By Kassie Meeks
Collegian Reporter

Check your fall schedule of classes carefully, music majors, because on March 6 the faculty approved the music department’s changes.

These changes include:

l A new course number schema structured to “convey year and sequence, category, and individual course,” according to the proposal the music department presented to the faculty.

l A new course called Introduction to Music Studies intended for freshmen planning a music major. It will emphasize rhythm, harmonics, overtone series, concert etiquette, performance practice habits and techniques and research materials, which are “tools [music majors and minors] can use throughout their music studies,” Holleman said.

l A rotating cycle of courses. Music majors may now combine either American Music or History of Opera, each of which are two hours, with either Performance Practice or Music in Film, each of which is one hour. Together, these smaller classes will fulfill part of the newly structured major’s requirements.

l Music theory will now be three credits instead of five, with more of a historical and philosophical basis than it has had. The course will now be a fourth alternative within the core’s fine arts requirement, along with the pre-existing art history, theater, and music understanding courses.

“Now, within music you can either choose music understanding, which is music appreciation, for the real non-musician, or the student who’s going to participate in choir, orchestra, bagpipes or jazz can choose to take that first semester of theory, Fundamentals [of Music], for the liberal arts core, and actually use that as a tool,” Chairman and Associate Professor of Music Jim Holleman said. “I’m thinking it’s going to really improve the level of understanding within our ensembles for the non-major.”

The practical argument for this change is that students wanting to major in music were too overwhelmed their freshman year.

“So we thought we could shift some of our heavy academics away from the freshman year so students can concentrate on the liberal arts core,. be taking the lessons and ensembles, and then offer music theory and music history when they’re not so jammed up with transition and hard academic courses in the core, and also benefit from the core,” Holleman said.

“If we’re going to teach the effects of the French Revolution in music history, let them take history first and let’s benefit from the knowledge that they’re going to learn there and then let’s talk about the music. So we were trying to put the horse in front of the cart instead of the cart in front of the horse, or actually, they were kind of side by side, trying to work in tandem, and it just didn’t work.”

Music professor Robert Rathmell also noted an idealist argument in addition to the practical one.

Music has been included in liberal arts subjects since the Greeks, he said, playing important roles in early Christian education, the Protestant Reformation, idealist philosophy in the 19th century and in 18th century naturalist philosophy. Therefore, not only music majors but also non-musicians who choose the new Fundamentals of Music to fulfill their liberal arts requirement will benefit.

“For example some of our classics majors are reading Cicero’s The Dream of Scipio or they’re reading Aristotle or Plato’s Republic and they see the references to music within those texts,” Rathmell said. “This is a course that intends to offer some grounding on the formation of intervals, why some numbers are preferred over other numbers and what this idea of numeric ratio is. There are all these interesting relationships between science and math and music theory, which we consider an art. I think the concept that art is a personal expression is a fairly recent one in history, and art, particularly music, has served other projects of great importance in the past and I want to have room to explore some of those things.”

At the other end of a Hillsdale music major’s career is the senior project, which can include a half recital, a scholarly paper, a half recital of original compositions or conducting a half recital.

Holleman, Rathmell, and music professors Melissa Knecht and Rachel Waddell have worked on these changes since the fall, with the idea of making the music program fit better at Hillsdale.

“I just feel like it fits our student better on this campus and it fits, it works in synergy, with the liberal arts core, as opposed to opposition to the liberal arts core,” Holleman said. “It allows our students and we as professors to benefit from the knowledge the student learns in the liberal arts core, so I think it’s just a better marriage of a music degree to a bachelor of arts, which is a difficult thing across this country. We want to have teeth in our major, so students can choose to go to graduate school and choose professions in music, yet still acknowledge that it’s a bachelor of arts degree and not a bachelor of music degree.”

Holleman, Rathmell, and music professors Melissa Knight and Rachel Waddell have worked on these changes since last summer, with the idea of making the music program fit better at Hillsdale.
This “is completely independent of any campus wide changes,” Holleman said.

“I just feel like it fits our student better on this campus and it fits, it works in synergy, with the liberal arts core, as opposed to opposition to the liberal arts core,” Holleman said. “It allows our students and we as professors to benefit from the knowledge the student learns in the liberal arts core, so I think it’s just a better marriage of a music degree to a bachelor of arts, which is a difficult thing across this country. We want to have teeth in our major, so students can choose to go to graduate school and choose professions in music, yet still acknowledge that it’s a bachelor of arts degree and not a bachelor of music degree.”