Musico-Blogging Glossary

It has been obvious to me for some time now that us musico-bloggers are fond of relying on a certain group of big words to make ourselves sound smarter than we actually are. Many of my recent blogospheric explorations have precipitated repeated trips to the dictionary just to understand all the jargon, foreign borrowings, and literary devices that y'all have such a penchant for. Hence, for the benefit of the uninitiated, I'd like to present what I hope will be a useful compilation of these terms and what they really mean. With any luck, this will save future readers from feelings of confusion and resentment. Without further ado...

profligate: show-off

schadenfreude: taking pleasure in the misfortune of classical music

autodidact: philosophy major

zeitgeist: the moment you realize that a whole bunch of composers already did what you are doing now

ersatz: product of zeitgeist

the long tail: theory describing the distribution of income among professional musicians. A graph of the data begins with a short, pronounced spike (the lucky ones) followed by quickly receding "long tail" (the indigents).

frisson: an accessible piece

pugilist: author of anonymous comments

polyglot: crossover artist

monograph: a blog post that is way too long

prestidigitation: typing many posts within a short period of time

legerdemain: typing many posts within a short period of time, then posting them one by one over a longer period of time in order to give the false impression of consistent productivity

metaphysics: if a blogger posts and no one reads it, does it exist?

To be continued...