The Walden School

The Walden School is an organization which runs summer music education programs. It is based in

San Francisco, California. Since its founding in 1972, the Walden School has operated the Young Musicians Program, a 5-week long summer camp and concert series, which is the only summer program dedicated specifically to young composers in the United States. Students aged 9 to 18 study musical composition, along with a unique curriculum of music theory, specialty electives, and chorus. In 2011 the Walden School began running the Creative Musicians Retreat, an 8-day long program for adult musicians from all backgrounds to study choral music, composition, performance, and pedagogy. Both programs take place on the campus of the Dublin School, and they both feature visiting professional ensembles who help to perform new music written by participants, as well as composers-in-residence who inspire and mentor the participants. The Young Musicians Program also puts on a choral concert at the conclusion of the program. Along with participants from the United States, in recent years attendees have come from countries such as Cyprus, Israel, Mexico, China, India, Estonia, Canada, Serbia, and Venezuela

.

History

The Walden School was co-founded in 1972 by

Mountain School from 1976 to 1982, a small rural private boarding school in Vershire, Vermont. In 1983, due to the impending sale of the Mountain School, Walden moved to the Dublin School in Dublin, New Hampshire, where it has been held ever since. On July 17, 1996, David Hogan was one of the victims of the TWA Flight 800 crash.^[1]^[2]

Methodology

Philosophy

The Walden academic curriculum and teaching methodology is based on a core philosophy which employs a comprehensive and organic approach to learning music, emphasizing creativity in all aspects of the curriculum. The Walden School's general philosophy defines music as "sound organized in time."

Musicianship

In the Walden School's Musicianship Course students simultaneously learn singing, playing, writing, and improvising music. The Musicianship course teaches the elements of music more or less in the order that they were developed, and starts with the existential question of "what is music?" Students then proceed through a process of discovery beginning with the

functional harmony

. The Walden School has recently published a textbook titled The Walden School Musicianship Course: A Manual for Teachers about its methodology.

Composition

Walden School alumni see Walden as a "composition camp", although technically composition is not at the core of the Walden curriculum. The method employed by composition teachers depends on the level of the student. In beginner classes comprising new and inexperienced students, a more improvisation-oriented approach is taken. More advanced classes take an open-ended approach, in that students are encouraged to compose any style they please while simultaneously receiving guidance from their composition teacher on orchestration and notation techniques.

Computer music

Digidesign Mbox hardware and Reaper software. Students use a Digital Audio Tape (DAT) recorder with a stereo microphone to record sounds, and then later upload these recordings to the Power Macs and begin composing electronic pieces primarily using Reaper software. Other popular pieces of software used among Walden School students to manipulate the sounds they record are Soundhack. Max/MSP is a more sophisticated digital audio signal processing

application and is used exclusively among the Walden School faculty.

Faculty Commissioning Project

The Walden School Faculty are active composers, performers and educators. The Faculty Commissioning Project offers opportunities for collaborating with resident musicians and premiering new works.

Past Walden School directors

2004–present Seth Brenzel
- 1996–2003 Patricia Plude
- 1994–1995 Stephen Coxe
- 1983–1994 Pamela Layman Quist
- 1972–1982 David Hogan

References

^ "WashingtonPost.com: Flight 800 Crew and Passengers". www.washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2018-03-22.
^ "WashingtonPost.com: David Hogan Obituary". www.washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2018-03-22.

External links

Official website
Hand Over Hand, Walden School alumni

Press coverage

Kelley, Gail (7 Jan 2001). "Song Brings Budding Musicians Together". The Boston Globe. Globe Newspaper Company, Inc. p. 7. Archived from the original on 10 March 2004. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
Conover, Kirsten A (28 July 1997). "Camp Strikes Creative Chord With Young Composers". Christian Science Monitor. Archived from the original on 22 April 2015. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
Sheridan, Molly (18 June 2002). "Breathing After Their Own Fashion: The Walden School At 30". New Music Box. Archived from the original on 24 July 2014. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
"Walden School honored by chamber music awards". Monadnock Ledger-Transcript. 23 Jan 2014. Archived from the original on 19 April 2015. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
Lipanovith, Marianne (14 April 2011). "Walden School: Winning Over Students, Winning Awards". San Francisco Classical Voice. Archived from the original on 9 January 2012. Retrieved 22 April 2015.

42°54′30″N 72°03′47″W / 42.90833°N 72.06306°W / 42.90833; -72.06306

[1] "WashingtonPost.com: Flight 800 Crew and Passengers". www.washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2018-03-22.

[2] "WashingtonPost.com: David Hogan Obituary". www.washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2018-03-22.

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