the alumni magazine of washington and lee (USPS 667-040) Volume 57, Number 1, January 1982 William ©. Washoum, 40... : 1. 23 es ee Editor Romultis T. Weatherman ......... Managing Editor Jefleiy-G@, Mamma 22 ee Associate Editor Rove? tie. 2... ee ee, Contributing Editor levee Gat: . se. ee Editorial Assistant W Pateeeriine ss 732. ee Photographer TABLE OF CONTENTS Development Program Succeeds .......-.---- 1 Weber Siewar A Piotile... 1.3: eee nae: 4 Philip Booth, Opera Star .......---++---es- 7 ieee ge ee ee ees 10 ‘Two Stmuner Programs ©. . 2. oa. 8 ee 2 eg 12 Tom Stoppard, An Interview ........-.. 2 14 ries (ie Gap. os ee ee 16 ee ee ge i ee ee 18 Fall Sporis Roundup ..........+.2+5-s20:-% 25 Boden Gl... re ee ee ee 28 Cie 8 3 Cig Nas ee es a ee 33 ln Wenig ee 39 Published in January, March, May, July, September, October, and November by Washington and Lee University Alumni, Inc., Lexington, Virginia 24450. All communications and POD Forms 3579 should be sent to Washington and Lee Alumni, Inc., Lexington, Va. 24450. Second class postage paid at Lexington, Va. 24450 and additional offices. Officers and Directors Washington and Lee Alumni, Inc. JAMES F. GALLIVAN, 751, Nashville, Tenn. President JOHN H. McCorMack Jr., 750, Jacksonville, Fla. Vice President W. DONALD BalIN, ’49, Spartanburg, S.C. Treasurer WILLIAM C. WASHBURN, ’40, Lexington, Va. Secretary Leroy C. ATKINS, ’68, Lexington, Va. Assistant Secretary PETER A. AGELASTO III, ’62, Norfolk, Va. ANDREW N. Baur, ’66, St. Louis, Mo. EDGAR M. Boyp, ’42, Baltimore, Md. OwEN H. Harper, 759, Pasadena, Calif. CHARLES D. Hurt Jr., 59, Atlanta, Ga. SIDMON J. KAPLAN, 756, Cleveland, Ohio G. RuSsELL Lapp, ’57, Mobile, Ala. WILLIAM E. LATTURE, ’49, Greensboro, N.C. J. WILLIAM McCLINTOCK III, ’53, Tunica, Miss. WILLIAM C. NorMaN Jr., 756, Crossett, Ark. S. MAYNARD TuRK, ’52, Wilmington, Del. CU v ON THE COVER: A light snow caressed the Washington and Lee campus a few days before Christmas, and W. Patrick Hinely, ’73, University photographer, who has an unfailing eye for exceptional scenes at W&L, recorded this memorable view of the Omicron Delta Kappa circle. Development Program Success A Promise Is Kept As 10-Year Fund-Raising Effort Exceeds Its Goal by $5 Million ASHINGTON AND LEE has successfully completed its 10-year development program by raising $67 million, there- by surpassing the $62-million goal set for last December 31. The Washington and Lee program is the largest successful effort by a college or university of its size. (Washington and Lee’s current enrollment is 1,650, and the University has 16,000 living alumni.) The enormous success of the program was due, in large measure, to the exceptional performance of the fund-raising effort in the final stages. In December alone, the University received $3.6 million in new gifts. President Robert E. R. Huntley made the announcement at Founders’ Day ceremonies on January 19. ‘“‘The astounding success of the program is a mark of the vitality of this old school and an unmistakable sign of the loyalty and generosity of those who love her,” Huntley said. “The largest factor in our achievement has been the extra- ordinary role of our Board of Trustees, which throughout the years has never flagged in its generous example and its committed leadership. ‘We who serve here on the campus can properly regard the achievement as a mandate for continued pursuit of the ideals of liberal education at Washington and Lee. We can- not regard our University as secure, but we can regard it as strong enough to approach the future boldly and unafraid.” The $67 million in gifts represents $22.8 million in endowment resources, $30.8 million for construction of new facilities and renovation of existing facilities, and $13.4 million committed over the 10 years through the University’s annual giving programs and by other unrestricted gifts. ye N ADDITION to the $67 million raised during the development program, the University received an unrestricted bequest of approximately $12 million from the estate of the late John Lee Pratt of Fredericksburg, Va., in January 1976. In accordance with the provisions of that bequest, the Pratt gift is being used by the University to improve salaries and student scholarship programs. It has played, and will continue to play, a vital role in allowing the University to confront the eroding effects of inflation. Washington and Lee’s 10-year fund-raising program was led by the rectors of the University’s Board of Trustees between 1972 and the present: John Newton Thomas of Richmond, Va. (1970-74), the late Ross L. Malone (1974), E. Marshall Nuckols Jr. of Weston, Vt. (1974-1981), and James M. Ballengee of Philadelphia, Pa. (1981-present). Joining the rectors with responsibility for planning and executing the overall program were the chairmen of the Board of Trustees’ Development Committee: John M. Stemmons of ‘Dallas, Tex. (1972-1977), John L. Crist Jr. of Charlotte, N.C. (1977), and S L Kopald of Memphis, Tenn. (1978-present). In addition, the University relied heavily on the leadership of two volunteer organizations, the 60-member Achievement Council and the 64-member Development Council, during the program. Through the development program, the University has more than doubled the size of its 1972 endowment in strict mone- tary figures. In 1972 when the program was announced, the endowment stood at roughly $22 million; commitments for new endowment total $22.8 million. General endowment income is used primarily for faculty salaries and student services. The student-aid endowment provides virtually all the financial assistance for approxi- mately 26 percent of the W&L student body. “The improvement in our endowment was absolutely essential, and we have done no more than the minimum required to bring us into the eighties,’ said Huntley. Warner Center, new gymnasium S A RESULT of endowment gifts added through the development program, the University has been able to create 72 endowed scholarships, six endowed professorships, three - endowed teaching funds, and numerous memorial endowments in support of particular academic activities. Additionally, the 10-year program saw endowments created for the following programs: the Frances A. Lewis Law Center for studies in legal issues; the University’s innovative program, ““Society and the Professions,” in applied ethics for pre-professional students in law, medicine, and journalism; and, a center for the display and study of historic porcelain and painting. When the University’s Board of Trustees announced the program in 1972, it made the annual giving programs an inte- gral part of the overall effort to recognize the indispensability of that aspect of the University’s financing and to give every alumnus and every parent of a student the opportunity to participate in the historic undertaking on a yearly basis. Washington and Lee depends on annual giving for approxi- mately 11 percent of its educational and general operating budget. “The excellent growth of our annual giving programs is in many ways the most heartening aspect of the success,”’ Huntley said. “This growth outstripped our predictions in every way, giving good evidence of the broad base of the University’s support.”’ A projection of $8.2 million was set for annual giving between 1971-72 and the end of 1981. The annual giving pro- gram and other forms of unrestricted current gifts exceeded that goal by $5.2 million. Included in the $13.4 million annual-gift total is $1.5 million from business and industry through the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges. The remarkable performance in annual giving has enabled Washington and Lee to balance its budget each year over the period during which inflation and an erratic stock market pre- sented unusually difficult financial realities. HEN THE development program was announced in 1972, anew $3.2 million addition to the University’s Doremus Gymnasium had just been completed and represented the first fund-raising objective included in the comprehensive program. Since 1972, the following projects (in addition to the gym- nasium) have been physically completed and entirely funded from gifts made as part of the development program: Lewis Hall, the ultramodern law school building constructed at a cost of $8 million; the new University Library, a 130,000-square- foot facility designed to hold 500,000 volumes and built at a cost of $9.2 million; the Commerce School, a $3.2-million project to remodel the former library building to become the home of the School of Commerce, Economics, and Politics; the $1.5-million renovation of Tucker and Newcomb Halls on the University’s historic Colonnade; restoration of the Lee Jackson House at a cost of $500,000; and, extensive develop- ment of the campus grounds including a plaza area on the back 2 campus, a new drainage system on the front campus, improved campus lighting, two new athletic fields, eight all-weather tennis courts, new roadways and parking, and a new heating- cooling plant, at a combined cost of $5 million. ‘“‘We need apologize to no one for the quality of our physical plant,” said Huntley. “‘It is, quite simply, first rate, in the same category as the quality of the education we seek to offer.” During the course of the development program, three other major projects have been undertaken but not financed by gifts made to the development program: new apartment-like dormi- tories for students, the Woods Creek Apartments; interior reconstruction of Graham-Lees freshman dormitory; and, a modernized kitchen for Evans Dining Hall. Two other facilities which were not among the formal objectives of the development program and therefore not included monetarily in the results of the effort are the Skylark Farm Conference Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Leslie Cheek Jr. of Richmond, Va., and 30 University Place, a center for the decorative arts which is the result of an anonymous gift. HE LARGEST single capital gift given to the develop- ment program was from Frances and Sydney Lewis of Rich- mond, Va., who contributed $9 million for the law school building and later gave the University an additional $1.5 mil- lion for other capital purposes. School of Commerce, Economics, and Politics New University Library —— Other gifts of more than $1 million came from: — The late Mrs. Miriam Caperton McClure of New Orleans, who left an unrestricted bequest of more than $4.2 million to Washington and Lee, the college both her husband and father attended. Mrs. McClure’s gift is recognized in the University Library; — Jonathan Westervelt (Jack) Warner of Tuscaloosa, Ala., a 1941 W&L graduate and long-time member of the Board of Trustees, whose gifts have totaled $2.3 million to date and for whom the Warner Center (gymnasium) is named; — Miss Ruth Parmly of New York City, who has given $2 million to the University in memory of her father, the late Professor Charles Howard Parmly, founder of the engineering department at City College of New York and for whom W&L’s physics-engineering-biology building is named; — The late Richard E. Gooch, a business executive of Lynchburg and Lexington and 1930 graduate who bequeathed more than $1.6 million to the University. His bequest is recog- nized in the department of journalism and communications; — The late Wilbur C. Hall of Leesburg, Va., a 1915 law alumnus who distinguished himself for more than 50 years as a Virginia statesman and lawyer and who gave approximately $1.5 million to his alma mater. The library in the law school is named for Hall; — F. Fox Benton Jr. of Houston, Tex., a 1960 graduate and member of the Board of Trustees who has given Washington and Lee a named $1.2-million endowment fund; — The late Egbert B. Doggett, Class of 1914, who bequeathed Washington and Lee $1.1 million to establish an endowed scholarship program in his name. Stemmons Plaza and Chenery Bridge, the new back campus IFTS OF between $500,000 and $999,999 came from: — Edgar A. Basse Jr., Class of 1939, whose gift is recog- nized in the new University Library; — The late Christopher T. Chenery, Class of 1909, whose gift is recognized in the new University Library; — Mr. and Mrs. Robert G. Brown, Class of 1949, of Dallas, Tex., whose gift established the Robert G. Brown Professor- ship. — Dr. A. A. Houser, Class of 1909, of Natural Bridge Station, Va., whose gift established the A. A. Houser—Robert E, Lee Endowment; — The William R. Kenan Jr., Charitable Trust of New York City, whose gift established the William R. Kenan Jr. Professorship; — The Kresge Foundation of Troy, Mich., whose two grants helped make possible the new University Library and the new home for the School of Commerce, Economics, and Politics; — The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of Pittsburgh, Pa., whose grants helped make possible the new University Library and important progress in faculty development; — The late David D. Johnson, Classes of 1921 and 1923 (law), who left the major portion of his estate for the general purposes of the development program; — The late Paul D. Pickens, Class of 1917, whose bequest to the University has assisted in the growth of the student aid program and the general curricular service; — Best Products Company Foundation of Richmond, Va., whose gift created an honor scholarship fund with recipients to be identified as Best Scholars; — The late Charlotte R. Flint, whose bequest provided assistance to the University in the early stages of the develop- ment program and is recognized in the University Library; — Two other gifts in this category were made anonymously. N ADDITION, Washington and Lee received 72 gifts ranging from $100,000 to $499,999; 48 ranging from $50,000 ~ to $99,999; 92 ranging from $25,000 to $49,999; and, 213 ranging from $10,000 to $24,999. An analysis of the constituency sources of gifts shows that $44.9 million (67 percent) came from alumni; $12.4 million (18.5 percent) from friends of the University; $5.7 million (8.5 percent) from foundations; $3.8 million (5.7 percent) from corporations; and, $0.2 million (0.3 percent) from Wash- ington and Lee’s faculty and staff. Washington and Lee conducted two separate phases of its overall program. | The first phase was announced on the anniversary of George Washington’s birthday in 1972. It was a $36-million effort and was completed on schedule in 1976, surpassing its goal by $1.5 million. The second phase, announced in October 1978, was a $26- million effort. That phase was completed on December 31, 1981, with gifts of $3.5 million over the goal. by Robert Fure Rob Stewart The Composer Composed: For 27 Years a Campus Institution of New Music It is said that, as one ages, one’s ears continue to grow. From the back, attired in tux and conducting with rhythmic strokes of his baton, his head bowed to the music before him, Robert Stewart at 63 seems all ears. For the music teacher, well- developed ears can be an occupational hazard, for the qualities required of his profession seem almost impossibly at odds. He must possess a sensitivity alive to the subtlest nuances of sound and, with that, the patience to endure the frequent failure of students to realize them. The ears must open and close. With a quiet flourish of his baton, Stewart moves his 18-member brass ensemble towards another section of Divertissement, a piece he composed after a long bus trip with the group in 1979. The instruments flash as they rise and fall in the hands of the players. Indeed, there is a certain uncontrollable brilliance in the brass at several moments of the performance. Stewart nods and brings the piece to a close. The audience erupts in applause. The conductor bows and then gestures to the ensemble. They rise together. Everyone is happy. ? Weeks of rehearsal, then performance, applause, and relief: the pattern has been more or less the same since 1954, the year Stewart arrived in Lexington. That year, the old W&L ROTC band was breaking up. Stewart gathered some of the disappointed brass musicians and a couple of percussionists into a brass ensemble. Under his tireless, inspired direction, students have been rising up and through the group ever since. Rob Stewart remembers them all, twenty- seven years of Brass Ensemble, almost as many with the Glee Club and various orchestras, in addition to the myriad music courses he has taught at W&L. Actually, his career aS music teacher began another 27 years before his arrival here. As a nine-year- old growing up in Chicago, he used to give violin lessons to his friends at 50¢ an hour. Even then, however, his burning ambition was to compose. While still a boy, he learned all the instruments, not with any intention of finding one that he could master, but with a simple desire to learn what they 4 Robert Stewart: ‘‘I’m not going to cop out. I want to continue exploring new possibilities.’ *“felt like.’’ After graduating from high school, Stewart went on to three Master of Music degrees in music education, violin, and composition at the American Conservatory in Chicago. Later, after leaving the , Conservatory and working as a professional violinist for ‘‘everything from radio shows to weddings and funerals,’’ Stewart began to realize that he was losing touch with his own music. Seeking more time to write, he decided to follow his own natural inclination toward teaching. After a brief and somewhat bewildering year as instructor at a small teachers college in Arkansas—where, in the tradition of Thoreau, he got into trouble for refusing to pay his poll tax—Stewart applied for an opening at Washington and Lee. At the time, the W&L job was a particularly challenging one. During an era of curricular expansion, Stewart was hired as the new music department. Undaunted, Stewart saw it as a marvelous opportunity to teach an entire community (“‘doctors, lawyers, and businessmen and thieves’’) some- thing about music. It would not be a “‘music appreciation’’ curriculum that he would develop—he doesn’t like the term—but courses that would ‘‘create musical experiences through listening and participation.’”’ Student participation has always been central to Stewart’s teaching philosophy. In the two-year music theory and composition course, for example, he has students develop musical compositions throughout their education in various theories. He begins with the rudimentary: “‘I let them write any sound they want to, and then I work from wherever they are in their ear sense. Eventually, they come to understand the theory. In the meantime, their musical imaginations are stimulated as well.’’ Nearly all of his courses have come from the expressed interests of his students. The pedagogical principle of shared ‘‘musical experiences’’ has remained the same throughout his career at W&L. Well versed in all areas of music, Stewart moves with the student’s impulse to explore in directed studies whatever field of instrumentation or composition the student desires. ‘‘Of course, a lot of beginning students still need to be shown that there is another world of music that can be meaningful. The satisfaction in teaching such students often comes, say 10 years later when one writes to you after attending a concert in Stuttgart.” In teaching, Rob Stewart has indeed been able to find more time to work on his own material, to follow a line of composition that began, somewhat controversially, between assignments at the conservative American Conservatory in Chicago. Back then, Stewart and a few of his friends Twenty-seven years of Brass Ensemble . . became curious about a new system of music, first developed by Arnold Schonberg, called serial, or 12-tone, composition. ‘*T remember a decrepit old teacher who taught for a short time at the Conservatory. He wasn’t very popular with his colleagues. He had been a student of Schonberg’s. He would let us come over to his house and listen to recordings of Schonberg and two other prominent serial composers, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. I was tremendously excited by it and began almost immediately composing serial music for my friends.”’ What is serial music? It differs from traditional music primarily in its employment, with equal value, of all 12 tones in a musical scale. No one tone, such as C major, becomes a predominating key to the composition. Instead, a composer sets up a pattern of pitches (called a “‘tone row’’) that becomes the tonal structure of the piece. As the piece develops, the pattern may be inverted or retrograded, but no one tone can be repeated until all of the 12 tones have been sounded. The composition develops its expressive potential through variations in the pattern, octave, color, rhythm, and destiny— any number of tones, for example, may be lumped together into a single chord. The result is a kind of cacophany that makes the musically timid tear for the exit at concert halls. The music is atonal, but it is as . ‘tireless, inspired direction’ — ’ insistently mathematical as Bach. Although serialism explores dissonance by abandoning traditional conventions of harmony, rhythm, melody, and tonality, it does so by adhering to strict rules—after all, one can’t really get to know new territory without measuring it. By following the tone row, then, the serialist discovers new posibilities in music. Stewart enthuses, ‘‘Wonderful new sounds have been discovered, sounds that wouldn’t have occurred if composers hadn’t gone through serialist experimentation. ’’ Stewart classifies himself as a post- serialist. Post-serial composition allows for greater permutations in the 12-tone row by breaking the row into three four-note sets and then providing a broader range of variation within each set. ‘‘Am I losing you?’’ The composer walks over to a piano. ‘*Here.’’ Strange, wonderful new sounds begin occurring as Stewart’s hands range over the keyboard. The old schoolroom piano becomes an instrument of the avant- garde. Stewart’s assiduous concentration becomes vaguely comical—how does such chaos require such exacting attention? A few more banging notes, a chord, a soft, tentative minor, and then—was that the end? ““Well, yes.’’ He points to the last note in the composition and plays it again. Serialism is no longer the mainstream of new musical composition. Stewart laments The Composer Composed >”, then I elaborate. the return in contemporary music to romantic traditions, a main convention of which is reference to something external to music itself: a storm, the woods in spring, an historical event, etc. Stewart’s music continues in the mode of a musical abstract expressionism, exploring sounds not only for their own sake but for their inherent emotional coloration as well. ‘*T still do abstract music because I feel it can communicate. I’ve always felt that music is the expression of human feeling. Post- serialism allows me the freedom to be more expressive, more emotional. In fact, my music is getting more expressive all the time.”’ A heavy smoker, Stewart pauses to light another cigarette. ‘“A lot of what’s being done today is retrogressive, a return to romanticism, like in painting. Well, I’m not going to cop out. I want to continue 6 “I make a statement at the beginning about what the music is all about and nuances of sound.’’ exploring new possibilities.”’ The old radical of music need not worry that music has perhaps passed him by. Stewart’s reputation as a composer is secure. Commissions for new compositions continue to arrive each year from performers and organizations eager to know his new possibilities. James Avery, the internationally famed pianist, is waiting for him to finish Duo for Solo Percussion and Piano. Stewart’s list of compositions, recordings, and honors is long—if you give him half an hour he might be able to find it (‘‘Now where did I put that?’’). Restless and endlessly curious, he writes for all instruments and groupings, from full orchestras (A Requiem for a Soldier) to solos (Mystic, a Contrabass Fantasia) and voice (The Curl, an opera). Where does it all come from? Each composition begins with a sound, a feeling. I : ‘Head bowed to the music before him . . may be reading something and think it really beautiful and work to transfer it into sound. I remember a phrase from Joyce’s Ulysses, ‘a heaventree of stars.’ Beautiful. That led to Four Excerpts from James Joyce’s Ulysses for A Cappella Chorus. ‘A sound. Three months later I may think of it again. It evolves with what I feel I can develop. The original sound is the reason for its being. So I make a statement at the beginning about what the music is all about and then I elaborate. If you get the beginning, you’re on your way. Just don’t try to set up what’s next—don’t be bound by traditional expectations of music.”’ So, again like Thoreau: ‘‘If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.’’ But first the ears must open. NEW YORK For most of his young life, Philip Booth, °64, was a classic underachiever. An exceptionally bright but lazy student, he seemed, due to an unfortunate dreaminess, unable to concentrate on his studies. His only compelling interest lay with classical music. Yet there also the feeling was rather passive. He did play around a little with the clarinet, but mainly he was a listener. Music was after all for dreaming. After graduating with an undistinguished record from St. Albans in Washington, D.C., Booth arrived at Washington and Lee. He had scored a perfect 800 in the verbal section of his college boards yet had never made an A in an English course. The major Ivy League schools would have nothing to do with him. An 800 on his college boards. Dean Frank Gilliam practically sent a taxi for him. Yet at W&L Booth’s academic achievements remained capricious at best. He ran afoul of the cut regulations and ‘‘lost’’ three courses. From his first moment on campus, he seemed to himself the odd man out. The son of Northern liberal activists, he felt hopelessly misplaced in what he saw as a ‘*Southern conservative bastion of fraternity life.’’ It was a condition that seemed to go with his appearance: an awkwardly tall, fair young man with a who-am-I-and-what-am-I- doing-here expression on his face. An early effort to transfer out failed. Unable to abandon academics entirely, however, Booth resigned himself to his circumstances, settled down to the motions of college life, and, somewhat sleepily, pledged Pi Kappa Phi. Then he met Rob Stewart. In the early sixties, Stewart was still W&L’s entire music department. Booth had long been a fan of choral music, having spent a good part of his youth as a $5-a- month choir boy at a Washington Episcopal Philip Booth in his New York apartment. Below, the king in Cavalli’ s L’Ormindo: Costumed and flush with a church. The pay wasn’t as good at W&L, but part, Booth expands to formidable dimensions. ‘‘Bassos must lay the foundations of opera.”’ by Robert Fure Philip Booth Between the Acts W&L’s Metropolitan Opera Star Is Rising Profile of an Alumnus Philip Booth Booth needed to do something that absorbed him, so he joined Stewart’s Glee Club. He recalls that the group’s first performance, of Bruckner’s *“Te Deum,”’ changed his life. Booth threw himself into music like nothing before. ‘‘I became pretty intense about choral music, probably to the point of being obnoxious. The Glee Club was all I had, and I went at it with a vengeance.”’ Booth’s devotion to music complemented a deepening interest in literature. The rich harmonic structures and spiritual zeal of several pieces in the Glee Club’s classical repertory fired in him a special enthusiasm for poetry, particularly 17th-century religi- ous verse. He took every course in the English department, meanwhile assembling the largest student collection of classical _ recordings. Though his career at W&L had finally achieved an intellectual and emotional focus, Booth still felt restless and constrained. ‘“Those were years of terrible growing pains. I failed those 8 a.m. science courses because I was a victim of my own late-night procrastinations.’’ The Glee Club served as a refuge of sorts, and a warm personal acquaintance with Rob Stewart and the English department faculty nurtured his developing interests, but Booth was still painfully aware of his own shortcomings. Through years of growing pains, the typical underachiever broods about his inability to fly. Booth was no different: ‘‘My singing voice was heavy and unwieldy. My work was so structured: my poetry was all sonnets, my theology systematic, my papers balanced and rather plodding. Bill Chaplin, my best friend, was a truly brilliant student. He could cut straight through to the heart of anything. He was a man of ideas and I merely of form.’’ The passion for music and literature continued nonetheless to animate whatever form Booth adopted. He became Stewart’s assistant with the Glee Club, hosting auditions and helping conduct performances in his senior year. By his own admission, his intense musicianship may have repelled some of his fellow choristers..He was never . invited, for example, to join the Sazaracs, W&L’s small pop music chorus. Without irony, he surmises, ‘‘I guess I wasn’t cool enough—but about music I was never cool.”’ Even as a student, Booth owned a bass voice of gorgeous depth and amplitude. But it remained essentially untrained, for at the time no one taught voice at W&L. Seeking some sort of professional future, he turned to the English department. He thought he might 8 like to be an English professor—one couldn’t make a living as a singer. In order to prepare himself for graduate study in English, he crammed seven literature courses into his senior year, earning an A in each one. ‘‘The English faculty were absolutely wonderful. The two-term seminar on Twain and James that I took from Severn Duvall that year remains the most profound intellectual experience of my life.’’ In the waning moments of his undergraduate career, Booth made up a few botched credits here and there, earned acceptance in the highly selective University of Rochester graduate program in English and, to his utter surprise, won the John Graham Award for distinguished achievement in fine arts. As long as he didn’t think about it, he was ready to fly. Booth’s current biography reads: Metropolitan Opera basso Philip Booth has achieved distinguished suc- cess with major opera companies and orchestras across the United States. Ever since his Met debut in Un Ballo in Mas- chera in 1975, this gifted young singer has demonstrated his versatility as a fea- tured artist in Metropolitan Opera pro- ductions of Otello, Die Meistersinger, Fidelio, Carmen, Ariadne auf Naxos, Rigoletto, and Aida. At the New York City Opera, Booth made his debut in Le Cog d’Or in 1978. . . . Philip Booth’s many guest appearances with opera companies throughout the country in- clude such notable productions as the Seattle Opera’s Ring, Sante Fe’s' Eugene Onegin and Magic Flute, Miami’s Na- bucco, and Philadelphia’s Rigoletto. Booth has also had marked success with the San Francisco Opera in Boris Gudo- nov (Pimen), with the Cincinnati Opera in Aida (Ramfis), and with the opera companies of Baltimore, San Diego, Portland, Hawaii, and Vancouver (Canada). . .. Possessing an extensive oratorio repertoire, Mr. Booth has performed with some of the country’s most esteem- ed conductors, among them: Sir Georg Solti (Chicago Symphony), Seiji Ozawa (San Francisco Symphony), Julius Rudel (Caramoor Festival Orchestra), Louis Lane and Walter Susskind (Salt Lake City Oratorio Society). . . . Booth made his professional debut in the fall of 1971 at the opening of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. He sang the role of the King of Scotland opposite Beverly Sills in the American premiere of Handel’s Ario- dante, directed by Tito Capobianca and conducted by Julius Rudel. English graduate study didn’t work out. Once again he found himself drifting, ‘‘totally at sea.’” And once again he turned to music for refuge. At the auditions for the Rochester Oratorio Society, his rendition of an aria from Bach’s Fourth Cantata, which he remembered from his W&L Glee Club days, overwhelmed the director. The Society immediately welcomed him. In addition, the director offered him a role as bass soloist in the Rochester Presbyterian Church Choir. Booth: ‘‘But I’m an Episcopalian.’’ Director: ‘‘T’ll pay you $10 a week and coach you free.’’ It wasn’t a living, but it was a start, indeed the beginning of the distinguished professional career. The rest follows rather quickly. The director of the prestigious Eastman School of Music heard Booth in concert: ‘‘A voice in a thousand, and a talent with endless possibilities,’’ he wrote. Booth was offered a full scholarship to the Eastman School with Status as special student, ‘“The first true bass at Eastman in twenty years.’’ The chairman of the English department at the U of R conceded, “‘I think it’s something you’ve got to do.’’ Booth transferred over in 1965 but lost his draft deferment since he was no longer officially a graduate student. Within a few months, he received ‘‘Greetings’’ from Uncle Sam. He was allowed to finish the year at Eastman with the understanding that he would serve his hitch as a member of the U.S. Army Chorus. ‘*My four years with the Chorus in Washington was basic training in several respects. They were a peerless group of singers. The roster of Army Chorus alumni reads like Who’s Who in opera today. I sang with James Shirley and Richard Stillwell and took lessons on the side from Todd Duncan. I also got married.”’ Booth never completed his formal training in music. In 1970, at the end of his hitch in the Army, he entered the Metropolitan Opera Competition. Over thousands of professionally trained voices in the national contest, he placed second, winning the Gramma Fisher Award from the Met and a large cash award with a full-time contract from the Kansas City Opera Company. He didn’t make it to Kansas City. Julius Rudel, then Director of the New York City Opera, invited Booth to help him open the new Kennedy Center in Washington. Booth sang the major role of King and father to Beverly Sills’s Ginevra in Handel’s Ariodante. ‘‘The whole world came. The reviews were wonderful.’’ Booth spent the next four years with Kurt In Massenet’s Esclarmonde In Mozart’ s Don Giovanni Adler and the San Francisco Opera Company, with guest appearances during the off-season throughout the country and abroad. In 1975 he became house basso at the Metropolitan Opera. : Today, at age 39 Philip Booth is entering his prime. Bassos mature later than other voices. Though blessed with one of the deepest voices in the world, he has needed years to develop the higher ranges. Now, nailing each note, he rises comfortably from a low C, the lowest note in the bass repertory, to a baritone’s high G flat. He studies continuously, ‘‘working and working and working for that fine edge between a good and a great voice.”’ Booth left the Met last season, intent on establishing a broader reputation—‘‘ You cannot be an international singer without singing internationally.’’ During the past 10 years he has developed a repertory of over a In the courtyard of the Met hundred roles, but at the Met he was held to comprimario, or supporting, roles while covering for the major basso parts each season. True enough, the Met is the center of the opera world, but Booth wants to move now towards the center of the center. ‘‘I am beginning to feel my readiness—vocally, emotionally, physically, dramatically.’’ He is driven in his music-making, haunted by a nagging fear of his former underachievement, determined to realize fully his own abundant promise. In many ways he seems the accomplished, mature version of the young man he was at Washington and Lee. Still fair and boyish in appearance, he colors slightly with enthusiasm when he describes his art. His eyes widen, ‘‘Yes, I am obsessed still. The performance must be precisely right. It has less to do with ego than with an overwhelming sense of responsibility to those enduring masterpieces of music that I am privileged to interpret.’’ To those who knew him in the early sixties, Booth’s voice must still seem too large for his frame, despite his 6’6”’ height. It is a marvelous, deep, resonant sound, Goliath’s voice. A sound like that should stand eight feet tall, with a rich, dark beard and ermine robes. Instead, Booth wears glasses and does the cooking for his wife and daughter. He smiles and remembers his teacher Todd Duncan mocking his ‘‘slender, pissy chest.’’ But costumed and flush with a part, Booth expands to formidable dimensions. ‘‘Bassos must lay the foundations of opera.”’ _ ““And yet,’’ he observes, ‘‘the voice must float on the top of the breath. If you drive that muscle too hard, you begin to hear a grinding’’—Booth winces and clenches his fist—*‘and the voice becomes heavy and thick. Great singing should be art that conceals art. You should be unaware of the incredible energy down below that is necessary to produce the seamless sound. The kind of singing that can absolutely melt you when done right.’’ Booth eases back into his chair. ‘‘Sutherland and Luciano [Pavarotti] at their best. Many a singer has come to grief in trying to fill our enormous American opera houses with sound. The breath,’’ he returns again to first principles, lifting his chin, ‘‘you must keep the voice on the breath.”’ However elementary, it is perhaps one lesson he could not have learned at W&L. No one back then was equipped to teach ‘“the most delicate, most complex, most beautiful instrument we have, the human voice.’’ Nonetheless, Booth expresses a gracious indebtedness to his alma mater. ‘‘I learned a lot from Rob Stewart and the others. W&L is my college. I’m a product, and it has influenced me—I trust for the better. I must say, I’ve taken a sort of perverse pride in being a professional artist from a school that is most known for turning out doctors, lawyers, and businessmen. I guess I’ve come to enjoy after all being the odd man out.’”’ For a man so intent on ascending to the next great operatic stage of his career, Booth may seem somewhat out of character when he reflects on his college. Yet his nostalgia is warm and convincing. ‘‘I remember a piece | used to sing at every Glee Club concert. It was ferociously difficult. I had to sweat and strain each time I attempted it. More growing pains.’’ There is a distant, vaguely dreamy look in his eyes as he recalls the title, ‘‘General William Booth Enters into Heaven.”’ by Richard W. Oram Reference and Public Services Librarian Stage-struck Collection of Theatrical Memorabilia Amassed by W&L Alumnus Is Exhibited in the Library Carter N. Bealer in Paris, 1930 Arthur F iedler, long-time conductor of the Boston Pops 10 The University Library’s Boatwright Rare Book Reading Room displayed an unusual collection of theatrical and musical autographs this fall. They were originally assembled by Carter N. Bealer, ’22, a Washington editor who died in 1965. Bealer was an indefatigable collector of stamps, coins, and books on cats, not to mention more esoteric items such as diaries, hotel labels, and restaurant menus from ocean liners. He was, in short, what would now be called an ‘‘ephemerist’’—a collector of minor printed matter which may often have interest to a social historian. His first love, though, was the theatre, and his passion led him to collect a wide variety of stage memorabilia, including prints, photographs, and over a thousand playbills. Bealer’s collection of collections arrived at the University Library about 15 years ago. Because of the large bulk of his personal papers, however, the autographs—about 150 of them—received little attention until quite recently. During the summer, the staff of the library’s Special Collections department The eminent French tragedian Francois-Joseph Talma in a classical role. A lithograph from the Bealer collection. prepared a complete inventory, and a selection of letters from the most important playwrights, actors, and musicians went on display in September. Among the most valuable items are letters from Francois-Joseph Talma, one of the greatest of French actors; Coquelin the Elder, the original Cyrano de Bergerac; the American tragedian Edwin Forrest; and Forrest’s English rival William Charles Macready. While some of the letters are in a prosaic “‘bread and butter’’ vein (accompanying enclosed theatre tickets, for example), others provide valuable insights into the hectic life of a touring 19th-century player. Professor George Ray of the W&L English department points out that an Edwin Forrest letter to his sister mentions 30 upcoming performances on a month-long tour! Although letters by Sarah Bernhardt are by no means uncommon, it is a pleasant surprise to find four of them in a single collection, alongside an inscribed cabinet photograph and several programs showing fe. aE oe reer SPE. Gant. ee eS oo pare f fee toe ws Poem dee eee ae A \ the Sn gee rites Peo She a ote © geen ~ oS A, hibernate nto Pte beow” & ty bat, A « $ A wey pte ee eee wes a ey . oa ee % of? * Res Ager 2 Fie Moree en - a . * < AK 6 beet wy gee? sete a: ¥ ee er tk a ae LL. wv oe epee at - : ”~ eee Case. A Ran ay oe > FP tine sae : £6 eS, PRS c tow le &, Fa “ 7 we Soe . age SS : é SS . - cre Bet Pens Hoe eee 5 £ z a ft sf ee : ce - . 2 “7 : cot oN . St Py “ ee “- uk weet RET + ed fi és so pac: see EO : Spe ge geve ew FE oe Bey ae eos ant aoe s. YS ye cet pees ee ge OR og eo tarog® fae Rn Cnet Bom co Sad Med ; eos maf 2 oo. seg fey Seg Roe ee Ee e : ¢ oe “cere oer wer eee sot seek fo. oo ge VE Fake gee ae TY ‘ ee £ vey te pe é * ofits wegen. a pe, — oe Os Peet Er fo Mae, Gut fad af See i : Be ed PSS ee 4 phe “ oo aoe A ay a 424 we Fi, . , f 2 Theos - _& feb Fy xe vw. gies, | Pd / The Alumni Magazine of At Lexingtia eee gous WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY And Additional Mailing Offices (USPS 667-040) Lexington, Virginia 24450 Ww PLAN NOW TO ATTEND W&L’S ANNUAL SPRING CLASS REUNIONS HONORING THE ACADEMIC AND LAW CLASSES OF 1932, 1937, 1942, 1947, 1952, 1957, 1962, 1967, 1972, 1977, AND THE FIVE STAR GENERALS (AII classes before 1932) MAY 6, 7, and 8, 1982 Motel reservation forms will be mailed to these alumni in March.