On Classical Music, Heavy Metal, and Parenting :: Non-Fiction Essays

On Classical Music, Heavy Metal, and Parenting You know, much to my parents’ chagrin, I used to hate classical music. In retrospect it makes perfect sense. I would get up on weekends, and when I’d come downstairs, instead of being whisked away by the light, airy strings of The Red Priest, I would instead be jolted awake by the sound of my dog’s howling. Soon thereafter we got a second dog, and then, not only were the decibels doubled, but the howling of two dogs would beat together as their respective sound waves mingled. Maybe I never liked the music itself. Too soft, too boring. However, I’ll conveniently absolve myself of guilt and say that I hated the music because it was too often complemented by the throbbing beat of my dogs’ objection. I mean really, dogs have no shame. I took piano lessons for six years. Rather, they made me take them. This was not a voluntary undertaking. Ironically enough, that seemed to help very little to further what should have been love for the classical. No, I wasn’t studying Jazz piano. I was very much ensconced in the works of Bach, Chopin, Bartok and the like. I practiced a lot. I suppose that I should also mention the fact that I couldn’t play the instrument, and that my technical control over it wasn’t worth a damn. My teacher, who was and still is a wonderful woman, would sign me up for piano examinations. They were like aptitude tests. I would play before a judge, and in addition to memorizing and playing a few pieces, I would also be asked to bang out scales and progressions that I was expected to know. Which I didn’t. It was hard to become fond of such music when I began to associate it with recitation, obligation, and the cruel, brutally honest judgment of my abilities, that glorious, r ipe fruit of my toils. I think the judges would pass me because they felt sorry for me. My musical tastes went through a few unfortunate years. My parents openly refused to take my musical sensibility seriously. They thought I was a joke, and with unwavering stubbornness, and I suppose ignorance, I would pitch my nose in the air, insisting no no, this really is good music. In an effort to distance myself from what I thought was the pretentious, classical bore, I moved to the other side of the continuum, and discovered grunge and alternative rock, a musical genre that deliberately attempted to be non-musical and crude.