The Music Man

The shirt-sleeved conductor raised his arms, and the 85-member Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra began the introduction to Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto. For Michael Senturia '58, summa graduate in music and former conductor of the Bach Society Orchestra, long weeks of practice have gone into preparation for the HRO's Friday evening concert, his debut before the critical Cambridge audience as the new conductor of the Orchestra.

To move from the Bach Society to the HRO, however, Senturia took the long route around: Gaining experience in Munich through study and by work for a few weeks "with a second-rate opera company, one which traveled from village to village presenting operas." As recipient of the Paine Traveling Fellowship in Music during 1958-59, he studied at the Munich Conservatory--and even gained an offer of a job conducting an orchestra for Siemens Electric, "the General Electric of Germany."

"This company hires a regular chamber orchestra to play for its workers, as a regular part of their employee public relations." As attractive as this position may have seemed, he turned it down to accept his present dual job of conducting the HRO and teaching a graduate course.

Senturia started originally as a pianist--but at the tender age of six, he quit "since I didn't like to practice." Five years later, he took up the oboe and developed great virtuosity, playing in the Woodrow Wilson High School orchestra and band, plus "a few college orchestras." For two summers, he occupied first oboe position at Interlachen, famed music camp in Michigan--"my love of music derived from my experience there"--and after his freshman year at Harvard, he attended the Eastman Conservatory for a summer. "I then had great doubts about the value of a University versus a conservatory education for a musician. But I finally decided the University education was better than the conservatory."

The budding conductor received a great honor when he was accepted at Tanglewood as a conducting student in the summer of 1957. "I was about 10 years younger than the other conductors there."

Yet Senturia admits, "I'm by no means a finished musician. I'm still studying with scores, at the piano, or `by ear. There is no real set pattern of advanced study for a musician, and as a conductor I must build up my repertory." To help accomplish this, and, more important, to provide more interest at the HRO's rehearsals, Senturia often conducts the Orchestra in pieces not meant specifically for concerts, a new practice this year. "This gives us all more variety and wider acquaintance with musical literature."

The concerts presented by the HRO this year also will differ from the patterns of previous years. "We hope to present short programs of music of more than common interest and less than common knowledge," Senturia states. For example, in Friday's concert, the Orchestra will present Stravinsky's "Symphonies of Wind Instruments," "a particularly uncompromising piece," Senturia's own arrangement for strings of Bach's six-part Ricercar, from "The Musical Offering," plus the Beethoven concerto.

Yet Senturia has long-range doubts about his continued work in music at the University. "I am a little cautious of the academic world in certain respects, and I am not convinced this is the best place for a performing musician." Contemporary composers should come to the University to play and speak with undergraduates "or else the entire musical community cannot flourish," Senturia recommends. Music at Harvard for him thus does not stop with the HRO; it is a living, all-important concern which extends far beyond his three rehearsals per week and his teaching in Music 253, formerly taught by Walter Piston. But beyond all this, Senturia exhibits qualities of understanding and charm--additional attributes for the successful new conductor.