They also love teaching, as seen in Raimi's reflections on the process. "To learn to play a Bach suite is as deep an educational experience as you're going to get because it's not only in the mind, it's in the body. You physically learn to do something complex and large-scale-a twenty- or thirty-minute piece. Learning a major piece of music is as valuable as or more valuable than any individual thing you might do in your college career. To understand the structure of a movement and how it's built, what the high points are, how to interpret individual musical phrases and put them together into a whole, makes the mind work in a very serious way."

Stephen Jaffe sum its up: "For undergraduates, a university experience should open up all kinds of aesthetic worlds-not just scholarship about aesthetics."

The quartet could not have lasted all these years without the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation's support, which is now gradually being reduced as the university tries to pick up more of their budget. In recent years, they have also relied on The Friends of the Ciompi Quartet, donors who direct some or all of their annual Duke contributions to a fund bolstering the group's outreach efforts.

The support of the sixty or so Friends enables not only the commissioning of new repertoire, paying guest artists, and the making of CDs, but also their playing on tour, says Kathy Silbiger, program director for Duke's Institute of the Arts. "Every musical organization loses money when they tour. The Ciompi's presence is a national and community outreach from the university. Real music has to be a living art form: If it's not played and experienced, it will die."

"One of the things that the Duke connection makes possible for them," she says, "is the freedom to be as adventurous as they are. They're not solely subject to market forces. They use that freedom in a very responsible, very idealistic way, achieving a balance between playing works that they love and that they know their traditional audience will love, and just risking it and putting some stuff out there that's untested."

Yet much of the Ciompi's new music is performed first-or only-at Duke precisely because the Duke audience is sophisticated enough to appreciate it, according to Hartman.

Professor Lindroth agrees. "Judging by how many of my colleagues from other departments I see at concerts," he says, "I believe they would regard Duke as impoverished by the absence of the kind of musicianship and artistry offered by the Ciompi Quartet."

Predictably, the performers recognize many people in attendance tonight: string students from throughout the Triangle; administrators, retirees, and library staffers, musiciens manquÈs and wannabes; faculty and grad students from philosophy, history, classics, the sciences.

After an intermission, they launch into Schubert's memorable opus 163, the string quintet in C major, which requires a second cello in the person of guest artist Norman Fischer, flown in from Houston for the occasion. Before they begin, Raimi rises for an impromptu announcement: "We'd like to invite you to a reception immediately following the concert," he says, "so you can meet the musicians-such as they are." The audience titters and Raimi looks pleased.

This kind of offbeat humor and informal relationship with listeners, who know that his self-deprecation masks an intense commitment, is a hallmark of the Ciompi style.

The players agree that audiences differ dramatically, and that Duke audiences are consistently good and critical listeners. Says Bagg, "You develop a following, friends amongst your audience who like to come to your concerts because they know you and have seen you play many times, and they want to see what you come up with this time. If you have a bad night, they forgive you.

"I don't think it's true, though, that it's easier to play at home than away. It's harder because these are people you see in other contexts every day. You feel a certain responsibility to them, that you have to play well because they know your entire history."

Though the group collectively aspires to more national and international exposure, Raimi admits that for him, "Where we play concerts is less important than how we play concerts. I hope the quartet continues to improve as a musical entity, to get more insight into the great composers and play their music better and more beautifully. If we can be there in five years, I'll be happy."

The playing's the thing. Back in his studio on a hot summer afternoon, Eric Pritchard says wistfully, "As hard as you might try in rehearsal, you never get quite that sense of magical communication that exists when an audience is there. You can't ever forget who your audience is and who you're trying to reach."

He turns and looks me in the eye, almost sternly. "Music is a few steps further down the path of abstraction than poetry is. To apply words to it is always a compromise."

He pauses thoughtfully. "My greatest fear," he says, looking away, "is that I'll bore people."

No chance.

Baerman M.B.A. '90, an oboist, is special assistant to Duke's president.

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