Sydney Life

The human memory is like a bit like a two-year-old iPod – temperamental, capricious, and an increasingly short ‘play’ time. On a good day, your memory might do you proud, spewing up pages of Music History 3 notes and replaying entire piano concertos within the warm fuzzy confines of your cranium. Other times, your memory works for about 30 seconds every five minutes, and for some reason refuses to play anything bar KanYe West’s ‘Gold Digger’, apparently completely at random.

But there is one function of our memories that (I like to think) separates man from machine. And that is our ability to retain copious amounts of Interesting, Questionable, and Utterly Useless Facts (Henceforth IQUUFs).

Schubert died of syphilis.
Whilst preparing for a Music History listening test with a friend, I made the mistake of asking “So, how do I tell the difference between the million songs in Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’ song cycle?”
“I have no idea,” he answered, “But I do know that Schubert died of syphilis.”
That right there? IQUUF. The result of this top-of-the-mind-recall information? It was all I could think about during my Music History listening test.
‘Oh. A guy singing, it must be from ‘Winterreise’. But which song is it? Did he just say syphilis? Schubert died of syphilis. Oh my gosh - was Schubert prophesying his own death? Oh crap - next question.’

Beethoven punched his best friend.
That Beethoven. Great guy – absolute genius. Total jerk of course, but what genius isn’t? Shamefully, this is like word association to me. It’s getting to the point where if someone says “Beethoven” I automatically look for a best friend to punch…

Scriabin died because of a pimple.
This is a prime example of an IQUUF, because I have absolutely no idea of the specifics. I’m pretty sure that Scriabin didn’t look in the bathroom mirror one morning and die of embarrassment at the mere thought of someone else seeing a particularly prominent pimple on his nose. I’m about 99% sure that the pimple was the precursor for some kind of gross infection, which turned into some kind of gross disease, which turned into some kind of pus-filled death.
But let’s not spoil the simplistic perfection of this IQUUF by adding explanatory information until it becomes mundane. Because although this little titbit of information will probably never be required for an essay, it’s fantastic for when I’m trying to be a cruel older sister (“Oooh a pimple you say? Look out – Scriabin died from a pimple.”).

The tuba part in Dvorak’s 9th symphony was only written to stop a tuba player from sleeping with Dvorak’s wife.
This is probably my favourite one, especially when you see that the tuba part, in its entirety, consists of 14 notes. I kid you not – fourteen. It’s pretty entertaining sitting behind an orchestra for a performance. Most instruments have multiple page turns, with their music neatly encased in a fancy booklet with a title page. The tuba part consists of one page. Half of it is taken up by the title of the work. And the tuba player gets paid the same amount of money as everyone else.

It’s a terrible, beautiful form of revenge that Dvorak inflicted on that amorous tuba player back in 1893. I can just imagine his thought process:
‘Tuba part? Check. Number of notes countable using only fingers and toes? Check. Lack of particularly exciting notes? Check. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of COUNTING? Check. That jerk of a tuba player required at every single rehearsal? CHECK. Oh yeah. Oh, I’m good. Heh heh heh.’

And finally:
Rimsky-Korsakov (Russian composer) found that he could not, as hard as he tried, get any of his works published while Tchaikovsky (another Russian composer) was alive. When Tchaikovsky finally did die, Rimsky-Korsakov’s first published opera was called Christmas Eve.

Completely awesome. “Dear Santa, I know this isn’t all that ethical. But this Christmas, all I want is for Tchaikovsky to get cholera. Preferably quite severely. Please consider it - I’m starving on rotten potatoes and vodka. Yours Sincerely, Nikolai.”

NB Unfortunately, when asked to recall “weird musical facts”, 9 out of 10 people completely forget any they ever knew.