Josephine and her society are mutually uncomprehending, and make impossible demands on each other. In the best Straussian fashion, all the themes of The Mouse Singer represent ideas and events from the play, and I've also thrown in versions of the bicycle bell, clacking dowels, and ankle bells that McClure asks his characters to use. MMC 2014 Listen to a RealAudio sample of this piece. Elements more than two measures long overlap each other, and because lighter elements are more abundant than heavy ones, the music becomes increasingly contrapuntal as it progresses. MMC 2014 Listen to a RealAudio sample of this piece.
All players read from the score, which is notated on just two staves.
The use of various clefs and transpositions results in the doubling of both lines in multiple partials up to the tenth, producing sonorities of a brilliance and splendor seldom paralleled. A repeated quotation from Berlioz's Harold in Italy hints that in this concerto, too, the orchestra is the hero, while the soloist plays the role of outsider, commentator, or invited guest. The disturbing tone of the first movement is abandoned in the second as the orchestra cheerfully puts a Chilean folk melody through its paces while the soloist surfs along the top of the variations. The original melody was conceived for divided panpipes, and its continuous hocketting infests all the variations as well. In many passages, no instrument plays more than one note at a time.