I have a little list.

Yesterday I posted about cleaning off the huge oak library table in my study and moving my center of operations back upstairs to its usual location. Part of that move/scouring was my having to decide what to do with a couple of folders of flotsam, things that have been floating around this study — and my life — for decades.

As I said yesterday, I have a couple of folders of material now labeled TRANSCRIBE, and that’s what I’m doing, at least a little every day. I began yesterday with a string quartet that I began years ago, transcribing the four string parts into Dorico. (I can’t find a score for the first movement printed out.)

NOTE: All of this is backlog and in no way replaces the stuff I’m supposed to be working on, like the pas de deux for Southern Arc Dance, et al. Nor am I under any illusion that these are the only documents in my study that need this done; they were just the ones on the table at this historic moment.

Here we go:

You’ve already met the string quartet in F major: in progress.

A Blue Horse music notebook from middle school (!), which makes it 60 years old. I had been in the band since 5th grade, and church choir forever, so my music training had already begun. What’s in it?

A lot noodlings that I will be exploring as I work through it. For example, here’s the first page. You will note the amateurish penmanship; I had never seen a music manuscript before and so just assumed that real composers drew in every note, big round heads and all. (On other pages, I carefully drew in the curves on eighth-note flags.)

I think these were practice phrases for the flute (my instrument), and I don’t think I composed them.

And then there was the infamous Super Stone! debacle. Longtime readers/associates will recognize indications that — for lack of a better phrase — I was born this way.

There was I was, in either 7th or 8th grade, and we had a social studies teacher named Mr. Stone. I want to say here, Mr. Stone, that I’m really sorry for creating the fuss, but I do think you should have rolled with it. You’d still be telling folks in your retirement home that story.

What happened was that my gang and I decided that poor Mr. Stone’s public persona was… lackluster, and definitely needed some bolstering, and our solution was to create and perform a musical about his secret identity: SUPER STONE! If you are thinking this sounds an awful lot like the brilliant Captain Underpants books by Dav Pilkey, you are absolutely correct. (See, Mr. Stone, you could have retired on your share of the royalties, which I’m sure your lawyers would have insisted on.)

As you might imagine, Mr. Stone took umbrage and we were instructed by the administration to cease production plans immediately. Oh well.

The lyrics have been lost to time, but here’s what I think was the opening number:

See the string of letters at the bottom? They stand for “The Great and Mighty Super Stone flies again,” although it might have been “flops again.” I don’t remember,

The more musically experienced among you will have recognized that our basic modus operandi in this project was STEAL FROM THE BEST: the main melody there after the ritardando in the second line is pretty recognizable. I mean, I recognize it, I just can’t put a name to it. Rachmaninov? Tchaikovsky? Concerto? Piano? Violin?

Anyway, you get the idea. Notice also the flawless penmanship.

There are more noodlings, any of which are worth mentioning I will update later.

There’s a little three-part “motet,” the title of which is “I’m ill.” I have high hopes for this one.

And that’s a very long post for one 60-year-old notebook full of juvenile ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS. It’s about time someone applied some GESTALT to this stuff.

(I’ll be back later with the other two-thirds of the list of TRANSCRIBABLES.)