A Little Haydn for Father's Day!

When I was around four or five years old, my dad was going back to school to become a music teacher.

He practiced piano non-stop back then and there was this one piece in particular he played over and over over for months.  He made up words to it, we sang it in the car, we sang it at the piano. I would dance around the living room when he played it. It's completely etched into my brain.

I had tried to track it down on and off for years. I finally remembered to ask him about it a couple years ago and he told me the name, but of course I forgot to write it down.

Then, about a year ago,  I inherited all of my grandmother's photos and scrapbooks and among the treasures was the program from dad's senior recital in college.

As luck would have it, I had also just recently snagged a Haydn book from our piano teacher when she was cleaning house and giving a bunch of music away. I immediately flipped through it and lo and behold, there it was!

MYSTERY FINALLY SOLVED!

It took a long while for me to tackle it. I kept opening up the book and then putting it aside again. It didn't even make the cut for my initial 12 Pieces in 2020.

I finally got down to business early on in quarantine when it became clear I would have loads of time to kill for the foreseeable future. It was initially visually overwhelming,  so I would do a little and, since I'm an instant gratification addict, I would move on to easier pieces I could learn in a day or two.

That made for slow..... going, but I slogged through it as best I could.

A few weeks ago, I realized Father's Day was coming up and it was the perfect motivation to wrap this up. I shot a bunch of questions off to our piano teacher and she helped me through the parts that I had been fudging my way through because I couldn't t execute them correctly or they were confusing. (Sidenote: it's amazing how things suddenly make a whole lot more sense when someone who actually knows what they're doing shows you. LOL! Thanks, C! 😊💜)

Unfortunately, I thought the part I wanted to learn was only two pages, but I realized about a week ago it's actually more like six.  (insert deflating balloon sound here)

The good news is that though I'm not totally in over my head. To continue with the with the deep water metaphor, it's more like I'm five-foot-two, standing on tiptoes with my chin just far enough out of the water to be able to yell, "Hey look! I can touch out here!!"

Seeing as how Father's Day is today, it's time to post. I'll preface with the fact that I'm a little embarrassed by this recording.  I still have some work to do on the piece anyway and you add in my ever-present performance anxiety and it's a recipe for a thousand takes, of which *this* was, sadly,  the best one.  Camera off? No mistakes. Camera on? It's like my fingers are tied together.

But! I did it! And now I'm partway through learning the rest of it. (but you'll have to wait awhile longer for that.)  :)

Lucky for you all, though I have performance anxiety playing in real time, I seem have basically zero shame about posting videos on the internet. (No, I can't explain that.)  So here it is, in all its mistake-riddled glory.

This piece is SUPER fun to play (when I'm not recording myself) and I can't wait to learn the rest of it!

Oops. Where did the last 114 days go?

Well, since that last post, a lot has changed, obviously.

We did NOT go on a super fun adventure to Europe. :( (Still fighting with travel insurance over that situation.)

I DID become a teacher/school supervisor for my three children overnight, which has been an interesting and eye-opening experience. Between that and having to do things like wipe down groceries constantly and worry 24/7 about the state of the world and whether my sneezing is related to pollen or COVID.... well, this blog got a little derailed.

One huge positive of the whole quarantine thing is that I have gotten to play a whooooooole lot of piano in the last few months. It has become a coping mechanism, of sorts, even more so than usual. So, despite not documenting it here, I have definitely stayed true to the spirit of my original goal. :)

I've actually learned a bunch of pieces since February!  There is video proof that lives on Facebook, though I'm not sure I will ever find the motivation to track them all down and put them here. We'll see.

Anyway, so I'm picking back up with a brand new goal and a piece that holds a special place in my heart! I'm dividing it into two parts because it was a pretty big challenge.... (also because I mayyyyyyyy have initially overlooked where the part of the piece I'm learning actually ends and prematurely thought I was finished....LOL) Video of part one will up by Sunday! Stay tuned. :)

Edited: Here are some of the pieces that kept me sane during the worst of the quarantine!  They are all from the various "Sessions" books by Andrea Dow. I love love LOVE these pop arrangements of classical pieces!