The article additionally states that, “recent evidence suggests a misfired rocket was destroyed by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system in the immediate vicinity of the hospital.” While there has been speculation about the role of the Iron Dome in intercepting the rocket, recent evidence regarding this claim is inconclusive. 

The Oberlin Review’s intention is to report the news factually and in good faith. We apologize for any harm caused by the inaccurate characterization of events cited in this article.

The digital attention economy conditions us to expect rapid change and gratification. We can unfollow or block a person, effectively removing them from our lives within seconds. We can open Instagram or TikTok and receive an instant dopamine high. When I open Instagram, I am looking to be instantly entertained. As I begrudgingly scroll past T-Mobile and NBC Peacock ads to see what my friends are up to, I also wade through an endless sea of content about the Israel–Hamas war. 

On Tuesday, Nov. 7, I tapped through every single Instagram story on my feed to see just how much content there was about the Israel–Hamas war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza within a 24-hour time frame. Out of 165 users who posted that day, 41 had posted content about the war, with a total of 93 individual story posts. But what does this content actually accomplish? Are there real world implications from our actions on Instagram, or any other online media platform? 

University of Pennsylvania professor Jonah Berger, author of the New York Times bestseller Contagious: Why Things Catch On, found that the leading factors that play into people posting on social media were social currency, emotion, and practical value. A similar Times survey conducted in 2018 found that boosting one’s self-image is the biggest reason people post and interact with online users. One survey participant said, “I try to share only information that will reinforce the image I’d like to present: thoughtful, reasoned, kind, interested, and passionate about certain things.” Social media is yet another vehicle for people to buy and sell their own personas and egos. Digital commodification is a topic for another day, but it’s important to keep in mind when thinking about why people post; I could write an entirely different article on how late-stage capitalism eclipses and tends to diminish interest in true civic engagement. 

Activism and civic engagement as a whole exist on a spectrum, and individuals’ levels of engagement will always differ. Some may have the time, money, and ability to join a protest or donate to an aid organization. Others may only be willing or able to perform the simplest action of liking an Instagram post. 

Many would characterize the latter side of this spectrum as “slacktivism,” a term coined by Dwight Ozard and Fred Clark in 1995 which refers to the act of supporting a political cause or movement with very minimal effort or personal resources. I’ve never been a fan of the term, and 28 years later, “slacktivism” has seemed to become a means of further dividing the political left between “real” and “fake” activists. In addition to the never-ending online discourse around political movements and crises themselves there is further discourse around how we ought to talk about these movements and take action on social media platforms. 

This division makes online platforms incredibly volatile spaces, mostly thanks to our short online attention spans and the ability to speak our minds behind the safety of our screens. People, for the most part, don’t take the time to really think before posting something. Instagram is designed to keep you entertained and engaged. That comes at the cost of being accurately informed on an issue or able to have productive discussions. 

The online fallout after the Oct. 17 Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion in Gaza City is a prime example of social media’s unparalleled potential to spread misinformation and create animosity. Initial world headlines suggested that the Israeli military was responsible for the explosion, which was deemed to be an intentional airstrike. For a day or so posts circulated and blame was traded. Not long after, news sources retracted these headlines, eventually agreeing that a misfired rocket from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad was responsible, and apologized for acting on insufficient evidence. Online arguments continued to unfold. 

Ultimately, war is incredibly difficult to accurately report on. As of now we don’t really know who’s to blame, although recent evidence suggests a misfired rocket was destroyed by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system in the immediate vicinity of the hospital. Most importantly, the more filters a piece of news goes through the more blurred it becomes, and the news we consume online is incredibly filtered. 

During the immediate days following the explosion, I noticed Instagram users using these conflicting headlines to further their own arguments and — going back to the concept of social currency — bolster their self-image and stance on the conflict as a whole. 

So we know why people post online, and we know what happens when you mix that with heavy, emotionally-tolling issues that many people have physical ties to, the Israel-Hamas war being the current example. But who benefits from this online anger, volatility, and misinformation? It’s not the people of the United States — anti-Arab and antisemitic acts of hate and violence are incredibly high right now, and we are more divided on the Israel —

Palestine conflict than ever before. The Gazans who desperately need clean water do not need an influencer’s infographic endlessly circulating, they need donations from all of us and aid from the United States government. The only people benefiting from what a recent Atlantic article aptly described as the “informational jungle” and “tangled vegetation” that has taken over social media platforms following the Oct. 7 massacre are those contributing to this “jungle.”  

I’m not saying not to post about the Israel–Palestine conflict. Social media is many people’s first experience with activism and a gateway to political awareness. Others rely on social media to know when protests are happening, or to discover organizations to donate to. What I am asking is for people to be more cognizant as to why they post something, what immediate effect that post has in an online space, and who may be actually benefiting from it.

1. Watchable by

5. Makeup of a cloud, perhaps

10. ___ to USB adapter

14. Write in C#

15. Zoom component

16. Ultra-wide shoe

17. ___ red

18. Thing above a bucket, sometimes

19. The one that’s not culture

20. Like 14-across vis-a-vis 17-across, maybe

23. Shares piece of writing from memory

24. Aussie slang for relatives

27. Plural of where a train would pull into, abbr.

28. Like this grid’s symmetry upon close inspection

32. Spike The Dragon from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic would snack on this

34. Aloe vera and long-lasting nail polish are examples of this

35. Former important deet for an Obie ordering a package

36. Regal rival

39. Home to Smith, Hampshire, and Holyoke

42. French relative of “mon”

43. Japan’s first capital

45. Palme ___: Cannes film prize

46. The Phanerozoic is one

48. How one might describe the nature of this puzzle (although I’d beg to differ)

51. Schlemiels

54. Beloved lighter

55. “Thou ___ false,” but fickle, according to Byron

57. With “the,” time at which this puzzle was definitely NOT made

61. Arizona tribe

63. Genre of Star Wars

64. Buds

66. Like Beethoven

67. Lore-accurate

68. Places where the Daily Racing Form is read, in brief

69. 15-Across industry giant

70. “Laborare est ___” (“to work is to pray”)

71. Ellington’s “Take ___ Train”

DOWN

1. Come up, or go down

2. Punny reply to “Whose bills are these?”

3. Zealous type

4. Rife, like a reef

5. Barrel measure

6. Practice in which nothing goes on?

7. Bldg. annex

8. ___ knot

9. Number

10. Frigate cry

11. Dilapidated

12. Satisfied, in a way

13. Good ending?

21. On the Aegean, for example

22. Taxing grp.

25. “How silly ___!”

26. Some sea rtes.

29. Golden ___(seniors)

30. Prefix with plunk

31. End to an ambiguous threat

33. LI x L

36. 1998 film that shortly preceded A Bug’s Life

37. Half portion at a luau?

38. Parisian’s skillet

40. Insult in a classic Vine about throwing paper

41. Gear part

44. Louden

47. Micro-machine

49. Fair-hiring letters

50. Posed, as for a portrait

52. Critical down

53. Nightclub flasher

56. Main outlet

58. Instagram for the extra-artsy

59. Chevy Bolt, e.g.

60. Little Girl Blue singer Simone

61. Some Vizios or Samsungs

62. War on poverty org. (not to be confused with 49-down)

65. Nine-digit issuer

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Why were you interested in soundscapes and what has your work with soundscapes consisted of?  

As I mentioned in the talk, I’m very sensitive to how we exist in spaces, and I found that I often wanted to integrate environmental sound into my compositions. That led me into a deep exploration of different diverse habitats and how closely related we are to them. I then studied and derived four math equations that we can use to calculate the rhythms of water in oceans, streams, and glaciers, and to look at the resonance and echos found in natural canyons. 

With glaciologist and geographer Michele Koppes, I sonically mapped glacial runoff in Alaska, Greenland, and the Himalayas. Everything recorded becomes a memory because the water’s changing, and it won’t sound like that ever again. I think everybody has a connection to water, right? So recording these changing rhythms is really part of a larger dialogue about the changing climate and our relationship with it. Telling stories through audio; it’s a great way to bring people to a place.

How do different natural landscapes inform the instruments and music genres from their respective regions? Have you experienced that in your own field research and travels?

Some of the forests that I’ve been in are mostly bamboo. That sound is just amazing. There’s a lot of  traditional music that’s interdependent with forests. I teach a course on forest rhythms from the northern Philippines. It’s really about community – unlike in Western music, where you’re asking, “Where is the downbeat?” With interlocking rhythms you’re asking, “Where’s my neighbor?” You don’t have to count, you just have to find your neighbors and play your part to your neighbor and so forth. Then you become one instrument, just like how underneath the ground, trees share their roots and resources.

In your masterclass on Tuesday, you used the phrase “sonic meditation.” What do you mean by that?

It’s about a sense of place and presence. Not everything that I play is quiet, and my music can be very developed, but the process of playing and listening to this music is meditative, just as you can have moving meditation. 

I was invited to The TANK Center for Sonic Arts in Colorado last year, where I played and recorded solo in this resonant tank where you play a note and it lasts for 40 seconds. It changes how you feel music and sound, in regards to time. For this landscape opera that I’m writing, I started traveling around in canyons and I played on these 50 million year old lithophones, recording echoes. It was just so special, the sound, and reflective in nature.  

What do you think about the practice culture seen in many conservatories?

I think practice is very personal. It’s crucial that practice integrates into your personal daily routine and you’re not told to practice a certain way. College is an opportunity to focus and lean into areas that you never had an opportunity to. Finding a way to absorb these things as you nurture your creativity and development is entirely personal. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to be learning certain fundamentals for your instrument, but I think the way you approach those fundamentals is up to you. 

In a lot of traditional cultures in the Philippines, for instance, people learn music in their dreams. There’s a certain friction when entering a new community. How do you integrate different cultures within your own artistry and self? What do you receive and take in, and what are things that maybe you don’t own and yet still have an understanding of and are open to learning?

What does being an interdisciplinary artist mean to you? 

I’ve always been collaborating with scientists, but it’s not as if I searched them out. We find ourselves in those moments. There are a lot of parallels between environmental science and music, but there’s a point where they diverge: music is very product-driven, whereas science is really based on inquiry, not necessarily about any results. That’s how I feel about my research, “Rhythm in Nature.” I feel like we’re making these certain inquiries with other artists and asking, “How do we connect that with an ecosystem and take it even further?” We’re all part of a larger ecosystem and we’re researching it and developing it. And it really takes all of us, because nature is massive.

Some people have an idea that they’re going to be a sound artist, but it’s not as if I ever said that until I realized that field recording was as important as me being in the studio, or being on stage or sound mapping. They’re all different and I like to investigate the sound in all of these different disciplines; I don’t think one is more important than the other.

1. Unit of brightness for screens

5. Lower backbones

10. “I’m gonna pass on that…”

14. Prefix with -matic

15. ___ mignon 

16. ___fried’s dragon

17. Underwater woodland

19. The other authors, briefly

20. Japanese fried cutlets dish

21. *

23. International association for (including, but not limited to) studies and surfing

24. Go, to a Scot

26. Over and over and over…

27. What the starred clues clearly are, or a descriptor of American suburbia

31. Power tools company

34. The transparent part of glasses

35. “You Broke Me First” singer Tate Mc___

36. Hertz competitor

37. Seth MacFarlane stuffed toy

38. Programming for older viewers

39. Get ___ of

40. Bring ___ (two words)

42. *

44. Habitual lifter

47. The guy with the fables

48. Choose, with “for”

49. On the Mtns in the morning?

52. Certain Medieval artilleryman

55. Type of khaki pant

57. Mil. unit

58. *Bows*/ what one might say while bowing

60. ____ Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason creator)

61. ____way to Heaven

62. Plural of an Oberlin street, similar to Maple and Elm

63. One who colors fabrics

64. Connecting the dots (to)

65. “I ___, I float, I fleetly flee, I fly”

DOWN

1. Point of commonality between leading female GOP presidential candidate and Review Editor-in-Chief 

2. Light bulbs, figuratively

3. ____whirl, a popular carnival ride

4. Soaks 

5. Bay Area airport

6. Bouncy mattress

7. One of three fictional mermaids in a hit 2000s TV show

8. Molded differently

9. Abbreviation for the position held by Jeff Sessions from 2017–2018

10. Password partner, often

11. Land close to home

12. Clean

13. To stare, mouth agape

18. Centri____ force

22. In, in French 

25. Jazz Pianist Tatum 

27. Job for un détective privé

28. Celebrated anonymous Italian author Ferrante

29. A rose by any other ___ would smell as sweet

30. Shade of blue

31. One of two sides in the movie franchise Star Wars 

32. How Perry the Platypus might describe Doctor Doofenshmirtz

33. 0.5 setting

37. “Free Fallin’” and “American Girl” singer

38. Primary psychoactive compound in cannabis

40. “Make ___”(two words): “Star Trek” Catchphrase

41. *

42. Aglet, to a shoelace

43. “Smart” accessory

45. *Painter, with Canadian accent 

46. What a weather reporter might say on a sunny day

49. *

50. Edible Japanese mushroom

51. 0/100, say

52. Street ___

53. Eagle’s nest: Var.

54. Morales of “Ozark”

56. The Devil’s cloven ___

59.Houston’s ___ Stadium

It’s undoubtedly true that car-dependent infrastructure is destroying our planet and our wellbeing, and I agree that the last thing anybody wants is more parking lots. However, I believe that this letter falls short in considering the complex systems at play in combating car dependency from an institutional perspective. 

Constructing a new 120,000 square foot dorm and a 201-space parking lot might not look so good at first glance, but it really is. The dorm will be mostly four-person suites, featuring the same amenities and privacies offered by Village Housing. Instead of groups of 12 students each sharing their own boiler and water systems, over 370 students will live off of Oberlin’s singular energy grid. That’s awesome. And it has taken an immense amount of logistical and financial planning to pull off. As Off-campus Housing will be phased out and re-allocated to the local community, those students who would have had a house will need a new place to park their cars, which is why 45 additional parking spots are being added to the Woodland Street parking lot. For those who don’t know, a student and staff parking lot previously existed in the space where the new dorm is now being built, so this parking lot is really more of an accommodating expansion rather than a new construction. 

The Sustainable Infrastructure Program is, at its core, an attempt to eliminate individuals consuming an unnecessary amount of natural resources, which could also be described as a local occurrence of the ‘tragedy of the commons.’ It should be noted that the Woodland Street Dorm is not technically part of the SIP, but representative of similar long-term goals. Cars on campus are also resources that aren’t shared in large numbers, which is a problem. So why bring back the Woodland Street parking lot at all if Oberlin is creating new on-campus housing solutions? Isn’t it a bit hypocritical that Oberlin, a school focused on environmentalism, is encouraging students to own cars? 

No, it’s not hypocritical, and they’re not encouraging car ownership. They’re simply accounting for the fact that students and staff still need cars during this transitional phase.

Oberlin students travel a lot. If you need to get out of town without owning a car, you can rent one of three electric vehicles offered by the College or take the ObieExpress. If you’d like to go somewhere outside of Cleveland on your own time, then the ObieExpress is off the table. If the EVs are taken, or if you need to go somewhere quite far or overnight, you’re really out of luck. Reducing parking minimums and limiting student parking availability without providing alternative methods of transportation will only prevent students from going where they need to go. Public transportation needs sufficient demand, and although the demand is there, Oberlin likely won’t be investing in more buses or EVs while a lot of their sustainability funds are still tied up in the Sustainable Infrastructure Program.

If we had a truly sizable fleet of EVs, for instance, that would surely eliminate the need for students to have cars on campus. However, this would be another massive undertaking by the College — though one that hopefully happens sooner rather than later. It’s not realistic to ask the College to also solve car dependency while they are already in the process of building an eco-friendly dorm. 

Additionally, there are around 450 faculty and staff in the College and Conservatory, and the majority of them don’t live in Oberlin proper. This figure does not include maintenance, administration, food workers, or anyone else employed by the College. Oberlin, like any other small town in America, has been forced to adapt to the car revolution. A lifestyle free of cars is fantasy for most Americans living in an environment similar to that of Lorain County. If you live in Elyria, for instance, it is not currently within reason to not own a car if you have to commute to Oberlin. As a result, as much as it pains me to say, staff parking isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

While Oberlin itself is a very walkable and bikeable city, it is situated in a larger region which is not — a region that lacks adequate public transportation. As many readers may know, the Oberlin bike path used to be a railway connecting the city to Kipton, Elyria, and eventually Cleveland. In 1898, Ohio had a rail network as complex and widespread as today’s highway network. If we had a modern version of Ohio’s historic rail network, maybe we wouldn’t need cars, period. But this is of course a much bigger issue that will require dedicated time and effort to solve. 

We shouldn’t be faulting the College for trying to meet the current transportative needs of a wide array of demographics. Fighting climate change as a whole doesn’t mean tackling every issue at once; it will take time, and that’s okay. Instead of complaining about everything Oberlin isn’t doing, what if we took just one moment to appreciate all the progress being made?

At first, I blamed the Jazz department’s curriculum for this issue, telling myself that it hasn’t adequately prepared me for scenarios that require sight reading. I think this is only partly true. Not being able to sight read is my problem, of course, and I simply haven’t put much time into practicing that aspect of my musicianship. What I ultimately found in myself — and something I have noticed in other Jazz majors — is a sort of indifference toward more traditional or “classical” methods of practicing. On the flip side, I’ve also noticed a hesitation toward improvisation among classical majors. I believe this indifference stems from an anti-collaborative culture present in both the classical and Jazz divisions, which is due, in some capacity, to a lack of intentionality to merge the classical and Jazz divisions within the Conservatory’s overarching curriculum.  

A more formal overlap of musical genres in curricula has obvious benefits for technique, increasing your fluidity on the instrument and preventing musical ailments such as tendonitis or carpal tunnel syndrome. But perhaps the biggest benefit in practicing classical music as a jazz musician is that you begin seeing classical and jazz not as separate entities, but interdependent genres. Professor of Music Theory Jan Miyake, OC ’96, shares this view. 

“I think my big pause with a lot of the curriculum is that a lot of students end up forming this very clear separation between classical and jazz, and I think that’s not doing anybody any good,” Miyake said.

For all the time spent sitting in classrooms studying traditional Western classical music — a required four music theory classes, four aural skills classes, and one music history class — most Jazz majors have to go out of their way to actually play and practice classical music, let alone play it with others. That’s the case, at least, unless you have a private teacher who regularly assigns classical repertoire. Associate Professor of Jazz Bass Gerald Cannon explained why he assigns Bach etudes in his private lessons. 

“[Classical etudes] help with soloing, for one,” Cannon said. “When you play them through, the next thing you know you’re in the middle of a blues solo and you’re playing some Bach fragments.”

I’ve usually been able to connect the dots between these classes and my own musical pursuits. I see counterpoint, for instance, as a tool for my own compositions as well as an orchestrational tool when playing solo piano. Aural skills classes are obviously incredibly beneficial to a musician who learns most of their music by ear and is playing jazz, a genre that necessitates listening to other musicians. That being said, I still frequently find myself wondering why I need to take some of these advanced theory classes. Do I really need to know about interval class sets or large form analyses? Can I study classical music in a way that would be more helpful for the industry I want to go into? 

Miyake validated my concerns.

“There are times when I’m teaching when I realize that my biases towards pitch and how to organize pitches really prioritize classical music because that’s both my musical training and my theory training,” Miyake said. “Especially if you look at recent music, sticking it into categories isn’t working so well.”

A strong general music theory curriculum necessitates that the takeaways do not privilege one type of music over another. Until the introduction of the TIMARA program in the ’70s and the Jazz department in the ’80s, an update to the curriculum wasn’t necessary because there wasn’t as prevalent a need to cater to various musical disciplines. We are now in year three of an updated curriculum, implemented originally by a number of departmental chairs, including Miyake, at the time. But we still have a ways to go in terms of dismantling departmental barriers. 

Curricular changes happen slowly: introducing an alternative class for Jazz majors would require a proposal from the chair of the Jazz division that outlines the purposes, outcomes, and processes of the class. This proposal would go to the Educational Plans Committee, a board of departmental chairs who would then vote on the proposal. Although the Music Theory department dealt with roughly 600 registrations this semester alone, my hypothetical proposal here is one affecting a group of around 30 incoming Jazz majors, as a curricular change wouldn’t be grandfathered into current majors. It’s not at all out of the question. 

I would suggest that Jazz majors could take, say, only seven core music theory classes instead of eight, opening up a slot for a required class that gets Jazz majors playing with classical students — a class on Alexander Technique, for instance, or an ensemble that blends genres similar to the Performance & Improvisation Ensemble. When I was in PI Ensemble my second year, the opportunity to play with classical performance majors was invaluable. It opened my mind up to what it meant to play in an ensemble and threw all the limitations that I subconsciously set upon myself when in a jazz combo out the window.

That being said, PI Ensemble is an optional elective, and a lot of people won’t go out of their way to take risks unless they feel safe and comfortable with the people they’ll be playing with. We shouldn’t just be encouraging cross-disciplinary studies, we should be requiring it. This may mean substituting some of the many required Western theory classes with more tangible and practical classes that bring different majors together. It may mean organizing more social events that all types of musicians would be interested in, with the goal of fostering community between departments. Whatever the case, the Conservatory should be doing more to break down barriers between classical, jazz, and all other genres of music. 

1. ___ Sutra

5. European crow

9. Nine-member band

14. “It is ___less, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the more deadly poisons known to man”

15. Potent prefix

16. Mexican street corn

17. Figs.

18. Texan’s preferred second-person pronoun

19. Tim ___, director of the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble

20. Body of knowledge that stems from textual analysis, and a field for 25-, 48-, and 57-Across

23. Lacking functional harmony, as of a musical work

24. Unit of 16-Across

25. “Once we think of Orientalism as a Western projection … we will encounter few surprises” -____

30. Place to take a stroll near campus, for short

33. Name originating from the Hebrew for “ascent”

34. “I had a great time tonight” reply

37. Medieval body armor 

39. Tear on the soccer pitch

41. Autumnal ailments

42. Shakes on

45. Dawn goddess

47. Max. or min.

48. “Masculine and feminine roles are not biologically fixed but socially constructed” – ___

52. A dove’s gentle cry

53. Seldom-used Oberlin email suffix

57. “In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.”- ___

62. Forbidden

63. __ meets West

64. Mark as important

65. Ksoik ekop gninid supmac

66. Funny

67. Obnoxiously large volume

68. Diamond unit

69. Carioca’s greetings

70. Pea variant

DOWN

1. Down Under slumberer

2. Fess up (to)

3. “Live Free or Die,” for New Hampshire

4. ___ Lupin (Maurice Leblanc novel)

5. Her highness’ preferred pronoun

6. Actor Sy of Netflix’s Lupin

7. Just

8. Nae, not skirted!

9. These begin with every presidential inauguration

10. Sonny Rollins tune… or another word for margarine

11. Dark film genre

12. Place to order some customware

13. French second-person possessive pronoun (pl.)

21. Sick

22. ___ go at

26. In the style of

27. Houston univ.

28. Middle Eastern military

29. Salmon garnish, sometimes

30. Key with three sharps (abbr.)

31. Mixture that can be made with lamb or beef… or whatever, really

32. One of many antagonists in a 1963 Hitchcock film

35. Drunken charge

36. Belief system suffix

38. Hawaiian garland

40. His wife was turned into a pillar of salt

43. Engrave with acid

44. “Old Brown ___” (George Harrison)

46. Goes Sherlock-mode

49. Cuban song genre that shares its name with a Ravel composition

50. “Yadda yadda,” abbr.

51. Ridicules, sometimes with an audience

54. “___ a limb”

55. Acrimonious Andean herd animal

56. Cause to buy Throat Coat

57. Papa’s partner

58. Letter-shaped construction beam

59. VERY deep sleep

60. Get an F

61. Hark! It’s an org. with a Tank and a Keep!

62. Transient ___ Disorder

There are a number of factors that set the Emerson Quartet apart from other leading American quartets. They were founded in 1976 as a student ensemble at the Juilliard School. Unlike some other quartets that came out of Juilliard around the same time, such as the Tokyo Quartet, Emerson has almost entirely maintained its original lineup since its founding, with only one personnel change.

In addition to producing an immense number of recordings in the last four decades, members of the Emerson Quartet have been able to build a deep and lasting musical relationship, one that’s nearly unrivaled in the chamber music industry. Over nearly half a century of playing, they’ve developed a level of intimacy that makes their music instantly recognizable.

“Even though we’re all different kinds of people and players, the music always comes first,” Emerson Quartet violist Lawrence Dutton said. “We’ve been working hard … to really understand this music and make it our own and play it as well as possible.”

Dutton also offered some context as to why the group has decided to end their long run, a question that has been continuously raised since the announcement of their farewell tour.

“To play Beethoven’s quartets, or to play any of this repertoire, takes so much energy, so much concentration,” Dutton said. “It’s a sport, really. We feel like we’re still playing well, and we really want to go out that way.”

According to Dutton, the group’s decision to disband was also prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. 

Associate Professor of Viola and Chamber Music Kirsten Docter played with members of the Emerson Quartet a number of times before joining the Oberlin faculty. She was also a member of the award-winning Cavani String Quartet for 23 years. Docter shared her thoughts on the importance of Emerson in a conservatory context overall and reflected on the group’s disbandment.  

“They’re just a really clean ensemble,” Docter said. “There’s a ton of great quartets who have a lot of great recordings, but Emerson just has so many recordings, and they’re all very pristine. I really appreciate the individual ability of each musician and how they really bring their own voice to their recordings and performances.”

Emerson is also unique in terms of instrumentation. Most string quartets are composed of a first violin, second violin, viola, and cello. In Emerson, the two violinists, Philip Seltzer and Eugene Drucker, alternate chairs, which enables the group to create seamless blends in their arrangements and tailor each piece to Seltzer and Drucker’s unique strengths. 

Conservatory third-year and violist Lily Bronson expressed an appreciation for Emerson’s strong stage presence and flawless performances. 

“One thing that’s really important in a string quartet is having a big sound presence, even though viola is usually secondary,” said Bronson. “I’ve been trying to emulate that from Emerson for a long time.”

At the Conservatory, there is widespread love for the Emerson Quartet. Most Conservatory students — including non-string majors — are at least familiar with the group, if not devout fans. 

“Everyone knows about the Emerson Quartet,” Bronson said. “Everyone has listened to their recordings. I can’t speak for everyone saying that they’re their favorite quartet, but I think everyone generally has a great level of respect for them.”

Because of their clarity and attention to detail, Emerson’s recordings lend themselves particularly well to study by conservatory students. 

“If you have Aural Skills dictations, for instance, you want [Emerson] playing the music you’re learning,” Docter said. “To me, all their interpretations of classical repertoire are very accurate.”

The Emerson Quartet’s final performance will be in New York City Oct. 22. The Quartet’s presence will be missed by many and their recordings will surely continue to be studied in conservatories for a long time. 

“It’ll be cool to see them at the end of their career and see how their career has shaped their playing,” Bronson said. “Maybe they will sound different from the recordings I’ve listened to from 40 years ago.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When did you first get into music cognition studies? Why? 

I’ve always been into music. My parents were rock ’n’ rollers; they named me after the singer from Van Halen. Eventually, I found myself in college, and I hated it. I didn’t like my theory classes, didn’t like any of my music classes, and I felt like it didn’t help me, didn’t explain why I enjoy music. I’m a pretty voracious reader, and as I discovered music cognition literature, I found that it was the best description of how I was experiencing music. At music school, I had no one to talk to about the music I was interested in. Everyone was like “Beethoven and Bach, the gold standard.” 

I suppose, in some sense, I probably should have done a Ph.D. in psychology or neuroscience, but I’m really committed to the humanities. When you work in a humanities department, rhetoric matters. What you say matters. While I am deeply an empiricist and run experiments, how we present that to people is really important. I’m trying to persuade people that there’s a lot more to music than we think, and it can encapsulate a lot more styles of listening than we think. I started to feel a bit more at home with myself through studying music and cognition — I’m not as different as I was made to feel.

What has your research consisted of?

For my doctorate, I was focused on how our hands help us and others think about music. I put myself in motion capture suits, made gestures, and asked the participants questions based on this avatar that was created. I found that, when performing, people develop specific musical expectations depending on those movements. It’s still heavily enculturated, however; it only really works with diatonic music, not with any other styles of post-tonal music. 

This other track that I’ve been taking lately is concerned with how people process music and some of the differences in how they think about music depending on their background and situatedness. Andrew Goldman, assistant professor of Music Theory at Indiana University, found that people with improvisational skills are more willing to be flexible with traditionally out-of-place harmonies, whereas people without that training are more rigid in how their brains process chord changes.

I’m currently running another experiment with bigger gestures to see if the magnitude of the gestures matter. And why is this research important? Because I like to go to concerts. I like to see people on stage and people acting in really specific ways. In what ways does that influence our perception of music?

How are you incorporating music cognition research into your own curricula? 

I have to take a lot of different approaches when I teach a class. If someone isn’t getting something, it’s because they just have a different musical diet. I ask myself, “How can I take what they’ve built their expectations on and get them to where they want to go?” In terms of the classroom, what if we can use our hands to help sing and dictate melodies better? 

If you take my Music and the Mind class in the spring, we spend the first two weeks talking about positionality. Basically, who’s conducting the research and who’s being studied? Most people that are being studied, not just in music, but in psychology in general, are late teenagers: college-age kids from the West who are doing it for course credit. That’s a heavily biased sample, so we talk about what more inclusive data might look like and the ethics behind music cognition studies.

In Music and the Mind, we also talk a lot about monkeys and babies, and that tells us about what aspects of music are evolutionary. One of the big arguments for the origins of music is that it’s for social bonding, but there’s much more to it than that. Monkeys can be trained to recognize octave equivalents at one octave, but not at two octaves, and they can’t do any other intervals. Babies value contour more than specific interval relationships for a while, and that lasts until about age seven. At that point, they start to really value specific interval relationships in order to differentiate the music they are hearing. 

Why is scientific research important, particularly in the context of studying primarily Western theory at a conservatory? 

Once you’re looking at music cognition research, particularly from a bird’s-eye view, you start to see how incredibly specific music theory is in a Western context. The development of musicality is so different for a lot of cultures, and it gets different really, really fast. It’s okay to study one genre of music, but there’s a lot more out there. We become better citizens of the world around us when we listen more, and research can help us do that. 

What classes do you wish to teach in the future? Are there    other research questions that you are interested in pursuing?

I would really enjoy teaching a specific cognition and performance class where people show up with their own repertoire. We do a lot of reading and we find ways to play pieces in a way that’s most well received — basically, how can cognition directly influence your performance with the repertoire you’re already doing? It would be a very active class, a class on empirical musicology.

For my own research, I am very blessed to be at Oberlin. I get to work with some really cool students. There’s a couple experiments in the pipeline that I won’t say because it will ruin the hypothesis testing, but just in general, I love to research. It’s a vehicle for shared understanding. Research to me is less about sitting in a library and reading books and more about working with other people. We learn more about everyone around us when we start asking questions together.

1. Piece of coal or clay

5. Animal with some serious chops

9. Not quite worse

14. Cause to call 911, abbr.

15. I’m one. You may be, too.

16. Jazz YouTuber Adam

17. ’70s-era EPA advocates for a hydroelectric dam?

19. Zora ___ Hurston

20. Google Search tab

21. Rodeo mounts

23. Get a table for one

26. Home to Zion and Bryce

27. “Haystacks” painter

28. Airer of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk

31. Not doing anything

34. “Is He Hitting Your ___ or Your Breaking Point?” (Reductress headline)

36. Qty.

37. Goal

38. 2013 Spike Jonze drama

40. Opposite of WSW

41. “Spare me the details”

42. Pioneer in color TV

43. Send to cloud 9

45. Turnarounds, to a Bostonian

46. Tiki bar cocktail

48. Blemish

51. Small err in tennis

52. Makes the grade

54. Donald Trump just got his first

57. Jack’s fairy tale foes

60. Overly meticulous

61. Titanic successor?

64. “___boy!”

65. Mjölnir wielder

66. Cupid’s Greek counterpart

67. Tavern in the Simpsons

68. Ship

69. Workout units

DOWN

1. ___ Carroll, “Jabberwocky” author

2. “Savoriness,” in Japanese

3. Convened in

4. Meetup before the house party, maybe

5. Enters cyberspace

6. Attorney’s org.

7. Good Will Hunting sch.

8. BBC nickname, with “the”

9. Reading assignment go-with

10. Witnessed in the area of

11. Governor’s island getaway?

12. French greeting

13. Turns red, perhaps

18. Move, to a realtor

22. Extended sentence?

24. Modelo ___ (dark beer)

25. UFO crew

29. Cousin of Tony and Oscar

30. Soulful Redding

31. George Jones ___

32. Overflowing with pesos (f)

33. Hillary’s Google login portal?

35. Katniss’s beau in The Hunger Games

38. Toffee and chocolate bar

39. One of two Mannings

44. Vanilla extract unit

45. Reluctant

47. Some Roadsters

49. Home to 65-Across, but certainly not 57-Across

50. Hasn’t left, as “the doctor” would be

53. Rimshot need

54. Lady’s address

55. Word repeated in the Golden Rule

56. Sandbox denizens

58. Sporty car roof option

59. Brief meeting (abbr.)

62. Michael of Weekend Update

63. Literally forever, figuratively