Miss Molly's Music

This weekend my husband disappeared into his little shed down in the very back corner of our garden. He emerged late on Sunday afternoon with this little Pentatonic Glockenspiel.



We saved some of the branches we cut from our big, old Mulberry tree last winter. A little bit of sanding and some beeswax and the lovely old branches have new life.

The keys are made also by my dear husband and are polished solid brass. It has such a lovely sound to it, very accurate 7 pentatonic tones.

I have loved the sound of pentatonic instruments ever since I first set foot in a Steiner Kindergarten. The lyres and the glockenspiels are sacred to those special early childhood sanctuaries. Rudolf Steiner spoke often of the value of the pentatonic scales. What is of utmost importance is that no matter how you play them, the music and sounds produced are harmonious, as a result they encourage musical improvisation with children.

Left over trails of little visitors to our tree are buried in the surface of the the old branches. Long gone are the little grubs but the tiny trails remind us of that they too have used this wood for their own use many months before us.