Title: Mueller's Music Fables
Description: Following the classical form of Aesop’s Fables this book contains 200 original music fables.  The book employs the conceit that musical instruments are emotional and physical beings that interact like humans.  Humans occasionally peek into this fabulous land to enhance the music-instrument-to-people relationships (conductors, composers, and instrument makers).  In addition to covering a broad gamut of conventional and rare musical instruments, the instruments themselves play music from the old to the contemporary.  By personifying musical instruments the reader obtains an insightful perspective on instrumental capabilities.  The fables combine imaginative stories of how and why instruments (and various musical forms) came into being, in a straightforward albeit fabulous way.  A moral is attached to each fable, reflecting Aesop's; some are literary and philosophical, others are slight and humorous.  The fables are a source of wry humor, of gnomic utterances, of witty asides, and cryptic epigrams.  Written in a humorous and sometimes satirical style the book is fun at the same time it is instructive.  Mueller’s Musical Fables have the advantage of venturing into the elegant world of music, while being profoundly simple but never simplistic.
Subjects: THREE FABLES  55 THE VAGABOND CLARINET      A restless vagabond Clarinet was off wading through a clutch of Bassoons and got jammed in the dark contrapuntal mess of Evgeni Kostitsyn's complex Third Symphony.  He tried to extricate himself but became hopelessly immobile in a soundless void.  So he applied to the resident Conductor for help.      “Fight your own musical battles, ” replied the pragmatic Conductor.  “Apply your lungs, you lazy instrument!  Work yourself out of the mess you are in.  You probably got yourself caught in vacuity because of your pigheaded separatist intransigence!”  MORAL: Don’t depend on others to solve self-made problems.  56 AMBITION HAS ITS LIMITS       One day an intimate family of four strings were playing a short but difficult Rondo by Anton Webern.   The Viola was very ambitious and she suddenly shifted high into the fifth position, playing feverishly and clearly trying to overwhelm the remains three strings instruments.      “Where do you think you are going, sister Viola?” the father Cello asked, catching her by a loose string and pulling her down to earth.  “Webern is difficult enough, without you breaking out with your high-position antics!”      “I didn’t mean any harm, ” Miss Viola explained, sheepishly smiling.  “All I wanted to do was soar high for a few moments!”      The twin brothers first and second Violins replied in unison: “You are not the only high-flyers in this quartet!  How dare you mess with Anton Webern’s modern composition?”      Father Cello added with a scowl: “Well, if you don’t like playing with us Miss Viola, you can resign, enlist in a Mozart trio somewhere!  We have had enough of your spiteful shenanigans!”    MORAL: Playing too fast and furious is dangerous.  57 A UNIQUE VIOLIN      A great rivalry between Violin makers existed in olden times in the city of Cremona in Italy.  Though Cremona was a small city it had many Violin makers who supplied the world with splendid Violins.      The family of Andrea Amati struggled to compete with Guarnieri del Gesu’s workshop and other Violin makers in the city, continually trying to outdo one another.      One workshop bragged that it could turn out ten Violins a month; another upped the ante and said it could turn out a hundred a month!      An impartial committee was formed of Cremona’s music-knowledgeable citizens.  They proposed to the makers work to set to work constructing Violins for one month, and bring their products to be judged.      The judging was very difficult, since most of the instruments were superb!  The Amati family built ten instrument, and the Gesu family twenty (less than either of them had bragged!).      The committee found that that one Cremona Violin maker named Antonio produced just one Violin during the allotted month.  They summoned him to ask him why he did not make more Violins.      He came before them, picked up his single Violin, held it up triumphantly and exclaimed: “But my Violin is a Stradivarius!”  MORAL: Quality trumps quantity.