"No-No" Nonette

P.D.Q. Bach, like all the other children of Johann Sebastian Bach, received music lessons at an early age from his father. Although J.S. had given up on P.D.Q. by the time the latter was three years old, he had already shown the baroque toddler how all the string, wind and keyboard instruments around the house were played, and he had also found it necessary to point out to his son that certain things, in spite of the fact that they could be made to produce sounds, were not to be considered musical instruments and were not to be employed in formal musical compositions. Of course it was inevitable, P.D.Q. being the obstinate son-of-a-Bach he was, that he would eventually write a piece using exactly those things he had been told not to use; in fact, he seems to have been in a hurry to do so, since the No-No Nonette is one of the earliest pieces written during the Soused Period. The following is a list, in order of appearance in the score, of the toys played by the percussionist: popgun, heavy cloth, boing box, toy drum, toy cymbals, harmonica, squeeze toy, bird whistle, moo cow cylinder, crying doll, jawbone of an ass (now usually called vibra-slap), toy cowbell, baby rattle, slide whistle, toy xylophone (actually glockenspiel), flexitone, large taxi horn, small bike horn, music box, doggie pull toy, bike bell, saucepan, wooden spoon, two inflated balloons, and ice pick.