My Favourtie Composer

I went to university from 1966-67 to 1969-70. In the fall of 1968, a new professor joined the faculty. She was Czechoslovakian, with a doctorate in music and experience in teaching, and had managed to get out of Prague just before the Russian tanks rolled in to put down the uprising known as the Prague Spring. She made it to Canada and was hired to teach my music history class.

She was very intelligent and had an excellent command of English, so much so that sometimes some of us scurried to a dictionary to look up a word she used. However, she had quite a thick accent and at first, her classes consisted of her just reading her lecture from her notes rather than winging it, because she had not yet settled down to feel comfortable in her new job and her new country. That meant for the first term her classes were dry and a bit boring, largely because much of what she said was delivered in a slight monotone as she read from her notes, and it was also not easy to cut through her heavy accent.

One day that fall was a particularly warm day and I was sitting at the back of the class feeling very sleepy. So as her lecture proceeded, I entered into a monumental battle with myself to stay awake. My head would fall and I'd catch myself and suddenly sit up, open my eyes wide, but soon nod off again.
 

As I nodded of yet again, I could hear her mention this composer by the name of Austin Sibley, and I had never heard of him before. ZZZZ, back to sleep I went. But again she kept talking about Austin Sibley and it seemed to me that she was attaching some importance to him. So I quickly jotted the name, Austin Sibley, in my notes and vowed to head up to the library after class to look him up. Back to sleep I went.
 

As I nodded off yet again, I fantasized about who this guy might be. He sounded English and I imagined some obscure organist living out his entire life in a dusty organ loft in the middle of Britain churning out masterpiece after masterpiece in organ and choral music, and no one knew who he was until all this prodigious output was discovered long after his death. Again I wrote down the name Austin Sibley. I got the impression that this professor was putting Austin Sibley on a par with Handel. That's how important Austin Sibley sounded to me, and I felt a bit ashamed that I had never heard of him.
 

After the class ended, I needed a coffee to wake up and headed off the to student common room to get one. As I sat with a couple of my colleagues and talked, I asked about that last class and this composer, Austin Sibley, the professor kept mentioning over and over. Everyone started laughing, for there is no composer by the name of Austin Sibley. The professor was simply using the word, ostensibly, probably her new English word of the day.
 

Then this story spread like wildfire all over the music building and for the rest of the day, everyone was calling me Austin Sibley. Well, I managed to laugh if off so that it all blew over and I managed to live it down by the end of the day.
 

However, to this day, whenever anyone asks me who my favourite composer is, I answer, in the snootiest voice I can muster, Austin Sibley! - He is certainly the most under-appreciated composer in history, but you mark my words: Eventually his time will come.