A note on 'stroppy'

I learned the word “stroppy” in a heartbreaking way. 

The word is new to me, but Merriam-Webster says it’s been around since 1951.

“Stroppy” means touchy or belligerent, and John Eliot Gardiner, in my view the world’s greatest conductor, used it. He was accused of striking a singer after a performance. He apologized and withdrew from a tour.

The New York Times article cited a 2010 interview in which he said:

 

I can be impatient, I get stroppy, I haven’t always been compassionate. I made plenty of mistakes in my early years. But I don’t think I behaved anything like as heinously as you have heard. The way an orchestra is set up is undemocratic. Someone needs to be in charge.

 

If I had to choose one musical hero, it might be Gardiner. I’ve listened to many of his recordings, but his recording of Mozart’s Requiem left me thunderstruck. The singers were Barbara Bonney, Anna Sofie von Otter, Hans Peter Blochwitz and Willard White.

To me that recording is a good test. If you don’t know whether classical music is for you, listen to it. If you come away unmoved, you probably can move safely on to other genres of music, other kinds of art.

It might make you want to sell all that you own, spend it all on classical music and see if there is anything else — anything at all — so wondrous.

“Stroppy” isn’t used in my circles, but most of my years have passed in the South. The dictionary says the word might be a based on “obstreperous.” The only person I know who used that word was my father, who might have had an obstreperous son.

• Source:  Javier C. Hernández, “Maestro Accused of Striking Singer at Performance Apologizes”; The New York Times, Aug. 24, 2023.