CAMPUS DESK - Fresno State Professor Steve Gilber died this week. Reports are that he had been suffering from a rare form of Meningitis, though, non-contageous. He was 55.
      A great loss to his friends and students and to the Fresno State Music Dept., Professor Steven Gilbert taught music theory III & IV, Advanced Composition and Analysis.
      Of all the instructors in the Music Dept., his curriculum held the undisputed title as the most demanding, the most rewarding and the most lasting.
      One of his favorite testing formats was the pop-quiz in which the class had to perform an aural dictation of excerpted Schoenberg "tone-rows" (atonal phrases of all 12 notes in random sequence). As students, we were required to transcribe from ear with 90% accuracy in 60 seconds or less to receive a passing grade.
      Prof. Steve Gilbert was one of Fresno State's best and brightest educators and my all-time favorite in the Music Dept.
     [Editotr's Note:Atonality, as described by Prof, Gilbert, "...exists where there is no well defined tonal or key center to which all other notes are attracted, where a key or tonal center is avoided or deliberately destroyed..."]