Confessions of a classical music nerd

Hey all,

There's been a lot on my mind recently. Has it ever happened to you that you've suddenly found yourself believing something you once told yourself you would never believe? That's what happened to me. (Sorry if this is uninteresting but it's what's been on my mind recently so I want to write about it.)

Some background: through high school, I always despised the musical philosophies of the 20th century. That is, the sort of attitude that says only the educated elite can understand music. Composers wrote stuff that sounded like garbage (or like nothing at all) and everyone was expected to appreciate it or risk looking unsophisticated. Basically, it just alienated audiences and made the classical music scene unapproachable and, frankly, unappealing.

 Over the course of the spring semester, I'd been sort of formulating a philosophy of composing. My private teacher is sort of a 20th century kind of guy, and in a lot of ways, he has helped me appreciate the good that came out of that era of music. In fact, as the semester went on, I gradually found myself accepting that I was (like the other music students) learning to appreciate music on a higher level than the average person. In a sense, I suppose this is true; at least from a theoretical perspective I'm becoming more and more knowledgeable the more I study.

It wasn't until I got back here for the summer and started talking to the musicians I looked up to in high school that I realized how much of a snob I was turning into. It's actually quite depressing. Honestly, I realized I'd started claiming to like lots of music that in high school I would have found obnoxiously pretentious. Did I actually like it? Not really. I "appreciated" it. I knew that it was technically "good" music, and if I wanted to be a good music student I needed to listen to it.

As for where I am now, I've learned a lot but I'm struggling to find a balance between my creations needing to be beautiful and needing to be intellectual (if that makes sense). There are certain ideas that I'm glad my teacher has imparted to me. But there are others I wish I didn't feel obligated to accept simply because I'm his student.

The moral of the story? I'm a classical music nerd and I'm not ashamed of it. But there's a difference between enthusiasm born of love and enthusiasm born of a need to look or feel intelligent. I think that those of us who call ourselves nerds can sometimes lose sight of the line between the two. Let's not not abandon the things we believe in just because we want to look smarter in the eyes of our friends or teachers. Okay? Okay.



Alright, that's all I have to say. I hope I managed to make some sense in this post-- I guess it's really directed to myself but maybe you got something out of it. Hope to see lots of posts this next week! :) And we really need to plan our life in a day project soon.

DFTBA,
Emily