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Striking a chord: A deep dive into the life of a Music Student

Everything I’ve learned after a year and one month at the Faculty of Music

Alia Ginevra

Varsity Contributor

Just north of Queens Park stands a building that looks like Shermer High School from the movie The Breakfast Club. It was built in the 1960s, and was found to contain asbestos, and we just got new chairs — the first update to the building I’ve seen since coming to U of T. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m talking about the Edward Johnson building, home to the Faculty of Music and yours truly.

Let me tell you a bit about myself. When I was

MIRKA LOISELLE/THEVARSITY seven, my parents began searching for an extracurricular hobby for which I would show enthusiasm. I tried ballet, soccer, and rhythmic gymnastics for a couple of years. I enjoyed each of these activities, but I had no aptitude for any of them.

I had nothing that I was truly passionate about until my parents enrolled me in an operatic choir. That is where I discovered my passion for classical singing. From that moment on, I continued singing in choirs, performing in shows, and spending my Friday nights taking vocal lessons. I’ve wanted to study music since the tenth grade, and I am lucky enough to have been accepted into an institution where I can fully dive into the intricacies of classical music with some of the best instructors.

Being a U of T music major truly makes you feel like you’re inspecting a specimen in a laboratory, but that specimen is your instrument in the classical or jazz stream. Unlike most programs, taking an extraordinary amount of breadth electives is not required. In my case, required classes include English and Italian art song, music skills, music theory, and choral ensemble. So, yes, I go to school to try to create pleasant sounds, and no, it’s not as easy as it seems. I’m not saying that a music major is the most difficult thing in the world, but from experience, a theory class is no walk in the park.

From the moment you enter the program, you are surrounded by great musicians who have the same drive to learn as you do. All of my peers are technically excellent. While I used to see this environment as an overwhelming burden, which it no doubt can be, I’ve learned to view it as an opportunity instead. Listening to those who are more experienced than myself allows me to take notes on how I can improve.

Moreover, a niche community where everyone knows everyone has its upsides and downsides. The help that you need is always available and class sizes are small. Professors know you by name, and you’re not wandering into a lecture hall of 1,000 people aimlessly trying to make connections.

Being a part of an interwoven community is part of what makes artistic careers so great — it allows you to meet and work with brilliant people that will help you grow as an artist. When you inhabit professional musical spaces, specifically in a small institution like a school, you never know if you will run into someone again. Being cordial and respectful is required to maintain good relationships in any setting, but what I have learned is that pleasing everyone is a near impossible task. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed making connections, but I’ve come to understand that they shouldn’t come at the expense of your authenticity, and that it is okay to not be loved by everyone.

It can also be easy to orbit only within the halls of academia or the arts when you are a music major. Of course, I am a singer, but my identity is not entirely art and is not homogenous with all the other musicians around me.

If you know me, you know that I’ve orbited both in and out of the arts community for the last 10 years. I didn’t grow up listening to classical music — it happened to find me at a young age at an impromptu choir audition. My family is not a music family, and I am partly glad about that because I have come to see the world from their perspective as well. Sometimes classical or jazz musicians assume that the rest of the world has the same attachment to classical music or the arts in general.

As much as I’d love to live in a utopia where everyone listens to Mozart, it became strikingly clear to me that this is not the case when I sang at a wedding and around 90 per cent of my repertoire was too unrecognizable to mainstream audiences for me to sing. I am committed to classical music, but at the same time, I have started to consider that I may need to become more versatile as a singer if I want to perform in various settings.

Additionally, I am taking classes and exploring disciplines outside of performing as I feel that I need to be a more well rounded person. As much as I love being in music, I can’t stay in the same building for my entire university career, and I want to be around people who don’t consider themselves to be ‘creatives,’ so I can better understand my own relationship with the arts and also my relationship with myself outside of classical music.

So, where am I now? After a year and one month of university, I have become entirely immersed in the music community, and to tell you the truth, last week was my first time visiting Robarts. I have faced many challenges and pushed myself to my artistic limits, but my greatest accomplishment thus far was finally making it to the other side of campus. In all seriousness, I am grateful for the education I am receiving, and I look forward to reflecting on how my experiences at the faculty will shape me further.

So, in the simplest terms, we are the basketcase of the university.

Sincerely yours, A Faculty of Music student

Ecocriticism’s struggle to define our relationship with nature

How an emerging critical field shifts our perspective on art

Jevan Konyar

Varsity Contributor

The past few decades have witnessed unprecedented — and, according to some, apocalyptic — levels of ecological upheaval, and new developments in the humanities reflect that. While there’s no shortage of discussion surrounding the effect of the Industrial Revolution on modern life — that torch is carried by a diverse group of thinkers comprising theorists like Timothy Morton and Max Liboiron — the question of how we interpret our own relationship with nature is the subject of a more specialized domain, which is called ‘ecocriticism.’

“Ecocriticism… started in the 1990s, so it’s very recent,” explained Andrea Most, a professor in U of T’s Department of English. “The field has grown… in response to the ways in which our understanding [of] the environmental crisis has progressed.”

According to Most, ecocriticism is not an isolated field, but part of a broader field of environmental studies. Ecocriticism demonstrates how artistic narratives on the environment can influence our approach to the environment, even if they shed light on the artwork itself to a lesser extent. It’s a critical lens that focuses on how we — as species, cultures, individuals, etc. — interact with the world around us. Like the environmental humanities at large, ecocriticism isn’t just a reexamination of traditional assumptions regarding our place in the world; they’re a particular approach to understanding our interaction with ecology based on cultural products.

Endeavors in ecocriticism are essentially nuanced, tackling issues of interpretation through an interdisciplinary approach. Professor Most noted that artistic fields are increasingly interested in the relationship between humans and other animals, as well as the impact of colonial ideologies on contemporary understandings of nature.

Most also noted that it’s important that the university focus on ecocriticism so academic analysis can be used to tackle the climate crisis. “[Ecocriticism enables] students and scholars to question and think through our historical, cultural relationships, our cultural perspectives, [and to] think through the stories we tell about who we think we are in relation to the living earth, because the stories we’re currently telling are killing the earth,” Most explained.

For Most, a focus on ecology should be worked into every facet of the academy. “You could study math through this lens, you could study business through this lens, you can study classical culture through this lens — it doesn’t matter,” she said. “If you’re not taking the Earth into account… everything else you’re doing is inevitably going to be lesser or pointless depending on how hopeful you are.” When an ecological crisis poses an existential threat, developing an understanding of the cultural practices contributing to that crisis becomes a matter of survival.

It would be naive to think, as Ontario experiences 15-degree-Celsius days at the outset of winter, that any cultural product is immune to questions from this new approach to ecology. Whether deliberate or not, there are hints of ecological narratives in every facet of what the average person watches or reads, and ecocriticism exists to pull those narratives out and critique them in a new light. In Most’s words, “the environment is not an issue that can be put into a little box… it’s what sustains all life.”

DALAINEY GERVAIS/THEVARSITY