Apartment Finder: Juilliard Drama

Thursday, 22 November 2012

Juilliard Drama

William Schuman graduated from (BS-1935, MA-1937) and attended the Juilliard Summer School in 1932, 1933 and 1936. While attending Juilliard Summer School, he developed a personal dislike for traditional music theory and ear training curricula, finding little value in counterpoint and dictation. Soon after being selected as president of The Juilliard School of Music during 1945, William Schuman created a new curriculum termed "The Literature and Materials of Music" (L&M) designed to be taught by composers. L&M was Schuman's reaction against more formal theory and ear training, and as a result did not have a formal structure. The general mandate was "to give the student an awareness of the dynamic nature of the materials of music." The quality and degree of each student's education in harmony, music history or ear training was dependent on how each composer-teacher decided to interpret this mandate. Many questioned the quality of L&M as a method to teach the fundamentals of music theory, ear training and history.