These eight short piano pieces represent work from Czech composer Antonin Dvorak’s “sketchbook”. He composed these in his time as director of the Conservatory in New York from 1892 to 1895. They represent a foreign-born composer’s take on being in America. It is important to note that there is a very un-serious quality to the “sketches” in this portfolio. His most famous piece from this set, the Seventh Humoresque in G Major would become the theme song of Slappy Squirrel in Steven Spielberg’s popular television cartoon show, Anamaniacs. It also became well known as the tune behind the “train toilet song” where passengers began singing aloud the directions for toilet flushing in passenger cars beginning with the phrase “Passengers will please refrain from flushing while the train is in the station…”
So what more perfect background music could there be for a look at some of the junk in my computerized version of a sketchbook? These images all come from my Work in Progress folder. I hope you will listen to the music while looking at these incomplete horrors and humoresques.
That is definitely a load of humoresques. But like other forms of it, you spread it on your garden and it will help the flowers grow.
Catch a Falling Star 