Donor Stories
Douglass Seaton
I joined The College Music Society as a young graduate student. Unlike many, I suppose, this had nothing to do with the Music Vacancy List. CMS interested me because of two distinctive features of the Society.
The first of these was that CMS brought together composers, performers, and scholars, composer-performers, performer-scholars, historically minded music theorists and historians of music theory, music educators and ethnomusicologists, and colleagues interested in multicultural music education, all under one umbrella. CMS represented the important idea that all of us in music in higher education belong to the single discipline music. Within the discipline, then, it fosters what I've come to call "intersubdisciplinarity."
The second feature of CMS that attracted me was the Society's dedication to the enterprise of teaching, while the subdisciplinary societies, such as my own American Musicological Society, focused almost exclusively on scholarship - at least that was certainly the case in the 1970s, when I was starting out. This seemed important for a number of reasons, of which only the most obvious was that teaching forms such a big part of what we all do. Beyond that, CMS recognized the need of many of us to teach beyond the narrow limits of our subdisciplines. Especially, it made an important place for Music in General Studies, a crucial part of our programs that no one else addressed. And finally, teaching is such an important contribution to our own continued learning that learning to teach becomes a vital stage in our teaching in order to learn.
Well, in due course I did turn to the Music Vacancy List, and I found my present position, which worked out very well. Since then - over thirty years now - I've had the opportunity to work with colleagues through CMS in various ways: as host of regional meetings and Chapter President, at the national level as Secretary, Newsletter Editor, and President, and presently as chair of the Forums and Dialogues Committee and on the Board of Directors of The CMS Fund. All of those experiences have been eye-opening and enriching ones, as well as enjoyable.
Along the way, it has been impressive to watch the Society develop some very special ways of opening up our professional world. I've admired the way in which national meetings modeled the idea of bringing conference participants into contact with the local musical traditions of our meeting sites. I've been touched by the empathy and generosity of the membership in assisting our Puerto Rican colleagues after Hurricane Georges. The ongoing emphasis on engagement and outreach demonstrates a uniquely committed character among our profession.
These are some of the reasons why my membership in CMS has always been a source of pride. I'm looking forward to watching the Society grow in new ways and, of course, to lending a small hand where I can.
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