Ballo for guitar? What's this?

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hago's closing item of the Cambridge Concert 2003 appears mysteriously on the programme simply as Ballo.

In fact, the correct title of the piece is Caterpillar Clog Dance, and Ballo was a cunning disguise so that the piece didn't arouse suspicion until it was too late to stop us!

Ballo comes from the rather unfortunate attempt to use an Internet translation engine to make the title sound posh. Indeed, the Italian translation offered up by two engines is the same...

Ballo Dell'Impedimento Del Trattore a Cingoli

It's only when we translated the title back from Italian to English did we discover that "Clog" became "Bunged Up" and "Caterpillar" became "Tractor's Crawler Tracks".

And so our programme concluded with The Dance of the Tractor with the Bunged Up Crawler Tracks.

But why Caterpillar Clog Dance? Well, this is a special 12-part arrangement of a trio that our Musical Director wrote for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music's (ABRSM) "Music Medals" scheme, designed to promote ensemble guitar, especially amongst school children. It's a fascinating initiative and we decided that we could have an extra bit of fun with the Caterpillar Clog Dance.

You'll have to come to one of our guitar orchestra concerts to find out just what though!

Music Medals book