Dies Irae – Dr. McMurtry

I only enjoyed one class in college.  It was a music history class for non-music majors at Oklahoma State University instructed by Dr. McMurtry.  This was also my hardest class, ever… and I’m more proud of that A than any grade I ever earned in any school.

The paper I had to do was a bitch to research and write.  Dr. McMurtry ASSIGNED the papers and warned us all that he’d been assigning them for years, knew everything on the subjects, had read all the related books in the library, and would know if we plagiarized (or forgot to document our sources).

This was before the Internet.  This Wikipedia article might have helped me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Rimsky-Korsakov

The papers were assigned at the beginning of the semester and due before finals.  We had to meet with Dr. McMurtry in his office to discuss our progress…  I did bunches of research.  Checked out a dozen books.  I was scared of the guy.

I got an A on the paper.  He circled one of my points and wrote that I was probably correct and that it was the first time that point had been made on a paper and the first time he’d thought about it that way.  (It was about Mussorgsky finishing a Rimsky-Korsakov work after his death and the flack the guy took for doing it… but I made the point that the two men had lived together for a number of years and that if anyone was qualified to understand what R-K himself would have done, it would be his homie.  Funny, this has more to do with personal relations than music.. hehe)

We had tests every few weeks.  The only credit given in the class was for the paper and the tests.

There were only five questions on each test.  We started with blank paper.  Dr. McMurtry would play 15 seconds of music.  He would start anywhere in the middle of any movement of one of the dozen pieces we had been studying.  He literally would drop the phonograph needle wherever the energy was right, then we were required to write down what we knew about it: Name, composition date, composer, music form, genre (Baroque, Classical, Romantic, etc.), what stylistic points put it in that genre instead of the previous one, etc.  We would also have to identify which movement from which the music was played and how it related to the other movements.

I listened and listened and listened to my cassette tapes preparing for those tests and memorized a bunch of music.  My daughter has the cassettes now.

I had planned on writing this post about a piece of music we studied very early in that class.  Before the Renaissance there was Gregorian music.  One of the most popular pieces is Dies Irae.  Little tidbits of this music pop up again and again in music throughout history right through to today.

Listen to the beginning of this:

Now listen to the theme underlying this clip from The Andromeda Strain (made in 2008):

Hear the variation of Dies Irae in this somewhat well-known piece of music?

I bet now you’ll notice Dies Irae or a variation of its theme in at least one thing you hear this year.


Dies Irae is the Mass for the Dead.

I just found out that Dr. William Murl McMurtry died in 2007.

http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/dws/drc/obituaries/stories/DRC_OBITS_3-25.15411def.html

For 20 years, I’ve been telling myself that I need to call or send a letter telling him how much I appreciated him and his class.  I missed the chance.  I’m very sad.

** Update at end of Post **

I really disliked college except for Dr. McMurtry’s class.  What I learned about music from him has been more useful and brought more joy to me than all the rest of my classes, combined.

For Dr. McMurtry:

And this is Mussorgsky’s best work, in my opinion. Surely, you’ll recognize Pictures at an Exhibition and like Russians a little more. 🙂