By RAYMOND J. LUSTIG

Above: William Schuman with Joseph W. Polisi in 1988. (Photo by Peter Schaaf) Below: Schuman seated at the piano with the score for his Symphony for Strings in 1943. (Photo by Rizzolla)

As the Juilliard community watches wrecking crews, bulldozers, and cranes bring about massive changes to the Juilliard and Lincoln Center campus, it seems like a good time to think about change—the needs and forces that bring it about, and the people who make it happen. Not unsuitably for a school of the arts, Juilliard has had a history of dramatic changes. And also not unsuitable is the fact that at the helm of a great many of the boldest changes—the ones that have shaped the very identity of Juilliard today—was an artist … a composer, in fact.

William Schuman (1910-1992) was not only a prolific and distinguished composer—he wrote 10 symphonies (the first two of which he withdrew); several ballets; two one-act operas; and an enormous body of orchestral, choral, chamber, and band music—but he was also Juilliard's president from 1945-61, and the leading force in the enormous transformations that changed Juilliard from a conservatory of music to a school for the performing arts. Current Juilliard President Joseph W. Polisi has, for several years now, been pursuing intense research into Schuman's life and music, and is writing a book on his predecessor that he expects will be published in fall 2008. Dr. Polisi will present some of his research on April 24 in a lecture titled "American Muse: The Life and Times of William Schuman." The talk, which will take place in Morse Hall at 5 p.m., is part of Juilliard's Doctoral Forum series of scholarly lectures and is open to the entire Juilliard community.

Polisi's interest in Schuman runs deeper than the academic. In a recent interview, he described the man both as his primary mentor and his close friend. Polisi said he was concerned that his close personal ties to Schuman might complicate his role as a biographer, but realized that not only did he have a wealth of anecdotal information that other biographers might never uncover through records and documents (Schuman's private aversion to Mahler and Ives, for instance), but Polisi's role as Juilliard's president would give him a clearer perspective on the demands placed upon Schuman in the same role (and later as president of Lincoln Center). So Polisi sent a proposal to Amadeus Press—the publisher of his first book, The Artist as Citizen (2005)—which agreed to publish his biography of Schuman.

Self-taught in many ways, including as a composer, Schuman displayed an early interest in popular songs and jazz. He wrote the music for legendary lyricist Frank Loesser's first published song, "In Love With a Memory of You." Hearing Toscanini conduct the New York Philharmonic in 1930 produced an epiphany for the 20-year-old Schuman, inspiring an almost feverish pursuit of studies in concert music—including at Juilliard—which led, a mere 10 years later, to the premiere of his Second Symphony by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Serge Koussevitzky in 1938.

From 1935-45, he served on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College, where he conducted the chorus. He assumed the presidency of Juilliard in the fall of 1945, at age 35. An outgoing, charismatic, and persuasive leader—"a true and real firebrand," as Polisi describes him—Schuman soon began a process of intensive reorganization, taking an active role in the budgeting and merging the Institute of Musical Art with the Juilliard Graduate School to form The Juilliard School of Music. He founded the Literature and Materials of Music Department, based on his pedagogical philosophy that the history and theory of music should be taught in an integrated way through close study of the repertoire itself rather than through textbooks, and brought in an entirely new faculty to teach the curriculum, including the distinguished composers Vincent Persichetti, Robert Starer, and Peter Mennin (who followed Schuman as Juilliard's president). He fortified the faculty by bringing in internationally recognized performers like the legendary conductor Jean Morel and violinist Ivan Galamian. He founded the Juilliard String Quartet in 1946, and expanded the concept of a conservatory when he created the Dance Division in 1951. He also added to the School's visibility, Polisi notes, with a wave of festivals including a French Festival and a Hindemith Festival, among many others.

With the formation of Lincoln Center in 1956, there was a search for an educational institution to be resident on the center's campus. Schuman knew intuitively, Polisi explains, that the school chosen would find itself at the center of the arts universe—and so he worked very hard for Juilliard to be that institution. (Unbeknownst to Schuman, says Polisi, inquiries from Lincoln Center's exploratory committee had also gone to Columbia and New York Universities.)

Schuman's extensive administrative experience, his knowledge of the arts, his ebullience and energy, and his famed gift for public speaking made him a natural choice when Lincoln Center was searching for a new president. Schuman assumed the role in 1962—and in his new position, as Polisi describes it, things were quite different. Not only were the administrative demands and political tensions greatly augmented, but Schuman's zeal for new artistic projects began to place him in conflict with Lincoln Center's increasingly cautious board (which included the very influential founding president, John D. Rockefeller 3rd) and a recalcitrant group of Lincoln Center constituents. Polisi perceives in the Schuman-Rockefeller clash an embodiment of the conflict between the commercial and the artistic aspects of Lincoln Center. Though he was forced out in late 1968 over his intense (and expensive) entrepreneurial verve, Schuman managed nonetheless in those years to establish the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Lincoln Center Film Society, among other Lincoln Center organizations and traditions.

Though the stress-filled years at the helm of Lincoln Center slowed his creative output somewhat, Schuman still managed to write his Eighth and Ninth Symphonies, a ballet, his string trio Amaryllis, and numerous shorter orchestral and choral works. By the time of his death in 1992 at 82, he had won two Pulitzers, two Guggenheim fellowships, the gold medal from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and 28 honorary degrees, among many other honors.

Polisi's book will combine biographical accounts—culled from the extensive records in the Lincoln Center archives, Schuman's papers at the New York Public Library, his scores at the Library of Congress, and Juilliard's own Lila Acheson Wallace Library and Archives, as well as Polisi's many personal and colorful recollections—with sections in which Polisi will discuss specific pieces that he finds to be underappreciated: the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra; the Third, Fifth, and Tenth Symphonies; the Fourth String Quartet; and his cello and orchestra fantasy Song of Orpheus, among others.

"There were two sides to Bill's personality," Polisi points out. "There was this incredibly ebullient, outgoing person, who always seemed to be smiling and upbeat, and, in turn, this very deep, profoundly dark person within himself. The dark side rarely came out, in public at least. But it comes out all the time in his music. From Night Journey on, most of Bill's works are very dark, profoundly almost tragic in some ways." The book, he believes, will be accessible to general readers: "It is designed to have a view of cultural history as well as Bill's life and his music."

In his April lecture, Polisi plans to focus on a period of works in which he notes a distinct shift away from the composer's earlier bright optimism, a change of creative voice in a man known for making changes to everything else around him. Such a turn toward a darker sensibility has been noted in comparing his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, but Polisi believes that the change can be detected in works he wrote between these symphonies as part of an interesting series of collaborations with renowned choreographers Martha Graham and Antony Tudor (who were to become faculty members in the Dance Division). Due to the travel schedules of his perpetually-touring collaborators, the work had to be carried out almost entirely by correspondence—which provides nearly complete documentation of Schuman's collaborations with these important choreographers, and will be of interest not only to musicians, but to scholars, dancers, and collaborative-minded creative and performing artists.

Raymond J. Lustig is a second-year doctoral student in composition.