Music Plans Renovations For Building

The Department of Music plans to build a $2.25 million addition to Pain Hall within 18 months, A. Tillman Merritt '29, chairman of the department, said yesterday. The funds are now being raised.

The money for the new building, its equipment, and renovations of the existing building will have to come primarily from members of the department's Visiting Committee, Merritt said. This is a group of outside academics, men from the business world, as well as music lovers and composers appointed by the Board of Overseers to visit the department annually.

Each department has such a Visiting Committee to give advice and often money.

The new building will be added to the present music library and will face the Gordon McKay Laboratory. Merritt said that the building will include offices for staff, teaching fellows, and faculty.

There will be more classrooms, practice and listening rooms, a studio to house electronic equipment, a student lounge, accommodations for very old instruments and rare books, as well as more room for library stacks and carrels.

Merritt said he did not know when the department would receive the funds.

The committee visited the department last Friday. The members attended several classes, listened to concerts given by students, and heard short talks by four graduate students.

Merritt said the committee members had a "marvelous" time and he hoped he had "inspired" them to give generously to the building fund.

The Visiting Committee of the Music Department is chaired by a member of the Board of Overseers, Gardner Cowles '25. Members include Leonard Bernstein '39; Alan Jay Lerner '40; Mrs. Henry Saltonstall; John W. Green '28, a Hollywood song-writer; and Donald J. Grout '35, author of a Music 1 textbook.

The new addition and renovations of the existing building have been planned for the past four or five years, Merritt said. "It will take about six months to draw up final blueprints and another year to complete the improvements. All we're waiting for is the money to go ahead," he said.