Some weeks ago I was chatting with a colleague, comparing notes about how we came to be academics. In the course of this very casual conversation – more than half of it the gossip and good-natured complaining that are the grist of workplace talk – she said something that brought me up short, and which I am still sorting out. Speaking of her ambitions as a singer, and of the decision to become a musicologist, she remarked, a little sadly, ‘It was the fork in the road, you know. . .’.