New England Conservatory of Music - Neume Yearbook (Boston, MA)

Page 6 text:

DEDICATION To WARREN STOREY SMITH, To you, we the Class of 1938, dedicate this book with sincere appreciation of your excellent instruction, keen sense of humor, and warm friendship. 2

Page 8 text:

To THE Class of 1938: Perhaps it has not occurred to you just that way, but the young man or woman embarking upon a musical career today may be considered doubly adventurous. The conditions o f life itself, always precarious and uncertain, are more unsettled, more problematical — or so it seems — than ever before. And if politics and economics are in a muddle, music likewise appears not to know which way to turn. A similar period of experimentation at the beginning of the seventeenth century led to a new and infinitely richer art. So we might as well look at the bright side and expect that polytonality and atonality and all the other ' alities and ' isms are not the end of a road but the beginning of one. In the meantime there is always the art of the past; and most of you will devote more of your efforts to cherishing and interpreting our great tonal heritage than you will toward moulding the art of the future. Also, until music again consents to ad- dress itself to the public instead of to the connoisseur or until the public catches up with the modernist composers, the music of the great masters, from Bach to Sibelius, will provide the inspiration and the refreshment, the escape into an ideal world of order and beauty that is so salutary, today. Indeed it might be said that, although his creative stature is perceptibly diminished, the artist, and especially the musician, is of more value to society now than at any time in the past. Thus you will be out in the world not merely as musicians but as ministers, and missionaries; as helpers and healers. Not only will you add to its store of pleasure, you will help it to pre- serve its sanity. May all good fortune attend you. Warren Storey Smith 4