“Kandinsky wanted to put music into his paintings,” Calvin post-baccalaureate student Alicia Hidajat extemporized recently, “and he would sign his paintings with musical movements.” Hidajat, 23, likes to make thoughtful connections between the liberal arts, and she will take that habit with her to the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society (AMS) — the main professional society for musicologists — held Oct. 27-30 in Washington, D.C.

Hidajat, who graduated in 2005 with majors in music and philosophy, won a grant from the AMS Committee on Cultural Diversity Travel Fund. The grant covers her airfare, lodging and meeting registration, as well as tickets to concerts at the event and a one-year membership in the society.

“The discipline of musicology has broadened immensely in recent decades, not only in terms of the repertory deemed worthy of study — which now embraces anything and everything — but also in the variety of approaches available,” said Calvin music professor Brooks Kuykendall. “The grant program for undergraduates to attend the annual meeting has become really very competitive, and it speaks very well for Calvin that one of our own should be selected.”

Hidajat, born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia, will use the conference to evaluate her post-graduation educational path. “I am planning to combine philosophy and music and study the philosophy of art,” she said prior to the conference. After scanning the titles of the AMS conference sessions, however, she’s a little more intrigued by musicology. “I thought at first that musicology means looking at scores very closely, trying to figure out the composer’s intention. That’s not really my thing,” she said.

“Alicia is an inquisitive student, a voracious reader and consumer of music,” Kuykendall said. “No wonder she’s the sort of student AMS was looking for. I hope that she’ll be impressed by the breadth of interdisciplinary work going on within the AMS.”

Hidajat attended a Reformed church in Jakarta, and came to Calvin because of alumni connections she encountered there. And while graduate school pulls at her, her native country tugs a little bit, too. “I won’t be able to learn these kinds of things if I go home, unfortunately,” she said. “That’s always one of the qualms I’m facing because if I go home, I’m not sure what my place will be. Indonesia is a rich country, and it has a rich culture to explore, but right now Immanuel Kant is interesting and Gustav Klimt is interesting.”