A welcome address to the parents and freshman class at Boston Conservatory given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of the music division at Boston Conservatory

One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school; I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school, she said, "You're WASTING your SAT scores."

On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and entertainment" section of the newspaper; and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment. In fact it’s the opposite of entertainment.

Let me talk a little bit about music and how it works.