<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Re: [CAUT] CAUT credential vs. academic program?</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> On 11/5/07 3:00 PM, "Jeff Tanner" <jtanner@mozart.sc.edu> wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE>Someone who holds a music degree has merely demonstrated that they can absorb material long enough to regurgitate it on an exam, and that they have shown some degree of incremental improvement in musical ability over a 2 or 4 year period, that they have attended a certain number of performances per term and have been present and accounted for in at least one performing ensemble each term. It has not made them musical if they were not already. </BLOCKQUOTE> Hi Jeff,     I was planning to sit this discussion out and let it die a merciful death, but your ever more outrageous and ludicrous claims have finally got to me. The above statement is mostly pure and simple crap. I’ll grant the point that a person has to have a degree of innate “talent,” or however you want to put that, to become a musician. I would describe it as a combination of a good sense of rhythm and melody, an emotional connection to musical sounds and phrases, with a necessary admixture of physical dexterity (ability to learn complex and subtle physical actions of a number of kinds) and an ability to concentrate and focus. In addition to this “talent” mix, a future musician needs “desire,” which includes the obsessive wish to be able to make music, and the persistence and self-discipline to pursue it. “Talent” without “desire” doesn’t get very far. And there is another equally important element: training. You cannot become a classical musician (I’ll leave aside other genres, as most of our institutions concentrate on “classical”) without a very fine training background. Period.     Now a music department can’t take just anyone off the street and make that person into a musician. Nor can a math department do the same and create a mathematician. You have to have talent, desire, and training even to get in the door. Once you are in the door, you are subjected to a rigorous four years of very hard and tightly directed work (speaking only of a bachelors degree). To give a small example, our basic two year theory program (freshman and sophomore for all music majors) consists of five days a week for the entire two years. Two days of written theory and analysis; one day each of sight-singing/solfeggio, ear training/dictation, and piano skills/harmony. Everyone goes through this. And let me tell you it is not a walk in the park. You have to work your butt off to get through, and at the end you have definitely learned a lot.     That is one small element of our four year program, which includes a fair amount of music history, additional theory and analysis, performance in both solo and ensemble, etc. etc. Along the way, the student is repeatedly tested and required to produce. Juries each semester. Degree recitals. Ensemble performances. Papers. Quizzes and exams.     As far as I am concerned, a bachelors degree in music from UNM means a great, great deal more than your dismissive statement above implies. I’m sure programs vary, but I believe there is enough similarity to make that statement for any accredited program. Are all graduates fine musicians? That is arguable, depending on taste and definitions. But they have done far more than the “merely” you claim. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico      </BODY> </HTML>