Chapter 4 - Harvard Years and Tanglewood Summers

Summary

Very quickly, I learned what a great mistake it was to test out of most of the undergraduate music courses at Boston University, since my fellow beginning graduate colleagues were so much better prepared for the rigors and the pre¬requisites involved in graduate studies than I was. The shock of passing the en¬trance exams minimally and the first classes that I attended were quite revealing.

My first class was musicology taught by the great Archibald T. Davison. There were seven of us in the class and Davison assigned each of us to give a lecture to the class every week. This lecture was to last one hour. My first as¬signment was “The origin and development of the Gabrieli style.” I went to the library and checked out every book on all the Gabrielis I could find, and there were many. Reading as much as I could in a week and writing the most brilliant lecture, I went to class with a glow. I was going to startle everyone with my brilliance.

I gave the lecture, and there was a deafening silence. Dr. Davison, sitting in the last row of the rather large lecture hall, took off his glasses and asked me: “Adler, what are you here for?” Somewhat startled, I answered: “I am a first-year graduate student.” “You are a what?” he demanded, and I repeated my status, upon which he replied: “You are a graduate student, impossible! You should be in Kindergarten! See me after class, you are a basket case.” Needless to say, I was stunned and went into his office shaking all over. When I entered, he looked at me with a very sad expression, especially when he noticed my bewildered state. “Adler, I did not learn a thing from your lecture and I know exactly where you got every bit of information. When I want to read up on the Gabrielis, I know what books to get, but I would first study their music, and that you did not do. You also did not perform, or have us perform, any music and I don't believe you know any of their music well enough to even suggest anything for performance by the class. When you study a composer, the first thing you study is the music—not what someone has to say about it or the facts of their lives. Further, you cannot speak English.