frrrerre 7 freer er EGGS AND BASKETS rrereeeee erreceeee rrereeeeeer frreeerecce for narrator and two instruments rereeereeccere Creerereererre reeereeereeceeceee reeereereeececcee ereereeceeeeeeerceecece freeeececeeeeeceeeeccee feeereeeeeeeeeeeeerecree cree rererereeereeeceecerecereccee ffr rr Prerreeceeceeeececeeeereececeeeceeceecceecceeceeceeceeceeecceece Tom Johnson Editions 75, 75, rue de la Roquette 75011 PARIS TWO-IGHTEEN PRESS P.O. Box 218, Village Station, N.Y., NY 10014EGGS AND BASKETS TOM JOHNSON EGGS AND PASKETS was written in 1987 for the musicians of the Calskill Conservatory in New York State, where it was presented in grade schools. The children, liked it a lot, but we found out tater that the piece is perhaps more appreciated by adults. The two instruments should be contrasted, and should stand some distance apart. but they should play in the same octave and with the same articulation. Violin and oboe, flute and clarinet, trombone and saxophone, and many other combinations are all quite possible. During the didactic first part of the piece, the music should be played clearly, deliberately, with most of the attention going to the narrator. But the final four pages can be much faster, even virtuosic. Narrator You've probably heard the expression “Don't put all your eggs in one basket.” It just means to spread out what you have so thet if something goes wrong, you won't lose everything all at once. But it's more complicated than you may think. Let me try to explain it simply. Suppose that we only have one egg and two baskets. In that case, there's noi a whole lot of choice. We either put our egg in the one basket or in the other... copyright 1987 by Tom Johnsonand there’s no way to avoid having all our eggs in one basket, 1 mean, 1 guess we could pul our egg in the refrigerator or somewhere, but that's net really solving the problem with the baskets. But now let us suppose that our hen lays another egg. Now we have Iwo eggs, which we can put in one basket or in the other basket —=o or divide up in two dillerent ways jane Now what if we have three eggs? Well, we can always keep them together. <= but there are a number of ways thal we can break them up, so to speak Now let's consider all the ways we can pul four eggs into two baskets. We can pul four eggs in one basket and none in the other.Or we ean put three in one basket and one in the other. a (Or we can divide them two-and-two. Actually, if you wanted to count. you'd find that everytime our hen lays another egg. we have twice as many ways of pulling them in our baskets as we had before. With five eggs, there are 32 different ways of putting them info our baskels. So even if we know that it's unadviseable te put them all in one basket we still have 30 other possible ways of dividing them up four-and-one or ree-and-fwo.How can we ever decide what lo do wilh our eggs when we have all those ways to choose from? And with six eggs!? Well, lot's just let the musicians play. And aller they've divided up the six eggs, they'll throw one out and do the five eggs in a different way than before, and then the fours and threes and twos and ones, so that we can review all of this, and hopefully clarify everything