This fairy-tale originates from my childhood. When I was a schoolgirl, I was fond of music, but as for music lessons, I just hated them! As soon as the time for piano lessons intruded into my otherwise wonderful day, my parents had to practically drag me there. All of my fellow-sufferers who also attended the special school of music experienced the same feelings. Judge for yourselves: we'd sit for hours and hours in an old, dusty building practicing boring scales and arpeggio while wistfully glancing at the sunny outside through the window, where all sorts of exciting and adventurous things must have been going on. At that time, I dreamed of becoming an enchantress, and just pressing a special button to turn all of the dull, mundane things into exciting ones and to re-fashion the school building into a theater or a circus.

As time went on, I became more and more determined to make my dream come true. Soon, it would become more than just a shimmering image in the mind of a young girl. To implement my plan, at first I had to learn as much as I could at a musical college and conservatory and spend long school days at the libraries studying everything that referred to music and teachers of music.

It was not as easy as I thought! "Blah blah blah blah," was all that managed to stick in my head as I earnestly tried concentrating on the textbooks and treaties that I read, but they were far too tiresome! Oftentimes, I'd catch my eyelids drooping just after finishing the first page. But I persevered! I had a very important agenda, after all! My epic battles with sleepiness, however, were most gruesome during the lectures of a few certain professors that I attended, who just loved to sprinkle their speeches with garish, meretricious vocabulary. Have you ever felt it necessary to bring a dictionary to class just so you could understand what exactly your professor was saying? Of course, professors used such a somber, grown-up language so that there was absolutely no doubt in their students' minds that music was an unbearably serious thing. Boy, did they succeed! After listening to one of those grim lectures, I often experienced the sensation that I had just attended a funeral. Sometimes, it seemed to me that those professors were like mechanical dolls, and all I'd need to do was flip a switch somewhere to suddenly transform them into more vivacious creatures. However, work on these robotic figures was nearly impossible as no one was exactly sure how they were arranged.

It came as a surprise to me to eventually realize that the "serious music," which "the robots producing unknown words" yammered on about was actually not only as lively and understandable as a good book or movie, but also, rarely as stolid as it was made out to be. I came to the conclusion that this "serious music" was in desperate need of explanation in different words, and a far more engaging language. This was especially obvious when I saw many of my friends losing interest in music because of tiresome teachers and books. Music suffered greatly as a result. How embarrassing it was to realize that we humans, with teachers in the lead, could stifle such a beautiful entity!

Since then, many years have passed. I've done my best to convert a school of music into a place as interesting and fascinating as a theater or a circus. I began with the invention of a special press-button to be used as a kind of remote control. If my little friend, who is a beginner in music starts yawning during my lessons, I press this button and together we'll dream up cheerful stories, fairy-tales and games to accompany the duller and more difficult concepts in our music lessons. This wonderful and enchanting remedy for boredom and apathy helps us keep our spirits up while overcoming the difficulties of learning.

If you wholeheartedly love music as much as you hate boredom and the routine ways of life, I've written this fairy-tale for you. I often dream of that time when all tiresome teachers will read this fairy-tale to their students, and perhaps even dream up a few of their own. I know that, after all, even monotonous teachers themselves hate boredom at heart, but they just don't have such a press-button to battle their students' yawning. Or, more precisely, they don't have such a button but hope to get it someday.

I would like to express my gratitude to the famous Tom Sawyer- the hero of the book by Mark Twain- for his ability to turn a tedious thing such as repainting a fence into an absorbing way of spending one's time (although, hopefully, music lessons could be considered a tiny bit more engaging that the art of fence-painting). I hope that, together, we will be able to turn the science of music from black and white into an entire spectrum of colors. When I will finally hear someone, in any part of the globe, exclaim: "Hooray! It's time to go to my music lessons!" I'll smile and at last release those bitter memories I've accumulated of my hardships in music school.

The right way to read this fairy-tale

Of course, like all stories, we should read it from left to right and from the beginning to end - right? Well, that's what you would think to be right. This fairy-tale, though, can also be read deep down, in breadth and in between the lines.

You can read deep into this fairy-tale because it contains a lot of important information about the history and theory of music, codified in fairy-tale images and fascinating adventures. Thus, it will help you later on and if you choose to delve deep into the science of music.

Reading this fairy-tale in breadth means that it will give scope to your imagination and - who knows how many more wonderful adventures its readers, both little ones and adults, might encounter in their life lessons.

The wrong way to read this fairy-tale

You should not read this fairy-tale to children all at once, from the beginning to end. Ideally, it should be narrated by making use of its material as the source for your inspiration. It's important to know this fairy-tale well, as you can re-fashion it.

This story helped me to work with both the youngest children of 2-3 years of age and students of musical colleges. Some specific musical concepts, for the reason of their abstract character, are beyond the comprehension of any beginner of ANY AGE, so it was important to me to find some enjoyable images for their explanation.

I believe that you can learn music successfully only if you do not ignore the nature of its original language. In many schools, teachers give long lectures about the music language without actually using music at all. If a kid only hears or reads about music and never has a chance to experience it firsthand, well, that's just like learning that French is a beautiful language and that many writers wrote in French, but never learning to use it. Will this knowledge about the beauty and importance of the French language help you learn to speak it?

From the very beginning, this fairy-tale directs the beginners towards acquaintance with the principal functions of musical art. It serves as the first stage of understanding music as a unique language.

The guide-book for those who will read "between the lines," or a short summary of what I got to know about the history and theory of music from boring textbooks and the fascinating world of sounds.

I was mostly struck by how it all began. An ancient man, just as a newborn, tried to express himself in sounds that were gliding first upwards, then downwards in the way of the capricious GLISSANDO (Italian: a glide from one note to the next - Belwin Pocket Dictionary of Music, p.50). In my story, GLISSANDO is a character with an unfortunate fate because, at the beginning of the development of human speech, GLISSANDO was very popular, but then was left behind for a long time in the process of musical development. To hear GLISSANDO, just take a run up and down the keys of the piano or keyboard, glide along violin strings, or use your voice to imitate a plane's take-off or landing.

The day and the hour when one of our ancestors, after the period of idle and anarchic swinging and glissading, succeeded in fixing one and only musical sound with the use of his voice was as important in the entire history of music as the invention of a wheel in the history of technical development. That is why the TUNING-FORK (a two-pronged instrument of metal, which, upon being struck, gives a certain fixed tone; used for tuning instruments - Belwin Pocket Dictionary of Music, p. 126), letting out only one regulated tone, is one of the key characters in my story. In this fairy-tale, Tuning-fork sets the tone for all of the other sounds and helps "build" the country of organized sounds.

This kingdom, like any other one, has its own laws and peculiarities and even its own queen- TONICA (Tonic - the keynote of a scale; the first degree of the scale - BPD of M, p.123). In musical works, the Tonic serves as a specific "gravitation center" to connect all sounds and introduce the sensation of stability and steadiness. Therefore, the majority of musical works is bound to end with a Tonic.

At the beginning of the 20th century this order of the organization of music was put to the test, and the so-called "abstract" music appeared, in which the uniting Tonic center was missing. So, music fell to acoustic sounds and began to move away from the once consolidated logic. Some adventures of this story are devoted to this historical period, such as the kidnapping of Tonica, organized by her enemies, and the effect it had on the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Tune.

Music as a "pure genre," connected with neither any word or pantomime, did not come into existence straight away. So, the sonata, concerto, symphony and other musical works that suffer "dull and boring" names are actually the reflection of the musical language that has fought through any interpreters. Isn't it wonderful - to be an object of such belief in our minds? Starting with the first pages of the fairy-tale, you will find information about how important it was for the art of music to become independent, and I would like those who make up caricatures about boring symphony concerts to think about it while reading this story.

Reflected in the fairy-tale, there is also the story of how all sounds were divided into musical and noisy ones, and accords - into CONSONANCES (pleasant in sound) and DISSONANCES (a relation of tension between various tones).

In the middle ages, the first professional schools of musical composition were attached to the Christian Church and called "Schools of Austere Writing." They subjected all dissonances to severe discrimination, including the use of noisy instruments. For example, C and F sounding simultaneously were labeled as "the devil's accords," and, as for the composers using them in their works, they would meet their ends in the scalding fire of inquisition. Drums, tambourines, gongs and other instruments from the Pre-Christian era were also considered "sinful," and their owners were thought to be wizards and witches. This is what the dramatic story dwells on - the development of the relationship between consonances and dissonances, and between musical and noisy sounds.

While reading the fairy-tale you will run across several musical terms that grow into characters and sometimes even serve as valuable items. These are:

Fermata (Fermata /It./ a pause, usually indicated by the sign. BPD of M, p.43).

Staccato (Staccato /It./ Detached, with each note separated from the next and quickly released. BPD of M, p.113).

Legato (Legato /It./ Even, without any break between the notes, smooth).

In spite of the fairy-tale surroundings, the essence of the phenomena reflected in music is not changed in the least! And perhaps my young readers, upon hearing this tale, will start treating footnotes with a bit more interest and attention.

My students love to hear this fairy-tale, so I hope it will appeal to my readers, too. Let it bring joy to you and help you look at footnotes in a new way, as well as hear all musical sounds anew. Through many years music has been attempting to reach us, so it had to go through a multitude of real adventures compared with which, any fantasy fades. If this book makes it easier for you to overcome the difficulties of understanding music as a language, it will be the greatest reward I could ever hope to get for the work that I have accomplished.