This is a story of a music-training program at one among many American institutions of higher learning. These institutions accepted the challenge to evolve and develop training programs for music as part of a liberal arts education. Covering a period of more than one hundred years, the book discusses aspects of politics and the arts in America during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It focuses upon faculty and administrative efforts to maintain a rich experience in the arts at a typical university in Midwestern America. It is a representative story that includes interviews with former faculty and administrators as well as with present faculty and alumni. It is a kind of arts-survival story presenting the argument that music is essential to the ideals of a complete education.