<<  -- 6 --  Carson P Cooman    LETTING THE MUSIC GROW

CC: How has the environment and community of Wake Forest University impacted your life and work?

DL: The impact has been very positive. The university has been wonderfully supportive of my work as a composer. Winston-Salem is a wonderful city and we have very bright students at Wake Forest. We are an undergraduate BA program which is both a plus and a frustration. It's a plus in that the demands of doctoral dissertations and such are not present. The frustration is that at the end of four years you have to send away outstanding students who are often just beginning to find their own voices. One such composition student of mine that just graduated last spring was Andrew Estel. Now at Indiana University, Andrew graduated number one in his Wake Forest class and won one of the highly competitive Jacob Javits Awards (a lucrative national award that fully pays for the student's graduate education through the doctorate). Such students make teaching very rewarding!

CC: At Wake Forest, you must end up teaching a variety of other musical things besides composition. Do you enjoy this?

DL: I do. As a matter of fact, this semester I taught one of our Music 101 sections (Introduction to the Language of Music) and will do so again next semester. For the sake of the arts, I feel that it is one of the most important courses taught in American universities and always needs to be taken seriously and taught well. Such a course (which at Wake Forest is a part of our basic core requirement toward the BA degree) trains our future audiences.

In addition to Composition, on a regular basis I also teach our Theory III/IV course, as well as Orchestration and, every other year, a course entitled Music in the Church. I enjoy the variety of the liberal arts environment. My own background began with a Bachelor of Music degree and concluded with a conservatory (Eastman) doctorate. But in these times, I think the BA degree for students is of tremendous value because of the variety of things that it prepares them for. If they decide to change direction in graduate school, they can do so without major difficulty.

Incidentally, I well remember one MUS 101 anecdote from the late 80s. There was a female student in the class who was as upbeat as could be. She always sat in front row right next to my lectern and was always attentive. When we got to the 20th century, I spoke enthusiastically about Leonard Bernstein and his impact on everything from Mahler to American music. After class, she came up to me and said: 'I was so fascinated by all that you said about Leonard Bernstein.' She went on to say:

'He's our next-door neighbor in Connecticut and I see him coming in and out all the time. I had no idea that he had done all those things!'

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