After orals

The Hunt For Red October; Basil Poledouris, composer; Cincinnati Pops Orchestra; Erich Kunzel, conducting

My thirty minute oral examination at CCM scared me more than anything I’ve encountered in life so far. My professors appraised their investment in me by scrutinizing my in-depth knowledge of nine hundred years of music history, music theory and piano literature. What an ordeal. I hope there are no oral examinations to get into heaven.

After all of the trauma, torture, misery and agony, I needed to delve into something that had little to do with music. So, I picked up the book “The Hunt For Red October” by Tom Clancy. I had made a pledge years before that dictated that I read a book (provided that it’s a good book) before I see its movie. I enjoyed the book thoroughly and went to see the movie on the very day that I finished reading the book.

Someone told me, a few years later, that the film score, composed by Basil Poledouris, had included some of the men’s chorus sections from S. Prokofiev’s “Alexander Nevsky”. So I downloaded the choral sections from “The Hunt For Red October” to see if they matched anything from “Alexander Nevsky”. They didn’t.

Credits: To Tom Clancy, for excellent techno-thrillers. Thank you for Jack Ryan. He’s an American Hero.