Biggest Lesson in Music Was Learning to Cope : University: The band, orchestra and ensembles were displaced and out of sync since the recital hall roof collapse.

The 350 music majors at Cal State Long Beach finished final exams last week in courses ranging from music theory to opera performance, but the most difficult lessons of the semester had nothing to do with music.

“We had to run all over campus for classes,” said sophomore Angela Parrish of Downey. “It really ruined my focus.”

For Parrish and her classmates, fall semester meant coping with the bizarre roof collapse in July of the Gerald R. Daniel Recital Hall. No one was injured in the incident, but it left much of the eight-year-old structure in ruins and prompted the closure of several buildings in the music complex because of safety concerns.

The events forced the music department to put together an academic program without some of its most treasured facilities. The results were at times taxing and unconventional. For example:

* The 60-student symphonic band, the 80-student orchestra and the 65-student wind symphony held regular rehearsals in a closed fitness club at the Marina Pacifica shopping mall. They moved to the former Nautilus Club after a short stint at the Universalist Unitarian Church, where the musicians complained about poor acoustics. They may have to move again next semester because of concerns about liability insurance.

* The music department, which received an extra $40,000 this fall from the university for equipment rentals, leases and other unexpected expenses, saw revenue from recitals and performances drop by about one-third during the fall semester. The decrease of about $10,000 may force the department to cut some student scholarships next semester. “That is a real problem for us,” said department head Donald Para.

* Opera students settled last month into the Queen’s Salon aboard the Queen Mary for a performance of Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte,” originally scheduled for the collapsed recital hall. Although the unusual location attracted attention, the performance lost money because the ship could accommodate only 150 people, about half the capacity of the recital hall.

* A regular stream of students held recitals at the Long Beach Public Library as well as at a host of churches across town, but in many cases, tickets were not even printed because it was too difficult to keep track of the changing venues.

* Comedian and musician Dudley Moore held a benefit concert at the university in October to raise money to replace two Steinway pianos destroyed when the recital hall roof collapsed. The benefit raised $13,000, but even Moore encountered unexpected problems when a string broke on a Steinway borrowed for his performance.

“All in all, we survived pretty well,” said Para, taking stock of the semester last week. “We took the attitude when everything started that you just do what you have to do. You decide that you are not going to give in to it, that you are going to run a program, you are going to find a way to teach and make art, and then you do it.”

Andrew Friedman, a junior French horn student from Irvine, said most students learned to make the best of a trying situation. In fact, university officials said, enrollment is up over previous years.

“It has been a crazy semester, but nothing we couldn’t handle,” Friedman said. “It was actually great to play on the Queen Mary.”

In a report last week to the California State University chancellor’s office, investigators concluded that the roof collapse was caused by a combination of design, construction and maintenance problems. Cal State officials said they were optimistic that an agreement can be reached among the architect, contractor, roof manufacturer and the university to rebuild the recital hall and repair the other buildings.

“My great objective is to get the buildings back in place, safe and sound, and students in them,” said Cal State Long Beach President Curtis McCray. “Distributing the costs is going to be the question. First thing we have to do is discover what needs to be done, then establish the cost, and then how do we all ante up.”

Cal State Long Beach spokeswoman Toni Beron said that three of the six closed buildings in the music complex may be repaired by the end of January, in time for the start of spring semester. Work on the recital hall and two other problem-ridden buildings, however, is not expected to be completed until next fall--at the earliest. Several music professors said they are not planning on the recital hall reopening until the fall of 1992.

“It has all of us a little depressed--the fact that nothing is happening too fast,” said Prof. Justus Matthews.

For students and faculty, the collapsed roof and closed classrooms meant juggling the routine demands of academia with previously unimaginable problems of logistics. Matthews spent $650 of the $800 allocated this fall for the department’s New Music Ensemble to move five pianos from one end of the campus to the other for a concert. The money is typically used to hire professional musicians to perform with the ensemble, Matthews said.

Many classes were also moved across campus--a brisk 10-minute walk, sometimes with musical instruments in tow--to rooms loaned by other departments. To help students decipher the changes, the department distributed a two-page schedule of courses that listed “old room” and “new room” assignments. A campus map was also posted on the department bulletin board.

But even with the navigational aids, a lack of parking sometimes turned simple tasks, such as using temporary classrooms, into monumental assignments. “It seemed like you had to park miles and miles away,” said graduate student Ron Anderson of Lynwood.

Some students, however, got an extra bonus from the scheduling changes. Assistant Prof. Martin Herman moved his electronic music course to the film and television department, giving his students the unusual opportunity to write scores for films being produced by other students. Herman said he hopes to make the collaboration a permanent part of the course.

“That (film) department is about the farthest place from the music complex that you could be,” Martin said, “but that is where the music department used to be before they built the music complex. It was kind of like a homecoming.”

Para, the deparment head, said the search for temporary classrooms and performance sites for next semester is already under way. Through it all, he said, faculty and students have kept in mind that things could be much worse.

“We are just thankful that nobody got hurt,” he said.