to want to use Bach's Goldberg Variations for pass the parcel music? dh has two objections...

[Lio]

1. We would have to make the parcel 32 layers thick, which obv has environmental implications.

1. He thinks the children would get bored, what with some of the variations being quite long. I say we just use the Glenn Gould 1955 recording, which is very zippy.

Any thoughts?

ds is going to be 5, btw. He is very advanced for his age.

dd2 was born to Beethoven's Symphony no. 3 and was playing along to Elgar as soon as she could reach the piano. I think you should put her on the guest list. If you don't mind the others being outshined.

Hee hee, hatwoman, if you think I'm going to have my kid outtshined at his own party you have another think coming. ds was born to Bach and had a terrible time coming out. Deadpan consultant said (referring to my choice of music) 'No wonder this child doesn't want to come out'.

lilymaid: I have emailed this thread to friends because I loved bundle's thing about John Taverner (and certainly not because I made 'Quote of the week - yay!), and one of said friends was in a band called Alkan Slap. How did they not get famous?

lolol

use the unaccompanied cello suites instead. there are only 6 of them and in my personal opinion are the most sublime manifestation of bach's genius. In fact, couldn't you get DS to pre-record them on his 1/4 size cello?

PMSL at this thread!

Love him though I do, I think it must have been very taxing to have been a child of John Taverner.

oh, ukuleles! Get one, mrina, please do.

I have been teaching myself ukulele for the past so many months and it's easy peasy.

FFS has no-one pointed out that if this parcel is 32 layers thick, you need Beethoven : 32 Variations on an Original Theme in Cm, WoO.80?

There's Jeno Jando on Naxos, but you may prefer Horowitz.

PMSL at Alkan Slap Lio, I have the good fortune to be professionally associated with the great man's legacy
But I'm sorry, Howard Goodall is mine, all mine

Wasn't Alkan killed by a falling bookcase?

Oooh ooh you all need to hot-foot it here, it's fantastic.

I also advise, Lio, that you think beyond the party. DS's hyroglyph lettres de remerciement - this year individually carved into York Stone paving-slabs - were very well-received by the recipients.

Or was it pushed Katisha (thousands of music lovers are rounded up as potential suspects)

If the parcel is 32 layers thick how do you except flimsy little ukele players to lift it? You need drummers and tea chest bass players and big muscley bassoonists strategically placed in order to give a hoist when necessary.

I don't understand why no one has recommended Schoenberg's "Verklärte Nacht". DD1 (3.5) finds the musical interpretation of Richard Dehmel's dark but ultimately hopeful poem to be sublime. She particularly appreciates the hints at Schoenberg's later atonal experiments. It's all they talk about at nursery.

It would rock on the uke too.

Gesang der Jünglinge v good when sugar-frenzy kicks in. Fair pins them to the comfortable wooden benches we provide.

Alternatively, almost anythign based mostly in consonant harmony or utilizing steady pulse (if not immobile drones), stasis and slow transformation is very good for musical chairs.

May I mention that when we took DD (4 at the time) to the Festival Hall to see Dan Zanes, Philip Glass came on to jam with the band?

Am worried, though, about York Stone lettres de remerciement. Has the environmental impact been adequately considered? And what if any musician of tender years should damage their hands handling said lettres? The consequences of weeks without harpsichord practice should not be underestimated.

Well I suppose musical chairs is essentially aleatoric in nature, so I can see why Stockhausen could work...

MadBad - Well quite. Furthermore, might an invitee have ancestors from the House of Lancaster; York stone might be seen as provocative I fear.

Swedes - Mmm, yes, I had entirely overlooked the political implications. I was more concerned that little Melpomene might inadvertently amputate her thumb as she wielded the chisel and bolster hammer. Of course, hand-engraved stationery is always to be preferred, but having to give up the harpsichord just before she sits for Grade 8 would surely be de trop.

Pas de tout. IMO it's vital that children should have an appreciation of both ancient, and truly modern.

Thus Theseus carves his thank-yous, often as a diptych. We're still searching for envelopes. And friends.

While Hero will, I'm sure, rise triumphant from her task: to catalogue the multiplicity of timbres at play in the geographical vocalization of 'WhatEVa'.

Antigone (Melpomene's darling twin) always stitches her own envelopes from organic parchment, sourced from a farm in Rutland.

But I hear Melpomene's own attempt - a knitted 'thank you' which was only comprehensible to those individual recipients who wer fluent in morse code - was not so successful. SO hard, isn't it, to acknowledge when one's child is struggling.

you bunch of loons

"Thus Theseus carves his thank-yous, often as a diptych. We're still searching for envelopes. And friends."

This was the point at which my pelvic floor gave out. It was under massive strain following Marina's Spem in Allium comment and that was the Final Straw... lololol

(as an aside Marina, is there any reason why Blackwells Oxford should have failed to come up with a copy of Missa Puer Natus est Nobis for me, after a WEEK? How am I meant to learn my part, just by listening to the CD?? Aurgh)

it's all v.good
when I saw Califrau on Wednesday, she said about how wonderful Lio is and how she doesn't post much, and then this was about the first thread I opened when I came to look at Mumsnet.
vvgood

Having inherited their fathers' passion for experiment, my own children prefer to express their thanks as performing art. Paralus (16) thanked his Godfather for PS3 Grand Theft Auto with a pastiche entitled Iggle Piggle's Swing after Yinka Shonibare after Fragonard. It was fascinatingly complex.

Whereas Aspasia (2) feels the need to express her thanks more traditionally - Last month she thanked her Uncle for the waterproof, talking Dora the Explorer with Handel's Opera Pasticcio Giove in Argo - it was very well done.