Gratuitous Musickal Posting (TM)

We hit a nice milestone at the Butcher's House last evening: the seven year old Llama-ette and I played our first piano duets together. In the past couple weeks, the gel has learned to read both treble and bass clefs and is even beginning to play a bit with both hands together. You can't imagine how proud I am of this.

The songs we played themselves, however, are a bit odd - strange modulations and rather ugly dissonances in the accompaniment part. They struck me as the first steps on the path that leads to that special level of Perdition reserved for lounge music. It occured to me later on that I really ought to write a few alternative pieces myself. While I have neither talent nor instruction in composition, even I could manage a Mozartian eight bar minuet for three hands.

Some day I hope to be able to play some real Mozart four hand pieces with the gel. He wrote a number of these throughout his career, all of which I've ever heard are quite good and, with some practice, well within the range of the amateur. (My book of them was autographed by Rudolph Firkusny, who I met when I was a boy.) And if Ed McMahon ever gets back to me about that sweepstakes thing and I can afford two pianos, then we can make an attempt on his sonata for two pianos in D Major, K. 448, one of my favorite pieces of keyboard music.