Melancholy Music for Children | Screenplay and Sheet Music

How the projects relate

Melancholy Music for Children history

Melancholy Music for Children was first created as an alternative to more conventional children's piano music: more reflective, more emotionally mature, and less limited by the usual expectations of the form.

Over time, ideas and story lines began to emerge that became the basis for a screenplay that utilized three works from the sheet music collection as well as works by Satie, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Ravel, and Scriabin.

Screenplay

Film project

When a burnt-out concert pianist — silently preparing to end his life — reluctantly agrees to teach a gifted, unusual twelve-year-old girl, he finds himself drawn into the orbit of her elegant, controlled, and deeply dangerous mother. As his will to live slowly returns, he begins to understand that the woman responsible for his resurrection may also be responsible for something far darker — and that knowing the difference between salvation and obsession may already be too late.

Read the screenplay online as a PDF, or request a printed copy directly.

Movie poster for Melancholy Music for Children

Alternate movie poster for Melancholy Music for Children

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Sheet Music

Original project

Melancholy Music for Children is a collection of piano pieces created for beginning pianists who prefer to play pieces in a minor key when most music for beginning pianists does not offer such an option. Most of the pieces are written in easier keys so that mood and emotion may be the focus of the performance.

Read the sheet music online as a PDF, or request a physical book of the music.

First page of Melancholy Smile sheet music from Melancholy Music for Children

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