A New Venture

[greenbaggins]

All, I am involved in (as in, I am the current president!) a new venture: the Great Lakes Conservatory of Music. Located in northwest Indiana, we are seeking to provide first-rate musical education at an affordable price with a family atmosphere, free from progressive ideology. The problem with current music schools is that all the best ones (Julliard, Curtis, Peabody, Oberlin, Eastman, Cleveland, IU, TCU, St. Olaf, Florida State, for example) are all controlled by progressive ideologies. Conservative colleges, on the other hand, do not have world-class music, and are typically rather expensive. We are, therefore, unique in the world. So, we are looking for students and donors. Another distinctive of our school is our plan for the curriculum, which will feature an integration of subjects not found in other institutions. If a student is learning about Bach in music history, they will simultaneously be studying his compositional technique in theory, trying to duplicate it in composition, and learning how to conduct Bach in conducting class.

 

[Phil D.]

If a student is learning about Bach in music history, they will simultaneously be studying his compositional technique in theory, trying to duplicate it in composition, and learning how to conduct Bach in conducting class.

And, surely, teach Bach's self-confessed philosophy of music. “The final aim and reason of all music is nothing other than the glorification of God and the refreshment of the spirit.” (paraphrase)

The feeling that all music was in the service of God went even further. When Bach dictated to his pupils excerpts from Niedt's book on thorough bass, he reworded thoughts expressed by Niedt as follows:​

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'The thorough bass is the most perfect foundation of music, being played with both hands in such manner that the left hand plays the notes written down while the right adds consonances and dissonances, in order to make a well-sounding harmony to the Glory of God and the permissible delectation of the spirit; and the aim and final reason, as of all music, so of the thorough bass should be none else but the Glory of God and the recreation of the mind. Where this is not observed, there is no real music but only devilish hubbub.'​

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These sentences reveal that by both men even the realization of a figured bass - the most rudimentary element of musical craft, used in instrumental as well as vocal performance and secular as well as sacred music - was considered an act of homage to God. Quite clearly, it had to be proper if it was to be useful at all; and if it was perfect it necessarily - as Tinctoris' words imply - pleased God as well as the player or composer himself.​

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In his secular work Bach without doubt strove for perfection as earnestly as in his compositions for divine service. Secular and sacred music were used with different texts and in different surroundings, but evidently Bach did not recognize a difference in principle between the two. For this reason he did not hesitate to make double use of originally secular works by adapting them to sacred texts, or to include movements from concertos and other instrumental compositions in his cantatas. The Osanna in the B-minor Mass was originally a movement in a 'dramma per musica', a secular choral cantata performed as a serenade during a visit of the king and queen to the city of Leipzig, but in its later position within the mass it forms as glorious a piece of religious praise as any music written specifically for the purpose could have been. The fact is that we, though we live in an irreligious age, have come back to the realization that there is no essential difference between religious and secular music, since, as we would put it, any fine music can serve to intensify the emotional content of any text that is at all similar in mood. And often the music Bach wrote for secular festivities rose so far above its text and the occasion for which it was composed that it fairly cried out to be refitted to words more appropriate to its sublime qualities.​

(Hans T. David, Arthur Mendel, The Bach Reader; A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents, [New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1966] 32f.)​

 

[SolaScriptura]

I wish you success on your new venture.

As you know, it take more than ability for one to be viewed as legitimate... it also takes credentials. What credentials do you (and others involved) possess that will lend towards credibility as a "first-rate" conservatory?

 

[greenbaggins]

Ben, all three of us currently involved as future profs have degrees in music and are professional performers. One is a bass player with the Chicago Lyric Opera Orchestra, and another is the top viola freelancer in Chicago land, and has performed with just about everyone important. Credentials are not a problem for us.

 

[Regi Addictissimus]

All, I am involved in (as in, I am the current president!) a new venture: the Great Lakes Conservatory of Music. Located in northwest Indiana, we are seeking to provide first-rate musical education at an affordable price with a family atmosphere, free from progressive ideology. The problem with current music schools is that all the best ones (Julliard, Curtis, Peabody, Oberlin, Eastman, Cleveland, IU, TCU, St. Olaf, Florida State, for example) are all controlled by progressive ideologies. Conservative colleges, on the other hand, do not have world-class music, and are typically rather expensive. We are, therefore, unique in the world. So, we are looking for students and donors. Another distinctive of our school is our plan for the curriculum, which will feature an integration of subjects not found in other institutions. If a student is learning about Bach in music history, they will simultaneously be studying his compositional technique in theory, trying to duplicate it in composition, and learning how to conduct Bach in conducting class.

Lane, this is excellent news! I work with a music major at RHB. We have often lamented how these types of institutions are dominated by liberalism.

If I am ever in the area, I would love help out with some photography. I will certainly be keeping an eye on this endeavor.

 

[ZackF]

This is wonderful news! The church and the world need this.