This year I thought it would be fun to become a musicologist. Other New Years resolutions seemed boring to me - losing weight, getting more exercise - I've done all those before. (Well, certainly I've tried to do those things before.) Becoming a musicologist would be much more challenging and interesting. And I like the word "musicologist", the way it rolls off the tongue, the way it sounds important, a term given to a person who is scholarly, worldly, well-respected, and obviously, musical. People at parties would ask me, "And what do you?" And I would answer proudly, "I'm a musicologist."
Musicologists, I discovered, are people who have degrees in music, that is, people who go to college and study music, and all there is to know about music. These people, these musicologists, have PhDs in music. These sorts of degrees require at least nine to ten years of college study. That would be a problem for me. I don't have the money to go to college, never mind get a degree, especially a PhD. Musicologists, I also found out, are usually amazingly talented musicians and composers, who know a lot about music before they even venture into a four year music degree. Becoming a musicologist is about the most far-fetched scheme I could ever come up with. I may as well have decided to become a brain surgeon.
So I thought perhaps I would become a self-taught musicologist. I would study courses on my own, and become a musicologist for pure enjoyment. Because what would be more fun than memorizing all of Paganini's twenty-four caprices, right? That's got to be a heck of a good time. I know it's going to be tough going it alone, but I know a little about music - I certainly have an appreciation for music. I can read, study, listen to music, practice my violin, my keyboard, compose a couple of oratorios. Who needs a college degree?
So I purchase myself a book about the fifty greatest composers which includes descriptions of their most important works, all 1,000 of them. And I make a determined effort to spend large portions of my day immersed in musical study, and critical listening. I turn my office into a music room, delve into my textbook, put on some classical CDs, and rosin my bow. And after just a few days of this, I'm having second thoughts about becoming a musicologist.
First off, I discovered that even after six months of violin lessons I can't play one piece through to the end without making a mistake. I'm also lazy, and never practice my scales. I can play a few pieces on my keyboard, but am unable to understand what all the little buttons mean and I sound like a lounge musican playing to drunks at the Ramada Inn. I can strum several chords on a tenor ukulele and guitar, but that's it. I can sing a little, but my range is about five notes. I love to listen to classical music and even attend chamber music concerts, but I have to sit on my hands to keep myself from applauding between movements, a faux pas among musical sophisticates.
Yesterday afternoon I tried to listen to Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave, while reading about the composer's life, laying in bed. I fell asleep in five minutes, and dreamed I was drowning in a great ocean. When I woke up, the CD had ended, and I was suffocating in tangled blankets, ashamed of myself. Dedicated musicology students don't spend their afternoons in bed. I was a failure.
I couldn't tell a clavier from a harpsichord, nor a cadenza from a chorus. I'm afraid to play music in public, lest I make a mistake. And as far as turning musicology into a career, I recently read that the only thing that a musicologist can really do for a living is to teach others to become musicologists. And so, I think I will continue to enjoy music as I have been all along, listening to CDs, going to concerts, and strumming a few chords on the ukulele. Leave the musicology degrees to the musicologists.
