I oughta know that....?

Hey - it happens to all of us. In this house, we have a stock answer - anytime there is ANYTHING playing that we do not know, we say "Bartok - Concerto for Orchestra". It could be *Baroque* - it's just the stock answer that means - heck, you don't expect us to know it ALL do you?

I had a professor much like John Houseman's character in paper Chase when I was in grad school. Terrorized all of us. He gave the HARDEST listening tests ever - so very may columns to fill in for such a HUGE listening assignment. I despaired - so I added another column - "measure number".

The person to survive was my husband. This man knows STUFF - and his knowledge of musicology is only surpassed by his knowledge of baseball. He is a walking *bar bet* font of knowledge. On our first date (we are married 36 years), there was that *silence* - and he was writing. I asked him WHAT. He sheepishly said "I am listing the works of Schoenberg chronologically." Yeah - that';s why I married him, alright . . .

So - if we cannot name something, it's either "Bartok . . " - or "Dad? What is this?"

I play or at least have heard everything Chopin wrote. I hum his waltzes, hear his piano concertos in my head and I feel very confident that if I did hear an unfamiliar work of his, I would be able to name him as the composer. That's what I thought anyway.

One day driving around I was listening to an unfamiliar piano work and was not paying too much attention at first. Later as I began to really listen I realized I did not know this piece and tried to identify the composer, I settled on John Field. How surprised I was when the radio announcer said "You have just heard the Chopin Sonata no. 1". How could I not know this piece? Very humbling.

When I lived in Knoxville, the classical station had a "Monday Evening Music Quiz." A composition was played unannounced, callers were invited to call in with guesses regarding the identity of the composer, and the names of those guessing correctly were announced.

I made some hits, but I made some misses, too.

Sometimes I didn't even get the right time period. They played a flute composition by Debussy, and I guessed that it was by Hindemith.

Hafwen, that's okay. At least the composition you identified was in the warhorse category.

Mamianka, I'm glad your husband isn't in this forum. He sounds like a fierce competitor for Top Contributor status.

Well this happens to me sometimes when I listen to metal. Like i would be shocked to hear say a ensiferum song and know who it was too and yet didn't know it.

Also it wouldn't even be a new song.

That happens a lot though to metal heads and it's great.

For classical though i never did listen to it that much but I do enjoy it time to time since classical music is a big influence in certain death metal and other sub genres of metal. i would listen to classical music more if there was better classical music radio stations where I live, but they don't play that much good stuff.

Well right now though I am putting some Beethoven on my mp3 player.

I hope I answered this right.

Oh dear...

Did you have to ask, now I'll have to confess...

A favorite pastime of mine is "name that tune." Yikes, it was the beautiful second movement to the 1st Rachmaninoff concerto...

So, I had no idea what it was (of course I had listened to that concerto a million times... grrr... my memory isn't as good as it used to be...) so I though, oh! Mozart, he wrote a lot of piano concertos!

oops...

Completely wrong.

I get lots of bizarre ideas when playing name that tune...

Another disastrous mistake was (I'm feeling similar to mamianka now...) was mistaking a (oh no!) Bartok improvisation with a (uh oh...) Scarlatti sonata... (how could I?)

oops...

The worst part is that I was very confident that I knew what it was...

Oh well...

Cheerio!

Glinzek, funny you should ask this question today!

You know, I'm still reeling with embarrassment from an incident last night...I was having dinner with friends, and one of them starting singing a VERY well-known piano concerto theme.

"Awww," I said. "Good old Grieg..."

Deathly silence. Everyone stared at me, mouths open.

"What?" I demanded.

No response.

"It - it IS the Grieg..." I gulped, "isn't it?"

No, it wasn't the Grieg. It was the Tchaikowsky Concerto no. 1.

I mean, DUR-R-R-R-R.

Can a Baroque-head like me be excused? Hmmm, I think not...

Cheers,

Hafwen.

Yes, more often than I care to admit.

Our brains are like computers.

Someone simply hit the party shuffle by mistake.

Just click on restored playlists and you'll be fine.

I've had it happen on occasion, but more often than not I'm either dead wrong or not willing to go out on a limb.