Thirteen pounds of sheet music.

My uncle had called me a while back - he had a client (he's a stockbroker) who gave him a bunch of sheet music (from a family estate, I think?). He had offered it to his son, who is in the process of training to be an opera singer, but he didn't want it (not his style, plus, he's at that peripatetic stage of education where having a lot of stuff is not a good idea). So he asked me if I wanted it. I said sure, being a sucker for that kind of thing.

He sent it while was gone - but I had a neighbor pick up the UPS box from my porch. I got it from her yesterday.

It's an interesting mix of stuff, mostly from the 1930s, I'm guessing. A lot of it is the sort of sentimental "drawing room" pieces - reprints of the kind of stuff a young woman in the 1800s might have learned as part of her arsenal for snagging a husband. (I presume after marriage and children she would not have so much time for playing music). I like that kind of music - and though I can't play any of it yet, maybe someday I can.

There's also a lot of...I guess you'd say, Catholic-themed music? Several songs about the rosary, one called something like the Knights of Columbus March, it's sort of an interesting window into what the long-ago person chose. (There are also a few "Irish" pieces, though the name written on a number of the music books is "Engelbreit" - I assume the Engelbreit was the owner of them, and that's a German name)

There are also a number of pop songs. They range from 1910 (the earliest copyright I noticed) until the early 60s (there is a song from the movie "A Patch of Blue").

It's an interesting mixture. The things I pulled out and set aside (in the "I might want to learn to play this sometime" pile as opposed to the "I will need to find somewhere to store this" pile) include a slightly-simplified arrangement of Clair de Lune (slightly simplified, but still beyond my expertise), a copy of "O Sweet Mystery of Life" (kept mainly for comic effect; thinking of the last scene of "Young Frankenstein"), a couple Sousa marches, Daisy Bell, "Believe me if all those endearing young charms" (an old edition of that; it has no copyright date but it looks fairly old), "Let me call you sweetheart" (which I love and would love to be able to play; I can pick out the melody line but the harmonization is still a bit more complex.)

There's also a piece called "Oh, Johnny, Oh" which I know better from an old Tex Avery cartoon. (it starts at about 3:30 in that YouTube clip. And they've slightly rewritten it to apply to the wolf in the cartoon - rather than the eponymous Johnny).

(It's funny, actually, a lot of the older songs I know from "classic" cartoons. Picking out the melody of "All those endearing young charms" reminded me of a Bugs Bunny cartoon where Yosemite Sam had set the piano with dynamite under one of the keys that you play in the song...and that Bugs kept "intentionally" making a mistake and missing that key - in fact, it's a mistake that's very easy to make when you're trying to play the song, I made it myself)

I really hope I do develop enough skill to play some of these things someday. Right now I look at them and despair a little - could anyone actually play that? Obviously they must have been able to. Even a few pieces marked as "grade school level" or "simplified for young players" are still beyond what I can do.

"They" say you need 10,000 hours of practice at something before you become an expert at it. I hope it doesn't take that full amount to become at least marginally proficient, because 10,000 hours, at one hour a day (about the most I can manage), is just over 27 years and 3 months. And you know, that's kind of discouraging to think about.