This year I helped to run the bookstall at the school jumble sale. Among all the chick-lit, thrillers, airport reading and the like there was just one book relating to music: the Cambridge Opera Guide to Wozzeck. As I withdrew this from sale with (almost certainly unnecessary) haste to add to my own pile of purchases, I reflected: why is it that Berg’s music seems to follow me around wherever I go and whatever I do? Or is it just that one notices such occurrences if they involve a favourite composer? Or is it that the guide to this particular opera sold relatively well because it’s thought to need more explanation than others, and also the guide is more likely to be discarded later?
[June 2013: something similar happened at the church fête]
Meanwhile I have been learning Haydn’s The Spirit’s Song. This is clearly a close relative of his great piano Variations in F minor, written a year or two earlier, and not just because of the key (I think this is the original one).