Action After Pilgrimage

Today is St. Aiden's Day. Three months ago tomorrow, our group arrived on Lindisfarne. It seems like a good time to share this reflection on action.

The sense of ultimacy generated by a good pilgrimage can draw us into the joy of feeling really alive back home in our own communities. Such a completed journey serves as an invitation to a greater awareness of our own spiritual unfolding, and we continue onward with fresh views of God’s presence and provision. 

To some extent. 

For a while.

But then what?

There are some paths to pursue from there, paths illuminated by the radiance of those pilgrimage experiences. 

To get started, we need not be in a hurry to let our pilgrimage go. Medieval pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, or St. David’s would have taken a more sustained effort than ours, and that effort would have shaped pilgrims in ways that profoundly affected the whole person. Those journeys were a matter of months, not weeks, and we would do well to adopt a similar pace in processing ours if we are truly to be transformed by it.  

As we take that time, we can consider our personal individual paths first. Many pilgrims carry specific questions on their journeys, and those questions can lead to new practices, as well as to the enrichment of familiar practices, back home. If being pilgrims has stirred our creativity, that newness and enrichment might also guide us in making something new. Further, the clarified perspective that sometimes comes with pilgrimage can open us to the discernment, calling, and courage we need for whatever our next steps might be. 

Beyond ourselves, we have opportunities to keep the discussions of pilgrim days going. Many times, such journeys provide new topics and new partners with whom to consider them. In choosing to continue those conversations, we foster a greater fullness in relationships both old and new. But if that feels like too much, we can at least connect with our fellow pilgrims sometimes in passing over shared memories of moving experiences that are now common points of reference. 

As our view broadens over the weeks and months, we should look for our understandings of our time away to shift and settle. The things that impressed us most while we were traveling might turn out not to be so significant, and we might even be amazed to discover that our least favorite aspects were carrying the most important messages for us.

Past all of this, we will go through times when it seems like the inspiration of our pilgrimage has run out and our worlds have become inundated by the humdrum. I believe those are the very moments we most need to stay true to the fruits of Spirit that were so sweet on our journey and to adopt an outlook that sees all of life as a pilgrimage. 

Thoughts After Pilgrimage

To go on pilgrimage is to engage a vision of God. It is a mystical striving to see ourselves traveling from/to/for/with/about the transcendent. 

But what do we make of such experiences once we return to our everyday lives?

As a journey takes time, pilgrimage invites us to consider various modes for processing time. Pilgrimage is a sustained engagement with sacred time, but it is not the only way of functioning in that mode. Regular participation in corporate worship is the most familiar way, and in our sabbaths, we pause something of our mundane concerns and return to the metanarrative of our tradition. Retreat is another way of infusing our perception of time with a sense of sacredness and is often defined by an intentional quieting to listen for "the heartbeat of God." Pilgrimage is distinct from worship and retreat as it typically incorporates physical travel to move us spiritually. 

As we do that traveling with others, we become mindful of the uniqueness of each pilgrim receiving the divine through their own spirituality and history. We understand our shared journey in ways distinct to our own conditioning while our understandings of ourselves are challenged by traveling together.

As we return from pilgrimage, we have many stories to tell, and we go through a process with those stories that is as old as inspiration itself. We are fortunate to have lived the very context of the stories. We were present for all the details, and pilgrimage provides the added benefit of being able to compare our memories with those of fellow pilgrims. Beyond those rich resources of first-hand knowledge, we provide interpretation as we tell our stories. We know what was most meaningful to us and we continue to track that meaning as it develops in our spirits. Finally, we have opportunities to apply that meaningfulness. As we pursue those opportunities, we find ourselves following the dictum of Father Gildas of Caldey Abbey: "What matters most is what we individually make" of the ways God has come to us. 

What forms might that making take in the weeks and months following a pilgrimage? 

Sensitive consideration is needed to answer this question. This is due in no small part to the reality that the thin places visited on such a journey are famously "homes for pilgrims" meaning people of a pilgrim orientation find a welcoming freshness in them. Not everyone resonates with this phenomenon, and its great purity can seem impossibly far from our everyday lives. So it is that our usual settings are the places most in need of the perspectives of pilgrims. 

Perhaps our best hope going forward is to patiently seek a gentle integration of the gifts of those wonderful times wherever we find ourselves. To do so, we might need to navigate undercurrents of disappointment or even despair. Maybe we have failed to follow through on possibilities of a new way of life we glimpsed on pilgrimage, but the effects of our journey are still within us. Such holy stirrings survive whether we nourish or neglect them, and often, it simply takes more time than we imagine to discover all that these urgings might become. 

A Pilgrim Tour

The following is a little tour of Durham Cathedral I gave our group of pilgrims. The purpose was to get oriented in this tremendous space so that each participant might form a clear idea of how they wanted to spend the limited free time they had there. (We had driven from Lindisfarne and needed to beat the tides coming and going, so we were on a bit of a schedule!) 

Perhaps this post can serve as a meditation whether or not readers are able to visit Durham.  

1. Arrival, Cloister, and Ambulatory

These are pilgrim spaces created to provide shelter and access for others who, like us, traveled from afar to the Cathedral in a sense of devotion. 

Drawn into the spirit of Cuthbert, we prayerfully gather in awe and anticipation.

2. The Space Itself

From the outside: Romanesque, rounded, a massive fortification - the most monumental Norman edifice we know. 

Inside, "as big as all outdoors" - towering, sturdy, its pillars like a grove for giants. 

There is a sensation of being outside even though we are inside, a feeling that some land and air deemed sacred have been enclosed with a sublime grandeur of reverence. Indeed, signs of nature surround us, not only in the natural building materials of wood and stone but also in the fossils that fill the locally-sourced Frosterley Marble.

3. The Tomb of Bede in the Galilee Chapel

Above the tomb of this saint and historian we find his beautiful prayer:

Christ is the morning star, who,

when the night of this world is past, 

brings to his saints the promise of the light of life 

and everlasting day. 

This area is airy and bright, and the windows through which the light reaches us incorporate hundreds of fragments of older windows giving a lovely sense of new life to what was broken. This befits the intellect and writings of Bede and is an inspiring image of how we might meaningfully arrange what sometimes seem to be disjointed beliefs, experiences, and parts of our lives. 

4. Cuthbert's Window

While the Cathedral is unmistakably old and remarkably preserved in its singular style (except for the "new" Gothic part), it has room for the modern which somehow gives it a distinct quality without upsetting the impression of consistency. There is a balance - or better yet, a cooperation - of deep, deep roots providing a platform for the flowering of fresh branches. 

This, too, can be a model for our lives as we build on the ancient insights of a historic faith manifested anew in our own lives.

5. The Clock

This artifact reminds us that, despite its spiritual import, this cathedral was, itself, an assertion of political presence and served as a makeshift prison. 

After the 1650 Battle of Dunbar, as many as 3000 Scots were imprisoned here with well over 1000 of them perishing within its walls. 

During that time, the clock was untouched while virtually every other wooden thing was burned for warmth. Why was it spared? According to legend, it was passed over due to the emblem of a thistle in its design, a key symbol in Scottish heraldry. 

Standing in the transept and pondering this story, we are reminded of the embattled world the Church inhabits even today. 

6. The Shrine of Saint Cuthbert

In my experience, this space induces an attitude of humility. 

Perhaps it is the magnitude of Cuthbert's devotion reflected in the present-day simplicity of the room. 

Or maybe it is the striking tester above the tomb and the touching statue of Cuthbert holding King Oswald's head. 

Beyond that, there is a resonance of the prayer rail with that of the rock in Jerusalem's Garden of Gethsemane Church of All Nations. 

As the Spirit weaves these together, our impulse is worshipful silence.

7. Chapel of the Nine Altars

Unfortunately, this area was closed during our visit, but we could still see into much of its space, a space of inspiration and imagination.  

Here is demonstrated something of how beauty can serve as a portal to heavenly things. In the richness of its symbols and references, its constellation of altars projects a vision of God through the lives of saints such as Margaret, Hilda, and Aiden, not to mention the soulful Pietà of Fenwick Lawson whose The Journey we had seen in St. Mary's back on Lindisfarne. 

In this city famous . . .

a river strong of wave . . .

in the deep dales deer innumerable

well-known among her sons:

the blessed Cuthbert . . .

the head of the pure king, Oswald . . .

the famous scholar Bede . . .

There dwells among the blessed in that minster 

also relics uncountable,

where many are worthied, 

just as the Book says to do —

in their company a man of God can await his glory.

- excerpts from an Anglo-Saxon poem translated by Dr. Ophelia Hostetter

A Follow-up with Pilgrim Friends

Dear Friends,

Soon we will be traveling together so I wanted to share a few thoughts about preparing and going.

We have considered that a pilgrimage is a journey undertaken with devotion, and that means one is already on pilgrimage from the moment they consider going on such a journey. 

Since this is the case, it is helpful to prepare in a devotional fashion. 

Not like a tourist. Not to study and process every detail of history or geography. Not to have in hand every aspect of the planning. 

But instead, to prepare our hearts. 

To orient in this way, I suggest starting to prayerfully ask the following:

What do I need?

What hurts need healing?

What questions need answering?

What might I take and what might I leave both at home and along the way?

How will I open to the sites of saints' lives?

How will I look for what the land might convey in terms of beauty, spirit, heritage?

Will I travel for someone else, someone who could not take such a journey?

What will my personal spiritual practice be?

What will my creative inlet be? (Often we speak of creative outlets, but our creative activities can be a means for the Divine to reach into us, too.)

And how will I engage hospitality at every point - to fellow pilgrims, to Christ in the stranger, and even to myself?

A Little Letter to Pilgrims

Later this year, Kathy and I will be supporting several groups of retreatants in experiences of pilgrimage. These thoughts were initially written with those retreatants in mind but I share them here for anyone who wants to consider how the spiritual life in the Christian tradition is shaped like a pilgrimage. 

My dear fellow pilgrims, 

Pilgrimage is the metaphor for the spiritual life (and for life in general) with which I resonate most fully.

Since the beginning, pilgrimage has been an element of the Christian experience whether that involved walking the Holy Land, dreaming up our own Bethlehems and Jerusalems, or going on the great spiritual odyssey of the soul with its maker. 

For the purposes of this little letter, my definition of pilgrimage is 

traveling with God to God.

At Epiphany, I think of the first pilgrims: the magi.

They saw signs of the divine and followed to the house of the young king Jesus.

But really, the shepherds came first from a field nearby and were put on their path by holy angels who had, themselves, traveled from Heaven to proclaim the good news. 

And before the magi and the shepherds and those angels, there were Mary and Joseph who travelled most literally with God to meet the Messiah in Bethlehem.

And before that journey, Mary made her way to Elizabeth, and was, herself, the sacred space in which God was reconciling the world to himself.   

And before that, Gabriel came to her.

And before that, 

and before that, 

and before that . . .

Abraham was called by God to travel with him and to him. 

(That's the beginning of the genealogy in the Gospel According to Matthew)

And even before that, Adam.

(That's the beginning of the genealogy in the Gospel According to Luke.)

Adam was already in the place of encounter with God. 

But something happened and their communion was broken. 

Barred from the Garden, Adam wandered into the world, without God, in a sense, and always at least a little bit away from God. Adam's path had became an anti-pilgrimage.

So all our pilgrimages involve a turning, indeed a re-turning: a turning back to travel with God and to God, a movement toward sacred spaces of encounter and communion.  

It is a blessing to know that, even with our first steps on the road of pilgrimage, we are already on the re-turn trip!

Swan City Piano Festival Preview Lecture 2023

 

 

Preview Lecture: Swan City Piano Festival

June 8, 2023

Charles Hulin, D.M.A.

 

 

1.  Introduction

 

One of our local aesthetic heroes, Frank Lloyd Wright, is purported to have said, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” Many other people have also purportedly said that, and Wright doesn’t strike me as someone who wouldn’t think he was good at talking about a thing. But if it is his statement, it sounds like he thinks the whole project of talking about music is absurd. While talking about music doesn’t seem nearly as hard to me as dancing about architecture, if anybody should have been able to dance about architecture, it ought to have been Frank Lloyd Wright. But I believe the entirety of the statement is buttressed on deep inner experiences of being moved by music that simply cannot be summed up with words.

 

And so I would like to muse for a few moments about how it might be that music moves us in inner spaces. My focus is that music is somehow a means of travel by which we glide over the shapes of life and quickly glean insights from doing so, all without leaving our seats right here in Harrison.

      

When we travel from place to place on earth, we never really go in a straight line. Because it’s a round planet, our straightest lines across its surface all end up being arcs. Every single journey we make has a rise and a fall. And for the curious, we travel one degree around our sphere roughly every seventy miles we go.

 

In the world of music, this arc-edness, or arched-ness, is called phrasing. We might even call it form. It’s both about how the music is shaped and about how we performers ride those shapes. That we call interpretation. And whether or not you think you understand what I’m talking about, you do. And not only that, you have done it yourselves!

 

As we sing “Happy Birthday” together, note the rise in your energy from the first statement to the higher second statement. And then, at the apex of the song, as we proclaim the name of the one with a birthday, we take more time with our singing. Finally, as the music arrives at its resting place, we all decelerate and some of you even add harmony emphasizing the completion of the journey!

 

Music teachers talk about what you just did with terms like “defying gravity,” “finding the escalator,” “keeping balls in the air.” I think this activity of phrasing is one of the things that makes us humans really love music. Those journeys up and down are so grounded in the realities of our existence.

 

To go a little further, as with any journey, where and how you begin, and what you take with you, determine so much about where and how you can go.

 

As we hear the first tense measures of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata, we have a sense that something like the extraordinarily sympathetic second movement is needed to mitigate that storm and stress. But even after that sublimely lyrical essay, we remember the first movement and desire the further unfurling we find in the sonata’s third movement. Starting at the beginning of Beethoven’s Pathetique, we can feel the logic of the relatedness and distances of its other movements. They are possible starting there. But we could not go so logically from there to music like Debussy’s First Arabesque, for example.  

 

Here I think of another arc word – ARK – which is a chest in which you might keep your most special things, or a vehicle in which you might survive a journey. And in those ways, music is also an ark. It conveys our consciousness so lightly and singularly through seas of human emotions crystalized by composers into beautiful patterning free of the chaos of our day-to-day experiencing.

 

So I invite you during this Swan City Piano Festival - during this particular season of listening and being moved - to ask where and how the journey of each piece you hear begins and what weights of feeling it is carrying. Imagine where it might go and then ride its up and downs to discover its realities.

 

Now I am going to highlight some of the works you will hear these next few days and comment on the itinerary - on the programing - of our artists which is especially brilliant this year.  I’ll begin each little discussion by emphasizing when and where each event will be taking place because a bottom line of enjoying these performances is being at the right place at the right time! All of that information is available, ingeniously color-coded in the program, and I encourage you to check and double-check so you’ll be sure to make it to the things you’re wanting to hear.

 

2.  Jihye Chang’s concert will be preceded by Erica Porter’s composer’s perspective presentation Friday at 6:15 right here at Harrison. That composer’s perspective time will introduce us to her musical world and to this year’s commissioned work titled “Glimpses.” Starting the evening by hearing from a living composer is perfect for Dr. Chang’s concert because she is engaged with a project and a passion to perform new works alongside what she calls her “bucket-list” of more established repertoire.

 

The subtitle for Friday’s performance is “Etudes (Fantasies) and Variations” and the programming is quite frankly, fascinating and fun. There is only time to highlight a few of the many works you will hear but maybe my words will serve as a bit of guide for your listening.

 

The performance will begin with Schumann’s enigmatic first opus, the Abegg Variations. Why enigmatic? Because its theme is derived from the musical notes that spell the name of one of Schumann’s friends. It is a little unclear if the Abegg of the variations was the friend as she appeared to be in daily life, or an idealized version of a friend in Schumann’s mind, or - my favorite option - the deeply noble inner Abegg whom Schumann was gifted to recognize. Whatever the case, those variations end with a fantasy, paving the way for the many imaginative flights of the evening. Of this early work, Schumann wrote to his mother, "What hopes and prophetic visions fill my soul's heaven…. Is it not a consoling thought that this first leaf of my fancy that flutters into the ether may find its way to some sore heart, bringing balm to soothe its pain and heal its wound?" You can hear he was so sensitive he could hardly stand himself, a quintessential Romantic almost too feeling for this life in this world.

 

Next will be the beautiful Berceuse of Chopin. A berceuse is a cradle song and how tenderly the single Chopin might have longed for experiences of family in his own life. With this work we hear one of those gentle beginnings that only allows for the delicate journeys of baby’s dreams.

 

Hear the opening passage of Chopin’s Berceuse. Note that Chopin is already varying his materials a few measures into the piece. This berceuse is itself a theme and variations.

 

I got a Glimpse of Erica Porter’s commissioned “Glimpse” and it seems to me that it starts in a similar place to Chopin’s Berceuse but provides shimmering sounds for our own times.

 

Next up, Dr. Chang has arranged what she calls a “Bouquet of Etudes,” and the expression pinpoints her way of programming with such accuracy. I remember my own mother arranging flowers, choosing each for its color and height and texture, and then placing them one by one until each was in just the right place to fulfill the beauty of the whole. That’s exactly how Dr. Chang’s “bouquets of etudes” work.

 

If you are wondering what an etude is, it’s a study. And most etudes are studies regarding particular problems for both performer and composer. The challenges of etudes can be technical or musical or something else altogether. Among other things, the etudes on this program explore the capabilities of the instrument. At times the piano will ring like bells, then sound like brass, and sing the sweetest songs . . .

 

By the way, if you’ve not been keeping track, Dr. Chang’s program will definitely get you caught up on etude writing in the 20^th century. She begins with a bit of Czerny who bridged from the Classical to the Romantic pianists, but she leaps over the likes Chopin and Liszt to the more modern foundations of today’s piano writing with a selection from Debussy’s etudes. This etude, so called “for the five fingers,” begins with a quote of an exercise by Czerny but, as one commentator puts it, it “blooms wildly from there.”

 

Another seminal etude of our time in Dr. Chang’s bouquet is Ligeti’s “Fanfares” written in the 1980s which is full of figures from the composer’s horn trio.

 

A favorite of mine follows: Earl Wild’s transcription of Gershwin’s “Embraceable You.” Wild’s writing is in the grand tradition of Liszt and others who take a tune on a journey through many textures and moods. If you’re like me, you’ll melt at the sweetness of the effect.  

 

Newer etudes will abound as well, including Alex Tedow’s “Clump” which is a start-and-stop sort of trip in a style that has been described as “intellectual music for all demographics” You’ll hear “catchy melodies, striking harmonies, likeable quirkiness” all in a framework of “complexity and ingenuity.” (Wes Taylor, Eastman School of Music)

 

And yet another etude represents several on the program composed for Dr. Chang. This is “Silver Bells!” written by Sungji Hong just this year. This etude was inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Bells” and conveys that poem’s resonance through repeated patterns, eerie lines, and imitations of the complex pitch profiles of many types of bells.

 

Perhaps a review of a stanza from Poe will pique your interest.

      

Hear the sledges with the bells—
                 Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
        How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
           In the icy air of night!
        While the stars that oversprinkle
        All the heavens, seem to twinkle
           With a crystalline delight;
         Keeping time, time, time,
         In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinabulation that so musically wells
       From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
               Bells, bells, bells—
  From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

 

 3.  Tal Cohen will be performing Saturday at 7 at the Polk Museum of Art.

Regarding Tal Cohen, he is a Grammy Award winner whose music traverses many cultural worlds synthesizing his own geographical journeys from Israel to Australia to Miami and now even responding to some extent to what he sees on the walls of our own gallery here in Lakeland.  The venerated and versatile Terrence Blanchard has said that Tal Cohen “has the promise of being at the top of the curve changing our minds about music” and I especially like that quote because of all my own talk about arcs!

Jazz aficionados in this audience have no need for my thoughts about Tal Cohen’s music making, but for those piano enthusiasts who might feel a little outside of jazz, I would suggest that jazz at the piano is part of the same big conversation about music at the piano that classical pianists and many others have been holding since the first few loud and soft tones were sounded from the earliest forte-pianos.

 

That conversation spans these always-relevant issues: What can be said with just two hands on some number of keys? How can we make such an instrument sing? How can we invoke experiences of flow? How do we articulate such experiences with moments of emphasis and color? How might we employ the instrument’s percussiveness? And on and on. If you are lucky enough to have a seat for Saturday’s concert, I believe you will hear these and other such questions answered in personal and creative ways throughout the evening.

 

4.  Sun-A Park will conclude the festival on Sunday at 3 at First Presbyterian Church.

 

Dr. Park has provided such a well-crafted program that one could talk about its depth and interconnections all evening, but I won’t!

 

She will begin by serving us a delicious morsel of the music of Francois Couperin.

 

If you are not familiar with the Couperin line of musicians, allow me to explain that, for nearly a century, numerous Couperins served as musicians at Saint Gervaise in Paris, and that is a dynasty reminiscent of the Bachs in Saxony. Francois was the J.S. Bach of the Couperin line and was making music around the turn of the 18^th century.

 

The exquisite Couperin work Dr. Tak will play should provide a sense of the ornamentation, the discursiveness, and the gentle dance-like quality of his harpsichord style. And as lovely as all that is, she’s sharing that music as a background to a great masterwork by Ravel, his Le Tombeau de Couperin.

 

You might guess that the word “tombeau” is a cognate for the English word “tomb,” and if you did, you would be right. For the purposes of Ravel’s music, tombeau refers specifically to a memorial monument. In fact, all the way back to the 16^th century, musical and poetic tombeaux were written to memorialize important figures.

 

Having witnessed the horrors of the First World War as a military ambulance driver, Ravel sought a way to move forward through music, a way not laden by the expressive weight of German Romanticism but graced with a charm and character suggestive of an earlier Gallic time. And so his tombeau contains dance forms from Couperin’s era, each one modernized in memory of specific fallen friends.  

 

After intermission, and concluding the festival, Dr. Tak will present a very famous work that is literally and overtly structured around a theme of movement. I am referencing Pictures at an Exhibition, a work so well-known that I don’t even need to mention that it’s by Mussorgsky! Its journeys happen on least two easy-to-follow levels.

 

Mussorgsky has been thought of as a man with uneven legs, perhaps struggling with his weight, and it seems he has depicted his own asymmetrical gait with a promenade that alternates between measures in 5 and 6.  Through this personal stamp on his music, he invites us into what it feels like to move like him. Throughout this work, this music returns to remind us of his physical journey, part of his way of experiencing.

 

And where did he doing this promenading? He did it in an art gallery where his physical journey was transformed into an imaginative one, compliments of his late friend, Victor Alexandrovich Hartmann. The year after Hartmann’s death, Mussorgsky viewed his drawings on the walls of the St. Petersburg Architectural Association. Those drawings gave Hartmann’s impressions of locales from the markets and gardens of Limoge and Paris to scenes of the hardness of life in ghettos of Poland to ancient moonlit castles in Italy as well as his own designs for objects and buildings never completed in the physical world.

I think it is profoundly fitting that the musical journeys of this year’s festival lead us to a compelling vision of one such structure, Hartmann’s Great of Kiev, an edifice that can only be experienced through Mussorgsky’s memorable music. Maybe you will find yourself dancing about that architecture deep inside.  

Theory

Our semester is drawing to a close and I find myself preparing reviews and summaries of what my students and I have done over the course of the fall. At this point of transition, I want to bring focus to the purpose of our work together. 

When my music theory students and I meet tomorrow, I plan to raise a question that is sometimes heard in theory classrooms: "When will I use this?" 

 

This question is often asked when an instructor has presented some concept or detail outside the student's usual conscious awareness.

Or perhaps it comes up because some intricacy of an unfamiliar style has felt a little out of the way.

Or maybe there is a still a gap between the logic of the academic discipline and the student's own logic.

Whatever the case, the student is not picturing a situation in which the information at hand will be relevant to the way of doing music they imagine for themselves.  

 

Of course there are numerous situations in which students might use such information.

To name a few: 

the final exam of the course

graduate record exams

major field exams for music teachers

placement exams for graduate programs

arranging music for ensembles 

collaborating with other musicians 

comprehending professional discussions of music

understanding music in such a way that they can explain it to others

etc.

Hopefully, we instructors keep reminding students of all the practical uses of their education as listed above.

But there is a larger picture for us to paint for our students, as well. 

The correct question is, indeed, "When will I use this?" 

But more emphasis should be put on the "I" than the "this."

The call of the college educator, and especially the educator in the arts, is never merely to prepare students to fit into an existing musical scene but to develop a breadth of musicianship in their students so that they might become the creators of new scenes. 

The call is not to train students to serve single styles but to empower them to express and touch and compel and refresh and envision and discover for the sake of their listeners.

The call is not to teach them to have skills relevant in the short term but to inspire them to become artists whose work speaks to the human experience in the long run.

And the response of the music student is to take all they are given by applied mentors and theory instructors and ensemble directors and diction coaches and history professors - all they have been given by these folks who have devoted decades of their lives to the consideration of music - and apply it to the settings in which they, themselves, will make music. 

It seems to me that might be one important way of defining professionalism. 

The finest musicians I have known have typically been the ones who received their training with humility and applied it with creativity, thoughtfulness, and enthusiasm.  

P.S. Thank you to my theory students at Southeastern who have always made teaching a pleasure!