Solo For Phil
		The conductor raises the baton The soprano quiets her cry The children dip their bows apprehensively And moisten reeds with red mouths And their bright eyes in their innocence Glance nervously about As the lights come up And the symphony begins Some follow the score intently While others without listening Blow haphazardly through rests and stops And are forced to rehearse their parts Again and again and again The orchestra swells in proportion Then shrinks to trios and duets Only to expand again In constellations of sound We start off carefully: adagietto As per the prepared score And proceed to allegretto As our talents are honed With instruments we have chosen Or have been chosen for us by who knows who We try to meet the composer's wishes Though the programme is not clear Now the pace proceeds to quicken Our feet beating to the time The delicate reeds glisten in trills to one side While a bassoon quartet reels on dangerously into the night And the undercurrent of basses Portends stormy passages ahead Before the orchestra admits A booming marching band And guitars and penny whistles Electric guitars and lutes and drums A shadow sings a lieder of loss And a chorus becomes a war cry But our duets whisper sweetly Of bodies, voices and velvet strings And the semibreves of one generation Become the whole-notes of our own And while the pull of major and minor Tonic and dominant Leads us on along our glissandos And between our counterpoints It is the augmented and diminished That give our song form And the suspensions (Ah, the suspensions) Those respites of peace Bring us through our difficult parts The tension and release The wild dances of our earlier movements Become a crippled fugue As the music starts to slow The players reach andante Slowing to adagio But the theme is still a mystery To the finale of the piece So we play diminuendo And play our solo to the silence Coda

Past, present & future
misguided ramblings of the MusiCurmudgeon
Stroll through the vaults of a diseased mind!