Gratuitous Musickal Posting (TM)

The Llama-ettes have branched out into yet another kiddie klassics venue: Beethoven's Wig.

This is a series of famous classical bits with silly lyrics set to them, the better to engage young minds, I suppose. For example, "Beethoven's Wig" goes with the opening movement of his 5th Symphony:

Bee-tho-vens-wiiiiig

[Something-something-something]-biiiig....

As I think I've said before, I don't really have any problem with this sort of thing for young kids. (Emphasis on "young". If this is all that the gels know of classical music by the time they're into their teens, I will consider myself to have failed as a father.) And I will say that the gels have got a great many of the pieces down cold now - they've taken to trying to stump me, which they even managed to do with some Debussy the other day.

On the other hand, I felt it to be my parental obligation (both on moral and educational grounds) to point out to the eight year old yesterday while we were listening to the Fifth that, in fact, Beethoven didn't wear a wig. (Her response - "Well, did Mozart?")

In the course of working on our project this weekend, we listened to practically the complete Beethoven symphonic cycle. (Incidently, I ranked my order of preference of these pieces last year - rereading the post, I find that I still agree with myself.) The gel is still at an age where she thinks the whole thunderstorm sequence of the "Pastoral" Symphony No. 6 is pretty neat. She spent the first three movements of the symphony fretting about when the storm was going to arrive. Then, during its height, she informed me of how she wasn't really afraid of the thunder effects. But as the storm faded into the distance in the transition into the last movement, I could tell she was a bit apprehensive that it might come back. I know all this in part because I felt exactly the same way about it when I was her age.