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What's that song and can it be sung?
Regarding Brandeis and the Lydian String Quartet, I have just signed my name to an open letter to my alma mater:
Sonya Taaffe, B.A./M.A. Classical Studies '03. The high-handed, short-sighted demolition of the music department would have been unthinkable to me during my time at Brandeis, when I specifically chose the university for the strength of the arts in its liberal arts, even over an acceptance to NEC, and was rewarded with an undergraduate experience in which music—studied, performed, appreciated—played as vivid and enduring a part as Greek lyric poetry. I am in accordance with the general opinion that enrollment in a liberal arts university is not improved by diminishing the quality and diversity of its arts and that the artistry of the Lydians is incalculable beyond budget cuts. The quartet is a treasure, not an expense. I hope to hear soon that the university has recalculated its values.
As I have also just written elsewhere, I hope the court of public and professional opinion falls in on the university's head just as hard as when it tried to sell off the Rose Art Museum. It makes me furious. I attended a school: what does it want to make itself instead, an illusion? I know finances are real. I know the singing of strings and sounding wood and breath and fingers has got just as much reality. I wrote doikayt first.
Sonya Taaffe, B.A./M.A. Classical Studies '03. The high-handed, short-sighted demolition of the music department would have been unthinkable to me during my time at Brandeis, when I specifically chose the university for the strength of the arts in its liberal arts, even over an acceptance to NEC, and was rewarded with an undergraduate experience in which music—studied, performed, appreciated—played as vivid and enduring a part as Greek lyric poetry. I am in accordance with the general opinion that enrollment in a liberal arts university is not improved by diminishing the quality and diversity of its arts and that the artistry of the Lydians is incalculable beyond budget cuts. The quartet is a treasure, not an expense. I hope to hear soon that the university has recalculated its values.
As I have also just written elsewhere, I hope the court of public and professional opinion falls in on the university's head just as hard as when it tried to sell off the Rose Art Museum. It makes me furious. I attended a school: what does it want to make itself instead, an illusion? I know finances are real. I know the singing of strings and sounding wood and breath and fingers has got just as much reality. I wrote doikayt first.
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That is an epic and needed rebuke.
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"If I wanted to be associated with a soulless vocational ‘university’ that put money ahead of culture, I would have attended Boston University."
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*sends flowers anyway*
WHY IS OUR ALMA MATER BEING SUCH PANTS. I understand about Bernard Madoff and I hope he's having fun in cherem now, but come on!
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