Music 1607: Class has timely Jamestown tie
Teaching about early American music does not generally draw much
attention, noted Ruth van Baak Griffioen, assistant adjunct professor
of musicology and director of the Early Music Ensemble at the College.
“I teach early music—medieval and baroque. Normally, who cares what I
teach or when it gets taught?” she said.
This year is different. Griffioen is teaching a class on the music of
1607, a class that could not be any more relevant as the country and
especially the Williamsburg area prepare to celebrate the 400th
anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown Colony.
“It’s so fun to be teaching something so current and so local,” she said.
Coincidentally, Griffioen noted, the course was approved exactly 400
years after the very date on which the settlers left for the new world.
“[The amount of time] from the approval of the course to the end of
exams [corresponds with] the entire time it took them to make that
trip,” she said.
The coincidence inspired Griffioen to make a large map of the Atlantic
Ocean for her classroom so students could track the settlers’ journey
“in real time.” Each week the students can see the progress of the
ships as they use historical records related to the voyage to mark the
vessels’ locations.
The class also takes advantage of the significant local resources in
the field of early Colonial music. Due to the availability of those
resources, Griffioen structured the course to be very hands-on.
“Everyone I need to talk to is right here,” she said.
Field trips and lectures by local experts constitute a majority of the
class time. One class featured an “old instrument zoo” during which
musicians specializing in 17th-century instruments demonstrated their
craft. Another class had the students learning and demonstrating dances
of the period. The students also visited Jamestown Settlement, which
offered them a unique perspective on their work. “You have to stand in
one of those ships to understand why they weren’t bringing harpsichords
over the first day,” said Griffioen.
Staff members of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia
Antiquities (APVA), which oversees the archeological operations at the
James Fort site, gave the class a behind-the-scenes tour at that
historic location.
“Artifacts tell the tale,” senior staff archeologist Danny Schmidt told
the group. To hear the tale, the students visited the Archaearium, the
site’s museum that features some of the nearly one million artifacts
that have been recovered from James Fort.
Music-related artifacts are rare, Griffioen explained. “[Instruments
are] underrepresented because they are not made out of materials that
survive over time. Violins, recorders—that kind of stuff doesn’t
survive except by tremendous luck,” Griffioen said. The few displays of
music-related artifacts at the Archaearium represent “the foundations
of early American music,” she added.
One of the rare artifacts is a brass mouthpiece. The mouthpiece,
Griffioen explained, is one of the oldest pieces of brass found thus
far at the site. She pointed out the mouthpiece’s flat playing surface
to the students and contrasted it with that of a modern trumpet. The
“chiffy” sound one heard from trumpets of that era came from that type
of mouthpiece, she said.
Visiting the site of the original fort and seeing the artifacts that
have been discovered there “puts everything into context,” said Rachel
Blake, a graduate student at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
“The cultural context gives [the course work] additional value.”
The timely class in terms of the 400th anniversary of the founding of
Jamestown has been a unique experience for both the students and their
instructor. “I’m usually teaching J.S. Bach. He never gets in the
news,” Griffioen said.
