Baby Shark Concerto?!

 

“Baby Shark!!” My four-year-old daughter shouted, banging the piano keys like a deaf Beethoven figuring out the main melody of his 9th Symphony.  She wasn't particularly tuneful, but her harmony did keep time with her words.  “doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo.  Baby Shark!!”

“Daddy Shark!!” boomed in the second verse with even more vibration of the piano strings.  Elise was wringing every bit of emotion this song had out of it.

“Grandpa Shark!!!!”  Followed by the requisite doo-doos and clashing of keys.  I wasn’t sure if the piano would survive.  I was sure my ears wouldn’t make it.

“It’s the end…  It’s the end…  IT’S THE END!!!”  The last note was a shriek that would have made the fat lady at the opera wish she could hit notes like that, if she had just heard it. Then the sound slowly died away.

“Sounded like Baby Shark,” I said nonchalantly to my son, Vincent.

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you like it?”  I asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said.  “Probably not.”

“I have an idea,” I said.  “Maybe you could someday write a theme and variations on Baby Shark – or better yet – a Piano Concerto!  The Baby Shark Piano Concerto, people would come out to hear it just because of the name.

Vincent shook his head.  This did not sound like a good plan to him and frankly, it doesn’t really to me either.  There are melodies out there that are beautiful and haunting, but the tune of Baby Shark is simply haunting.  Expanding it out to a ten- or twenty-minute classical piece of music sounds like a disaster only surpassed by the volcanic eruption at Pompei.

It strikes me that there are some things that need to be brief.  Preachers and politicians are often fond of the sound of their own voice and say with ten words what could be said with two or three words.

Proverbs 10:19 contains the wise saying, “ In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin: But he that refraineth his lips is wise.”  Quite simply, we are far more likely to get into trouble when we talk a whole lot than we sit and listen.

More than that, a little bit goes a long way.  This is true when it comes to words and speeches.  It is even true when it comes to the song Baby Shark, where a single verse is better than the whole song – even if it is played by a precocious four year old on a Baldwin Upright Piano.