A cheap entertainer who fancies himself a writer was the judgment pronounced by a colleague who had no idea that her words would come bouncing back to me, and in short order. I took her dig in stride, figuring that: 1) I’m actually a kinda pricey entertainer and 2) quite a few editors and publishers fancy me to be a writer as well, and buy my stuff. So whether it was sour grapes or sour apples talking, sour disposition or sour stomach, I didn’t let it pucker me. Well, not much. Then again, here I am using it as the lead for a post, so maybe it gave me a tummyache after all.
Besides, she was full of it. Her stance was very pro-musicology and anti-performer; as far as she was concerned, we public types who actually engage with the big bad ticket-buying world have dirt under our fingernails, rings around our collars, and talk like a bunch of Gomer Pyles when amongst ourselves. Ergo, in her view musicologists can do no wrong, especially the most arcane sort who write professionally inscrutable journal articles about lute ciaconnas in the court of Hedrick IV in 1550s Antwerp. We of the hillbilly persuasion tend to look upon those musicologists as dessicated dullards, juiceless and joyless blowhards who peer out from behind library shelves while we take yet another bow.
That’s not to say that we’re armed opponents glaring at each other across a campus-wide Maginot Line, but there are some for whom the situation savors a bit of Upstairs, Downstairs. I think my accuser was one of those, having grown a sizeable chip on the shoulder. I teach in a conservatory, by definition blue-collar and working-class, devoted to the training of professional working musicians and giving lip service to the scholarly end of things. Yet conservatories are degree-granting institutions and those all those bachelor’s and master’s certificates need to be made out of something more than tissue paper. Thus we oblige our students to absorb a reasonable amount of music history, literature, and the like. We’re not producing budding musicologists, but at least our grads know the difference between Biber and Bieber. Well, some do. Well, somebody does. Well, I do, and in the far mists of time I received several degrees from honest-Injun conservatories.
Perhaps I could ding myself for not adding to the field, engaging in pure scholarship instead of devoting my research to fodder for my general-interest audiences at the SF Symphony or UC Berkeley or the Fromm Institute. There isn’t the slightest doubt in my mind that I would have made a dandy pure scholar; I have the patience, the concentration, and the sheer love of learning. But I never would have been a dry one, or a refugee type who fled to musicology because dogs howled in agony when I played the cello. No. I was destined to do what I do, which is to communicate music to ordinary folks who care enough to buy symphony tickets, attend places like the Fromm, or encourage their kids to take introductory music courses at Cal. I also spend part of my week imparting music theory and eartraining to professionally-bound conservatory students. Both jobs are valuable.
I want to share my discoveries with everybody, and not just with the 2.5 people who know my patch of the field well enough to follow my studies. It’s of utter unconcern to me that I may be traipsing over well-trod paths. I haven’t trod them before, and that’s all that matters.
In fact, given the source, that insult at the head of this post just might be construed more as a compliment. If to ignite an audience’s interest in a piece of music is “cheap entertainment,” then I’m delighted to serve as the lowest vaudevillian imaginable. And if inciting that same interest with clear, engaging prose is to fancy oneself a writer, then I proudly join the ranks of any number of other fancied writers who are eagerly and happily read by the paying public. Or, to quote my fellow cheap entertainer Liberace, I’ll cry all the way to the bank.