If you’re in the Princeton area, and you just can’t sleep, Westminster Choir College is holding a 24-hour marathon performance-protest against its overlord university.
Rider University, desperate to shore up its own finances, is floating the idea of absorbing the operation of the Princeton music school into its Lawrenceville campus. Of course that would mean the primary artifacts of Westminster’s history, in the form of its neo-Georgian buildings, quadrangles, and invigorating greenery, would be left behind for a new owner to do with what it will. How Rider would propose to move all those organs is anyone’s idea.
Anyway, the marathon began at 11:00 this morning and will run through 11:00 tomorrow morning at Nassau Presbyterian Church. Performances will include the college’s bottomless arsenal of pianists, organists, harpists, and of course singers, with solidarity appearances by Princeton Girlchoir and Orpheus Club Men’s Chorus.
Nassau Presbyterian Church is located at 61 Nassau Street in Princeton. Just be aware that Princeton doesn’t like cars to be left on many of its streets after 2 a.m.
Anybody else care about keeping Westminster Choir College in Princeton (as opposed to it being relegated to the music department of Rider University)? Sign the petition now.
Born the same date as Beethoven. Doomed to suffer the same fate as Édouard Lalo (who was born the same date as Mozart) and Modest Mussorgsky (born the same date as Bach). Everyone goes to the other guy’s party.
Kodály may have been no Beethoven. Nonetheless he was a very important musical figure, both in his native Hungary and abroad.
Here’s some of his music for the season. This is called “The Shepherds and the Angels.”
You’ll note the children’s choir. Kodály, of course, was as interested in music education as he was composition. To this end, he introduced a new curriculum for use in public schools and devised new teaching methods for the musical development of the young.
Here’s an old short demonstrating the Kodály Method in action:
And here it is in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind!”