By Esti DeAngelis, Managing Editor
The room where Stern College for Women’s music professors teach, with its grand piano, music staff-lined white board and kippah-adorned bust of Beethoven, is one most students visit for only one semester. Sense of Music, the extent of most Stern students’ music education, is a class that most take to help fulfill one of their “interpreting literature and the arts” general education requirements.
But there is a small group of Stern students who look for more from the music department. Some are music majors and minors, who will take classes on music theory and composition. Others may not necessarily be studying music at all. These students make up the small groups of girls who gather for 75 minutes each Monday for one of Stern’s two musical ensembles, its chamber and choral groups. Both courses along with some of the Sense of Music slots, are taught by Professor Marcia Young, director of Performance Studies at Stern.
“I love them all, in different ways,” Young said of the different classes she teaches. “I already knew I love coaching performers, but I was totally surprised to find I also love classroom teaching.”
Young has been teaching music at Stern for more than 20 years, a stint that began when Dr. David Glaser, the chair of Stern’s music department, was in the audience at a concert in which Young was performing. “He was looking for someone to start a choral ensemble at Stern,” said Young. “Based on what he saw and heard, he got in touch and offered me the job.”
Young is now a fixture of Stern’s small but mighty music department, and she enjoys the work she does. “They are a mutually supportive community,” Young said of the students at Stern. “They seem to take real joy in helping each other to achieve common goals, and they have cracking good discussions.”
Though Sense of Music serves as the extent of most students’ interactions with Young, the students in the chamber (instrumental) and the choral (voice) ensembles see a different side of her.
During chamber ensemble rehearsals, Young sits in a green cushioned rolling chair behind her desk, interjecting the students’ performance with the occasional “good for you” or “not quite.” Other times, she pulls the chair up to the piano or leans over the student sitting on the piano bench. Though the instruments in the ensemble change semester to semester, there is usually at least one pianist, and this is the instrument in the typical ensemble lineup at which she is most proficient. This semester, the chamber ensemble consists of two pianists and a violinist. Young is also a classically trained singer and plays different kinds of early harps.
Young’s feedback is always honest but constructive, and she helps the students keep time by conducting with her hands. “Are you sure you’re playing the right notes,” she says. It is a statement, not a question, a way to politely tell the student she has the notes wrong. When a student makes the same mistake a few times, Young recognizes there is a larger problem present, and she offers more universal advice. “A practice session is really a problem-solving session,” she tells the student. “Even if you’ve got five minutes, say, ‘I’m going to solve a five-minute problem.’”
This advice has been forged from her decades of experience performing and also from being, at one time, a student herself. Young was a voice major in college and graduate school, and has performed Renaissance and baroque music with multiple groups over the years, though she says at this point she is mostly retired from performing, save the odd church gig. She is also a music journalist and has previously done on-air work for the WQXR radio station.
She describes her teaching philosophy as one of personalization. “It is important to start where the student is. Close observation is the key to this,” she said. “Individualize instruction to the fullest extent possible. Every student is different. Patience and flexibility are, for me, essential to effective communication with students.”
Once rapport has been established, students in both the ensembles or Sense of Music can flourish. “It is always about the students themselves, and their degree of engagement in the subject matter, that make it rewarding,” Young said. “It is especially glorious when students who believe they have no talent or inclination for music, find that they actually do.”
For the students in the chamber ensemble, though, Young’s passion for music shines through the most. She tunes one of the hand harps she keeps in her office as she and a student discuss harp history, impressed by the student’s historical knowledge. Then, they play the piece, with Young playing the melody on the harp. It is an old folk song. They go slowly to allow the student, who has just learned the piece, to keep up.
Young is excited about the music, and she spontaneously takes the students to her office to watch videos on her computer of something called Morris dancing, the dance traditionally paired with the piece they are learning. In the office, piles of sheet music clutter the two desks and every other available surface. Among the sheet music are an eclectic assortment of other objects: the remnants of a pot of the oolong tea she brews every day, a couple bottles of hand sanitizer, an open planner and an extra black beret, identical to the one she has on. The clock on the wall has, instead of numbers, the circle of fifths, a chart used in music theory for organizing pitches.
Back in the classroom, the lesson is coming to an end. Ensemble is a precious hour for Stern’s musicians and singers, but Young doesn’t view these students any differently than those in Sense of Music. “Sense of Music is an analysis course, but the analysis is done using the ears. Thus it is brand-new for everyone,” she said. “My STEM girls find it refreshing as a sort of reset for their brain, which normally expends a lot of energy taking in sequential information and memorizing data.” For Young, music classes at Stern carry a unique significance for every student, regardless of how many semesters they spend in the department.
“As a bonus, students get to listen to music,” she adds of the Sense of Music class. “And, when the stars align, they emerge with a new understanding of it.”
Photo Credit: Esti DeAngelis