Talk:Music education and programs within the United States

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Music Goes Collegiate
As populations grew, schools at all levels supported that growth, including the collegiate level. Some institutions offered specific curriculum to train future music educators, which included accreditation and licensing. Others developed programs and courses to enrich the lives of the students through academic study of musical materials, and still others offered a plethora of opportunities for their students to perform together as choirs, orchestras, and other types of ensembles.



Harvard University of Cambridge, Massachusetts, holds the distinctive honor of being this countries oldest educational institution. They consider themselves a school steeped in tradition, and from their humble beginnings of only 9 students, the school has since grown to more than 18,000 strong. The clubs, fraternities, and societies that serve the students today are the same organizations that served the students one hundred years ago and some of them for more than two hundred years. Learning about music and performing music has long been a standing tradition as well. Harvard’s Pierian Sodality began more than two hundred years ago and continues today in the form of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, but the early years were not always easy for those musically inclined students.

In March 1808, a small group of students bonded together and formed the Pierian Sodality, a brotherhood based upon common interests and shared aesthetic values. The original charter of the Fierians stated the goal of organizing an orchestra with the intent to perform music for the enjoyment of others as well as serenade young women in the square. The signatures that appeared on the founding charter included Alpheus Bigelow, Benjamin D. Bartlett, Joseph Eaton, John Gardner, and Frederic Kinloch, all of whom were members from the class of 1810.



The organization can now lay claim to being the oldest collegiate orchestra in the country. When originally founded, the Sodality chose its name from the spring that gave Greek gods their musical inspiration. They began quite humbly. They were simply a collection of students who liked to play music together.

It is, however, thought that there must have been musical clubs at Harvard prior to the Pierian Sodality but few-to-no records exist to validate such accounts. During the mid-1800s, a book was found one day that contained the words "The Accounts of the Treasurer of the Singing Club of Harvard College." The records began November 9, 1786 and actually continued to May 1803. The accounting for the membership was reflected through entries of shillings and pence, up until the day that the new Federal money system took effect in the region. Other than this one discovery, no other records have yet been found.

Although the term “Pierian Sodality Orchestra," was incorporated as the organizations official title, it was not actually an orchestra during a good amount of time during the earlier years. They were in reality much closer to a band with poor instrumentation, which of course would change year-to-year and some years the changes were extreme.  Such was the case in 1832 when upon entering the rehearsal room for roll call, only three gentlemen were present, and they were all sophomores.  A number of months later the membership numbers would again rise to their norm, but let’s consider this; with three members you are able to develop a repertoire, have full chords, and even some interesting contrapuntal movement amongst each other, but what happens when your membership dwindles down to one?  Yes, a single, devoted active member held the meetings regularly, alone, and never forgetting to put up the advertising board for his own satisfaction each week. He would call himself to order and proceed with his solitary rehearsal, continuing for the full hour then dutifully clean up, and put away the advertising board. The required effort and time for the weekly meeting was time to work, and that he did, but not in vain. That solitary drive kept the eternal flame of Harvard’s Pierian Sodality Orchestra, eternal. Now that's a Harvard man, through-and-through!



Today, Harvard University possesses a department of music, concentrating on the academics of music with an A.B. (a concentration in music) and a Ph.D. in historical musicology, ethnomusicology, theory, and composition. Vocal and instrumental performance degrees are not yet a part of the coursework but performance itself is still a very important part of campus activities. (Harvard University website) The Pierian Sodality continues to flourish in the form of the Harvard-Radcliffe Symphony Orchestra.

IQ content
User:Sultasto the content you added here and here is not OK, because this is content about IQ and is sourced to popular media, describing a "primary source". For this kind of content you need a source per WP:MEDRS. If you don't understand MEDRS please ask. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 20:57, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

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