Tonight was the Masterworks Chorale concert, so that’s my creativity for the day.

We sang An Evening with Rodgers & Hammerstein, a packaged thing from the R&H conglomerate. Great tunes, for the most part, and some very interesting, lush harmonies. I was very intrigued by their “waywardness” in harmonizing what I remembered as very simple melodies. Of course, this may not have been Rodgers’ original scoring but some later hired hand’s work. Nevertheless, it was instructive.

One way in which it was instructive was that it brought to mind the comments of some “real” musician who had graciously agreed to look over one of the movements of my Mass in C, many years ago. There was one passage in particular that he furrowed his eyebrows over and made some comment about my having gone from one key to another in five or six consecutive measures.

My only possible reply at the time was, “That’s what I heard.” That is, of course, the correct answer to any such sniffing. But I might just as well have said, “It’s something I picked up from studying Richard Rodgers.” That might not have reduced the sniffing in the least, but at least it would have clued me in on exactly what direction the snobbery was coming from.