Arlene was my professor for four semesters, covering the basics, and then the not-so-basics, of ear training, piano technique, rhythm skills, and sight-singing: the building blocks of good musicianship. People say that you forget almost everything you learn in college within a few months, but I use everything I learned in Arlene’s class on a daily basis. (In fact, the 101 Bach Chorales book and Modus Novus are sitting on the bookshelf behind me right now, well-thumbed-through and not the least bit dusty.)
Even after those four semesters, though, Arlene was a constant presence in my life at Brown. More than a teacher of skills, she was a model of how to be a good member of a community. Arlene made me feel welcome, feel known, from the very beginning. She was a link between the long-standing institution of Brown and the department and each of us who made it our home for a few short years. And she had an incredible knack for balancing the highest standards in music making with a positivity in accepting us wherever we were at that moment.
Two examples illustrate that balance:
1. I was sitting in Arlene’s office one day listening to the recordings that prospective students had sent in with their applications. (Why was I there? I genuinely don’t remember…) Each recording sounded, to a non-pianist like me, incredible. These were teenagers performing concertos with full orchestras or working their way through desperately tricky solo repertoire.
Arlene would listen for a few moments and say, “eh.”
She only needed a few notes to understand who was just playing the piano and who had real potential as a musician. It was a humbling experience of her powers of discernment and musical sense.
2. This actually happened to a very good friend, not me, but we’ve talked about it over the years whenever Arlene comes up in conversation and it’s somehow become one of my favorite memories of her.
Do you remember the part of our musicianship exams where we had to play piano and sing, regardless of our prior training or inclination as pianists or singers? My friend was an excellent musician on her instrument but had studied neither piano nor voice before arriving in Arlene’s class.
She had labored her way through the exercise on her exam until the very end. She saw the last note. High. Higher than anything else in the passage, and she didn’t really know where it fit in her vocal range. So she just picked the highest note she could sing, sang it, and concluded the piece.
Arlene looked at her, cocked her eyebrow and smiled, and said, “a little sharp.”
Arlene Cole was a beautiful human being whose patient tutelage, kindness, and commitment to excellence made the Brown University music department a welcoming home for me and for so many of my friends and colleagues. In the years since I graduated, I’ve always looked forward to seeing her and checking in during my visits back to Providence. It’s hard to believe that she won’t be waiting there in Orwig next time I return. I will miss her dearly. May her memory be a blessing.
Nat Seelen ’08