September 19,
2005
Inauguration: The making of Quaerere et Invenire
Morris |
f a presidential search committee were a piece of music, what would it sound like? Composer Robert Morris's answer is Quaerere et Invenire (the Latin translation for "to seek and to find"), a work that will have its world premiere at President Seligman's inaugural ceremony on October 23.
An internationally known music scholar and professor of composition, Morris wrote the piece this summer on a commission from the Hanson Institute for American Music in honor of the inauguration. The parameters were to create a work for piano and about 10 wind instruments that could be performed in close to 10 minutes. . . . not to mention, suggest the pomp and circumstance of such a long-held academic tradition. Morris says the commission posed some "interesting compositional problems."
"How could I mold the dramatic possibilities of a piece for piano and what amounts to a small orchestra without strings—a concerto—to the occasion?" wondered Morris.
The solution, he says, came to him as he began to contemplate the roles he and other contemporary composers play as members of an academic community.
"I participate in a dual role as composer and scholar," says Morris, who has taught at the Eastman School since 1980. "Moreover, having been a member or chair of many search committees for new faculty members and administrators, I could easily imagine the process and experience of those who had sat on the committee charged with selecting a new university president. In such committees, there is real drama—intrigue, excitement, surprise, crisis, resolution—as the members do their work: calling for names, deciding on the candidates, interviewing them, selecting the best person for the job, and convincing him or her to take it. I designed my piece to reflect this process, to have a form that suggested many possibilities at the onset, then to examine each one, and end with resolution and success. . . . In sum, I present my piece both to celebrate the inauguration of Joel Seligman as president of the University and to appreciate the product and process of academic engagement in all of its manifestations, embedded as they are within the culture of cultures we call the world."
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