What's My Melodic Line?
Often when I’m deep into the first 38 of the Hanon exercises, I think of Peter Schickele. One of the more memorable cuts from Disk 1 of the 2 disk set “The Wurst of P.D.Q. Bach” is called “What’s My Melodic Line?” This skit has I Virtuosi de Hoople playing the first few bars of any score sent in by listeners. There are prizes and consolation prizes. In this episode, they get the first two correct, but confuse a 3-part invention for a 2-part invention. The joke, of course, is that all the pieces sound near-identical. Just like some of the Hanon exercises.
The gem of this disk is “New Horizons in Music Appreciation: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony Sportscast”. It’s the Fifth as a Baseball game with all the accoutrements thereto. The entire 2-disk set is a hoot, one that I suggest you find and enjoy “Toot Suite” (from the Fugue in C Minor for Calliope Four Hands, S. 212⁰).