rchschem wrote:And as far as the argument that "X is acceptable as the third part of a bonus" because X is hard, that's a wicked slippery slope and a weak defense for a bonus part.
I don't advocate that; that's a very poor idea. I was saying that
if we believe someone of the difficulty of Respighi to be okay for a third part, then we should certainly believe something like Diels-Alder--which is as essential to the chemistry you learn in high school as Respighi is to the music theory you might learn in high school, I'd argue--is similarly appropriate.
Also, I don't think the suggestion that Respighi is "just a composer" while there's this enormous barrier to learning about Diels-Alder holds any water. There are a lot of ways you can learn both of these things:
1) learn buzzwords for both--I'll buzz off La campana sommersa, you'll buzz off Warner-Jauregg, we'll both go home happy
2) have surface experience of each--I'll listen to the music, you'll look at some structures of reactants and products and figure out that D-A makes six-membered rings (as evidenced by the hexagons on the right hand side) that might have a "double bond" of some kind
3) have deep experience of both--I take a semester of music theory so that i know what the hell a Mixolydian mode is and why he named a piano concerto "Concerto in the Mixolydian Mode"; you take a semester of o-chem and learn what "pericyclic" means
and each level requires roughly equal commitment for both.