Here they are, my submitted Fulbright essays. All this work had better get me somewhere (literally) this time:
In 2006, the sun flooded an overcast February day as I began to ring the bells of the University of Rochester’s carillon. Students emerging from classes gathered before the belfry, asking questions. Is there a musical instrument in that usually silent tower? Can students learn to play?
I enrolled at the Eastman School of Music filled with the hope that as an organ student, I could also realize the potential of this magnificent forgotten instrument, comprising four octaves of bells in a tower played without electric assistance from a keyboard and pedalboard. Over the past year, I have drawn the interest of community groups and the university president alike to this Dutch-crafted treasure, achieving my most urgent public awareness and repair goals and initiating long-term development. The Eastman Organ Department, Eastman Computer Music Center, College Music Department, and a new carillon scholar are cooperating with me in this rejuvenation. I will ensure that the movement becomes self-sustained, because my next degree will prepare me to spearhead the development of a university carillon program from which I can, as an influential teacher, set in motion the revitalization of instruments well beyond Rochester.
My twofold goal combines the organ and carillon in an unprecedented program of study. The American carillon is in jeopardy because instruments outnumber competent players. Historic instruments have fallen silent, their potential to enrich public life forgotten. My answer to this crisis is to attract new talent as a teacher and to call on organists to become stewards and even players of carillons in their churches. I am already bridging the historically related instruments through my research and professional activities. Through university teaching and research, I will establish the carillon as an academic and artistic discipline and create the first environment in which an international panoply of styles can flourish. In the Netherlands, Utrecht University is expanding the music program of its English-language international honors college, the Roosevelt Academy (RA), into the graduate Roosevelt School of Music (RSM). This offers the first chance in history for a carillonist to help realize both goals in preparation to implement them in the US.
At RSM I will study performance on both instruments and, in preparation for a teaching career, develop methods of integrating the studies with experts in both fields. My thesis for the one-year Master of Arts in Musicology & Applied Performance (Carillon) degree will build on the two years of research I will have already pursued through the interdisciplinary sequence “The History of the Organ, its Literature, and Social Context” at Eastman. I will graduate prepared to integrate the study of these instruments in doctoral studies as very few musicians or scholars can.
I am expanding the campanological collection of Eastman’s library and teaching carillon students. But in my research on parallels in the developments of the Dutch organ and carillon in terms of construction, repertoire, and social function, I have found American libraries lacking. One of my papers proposed that while organs and bells developed separately for secular use, the invention of the carillon in the early 16th century allowed their evolutions to partially converge, and during the Reformation to temporarily exchange societal roles. Furthermore, I have found that the carillon underwent equivalent developments to the organ but at intriguingly later dates. My most recent paper analyzed the growing carillon repertoire derived from organ and harpsichord music in the 17th and 18th centuries and causality in the eventual decline of carillon performance and of both carillon and organ building. At RSM, I will be able to make detailed studies of source materials such as early keyboards and carillon, organ, and harpsichord manuscripts, read the large body of carillon research centered in the Low Countries, and consult leading scholars. My thesis will probe connections beginning with the early development of the instruments, and those findings can help bring the carillon back to the forefront of organ studies.
The broader future of the carillon in America is of great concern to me. Much of our carillon heritage is in disrepair or forgotten, in part because the carillon and organ worlds have drifted apart. Carillons were first built and played largely by organ builders and organists in the Low Countries, but today organists are often given authority over carillons about which they know little. By reestablishing the carillon’s importance to organ history, I am providing knowledge that organists need to protect neglected carillons from destructive modification.
Upon attending a 2005 performance by Geert D’hollander, who would become my teacher at the Royal Carillon School, I understood for the first time what it meant not just to play the carillon, but to make music with it. His artistry rivals that of touring concert pianists. The lack of such performers in the US prevents the carillon from being taken seriously. His instruction can help me achieve a professional performance level in order to attract outstanding musicians to my program. I hope to teach a new generation to win the instrument the place it deserves in our country’s public life, revive silent carillons, and see that carillons rather than synthesized chimes are built. It is organists who can best ensure the conservation of this heritage from the Low Countries; they often fail because they are unaware of the carillon’s expressive capabilities, though it offers the largest dynamic range of any acoustic instrument. An electric chime machine and a carillon seem equally musically viable to the uninitiated—and that misconception is at the root of the disasters I want to avert. The Eastman organ department has set a precedent with its model of integrated teaching of the organ, clavichord, and pedal piano, and my curricular investigations at RSM will help me develop a similar program. Through artistry in performing, public outreach, and education, I hope to recover the carillon and to enlist defenders nationwide to recoup the tradition. I am already forging connections with organ builders and restorers. During the 2007 Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative Festival, I gave a recital and talk on the need for carillon preservation. Many of America’s prominent organ builders and scholars embraced my message and its immediate relevance to organists, urging me to bring it to yet wider audiences.
The future of the carillon also depends on international collaboration. I joined a diverse class at the RA’s past two summer carillon courses, first as a student and then as an Eastman Arts Leadership Program intern. In addition to teaching lessons, I helped adult students lay foundations for cross-cultural partnerships in education and carillon restoration between three continents. D’hollander, widely considered one of the world’s leading carillon composers and performers, acts not only as RSM carillon professor, but also as a guest teacher and liaison between national schools. I intend to continue his mission, exploring each style in my teaching to foster well-rounded musicians able to initiate change by bringing disparate communities together.
I want to participate directly in the founding year of RSM’s carillon and organ program, working with director Albert Clement, my trusted advisor and former internship supervisor, to give direction to the program and gain insight not only into educational planning, but also into the administrative challenges of establishing a graduate school. By weaving together carillon and organ training towards a doctorate, I can best meet the challenges of my career—developing an teaching practice that explores the carillon and organ as related musical instruments and that establishes a new level of carillon artistry and scholarship in the US. I want to create an interdisciplinary environment for research into historical relationships and their consequences for construction and performance practice today. The chance to prepare through direct involvement for such a goal will certainly not come again before I begin my task. Thus, there is no better time or place for me than the Roosevelt School of Music from September 2008 to May 2009.
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