keeping up skills

Even though I'm not taking piano lessons this summer (and am hoping to soon hear from my teacher, and am really hoping she'll say, "Yeah, I can give you lessons in the fall"), I'm still practicing. Aiming for an hour a day but a couple times I've not come close to that (most recently, when I was dealing with the bad antibiotic reaction/messed up mouth).

But still, I'm keeping up with it. I've been working through the Hanon exercises again, to keep up the strength of my fingers and maybe get a bit faster and more accurate. And I run through what I think of as the "little" Bach pieces (a number of pieces from the Anna Magdalena books that I learned over the years) for the fun and satisfaction of being able to play something fairly well. And I'm still working on a Beethoven sonatina I was working on at the end of lessons this spring - I'm still not satisfied with how well I can play the Rondo section, but I'm getting there.

And occasionally I try something new. I ordered a Dover copy of the Bach WTC books, and while the only piece I've really attempted has been the first (Prelude in C, and it's a pretty well-known piece - it's based on a series of arpeggios), still, it is nice to be able to play THAT.

I admit, I stick pretty heavily with Bach because I *like* Bach, and also (and this is something I have tremendous respect for Bach about) he wrote pieces that someone without great expertise can play and make sound good, but they are still interesting pieces to play. (Some "beginner" stuff is not that way - once you've mastered it, you feel so "meh" about it you never want to play it again).

But I do know I need to branch out from time to time. I've been playing a few Schumann pieces (even though I am not fond of some of his stuff) - First Loss, The Happy Farmer (yes, that's a real beginner piece, but it's good practice).

I tried something new last night. I've been flipping through my compilation books (I have "Literature through the Piano" or some such - it's a Bastien compilation, there are multiple books and I have the first four). I've pretty much worked through books 1 and 2 (though there are pieces in both I return to for fun or for practice). So I've been going more and more to book 3 (I am assuming they are graded by difficulty; at least, they seem to be). I've played "Fur Elise" and Bach's two-part Invention Number 1 out of it (as a student), but also have picked away at a CPE  Bach solfegietto piece. But last night, I hit on a piece by a composer with whom I am unfamiliar - Ellmanreich. The piece is called "Spinning Song," which caught my attention (I am quite sure it is spinning as in spinning fiber into yarn, and not any other kind of spinning, especially now after playing it).

I figured "It's a good idea to try a piece I'm not familiar with for once" (in the sense of - a piece I haven't heard before. Most of what I play I am familiar with and even have recordings of). But then I started playing it.

I KNOW this piece. I have heard it before. Here it is:



(It's a pretty little piece. And it does "sound" like spinning to me - at least, the A section does; there's a staccato base that could be the treadles of the wheel, and the treble melody does sound a bit like the whirring of a spinning wheel. I can play the A section reasonably well but am having a little trouble sussing out the middle section where the pattern changes. And I'm pleased to see that he's playing it not vastly faster than what I can manage with a little practice - so I will be able to master this one).

But I know it from somewhere - probably, from a cartoon. A lot of those little basic classical pieces I remember from my early childhood of watching old, old Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies, or old MGM cartoons. I loved the old cartoons and I really don't think they were as "bad for me" as some people might claim - I learned a lot about American cultural history from them (the first place I ever learned about War Bonds was from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon). Some of the really old ones, the ones that didn't use the typical "stable" of characters, were interesting - I know there were at least a couple set in a bookshop closed up for the night, where the book characters would come to life and interact with each other. I always liked those cartoons - part of it for me, as a bookish child, was the fun of seeing how many of the characters I "knew" - I recognized Sherlock Holmes (even though I had never read any of his stories) and Long John Silver and eventually I kind of "got" who Fu Manchu was supposed to be and stuff. At least one of those cartoons featured Sniffles the Mouse, a character I admit I liked, even if he was a lot milder and blander than the later Warner Brothers creations.

I admit, I watch a lot of cartoons. Many of the ones currently made don't have the same referential humor (though in another 50 years or so, kids will probably learn about the late 1980s - early 1990s from watching re-runs of "Animaniacs") that the older ones do (Though in the MLP cartoons, there are little gags and references and even references back to some of the "classic" cartoon tropes, like the "duck season/wabbit season" switcheroo).

(Now that I think about it - could Spinning Song have been used in the Tex Avery elves-and-shoemaker cartoon? I vaguely remember elves at work on something, and lots of visual gags involving shoes, and hearing that. And yes, I have a freakish memory in that way - that I can remember snippets of music and even the context in which they were used)