Yesterday, when I woke up I was on a bit of a musical 'roll' so carried on whilst the spirit moved me and whilst I seemed to be making good progress. Basically, everything stems from the fact that I was reasonably content with the first of the presentations (of seven pieces that I have put together) which is my contribution to the next meeting of the 'Classical Music Appreciation' group of U3A (University of the 3rd Age) Now that I have the website in place and I know how to search for new pieces on 'YouTube' I started to wonder whether I might make a second in the whole series on Mozart. Given that Mozart wrote for such a huge range of instruments, I thought it might be very interesting to assemble some pieces known to me but with which my fellow group members might be unfamiliar. So I have thought of, and assembled pieces that Mozart wrote for violin, viola, basset horn (like a bass clarinet and used at the opening of the Mozart Requiem), the clarinet itself, horn, flute and harp in combination and finally, of course, piano itself. I mentioned all of this to my daughter-in-law who opined 'What happens if they don't like Mozart' which is unlikely but she has a point. So now I have the template in place, I thought of seven pieces of J S Bach (two organ, two choral pieces and three instrumental) and so this will be the third in the series. And finally, I would do the same for Beethoven where I have finished off with two snatches of symphonies, two piano sonatas, a violin concerto, a piano concerto and a choral piece with which to conclude. Now numbers 2, 3 and 4 in my little series have not actually been constructed yet but many of the elements are in place and over the next few weeks I will gradually populate my little websites and then publish them on the web. This means that at if I present at about every 4rd or 5th meeting, I have material to keep going for the next year and a half. Whilst to a large extent this has been a 'labour of love' I have learned a tremendous amount whilst undertaking my researches. For example, I had no idea that it was Mozart who wrote extensively for the basset horn which is a kind of extended, bass clarinet) and it is these instruments that give the dark, sonorous and lugubrious tone at the start of the Mozart Requiem (with which many of us will be familiar in any case) So having got the ideas sketched out for these four pieces, I will pause for a moment but be happy in the knowledge that I have assembled some pieces that might provide a lot of pleasure as the websites can be accessed for ever and a day. The day today is going to be quite a full one as Pilates will occupy me mid day and, as of yesterday, I have been fitted in for a hospital routine scan at 5.15 late in the afternoon in the hospital down the road in Redditch. When I return from this, I may well pop into my local Waitrose and pick up a sandwich ready for my trip out to Jodrell Bank (by coach) the following day to which I am looking forward tremendously.
Yesterday was the day that our domestic help calls around and, of course, today she had my son and daughter-in-law to talk to and of course they spent quite a lot of time discussing the progress of their new kitchen which appears to be on schedule so far. I spent some of the morning going through newspapers to identify if there are cuttings to be made or interesting things to keep. As it was, I found a couple of articles which I felt my domestic help and her husband will enjoy. Then I spent some time struggling to get my text editor to write in a 2-column mode. This is because I am adding the libretto (words) to my Mozart arias and I want Italian on the left hand side and English on the right. In the event, I settled upon a simple two column table in HTML in which I know that some of the formatting issues are taken care of automatically by the browser and I know it will give me the results I want. All I have to do is to locate the relevant libretti on the web but I think this is going to be quite straightforward. Then it was a case of going down into town to undertake my weekly session of Pilates but I popped into the supermarket to pick up a copy of my daily newspaper. After lunch, my son and daughter-in-law carried on with their slow and painstaking ask of piecing together my grandmother's past and eventually texted my niece who we felt might be in possession of some fragments of information. These communications by text proved to be extremely interesting because it not only corrected one or two little remembrances that I may have got wrong but also supplied us with some critical information to assist us in our searches. Apparently my grandmother had been employed as a type of 'housekeeper' moving to smaller and smaller establishments as her economic circumstances worsened. Ny niece almost told me that my grandmother had some siblings one of whom had died of croup and another of whom was killed in the first World War. All of this was completely new information to me but it means that my son and daughter-in-law can now examine things like census records armed with some more fragments of information that will help them to narrow the field of eligibles as it were. n the very late afternoon, I needed to get myself to a hospital in Redditch where I was to have a routine MRI scan although it seemed a very long four minutes in the longest part of the scan and the clanking of the electromagnets was tremendously loud despite the huge ear muffs with which I was supplied. On my way back from the hospital, I popped into the supermarket to buy some sandwiches, and a bottle of water which I may need ned on my day trip tomorrow to Jodrell Bank. In view of the density of the traffic early in the morning, am going to walk down to the bus station because this means that I am bound to arrive on time whereas the alternative on relying upon a lift by car or a taxi may mean that I will get stuck in a huge traffic jam, which I quite usual in Bromsgrove from about 7.30 am onwards.
© Mike Hart [2026]