Convocation is normally a time when a Dean or Director addresses an assembled class or student body, perhaps in response to a particular situation or during a gathering of a given body, or as the ritual launch of the academic year, as happens at the Eastman School of Music.  An established part of the proceedings is the Dean’s or Director’s statement of welcome; at the Dean’s or Director’s discretion, a local clergyperson or spiritual advisor might be invited to offer a prayer or invocation.^[1]  The archival record demonstrates that Howard Hanson routinely used Convocation to comment upon the larger issue(s) of the day and to exhort the assembled students to dedicate their talents to the betterment of the world around them.  Further, Hanson had no need of a clergyperson, for he himself offered words of spiritual inspiration, freely quoting from the Judeo-Christian Scriptures and more than occasionally concluding his address with a prayer or invocation to the Judeo-Christian Deity (such was Hanson’s own faith practice).  In 1942, the Eastman School was beginning an academic year in wartime, and in very short order the War would bring profound changes to the life and activity of the Eastman School. One month before the 1942 Convocation, Hanson had sent a letter to all men enrolling at Eastman to advise them on specific changes to the curriculum that would attend their enlistment.^[2]  Before 1942 was out, the death of an Eastman School alumnus in the service would be reported.^[3]  As the ensuing years passed, men would either interrupt their Eastman studies to enlist, or else would join up immediately after graduation.  The Eastman yearbooks of 1942 through 1945 would carry photos of men in uniform, and the yearbooks of 1944 and 1945 would list all of the Eastman students who were serving, and also, sadly, those who had perished or else were missing in action. The national anthem would be played at school gatherings and orchestral concerts.  One school ensemble, The Little Symphony of Phi Mu Alpha, a men-only ensemble drawn from the Phi Mu Alpha fraternity, would be transformed into a co-ed ensemble to compensate for the diminished enrollment of men.  To that same point, for the first time in the school’s history, all four class officers of the 1943-44 senior class would be women.  National service was required not only of the young, but also of those of older age who were able-bodied, and so faculty members fulfilled national service in various ways. Conductor Frederick Fennell spent two years as a United Services Organization (USO) conductor based in San Diego^[4], and Wayne Barlow, at this time teaching music theory, worked six days a week in a local factory alongside his Eastman School teaching load.^[5]  One point worth noting is that Dr. Hanson, in his 1943 Convocation address, advised students that customary services around housing, food service, and physical plant maintenance such were carried out in peacetime would not be available.^[6]  Nationally, the diversion of raw materials to the war effort prompted certain changes at the industrial level.  With the diversion of aluminum, the audio instantaneous discs used by the Eastman School’s Recording Department^[7] now had glass at their core. Paper-based products were also affected; books published during the war carried an obligatory statement confirming that their production had aligned with Federal wartime regulations.^[8]   The Sibley Music Library had already at the outset undergone a major change in January, 1942 when the Eastman School’s Board of Managers voted, with the support of the University President and the President of the University’s Board of Trustees, to withdraw circulation privileges from the public, one reason being that under wartime conditions, replacement of lost or worn-out foreign  editions would be next to impossible.^[9]   These are but a few examples of the many wartime changes in the lives and routines of Eastman students, faculty members, and employees.  The Eastman School was not alone in this, for just as in any general emergency, whether war, weather event, industrial strife, or pandemic, the prevailing conditions and changes would affect all aspects of life for the entire population for the duration.^[10]

 As Howard Hanson prepared for Convocation in 1942, the scale of the conflict in both the Pacific and in Europe, and the sheer urgency of the fight, called for some appropriate statement to the assembled student body.  In this Convocation address Hanson more than lived up to his customary flare for oratory; the charged moment of the War had given him a focus far surpassing the customary academic round that normally commanded his and the students’ attention. He opened on an aspirational note, yearning to be “a combination of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates and a sprinkling of the contemporary philosophers” and here it’s relevant to note that in his original handwritten draft, he followed up those illustrious Classical names by penning a reference to a much-celebrated American man of letters —  “I’m reminded of the famous story of Mark Twain” — which he ultimately deleted, and so we don’t know exactly which story he had in mind.  Moving on, Hanson assured the students of his understanding, and that of others of his generation, of their dilemma, their uncertainties, their problems, pointing out that his own generation had experienced similar one quarter-century earlier.^[11] He expressed the regret felt by his generation over the outcome of the 1914-1918 war, with its failure to ensure a lasting peace.  That sense of regret had bred a skepticism as to the efficacy (his word) of war, in combination with “the natural hatred of war”.

Making his segue to the subject of music, he advised the students to beware of slogans, lest these be used to justify any undesirable ends.  Further, regarding the words “No business as usual” which had come into constant usage, he defined at some length his vision as to what those words should mean: spurning selfishness, ill-gotten gains, and waste, and then a “re-dedication of our purpose to preserve all that is good in human life and in human institutions.”  That very re-dedication should be accompanied by “the cultivation of the spirit of religion, the spirit of truth, the spirit of beauty.” Hanson further spoke to the students’ responsibilities as musicians, and exactly here was where he saw them called upon to leave the world a better place.  For Hanson, dedicating oneself to music was no less than a spiritual charge, a “spiritual battle” which must be won “if the world is to have a spiritual re-birth.”  He called on the students of the Eastman School of Music to exercise “[their] leadership, [their] intelligence, and [their] faithfulness to ensure that music would play its part by “join[ing] with the religious instinct in man for the stimulation of a transcendental spirit which will overcome hatred and war through love and understanding.”

These are lofty words, uttered with deep conviction by a man who felt a responsibility for his school that was not only professional, but indeed, deeply personal. In Hanson’s eyes, the Eastman School was preparing its students for the highest service.  With the prospect of military service looming for a number of the students, Hanson offered these words:

And what should this mean to you as individuals.  It should mean a re-consecration of your powers, a re-vitalizing of your spirit.  When and if the time comes that you are to go, you will go willingly and bravely to serve your country as fate may decide.  Until that time comes it should mean for you a more intense loyalty to your work, a finer devotion to your ideals, a more complete realization of the precepts of upright, clean living which your best instincts have held before you, and the holding to yourself more firmly than ever before of those high principles of faith and religion which your parents have given to you as their most holy and most cherished gift.

—In conclusion, Hanson cited Schiller as set by Beethoven—“Joy! . . . All men become brothers – – – – and beyond the canopy of the stars dwells a loving Father.”  And his last concluding words, “This is music and this is your task.”  Hanson’s handwritten draft shows that he initially added another line, but then omitted it.  His chosen ending is a compelling statement, embodying a challenge to the students.

One passage is less fortunate in that it revisited an issue that had already been put to bed, so to speak, by events.  Hanson alluded to one of the U.S. political dynamics of the 1930s (“the philosophy in the third decade of our century”) devoted several lines to attempting to justify, after the fact, the isolationist viewpoint that had informed U.S. national politics throughout the 1930s and up until the attack on Pearl Harbor. After 1933, with Nazism ascendant in Germany, and Hitler openly threatening the rest of Europe, many Americans were loathe to become involved in what they perceived to be another looming European war. Once the U.S. had entered World War II, that isolationist, non-interventionist position had been rendered a moot point, and in 1942, Hanson was a speaking to a younger audience, many of whom were facing the prospect of enlistment and combat.  The time for revisiting what had been a point of policy debate of the past was over, and for that reason, he might well have omitted altogether any mention of that “philosophy in the third decade of our century”.

Nevertheless, Hanson’s Convocation address of 1942 is an inspiring statement, surpassing many another of his public statements through the sheer oratorical force with which he portrayed the service of music as a spiritual undertaking.  Just as armed combat was necessary to defeat the forces of cynicism and cruelty to win the lasting peace in the world outside, so, too, within the Eastman School of Music, Hanson exhorted the students to take up the spiritual battle that would be necessary for a spiritual rebirth.  It is a powerful address.  Excerpts from Hanson’s address were published in the Rochester press the following day^[12], and Hanson’s address was later published in its entirety in the Eastman School’s Alumni Bulletin.^[13]There is no archived recording; whereas Convocation was recorded and archived in some years during the Hanson era, the 1942 Convocation was not.  We’ll never know, but I’ll wager that the students greeted Dr. Hanson’s words with spirited applause.