Some Footnotes Are Just So Rude
Jeeze, haven't posted in nearly a week. It's because I've been busy with work to get money so I don't have to be homeless. A weak excuse, I know, but the only one I have.
But I've got lots to tell you! And I'll do that later, got something to do right now. But I was practicing the piano, playing a book of simple little pieces called Notenbuch für Nannerl, or Nannerl's Music Book, written between 1759 and 1764 by a fellow named Leopold for his daughter Maria Anna, whose nickname, as you may have guessed, was "Nannerl." Her younger brother Wolfgang showed an interest, so Leopold started teaching him out of the book too. These people's family name was Mozart, as you may have also guessed.
I'm an adult beginner when it comes to sight reading music, so I've been working through these pieces pretty slowly. I just got done a new one, and what do I see at the bottom of the page? A footnote: "These last 8 minuets little Wolfgang learnt in his fourth year." Grr! Well, good for you, I thought, little Wolfgang, feeling that unpleasantly churlish irritation you get when you're outdone handily by someone quite a bit younger and obviously quite a bit more talented.
I got over it pretty quickly, though. I actually bought the book because it's so cool to think that these two kids were learning from it centuries ago, and now I am too. A sister, a brother, a father proud and increasingly astonished, I imagine, at how fast the younger child was coming along. He makes similar notes on other pages, and it's touching in one sense and also spooky in that I'm imagining him writing these notes at a window, maybe, or by candlelight, feeling a father's pride and a music teacher's growing awe, I'm becoming him for a moment in my imagination, and yet he's been dead for centuries.
Huh.
So anyway, yeah, I got over the irritation. It's OK to be beaten at the keyboard by a little kid if the little kid is Mozart. I think I can live with that. Little Matt is not progressing as fast as little Wolfgang, perhaps, but he's progressing, and that has to count for something, right?
But I've got lots to tell you! And I'll do that later, got something to do right now. But I was practicing the piano, playing a book of simple little pieces called Notenbuch für Nannerl, or Nannerl's Music Book, written between 1759 and 1764 by a fellow named Leopold for his daughter Maria Anna, whose nickname, as you may have guessed, was "Nannerl." Her younger brother Wolfgang showed an interest, so Leopold started teaching him out of the book too. These people's family name was Mozart, as you may have also guessed.
I'm an adult beginner when it comes to sight reading music, so I've been working through these pieces pretty slowly. I just got done a new one, and what do I see at the bottom of the page? A footnote: "These last 8 minuets little Wolfgang learnt in his fourth year." Grr! Well, good for you, I thought, little Wolfgang, feeling that unpleasantly churlish irritation you get when you're outdone handily by someone quite a bit younger and obviously quite a bit more talented.
I got over it pretty quickly, though. I actually bought the book because it's so cool to think that these two kids were learning from it centuries ago, and now I am too. A sister, a brother, a father proud and increasingly astonished, I imagine, at how fast the younger child was coming along. He makes similar notes on other pages, and it's touching in one sense and also spooky in that I'm imagining him writing these notes at a window, maybe, or by candlelight, feeling a father's pride and a music teacher's growing awe, I'm becoming him for a moment in my imagination, and yet he's been dead for centuries.
Huh.
So anyway, yeah, I got over the irritation. It's OK to be beaten at the keyboard by a little kid if the little kid is Mozart. I think I can live with that. Little Matt is not progressing as fast as little Wolfgang, perhaps, but he's progressing, and that has to count for something, right?
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