Music In The Undergraduate Curriculum > D. G. Mason
Daniel Gregory Mason
Photograph taken on the grounds of his Connecticut home, no date
Columbia University Archives, Rare Book and Manuscript Library
One early Department of Music chairman who, like MacDowell, was deeply committee to music as a general college subject was Daniel Gregory Mason. A composer, a charismatic and widely influential educator, a brilliant lecturer and writer, Mason was a champion of music as, in MacDowell's words, "an element of liberal culture." The collateral readings and concert attendance he required of his undergraduates during his 20-year-long chairmanship would serve any modern teacher of Music Humanities. "In every way possible," he wrote in 1918, "students are helped to substitute for that 'drowsy reverie relieved by nervous thrills' in which Mr. Santayana says most people listen to music, an attitude of alert, discriminating perception."
Mason went on to say: "More nonsense has been written about [music] than about any other art — and that is saying a good deal. By listeners of the intelligence of college students what seems most needed, aside from certain warnings against popular misconceptions, is plentiful presentation of fine examples, well performed and sympathetically analyzed, detailed study of the styles of various composers and schools, and stimulus to discriminate between the best and what is in any way inferior, and to build up gradually from such discriminations the habit we call good taste."
Then and now, a sound prescription. It cannot have been lost on Mason and the colleagues of his generation that the students who had most benefitted from this learning experience might possibly continue to pursue their interest in later life, and even to support it with their means. By the same token, it does not seem cynical to observe that for the present generation of musicians, faced with the steady decrease in governmental and institutional support, hope may continue to lie in the direction of today's musically-experienced non-specialists, who are often in a position to provide the financial support that the musical community cannot provide for itself. It goes without saying that this kind of education needs to begin in childhood. But in a society in which systematic exposure to music is still far from the norm, a suitably challenging introduction at the undergraduate level may be the best we can do.