The Wesleyan Music Faculty Top 5

By Karen Correa

Did you often wonder what your professors listen to when they are not teaching you music theory or outlining the finer points of Sun Ra’s extragalactic origins? No, neither do we. Oh, silly rabbits, we are only joking with you! Of course we do, hence this exciting and enlightening survey. All right, so not all of the responses are exactly in Top 5 form, but the idea is just to get a glimpse into the private musical lives of those professors that we all know and love. On with it then.

Professor Slobin had a hard time pinning down a "Top 5" (which is sort of a recurring motive in this survey). However, this seems pretty indicative of his role as an ethnomusicologist with a wide range of interests and musical tastes. However, he does recommend:

1. The Well -which features Israeli singer Chava Albertstein and the NY band The Klezmatics. Alberstein selects excellent Yiddish poems and composes melodies for them, with terrific arrangements by the Klezmatics. This package is then bundled in a rather French chanson style.
2. The new series of Gyorgy Ligeti albums presenting a variety of his work in terrific performances, particularly chamber music that is otherwise hard to find.

While anyone who knows Professor Barlow could probably have guessed on this one, he really never listens to recorded music. As he put it, " The only music I hear is the music I make for myself, mostly the Cage Etudes these days."

1. Mozart’s Great Mass in C-Minor KV 427, performed by Leonard Bernstein and the Bavaria Radio Orchestra.
2. The late Beethoven String Quartets, performed by the Lasalle Quartet.
3. Kacapi Suling — Traditional instrumental music of the Sudanese region of Indonesia

Several large-scale pieces of Morton Feldman, including:

4. Triadic Memories played by pianist Aki Takahashi.
5. For Phillip Guston performed by The California Ear Unit.

Hooray! It’s a real Top 5 list! We have succeeded!

Professor Bruce, an admitted music junkie, also found it hard to narrow down a wide array of interests into a Top 5 list. However, with not a little of that patented WMJ poking and prodding he settled on five big pieces that have a special place in his life:

1. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier
2. Wagner: Das Ring der Niebelungen
3. Beethoven: 9^th Symphony and Sonata Op. 106 (a tie)
4. Debussy: Preludes
5. Cage: Song Books

I’m afraid after two real lists we have to eat our words about no lists. Yes, we see the next one, too.

1. Jim O’Rourke: Terminal Pharmacy
2. Jocelyn Robert: Canned Gods
3. Bill Frisell, George Lewis, John Zorn: Blues for LuLu
4. David Tudor: Neural Synthesis
5. Yasunao Tone: Solo for Wounded CD

Sumarsam periodically listens to gamelan music and, when research requires, other Western and non-Western recorded musics. However, he is of the live concert camp and a supporter of the CFA program.

In general, Professor Charry listens to a lot of music from Mali and Guinea. Guitare Seche by the Guinean guitarist Djessou Mory Kante is a recent favorite. Occasionally he listens to the radio. He also supports the live concerts on campus.

Maestro Gil-Ordóñez highly recommends the concert recordings of Sergiu Celibidache with the Munich Philharmonic, which will be released soon on EMI. They are live concerts that were broadcast by the Bavarian Radio. They have a great deal of personal significance for Angel since he was there and studied under Celibidache for six years.

Professor Viswanathan, teacher of South Indian classical music (also known as Karnatak music) recommends many recordings of Karnatak music now out:

1. Ramnad Krishnan: Vidwan. All the musicians on this recording were professors at Wesleyan when it was recorded in New York in 1968. It is available on the Elektra Nonesuch Explorer series.
2. Cormack and Ross: Horse of Stone. Fusion music by a duo of vocals and guitar who also happen to have connections to Wesleyan.

Professor Hoyt started his list by noting that if he was forced to make a "Stranded on an Island" list, he would most certainly want to smuggle a few extra recordings onto the lifeboat. His list, which presents the music in chronological order, was thought provoking and certainly "ballast-free". We tried to include as much as possible:

1.) Medieval/Renaissance-

O Cieco Mondo by Ensemble Huelgas directed by Paul van Nevel. An interesting note is that Paul van Nevel is currently under investigation for stealing rare texts from a library in Bologna. The Italian press accuses him of ransacking the Italian patrimony and wants him tortured. When Professor Hoyt’s conscience tells him that he should boycott this work, he turns to Music of the Renaissance in Naples by Hesperion XX, directed by Jordi Savall or The Old Hall Manuscript, sung by the Hilliard Ensemble.

J.S. Bach: St. John Passion, performed by the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. Professor Hoyt compares the beginning of this piece to a burning cigarette applied directly to the soul. Sounds delightful, no?

C.P.E. Bach: Four Symphonies Wq. 183, performed by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conducted by Gustav Leonhardt.

Joseph Haydn: String Quartets (Op.20, Nos. 2 and 4) and Luigi Boccherini: String Quartets Op. 32, both by the Quartetto Esterhazy, led by Jaap Schroder.

Alban Berg: Lulu, The Orchestre de l’Opera de Paris, conducted by Pierre Boulez.

Despite this lengthy (for a Top 5) list, we gather that this is only the tip of the iceberg. One that he wanted to include, but didn’t, is Georg Solti’s fifteen-CD reading of Wagner’s Der Ring des Niebelungen. But we just did, so it’s ok.