Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

(Ol’ Robbo may need to listen to some Purcell this evening. It’s been a while.)

What with one thing and another, I’ve spent very little time recently tickling the ivories, with the result that what little finger-memory I have has gone out the window again. This is what I get for being such a dilettante.

Whenever I hit this point, I always regroup by returning to two sets of works, the Bach Two-Part Inventions and a little album of sonatinas by composers such as Kuhlau, Clementi, Dussek, and the like. Banging around on these for a while always seems to limber up the fingers, the eyes, and the braims.

Of course doing so just gets me back to where I was before, an undisciplined, sight-reading hack. I’ve enough native talent that when I’m going well I can thoroughly enjoy what I’m doing, but part of me also feels somewhat ashamed at squandering my abilities this way. I used to tell myself that when I retire one of the things I will do is take up the study of musicke – both in theory and performance – more seriously, but now I begin to wonder whether my hands will be up to the task then.

We shall see.

In the meanwhile, St, Cecilia, ora pro nobis.

Thanksgiving Watch UPDATE: Youngest Gel just got home from school. She was in the Cincinnati airport at 5 ack emma and reports it was absolutely mobbed. A good sign that people are returning to travel, in my humble opinion.