Midlife Meditation

Yeah, I hear your dismay, fellow music nerds: What the glockenspiel happened to Brahms? The answer is very simple: I just don't care for him. Blasphemy! Heresy! Tools of musicological excommunication, anathematization, shunning, and belittling are even now being leveled at my cretinous self. But if you can just bear with me for a few minutes, I hope you'll reconsider booting me from the Society of Musical Snobbery, because the case I'm arguing in this series is that taste, while it can be cultivated, is ultimately subjective. When last (a few hours ago, to be precise) we checked in with our erstwhile musical novice, he was about to embark on full apprenticeship in the musical arts. His institution of choice: Willamette University, a small liberal arts college in Salem, Oregon. I arrived at Willamette grossly unlettered in music literature. My exposure to the classics was limited to a few recitals I had yawned my way through (Van Cliburn--yes, that Van Cliburn--was ...

There was never any doubt I would be a musician. My father began taking pictures of me at my mother's piano as soon as I was able to sit up by myself. My mother, a classically trained professional organist and piano teacher, started me on lessons when I was 5, and continued teaching me until I was 11, when I was allowed to choose a band instrument. I have little memory of the music I learned during those piano lessons, though I do remember that new sheet music had a wonderful fragrance to it. There are a number of pieces from Bach's Anna Magdalena Notebook I can still play--more likely fake--from memory, and that's about it. Considering my mother was a professional musician, and my father a gifted amateur, it's remarkable how little music I heard growing up. We had a phonograph, but it was mostly used to play children's records. There were a few LPs, as well as several box sets of 78s, that my brothers and I would occasionally put on, but there was little on t...