In honor of the first day of the new semester, one of my favorite pieces of music ever. (Because it's Brahms' Academic Festival Overture)



I love this piece because for me, it really sums up what my romantic ideals (as a girl) of what life on a college campus would be - the purposefulness (much of that piece sounds like people striding rapidly across campus to class, their academic robes* flapping in the wind, discussing deep stuff as they go). The swelling music, capturing the joy that a bookish nerd feels upon facing a new academic challenge or a new semester - all the new books, new pencils, new things to be learned. Even the old drinking songs that are incorporated - though I have to admit my observation (not participation) of on-campus drinking suggested it was more like a really bad punk song than a comic scene from Shakespeare (In that, rather than in vino veritas - or in vino ridemus - it was more in vino, puking and bad hook-ups).

(*Yes, I admit it, I sort of wish American universities had kept the British tradition of students and faculty wearing the academic robes over their clothes. I would probably complain about the impracticality in real life, but in my romantic imaginings, everyone looks a bit like a combination between Hogwarts and the stories I've read featuring Oxbridge in the 20s and 30s)

And then there's the Gaudeamus at the end. Which is sometimes sung at graduations (well, not here, it isn't), and so seems such an appropriate summing-up. (Even if the Gaudeamus is essentially another drinking song).

I don't know, it's hard to explain. There's a lighthearted and yet serious quality to my imaginings of academic life - lighthearted in the sense that you were apart from the rest of the world, that you could almost imagine yourself above the grubbing and politicking that happened out in business and, well, politics (though sadly, that is not the case - though I have managed to avoid MOST campus politics, and am grateful for that). And the serious quality: well, learning is, I've always believed, serious business. (or, if you prefer, srs bzns). And yet, at the same time, it's FUN. It's about the best fun I know.

from the Gaudeamus: (I don't know Latin but I've seen the English translation of it, and probably most of you can figure out what it's saying):

Vivat academia!
Vivant professores!
Vivat membrum quodlibet
Vivant membra quaelibet
Semper sint in flore.