ISSUE: Winter 2018
It couldn’t have been easy getting it to lie flat on paper.
That’s obvious from the asterisks.
Above the notes on the stave are some bizarre annotations:
Sobbing. Hand clapping. A kind of shake.
It’s impossible to guess how they might fit into the music.
I can’t read it well enough to get any real feel for the tune—
just enough to recognize the stranger movements.
There are parts where it breaks down to only two notes
going up and down and up from quaver to semiquaver.
A part in the middle accelerates to the point of nonsense
and I’m wondering as I look at it if this is just noise.
I’m almost certain it’s unsingable.
In small letters along the bottom someone has written
och, och, och in embarrassed cursive script.
A final note in Italian says how loud the piece should be.
