Bonding with Beethoven (3)
Health is returning.
Piano Concerto #4 now playing”the last movement’s opening theme:
Bump ba da bump ba ba bump/bump bump bump/
bump bad a bump bump bump/
bump bad a bump bump bump/.
Audio [opens in new window]
I search for words that could correlate with the notes, lyrics to enable my weak memory to recall the tune.
While Ian was at Karate yesterday, I walked around the parking lot listening to the Waldstein sonata. As the wind swept through the tops of the eucalyptus trees by the creek, I imagined hearing it in the opening of the third movement.
Audio [opens in a new window]
Wikipedia calls it “a sweet and consoling tune.”
Today driving around putting up “Elect Jan Marx” signs, words for the first phrase pop into my head: “Sing sing the wind is blowing.” At home I play with rhymes.
Sing, sing, the wind is blowing
Dance dance the fluttering leaves
Ring ring the bells are tolling
Earth now new life conceives
I check the performance and the score:
My last line ignores the shift from a simple repeat to an extended variation in the third and fourth lines of the stanza.
I look in the top line of the score for the theme and cant locate it. Then I notice that the treble and bass clef have been deviously reversed to indicate right and left hands being crossed. I correct the lyrics:
Sing, sing, the wind is blowing
Dance dance the fluttering leaves
Ring ring the bells are tolling
With news that earth receives, conceives, believes
And having heard no longer sighs and grieves
I don’t care that they don’t make much verbal sense; they help me remember the strain that shapes the later wild variations.