“Performing involves having a healthy ego,” Brunelle says. “You need to feel good about what you are performing.
St. Olaf has a music faculty who know the importance of positive, artistic and inspired communication. It has been
that way for many years and accounts for the long history of the college’s musical fame.”

On any given day music can be heard somewhere on the St. Olaf campus. Organ music wafts out the open doors of Boe Memorial Chapel. Students perform in The Pause, in the Crossroads of Buntrock Commons, on the football field, even beneath the old elm trees.

The college and Northfield communities are regularly invited to hear a faculty recital or student concert. Gospel music, music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, jazz ensembles, trombone choirs — there’s something for everyone.

“We have a rich heritage that spans a century of performance, creation and understanding. It’s a vital legacy to be entrusted to future generations,” Mahr says. “I’m convinced those of us currently teaching sense the incredible responsibility we have — to not only carry the torch that was lit 100 years ago, but to fan its flame ever brighter.”

— Carole Leigh Engblom is editor of
St. Olaf Magazine and a media relations
specialist at St. Olaf College.