University of Michigan - Michiganensian Yearbook (Ann Arbor, MI)

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i B ;y ICHIGA rn all people, there is seen a common joy: music. It pos- sesses humans like no other force it seems to draw the subtleties of our fears and wishes to the surface, to aid new feelings to our brow with the strike of each fresh chord. How often have you listened to an old well-worn piece only to hear something brand-new which brings a new- found intensity to an excitement felt long ago? Music is aid to wisdom: somewhere in the infi- nite variety of its harmonies and melodies there can be found the very essence of life. We learn to understand ourselves, perhaps never quite to the level at which definitions can be phrased or so- lutions can be formulated, but yet we learn to understand our- selves and others. If only for the brief few moments of music ' s sweet duration, we find the truth that lays just below the senses. This is music ' s pleasure, whether the truths are of bitterness and uselessness, or sweetness and power. the University, we .compose our own music. Each of us has his or her own tune, of course, but we all listen carefully to every other person ' s song, for each single melody en- hances our own. Graduates influ- ence undergrads just as blues influenced rock; undergrads influ- ence freshmen just as soul influenced rap. Pop from each generation lives on, permeating the lives of contemporaries, never losing its cool. And Why? Be- cause life at the university, not unlike music, draws each and ev- ery one of us together into a dis- (con ' t) A.M. Elm Prologue If 3

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parate, diverse, clashing cacoph- ony of opinions, ideals, thoughts, and conviction. The fact that we are here is the one underlying and all-forgiving constant in our small universe that makes us all unique and yet dependent upon all others. One must thrive upon the melodies of another to create the harmonies of his own. None of us will retain anything from Calculus 216, but we will all come away from these few years with an awareness that was not like the one with which we entered. We can read as many pages of staff notes as we wish, but our true education, sentimentally known as the college experience , is what we derived from the pleasure of being in tune with others for four short years. Some of us came to find new mean- ings to the universe, some came to find jobs, some came to track new atomic particles, some came to track husbands or wives, some came simply because it was the next logical step in their lives, but we must all come away with something common. FIRST MOVEMENT: SCHERZO SPASMISMO A few staccato and uncertain footsteps fill the vacuum of silence as freshmen enter their dorms. This movement begins with brief, cau- tious half steps up and down the chromatic scale, however it quickly settles into a familiar rhythm and soon sprints off into many brave patterns. Motivated by a blind rush of adrenaline, the notes probe cur- iously, high into the far reaches of the treble clef and deep below the bass clef. Harmonies are nearly in- audible, but there is a kind of ge- nius in the newness of the sound and the brightness of the volume. The movement ends with tension which seems to examine for the first time what has been and what will be. SECOND MOVEMENT: SO- PHOMORISMO MINUETTO After a long fill of silence, the student swings into a slow, graceful, confident dance. The same melody emerges, only with different style and changing harmonies. There is more smoothness, though no less vivaciousness, to this movement. It has a charisma, both sensual and sensuous. The notes gather on the center of each clef, drawn to the most easily listenable segments of the spectrum and to what is already known to be pleasing. There is (con ' t)