University Award for Excellence in Teaching
Miriam Clapp Duncan, 1984
"While you may or may not be the first Hoosier to have matured as a performing artist and musicologist under the guidance of Anton Heiller, it is certain that you are among the first American organists to comprehend not only the revolution in performance practice that has taken place in the organ world, but also in the broader implications of that revolution. Mean-tone, equal-temporal, and Pythagorean tuning systems may constitute an arcanum for even the most erudite musicians, but for you, the arcanum has never been arcane. Moreover, for you teaching has been a 'moral imperative,' and as a liberated musician and scholar--at home in the Freshman Studies classroom as well as in the concert hall--your knowledge of performance practice, musical styles, and organ and harpsichord repertoire has guided generations of students into such diverse careers as music and medicine. A student recently said of you that you are one of a true kind, and while other students may not have framed their thoughts in the same language, the superlatives they use in describing your teaching echo that sentiment.
Miriam Clapp Duncan, you first embraced, then enhanced, and now personify the notion that a conservatory is no more distant from a college in thought or deed than an avenue. Though you have crossed College Avenue many a time on foot and bicycle--and even behind the wheel of a Kewaunee-blue pick-up truck--the crossing for which you are known best is that over a bridge, one that you helped construct, one that exists in more than imagination, one that connects the purposes of out college and our conservatory.
It is my pleasure to present to Miriam Clapp Duncan the 1984 Excellent Teaching Award."