on 2/6/08 10:57 AM, Lee Ridgway at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Last night, listening to WHRB, the Harvard FM station which for
> several years has been the Boston area's best classical (and jazz)
> station, the DJ announced a recording of Handel's Suite in g, "played
> on harp-is-chord by Sophie Yates". Yes, that pronounciation, so often
> used by us harpsichordists' when joking-around. I just about dropped
> a fresh-cooked pot of rice pilaf on the kitchen floor. And then the
> announcer said it again, just before starting the CD!
> 
> Granted, just about all the announcers on HRB are Harvard students,
> and although most of them do know a thing or two about music, we do
> occasionally hear some truly butchered pronounciations from these
> kids, usually of names or titles in languages other than English. But
> this was a first.
> 
> Someone must have called while the music was playing, or else the
> announcer looked more closely at the CD notes, because in the after-
> announcement, she pronounced "harpsichord" correctly.

Gee, and all this time I'd been led to believe that Harvard folks had
absolutely superior and infallible intelligence, as compared to us
knuckle-dragging troglodytes in flyover country, where you hear the term
"harpischord" bandied about continually in the trailer parks we all live in.

;)

-- 
James R. (Jay) McCarty, MD
Fort Worth, TX

"You can tell a Harvard man, but you can't tell him much"