This piece is about a bear, but it’s also about a chameleon. And a secret message. Yes, for real! The right hand part is a musical chameleon: a secret code word (BEAR) is disguised as the melody. The B, E, and A are of course easy to make sense of, but I had to get a little creative with R. In solfège (a musical alphabet for singing) the second note of a scale is “re,” which would be a D in C major. But if you lower it (add a flat), it’s “ra.” This makes it fierce, especially if you say it with a growl-roar at the end: Bea...RA!

Score Length: 2 pages