Practice Made Perfect?

Catherine Hunt's freshman year lasted exactly one week. That was all the time it took her to realize that in turning down Yale for Harvard she had made a serious mistake. Almost too late, she discovered that the Music Department here had neither the facilities nor the attitude to help further her life's ambition: to become a concert pianist.

"I guess I was expecting a Wellesley or an Oberlia, where there are hundreds of instruments. I could have adjusted to playing on mediocre pianos, but I really needed to have access to one whenever I wanted," she explains from her home in Michigan, where she is now taking the year off, practicing and studying music theory.

Harvard does not pretend to be a music conservatory. Yet its admissions department strongly encourages serious musicians to apply. Performers can participate in any one of a number of organized ensembles, including the Harvard/Radcliffe Orchestra, the Bach Society, the Ensemble Society, the Wind Ensemble, the Harvard Jazz Band, and numerous choral groups. They have access to facilities as good as any in the Ivy League, and they can major in a department that specializes in music theory, composition and history.

But many musicians are simply dissatisfied with what they find here. They arrive to discover insufficient practice facilities and uniformly express frustration with a Music Department which they say discourages performance. Pianists, in particular, face a difficult situation: Few opportunities exist for organized music performance, and even finding a good practice piano can prove time-consuming and fruitless. These musicians--not all of whom are necessarily headed for professional careers--have two options. They either leave--as Hunt did--or they quietly re-adjust their habits, and perhaps even their ambitions, to conform to the conditions of an unashamedly academic environment.

Jessica Krash hated living in Matthews. So when January of her freshman year rolled around she decided to move off campus. "I couldn't stand the food. I wanted to live with my boyfriend, and most of all I was going crazy not having anywhere to practice. I used to spend hours wandering around searching for a piano."

Unfortunately, the Freshman Dean's Office was less than thrilled about Krash's moving plans. "Our policy on this is that it never happens," says senior adviser Will Marquess, and Henry C. Moses, dean of freshmen, emphatically agrees. But after petitions, letters, and parental intervention, Moses and company gave in and made her a rare exception. Krash moved out of Matthews, turned vegetarian, and bought her own piano.

"During my first half-year here my confidence in my playing dropped dramatically because I wasn't practicing and performing enough. At home I'd been practicing four to five hours a day, performing, and teaching," she says, adding. "I don't think I could have made it to junior year without a piano."

Moving off campus is just one of the ways Krash adjusted the musical situation here to fit her needs. When she discovered that taking fewer than four courses a year--to create more practice time--would mean paying an extra year's tuition, she simply took an entire year off. When she found the Music Department "unmusical and unintellectual," she created her own concentration. "The Philosophy and Psychology of Music." And when she discovered that music professors were unresponsive to her complaints about poor facilities and anti-performance attitudes, she decided to form a coalition of Harvard musicians to try to improve the situation.

"I'm still in the process of talking with people about it," she says, "I hope we can eventually improve access to pianos, raise money, and generally encourage interest and concertizing."

Yet Krash believes that the problems of piano playing at Harvard go far beyond a lack of facilities. "Of course there should be more pianos, of course the music building should be open past ten o'clock." But the real problem, she says, is attitude. "The Music Department could really be an advocate of performance, but instead professors say to me. 'Oh, you probably want to do something more intellectual with your life than perform. 'It's one thing if they don't want to teach it, but they look down on it as well," she says, noting that none of her professors has ever attended any of her numerous recitals or chamber-music concerts.

This attitude, she insists, is one of the main reasons the facilities are so poor. She recalls a run-in with a department secretary who controlled the keys to all the piano practice rooms. "When I asked her for the key to the grand piano, she looked up at me with this little smile and said. "You mean the pianos downstairs aren't good enough for you?'"

Krash joins the chorus of Harvard pianists who bemoan the inaccessibility of the Music Department's new Bosendorfer grand (believed by some to be the finest brand of piano in the world today). Only professors and graduate composition classes are allowed to use the instrument, which is kept locked up at all times. "The department seems to feel that instruments somehow get used up if you play them," she says. "Of course they deteriorate just as quickly if you don't play them."

Krash, however, is not wholly negative about her experience here. Harvard, she says, allows one to "get out of circulation in the competitive music world--you lose your class rank, which is great, although you also lose some perspective." She notes that Houses eagerly invite musicians to give recitals, which are relaxed and informal.

"I think there are some brilliant people here," she continues. "The problem is that they don't really stop and consider how much they could be teaching, given the resources of an enormous university. There is very little questioning about why people play--about what music is and how it relates to other arts. This is much sadder and more serious than the fact that the building closes at ten."

Music professors understandably defend their department. Although he admits that professors often develop "methodologies" that get in the way of truly inspirational teaching. Leon Kirchner, Rosen Professor of Music and teacher of Harvard's only credited music performance course, argues. "I think that very talented musicians can use the University as a sort of pump primer intellectually which will ultimately realize itself in musical values.

"The situation here is not as ideal as it is at Vassar, where the music building is filled with pianos," he continues, "but if you're talented and really driven you find the means."

Christoph Wolff, chairman of the department, addresses the piano issue more specifically. "We do have quite a number of pianos, although not all of them are in the best of shape," he says, adding. "We are about to improve the situation and rebuilding is in effect."

In fact, David Cybulski, who is in charge of piano mainte ance at Harvard, has rebuilt eight of the University's 60-plus pianos this year. But the rebuilding process is extremely slow--taking time away from his equally important duties in piano tuning and upkeep--and over Cybulski's five years here he has completed only 12 instruments in all.

Cybulski's short answer to questions about the inaccessibility of the University's concert grands perhaps best reflects the department's attitude toward serious musicians. "There is no way you can keep something fine while letting everyone play on it," he says. "Music is simply not a very democratic art."

The plaque above her desk reads "Life is like a piano--what you get out of it depends on how you play it." Her note pads bear the legend "quarter note," and her stationary is covered with small flowering G-clefs. Last December, in what she describes as "the most important thing that's ever happened to me," she soloed with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic, and this summer she will travel as far as Tokyo to give her third recital in the city's most prestigious concert hall.

Yet Mayo Tsuzuki is majoring in Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the hours she once spent at the piano she now spends in the basement of the Science Center disentangling the mysteries of A.M. 110. She insists she gave up any ideas about becoming a concert pianist before she came to Harvard. But her almost wistful ambivalence about that decision, her commitment to future performing, and even the mementos that crowd her Canaday room, all speak of regret that she cannot at least continue to practice regularly. She admits that if she had arrived here last September resolved on pursuing a professional career in music, the inaccessibility of good practice facilities coupled with her heavy academic obligations would probably have shaken her resolve.

In another way, however, Tsuzuki says coming here has strengthened her determination always to have some sort of music in her life. "Coming to Harvard gave me the option of dropping piano altogether," she says, adding. "Not until this year, when the choice was finally mine, did I realize how important to me it really was."

Nevertheless, this musician who says her parents would never have allowed her to quit the piano before she finished high school has not had a piano lesson in more than a month. "When I was little my friends used to come over and say, 'Mayo, come out and play,' but my mother would say, 'No, she has to practice,' "she recalls. "Now I can only practice if I have a concert coming up.

"Sometimes I wonder if all that hard work was a waste--I lost the chance to learn about so many other things, and I didn't come here with a very worldly mind."

Certainly a year in the Yard has improved her knowledge of the world, but music--if sometimes only on note pads and stationary--remains in her life. "I want to try to keep performing as long as I can," she says, adding. "I hope Harvard doesn't get too much in the way."

Kenneth Bookstein spent most of his summer at Interlochen Music Festival breaking into the women's dormitory. His motives were really quite innocent, however--he simply wanted to practice on the building's nine-foot grand. Now one Harvard pianist ponders Bookstein's reputed eight-hour practicing binges here: "He must have made some sort of deal with the department secretary who controls the keys."

Bookstein is simply an extremely dedicated musician. "I intend to become a concert pianist," he says, and he will allow nothing to stand in his way. "I've been known to practice until five in the morning," he continues. "I really find it quite pleasant concentrating for such long periods of time--sort of like running the marathon." He adds with a grin, "Of course the chair helps."

Unlike Tsuzuki and other pianists like her who have felt compelled to let their music take a back seat in this academic environment. Bookstein says he has become a more serious musician since he came to Harvard. "Maybe it's that I'm surrounded by more serious players," says the native of tiny LaJolla, Calif. "Maybe it's the change of atmosphere."

A music major, Bookstein voices the sentiments of many Harvard musicians when he says he came here because he wanted to expose himself to the world of liberal arts before jumping into one-track conservatory life. He elaborates: "I really worked out a lot of my technical problems before I came here. This year I tried to concentrate more on expanding my repertoire." Hence, eight hours of daily practice.

Bookstein's criticisms of the pianist's life here are minimal, partially because he seems to have both the guile and the dedication to surmount all obstacles. He plans to give at least six recitals next year, and his strenuous practicing schedule shows no sign of letting up. But the bulk of his musical education, like that of other serious performers at Harvard, will take place outside the classroom. "I'm not here to learn piano performance," he says. "Harvard does not offer piano performance."