Adventures in Music

I love fiddling about on the piano when no one else is around. Mostly I sight read but just lately I have been trying to learn music off by heart, partly in an attempt to keep my brain in reasonable order, partly out of a misguided and never to be fulfilled dream that one day I will sit down in Euston Station - or somewhere else where they leave rather bashed up pianos for the public to play - and I will put my hands to the keyboard and a stream of wonderful melodic sound will result.

Among the pieces I've often sightread and am now looking at more closely are the oddly named Three Gnossiennes by Satie.

When merely sightreading it was as much as I could do to merely follow the notes. I allowed the instructions from the composer about how to play them to slide by in a blur. Now though I realise that they are quite out of the ordinary and constitute a work of art in and of themselves. They start out normally enough:

but after the first page the composer decides to have some fun:

Are we dealing with instructions about how to play this music, how to live life, or simply the transcript of a few castings of the I Ching, I wonder. Whatever they are, I have seldom read such a charming set of musical notations:

The last of these instructions would be the one that anyone hearing me play would be most keen that I took notice of.