In less than an hour it will be 77 days, but who’s counting? (And who’s kidding whom? As if anyone believes I will be working on this in the week preceding noon, June 8.)

As I indicated previously, I have abandoned IV. Lento temporarily and am working on III. Allegro gracioso. Something tells me that it’s not going to be as salutary as it might be in anyone else’s creative scheme, because unfortunately I have a natural gift for waltzes. This was a piece of cake, and I fear it’s only going to make the formal torture of thematic variation even worse when I return to the fourth movement.

I’ve done the first 60 or so measures. You’ve heard the first strophe, but the rest is new and just sketched out in the strings. Here’s the mp3.