On a brilliant, blue-sky winter morning, first-year students on Duke University's East Campus are getting a slow start to their Friday. But on the ground floor of the Mary Duke Biddle Music Building, the air is crackling with energy. The lively strains of a racing violin melody emanate from faculty member Eric Pritchard's office. His colleague, Jonathan Bagg, knocks on Pritchard's door to ask about a detail of an upcoming Ciompi Quartet performance that the two of them - along with cellist Frederic Raimi and violinist Hsiao-Mei Ku - will present later that month. When Pritchard stops playing to answer, the distant sounds of someone practicing piano can be heard.

Moments later, Ku emerges from her office and walks with her laptop computer over to professor and composer Stephen Jaffe's office to show him five mockups of possible cover images for her forthcoming CD, Violin Music of Ma Sicong (1912-1987). After weighing in, Jaffe, just back from a work-related trip to Slovenia, shows a visitor the Max/MSP computer program he and graduate composer John Mayrose designed for arranging the sounds of Blackcapped and Carolina chickadees. The bird songs are among the musical elements in his "Poetry of the Piedmont" piece, scheduled to premiere the following week as part of the North Carolina Symphony season lineup.

It's a typical day in the life of the Duke music department, a thriving artistic enterprise that has given rise to individuals and groups whose musical contributions reverberate throughout the local, national, and international music communities. Undergraduate majors learn technique and theory from esteemed resident and visiting faculty. Master's and Ph.D. candidates receive commissions from leading symphonies and orchestras, and are annually awarded such prestigious honors as Fulbright, Mellon, and Javits fellowships.

Mary Duke Biddle, whose allegiance to her alma mater and devotion to the arts helped shape the mission of her eponymous foundation, was determined to make sure that Duke University embraced and nurtured the fledgling music department. Yet at major research universities, the arts often struggle for visibility and resources, and this was true of the Duke music department, particularly in the early days of its existence. Edgar Williams, a music major who graduated from Duke in 1970, recalls that when he and his peers used the practice rooms in the aging Asbury building, "we had to keep all the windows closed due to structural reasons," lest the reverberations rattle the panes.

Because of the department's low status amid other institutional priorities in the mid-twentieth century, The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation's unwavering support meant that it served as a something of a "sponsor-in-residence" to the department as it established a foothold. At the dedication ceremony of the Mary Duke Biddle Music Building in 1974, Nancy Hanks, then chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, noted that many people within and outside the university had worked to make the arts part of "the everyday life" of the university community. "Efforts for this new building, and for development of the new music curriculum have at times been tortuous. But the goal has always been there....With its eyes on Duke's tomorrow, the Foundation has consistently provided support for the university's today," she said.

Throughout its fifty years of philanthropic support, the Foundation has provided grants ranging from short-term, one-of-a-kind initiatives to substantial long-range support. In its early years, the Foundation's "With its eyes on Duke's tomorrow,the Foundation has consistently provided support for the university's today." Cultivating musical creativity Duke University Music Department Neat beats: John Brown, director of the Duke Jazz Ensemble, picks up the musical pace financial and creative backing helped set the course for the small department, a mutually beneficial arrangement both for the Foundation and for Duke officials. By setting high goals for what the department could become, the Foundation helped university administrators envision and plan for a vital program that could serve as a cornerstone for enhancing the arts at Duke. In 1961, the Foundation established the Distinguished Professorship of Music, bringing Scottish musician Iain Hamilton to campus to teach, perform, and compose original music that was presented close to home by music faculty colleagues, and in international settings, such as a BBC Symphony concert in London.

As the department grew and flourished, Foundation support provided additional funding for new professorships, nurturing the activities of the Ciompi Quartet, and expanding undergraduate and graduate scholarship opportunities. Luminaries such as Gustav Leonhardt, the world-renowned harpsichordist, came to campus as visiting artists, presenting lectures and concerts. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Robert Ward was invited to lead the department's composition focus. New series, such as the popular "Encounters: With Music of Our Time," introduced members of the local community to the vibrant creativity of music department affiliates. The Foundation also helped the department expand its music-related holdings, including a collection of romantic opera scores, a pianoforte, and a custom-made Indonesian gamelan.

While internationalization efforts are now a central focus of Duke University's mission, the Foundation and the music department have had global aspirations for decades. In the early 1970s, the Foundation helped make possible the university's first accredited foreign program during the academic year, sending the Wind Symphony to Vienna for a fourteen-week semester of performance and study. An international conference on Richard Strauss in 1989 brought together Strauss scholars from all over the world.

More recently, graduate student Chia-Yu Hsu submitted the winning composition for the International Harp Competition contest. Semifinalists in the competition this summer will be required to play "Huan," Hsu's eight-minute composition for solo harp in round three of the competition. And of the six composers chosen for the American Opera Projects' nationally-recognized Composer and the Voice Workshop Series this year, three—Jennifer Fitzgerald, George Lam, and Caroline Mallonée—are currently in the program or are recent Duke music department graduates.

Faculty member Jaffe, the Mary and James H. Semans Professor of Music Composition, says that Hsu is only one example of how early and enduring Foundation support set the stage for long-range results. "Some universities look for certain kinds of things that they want to be known for stylistically," says Jaffe, who has been at Duke more than twenty-five years. "In contrast, we tried not to have a Duke sound; we cast a very wide net in order to attract the most interesting and diverse students and faculty we could."

The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, he says, has been essential to creating the department's dynamic environment, where such fresh and inventive collaborations routinely take place "We have always had excellent students and faculty," he says. "But without the Biddle Foundation, there's no way we would have achieved the critical mass that we have today."