My late father-in-law, a truly wonderful man, was a retired New York City music teacher. He was a violinist and a member of The Chamber Music Society. Now and then he would host other society members in his home for sessions of playing chamber music. He was also well versed in other musical genres. Listening to him speak on any musical topic was always an education and I loved it.
On this one particular morning, he had some guests over just when I happened to be around. They were a very congenial and pleasant group indeed.
They were folks who could tell you all about their favorite composers and their works. Their personal favorites would include the giants by whom I mean Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Chopin,..... and there was even one guest who might have been able to recite by heart the entire Köchel-Verzeichnis chronological catalogue of compositions by Mozart.
They were very well educated people with very deep, very profound and very comprehensive cultural sophistication. They were much to be admired and yes, I was very impressed.
Until.
To my amazement and astonishment, I discovered in the course of conversation that none of these folks knew anything at all about the popular music of their youthful years.
None of them had never heard of "720 in the Books" by Jan Savitt. Nobody had ever heard of "String of Pearls" by Jerry Gray with lyrics by Eddie DeLange, even though both of those pieces were major popular hits when recorded by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, not to mention having also been recorded by other popular musicians of their day.
Duke Ellington's music? Well, yes, they remembered having sometime heard of Edward Kennedy Ellington, but to my further astonishment, they knew nothing about his music either. (As an aside, I highly recommend that you give a listen to all of those recordings. Wow!)
It was as though my father-in-law was this highly accomplished and sophisticated generalist moving among a circle of friends who were very highly focused specialists. I've always felt it was the specialists who were worse off for that state of affairs. They really had no idea what they were missing.
Hey, Microwave Guy! Have you read anything lately about switchmode power supplies?
Hey, Analog Guy! Whaddaya think about that C++ code over there?
Personally I consider myself a generalist engineer. Primarily analog designs, occasionally involved with embedded systems, also knowledgeable in mechanical design. Probably comes from the environments where I worked: smaller organizations where a lot of different problems arise. Perhaps a larger engineering organization allows someone to specialize.
Posted by: Mark Walter, PE | March 21, 2014 at 07:58 AM