'Usable Only by the Unwary or Vulgar'

A professor I interviewed was bothered by a trend already condemned by many for more than a century: specialization. He seemed to think no one before him had ever noticed this tendency or treated it as a problem. It came up in the context of STEM vs. humanities. He said: “I think the drive toward specialization has reached a sort of crescendo.” His use of the musical term jarred me. I would have expected him to say “turning point,” “climax,” “high-water mark” or some other familiar cliché. Was he just being sloppy? Or was this a slightly pretentious misuse of a word that had attained the status of a full-fledged cliché and I had somehow missed it?

The OED, after the musical definition, gives a meaning it identifies as “colloq.”: “The peak of an increase in volume, force, or intensity; a climax.” Fitzgerald used it this way in Gatsby and Wodehouse in Uncle Fred in Springtime. Still, it doesn’t sound right in my inner ear. It sounds high-falutin’ and reaching, and might only be used ironically. Kingsley Amis agrees. He has a separate entry for crescendo in The King’s English: A Guide to Modern Usage (1997):

“Once a musical term meaning ‘(passage played) with increasing volume’ and a derived figurative term meaning ‘progress toward a climax’. For many years now taken to be a fancy synonym for ‘climax’ as in ‘the gunfire reached a crescendo’ or ‘the chorus of vilification rose to a crescendo’ and rendered usable only by the unwary or vulgar. Outside a strictly musical context, that is.”

Amis’ ear for falsity, social striving and any hint of pretentiousness was reliably flawless.