Rewriting My Notes From Music Appreciation

I recently found an old notebook from a Music Appreciation course I took in college. It was full of wondrous terms such as "Hypolydian" and "Phrygian" and "Ionian" and "Aeolian." It was there I jotted down how Classical forms are not so subtly different from Baroque and how concertos differ from gavottes and what arpeggios, tremelos and grace notes are. There are also short notes to remind me of the plots of operas: "La Boheme -- Mimi and Rodolfo go wandering in the snow. They sing a candle song, and then she dies. . . noisily." "Fritz" Mueller, the professor, did his Germanic best to complete the job of turning me into a musical snob. (My father played Beethoven's Ninth or Dvorak's New World Symphony on the stereo at breakfast time; my sister was a coloratura who could damn near bust a crystal stem with her high E.) These folks finally succeeded in making me informed about and interested in the arhythmic cacophonies of such stuff as Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps. As it turns out, however, my longest lasting and most powerful instruction concerning scores and libretti came from my grandfather Michael Vincent O'Rourke who was two quarters Irish, one quarter Scots, and far more than one quarter something else. He gave me the really important thing that I know about music when I was about seven years old. That was when he started teaching me my first piano piece: (C-D-E-F-G-G) "Sally was a barber." (G-F-D-E-C-C) "Sally was a shaver." (C-D-E-F-G-G-G) "Sally shaved a big tomcat." (G-F-D-E-C-C) "With a silver razor."

The Hypolydian mode of C sounds like
A major scale to me. You know the one,
The run up from the middle C, each tone
One plain white key, the scale old Grandpa Mike
Taught me to play: "Right thumb, index, and then
The middle -- now the thumb goes under to
The F -- and then, my buddy, what you do
Is thumb-two-three-four-five." Ah, that was when
He gave me jaunty tales in major keys --
Especially the Barber Sally song.
He told a story that went right along
With the tomcat and the razor mysteries:
"Old Salvatore, when a quite young lad,
He learned to be a barber and to shave.
Unfortunately, he could not behave.
And so grew up -- let's face it -- quite, quite bad!
Sally the Barber! Muscle for the mob!
When Scarface wanted someone to be gone
Without a trace before tomorrow's dawn,
Old Sally's silver razor did the job.
So when fat "Tom Cat" Ricci crossed the boss --"

C-D-E-F-G-G. Six jaunty tones!
Play them, and they will vibrate in my bones!

I'm young again, and there has been no loss!
My Grandpa and a wide-eyed kid still live
Somewhere beyond those Hypolydian scales;
A few keys up from middle-C, the tales
And tunes still sound -- real gifts Mike had to give.

Warren F. O'Rourke, 2005

(On other occasions Sally became the poorly educated but wistful and waif-like daughter of an aged barber in Seville. Yeah! you can guess what Grandpa Mike did with that.)