The father, a pioneer of the early shellac culture, brings the dance and variety orchestras of Berlin into the ODEON recording studio during the 1920s and 1930s. Later, in the post-war period, he brings home a new black record from the city every evening, from which loud music blares, much to the daughter's dismay. To her, the father appears as a magician who can compress opera singers, pianists, and entire orchestras into the tiny format of a record. Nothing interests the daughter more than discovering the secrets of her father's mysterious world of music. Therefore, she takes piano lessons, studies couplets and small dances with her father, and tries her hand at being a child star, but fails in a quirky way with each of these attempts. She must come up with something else. "We Make Music," the first major prose work by the essayist and playwright.