5p, one sided pages, staple in top left corner, 5 horizontal folds, silver fish damage on the last page, mimeograph on matte off white paper.Includes a clipping from the NY Times (9/24/1944) written by Roger Sessions that praises the quality of the first summer music institute. Also announces a Wed evening meeting at Wunsch's office on the Fall quarter curriculum, class schedule, educational goals, exmination dates and others. Announces that the Fall Quarter officially started on Sep 30. announces that William Morse Cole will arrive to begin his 11-month audit announces the arrangement of the 12th season college dramatic production program announces that Alfred Kazin arrived Erwin Straus was permitted to take a sabbatical leave to accept the appointment as a Fellow in Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School Kenneth Kurtz was also granted a sabbatical leave to finish his doctorate study at Yale. BMC was on yesterday's New York Times, and the article is attached on the last two pages.
BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE COMMUNITY BULLETIN
College Year 12 Bulletin 1
Monday, September 25, 1944
CALENDAR:
There will be a meeting of the Faculty and Student Officers on Wednesday evening at 7:30 o’clock in Bob Wunsch’s Study. Among the items listed for discussion are the following:
The Fall Quarter curriculum
The Fall Quarter class schedule
Educational objectives for the 1944-45 session
The Fall Quarter senior division examinations
Representation at the annual meeting of the North Carolina College Conference Center in Greensboro on October 25 and 26
The Newsletter on the 1944 summer program
Committee for the 1944-45 session.
The Fall Quarter of the 1944-45 session will begin on Saturday, September 30. Students will register on Saturday; classes will begin on Monday.
There will be a Community Meeting on Sunday evening, October 1, in the lobby of the North Lodge.
William Worse Cole will arrive at Lake Eden this evening to begin his eleventh annual audit of the College accounts. He will spend several weeks here.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Black Mountain College will begin its twelfth season of dramatic production with “The Braggart Warrior,” a comedy written in the Third Centtury BC by Titus Maccius Plautus, the most famous of the writers of Roman comedy. It will be presented at the end of the second week in November on the dining hall stage.
“The Bruggart Warrior” deals with the vain and boastful soldier, always eager to exaggerate his deeds, a character popular in ancient comedy as well as in later European comedy.
The Black Mountain College production will not be a slavish imitation of the Roman production; it will have, however, many features that are regarded as characteristic of a Roman production, including a long and narrow stage representing a city street, Greek dress; and the use of wigs, black for the youthful characters, while for the aged, and red for the slaves. Unlike the Roman production that employed an all-male cast, the local production will use girls in all but the leading male roles.
“The Braggart Warrior” will be cast during the first week in October. Rehearsals will begin immediately after the casting, as will also the erection of scenery, wigs and costumes.
It is hoped that arrangements can be made to give productions of the comedy at the various military service centers in Western North Carolina.
“The Braggart Warrior” will be followed in December by a production of Betty Kelley’s original full-length play, written especially for the Asheville Children’s Theatre, a colorful fantasy about the unbought toys in a toy shop on Christmas Eve.
Black Mountain College will present also in December two mediaeval mystery plays as part of a Christmas program. Tentatively scheduled for the post-holiday months are Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” and Chekhov’s “The Three Sisters.”
WITH THE MEMBERS OF THE 1944-45 STAFF:
Ted Dreier left last Tuesday afternoon for a College business trip to Chapel Hill, Washington, and New York City. He will return to Lake Eden early this week.
B M C Community Bulletin Bulletin 1 Page 2
Alfred Kazin, recently appointed Visiting Lecturer of English and American Literature at Black Mountain College, arrived at Lake Eden on Friday afternoon. During the Fall Quarter Mr Kazin will give two courses, one on William Blake and the English romantic period, the other on Herman Melville: An Introduction to American Writing.
Heinrich and Joanna Jalowetz left yesterday morning by bus for Highlands, North Carolina, where, in the Clark Foreman’s summer home, they will spend a brief vacation from Lake Eden.
George and Mrs Zabriskie are leaving Durham today for Lake Eden.
Erwin Straus has been granted a sabbatical leave by the Board of Fellows. This leave has enable him to accept an appointment as a Fellow in Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School. He will leave on Thursday for Baltimore.
Anni Albers will return from a two weeks’ trip to New York City on October 3.
Fritz and Maria Hansgirg expect to leave Oakland, California, on October 2. Because of their inability to date to get Pullman reservations from Chicago to Asheville before October 9, however, they may be unable to reach Lake Eden on October 7 as they had originally planned.
WITH FORMER MEMBERS OF THE STAFF:
Notes:
Recently Bob Babcock sent to the College a copy of the Wednesday, September 6, issue of Egyptian Mail, a Cairo newspaper. This paper contained an announcement of the visit of Agnes de Millie to the Summer Music Institute at Black Mountain College.
Bob writes from North Africa on September 17: “It may interest you to know that soon after reading the article in the Egyptian press about BMC, I ran quite by chance into Alice Lee Swan Graham in Port Said where she and her young son are waiting passage back to the States after having been evacuated from China about two years ago. This seems like coincidence doubly compounded and worthy of mention to you. We managed to see a fair amount of each other, I bringing her up to date on the College and she furnishing me with many details about the early days….What I am doing here…does have the advantage of letting me see a good portion of the Levant. In addition, so far, I have been stationed under conditions of such leisure as to allow much sight-seeing all along the African coast from Liberia to the Suez Canal. Consequently, I am deriving from the Navy no knowledge of war out what is known as a liberal education.”
Fred Cohen and Elsa Kahl left by train on Thursday afternoon for New York City.
WITH FORMER STUDENTS:
New Addresses:
Mimi French
43 Linnasaen Street, Apartment 4
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Liese Kulka
118 East Seventieth Street
New York 21, New York
B M C Community Bulletin Bulletin 1 Page 3
Mrs E Conrad (Ruthabeth Kreuger)
Spruce Creek Boulevard
North Kittery, Maine
Mrs Alan H Woog (Sue Alice McNeil)
Flying W Ranch
Ashton, Idaho
(c/o Mark Weaver)
Notes:
An Announcement:
Mr and Mrs Louis John Moss announce the marriage of their daughter Esther Myra to Norman Dickinson Jamieson Corporal, Army of the United States Saturday, the third of June Nineteen hundred and forty-four Brooklyn, New York.
Mimi French and Liese Kulka will leave Black Mountain by train this afternoon. Liese plans to study piano with Edward Steuermann in New York City during the Fall and return to Lake Eden in January. Mimi plans to spend some time at her home in Cambridge.
In the Mail:
Barbara Beatty Dwight writes from Arlington, Virginia: “Dunc is in Missouri- a spot called Malden- working on planes. He seems to be very busy and certainly enjoying it more than he enjoyed just sitting around doing nothing. He seems to have had more than his share of that. No one knows how long he will stay there or anything like that. I wish he were closer- I haven’t seen him since June….Russ and I had a fine visit for a week in August. She came down for part of her vacation….I just heard from Peggy Dwight that the Westons are in New York now…”
From Mrs H Kreuger in Wheatridge, Colorado: “Ruthabeth will be in North Kittery, Maine, for several months while her husband is there in port. Her little Kristin is thriving, and the three are happily settled for the time…Ruthabeth will appear as soloist with the Denver Civic Symphony on February 11.”
COMMUNITY WORK REPORT:
(for week beginning September 18)
The final loads of silage were put in on Monday morning and the borrowed cutter returned and set up at the Orphanage. For the next three days Max Penley, with the International Truck, returned favors and helped the Orphanage take in their silage. In the meantime, we got the hay in from the Morris fields, and it poured rain- discouraging the hay which was down in the Bottom Fields. The crew suddenly picked fifteen bushels of beans and forty pounds of cabbage (Which we sold in Asheville) and buzzed a small mountain of wood, some of which was distributed to each furnace on the campus. Construction of a fattening pen for the hogs was begun.
The curved field was partly disked.
Each time it rained we spread out hay again.
The grass around the entrance to the grounds was mowed, and Ken Kurtz removed most of the fence that had outlined the tennis court area.
The Lodges were cleaned and shifted around. General dishwashing was continued.
Pearson Mundy and Dick Albany nearly completed the insulating of the Albers’ attic and installing a closet.
B M C Community Bulletin Bulletin 1 Page 4
Chuck Forberg and Max Penley removed a partition in Black Dward. This resulting added space gives Naomi Ruth Lowinsky room to grow in.
In case this seems to be an impressive list of accomplishments, it is only to be explained by the face that seven faithful members of the 134th Field Artillery, stationed at nearby Moore General Hospital, have take on the whole College problem and really saved our lives.
--Mary Gregory
PUBLICITY:
A clipping from yesterday’s New York Times:
REPORT ON BLACK MOUNTAIN
To the Music Editor:
I have just returned from attending the first summer Music Institute held at Black Mountain College, N.C., which came to an end recently. The college, which is situated in the Blue Ridge Mountains, was founded in the early Thirties by a group of idealists who believed that education is a kind of collaboration between individuals differing in experience in knowledge, but between whom barriers arising from position and authority are minimized to the utmost extent. In practice this results, as I was able abundantly to observe, in an amazing freedom of discussion, which to one coming quite unprepared from the outside world, is extremely impressive in its testimony to the maturity and seriousness of which young Americans are capable.
If I dwell on this rather than on other aspects of its unusual program it is because I have no authorization as a spokesman for the college itself and wish simply to report on that phase of its activities which I have witnessed at first hand.
Those who worked there in music this summer had the privilege of daily comradeship with the regular music staff, including such outstanding personalities as Heinrich Jalowetz, formerly conductor of the opera at Cologne; Frederic Cohen, who was a leading spirit in organizing the institute, and Edward Lowinsky, eminent musicologist. The summer staff included such distinguished musicians as Edward Steuermann, Ernst Krenek, Marcel Dick, Rudolf Kolisch, Nicolai and Joanna Graudan, Yella Pessl, Lotte Leonard and others.
COURSES ARE VARIED
In the varied program of courses in ensemble and solo performances, the emphasis was always primarily on musicianship and interpretation. Mr Krenek and Dr Lowinsky offered courses in composition and musicology. There were also numerous lectures by members of the faculty and panel discussions by invited guests, of whom I was one.
Most remarkable also was a series of weekly and semi-weekly concerts offered by the artists participating in the work of the institute and ranging from sixteenth-century choral music through the classics to a liberal and diversified choice of contemporary works. The artistic quality of both programs and performances was of the highest order; the mere list of works presented represents no mean summer’s achievement. The constant rehearsals which were open freely to students were, in the opinion of one gifted student, the most valuable single experience of the summer, since they brought young musicians, in the most free and informal manner, into close contact with first-class artists in the workshop.
Even this extremely impressive list of accomplishments, however, fails to real justice to the unique quality of the institute. This latter string from the fact of a common effort in the service of music, conducted in a spirit of warm friendship based on a real and intense love of music, a love which gladly accepts and tries to fulfill the highest possible artistic demands. This spirit was manifest every hour of the day and expressed itself in an activity which was incessant and glowing with enthusiasm.
B M C Community Bulletin Bulletin 1 Page 5
REPORT ON BLACK MOUNTAIN- continued
Those who participated in music at Black Mountain this summer will never forget the experience and will certainly do all in their power to keep it alive both there and elsewhere. For me it seems one of the most vital signs of what must and can be achieved for music in the United States, if we have the vision and courage and imagination which is demanded of us.
Roger Sessions. Princeton, NJ
