An Important Clarification

In going through my inbox today, I read with horror the following email:

Thanks for the tipoff on the Rosen book [The Classical Style]. If you couldn't understand it, with only my five years of piano lessons I certainly won't, and can save my $15.

No, no, no, no! Anyone with even the most rudimentary grasp of the language of music (i.e., anyone who can read music notation, even haltingly) will understand Rosen's book, so lucidly is it written. When I wrote (in this post),

I can, of course, with some expenditure of effort and slow reading, get the gist of Rosen's arguments, but real understanding is, I suspect, now sadly beyond my capabilities — that is, short of my first learning and practicing at music theory all over again...,

I meant merely that with my current arthritic facility at music theory the real (i.e., gut-level as opposed to intellectual) understanding of the practicing musician was beyond my present capabilities.

Spend those $15 if the subject is of interest to you. They will prove to be among the best-invested dollars you ever spent.

And my apologies for being unclear and misleading.

Mea maxima culpa.