Today I was giving Edie her lunch (she's just fifteen months now), and Gary Cooper's wonderful CD of Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier was playing on our hi-fi (which is in the kitchen -- otherwise we'd never use it!). She didn't show any signs of paying attention to the music (though kids are like that -- and next thing you know they've practically memorised the thing you thought they weren't paying attention to!) until suddenly, when the B-flat minor prelude came on (which is just a series of beautiful chords), she stopped devouring her lunch, looked up at the hi-fi speakers, looked at me, and said thoughtfully: "play! lute!". I'm still shocked when she speaks, because it's so new. But this was even more shocking: she was noticing that the series of plain chords, played on the harpsichord, sounded rather like a lute. She was right. And I'm going to arrange it (down a minor third, I think, or maybe up a tone) for lute, since it was her advice that I should do so. And I think it'll be a gorgeous lute piece. Clever old Edie!

More text (and pictures) to follow soon. I'm aware that there's a huge gap to fill in since the last entry.