Wellesley College Music Department: Facilities

FACILITIES

Jewett Arts Center Library Practice Rooms Auditorium Instrument Collection
Houghton Memorial Chapel Charles B. Fisk Organ
Jewett Arts Center The Jewett Arts Center (1958) is an important early work by the distinguished American architect Paul Rudolf.
The Jewett Arts Center consists of the Mary Cooper Jewett Art Wing and the Margaret Weyerhaeuser Jewett Music Wing. Located in the east section of the building, the Music Wing holds the Music Library, listening rooms, practice studios, classrooms, departmental offices, and a collection of musical instruments from various periods available for students use. The Art Wing consists of classrooms, studios, photography darkrooms, video and computer facilities, the Art Library, and a gallery for student work.
Library Wellesley College Music Library Online Resources Links: Music Library Music Web Resources

Practice Rooms
The Music Department has 22 available practice rooms, most of which contain Steinway grand pianos.
Auditorium
	Music performances, theatre events, lectures, and symposia are held in the 320-seat Jewett Auditorium. The theater contains a full complement of sound, lighting, recording, and playback equipment.

Instrument Collection
The Music Department owns 39 pianos (which include 28 Steinway grands, 2 Mason and Hamlin grands, and 5 Steinway uprights), a harp, a marimba, and a wide assortment of modern orchestral instruments.

In addition, an unusually fine collection of instruments appropriate to early music is available for use by students. Of particular interest is the Fisk organ (completed in 1981) in the Houghton Memorial Chapel, America’s first major instrument constructed after seventeenth-century German prototypes. The chapel also houses a three-manual Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ. Galen Stone Tower atop Green Hall contains a 32-bell carillon.

Early Instruments
There is an extensive early music instrument collection, which is available for student use.
	Keyboard instruments: a clavichord, a virginal, two harpsichords, a fortepiano, and a Clementi piano
Stringed instruments: a lute, 8 violas da gamba, a Baroque violin, and an 18th-century Venetian viola

Wind instruments: a sackbut, krummhorns, shawms, recorders, a Renaissance flute, 2 Baroque flutes, a dulcian, and a Baroque oboe.

Charles B. Fisk Organ in the Houghton Memorial Chapel
The organ built by the late Charles Brenton Fisk (1925-1983) for Houghton Chapel at Wellesley College is one of the most extraordinary instruments in America. This is an organ designed specifically for the performance of north German organ music of the 17th century - a huge repertory of remarkable artistic quality. The great interest of this music is best revealed, however, when the organ on which it is performed has certain historical features.
Historical Tone Colors The Wellesley organ features an array of historical tone colors. These are particularly evident in the reed stops found on the Ruckpositiv and the Brustwerk, which are copied from the 1636 Ruckpositiv and Brustwerk created by Friedrich Stellwagen for the transept organ of the Jakobi Church in Lübeck. Similarly the four stops of the Brustpedal are copied from the 1610 Esaias Compenius organ in the Frederiksborg Castle in Copenhagen.

Historical Wind System In 1969 Charles Brenton Fisk published a pioneering article, “The Organ’s Breath of Life,” in which he advocated a return to historical organ wind systems. Historical wind systems, explains Fisk, allow an organ to “seem to be alive.” Accordingly, the wind system on the Wellesley organ can be activated by a “calcant,” a human being who pumps the bellows.

Photos: Judith Sandler, Michael Lutch

FACILITIES