When, one long-ago Fall, inside Carnegie Hall,
Perry Hartch introduced this new piece;
'twas for voices and strings -- plus preposterous things.
'twas for voices and strings -- plus preposterous things.
Perry call'd it "Calypso Caprice."
First came notes in a wail (43 to the scale)
play'd con brio assai by two flutes.
At the seventeenth bar, Hartch off-loaded a jar
of cream'd corn over ten tenor lutes.
Then the ladies who play'd 'em cried (quoting verbatim):
"You've not heard the last of us yet,"
whence each took her marimba (or shook her kalimba),
withal to make good on that threat.
Soon there follow'd a rest (hours long, critics guess'd:
no one knows, for the audience left.)
Thus did Perry's "Caprice" undergo its decease...
Thus the musical world's left bereft.
