Half a Century of Music

Karen Ahlquist, chair of GW’s Department of Music, reflects on the department’s past and future.

May 8, 2010

GW orchestra on stage with conductor raising batons

According to the GW and Foggy Bottom Historical Encyclopedia, the University’s music program began in the early 1960s, formalizing a longstanding tradition that began with choral groups before the turn of the 20th century.

Today the department offers a Bachelor of Arts in Music and minors in music and jazz. Its coursework includes a wide range of subjects, including music theory, world music, opera, composition, and electronic and computer music.

George Washington Today caught up with Karen Ahlquist, chair of the department, to discuss the department’s important milestone.

Q: What are some of the things about GW’s music department that distinguish it from other programs?
A: Our most distinguishing aspect, and one that attracts applicants and their families, is that our students can pursue serious study of music as an art if they choose, while benefiting from the wider opportunities in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences and GW as a whole. At a music school, their opportunities would be much more limited, and in a liberal arts college, they might not even receive credit for performance study.

Our Washington, D.C., location means that our performance faculty members are top quality and well integrated into the musical community. So, students can benefit from excellent teaching in a specific area, along with opportunities to perform in venues like the Kennedy Center, the National Cathedral, the Strathmore Performing Arts Center, Blues Alley and many others.

Q: What are some of the most fundamental ways the department and its curriculum have evolved since its inception?
A: The biggest change is the wider range of music being studied and performed. We have an active jazz program, which did not exist in 1960; we pay attention to popular genres and perspectives from ethnomusicology (essentially the anthropology of music); and we have more students doing original musical compositions in acoustic and electronic media.

Q: What are some of the things you hope the department will achieve in the next 50 years? Are there new technologies that you think will assume a more prominent role in music research and teaching?
A: The biggest advance in music research through technology is simply the catalog of information and documents now available on the Internet. And by “documents” I include sound files ranging from historical performances from the Library of Congress to an item posted yesterday on YouTube. This material allows faculty members and students not only to study what interests them but also to verify or challenge assertions and explanations that may have been handed down over generations of mythology and tradition.

As we move forward, I see us poised to take a leadership position in teaching and understanding music in academic life, in D.C. and in society as a whole. Because we’re small, we have the opportunity to work out ideas and innovations in our program with relative ease. We’re committed to thinking through the balance between traditional approaches to music study and what will serve music in the current century. So nothing ever remains just as it was, and that gives us the power to choose – and the fun of doing the choosing!

Just as there’s much more to D.C. than the behemoth of politics, there’s more to GW than politically oriented programs. As that fact becomes better known, we expect (along with all of the arts) to have an increasingly prominent place in what GW does and how it is known.

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