We Definitely Went to Different Schools

Anthony Tommasini tells us in his recent review of Gustavo Dudamel's performance conducting the New York Philharmonic playing Anton Dvorak's chestnut 'New World Symphony,' that he always feels the piece is played far too often by most orchestras.

He goes on the tell us he attributes this feeling perhaps to the overkill of a gym class instructor he had in college who played excerpts from the symphony during exercise sessions. He admits that when he hears the third movement he gets the urge to scoot out into the aisle and start doing jumping jacks.  He so far resists.

What Mr. Tommasini is of course describing is that something always reminds us of something. And of course music can be the greatest of all memory catalysts.

I had a friend who told me Maurice Ravel's 'Bolero' was "the greatest fuck music ever written." He attributes this conclusion to the fact that it always reminds him of when he was a young, unmarried fellow and he was boffing a judge's daughter in the judge's study, with of course Bolero playing in the background. (Timing is everything.) Jump in the aisle and start doing that and they will definitely lead you out.

It is funny, but the same friend had a subscription to a box at Carnegie Hall in the '80s and took me to see, and of course hear, what was my first classical music concert ever. The feature piece was Dvorak's Ninth. the famous 'New York Symphony.' From that moment on I added classical music to music I enjoy. And I can't help but remember my friend Tom whenever I hear the symphony performed. And I've heard it several times, even taking him to a performance of it years and years after as a way of a thank you.

But right from the outset of Mr. Tommasini's review, it is made clear that he and I went to entirely different schools. The only sounds I ever heard in any gym class were grunts, whistles, and the squeaking of sneakers on polished gym floors.

Even into college, my exposure to classical music was either through cartoons, (Carmen) or Rossini's 'William Tell Overture' played at the start of Lone Ranger TV episodes. No one, particularly in a gym class, ever revealed themselves to be a fan of what I grew up referring to as "long hair music."

Mr. Tommasini obviously went to a college that likely had a tuition far in excess of anything my family could afford. I never heard of student loans, but my father certainly heard of loan sharks. Perhaps he got a special rate for the pursuit of a higher education. It's way too late to find out.

Even without seeing someone, or reading something they wrote, generational differences can become apparent.

At my next-to-last job I distinctly remember being on the phone with a very pleasant sounding female voice, trying to provide enough answers to her questions so that she could design a sales brochure for our unit in the hope of snaring more clients to use our fraud detection services.

We were both part of a very far-flung company, Trizetto, and she was in Chicago. We went on and on quite well, but I just knew by things I said, and what she said, that I grew up knowing way more presidents than she did.

I finally consolidated our differences by telling her, "I think you and I grew up being taken to different movies."

The brochure was a winner.

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