1. The Juggler

The Juggler is the first song in the fourth grade book and, as J. T. said, the progress between each book truly is unbroken because learning this felt like simply moving on to a new song, not to an entirely new book! In fact, all things considered, it was easier than Hymn to the Sun, since it's basically one big arpeggio in G major. Well... of course it's more than that. The lesson it provides is in sharing figures between the hands, and the arpeggios are to be played as though they were being done by just one hand. The name "juggler" is apt, since the semiquaver duos are thrown back and forth and the notes of the arpeggio appear in a regular G-major cycle, with the left hand picking up the notes the right hand has just dropped off—as though you were really juggling G-B-D-G! The opening typifies this: the slurs cover the entire 4 notes of the broken G chord and spans both staves.

The phrase ends with a flourish in the right hand, which should be indistinguishable from the rest if judged by the sound alone, since the smoothness shouldn't be broken at all. This part, I remember, took some practice to get right. I had to change the fingering a bit: I had to use my third finger on that F meant to be executed with the second finger. That way, my pinky gets to A in time to perform that group of four semiquavers with the appropriate smoothness. The gap between the G and D was, at first, an impediment to the desired smoothness, but I'm getting there.

Pictured left is a section in which the hands trade two-note slurs of contrasting slopes, and in which the motion they make is that of a lemniscate. It takes practice to get them to work together with the correct timing, but once it happens I think the execution will be as beautiful to view as it is to hear.

The lead-in to the end has us performing a variation on that flourish described above—several in quick succession, building on different tones of the home key, and shared between the hands. It leads into some broken seventh chords played in inversion (not pictured) and then finally to an exact repeat of the above group of notes (pictured lower left). Interestingly, that middle group of semiquavers have their stems pointing downward this time. Not at all sure why the difference. And what's up with that double stemmed semiquaver to the right of them and resting on G? The stems seem to be indicating a dual relationship: one shared with the A across the bar line on its left, the other shared with the semiquaver groups to its right. This resolves into another train of arpeggios, ascending to the song's final chords: D-G (below).

 







Alan Chan's rendition

Redux: November 11, 2016
Worked a bit on this today. There's a lot more fluidity in the G major arpeggio, but still some trouble with the left hand jump down to the D7 in measure 4. I find that it's easier to remember the notes, but I'm not sure that I'm working from muscular memory of the song itself, or just from general muscle memory gained from playing technical patterns, like scales. Either way, I guess it's good. I'll still have to work a bit to get it memorised fluently and played fluidly, but at least my hands already know how to make the notes sound cantabile.