Slosberg Music Center, Brandeis University
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I'd reported in 2023 that the Brandeis University administration was threatening to shut down the graduate programs in music. I neglected to report that it appeared, after protest, that these programs, which cost about $300,000/year, were going to be retained.
Ultimately, though, the university decided to shut down the graduate programs and also to lay off the Lydian String Quartet, which has been in residence for forty-four (44) years. In that time, the Lydian has been an advocate for new music and hugely valuable as coaches and teachers as well as performers. The cost of the Lydian was about $275,000/year.
This is truly terrible: what it means is that in the future, the faculty won't have graduate students to teach and the undergraduates won't have the vast wealth of teaching and performing experience of the Lydian. It will be nearly impossible to attract top scholars and composers to Brandeis because there won't be graduate programs.
This has already resulted in the decision of longtime faculty members Eric Chasalow and David Rakowski to accelerate their retirement from Brandeis.
I was an undergraduate at Brandeis in the late 1970s, and my teachers there included musicologists Joshua Rifkin, Edward Nowacki, and Margaret Bent, composers Harold Shapero and Arthur Berger, and conductors James Olesen and David Hoose, who provided a first-class music education. I remain grateful to them all to this day and I deeply regret that future Brandeis students won't have the opportunities that I had.
I sent printed letters in August to various high-level administrators and heard nothing. (The president of the University was on the verge of announcing his resignation, so it's not a surprise that he didn't respond.) I wrote again in October to most of the same group and added a few members of the board of trustees. Only one person bothered to respond; her line was "hard decisions must be made." Note that there was no outreach to music department alumni about the status of the department and no attempt made to raise funds from us.
I did tell each person I wrote to that I had planned a substantial bequest to Brandeis, but I had called off those plans and would never donate another cent. I hope that other Brandeis alumnae who studied in the music department will do the same.
3 comments:
I can see them citing your withdrawal of your intended donation as an example of why they needed to cut, nicely confusing cause and effect. It doesn't seem to occur to cutters like this that, instead of preserving what they want to preserve, these cuts undermine the whole institution. (Why keep an undergraduate music program if you're going to cut the graduate one? It won't be worth keeping.) The SF Symphony board is the same way.
Yes, that would be an interesting way to lie about what happened. It is truly enraging that there was no targeted fund-raising before they made this decision, and speaks to their having little imagination about ways that they might preserve the graduate programs and the Lydian.
The comparison with the SFS board is extremely apt, thank you.
It's almost as if they were looking for cuts to make (though cutting the Music Department programs hardly saves them much), and actually hoped that donations would cease to enable them to justify the cuts. But I think that is attributing too much cleverness to the parties in question. I have also informed them that I am no longer planning to make any bequests or further donations to Brandeis. There are many other worthy organizations to support.
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