Yesterday morning I put the finishing touches on the eighth and last lecture for a forthcoming class on choral music at the Fromm Institute. My Fromm classes are particularly special to me, being as they are broad overviews of music literature in which I’m given carte blanche to cover the music I want to cover, as I see fit to cover it, for a class—an audience, really—that is appreciative, receptive, and perceptive.
To clarify: the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning is a well-funded and superbly managed institution dedicated to continuing education. The Fromm feels distinctly upscale, but membership fees are quite reasonable thanks to a substantial endowment from Hanna and Alfred Fromm, pioneers of the California wine industry and staunch advocates of lifelong education. The Fromm students, all of whom are 55 years or older, enjoy their own comfortable building on the University of San Francisco campus and take up to three classes per term, courses which are typically taught by retired professors, although some—such as myself—are still very much in their working years.
It was my abilities as a public speaker on music, on display at the San Francisco Symphony, that brought me to the attention of the Fromm. They invited me for a visit, and it was mutual love at first sight. I signed up to teach a class on Romantic symphonies—eight weeks of Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms, 1.5 hours one morning per week. My class, held in the second-largest classroom, sold out and was invariably filled to overflowing. From then on I taught in the largest classroom, where my lectures were also piped via closed-circuit TV to overflow rooms. My fourth and most recent class, for the winter session just past, broke all Fromm records with an enrollment of over 500. In less than three years I’ve progressed from intriguing faculty newcomer to being honored with the Barbara Fromm Endowed Chair in Classical Music.
I have been presenting music to non-musicians for over two decades, thanks to my fall semester teaching gig at UC Berkeley, where my classes are introductions to Western music for non-music majors. Years ago I discovered just how potent visual aids can be in such circumstances, so I’ve filled my Cal classes with animated listening charts, videos, and other such fare. They are time-consuming to prepare but once made can be re-used. Besides, they’re fun to make. The Fromm boasts excellent audio-visual equipment in all the rooms, so I have taken the same tack there. From the beginning, my Fromm classes have been noted for their technical whiz-bang—the animations, the charts, the fun of it all. My ratio of preparation to presentation time is on the order of 10:1, but that’s just fine with me. I’m a bonafide card-carrying preparation wonk, so anything less would give me the willies.
I love that long prep period, as I journey through the subject area I’ve elected to teach. This time around I’m covering great choral works, the first time I’ve focused on vocal music at Fromm instead of my usual instrumental music fare. The course starts with Gregorian chant and ends, about 12 lecture hours later, with Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. I could recycle a smidgen of UC Berkeley stuff—masses by Josquin and Palestrina, Bach’s Cantata No. 4 Christ lag in Todesbanden. But most of it needed to be all new, so this was going to be quite an extensive journey, indeed. First came choosing repertory—not only the pieces but also the sections or movements, then I needed to study the work, followed by choosing a presentation style. Would this one be a chart with technical info as to sections or whatnot? A focus on the words? An inspirational affair, matching artwork to music? Something else? I experimented and concocted some new approaches. We’ll see how they work when I actually present them. Then there’s always the question of how much info, and how much music. I don’t want to talk too much, but when I do give instruction, I want to make sure that it’s trenchant and apropos. Knowing my own teaching style, I must also leave room for serendipity; I may prepare like no tomorrow, but that’s in the interest of liberation, not limitation.
The prep is finished. Soon my private journey will become public.
A few hours after I had mentally signed off on the course as ready to roll, I realized that I had inadvertently come full circle. The very first piece I am presenting is a Gregorian antiphon that sets the last stanza of the Requiem Mass: In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem. As it turns out, my very last presentation to the class is the final movement of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem—a setting of the same text. Beginning and ending with those words of reassurance and comfort; how apropos. And entirely by accident.