Largely true confessions of a classical music nut...

Johann Sebastian Bach (Wikipedia)

Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/5-3-25 It’s not exactly Bob Dylan or Prince, I was thinking as, arms waving, I conducted a large symphony orchestra. Resounding through the concert hall was the second movement of Beethoven’s sixth symphony (the one with the great thunderstorm). The concert hall was our living room, with nobody home, the CD player blaring. My own Homegrown Music Festival.

 

I wouldn’t dare do such a thing if anyone was watching. Enter the men in white coats. (They’ll be back!)

 

Can’t help it though. I’m a classical music nut, have been since childhood, a proclivity that has survived through dozens of musical genres I have listened to during my long life, including the estimable Mr. Dylan — more on whom later.

 

I was in my teens in high school when Elvis hit and he changed everything in popular music. I thought he was great, even though I maintained my suppressed love of classical music in my high school years, attempting to be “cool” (and failing). Brahms is great, but not cool, like Chubby Checker.

 

Before Elvis, much popular music could only be looked upon today as “sappy.” The 1950s radio was humming with such songs as “How Much is that Doggie in the Window (arf-arf)” and “The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane” (tribute to a newborn). How about “On the Baby’s Knuckle or the Baby’s Knee, Where Will the Baby’s Dimple Be?” Great questions of our time. Or that time, I guess. Oh, can’t forget “The Shrimp Boats are a-Comin’, There’s Dancin’ Tonight.” But not the “Peppermint Twist.”

 

I always had classical music to fall back on though, earworm-wise.

 

It goes back a long way in my life, to fairly early childhood. There was a lot of classical music in my growing-up home because my mother was an accomplished pianist who played it on our piano. Plus, we had recordings of some of the great composers.  Bach was big, Bing not so much.  

 

Once as a child I was on a program in our church parlors in which Sunday school kids were interviewed. I was six or seven years old. When they got to me, the adult interviewer asked me several questions and it came out that I liked music. 

 

“What kind of music do you like? I was asked.

 

“Certainly not Shostakovich,” was my response.

 

People in the audience roared with laughter in appreciation of this rebuke of a Russian composer. One woman hugged me. It was when the Cold War was heating up right after World War II and anything anti-Russian was appreciated in America. 

 

At that moment I decided I would grow up to be president of the United States but it turns out I had to settle for living room maestro. Ironically, later in life I grew of appreciate Dmitri Shostakovich’s music, although I’m not that crazy about trying to spell his name. Google knows how.

 

Still, the music goes on and on, as do the years. I thought the folk singing Kingston Trio was pretty cool in the early ‘60s and also embraced some jazz — Shearing, Brubeck — but classical music from the romantic era (largely 19th Century) has remained my staple although I also can also go for baroque and dip into the 20th Century. Remember that century?

 

Beatles? I missed being a fan, but they have their moments. What about rock ’n’ roll? It can’t be avoided. If it could, I would. I once I wrote “I’ve got a right to hate the blues” in a column and got hate mail. Prince is huge, but not for me. My rain ain’t purple. Sorry, kids. (My own kids, great fans.)

 

Can’t forget Country/Western. It’s tuneful, I admit. I once wrote a Country/Western song called “It’s a One Woman Kitchen/She’s Out There Cookin’ All the Time” that went over big in the doghouse.

 

Moving on in the world of music: What about hip-hop? Many of my generation are hopping to their orthopedic surgeons to see about getting new hips. Being a registered geezer, that’s all I have to say about that genre. (Don’t tell my grandchildren.)

 

Why all this now? Bob Dylan has suddenly reappeared in our lives with a recent concert in Mankato, Minn, that has received quite a bit of attention in his home state, as has the movie about his early life, “A Complete Unknown.” Saw it. Liked it.

 

Being such a stuffy classical music guy, it has taken me a long time to appreciate Dylan’s art but I have come to realize he is a brilliant thinker, a gifted poet and a talented musician with a plain singing voice for conveying his thoughts. Grand opera it ain’t, though.

 

Dylan’s ability to stay in the public eye and maintain his enormous popularity for 65 years while seeming not to care is unique. He has never sought glory in his birth town or where he grew up — Duluth and Hibbing. If I had done that well, I’d have demanded a ticker-tape parade.

  

My sticking with classical music in these troubled times can be upsetting though. In a restless overnight dream, I failed to pull the drapes while conducting the massive Gustav Mahler Second Symphony (titled “Resurrection”) and somebody must have seen me waving my arms and reported it.

 

Glancing outside in my dream I noticed two strange men approaching the house. They were wearing white coats. That was okay, though. “I’ve always trusted the kindness of strangers,” as Blanche said in “Streetcar” when they came to get her. (Oops, don’t get me started on theater.)

 

Rrrrring went the alarm clock. I was resurrected.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.