Lights out

Two of my favorite signs to be posted in places of business:

At the customer service counter of a print shop...

Fast
Good
Cheap

Choose any two.

And, in the Music Department office in Old Cabell Hall at the University of Virginia:

Lack of preparation on your part, does not constitute an emergency on our part.

Strange to say, earlier today I listened to the Suite from The Love for Three Oranges, but (apart from the wonderfully famous March, naturally) I don't think I recognized a single note.

Should I be worried?

Dewy morning

Back in the right spot, as even when the page is not beneath my poised pen, new ideas spring up in a most gratifying manner.

Chappie who used to sing with us at St Paul's just noted that a Psalm setting (which I arranged . . . sort of a modest homage to Mozart, who transcribed the Allegri Miserere mei, Domine on one hearing, this is a Psalm 91 I heard repeatedly, sung by men, and which I later arranged for SATB from aural memory) is a piece which keeps recurring to his inner ear.

Getting on with it

Some work laid in, both last night, and on this morning's train. The topmost staff was from May of 2011, and shows a meter change which I have reconsidered. The remainder of the page is not necessarily in the right order, but it's all material I expect to use.

Signally productive

All in all, The Grand 2013 Henningmusick Re-Rollout has been an overridingly positive experience.  I have managed to get Sibelius 6 files to the publisher for:

Three Short Pieces (organ), Op.34
Radiant Maples, Op.59
Fragments of « Morning Has Broken », Op.64a
Starlings on the Rooftop, Op.82
Studies in Impermanence, Op.86
Nunc dimittis, Op.87, № 9

. . . and the experience of (perforce) having to put new composition on hold, while sawing away at a task which brought a fair number of "old scores" under my eye, gave me the chance (potentially) to grow heartily sick of (it might have been) embarrassing early work.  But — even if none is The Musical Masterpiece of My Generation — I find all the pieces to be well made, still, and I just enjoy the sound of them all, still.  (Added bonus:  All six works have actually been performed in public; and a majority of them have been performed multiple times.)

And (but wait — there's more!) I find myself freshly enthused to attend to The Mystic Trumpeter.  Yes, I did some composing on this morning's train.  The piece will benefit from the much-improved global sense of architecture which I have developed over all these months of apparent inactivity on the composition.

Maples done, again

In reviewing the old PDF of Radiant Maples, my eye caught a musical infelicity. The offensive measure contained repeating notes in the harp.

I composed the piece before I had the advantage of knowing Mary Jane Rupert, who pointed out to me that, most unlike piano or harpsichord (or guitar, for that matter), rapid repeated notes are not idiomatic on the harp (the strings are too long, and need time to recover a bit in order for the player to strike again).

It is long enough ago that we played the piece, that I honestly don't remember what Mary Jane's workaround was -- or even, if I recomposed that measure for her part on that occasion. At any rate, I made a few comparatively trivial changes else, here and there.

Bingo!

This morning, I felt I should get the Fragments done this evening, and here it is, not even half past eight, and it is in the can.

The doggone minute I've decided to hold on

As documented by an image earlier posted to this very blog, so far as concerns Radiant Maples, Opus 59, for flute, clarinet in B-flat, harp & piano, the XML transfer method is one of the five startlingest non-starters in the history of music engraving. I think there may be nothing for it, and that (in the case of more than one section with rapid figurations in uneven note divisions) there's apt to be no solution short of do it again.

This is not complaint, it's appraisal. Knowledge is Power. (And still, rhythmically simpler passages {marginally the greater part of the piece} may import well enough via pdf.)

Considering this month's musical To Do List: the news is much better (and, as focused as I have been on solving for Maples, unexpected) with the Fragments of « Morning Has Broken », Opus 64a, for flute, clarinet in B-flat, and piano. This score is overall much simpler rhythmically, and appears actually to have survived the XML ordeal as intact as might reasonably be expected.

Suggest, if you must, that this is irrationally exuberant of me, but I think it realistically possible to chop a new Fragments out in an evening's work. Don't take my word for it: we shall put the matter to the test, tonight.