A Most Excessive Display of Musical Knowledge

Dense, controlled, and packed with musical terminology, this song lets Seraphino demonstrate theory while correcting an audience that claps late, fears modulation, and mistakes counterpoint for witchcraft. The humor comes from the collision between genuine expertise and his complete inability to exercise modesty about possessing it.

The title hath been called an admission. It is, in truth, a warning label placed for the protection of slower listeners.

I wished the composition to remain busy without becoming unruly. Its references to cadence, fugue, inversion, dynamics, rubato, and deceptive resolution are not ornaments pasted upon a simpler jest; they govern the behavior of the music itself. This density is deliberate. The audience should feel that the lesson proceedeth whether or not it hath brought writing materials. Yet the piece would fail were knowledge alone the subject. Its true concern is confidence without comprehension: the person who loseth the pulse but correcteth the performer, demandeth resolution but complaineth when surprised, and requests something familiar after being offered something fine. I bear such listeners no malice. I merely ask that they clap where the measure actually endeth.