How To Disappear Completely

and now for a theme in the mediant

Most of the time in this grad program I feel as if I am learning, learning, learning, always encountering the unfamiliar, trying to absorb it all and become the knowledgeable expert. This usually involves heavy listening to all sorts of genres under the sun, although I feel as if I barely scratch the surface before moving on to the next thing. And any true expert worth his or her salt will call me out eventually.

But today brought the breath of familiarity. I invigilated a music history test (interestingly enough termed music history--the standard--as opposed to the courses titled popular music history). I had gotten used to hearing Pink Floyd, or Stephen Foster, Elvis Presley, Jimmie Rodgers, or any of a number of du-wop, mo-town, or tin pan alley songs for the listening sections. But today what should hit my ears but a section from the 5th movement of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. The weird clarinet glisses, the ominous bass. I started to grin. When the next listening example brought the hymn-like secondary theme from the first movement of the Waldstein sonata, I grinned even more. As the scale passages raced away, I started tapping along. As cool as I've tried to be in my various forays into hip alternative genres, I still can't escape the pure joy that Beethoven still brings me. Call it indoctrination, but I was surely having fun with that dead white deaf man's music today.