It is not the walls of your library decked with ivory and glass that I need, but rather the resting place in your heart wherein I have not stored books, but have of old put that which gives value to books—a store of thoughts . . .
Welcome to an exclusive musical think tank dedicated to communal exploration at the highest level of inquiry. Now celebrating our tenth anniversary, we offer distinguished music scholars from around the world a unique opportunity to teach, challenge, and learn from each other in a sustained and mutually supportive way. Our mission is to magnify the mind and enlarge the ear through the distillery of debate. Independently funded by visionary private donors since 2001, the Institute has garnered international acclaim as a revolutionary innovation in academia and the preeminent forum for humanistic collaboration in the evolving disciple of music scholarship.
Each year in the last week of June the Institute conducts an integral series of participatory workshops, plenary sessions, and roundtable discussions focusing on a different musical topic guided by a rotating faculty of expert peers and distinguished special guests drawn from the academic community. Our venues include prestigious educational institutions across North America. Diligent preparation and a genuine personal commitment to active participation and contribution through a dialectic process of collective exploration are essential.
I determine nothing; I do not comprehend things; I suspend judgment; I examine.
Montaigne
T h i n k T o g e t h e r.
The Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Scholarship is a seminary of musical learning, "the confinement of the studious with studious companions" in Samuel Johnson's words, huddled within the bustle and bureaucracy of higher education. This is a sanctuary for endlessly renewed speculation and never concluded contemplation. We revive a venerable tradition of humanistic inquiry premised on the rigorous testing of ideas in the crucible of collegial interrogation, rooted in disciplines of independent thought, critical examination, and free-ranging discourse. Our evolving kaleidoscope of members gather as an eclectic confederacy of scholars, bound together, as Dr. Johnson says, through "the contagion of diligence, an impatience with inferiority, and the stimulation of honest rivalry."
We invite you to join other outstanding music theorists and musicologists from around the globe to share in this uniquely transformative experience in collaborative learning. Step out of the postured formality of conventional conferences and into the dynamic flow of robust interpersonal exchange. Engage your peers in constructive dialogue and interactive debate in the common pursuit of knowledge. Dare to implement our historic credo from the origins of our republic—Deliberate with Coolness, Analyze with Criticism, Reflect with Candor, and Evaluate with Conviction.†
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats
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During the public debate over the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1787, a series of controversial articles appeared in the New York Journal under the pseudonym “Cato.” Americans knew the name both from Plutarch’s biography of the Roman defender of freedom against the usurpations of Caesar, and Addison's popular 1713 play of the same name. Many historians think the author was New York Governor George Clinton, but there is no conclusive evidence. Daring only to speak out behind the veil of anonymity against a mounting tidal wave of virtually unanimous support for ratification, the lone voice pleaded for independent thinking and rational critique of nothing less than the Constitution itself. In the noble tradition of Montaigne and Descartes, Cato beckoned the newly liberated colonists to the crucible of skepticism and the methodology of doubt as the truest test of wisdom.
"The wisest and best of men may err," he counseled, so "every man ought to think for himself." Arguing neither for nor against ratification, my only goal he wrote is "to excite you to, and assist you in, a cool and deliberate discussion of the subject, to think, speak, act, and assert your opinions." Cato implored his peers to question and examine their strongest held beliefs, regardless of their virtues, as an end in itself. His watchword was “Deliberate with Coolness, Analyze with Criticism, and Reflect with Candor.” These words and their challenge of independent thinking, suspended verdicts, and just reasoning - supplemented by our own caveat "Evaluate with Conviction" to form the acronym DARE - revive Cato's manifesto in the formative days of our open society. They articulate the historic mission and credo of the Institute. Our logo of da Vinci's Vitruvian Man is an iconic emlem of this vital spirit of rational inquiry.
