Golden oldies...

I took music appreciation because 1) I know a lot about music, and since I was taking algebra, I thought it would be an easy A, and 2) I needed something artsy-fartsy in my curriculum to transfer to a university anyway. Well, it's not easy, and I don't know a lot. OK, I had heard half the selections on the first listening disk, and four of seven on the second. But I didn't know that a scherzo is a musical joke, that Franz Liszt was the first rock star, that Schubert was the father of the romantic era, or that Berlioz constructed the modern orchestra, and many new ways of flavoring the music with awesome timbre, the blend of instruments that gives classical, oops, I mean art music its character. So here I am, Saturday morning, with my second cup of luscious Sumatra coffee, listening to Mendelssohn's Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique, not to mention Dvorak's New World Symphony, not anything I would think of doing by myself, and really enjoying them! No one is more surprised than I. Really, I thought I had done everything, been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. And to find there are new horizons in the twilight of my years on this planet, well, that's solid gold.