Rosina Moder ... Anytime I stay away too long from performing in public, the stage begins calling me. - Contributed
This is part one of a two-part series. Part two will be carried next week.
Austrian-Jamaican music educator, composer and performer Rosina Christina Moder is as passionate about people as she is about her art form. That's why she offered music to the ailing, ageing Jamaican composer Clyde Hoyte (born 1915) as he died.
"He passed on while I was singing to him his O'er Our Blue Mountains in November 2003," she told The Sunday Gleaner.
She had discovered Hoyte while researching material for a recorder music book she subsequently published.
"I wanted to ask for permission to publish his Christmas songs in my tu tu tu tu book [and] found him in a house in Half-Way Tree, where rats were his daily companions," she said. "I thank God. I organised a big concert in his honour in March 2003, where he himself appeared, dancing."
Now a lecturer for Recorder and Recorder Ensemble at the School of Music, Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts, Moder has organised many other things since she migrated to Jamaica from Austria in 1985.
She is founder and coordinator of the Jamaican Recorder Society, founder and musical director of MUSICA XAYMACA, a Jamaican chamber music group, and founder and chairperson of the RCM Music Foundation. The mission of that not-for-profit organisation is to raise funds for music scholarships, offering free concerts islandwide, publication and the promotion of Jamaican/Caribbean compositions throughout the region.
extensive knowledge
One way in which she spreads music is with her book tu tu tu tu: Caribbean Beginner's Workbook for Soprano or Tenor Recorder, which she co-wrote with her husband, fellow musician Peter Ashbourne. The book is used in classrooms throughout the English-speaking Caribbean.
Though she said she came to Jamaica with the intention of integrating her extensive knowledge and experience into local music, she quickly turned to research of Caribbean music. Her focus has been on the life and work of the first classical music composers of the Caribbean, including Samuel Felsted of Jamaica (born 1743) who, at 30, wrote the first oratorio composed in the New World and was organist at both the St Andrew and the Kingston Parish Church. She has also done research on and organised the performances of music by Esteban Salas of Cuba and Joseph Bologne of Guadeloupe.
Her work in promoting music in the region resulted in her becoming the first recipient of the International Nikolaus Harnoncourt Prize in 2001, awarded by the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland. Of the prize, Moder says: "It was magic and came to me like a rain of appreciation from heaven."
The 20-minute long speech and citation delivered personally by Professor Harnoncourt (with whom Moder had studied) included the following paragraph translated from German:
"This prize was established to honour an outstanding individual who has done great achievements in either performance of music with historical in-depth knowledge, as Professor Harnoncourt is known all over the world for, musical research and documentation, or enhancing human conditions by empowering the youth through music."
However, Professor Harnoncourt said that Moder was receiving the award for all her contribution in all three areas.
"It was the best prize in my entire musical career," Moder stated.
Born in Feldbach, a small town in the Styrian hills of Austria, Moder graduated from the University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Graz, Austria, with a certificate in Early Childhood Music Education in 1974; a Bachelor's degree in Recorder Teaching (1976) and a Master's degree (honours) in Recorder Performance (1977).
She pursued post-graduate studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (with Jeanette van Wingerden) in Basel, Switzerland, and at the Music University Mozarteum (with Nikolaus Harnoncourt) in Salzburg, Austria.
She has performed in Europe, Japan, Argentina, the United States of America as well as Jamaica and the wider Caribbean and has taught Recorder and Early Childhood Music Education in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Jamaica, and held recorder workshops in Austria, the United States and throughout the Caribbean.
pleasure
She told The Sunday Gleaner as of next month, "I will be coordinating the Early Childhood Music Programme for the brand new Edna Manley Junior Academy for the Arts".
So, does she prefer teaching or performing?
Said Moder: "I love both. I am maybe more of a natural teacher than performer, but anytime I stay away too long from performing in public, even if it's simply at a cocktail reception or wedding, the stage begins calling me."
Asked whether there was more than mere pleasure to be gained from classical music, she mentioned academics, suggesting that it helps the development of the brain of babies.
"It can be used in schools to quieten a restless class," she said, and "for music students, even if they don't specialise in classical music, it provides a very good foundation for playing."
With characteristic passion, she added: "In a social sense, since classical music is a part of World Music and not centralised in Europe any longer, if utilised as a world unifying art form, it is one of the best messengers and carriers of peace."