August 17, 2005
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At Cologne
“The Game was at first nothing more than a witty
method for developing memory and ingenuity among students and musicians.
The inventor, Bastian Perrot of Calw… found that the pupils at
the Cologne Seminary had a rather elaborate game they used to play. One
would call out, in the standardized abbreviations of their science,
motifs or initial bars of classical compositions, whereupon the other
had to respond with the continuation of the piece, or better still with
a higher or lower voice, a contrasting theme, and so forth. It was an
exercise in memory and improvisation quite similar to the sort of thing
probably in vogue among the ardent pupils of counterpoint in the days
of Schütz, Pachelbel, and Bach….
Bastian Perrot… constructed a frame, modeled on a child’s
abacus, a frame with several dozen wires on which could be strung glass
beads of various sizes, shapes, and colors….”
