I once studied composition with a pupil of Stravinsky.
I say this not to point out my pedigree, but to point out how pedigrees are utterly useless as a measure of talent, even when real and deserved.
His name is unimportant, although he was famous or competent enough to gain tenure as a Professor of Composition at a famous Ivy League college.
He was known as a stern taskmaster, aloof and disdainful.
We'll call him Professor K.
He had an eastern European air about him, and his pedigree of having had Stravinsky as a teacher gave him a substance and reputation that everyone seemed to acknowledge.
I ended up taking composition with him, hoping that the knowledge he gained from Stravisnky might somehow be transferable.
But it wasn't, as I soon found out.
He was irascible, throwing my composition books on the floor and looking at me as if a chimpanzee had just applied to pilot his steamship.
He found me imaginative but undisciplined.
I think now that he might have been demented, and everyone else knew it but me.
But I persevered, and presented him with themes for concertos and symphonies, all of which he rejected as too facile, too melodic, too agreeable for his modernist tastes.
His last review of me was a vicious, "You dare to write music which has a melody!" He gave me an F for the first quarter, and I protested to the Chairman, who examined my voluminous work and said, shaking his head, "Your work is wonderful.
" Now, believing Professor K.
to be quite mad, I checked out a Violin Sonata he had written, found in the bowels of the music library basement that I liked to hunt.
I opened it and played it, and it was page after page of violent squawking and wrenching on the violin, pierced by periodic sledgehammer piano chords interspersed with trickling jabber.
It was just about the worst piece of academic nonsense I had ever seen, but here it was published by the famed Boosey and Hawkes.
He had won some famous prize in 1936.
I dropped the Professor's course.
I didn't see him again until the end of the year at a concert, where I discovered him standing directly behind me at intermission.
I turned around and said hello, and to make conversation, tried to say something nice about the awful Violin Sonata of his I had found.
He was suddenly nice and seemed touched.
We spoke for a bit.
I hoped for a tidbit about Stravinsky, but none was forthcoming.
As we parted Professor K.
said quietly to me, "Thank you for talking to me.
No one has spoken to me here in twenty years.
"
I say this not to point out my pedigree, but to point out how pedigrees are utterly useless as a measure of talent, even when real and deserved.
His name is unimportant, although he was famous or competent enough to gain tenure as a Professor of Composition at a famous Ivy League college.
He was known as a stern taskmaster, aloof and disdainful.
We'll call him Professor K.
He had an eastern European air about him, and his pedigree of having had Stravinsky as a teacher gave him a substance and reputation that everyone seemed to acknowledge.
I ended up taking composition with him, hoping that the knowledge he gained from Stravisnky might somehow be transferable.
But it wasn't, as I soon found out.
He was irascible, throwing my composition books on the floor and looking at me as if a chimpanzee had just applied to pilot his steamship.
He found me imaginative but undisciplined.
I think now that he might have been demented, and everyone else knew it but me.
But I persevered, and presented him with themes for concertos and symphonies, all of which he rejected as too facile, too melodic, too agreeable for his modernist tastes.
His last review of me was a vicious, "You dare to write music which has a melody!" He gave me an F for the first quarter, and I protested to the Chairman, who examined my voluminous work and said, shaking his head, "Your work is wonderful.
" Now, believing Professor K.
to be quite mad, I checked out a Violin Sonata he had written, found in the bowels of the music library basement that I liked to hunt.
I opened it and played it, and it was page after page of violent squawking and wrenching on the violin, pierced by periodic sledgehammer piano chords interspersed with trickling jabber.
It was just about the worst piece of academic nonsense I had ever seen, but here it was published by the famed Boosey and Hawkes.
He had won some famous prize in 1936.
I dropped the Professor's course.
I didn't see him again until the end of the year at a concert, where I discovered him standing directly behind me at intermission.
I turned around and said hello, and to make conversation, tried to say something nice about the awful Violin Sonata of his I had found.
He was suddenly nice and seemed touched.
We spoke for a bit.
I hoped for a tidbit about Stravinsky, but none was forthcoming.
As we parted Professor K.
said quietly to me, "Thank you for talking to me.
No one has spoken to me here in twenty years.
"
Source...