The PAW article on the history of the senior thesis (May issue) included a photo of Edward T. Cone ’39 and the information that his was the first work submitted as a “creative thesis.” This brought back quite a few memories for me.
Ed Cone was my mother’s distant cousin and probably the most compelling reason for my attending Princeton. I was a music major and, when thesis time came around, I applied to write a cantata based on the Garcia-Lorca play “The House Of Bernarda Alba.”
All was going well and, since I’d composed music since high school, I thought, “This is a piece of cake!” I submitted it two days early to my thesis adviser, the brilliant composer and educator Milton Babbitt *42 *92, who said, “Fine. Now orchestrate it.”
Holy Humperdinck! I had two days to take my piano score, break it down, and expand it into parts for a full orchestra! I went through boxes of No-Doz but got it done.
A year earlier I had put in a lot of work on my junior paper: “Simultaneous Composition In Jazz And Classical Music,” an examination of the music of Stravinsky, Ellington, et al. I got a disappointing grade. But, without my knowledge, Ed Cone read it and raised the grade. My J.P. adviser didn’t appreciate jazz. Ed Cone did.
The PAW article on the history of the senior thesis (May issue) included a photo of Edward T. Cone ’39 and the information that his was the first work submitted as a “creative thesis.” This brought back quite a few memories for me.
Ed Cone was my mother’s distant cousin and probably the most compelling reason for my attending Princeton. I was a music major and, when thesis time came around, I applied to write a cantata based on the Garcia-Lorca play “The House Of Bernarda Alba.”
All was going well and, since I’d composed music since high school, I thought, “This is a piece of cake!” I submitted it two days early to my thesis adviser, the brilliant composer and educator Milton Babbitt *42 *92, who said, “Fine. Now orchestrate it.”
Holy Humperdinck! I had two days to take my piano score, break it down, and expand it into parts for a full orchestra! I went through boxes of No-Doz but got it done.
A year earlier I had put in a lot of work on my junior paper: “Simultaneous Composition In Jazz And Classical Music,” an examination of the music of Stravinsky, Ellington, et al. I got a disappointing grade. But, without my knowledge, Ed Cone read it and raised the grade. My J.P. adviser didn’t appreciate jazz. Ed Cone did.