Musical anatomy

WARNING: off-topic silliness follows. ; )

Sight reading with a piano pupil through a duet reduction of Haydn's Symphony No. 2 in D major yesterday, I was reminded of an experience I had as a callow seventeen year-old in my Music A Level Analysis class (I was studying on the Preparatory Course in Music at Dartington College of Arts in Devon; wow, I just realised that was half a lifetime ago!).

Our Analysis teacher, Dave (I forget his surname, which is probably fortunate), is fresh out of university and evidently keen to impress the class with his knowhow and enthusiasm. As we reach, in a group analysis, the point in the first movement of the symphony where Haydn modulates rather dramatically and loudly to A major, Dave melodramatically expostulates, in his vowel-softened Newcastle accent:

"Can't you just feel the massive A-ness?!"

The image Dave had just unintentionally conjured in our minds seems to hang in the air for a moment.

A deranged laughter bursts across the room, uncontrollable and side-splitting. We are falling off our chairs. Poor Dave flushes beetroot red.

Then some wag pipes up:

"It's a good job there's no key of P!"