Our Campus Creates

Today was an event on campus called "Our Campus Creates". This is essentially a day of workshops in various buildings, and subjects taking place all over campus.

Choosing the workshops that I would appreciate most was difficult (I have been referred to as a renaissance woman, a lover of many subjects) but I chose the workshops that were the most interesting to me and also as different as possible from my major.

My first workshop of the day, starting at 9:30AM, took place in the Berkman Recital Hall, (a beautiful room, very "wet" acoustically, and just plain lovely). the workshop was called "Key(board)s to Creativity". Finding the room was a little challenging but once I found it, I was in heaven. I walked in and my slight steps on the floor practically echoed through the small space, which just tells you that it was built for musicians! and then in the center of the stage or stage area was a beautiful Steinway! (Easily my favorite piano maker in the world) And a man who I came to learn was David MacBride, sitting at the keys, and not quite touching them but simply allowing the silence to drag on and I'm the first one to say I am loud and silence makes me a little uncomfortable, but for some reason this silence wasn't. Maybe it was the slight chatter down the hall, maybe it was my curious nature that kept me asking if this man was ever going to push down on the keys and impress us with is amazing ability to "tickle the ivories" or maybe it was just the fact that I was so enamored by the beautiful Steinway sitting before me! But the silence came to an end, and all I could do was slightly question the silence, but almost long for it because it was calming and and almost spiritually centering? if that doesn't sound too weird! Turns out the silence was actually a performance of a piece of music called 4'33" by John Cage, and it is literally silence for 4 minutes and 33 seconds! It was really interesting.

Afterwards we learned a bit about Fyodor Dostoyevsky, (for more information click here - http://www.online-literature.com/dostoevsky/ ) and David MacBride was so moved by his writing that he decided that we would compose a piece of music right then and there! SO the 5 of us in the workshop, including David MacBride, sat in the audience with the piano keys facing us and no bench in front. We were told that if so moved we could approach the keys and ponder them and of we decided not to play, could return to our seat but if we chose to play we were asked to play a single sound, which could be made up of any number of keys. This went on for a little while, and in between each sound was a large amount of silence again, and I found myself thinking of the make up of each sound or chord that was played and also thinking of the sound it would have been if it were minor, major, sustained, augmented, played with a 7th or 6th, and suddenly within the silence a sort of composition a musical piece was being created in my head. It was definitely one of the most intriguing and intellectually and musically stimulating workshops I have ever participated in.