The Walden School

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The Walden School is an organization which runs summer music education programs. It is based in Dublin, New Hampshire and has a year-round office in San Francisco, California. Since its founding in 1972, the Walden School has operated the Young Musicians Program, a 5-week long summer camp and concert series, which is the only summer program dedicated specifically to young composers in the United States. Students aged 9 to 18 study musical composition, along with a unique curriculum of music theory, specialty electives, and chorus. In 2011 the Walden School began running the Creative Musicians Retreat, an 8-day long program for adult musicians from all backgrounds to study choral music, composition, performance, and pedagogy. Both programs take place on the campus of the Dublin School, and they both feature visiting professional ensembles who help to perform new music written by participants, as well as composers-in-residence who inspire and mentor the participants. The Young Musicians Program also puts on a choral concert at the conclusion of the program. Along with participants from the United States, in recent years attendees have come from countries such as Cyprus, Israel, Mexico, China, India, Estonia, Canada, Serbia, and Venezuela.

Dublin, New Hampshire Town in New Hampshire, United States

Dublin is a town in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 1,597 at the 2010 census. It is home to Dublin School and Yankee magazine is based there.

United States Federal republic in North America

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city is New York City. Most of the country is located contiguously in North America between Canada and Mexico.

The Dublin School is an independent college-preparatory school with a student body of 165. It has grown from approximately 110 students in 2008. It is located in the United States in Dublin, New Hampshire, near Dublin Pond and Mount Monadnock. Of the 165 enrolled, approximately 75% are boarding students.

Contents

History

The Walden School was co-founded in 1972 by David Hogan, Pamela Layman Quist, and Lynn Taylor Hebden following the death of Grace Newsom Cushman, the founder of the Junior Conservatory Camp (also commonly referred to as the "JCC"). The JCC was founded in the 1940s in Baltimore, Maryland, and was considered the spiritual predecessor camp of The Walden School. The Walden School, which began in Reisterstown, Maryland, was situated on the campus of the Mountain School from 1976 to 1982, a small rural private boarding school in Vershire, Vermont. In 1983, due to the impending sale of the Mountain School, Walden moved to the Dublin School in Dublin, New Hampshire, where it has been held ever since. On July 17, 1996, David Hogan was one of the victims of the TWA Flight 800 crash. [1] [2]

David Hogan (composer) American composer

David Hogan was an American composer and musical director of CIGAP—Le Choeur Int'l Gai de Paris—a choir composed of men who loved music and wanted to show pride in their identity as gay men.

Baltimore Largest city in Maryland, United States

Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, as well as the 30th most populous city in the United States, with a population of 602,495 in 2018 and also the largest such independent city in the country. Baltimore was established by the Constitution of Maryland as an independent city in 1729. As of 2017, the population of the Baltimore metropolitan area was estimated to be just under 2.802 million, making it the 21st largest metropolitan area in the country. Baltimore is located about 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Washington, D.C., making it a principal city in the Washington-Baltimore combined statistical area (CSA), the fourth-largest CSA in the nation, with a calculated 2018 population of 9,797,063.

Maryland U.S. state in the United States

Maryland is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east. The state's largest city is Baltimore, and its capital is Annapolis. Among its occasional nicknames are Old Line State, the Free State, and the Chesapeake Bay State. It is named after the English queen Henrietta Maria, known in England as Queen Mary, who was the wife of King Charles I.

Methodology

Philosophy

The Walden academic curriculum and teaching methodology is based on a core philosophy which employs a comprehensive and organic approach to learning music, emphasizing creativity in all aspects of the curriculum. The Walden School's general philosophy defines music as "sound organized in time."

Musicianship

In the Walden School's Musicianship Course students simultaneously learn singing, playing, writing, and improvising music. The Musicianship course teaches the elements of music more or less in the order that they were developed, and starts with the existential question of "what is music?" Students then proceed through a process of discovery beginning with the overtone series and improvisations inside the piano. This method of teaching musicianship breaks with conventional methods of music education, most notably in The Walden School's teaching of intervals and modes before teaching functional harmony. The Walden School has recently published a textbook titled The Walden School Musicianship Course: A Manual for Teachers about its methodology.

Overtone Tone with a frequency higher than the frequency of the reference tone

An overtone is any frequency greater than the fundamental frequency of a sound. Using the model of Fourier analysis, the fundamental and the overtones together are called partials. Harmonics, or more precisely, harmonic partials, are partials whose frequencies are numerical integer multiples of the fundamental. These overlapping terms are variously used when discussing the acoustic behavior of musical instruments. The model of Fourier analysis provides for the inclusion of inharmonic partials, which are partials whose frequencies are not whole-number ratios of the fundamental.

Composition

Walden School alumni see Walden as a "composition camp", although technically composition is not at the core of the Walden curriculum. The method employed by composition teachers depends on the level of the student. In beginner classes comprising new and inexperienced students, a more improvisation-oriented approach is taken. More advanced classes take an open-ended approach, in that students are encouraged to compose any style they please while simultaneously receiving guidance from their composition teacher on orchestration and notation techniques.

Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation, in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of improvisation can apply to many different faculties, across all artistic, scientific, physical, cognitive, academic, and non-academic disciplines; see Applied improvisation.

Orchestration study or practice of writing music for an orchestra

Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orchestration is the assignment of different instruments to play the different parts of a musical work. For example, a work for solo piano could be adapted and orchestrated so that an orchestra could perform the piece, or a concert band piece could be orchestrated for a symphony orchestra.

Musical notation graphic writing of musical parameters

Music notation or musical notation is any system used to visually represent aurally perceived music played with instruments or sung by the human voice through the use of written, printed, or otherwise-produced symbols.

Computer music

Computer music was added to the Walden School Musicianship and Composition curriculum in 2000, when a computer lab was first installed. The lab uses Apple Power Mac computers, each supplied with Digidesign Mbox hardware and Reaper software. Students use a Digital Audio Tape (DAT) recorder with a stereo microphone to record sounds, and then later upload these recordings to the Power Macs and begin composing electronic pieces primarily using Reaper software. Other popular pieces of software used among Walden School students to manipulate the sounds they record are Soundhack. Max/MSP is a more sophisticated digital audio signal processing application and is used exclusively among the Walden School faculty.

Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and application of new and existing computer software technologies and basic aspects of music, such as sound synthesis, digital signal processing, sound design, sonic diffusion, acoustics, and psychoacoustics. The field of computer music can trace its roots back to the origins of electronic music, and the very first experiments and innovations with electronic instruments at the turn of the 20th century.

Computer lab


A computer lab is a space which provides computer services to a defined community. Computer labs are typically provided by libraries to the public, by academic institutions to students who attend the institution, or by other institutions to the public or to people affiliated with that institution. Users typically must follow a certain user policy to retain access to the computers. This generally consists of the user not engaging in illegal activities or attempting to circumvent any security or content-control software while using the computers. In public settings, computer lab users are often subject to time limits, in order to allow more people a chance to use the lab, whereas in other institutions, computer access typically requires valid personal login credentials, which may also allow the institution to track the user's activities. Computers in computer labs are typically equipped with internet access, while scanners and printers may augment the lab setup. Computers in computer labs are typically arranged either in rows, so that every workstation has a similar view of one end of the room to facilitate lecturing or presentations, or in clusters, to facilitate small group work. take the place of dedicated computer labs, although computer labs still have a place in applications requiring special software or hardware not practically implementable in personal computers.

Power Macintosh line of Apple Macintosh workstation-class personal computers

The Power Macintosh, later Power Mac, is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. as part of its Macintosh brand from March 1994 until August 2006.

Faculty Commissioning Project

The Walden School Faculty are active composers, performers and educators. The Faculty Commissioning Project offers opportunities for collaborating with resident musicians and premiering new works.

Past Walden School directors

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References

  1. "WashingtonPost.com: Flight 800 Crew and Passengers". www.washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2018-03-22.
  2. "WashingtonPost.com: David Hogan Obituary". www.washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2018-03-22.

Press coverage

Coordinates: 42°54′30″N72°03′47″W / 42.90833°N 72.06306°W / 42.90833; -72.06306