108 ❧ chapter nine
Age 16: I had considerable fl uency at the piano, but all was in technical disor-
der. I had no notion of effi ciently organized practicing, but covered with great
enthusiasm a vast amount of literature. I had never sung or danced. I had no
background in harmony or any form of composition or analysis. I had never
heard of a Bach chorale. I detested Beethoven. In this condition I arrived at
Harvard.
Ages 16–20: At Harvard I considered concentrating in music and took fi rst-
and second-year harmony. Totally repelled by counterpoint and certain other
probably deservedly unpopular courses, I decided to concentrate in fi ne arts,
meanwhile remaining more active in music than in any other fi eld. I had piano
lessons with a teacher who for two years tried to obtain orderly and system-
atic work but without helping much with technical development. However,
this teacher, oriented better toward pre-Romantic music, fi nally dismissed me
with a falling-out that resides in my ears to this day and which precipitated the
beginning of my career as a disciplined musician. I took a few more courses in
music, but very few. They included orchestration, which was a farce; a course in
the music of Bach, for which I had by then become an active and more mature
participant; and one half-course in the history of choral music, which is all of
music history that I have ever offi cially studied. In the meantime, I had begun
to sing in various choral organizations, and I count this experience the one
single most important factor in my musical education. Concerts were attended
in abundance and curiosity about the literature of music was not lacking. As
a pianist I participated in some chamber music, but very little, since in those
days there were hardly any instrumentalists to be found in all of Harvard. For
over two years, I accompanied a Harvard vocal group that toured schools and
colleges on the Eastern seaboard, to the extent of as many as forty concerts a
season, usually playing a group of piano solos.
In the fi rst summer, I attended the Concord Summer School of Music, sang
a great deal of choral music, acquired some notions of musical taste that were
unsupported by my own background and perceptive abilities, played for the
fi rst time a concerto with orchestra, and became a musical snob. The last three
summers I served as music counselor, fi rst in a boy’s camp where I acquired a
permanent distaste for Gilbert and Sullivan and met various performing musi-
cians of both low and high caliber.
In my junior year, I became interested in the harpsichord and began playing
it, giving my fi rst public performance in May 1930. By this time I had learned
how to work, and conducted my affairs with what to others may have seemed
an excessive intensity and seriousness. In the next two summers, I served as
music counselor in another camp and played much piano and accompanied
many dance classes. In my senior year, I continued playing the harpsichord
and, of course, singing in choruses of all sorts of combinations and repertoires,
many of the performances being in connection with the Boston Symphony.
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