As naive and uninformed as I was freshly out of college, I did hear about the theory and history placement exams for incoming graduate students at various schools. It would be a good idea to do well in order to avoid taking remedial classes—which would be time-consuming and would likely be non-credit. A few classmates and I knocked on the door of Mr. Lu Yan (盧炎).[1] Weekly, we sorted through Bach chorales for harmonic analysis. We practiced species counterpoint one type, one rule at a time. Later, we also studied various of musical forms.
Having studied and worked in the States for over a decade, Mr. Lu went back to Taiwan in 1979 and quickly became a well-liked theory and composition teacher. Often, we met at his friends’ studio—a small but well-designed apartment. Good tea would be brewed. We sat around the table; quietly worked on the exercises. When necessary, Mr. Lu would provide us with information with his gentle voice. He was never in a hurry: There seemed to be a tiny delay of every word, as if he needed to confirm the wording with himself. It could very well be that he never stopped calculating and listening to notes in his head.
Mr. Lu was able to glance at our work and pinpointed out the error immediately. Sometimes, we chose to start harmonizing a phrase with a poor position. Within a few chords, chaos broke out. He would, with a big grin, guide us back to the point where trouble started.
These tutoring sessions paid off. I tested out of theory classes both at CIM and at Kent State. It freed me to select other classes that interested me. When reading through a musical work, I was able to deconstruct the content and understand the composer’s intention.
Music history was a different story. The two-semester Western Music History class at NTNU was given in Chinese. The textbook was written in an old-fashioned, hard-to-understand manner—most likely, half-translated.[2] The content was read to us in class, word-for-word. The exams at the end of the semesters were open book.
I was told, when arrived at CIM, to not worry about the history placement. There was a school policy that all graduate students must take the one-semester history review class, as a preparation for the final comprehensive exam. I remembered opening the tests and not understanding any of the questions. So, yes, I took the review class—which, in my case, was to start from scratch.
Fitting centuries of musical development into a 15-week course was not easy. However, Dr. Quentin Quereau[3] had the entire thing mapped out perfectly. (It was my first encounter with a “class syllabus.”) Other than a long list of books for each time period, we studied the examples from Historical Anthology of Music I (HAM)[4] for Medieval and Renaissance works. I heard the sounds of early music for the first time. The fact that such mysterious and, sometimes, ethereal sounds could come out of mathematical calculations and organizations fascinated me to no end. Appropriately, the class met at a chapel on the campus of Case Western Reserve University.[5] Totally unfamiliar with the terminology, the composers and the titles, I recorded every week’s lecture and reviewed them at home. I read the assigned reading as much and as quickly I could. When I was totally frustrated with practicing, I would go home to study music history. Other than gaining knowledge, this, at that time, helped me to feel purposeful.
Every few weeks, we would have a listening quiz: excerpts of various compositions would be played. We needed to identify the genre, describe the characteristics and list possible composer(s). I loved the challenges and did reasonably well. At the end of the semester, we were to select a piece that we might play later in a recital, give a historical and compositional analysis as a practice run for the written comprehensive. I chose the first movement of Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, Op. 53. It was my first essay in English. Dr. Quereau wrote, “Too long to be written during the comprehensive exam.” I was one of the two students earning an “A” that semester.
With the information freshly in my head, I tested out most history requirements at Kent. The one exception was, not surprisingly, twentieth-century music. However, I was hooked. I signed up for more advanced classes, not knowing that I was on my way to become a “musicologist.”
[1] Lu Yen_Biography
[2]Some terms in Chinese translations are simply misleading. “Motet” is called 經文歌, literally “scriptural songs.” I was shocked to find out that they were often with secular texts.
[3]CWRU, Quentin Quereau/
[4]Archibald T. Davison and Willi Apel, eds., Historical Anthology of Music, revised edition, vol. 1, Oriental, Medieval and Renaissance Music (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, Fourteenth Printing, 1978).
[5]CIM has a partnership with CWRU. Many academic classes, both music and non-music, are offered by CWRU. Applied music courses are offered by CIM.