You know you're really a musician when...

September 4, 9:59 AMSF Classical Music ExaminerScott Foglesong

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Comedian Jeff Foxworthy is famous for his "You Might be a Redneck, If...." jokes, books, and TV specials. Totally open-ended, just keep adding one-liners.

So in true Foxworthy spirit, I offer a set of "You know you're really a musician when..." quickies.

If you feel moved to add to the collection, well, there's an "Add Comment" button.

You know you're really a musician when...

        You can imbue a waltz with Viennese gemutlichkeit or a sarabande with Delphic gravitas, but you can't dance a step without making a lurching clod of yourself.

You know you're really a musician when...

        You can sing and/or play every last aria in Don Giovanni by memory, in any key, but you don't know any of the words.

You know you're really a musician when...

        You've become benignly tolerant of ignorant twits who pronounce "Dvorák" without the zhuh in the middle.

You know you're really a musician when...

        You've forgotten what life was like without back pain.

You know you're really a musician when...

        Your youthful, incoherent terror of the late Beethoven quartets, having progressed through successive stages of attraction, appreciation, and amazement, has settled comfortably into mature, incoherent terror.

You know you're really a musician when...

        At a screening of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, you're the only person in the theater to guffaw when Gene Wilder pokes his head out of the train window and says: "Pardon me, boy, is this the Transylvania Station?" (Bonus points: you then blurt out Yahsir, Track Twenty-Nine!! right along with the porter.)

You know you're really a musician when...

       As a kid at the summer camp joke marathon, amidst all the booger and titty jokes, your contribution was inevitably What's brown and sits on a piano bench?

Coming up: on September 9, a look at the new Tilson Thomas/SFS recording of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde.

• The S.F. Conservatory celebrates Elinor Armer and Conrad Susa on September 6
• Here's an article about September at the San Francisco Symphony
• Here's one about September at the San Francisco Opera
• And yet another one about September programs from the New Century Chamber Orchestra