Music at Wesleyan. Mark Slobin

      Welcome to one world.

      This book, through its materials and energy, unleashes a remarkable panorama, just as music itself has done throughout Wesleyan’s history.

      Prior to the unfolding of Indian and Javanese and Japanese and Ghanaian and Afro-American musics at Wesleyan in the 1960s, the university had participated in a general exchange of students with other countries in Europe and Asia. Joe Beech, born in England and Wesleyan class of 1899, was admired for his work in China where he was president of Chengtu College (1905–1914) and chancellor of West China Union University (1914–1941) His work there led to student exchanges—indeed, my own college roommate, Dr. Donald G. Arnault, spent his junior year, 1938–1939, at West China Union University. The presence of Chinese students at Wesleyan is memorialized in the small Foss Hill Cemetery where two Chinese were buried after illness had struck them down—Fu-Sheng Chang in 1918 and Dieu Geing Wong in 1923. The one-worldness of Wesleyan music is perhaps symbolized by the fact that Joseph S. Daltry, founder of Wesleyan’s music department, is laid to rest along with Fu-Sheng Chang and Dieu Geing Wong on Foss Hill.

      Joe Daltry’s importance to Wesleyan merits special attention. Born and reared in Australia, schooled in London and in Europe, he was Wesleyan’s first fulltime music professor, appointed in 1929. His job description required him to be chapel organist and choir master (at that time of paramount importance); to be director of the Glee Club; to introduce course work in classical music; and to teach classes in music theory—all of which he was exceedingly well-equipped to do. By the time I matriculated in 1936 he had firmly established a small, aggressive teaching/music-making department. His skill and commitment created a rock-solid foundation on which to build—without which Wesleyan’s embrace of World Music could not have evolved.

      What a pleasure that Mark Slobin had the instinct, energy, and skill to produce so lively a work as Music at Wesleyan: From Glee Club to Gamelan!

       —Richard K. Winslow ‘40

       John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, Emeritus