Juilliard: A History by Andrea OlmsteadReview by: Karen AhlquistJournal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Summer 2002), pp. 369-373Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jams.2002.55.2.369 .

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Reviews 369

Juilliard: A History, by Andrea Olmstead. Music in American Life. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999. xiii, 368 pp.

As a topic, the place of institutions in Western music history lacks the obvious appeal of the music itself. Institutional roles are acknowledged, of course, and in particular, professional music schools have undergone ethnographic scrutiny in recent studies by Henry Kingsbury and Bruno Nettl.1 Traditional narrative histories, however, have been relatively few in number; as Andrea Olmstead notes, music education has not been a priority in Anglo-American music scholarship. On this account alone, her unauthorized, critical history of the preeminent conservatory in the United States (and, arguably, the world), The Juilliard School, is welcome.

Olmstead offers a thoroughly researched narrative centered on the person- alities and relationships that have given the school its character and nurtured it in its path to fame. Her straightforward writing style is laced with first-person commentary and occasional wry humor (after quoting Harold Schonberg's description of the new school building as "the Taj Mahal of conservatories," she quips, "Perhaps he forgot the Taj Mahal is a tomb" [p. 188]). As she re- marks in her introduction, the conservatory is an easy institution for musicolo- gists to ignore. Yet many readers of this Journal who also read the book will recognize ways in which the Juilliard ethos affects the environment in which they work. The view is illuminating.

Fundamentally, this is a book about politics. Just as Olmstead emphasizes Juilliard's top-down structure, her book offers chapters titled by the names of its leaders. The first, Frank Damrosch (1859-1937) of the well-known German family of musicians, founded the school's predecessor, the Institute of Musical Art (IMA, 1905). The IMA's bylaws gave its director control over all policies, curriculum, and faculty. And so, seemingly naturally, German tradi- tions and idealism obtained. With money from banker James Loeb (1867- 1933), Damrosch aimed to nurture musicians who would "place the work of art before the personality of the performer, in other words, musicians who are true devotees of the art of music" (p. 27). This attitude extended to the Department of Public School Music, which trained the institute's many women students in one of the few musical occupations open to them.

The 1920s brought Damrosch's vision stiff competition in the form of the Juilliard Musical Foundation (JMF), created through a bequest from textile merchant Augustus Juilliard (1836-1919). Juilliard's nephew and heir, Frederick, chose a Protestant minister, Eugene Noble (1865-1948), as execu- tive secretary, a crucial act that Olmstead suggests allowed self-serving corrup- tion and indifference to undermine its musical purposes. The merger of the

1. Henry Kingsbury, Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); and Bruno Netd, Heartland Excursions: Ethno- musicological Reflections on Schools of Music (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995).

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370 Journal of the American Musicological Society

foundation's Juilliard Graduate School, an all-fellowship, lessons-only institu- tion (not a graduate school in today's sense) with the IMA took place on paper in 1926, but was fully achieved in practice only in 1946 under William Schuman. Presumably the reasons were financial: despite gross mismanage- ment and diversion of funds for personal use (Noble lived free in a grand apartment in the original Juilliard building), the JMF had the millions needed to support an important music school.

In a series of chapters, Olmstead describes insider hiring, infighting, recrim- ination, at-will firings, old-boy relationships, and personal aggrandizement, all of which she suggests dominated Juilliard's governance from the 1920s to the death of president Peter Mennin in 1983. The might-have-beens of this era are sometimes poignant-for example, the repeated attempts to recruit Arnold Schoenberg for the composition faculty. So are decisions portrayed as irresponsible, such as Schuman's abolition of the successful Juilliard Summer School. Olmstead also accuses Schuman of co-opting the press (one of several times) by hiring New York Times music editor and self-described administra- tive "greenhorn" Mark Schubart as dean (p. 152).

In the last chapter, "Juilliard in the Post Modem World," Olmstead draws on her inside knowledge (she taught music history at the school from 1972 to 1980) to chronicle important changes in recent years in response to a chang- ing artistic climate. She documents the first systematic attention to the overall education of the student artist since the days of Frank Damrosch. Joseph Polisi, arguably the school's most broadly educated president (his undergrad- uate degree is in political science), urged students to "look out beyond the practice room" (p. 270). Under his leadership, the school communicated with its graduates for the first time in decades, increased student support services, established a collaboration with Columbia and Barnard for five-year double degrees, and completed necessary computerization (the library used a card catalogue until 1995). To this reviewer, who studied at Juilliard for three years, Olmstead's report of student community life in its first dormitory (opened in 1990) is revelatory. Yet she also reports, "One of Polisi's first acts was to fire the entire academic department, many of whom had excellent credentials" (p. 275). While a president may make decisions that improve the school, Juilliard still seems as vulnerable to top-down management as always.

One walks away from Olmstead's narrative marveling at the disjunction be- tween the Juilliard mystique and the facts. And indeed, the book argues con- vincingly that for much of its history, the school's reputation has exceeded its value as an educational institution. Olmstead's assessment in this regard comes across as balanced. On the one hand, she stresses the importance of the major studio teachers to their students' education, highlighting the many long-term faculty members who inspired devotion and respect. On Vincent Persichetti, for example, she quotes Steve Reich: "He could listen to you, look at your score, and he became you. He could improvise pieces in your style. He knew what information you needed at this point in your life today. And that's a great

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Reviews 371

teacher" (p. 251). She tells us that violinist Leopold Auer "broadened the stu- dent's horizons [and] made them read books" (p. 86), and that Peter Mennin brought in distinguished performers such as Jenny Tourel and Sixten Ehrling. But she also convinces the reader that in the Music Division at least, until re- cent years "pride and envy as well as the lesser sins of snobbery, secrecy, arro- gance, intimidation, and self-interest" trumped the school's educational mission (p. 3). So did its implicit goal of enhancing its reputation by creating musical stars. From the time of Van Cliburn, who won the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958, it has excelled at this task.

Olmstead further emphasizes the lack of basic humane treatment of stu- dents and faculty by imperious administrators. Under most of the presidents whose names grace chapter headings, Juilliard was not a nurturing environ- ment and had trouble recruiting and retaining faculty (especially in classroom subjects) because of cruelly low salaries and an absence of job security. On salaries, she notes, "The attitude that somehow rent could be paid using only the prestige of the name 'Juiliard' led to problems obtaining faculty" (p. 255). She also calls fear of the president "a powerful source of the School's mystique" (p. 4), using relations-or, rather, nonrelations-between students and President Mennin as an example:

[Mennin] was rarely seen in the halls and never in the three large elevators where everyone bumps into everyone else.... So removed was Mennin from the students and many faculty that it was possible to spend years at the School and never enter his office or even know where it was. Those who did find their way to the second-floor room behind a wall of glass encountered a secretary who made sure they did not meet with the president. (p. 246)

From this perspective, one can understand a cynical student saying: "How do you spell Juilliard? Big J, little you" (p. 250).

Other important topics receive valuable treatment. Olmstead follows the themes of gender, nationality, and race from the IMA forward. In the early years, administrators were obsessed enough with male enrollments that "per- centages of male students were . . . calculated to a fraction of a percentage point" (p. 38). Similarly, under Eugene Noble, the Juilliard Graduate School was open to American citizens only. Neither institution discriminated officially against students of color. Nevertheless, Olmstead demonstrates that the prob- lems common to diverse institutions were present. For example, she recounts in detail the story of the Music Advancement Program (MAP), designed for pre-college-age black and Latino students. Some Pre-College Division faculty and parents saw the program as a diminution of standards (MAP students were awarded the same diploma after two years as Pre-College students after eight years or more). Yet it received substantial outside fimding. In this re- gard, Olmstead cites Yale dramatist Robert Brustein, who argued that foun- dations make donations to arts organizations under the assumption that art is essentially a social service. According to Olmstead, Brustein's remarks were

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372 Journal of the American Musicological Society

circulated at the time of the MAP controversy and offered "some comfort" to Pre-College parents (p. 278).

Further, although Juilliard was first and may still be best known for its music (the name "Juilliard School of Music" is sometimes seen today, over thirty years after the last two words were dropped), Olmstead gives dance and drama their due. She centers the story on the relationship between the school and Lincoln Center: Would these arts at Juilliard undermine professional dance and drama companies being planned for Lincoln Center? This contro- versy nearly killed the Dance Division (opened in 1951) and almost prevented the Drama Division from opening at all (it opened in 1968, still uptown).

Perhaps of greater interest to musician readers of the dance and drama chapters is the discussion of curricular issues. In neither area were assumptions about the content of the education taken for granted. In dance, the question of ballet versus modern technique came to the fore, in drama, that of acting versus playwriting and stage direction. Both faculties considered students as members of a class or group; the well-known Acting Company, founded by the first graduating class in drama, speaks to the strength of this ensemble ideal. The Dance Division also offers its students something important: collegiate- level education for a constituency often working professionally at an age when their cohorts are still in high school.

In addition, one learns illuminating tidbits about life at the school. Final exams at the IMA were given at night, with the entire faculty attending in evening dress. Juilliard had a music education department, which was elimi- nated in 1949. In the 1960s, the purportedly apolitical students protested the war in Vietnam. In response, an "outraged" President Mennin fired faculty members who supported them (p. 254).

Other themes, however, would have merited fuller discussion. Olmstead notes that in 1995, the acceptance rate in music was about 10 percent. How does that percentage compare with other eras, and what should be made of it? She discusses the Literature and Materials of Music ("L&M") curriculum at some length (pp. 160-63,275-76). Essentially an attempt to integrate reper- tory and theory, it was instituted in 1947, she argues, without a vision that could transcend individual faculty members' interpretations. This discussion whets the appetite for a more systematic consideration of curricular and educa- tional principles, especially in classroom subjects. For example, in 1963 the re- quirement of sixty academic credits for a bachelor's degree was cut to thirty. What was dropped and why? And how has the school acknowledged reper- tory beyond a narrowly defined Western art tradition?

The book also has annoying features, including digressions, confusing chronology, non sequiturs between or within paragraphs, topics and individu- als not clearly identified where needed, and narrative gaps. It needs more rhetorical peaks and valleys, so that the reader can follow the themes given at the outset, rather than merely try to piece the narrative together. One can appreciate the difficulty of telling such a complex story, however. If the book

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Reviews 373

receives a second edition-perhaps even a second printing-a timeline with important institutional dates, events, and people would be welcome.

Finally, a few conceptual difficulties muddle the argument. For example, Olmstead suggests that some parties did not want Juilliard as the educational institution at Lincoln Center because its large Preparatory School was viewed as "not professional enough." She continues: "Lincoln Center insisted that nothing approaching music education become a constituent. The focus was to be professional rather than on training music teachers" (p. 176). It may be that the Preparatory School did train music teachers. But it is not clear whether it did the same work as the Preparatory Department or the current Pre-College Division. Both of these units have prepared students for the same professional education the collegiate-level students receive, and have nothing to do with "music education" as it is commonly understood.

These problems aside, the book has much to say to anyone thinking about the future of Western art music in education and professional life. If it seems that Olmstead misses a big picture, it may be that there is none, and that much of what created Juilliard's character arose from the motives and person- alities she describes. This is a sobering thought, given the school's prominence and ostensible leadership position in the education of professional musicians. Equally sobering is her emphasis on the role of big money in setting up insti- tutional frameworks for the arts even in the absence of artistic competence. And so, finally, is her evidence that most presidents (Olmstead refers here to Schuman) "would not tolerate faculty committees" (p. 246). Instead, rule by fiat, fear, and force of personality left behind a series of reinvented wheels. One wonders what historians of politics would make of the power structures de- scribed here. One also wonders how and why this pattern has been able to maintain itself at Juilliard for so long.

The last chapter, however, may transcend much, if not all, of this caution- ary tale. In 1995, former dean Gideon Waldrop called Juilliard "more like Yale than it used to be" (p. 272). In so doing, he acknowledged the conservatory's need to nurture both talent and intellect: "You can say students [at Juilliard] are better educated. But if you look at what's happening with the big, big tal- ents, ... it doesn't happen anymore. Maybe it's better to have better-educated artists, rather than robots" (p. 272). Dean James Sloan Allen put the same issue in another way: "We could go on as we did in the past, but the conserva- tory is a nineteenth-century invention, and the lives of people are not the same anymore" (p. 287). The legacy of romanticism in music education (analyzed by Kingsbury and Nettl) has given way first to the star system and now to a broader vision that includes attention to intellectual development along with outreach and arts advocacy as part of the musician's job. This change will be worth watching. With it, Olmstead suggests, Juilliard may indeed become "more like Yale," and foster an ideal of the performing artist who can meet the scholar on common ground.

KAREN AHLQUIST

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