Finding Their Voices - Amherst College

colleges, which were otherwise devoted to the abstract ideal of intellectual and moral
improvement of the mind. In an attempt to make the study of music more amenable to
the collegiate sphere, music educators began to invent new, more cerebral methods of
approaching the subject. John Knowles Paine (whose career will be discussed in depth
later in this chapter) proved to be the most vocal advocate of these new ideals. Outspoken
for his time, Paine believed that no credit should ever be offered for the practice of music
and that composition, theory, and history should be the focus of music education.
This issue came to a head at Vassar after Ritter’s death in 1891. Only a few
months after the old professor was buried, James Monroe Taylor, the president of the
college, issued a notice to the board of trustees in which he questioned the usefulness of
the curriculum that Ritter had created:
All who have watched carefully the recent development of the College, must have
felt that the relation of it to our schools of Painting and Music involves a source of
weakness, and even the possibility of an influence antagonistic to our academic
development. 122
At the time, Taylor was on a mission to raise Vassar’s academic standards to that
of its peers. Remarking that Harvard, Yale, Pennsylvania, and “most of the colleges for
women” were undergoing similar re-organizations, Taylor warned the trustees that the
time required for musical study “might be a menace to higher standards.” More
specifically, Taylor wrote, as “is done in Harvard University,” courses in Art and Music,
as well as membership in the Orchestra, should now be allowed only to juniors and
seniors (though the extra fees would be abolished), and could not be counted towards
graduation. Taylor felt that these changes would place “music on a more dignified basis
than now, and would give it, as a study, a place worthy of it in a liberal education.” The
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122 James Monroe Taylor, Notice issued from the President’s Office in October, 1891, to the Board of
Trustees.
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