To View, To Envision, To Have Vision: The Holy Names Essence
Keynote Address On the Occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the
Holy Names University Kodály Center for Music Education
by Jerry L. Jaccard EdD, Class of 1976
Sister Rose Marie, Dean Beth Martin, Honorary Consul Voisin, President De Greeve
Dear Colleagues and Guests:
Standing as it does as a beacon on a hill, Holy Names University is home to the
Holy Names Kodály Center for Music Education, one of the most unique and influential collegiate music education entities in North America. It all began with a vision, the one that brought the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary to Oakland 140 years ago. While they were establishing the Lake Merritt campus, we can imagine how the Sisters might have often looked up to the hills where the present campus is now situated. The opening lines of the one hundred and twenty-first Psalm come easily to mind: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.” The Oakland hills offered a change of perspective, an outward-looking one to match the upward-looking one the Sisters already possessed. And even when on this present hillside campus one still looks and climbs upward to the Chapel, from where the outlook literally and figuratively provides even wider perspectives.
The theme chosen to shape our 40th anniversary celebration is
Music for Everyone: Envisioning a Musical Culture. Central to this theme are the words “envision” and its root, “vision.” These two words bring us immediately back to the visionary origins of this university. “Envision” is defined as “to picture in one’s mind, especially a future happening” (Webster 1981). Following on, the word “vision” requires farsightedness, the ability to perceive a bigger picture, to understand one’s place in it, to act well one’s part in making it come to pass, and its possible and potential consequences. Sister Mary Alice Hein, a consummate musician and pedagogue in her own right, envisioned what
could be here at Holy Names and went to work engaging others in a work that has ultimately touched tens of thousands of lives. Her bringing to this campus the first ever International Kodály Symposium in 1973, a truly historic gathering of much of the best music teaching talent in the world, provided lasting impetus to the fledgling program. Some of those in attendance returned to teach or to study in the Holy Names Kodály Program. Some of us are present at this very moment.
We live in a secular society that is seemingly without vision, a shortsighted lot bent on self-destruction through seeking the paths of least resistance, including rampant materialism based on unprecedented greed and self-interested. Yet our vision runs uphill against those odds, looking ever upward and outward. What we see is best expressed in Zoltán Kodály’s watch-phrase of “Music for Everyone.” Whereas the political-commercial world is mostly deaf to the pure voices and blind to the singular innocence of the world’s children, we have staked our future on the power of childhood. We believe the hope of civilization rests on how our young ones are educated, and we believe that every child is naturally musical, a self-evident truth with the potential to change the course of nations. Zoltán Kodály clearly understood this possibility:
Not only from the point of view of individual education but from that of the nation, the work of the kindergarten is indispensable. Not even the most careful education in the family can supply what the kindergarten offers: adjustment to the human community . . . In music, too, the work of the kindergarten is irreplaceable . . . even the most careful and wealthy parents, however good the teaching they supply for their children, are unable to provide them with a collective education, which, at the initial stages of music, is a tremendous help. Most children have no opportunity to make use of their natural sense of music in time (Kodály in Herboly-Koscár, 2002, p. 19).
We hold firmly to this vision because we know that life is never one-sided, that the pursuit of a career and financial security can only be truly self-actualizing when balanced with the expression of more spiritual, less tangible values. Albert Einstein, the quintessential scientist, underscored this point when he said: “If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music” (Einstein in Viereck, 1929, npn). It is well known, of course, that Einstein was an accomplished violinist. He also underscored the essential balance between art and science, music and life: “After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well” (Henderson, 2006, 33:257). Thus, however small our collective voice in this unsettled world, we are nevertheless called upon to nurture the divine spark of human musicality through Kodály’s banner statement of “Music for Everyone.”
Our world is but a speck in a well-ordered universe, and our diminutive music education voice seems even smaller. Yet, our tiny endeavor is one of the earth’s oldest, most natural links to the Universe. It is not for nothing that the Ancients believed—and science is rediscovering—how inextricably melody, rhythm, and form is woven into the fabric of the Cosmos. At first we knowingly winked when we read how the Greek philosophers and their medieval successors believed in the Harmony of the Spheres. That is until NASA’s two Voyager spacecraft recorded hours and hours of rather pleasant sound emissions from the solar wind, the planetary magnetospheres, and a variety of other natural sound sources within the audible frequency range, all found in our own solar system. The Ancients knew, Kodály knew, Einstein knew—we know—what László Dobszay here summarizes:
Good music reflects and, at the same time, expresses the order of the universe and the harmony of the human body and soul. The proportions of the universe, the beauty of the cosmos arranged in accordance with weight, number and measure...all become a tangible experience in music. Music reflects order and therefore creates order in man (1992, p. 83).
Scientists have also looked inward to the microcosm of the human mind and body resulting in studies documenting such things as the special role of music in cognitive development, the effects of musical vibration at the cellular level, and the many musical functions of the brain. Scientists and musicians alike recognize the numerous manifestations of symmetry, asymmetry, chiasmus, and the Golden Mean everywhere present in Nature and music. Even the latest discoveries about Chaos Theory or the behavior of subatomic particles reveal processes that are astonishingly similar to principles of musical organization. Our voice may be small and our message largely unheeded, but we do indeed have something of significance to say!
Yet, throughout its visionary leadership, the Holy Names Kodály Program has always kept in sharp focus the most important discovery of all about music: all children are natural musicians who deserve the finest possible education in order to cultivate their inborn musicality. Who can ever forget that extraordinary moment at the 2004 National Conference of the Organization of American Kodály Educators when the conductor of one of the Oakland high school choirs asked his singers how many had come up from elementary schools with music teachers from Holy Names? Most of the nearly one hundred singers raised their hands, and then they began to sing. The blend, the intonation, the artistry, the sheer musicality of their singing was simply electrifying! It was but one example of the remarkable ongoing legacy of the Holy Names Kodály initiative.
But what makes the Holy Names Kodály Program so successful? First and foremost, it is its focus on quality childhood education through humanely rigorous teacher education with strong musical underpinnings. Its unwavering commitment to children and their music teachers has transcended the paralyzing politics of the music education establishment and the murky motives of the trivialized and commercialized children’s music industry. In its 40-year existence and to the lasting benefit of us all, the program has steered remarkably clear of the stiflingly provincial isolation of American school music.
Other attributes of the Holy Names Kodály Program are its constancy, its stability, its holistic balance of practical and theoretical, and the fact that its directors and faculty have always been of the highest musical and pedagogical preparation. After Sister Mary Alice came more visionary directors: Rita Klinger, Ed Bolkovac, Judy Johnson, and Anne Laskey. They continued to bring master teachers to Holy Names, whose names are listed in our anniversary booklet—many of them are with us here today and deserve our deepest admiration. Sister Mary Alice, Eleanor “Toni” Locke, and Lois Choksy—and yet other faculty and students—are widely published. Anne Laskey and Gail Needleman have turned Toni Locke’s original treasury of folksong into a branch archive of the Library of Congress. Its online accessibility continually extends the benevolent reach and influence of the Holy Names Kodály Program. The unique mixture of Hungarian musicianship teaching with American and international pedagogical research and practice has made a particular difference not only in North America, but also throughout the Pacific Rim and elsewhere. Who would have guessed that Holy Names alumna Dr. Miriam Factora would one day traipse through Philippine rain forests collecting songs from headhunters and live to tell about it! We are all blessed and inspired indeed.
Congratulations and gratitude to all administrators, faculty, students, and supporters who have had anything to do with the Holy Names Kodály Program for the past 40 years. What an outstanding foundation we have constructed together upon which we hope many more will build over the next 40 years and beyond! May all past, present, and future members of this sacred community of teachers and learners find renewed vision in Mikhail Lermontov’s poem, The Angel’s Song (in Vickery, 2001, pp. 101–102 and Rachmaninoff, 1895, npn, ed. Jaccard):
An angel flew through the midnight sky
and a soothing song he sang.
And the moon, stars and clustering clouds
listened to that sacred song.
He sang of the bliss of innocent souls
in paradisiacal gardens,
Of Almighty God he sang
and his praise was unfeigned.
In his arms he carried a young soul
to the world of grief and tears,
With that young soul his song remained—
wordless, yet vibrant and alive.
And long on the earth did that young soul languish,
with wondrous longing brimming over,
And that song of heaven was never outranked
by the weary songs of the earth.
As the visionaries we are called to be, in whose care are found many such young souls and into whose hands the future is entrusted, let us ever “Glance backward, look heavenward, reach outward, and press forward” (Monson, 2007, npn).
