Here my age and my German upbringing show: throw La Paloma at any German who was alive in the early sixties, and they associate spontaneously: Freddy Quinn. While he was a fine singer and musician (he had some critical success in London with a musical), he chose to make his living in Germany with some very corny "harbour city" pseudo-folk music. La Paloma was one of his most famous numbers. This connection also explains my choice of instrumentation: MIDI instrument 24 (Accordion). However, there are redeeming graces: the rhythm of this piece is quite unusual with its combination of eighths (quaver) triplets -the first of which is initially tied to the preceding half-note (minim)- and plain eighths in the melody, and a tango-like dotted rhythm in the accompaniment. While the arranger Maxwell Eckstein manages to fill two pages with this, the repetitions become obvious to the transcriber and it is shown here on just one page. It was transcribed from "LET US HAVE MUSIC for PIANO" Vol.2, Arranged and Edited by MAXWELL ECKSTEIN, (all their caps) Carl Fischer Inc., New York, U.S.A, ALLANS MUSIC AUSTRALIA LIMITED, Imperial Edition No.883 . It contains howlers like the Theme from Haydn's Surprise Symphony, the Theme from Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, an extremely bland arrangement of Handel's Largo, and worst of all, something titled "Theme from Tschaikowsky's Piano Concerto No.1"; Maxwell Eckstein should be shot just for this. Alas, my score reading skills don't include actually hearing the piece, that's why I transcribe them with MOZART, and only then becomes the poor arrangement obvious. So I ended up transcribing the Triumphal March from Aida and La Paloma by S. Yradier. The difference in quality can be seen by comparing Eckstein's Barcarolle from Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann with the one in AMSCO's The Library Of Piano Classics., which is also included in this collection. (With apologies) Enjoy! December 2001: "Sebastian" posted the Spanish lyrics in the news group rec.music.classical, so I added them. My Spanish is very rudimentary, so I'm sorry if I got the syllable distribution wrong. Michael Bednarek http://www.geocities.com/mcmbednarek/