I'm posting here because, in Breeze Shooting land below the line, somebody caught a steelhead trout and it reminded me of "Die Forelle" by Franz Schubert. I thought I ought to continue above the line, in the music section, without starting a new thread, so here we are.

No, I'm not going to answer the question, I'm just going to shamelessly continue the Forelle digression, totally exploitative of me.

You know what I think about Schubert, after years as an accompanist at the piano for voice teachers and their students? I think Schubert had some kind of a THING for running water. Not just water:
has to be flowing, running water. The pianists who have to play those accompaniments know what I am talking about: Die Schöne Müllerin, a whole cycle that takes place next to a millstream with all these running-water noises. I don't know that Schubert was so concerned with the Pro-Fish, Anti-Angler viewpoint of the poet, whose name I mercifully forget, in "Die Forelle." No, I think Schubert just took one look at the first line of the poem:

In einem Bächlein helle...

In a clear little stream...

and said the Viennese equivalent of: HOT DAMN, running water! And he's off and running himself.

Yes, Steve (Shaw), I have played those variations with a string quartet. My problem is that I have sat through too many Disney feature-length animated films like "Fantasia." When we get to the variation, I forget which numbered one, where the double-bass viol takes the melody and the piano goes absolutely frantic, I forget about the trout and the stream completely: I imagine a big old whale, sporting in the ocean, breaching and blowing and flapping his flukes, with maybe some dolphins and/or sea otters going all frisky. Whew!