Reflections on Music and the Liberal Arts:

Keynote Address, A Celebration of Music at F&M on the Occasion of 

Brian Norcross’s Retirement

March 28, 2026 Franklin & Marshall College

Good morning! 

Before I begin, I’d like to offer a few words of thanks, first to our friends from the Office of Advancement, Kristen Krista and Kim Hocker, for putting this weekend together, and of course to Brian Norcross for inviting me to participate this morning. In listening to Brian's wonderful recounting of the history of the F&M band and how he came to be our instrumental director, I realized something very important: I'd forgotten how funny he is! This has caused me some trepidation, since I've been asked to offer some reflections on how Music at F&M has shaped me both professionally and personally, as well as speak to the importance of music as a foundational element of a liberal arts education…and I don’t want to kill our jovial mood! I’ll try to add some stories on the fly to keep you smiling.  

The last time I stood at a podium on this stage (well, kind of this stage) was the morning of my Commencement in 1987. I had been asked to give one of the speeches for the Baccalaureate service and my address, entitled “The Liberating Arts,” spoke to how my two majors – geology & music – complemented each other. You see, I’d gotten sick of answering, for the thousandth time, what the two had to do with one another (I’ve heard ALL the rock music jokes, believe me, so don’t even try), and so I decided to put the matter to rest. That morning I articulated a phrase I have repeated countless times since: science and the arts go together because they’re both after the same thing: seeking to understand the universe and our place in it. They use different means to accomplish these ends, but the goal is the same. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I mention that day, though, and standing on the stage of what was then Hensel Hall, because it’s a good illustration of how far the arts have come at F&M since then. (Spoiler alert: A LOT.)

In preparation for today’s remarks I got curious about not just our band with its 90-year anniversary but the Music Department as a whole: When was it established? Who were its first faculty? Unfortunately, there’s precious little information on the subject. In the first history of the college, published in 1903 and written Professor of History and Archeology, one Dr. William Henry Dubbs, quotes an account of the dedication of Franklin College in 1787 that mentions, “music solemn to the occasion.” Later, in his biographical sketch of Frederick Augustus Rauch (first President of Marshall College), Dubbs mentions that Dr. Rauch was an avid musician who had studied piano as a young man and who would often weave discussions of music into his lectures on philosophy and aesthetics. But the first lists of fields of study from either college do not include music, and most of the accounting of 19th century history is consumed with discussions of the merger of the two colleges and subsequent financial struggles that continued for decades. (Some things never change, I suppose?) Other than the photos that Brian mentioned, the only other mention of music that I could find until the 1940s was from 1939, when the second chronicler of our college history, Professor of History H.M.J. Klein, noted proudly that Who’s Who in America listed no fewer than 86 alumni of F&M – two of whom were identified as “composers.” (This was astonishing to read, as I have no idea who these individuals could possibly be. I went down quite the rabbit hole attempting to find out, but I struck out. And since, as far as I can tell, there wasn’t anyone here for them to study composition with, I don't know how or why they identified themselves as composers in the first place. So, there’s a mystery there for some future scholar to unravel.) 

The first academic faculty was hired in 1946 with the appointment of William H. Reese as an Assistant Professor. As Brian mentioned, the F&M Band was essentially a student club – a status that did not change until the appointment of Brian in 1986, when instrumental ensembles took their rightful place in the Department of Music. When I arrived at F&M in 1983, the band was overseen by the Director of the College Center, who at that time was a well-meaning but clueless administrator who viewed those in the Music Department as being nothing more than a bunch of greedy, uptight busybodies for wanting to take the band away from her. It was, as Brian mentioned, quite the kerfuffle.

The 1980s marked the beginning of a period where music at F&M came into its own in many ways beyond just the band. Under the strong advocacy of Dean of the College Brad Dewey, who believed passionately in the importance of music to the liberal arts, F&M began building a full-fledged department of music. This began with the appointments of Courtney Adams and Bruce Gustafson around 1980 to teach musicology and then, in the spring of 1984, John Carbon was hired to teach theory and composition. The Music major was created, and Brian’s appointment (and the hiring of a choral director at more or less the same time) filled out the full-time roster two years later. 

It was this still-forming department that I stepped into as a squeaky-clean freshman in the fall of 1983. Among the first courses I signed up for was Courtney’s class, Music History from 1750-present. I became obsessed, and quickly took the next course with Bruce, Music History…before 1750. But it wasn’t until I began studying composition with John Carbon the following spring that it began to dawn on me that there was more to my musical talent than I’d previously realized. My world began to open up to a new universe of possibilities. It was one of the most transformative times of my life.

You see, I didn’t come to F&M to study music. (For that matter, I didn’t come here to study geology, either.) I was the kid who didn’t know what he wanted to be when he grew up. I was interested in everything. First, I fancied myself as a future novelist, the gentle, thoughtful, poetic type — though I think this was mostly because we watched the TV show The Waltons and I had a crush on the character JohnBoy. I loved the natural sciences, too, and I also discovered that I had an uncanny knack for making money in the stock market. And, of course, I’d been involved with music for as long as I could remember. And despite coming from a home which embraced music in all its forms (well, most of them anyway), the message from the parental units was that music was a great thing to have in your life but a lousy way to make a living. And besides: my frustrated piano teacher had pronounced me unworthy of advanced study (due to my misshapen thumbs, among other perceived shortcomings), and the glorious, crystal-clear voice of my prepubescent years had cracked and crumbled under the weight of teenage hormones to become the same, lumpen, “bari-tenor” voice of pretty much every other 16-year old male. So, as far as I knew, I was never going to have what it took to be a musician. Instead, my intention was to major in economics, go to Wall Street, and become a millionaire before I was 30. Talk about things ending up differently than you think they will when you’re 17!

Whenever I talk with undergraduates about their education and career path, I tell them that the mark of a good college education – perhaps, in some ways, the most important measure of one’s college experience – is that you’re a different person when you finish than you were when you began. And that was certainly true for me: The person who arrived at F&M was a kid who wanted to study economics and become a wealthy financier; who had voted Republican in his first election the previous year; and who was working very hard at convincing himself (and everyone else) that he was straight. The person who graduated had ended up majoring in music and geology; had disowned wealth as a relevant factor in choosing a career; who was a passionate liberal; and who had embraced his identity as a gay man with gusto. 

The mark of a good education, indeed. 

The evolution of the arts at F&M continued with force in the 1990s during the tenure of President Dick Kneedler, who oversaw the remodeling of Meyran Hall from a dormitory (where, ironically, I had lived my Junior year) to a proper home for the Music Department; the transformation of the former Hensel Hall – a sorrier excuse for a concert hall there never was – into the stunning space we’re in this morning; and, finally, renovation of the old gym attached to new construction that created the Roschel Center for the Performing Arts. This was a transformative time not just in my life, but in the life of F&M as a whole, and I don’t think it’s any coincidence that so much of that transformation was driven and led by development of the arts on campus.

I suppose you might be interested in how I ended up at the University of Colorado-Boulder. It’s a rather long and twisty story, the particulars of which I won’t recount lest we completely lose the thread of this address. The short version is this: after a misguided year of grad school in geology, I went to Rice for graduate school in music, where I earned my Masters and Doctoral degrees. And there again we see the impact of the folks in this department, specifically John Carbon. When I told John I was headed to geology grad school, he was quiet for a moment and then said, as only John could (he had a way of registering his doubts without ever pressuring you to change your mind), “Are you sure that’s the right choice?” Then, that Fall (1987), with the college’s Bicentennial still going on, John hatched a very clever plan. I’d gone to geology school only a few hours away, so one day he called me and said, “So, the next Bicentennial commission is coming up and it’s a piece by my mentor from Rice, Paul Cooper. I thought maybe if you’re free that weekend you could come down and hear the piece and, you know, maybe I could see if he’d give you a lesson.” He said this very nonchalantly, and I had no idea he was playing matchmaker. But he knew exactly what he was doing: I had that lesson, Cooper and I immediately connected, and I began to realize that I’d made the wrong choice with geology. 

And when it came time for me to apply to grad school, once again John made the difference. You see, all the conservatories I applied to didn’t think my lowly Bachelor of Arts degree, from a music program nobody had heard of, had adequately prepared me for their hallowed halls. Surely I must be a second-class nobody without any talent or I’d have had a fancier piece of paper! Being the First Music Major from the college didn’t distinguish me in their eyes — it was the primary strike against me. Rice would have probably felt the same way if it hadn’t been for John calling up Cooper and insisting I was somebody he should take on. It was another turning point in my life.

So: why does any of this matter? Of course, it matters a great deal to me. Studying music transformed my life in ways that go much further than simply my career, and the teachers who guided me – Courtney, Bruce, and especially John – were touchstones and role models that I continue to channel to this day. Even Brian – and I say “even” Brian because I was a choral singer, so I never was in one of his ensembles; nevertheless, Brian played a critical and formative role for me. During my senior year, Brian programmed the first piece I ever wrote for orchestra (a set of variations on a theme by William Billings, if I recall), and he went on to commission several works for orchestra and/or other ensembles as I was starting out in my career. (I think it was four commissions in all, is that right, Brian?) In those first years out of school, Brian did more for my professional development  than pretty much anyone else. The depth of gratitude I feel for him and for all the Music faculty is profound.

So, yes, all of this means a great deal to me personally. But I believe there’s a more important message to be drawn from our celebration today, for which I am but one supporting example. And it’s this: Music is a keystone component of a liberal arts education. The Greeks understood this, believing that a proper education should include literature, physical fitness (oh well, failed that one!) and…music. During the Enlightenment, the founding era of our college, music was viewed as an essential element of a cultured household – many of the Founders were avid amateur musicians, including Thomas Jefferson and, of course, Ben Franklin. (In preparing my remarks for today, I tried to determine if John Marshall also appreciated music, but to no avail. This tracks with an earlier question I had about Marshall, prompted by my discovery, about six months ago, that Franklin had an affection for pet squirrels — can you imagine a better pet for Ben Franklin?? I mean, ask yourself what pet would be the best choice for Franklin and you’d have to come up with a squirrel! That, in turn, got me wondering if Marshall had ever had a pet and if so, what kind — I had the idea that we might have finally found the answer to our elusive mascot question. But, alas, no evidence exists of Marshall having pets, either. It would seem that John Marshall was a terribly serious person, somewhat the opposite of Franklin in terms of temperament.) 

But I digress. 

Today, music continues to be essential to a liberal education. If the humanities illuminate the human mind, and the sciences illuminate the natural world, then music is what illuminates the human soul and gives expression to all these things in community. That last part, community, is extremely important, because that’s how music functions as the essential connective tissue that binds our disparate disciplines together. We see this in a famous quote often attributed to Plato (perhaps erroneously): "Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” In this quote, Plato (or whoever said it) articulates the essence of the musical force, which breathes life into all other pursuits, freeing the mind and imagination to transcend our personal limitations. And in this sense, had I ended up being a geologist, I would have still been a musician. Had I ended up being a businessman or an author or any other thing, I’d have still been a musician. In the context of the liberal arts, all of us are musicians, drawing together the rhythms and melodies of our disciplines into a symphony of understanding worthy of the intricate counterpoints of knowledge embodied by our universe.

And that’s why we’re all here today. To celebrate Brian Norcross, to be sure; but also to recognize the critical role Brian has played in connecting us to this deeper purpose for the music we experience together. 

John F. Kennedy, in remarks at Amherst College in October of 1963, understood this: 

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist, he said. [And] we must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

“Little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization.” Think about that for a moment! The arts aren’t trivial; they’re not some luxury we can do without. They are fundamental – and music most of all. A month later, in the wake of Kennedy’s assassination, Leonard Bernstein urged us to, “make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” I’m reminded of how, in the days following 9/11, the first official gathering of people in New York City was in Central Park – to hear a concert by the New York Philharmonic. In the midst of unspeakable grief and shock, people instinctively sought out music…and sought out each other through music. Bernstein (and the planners of that 9/11 concert) understood the essential, unique, irreplaceable role that music has to play in supporting the very fabric of our society. Music is the indispensable ingredient in our civic life. And given its importance, Music is, and must continue to be, an indispensable part of our college. And so, as we celebrate the legacy of Brian Norcross and the continuing impact of the arts here at F&M, let us also heed the call of Kennedy and Bernstein and so many others before and since: to renew our dedication to music’s truth: at F&M, in our community, and for our world. 

Thank you.