Rob Gordon (from the movie High Fidelity): “Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do’s and don’ts. First of all you’re using someone else’s poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing.”

So, taking the leap from a tape designed to win over a woman, to a classical music concert with, presumably, no ulterior motive other than to entertain, how does a group, such as the Civitas Ensemble, decide what to play, and, more importantly for this discussion, in what order?

The Dummies website tells us that symphony orchestras almost always follow the format: an overture, a concerto, intermission, a symphony.  To apply this enunciation to Civitas, the core of which is a four-person troupe, it occurred to me that I had to apply a sort of reverse extrapolation, if that’s a thing.    

Well, it turns out that retrograde extrapolation is a thing.  It’s used by chemists and toxicologists to estimate what a person’s blood alcohol content was at a specific time based on test results obtained at a later period of time. 

As there was no alcohol being served at the concert; no overtures, concertos, or symphonies on display; and the first two pieces were of fairly equal length, the best application of the principle I could come up with was the varying size of the ensemble playing each piece.

The program of Hungarian Masters was to start with a duet, followed by a quartet, followed by intermission, and then a sextet that included two guest artists.  Quod erat demonstrandum. 

However, though its performance of Erno Dohnanyi’s Sextet in C Major, Op. 37 rousingly closed the excellent concert, Civitas changed the order of the first two pieces, explaining that it decided to present the melancholy selection first and then the more upbeat music as a cheerful note heading into intermission.  A sound decision I felt, but one that might represent the first sign of anarchy for dummies, if that’s a thing.