Music man asks for more than a clap for credit

"Every time I give a lecture I want to stand up and say, `This class is not Clapping for Credit!'" Professor Craig Wright, who teaches the popular Music 112a: Listening to Music, said. The course's nickname, according to Wright, does not accurately represent its mission: turning Yalies--regardless of their innate music ability--into intelligent critics of classical music.

According to Wright, "You can't teach someone to have perfect pitch...but you can teach someone how to review the Yale Symphony Orchestra." He sees his course as "an analogue to Vincent Scully's Introduction to Art History," explaining that he aims to inspire his students to gain an appreciation for musical arts in the same way that Scully inspires students to gain an appreciation for visual arts.

The 325 students enrolled in the course this semester have a wide range of musical experience, and Wright reiterated that students don't need any musical background to succeed in or benefit from the class. In fact, he enjoys teaching non-music majors and students with little or no prior exposure to music.

"[These students] tend to get excited and exuberant [about music] and that is a joy in itself," he explained. Furthermore, he enjoys breaking down the non-musicians' "falsely perceived barriers of being unable to do anything musically."

Netanya Sandler, TC '98, said that despite her lack of musical experience, she has not found the course difficult. "I don't think it's terribly challenging," she commented. "It's not really intense in terms of work...the hardest part is that it's not really something that studying can help you with. It takes more than just practice."

Many students described Wright's teaching style as interactive and engaging. Wright "tries to get the students to communicate," Alex Greentstein, ES '98, said. "The class is a fun and mellow atmosphere. There is not so much note-taking. You learn more by absorbing the information through your ears than by memorizing."

Wright has been known to call on students during lectures and use different audio-visual media in order to explore the relationship between music and other arts. In his lectures, he often plays the piano, reads poetry and shows slides of impressionist paintings. During one lecture this year, Wright and several Teaching Assistants even performed a portion of the opera Don Giovanni, in which Wright played the role of the seducer.

Wright attempts to focus the course on the emotional aspects of listening to music. In sections, students are encouraged to talk about the feelings they experience when listening to a piece, and to examine the technicalities afterwards. Wright teaches two of the nine sections himself, and makes an effort to visit the others twice each.

Perhaps Wright feels so strongly about attracting non-musicians to his course because he himself was once uninterested in music. His parents had to force him to take piano lessons at a young age--but soon he was hooked. After high school, Wright turned down a golf scholarship offered by the University of Maryland, choosing instead to attend the Eastman School of Music.

Yet Wright never realistically thought that he would become a professional musician. In fact, he says he "still gets nervous" when he plays the piano during lectures. It was while earning his doctorate in music at Harvard that Wright found his calling. As soon as he sat in on a course called Music One, he was instantly inspired to become a professor.

"There were about 400 students [in that class] hanging on every word that the professor said. From that moment on, I knew that was what I was going to do," Wright explained.

Today, Wright lives with his musically-talented family, consisting of his flautist wife, 11-year old cellist daughter, and six-year old violinist son. Wright encourages his children to listen to classical music, attend concerts, and practice at home, but says their eventual future in music is up
to them.

Although he has now been teaching Listening to Music for 15 years, Wright believes that he is still finding new interpretations of the music and discovering better ways to explain it to his students.

"Music is an abstraction. There is no pre-determined interpretation for a piece. I can feel a new and different emotional response each time," Wright explained. "The teaching process never dulls. It gets better every time."

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