🎧 Listen to “Scary Movie”:
🧐 About “Scary Movie”:
As a child, I LOVED learning the Burgmüller “Ballade” out of my old John Thompson book. At the time, I felt like a “real pianist” as I rumbled through the left-hand theme, and worked to make the middle section sing out like a “beautiful princess.”
In “Scary Movie,” the ominous opening (a quote from Burgműller) sets the pace for thunder-like rumblings in the left hand. There are opportunities here to develop even left-hand fast passages. There are crossings of the second finger over the thumb in both hands in this section to go beyond five-finger positions. Let’s see the comparison:
Burgmüller:
Robertson:
The middle section uses a similar texture to the Burgmüller etude, but the “sunnier” theme is different.
Burgmüller:
Robertson:
The A section is repeated, and ends with a brief coda.
In the end, perhaps this “movie” is more mysterious than “scary,” so maybe it’s G-rated. But it’s fun to play, and it has a lot of technical and musical teaching points.
In addition to being an excellent seasonal Halloween selection, it will help the young player develop technical skills, all wrapped up in less than a minute of fun!
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