Quotable Professor Day

Wisdom from Dr. Peter Spencer's Pedagogy of Music Theory class, Fall 2001

• "We're not dealing with Philip Glass here; we're dealing with someone who can write music."


• "The University of Florida has about as much right to call themselves a School of Music as I do to call myself a professional golfer. Actually, I have more of a right to call myself a professional golfer."


• "Not even [John Cage] would argue that you need to know how to write a C major triad. He wrote so many of them!" - on the importance of teaching music fundamentals


• "Fundamentals textbooks are a lot like gerbils -- they proliferate and then they die." - on why he wrote a music fundamentals textbook


• "'This is why you got it wrong, dummy.' Isn't it funny that we can't use the word 'dummy' in the classroom anymore? We can buy books with 'dummy' written all over...we have no problem labelling ourselves as dummies." - on how to explain a student mistake


• "This may be the best first quiz, collectively, I've ever seen. You don't look that bright, but you obviously are."


• "Stephen Foster really irritates me [...] He writes these smarmy, nasty, little tunes [...] But it is a good example of a two-phrase period, blast him!" - on the audacity of Stephen Foster and the use of Camptown Races as a politically incorrect example of periods


• "A mnemonic I use is the phone number, 473-6251. I tell people that's actually a bordello in Miami. Students seem to get a kick out of it." - on remembering the circle of progression for harmonic motion


• Dr. Spencer: "When you go to the store to buy marmalade and there's a whole row of jellies and marmalades, what do you do?"
  Student: "Taste them?"
  Dr. Spencer: "Taste them!? No wonder we've got an anthrax problem."


• "The 'whatever' will hit the fan, and we need to make sure the fan is running very slowly when that happens." - on the pitfalls of overexplaining figured bass symbols in basic theory classes


• "When you're teaching, try to get yourself into the minds of students, to the extent that some of them have minds."


• "'Cadential' isn't the most common word in student conversation. The most common word is 'like'. Isn't it fun sitting at the table with a younger brother or sister and having no idea what they're saying? It took me a while to figure out the word 'bad'." - on defining theory terms for students


• "Let's go on to the Mozart... the hell with Beethoven; he never knew how to part write anyhow." - on clear examples of diatonic seventh chords


• "When one's thirty-five, one knows everything... and then you gradually know less and less. [...] Then you hit eighty and you're suddenly omnipotent."


• "I agree, I don't like the operatic kind where the pitch on each note is everywhere and you could drive a truck through it." - on gratuitous vibrato


• "I think you've got to be a kid, or something better than an undergrad." - on people capable of reading the Harry Potter series


• Dr. Spencer: "Is there a place that students hang out these days?"
  Student: "...the Chiefs hang out in the lounge, the 'players' hang out down by the lockers, the string players hang out on the fourth floor..."
  Dr. Spencer: "I see. So where do the weirdos hang out?"
  Mark Connor, composer: "We hang out in the breezeway!"