Music instructor Robert Palmer came to the Academy this fall from the music department at Rutgers University. Any misgivings Robert may have had about teaching at the high school level were dispelled when he heard Exeter’s concert choir on tour last year. “The strong message of that evening’s program,” he says, “was that music is a way to understand culture, and the students I met seemed eager to engage that notion.” With a term of choral directing at the Academy behind him, Robert notes that there are similarities between music at Exeter and at the college level: “For one, music was very centered around the music building at Rutgers, which had an active lobby life and people coming and going at all times,” says Robert. “That’s equally true at Exeter.”

A new dimension to what the Forrestal Bowld Music Building has to offer this year is the newly created music library. During the past year, Exeter’s music department has used gifts made by the family of Robert Very ’43 and by Dr. Fred Pittman ’51 to relocate, catalog and bind much of the school’s music literature collection. Until recently, most of it had been stored in the basement of the music building, where it was not very accessible and subject to adverse conditions. The un-cataloged collection circulated only to faculty, who had little idea of what the collection contained. Now, much of the school’s sheet music is housed in the Rodgers Composition and Theory Room, and music librarian Drew Gatto oversees the collection. About 20 percent—most of the piano and voice music—is permanently bound. Incorporating the music library’s holdings into BIBLION, the Academy’s online library catalog, is ongoing, as is weeding, further binding and filling in gaps in the collection.

While the main purpose of the music library is to support instruction within the music department, Rohan Smith, instructor of music and director of the Forrestal-Bowld building, hopes the new library will encourage more Exeter students to become “music adventurers,” sampling from the collection on a whim or prospecting for new musical tastes. The Rodgers Composition and Theory Room houses ten electronic keyboards in addition to the music library. Rohan envisions interested students browsing the library holdings, then sitting down at a keyboard to “play around” with a piece that they have either come across serendipitously, or been asked to look at for a class. “Our collection is small but good,” says Rohan, who believes the fact that Exeter has a collection at all sets it apart from most high schools. “The school has a great piano four hands collection, which gives students of a solo instrument opportunities to collaborate.” The collection also contains several unique first editions of works by American composers. These and other fragile or valuable pieces are housed separately in a non-circulating special collection.