30 June 2009

Tempora mutantur

Queens wasn’t a hip place to be from
if you wanted to be a folk-singer.
Paul Simon

Although The Stranger was Billy Joels breakthrough album, it was the overall excellence of 52nd Street which got my musical blood boiling on its initial release. Though I did not delay all that much to buy the LP, all the same I had heard better than half of the album over the radio before I owned the vinyl myself. I still remember riding in a friends car in Pompton Lakes, turning the radio on and hearing Until the Night . . . and I remember, almost as if the seconds are ticking by all over again, how awareness that the singer was Billy Joel sank in only gradually.

The irony is something wistful, after the ball-players subsequent history, to hear Joel singing, Rose, he knows hes such a credit to the game.

Still, for a Yankees fan to acknowledge such a thing . . . the sentiment does Billy Joel credit.

Freddie Hubbards solo on Zanzibar: magical, electrifying.

29 June 2009

One Reckless Berry

Probably had not done any composing proper since late April — but then, I’ve had the recitals to arrange and prepare for. Now I’ve gotten a start on the new fl/cl duet, Heedless Watermelon.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

27 June 2009

Resurrection of the Passion (So to Speak)

The voice of the people has been heard! The Board of the Sine Nomine Choir have approved director Paul Cienniwa’s proposal to program the Henning Opus 92 on 20 & 21 March 2010, in New Bedford & Fall River, Massachusetts.

Back of the envelope

Having faced the reality of not programming The Angel Who Bears a Flaming Sword in the half-hour recital at King’s Chapel, Peter & I are rapidly addressing the task of rustling up another venue.

And I’m scratching lead over a half-hour program to complement that at King’s.

Paul will likely be preoccupied packing his kit to head abroad for August, otherwise we might give Fragments a spin. Still, worth checking with him . . .

Otherwise, what I’m thinking is:

Blue Shamrock (cl solo)— 4 minutes
The Angel Who Bears a Flaming Sword (alto fl solo) — 14 minutes
Irreplaceable Doodles (cl solo) — 6 minutes
[ new fl/cl duet ] — 6 minutes

Golly

More tabloid opera in the pipeline! Just what the world needs . . . .

26 June 2009

The Faithful Muse

Feeling an urge to draw up a flute/clarinet duet. Ideas are flowing.

On the Road

Driving to the Museum yesterday, I got a close look at a bumper sticker on the rear of a car whose driver cut me off:

      When the power of love
      overcomes the love of power,
      then the world will know peace.

A lovely sentiment. I suppose the application of the sticker to the bumper was a simple gesture of admiration for Jimi Hendrix (the apparent source of the quotation) rather than any endorsement of the content of Hendrixs remark.

Else one is invited to understand that the power of love is completely compatible with cutting fellow motorists off because, what the hell, youre in the far left lane, and you suddenly realize this is your exit.

Forestalling the Gong

There is artistic value for the composer in considering the question of excisions/revisions; either one finds them actually called for, or (ideally) there emerges a clearer understanding why the composition as it stands, should be left in situ.

As I often find, where one day I perceive a musical problem, I ‘sleep on it’, and in the morning I find an elegant solution ready to hand.

In my post yesterday, I entertained the idea of abbreviating stars & guitars; on reflection, though, I realized that the proposed abbreviation (starting the piece at a later point) in effect cuts out the piece’s roots . . . one of the formative inspirations for the opening two sections, was a Morton Feldman piece I had been listening to a great deal. In the event (as generally, and happily, happens) I write my own piece, rather than (in this case) faux-Feldman . . . the long and the short of it is, I withdraw the suggestion on better consideration.

That point considered moot, then; what to do?

The simplest path to a half-hour program for the 28th is, drop The Angel. We can substitute an arrangement of a 2-minute extract from my ballet-in-progress, which I have already performed separately as a cl/vn/pf trio; this will adapt readily as a fl/cl/hp bon-bon (it is simplicity itself) which will close the program nicely. The new program would thus be:

Irreplaceable Doodles (cl solo) — 6 minutes
stars & guitars (fl/hp) — 20 minutes
Tropes on Parasha’s Aria (trio) — 2 minutes

For a repeat performance of The Angel Who Bears a Flaming Sword, I have a scheme in view. Watch This Space.

25 June 2009

Ticklish Uptick Timing Issues

An excellent point was raised at the conclusion of last night’s recital; and better thought must be taken for programming on Tuesday the 28th.

Fact: Although in the past, I think I have programmed up to 40 minutes of music for a King’s Chapel recital, management currently seem less negotiable on duration, and expectations are for 30 minutes.
Problem: The tentative program I had been thinking runs:

Angel, op 94a: 12'
Irreplaceable Doodles, op 89: 6'
stars, op 95: 20' (or maybe a shade more?)

total = 38' (plus)

. . . which with potential ‘breathing expansion’ in the music, and stage-changes, is clearly too long a running-time.

Possible solution A: Drop the Doodles
Objections: Still leaves us running a bit long; and the idea of programming Doodles is to give Peter a well-deserved breather.
Level of objections: Code Red

Possible solution B: Drop the Angel
Objection: Seems a pity not to let Peter have more use of the piece now that it’s in ‘fighting trim’.
Ameliorations: Lightens some of Peter’s burden for that day; currently no prospect of a recording of the event, anyway.
Level of objection: Code Yellow

Possible solution C: A one-time abbreviation of starsfor this occasion only
Objections: Composer is very much not desirous of seeming to ‘sanction’ cuts; part of the piece’s impact, I think, is its breadth; I don't really ‘see’ cutting more than (say) the first six minutes-ish . . . if we begin with love awakens, we still have a 14-minute piece.
Level of objections: Code Yellow(?)

If we keep Angel & Doodles, and go with (C), we’ve still got something like 32 minutes of music . . . which perhaps, if we are brisk with sequencing, we can get away with.

I still await my fellow performers’ thoughts on the matter.

Gentle Reader, what are your thoughts?

Upticks (I) Recap

The audience outnumbered the musicians four to one; so attendance must be reckoned a crowd. This was a nice ‘zone’: an audience large enough, that you feel that you are playing for the public — yet an audience intimate enough, that everyone feels welcome to come up and congratulate you afterwards.

The space, too, is impressive. Though it is large, it is acoustically a wonderful interior, wherein a nervy wind player with good projection can ‘command’ the whole space, no matter how quiet the music. The audience were all keenly attentive, you could practically feel them breathing in sympathy with you — and any musician is grateful for such an audience, great or small.

Calculatedly, Gentle Reader — ever so calculatedly — I opened the program with the whirlwind Blue Shamrock. No matter the several imperfections of the reading to which I was necessarily alive, all it needs is nerve enough to carry on, and to keep the energy ratcheted up.1. Even at somewhere-less-than-perfect, the piece makes an impression, and wins you the audience; which in my book, is worth all the sweat needed to bring the piece to an audience.

Mary Jane then played the harp solo suite, Lost Waters. (I should be apt, Gentle Reader, to make myself tiresome with saying this, so let me say it once now, and I shall not repeat myself, though it will be true of all the remaining program, too:) It was an irreducible admixture of pleasure, pride, gratitude to the performers, and humble gratification in the performance, to have one’s music (written, in some cases, long before) played with such sensitivity and grace, by such accomplished colleagues. If I say that I enjoyed every note, let it not suggest any proprietary attachment to the fruit of my musical brain, for it signifies instead the professional and musical importance with which the performer invested each note. Any composer would be envious of such attentive performance of his work. At whose end, Mary Jane rose to a well-earned warmth of applause.

After the ready accessibility of Lost Waters, Peter and Mary Jane launched into the comparative musical maze which is stars & guitars. Together they played the piece with unwavering focus and passion; and I thought, what a good thing that I wrote it for such a long piece: for (and especially after the familiar sound-scapes of Lost Waters) the duo starts off in a way which, to anyone new to the piece, must seem a stark puzzle — but let your ears settle, and things fall into place. It was a gripping performance.

After a brief intermission (whose purpose was more to give Peter a chance to catch his breath, than for the instrument change), the bass flute was traded for an alto, and forth sang The Angel Who Bears a Flaming Sword. Apart from obviously occupying a mid-range between the standard concert flute and the bass, the alto flute also balances half-way between the sweetly focused tone, and on-a-dime navigability of the concert flute, and the earthy, take-a-deep-breath character of the bass. Peter gave outstanding performances all through the evening.2.

To wrap up, the trio (Fragments...) and quartet (Radiant Maples) both went very well, and aught that they may have lacked in strict compliance with the score (the clarinetist managed somehow to come in early after one tempo change, for instance) was more than made up for in spirit. And the slow closing section of Maples is exactly what I should have wished, in terms of the audience’s final impression of the evening.

What was especially gratifying: I was introduced afterwards to a splendidly capable freelance clarinetist, who is keen to give Blue Shamrock a try. A program which he is playing in a week or two, in Brookline (IIRC), is all music by American composers, so the Shamrock falls cannily within his recent musical thoughts.

My mom came up from Tennessee for this concert, which all of its own was a touching gesture — it is many years since last she heard me play, and I don’t know that she has heard any of my compositional work at all. The stage was set for a comedic, Is this what you compose?!? But mom and her two traveling companions spoke to me afterwards with a warmth which went well beyond any obligatory en famille politeness. I think mom may not wait so long before attending another concert.

1. Someday, I am going to say to my wife after a concert, “I played Blue Shamrock exactly as it ought to be played [or, one of a variety of ways within how it ought to be played].” Someday, I am going to say to my wife after a concert, “Once again, dear, I played Blue Shamrock exactly as it ought to be played.” Even though yestereve was not either of those days, I am entirely pleased with my performance. I should be displeased, if the next performance does not improve on it.

2. And between stars & guitars and The Angel..., he was given enough of a workout that he scheduled himself a post-concert appointment with a masseuse today.

PS/ Even if things had gone absolutely smoothly, it would have been a busy afternoon before the recital. But then, as I was on the highway heading south of Boston to fetch in the recording engineer — tire went flat. Had to pull over, call AAA. (It all sorted out, and happily the adventure did not remove my ability to think on my feet . . . .)

24 June 2009

Penultimate Rehearsal

Last night, I had arranged to meet Bill Goodwin at First Church principally to sort out details (and blow Blue Shamrock for maybe an hour)  Peter Bloom had offered (more than once) to play through The Angel Who Bears a Flaming Sword  for me ahead of the recital;  so I rang him yesterday morning to see if he could pop by.

It was the first I’ve played in that space in some few years, and its beauty is both architectural (in a chaste, New England way) and sonic.

It was something of a change in plan I had pulled on our worthy Bill, by having Peter appear . . . and Bill was ready to move some plywood, when, seeing that Peter had already assembled his alto flute, he said (in a friendly and gracious way), “You do your thing first, before we do the physical tasks.”  Peter said (and I thought it sounded a bit like a question, “It’s twelve minutes.”  “Yes,” I replied.  “I timed it,” he enlarged.  “So that is more or less what you were expecting?”  (Aye, exactly what I was expecting.)  I sat about six rows away from Peter (and Bill sat maybe ten rows behind me), and I just relaxed and enjoyed the experience of The Angel Who Bears a Flaming Sword inhabiting that great space.

Now, Bill had been quite sufficiently friendly when I had first arrived at the church yesterday, everything gas & gaiters, both of us pleased to be working together again after the long hiatus.  As a result of Peter’s playing my piece last night, though, the warmth in Bill’s manner notched upI might even say, it upticked bullishly.  Necessarily, he gets caught up in the mundane week-to-week happenings at the church . . . And then to hear a performer of Peter’s calibre play this wild, new piece, and to hear that in the space where he (Bill) works all the timeI think it ‘opened his ears again’.  Knowing Bill all these years, I am sure that part of it was gratitude for the reminder that it is these ‘flashes of culture’ that really count, that it clearly inhabits a higher realm than the sometimes tedious goings-on in the workplace (even when that workplace is a church), and that it is those flashes which perhaps ‘redeem’ the tedium.

Peter wanted critique from me, but I was simply pleased with it all.  “Any demands?” he asked.  “All my demands are there on the page, and you are complying with them all nicely.”  His wife Becky listened to him run the piece earlier yesterday, and made very flute-specific comments “even though she’s not a flute-player,” qualified Peter.  “And that is a talent, too,” says I.

From rehearsal as a quartet in Mary Jane’s home in Cambridge, we had a specific grouping of the four of us in mind for tonight’s concert.  I had forgotten, though, how strangely cramped the space in the church is, in the spot where (acoustically) we shall want to be situated.  Between the front-most pew-wall, and a raised daïs for the communion table, the space is a bit too narrow to accommodate our configuration ‘perfectly’;  but with piano not quite square to the daïs, there is room for the harp in the crook (important to have eye contact between Paul and Mary Jane in Radiant Maples) and I should still be able to fit myself between the harp and the pew wall.  Bill and I moved the piano, and then laid two sheets of plywood down on the floor to cover the bands of carpeting.  We shall find out this afternoon if we need to make any adjustment, but it feels reasonable;  and there is open space in the center, to the pianist’s back, for the solo wind pieces.

All that done, I put the clarinet together and practiced Blue Shamrock.  I don’t feel that I have it all quite ‘locked down’ (so, yes, I ought to have started practicing a week earlier, as I had originally planned).  Yet, it all felt reasonably comfortable.  I had been playing it at home, seated (because the stand I have at home doesn’t rise high enough to play from, standing), and just two sheets at a time (as I have only the one stand . . . and, for that matter, only the practical space for the one stand).  At the church, standing, and with the music splayed out over three stands, it all feels much more comfortable.  So I practiced the ‘trouble spots’which are two pages whole at a stretchseveral times.  Then, I borrowed Bill’s nifty electronic metronome (better in many respects than the wobbly plectrum number I have).  (“I'm not sure I really want to do this,” I said to Bill, of the metronome.)  It would require significant effort, still, to get a grip on the ‘ideal’ metronome markings imprinted in the score;  pity I shan’t be able to, for this recording.  But the bright side is, that I even think it possible.  I am bringing the piece up into the soberer “range” of tempo which I want to incorporate into future Lux Nova imprints of the piece.  The ‘woodshedding’ done, I then ran the piece twice; tolerably, though I still hope to better it for tonight.  Strangely, I may be less tense about it, playing it at the start of the recital, than striving to rehearse it.

In all events, after I was done with the final run-through, Bill casually remarked, “Tape was running.”

23 June 2009

Thanks to All the Aardvarks

On aardvarkjazz.com.

Shingle

Out for a near-drizzly walk around Faneuil Hall this afternoon, I found myself approaching the cadet office of the famed bar:



So, I stepped in, tapped a somewhat-surprised visitor to Boston on the shoulder, and discreetly asked, Now, in fact: does anyone here know your name?

We shared a laugh. (I didnt tell him my name.)

“... more to emancipation than dissonance.”

Steve Hicken at listen blogs about In C.

22 June 2009

Program Notes

About the Music

Blue Shamrock :: Although the occasion for ‘finalizing’ this gnarly little number was a call from a European clarinetist for unaccompanied pieces, I had done most of the composing while in St Petersburg, in the mid-’90s. At that time, I was supposed to be finishing composition of my doctoral dissertation; but the comparative ‘formality’ of completing that dissertation aside, on a practical, experiential level, I felt a great freedom in having at last emerged from academia, and this sense of freedom frequently expressed itself in the writing of some small-scale piece which served no practical purpose for the dissertation. In this case, a jeu d’esprit for clarinet solo, three variations ‘in search of a theme’; which I had not quite finished, at a point when conscience regained the upper hand, and I went back to work on the dissertation. The call for scores, which came through my publisher (Lux Nova Press in Atlanta), prompted me to dust off these sketches; and the result is a piece gnarly enough, that I don’t believe the European clarinetist ever did essay it. Every now and again, I get Blue Shamrock back into playing condition, because I can, and because I seem not to lack nerve.

Lost Waters :: Each of the four numbers in this suite — Irving’s Hudson, Thoreau’s Walden, Whitman’s Ontario & Carlos Williams’ Passaic — draws variously upon literary inspiration, upon the writer’s association with a particular body of water, and upon my own impressions looking at and hiking about each river, pond or lake. The four pieces overall form a kind of ‘progression’, from the first (in which all twelve chromatic tones of the octave are used) to the last (for which there are no pedal changes at all). That gradual ‘simplification’ of pitch-world is complimented (inversely) by a stepped increase in the complexity of the rhythmic profile of each succeeding piece. The composition of music as a sort of contemplation of American literary figures was the result of my writing the suite while in St Petersburg. I spent almost four years in Estonia and Russia, where in fact I had gone first as an English teacher, so I had brought both a collection of Carlos Williams’ poems, and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. I am deeply grateful to Mary Jane Rupert for undertaking the long-delayed première of the suite; and it is gratifying to report that the delay was not any matter of musical impracticality — for when Mary Jane met with me privately to read the pieces earlier this year, it appeared that no musical adjustment of any substance was necessary.

stars & guitars :: After adapting The Angel… (see below) for alto flute, I thought it high time to follow through on a casual promise I once made Peter Bloom, some time since, to write a duet for his bass flute & harp; and I reckoned on compensating for my delay in compliance, by composing something fairly substantial. I began work in February of this year, under a working title which, really, I didn’t much like from the outset; by which, I should probably guess that I prefer working on music with ‘the wrong title’ to working on (say) “Flute & Harp Duo № 1.” The true & proper title of the piece came to me quite readily, when I attended a lunchtime recital at King’s Chapel in Boston — played by a guitarist. I sketched and composed the piece almost entirely “abstractly” (my notes include phrases like fl sustained tones, hp “pixie dust”); but at some point I reflected that the performers, faced with pages and pages of notes, beams & accidentals, would probably find it helpful to have some indication of character, from section to section. Thus the piece unfolds in the following sequence:

i. a dream of a dream
ii. a most cautious alegría
iii. the mesa spread out beneath the stars
iv. love awakens
v. the face of night
vi. a dream of antique navigation
vii. alborada

In exactly the same way that the title stars & guitars belongs to the piece, even though I hadn’t lit upon that title until I was somewhere around p. 12 of the MS., these several descriptions of the different sections were really always a part of the music. It’s only that I drew the veil aside at a later stage in the process than usual.

The Angel Who Bears a Flaming Sword :: This piece I originally composed for trumpet solo, for Chris O’Hara. I knew it would be a demanding trumpet piece (a schoolmate in high school, Steve Falker, was a trumpet virtuoso, and his playing has been a persistent benchmark for me—to the despair of many another trumpeter). When I had finished composing the piece, and was fine-tuning the graphic layout, I realized that (with judicious transposition) it would work effectively for flute solo. When I showed the piece in that form to Peter Bloom, he suggested a further transpositional adjustment, to suit the piece to alto flute. The piece has some elements of Ego vox clamantis in deserto (as John the Baptist ‘explained’ himself in the Gospel). The sword of flame is in the hands of an Angel posted by the Most High to bar the return of errant man to Paradise; and, in part, this piece meditates on that Angel’s sorrow.

Fragments of « Morning Has Broken » :: Originally this piece was commissioned by Bill Goodwin, organist & music director here at the First Congregational Church, for clarinet, violin & piano. I am happy to say, I seem to be writing enough music that, as time passes, sometimes I forget details of earlier pieces (which, I suppose, means that I ought to write my program notes sooner)—it mystifies me, now, why I arranged the piece, then, for this alternate combination. This fog of memory leaves open the possibility that tonight’s performance is a première of this version, but at present this can only be speculation. The piece breaks down the hymn-tune Bunessan (popularized by the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens), and builds a series of ostinato variations on each ‘fragment’. At the end there is a sort of chorale in the winds based on the tune in its entirety. Probably, I ought to be embarrassed to write program notes which feature details that I have forgotten, so prominently, but there it is.

Radiant Maples :: In November of 2001, Phil Michéal (music director at the Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian Church in Detroit) programmed a Service of Light. One of the choral pieces he selected for use was my setting of O Gracious Light for choir, harp & piano; he was hiring a flautist for another piece that the choir was to sing, and so we discussed an instrumental interlude which I would compose, for flute, clarinet, harp & piano. In keeping with the Service of Light theme, I had told Phil that the title of my interlude would be Et lux in tenebris lucet (“And the light shineth in darkness”), and I set to work. I had just finished a wild piece for woodwind quintet and piano, Counting Sheep (or, The Dreamy Abacus of Don Quijote), and compositionally I was exulting in writing energetic, challenging chamber music, as a welcome change from a long stretch when most of the music asked of me was relatively calm sacred music (not that there’s anything wrong with that). As I was working on the interlude for Phil’s service, the music grew fairly cheerful, and so came to be at odds with my working title. As we had enjoyed especially beautiful foliage that autumn, I decided on Radiant Maples as a more suitable title. Although Phil felt that I had pulled something of a ‘switch’ on him with the new title, in the event it was not that alteration which caused the piece to be dropped, regretfully, from the service (the pianist’s health had sharply failed, and the piano writing in Maples was a bit daunting for the last-minute substitute).

About the Performers

Peter H. Bloom, whose playing has been called “a revelation for unforced sweetness and strength” (The Boston Globe), tours widely with leading chamber music and jazz ensembles and appears on 30 CDs (Dorian, SONY Classical, Newport Classic, others) with distribution throughout North America, Europe and Asia. His career encompasses a wide range of chamber music from period-instrument performances to the great European and American masterworks, to new music premieres. He is also a noted jazz artist, celebrating his 30th season with the internationally acclaimed Aardvark Jazz Orchestra (“a bracing walk on the wild side of the big band spectrum” — Jazz Times). Mr Bloom is historical woodwind consultant for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; provides musical direction for museum exhibitions in the US and abroad; and lectures widely. He earned the prestigious Noah Greenberg Award of the American Musicological Society for his work in 19th century American music. A board member of the James Pappoutsakis Flute Competition, Mr Bloom received a Master of Music with Distinction from the New England Conservatory of Music and holds a BA in Philosophy from Boston University.

Paul Cienniwa’s 2008-2009 concert season has included performances at St Thomas Church Fifth Avenue and in Chicago with violinist Rachel Barton Pine. His direction of Handel’s Alcina for the Boston Opera Collaborative prompted the Boston EDGE to write that “his playing was expert” and the Boston Musical Intelligencer to report that “[his] music pacing was expert”. Following his undergraduate studies at DePaul University with harpsichordist Roger Goodman, he received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Yale University, where he was a student of Richard Rephann. He has been awarded BAEF and Fulbright grants, and his musicological articles have appeared in American and European journals, including Early Music and Ad Parnassum. In addition to leading Newport Baroque, he is director of Sine Nomine choral ensemble and Music Director at First Church Boston, where he can be heard weekly on WERS (88.9 FM) Boston.

Mary Jane Rupert, acclaimed as a concert pianist and harpist, has performed throughout the world from Carnegie Recital Hall to the Beijing Concert Hall. She has appeared with symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles across the United States including the Boston Philharmonic, Louisville (Kentucky) Symphony, Mannheim Steamroller, The New Philharmonia, New England Philharmonic, Monadnock Orchestra, Nuclassix, and Underground Composers. In solo recital, she has performed for the National Meeting of the American Harp Society, Syracuse University, Western Michigan University, Longy School of Music, and others. She records for North Star and Harmony Hill. Dr Rupert serves on the music faculties of Tufts University, Wellesley College, Boston College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught at Oberlin College, Indiana University, Western Michigan University, and elsewhere. She holds a DM in Piano Performance and Music Literature, an MM in Piano, and an MM in Harp from Indiana University, as well as a BM in Piano from Oberlin College.

Karl Henning holds a B.Mus. with double major in composition and clarinet performance from the College of Wooster (Ohio); a M.A. in composition from the University of Virginia (Charlottesville); and a Ph.D. in composition from the University of Buffalo, where he studied with Charles Wuorinen and Louis Andriessen. His music has been played and sung on three continents (North America, Europe and Australia), and there is unconfirmed rumor that an Uruguayan zookeeper has papered walls with the Henning organ Toccata. Karl has served at different times as Interim Choir Director and Composer-in-Residence at the Cathedral Church of St Paul in Boston, where he composed a 40-minute unaccompanied choral setting of the St John Passion (premiered in March of 2008). Current projects include a full evening’s ballet based on Dostoyevsky’s novella White Nights, and a set of short pieces for cello ensemble.

21 June 2009

Haydnography III

It’s Fathers Day, so . . . why not some more Papa?

21.vi.09

Symphony № 30 in C Major, Alleluia
Symphony № 31 in D Major, Hornsignal

Symphony № 32 in C Major
Symphony № 33 in C Major

Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra
Adám Fischer


Separately . . . Sir Thomas More writing on the coronation of Henry VIII.

20 June 2009

A Fresh Scent of Maybe

“Tight, finely wrought” are the descriptors which have recently been applied to both Fragments of « Morning Has Broken » & Radiant Maples. and we are all enjoying ourselves in working the pieces up. The composer is well pleased; and occasion may possibly be found to make use of the pieces in a service at First Church, early in September.

It’s now some four years since the Squibnocket Trio played my trio (cl/bn/pf) Hurricane Relief; I am still in sporadic touch with the bassoonist, Dave Gallagher, who advises me this week that he has formed a woodwind quintet — so naturally I ask if I might write something for them. Replies he, Have you written anything for WW 5tet already?? Let me sound the group out, I think it would be worth a shot.

Naturally, I had to return that I have nothing yet in the catalogue for quintet, but . . . a piece for woodwind quintet and piano. Happily, he volleys back with We’re doing a WW 5tet + piano program in November – featuring Poulenc and Jacob 6tets. We’ve been playing a short WW 5tet piece for an opener…how long is your 6tet??

My own sextet, Counting Sheep (or, The Dreamy Abacus of Don Quijote) is the other piece (besides Radiant Maples) which I composed late in 2001, but which has languished on the shelf unperformed, even though at the time, it was composed to fulfill a musical request.

So, we watch & wait: the Abacus’s time may at last have come.

19 June 2009

Verbal Flotsam

It’s pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness.
Jerry Garcia

An important aspect of design is the degree to which the object involves you in its own completion.
Brian Eno

Working with [Thelonious] Monk is like falling down a dark elevator shaft.
John Coltrane

A wise man once said: Never discuss philosophy or politics in a disco environment.
Frank Zappa

It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.
P.G. Wodehouse



In the fall of 1798 Beethoven accepted Prince Lobkowsky’s commission for a set of six quartets. He immersed himself in the modern classics of the genre, many of which he had probably played and heard in Bonn. He had laboriously copied manuscripts from Haydn’s op. 20 and from Mozart’s 1785 quartets, and was not above performing and studying quartets by at least a few local masters, including Emanual Förster. In his memoir of Beethoven, Franz Wegeler reports in this connection that “a Viennese composer, Förster, brought him a quartet [presumably a string quartet] that he had just finished copying out that morning. In the development section of the first movement the cellist lost his place. Beethoven stood up and sang the cello part, while continuing to play his own part. When I told him that this was a mark of his remarkable skill, he replied, ‘that’s the way the bass part has to go, unless the composer had known nothing about composition.’”
Lewis Lockwood, Inside Beethoven’s Quartets, p.29


Bang on a Tweet

soho the dog discusses the intersection of Twitter and the Happening.

. . . which discussion makes reference to Life’s a Pitch, wherein is revealed (the complete non-surprise) that one may not be able to hear the music, for the tweets.



Me? Who, me? Another and yet better rehearsal last night.

17 June 2009

Collectivization

Tired after a very productive two hours of rehearsal; and most gratified that all the performers share my enthusiasm for the music. Next week shall go well.

Good night, all!

16 June 2009

Brand-New Music, West Coast Division

A piano trio composed by Garrett Shatzer, and recently premiered.



Garret's program notes:

Garrett Ian Shatzer (b. 1980, Detroit, MI) is a first-year graduate student at UC Davis. Holding degrees from the University of Michigan and the University of Miami, he has also had the privilege of studying in Paris, Rome, and Buenos Aires. After concentrating on popular electronic music for many years, his focus is now exclusively on acoustic compositions. Aside from writing for the concert hall, he has also written music for films, dance clubs, rock and metal bands, hip hop MCs, modern dancers, and theater productions.

I am increasingly interested in the process of reharmonization and reinterpretation of musical events. In Piano Trio No. 1, I explore these in two large-scale ways. First, I use the opening gesture to reach two distinctly different sections of music, contrasted via harmony, dynamics, and tempo. Second, I investigate the functional possibilities of the common harmonies within the two main key areas of the piece, B minor and F minor. My musical idiom has been described as “tonal but not really tonal” due to my conflicting uses of tertian harmonies in both functional and non-functional ways, and this piece is no different.

A Little Maple Music

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15 June 2009

Five Little Pages

That’s all there is to Blue Shamrock. But to play those fives pages, is life richly lived.

Seven years ago now, it must be, my publisher asked around among composers in the ‘stable’ for pieces for unaccompanied clarinet. I had in my sketch-book a series of three ‘variations in search of a theme’ which I had composed while in St Petersburg (Russia); they were a sort of pitch-world jeu d’esprit I tinkered with, at a time when I ought to have been focusing exclusively on completing the composition of my doctoral dissertation. (I actually did quite a bit of non-dissertation composing in those few years; and although the obvious ‘transgression’ is, that completion of the dissertation was delayed, I find that more than compensated for by the large number of smaller pieces I drew up then, some of which remain fair favorites of mine.)

In the case of the draught variations which later became Blue Shamrock, I ‘justified’ that detour from the dissertation by including part of it as a wild chamber intermezzo leading into the fourth ‘Ayre,’ “Speculative Biology (I).” Chances are that Uncondyssion’d Ayres won’t be performed anytime soon; and it tickles me a bit that, to continue to keep Blue Shamrock in my performing repertory, is a sort of perpetual celebration of my musical emergence from the years of academia.

To return to a perhaps fatally derailed narrative, when Mark Gresham at Lux Nova asked after clarinet unaccompanied music, I fetched forth the sketches I had drawn up in Petersburg a few years earlier, and finished the piece up as just those three variants, rather than pursuing their further metamorphosis. Blue Shamrock was sent to the inquiring clarinetist, who must have found them a harder nut than quite suited his pesto.

It cannot be argued but that the piece has a high effort-to-final-musical-duration ratio. But that, too, is one reason I like to keep it in my rep. My short list of reasons:
  1. I like the piece, musically
  2. I really enjoy the piece as a virtuosic display (I am in harmony with my ‘inner Liszt’)
  3. Having already expended the effort to get the piece ‘in my fingers’, it makes sense to continue to make much use of it
  4. The generation of a ‘reference’ recording has eluded me
  5. I love playing, but I find it difficult to make time to practice, as a general thing; the keen challenges entailed in Blue Shamrock are one motivation not to abandon the clarinet entirely
  6. Since to my knowledge, no other clarinetist who has looked at the piece, has ‘bellied up’ yet, each successive performance that I log could be considered a triumph of my nerve
  7. Or, if I don’t play it, who on the planet will?
Some few years ago, I played the piece on a recital in Woburn, and I was reasonably well pleased with the performance. We got a fairly good recording of the event, too (which included the premiere — and so far, sole performance — of Night of the Weeping Crocodiles) . . . on cassette. I gave the cassette to a friend so that it could be transferred to compact disc — and he lost the cassette. Outrage at the loss has long ago subsided (and I have well learnt the lesson that, if you have only one copy of a recording, do not give it out unduplicated, even if you think the other fellow the most reliable person in the world), but probably the regret will not evaporate completely until I have good recordings of both pieces.

That milk has long been spilt, and I am not posting here to weep over it. Ever since, of course, I have had as a priority to work the piece up again, for a good recording. Twice-ish, now, I scheduled the piece for preparation, but the heat & noise of life interfered with preparation, which was fair, but which needs to improve a good deal on fair.

Thus, Gentle Reader, I try again.

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Judith Shatin in the Low Countries

Judith Shatin’s Ockeghem Variations were premiered 13 June by the Hexagon Ensemble at the On Wings Festival, Groningen School of Music (Groningen, Netherlands). There is an interview with Judith listen to on-line, with Noizepunk & Das Krooner (scroll down the page to Show #23).

14 June 2009

Stray Fragments of Reading

We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
Portia (as Balthasar in court before the Doge),
The Merchant of Venice IV.i

On March 5, 1953, Stalin died. His statue, eight meters high, was next to the opera house, and all around the block the grieving people of Ufa stood in line to place flowers at his feet. In Moscow, where Sergei Prokofiev died on the same day, the streets were blocked off, traffic was at a standstill, and all the florists’ shops had been emptied. “Nowhere could one buy even a few flowers to place on the coffin of the great Russian composer,” writes the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. “In newspapers, there was no room for an obituary. Everything was Stalin’s—even the ashes of Prokofiev, whom he had persecuted.”
Julie Kavanagh, Nureyev: The Life (p.29)

Don’t you realize what you’ve written?
Composer Nikolai Myaskovsky to Prokofiev,
of the latter’s Violin Sonata № 1 in F Minor, Opus 80

Of course, it requires greater effort to learn from one’s juniors, and their manners are not invariably good. But when you are seventy-five and your generation has overlapped with four younger generations, it behooves you not to decide in advance ‘how far composers can go’, but to try to discover whatever new thing it is makes the new generation new.
from Conversations with Igor Stravinsky

As for myself this week: I can scarce believe, not merely that there is no narrative whatever devoted to Feldman in the Phaidon book Minimalists, but that his name is entirely absent even from the index.

13 June 2009

Coming Soon

In a scant ten days . . .

Bullish Upticks (I)

The Irrationally Exuberant Music of Karl Henning

Blue Shamrock, Opus 63 (2002) clarinet solo
Lost Waters, Opus 27 (1994-95) harp solo – Premiere
stars & guitars, Opus 95 (2009) bass flute & harp – Premiere

The Angel Who Bears a Flaming Sword, Opus 94a (2008) alto flute solo – Premiere
Fragments of « Morning Has Broken », Opus 64a (2002) flute, clarinet & piano
Radiant Maples, Opus 59 (2001) flute, clarinet, harp & piano – Premiere

Peter H. Bloom, flutes of divers varieties
Paul Cienniwa, piano
Mary Jane Rupert, harp
Karl Henning, clarinet

Wednesday, 24 June 2009
7:30pm
First Congregational Church in Woburn
322 Main Street
Freewill donation; all proceeds to benefit Organ Restoration Fund.

When the going gets tough, the tough get composing.

Soft Echo of Timing Issues

While the question itself serves to point out that I should tape out a proper outline of the movement . . . my friend Brian, on reading this, inquired where those seven measures of 3/4 are situated. The question is a nice challenge to describing where, when the inquirer lacks a score.

There are two ‘singletons’, peppered in for occasional effect (as it were):

  • m. 30 near the start of the opening ‘big A’ section
  • m. 147 in the ‘big B’ section, which begins with the strings running a unison [ g-a-b-flat-a (repeat) ] sixteenth-note ostinato
In between these, five of the 3/4 interspersals (mm. 68, 71, 77, 87 & 90) are a regular part of (as one readily hears, I think) the brass chorale (the answering theme in the ‘big A’) which begins with the repeated eighth-note pickup to (the first such measure) 67. In octaves the first trumpet and trombone play [ B-flat.B-flat / E-flat - D-flat / C C ] . . . the E-flat is a half-note, and the D-flat, a quarter-note, in a bar of 3/4.

Haydnography II

12.vi.09

Symphony № 21 in A Major
Symphony № 22 in E-flat, The Philosopher
Symphony № 23 in G Major
Symphony № 24 in D Major
Symphony № 25 in C Major
Symphony № 26 in D Minor, Lamentatione
Symphony № 27 in G Major
Symphony № 28 in A Major
Symphony № 29 in E Major
Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra
Adám Fischer




Half-time refreshment consisted of:



Vaughan Williams
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Flos campi1
A Pastoral Symphony2
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Vernon Handley

1 Christopher Balmer (va), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir
2 Alison Barlow (sop, mvt iv)

12 June 2009

Timing Issues

The second movement, Allegro, of Shostakovich’s Symphony № 10 in E Minor, Opus 93, bears a tempo marking of half = 176.

The movement consists of 356 measures total, predominantly in 2/4:
2/4 measures: 349
3/4 measures: 7
Skipping any such finer math which would yield a precise1 “theoretical timing,” leave us observe that, at a tempo of a half-note = 176, there are 176 measures of 2/4 to the minute, and two minutes of play would thus rip through 352 measures. “By the metronome,” then, the piece supposedly runs scarcely more than two minutes. Before this morning, I had not looked at the score in quite a while, and my rough recollection/estimation (here gratifyingly vindicated) was that Shostakovich’s metronome marking for the second movement would be impossibly fast for any orchestra.

(Interest in the question was lately rekindled as I’ve been listening comparatively to that movement in three recordings2. Maksim Dmitriyevich, the composer’s son, paces the Prague Symphony through the movement at 4:18; Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic, at 4:09; and Karel Ančerl runs the Czech Philharmonic at a mighty brisk 3:51.)

Two minutes is, of course, just plain impossibly fast. However . . . what if the half-note in the metronome marking is a misprint for quarter-note = 176? At 176 quarter-notes to the minute, a quarter-note = .341 seconds, and this ratio yields:
349 mm. of 2/4 = 238 seconds = 3'58
7 mm. of 3/4 = 7 seconds

Total ‘theoretical’ duration = 4:05
. . . which allows that all three of these performances are within a plausibly musical range of the composer's intent.

My score is a Kalmus printing of an older edition of the score, and in fact, I do not find any copyright information in the score; so I wonder if the newer definitive Shostakovich edition amends the metronome marking at all? (Time for another visit to the NEC library.)

1 Normally, I should say “precise (barring the necessary and inevitable musical ‘relaxations’ in phrasing),” only this movement seems to me an obvious case of no such relaxation of any of the phrases; it just plows on inexorably until the final bar.

2 In case you were motivated to ask, yes, I like all three of these accounts of the symphony very well.

11 June 2009

Quodlibet

It all began innocently enough on Tuesday.
Nick Danger (1969)

I’m gonna find me a horse
Just about this big
An’ ride him all along the border line
With a pair of heavy-duty
Zircon-encrusted tweezers in my hand,
Every other wrangler would say
I was mighty grand.
— Frank Zappa , “Valhalla”

I am not a fascist. I hate Tchaikovsky and I will not conduct him.
But if the audience wants him, it can have him.
Pierre Boulez

Breakfast with the Gods. Night angels serve with ice-bound majesty.
Frozen flaking fish raw nerve – in a cup of silver liquid fire.
Moon jet brave beam split ceiling swerve and light the old Valhalla.
Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull), “Cold Wind to Montana”

If you spell my town inside-out, you get Legs On Sale.
Nick Danger (2001)


10 June 2009

A bit more about the switch

In an on-line community, a pair of neighbors had the following exchange
Sibelius sucks. Any self-respecting composer uses Finale.

— They both get you the same final product. It's all just a matter of what you learned on.
And my response:

To address these in reverse order . . . I used Finale for some eleven years, running through stepped upgrades from 98 to Finale 2004. As early as 8 years ago, out of curiosity, I got a Sibelius demo disc, but I never even gave it a test drive.

With the 30-minute suite of wedding music which I wrote last summer, I at last became utterly exasperated with shortcomings in Finale which I had always just stomached before. The ‘end-game’ of making the score tidy, and professional-looking, and getting all the parts likewise, just took way too long, and ate up entirely too much time. (And no wonder someone who produces a score in Finale would outsource the parts to some other sod.)

I got the piece and the parts done in time for delivery, but I swore that Finale had wasted the very last of my time, with matters which there was no technological reason they couldn’t have had fixed ten years sooner.

So I bought Sibelius 5.

Your remark on ‘what you learned on’ is apt, of course, because at first it was frustrating trying to get anything done on Sibelius: there were a hundred little things, basic mini-activities, which I had internalized through a decade of using Finale, and most everything was somehow different in Sibelius. However:

(a) The learning curve in Sibelius I found much gentler. Two evenings of work, and I had already achieved reasonable fluency.
(b) Everything (and I use that word without any exaggeration: I do mean everything) is much more intuitive in Sibelius, and usually requires less ‘work’ than the corresponding task in Finale. This, of course, is the driver behind (a) above.
(c) The result in Sibelius looks markedly better, and with exhiliratingly less effort, than in Finale. I’ve produced many a score in Finale (60 at least), and for the larger-scaled pieces in particular, I had to work like a fiend to get them to look ‘press-ready’.
(c1) For but one seemingly minor, but potentially tedious and time-wasting, example: slurs often need micro-management in Finale. You’ll tweak and tweak a slur, and finally it will look decent. Then, you make an adjustment in another measure on the same line, and the slur you just spent 10 minutes fixing, needs fixing again. Then, when you extract the part: that slur that you fixed in the full score? The one you’ve already worked over, twice (or more)? Well, it didn’t ‘stay fixed’ when you extracted the part, so you’ve got to spend 10 minutes fixing it again.
(c2) Repeat (c1) for 30 slurs in the alto saxophone line of the score.
(c3) Repeat (c2) for those same 30 slurs in the alto saxophone part.

From my experience, in a two-word sentence where the verb is sucks, the subject of the verb is not Sibelius.

09 June 2009

Of Danes & Moonlight

A season or so ago, a quondam ‘virtual acquaintance’ came up to Boston (thereby becoming a friend forsooth, and beyond mere ‘virtuality’) for the premiere of Elliott Carter’s Horn Concerto. (In this post I shall respect his anonymity.) Today I learn that an early literary effort of this friend’s, was a fanciful drama centered upon the composer Carl Nielsen.

He writes:

It was a one-act that took place just as Carl was completing his Clarinet Concerto in the late 1920s. It dealt primarily with his disillusionment over his career. I don’t know what inspired it: we were sitting in class talking about subjects, and I suddenly got the image of Nielsen destroying a bust of himself with his cane. The bust was in progress, still soft, and was intended as a gift from his wife, Anne, a sculptress. It was kind of a hokey script, and re-reading it years later, I was amazed I got an A for it. Probably the best thing to come out of the class was that I introduced my prof to Nielsen’s music.

There wasn’t much information available on Nielsen’s family back in the 1970s. [In the one-act] I made his daughter, Irmelin, a homebody who bakes in her spare time. Turns out she was a well-known choreographer, quite prominent in Denmark, every bit as arty as her parents.

The creative life is the hardest thing to depict onstage, I think. How does one portray the labors of a writer or painter or composer in a way that’s dramatically interesting? . . .

Years after writing the play, I read about her [Irmelin] in Jack Lawson’s pictoral biography, the one published by Phaidon, and the only complete bio in English. I also learned that Nielsen and his wife were separated in the early 1920s. Carl had several affairs and fathered five or six illegitimate children during the marriage.

Irmelin died in 1974, just about the time I was discovering her father’s music. Nielsen's other daughter, Anne Marie, nicknamed Sos (or sister), lived until 1983, age 90. I was in Copenhagen in 1978, and had I known at the time she was still living, I would have tried to look her up.

Anne, Carl’s wife, died in February 1945, just before the end of the Nazi occupation.

I often wonder if Victor Borge’s family knew the Nielsens.
I confess myself simply delighted by the thought of my friend (a) finding literary inspiration thus, and (b) already familiar with the music of Nielsen then . . . there is an elated fantasy in wondering what effect that invigorating music might have had upon myself, had I heard it at so tender an age.

(This friend also played an April Fool’s joke which backfired . . . he drew up a wry “article” announcing that Carter had “repented” of his erroneous, atonal ways . . . and it was taken up as gospel by gullible atonality-haters. IIRC, it got as far as a referent in actual newsprint. So take the lesson of the dangers of misinformation which may propagate as a result of, as Prokofiev might say, “teasing the geese.”)



Lastly for today, in my in-box there appears an announcement, addressed to a mailing-list of which my address is apparently a member, from a chorus who specialize in new music — but whose director, it turns out, did not much find himself drawn to the scores I sent him.

— I suspect that folks are genuinely seeking to be helpful when they mention other living composers whose work they do find themselves drawn to. But, I’m a listener with my own likes, too, and I may not find the music associated with the name that they mention clearly somehow superior to my own; and, well, I have been all these years establishing my own musical voice — I must decline the invitation to throw that all over, instead to try to write like a faux-whomever.

That preamble done, I do not necessarily despair of making my music a flint to such a someone’s steel; and the arrival of this mass-mailing reminds me that I offered this director another score. And it’s an idea I just may act on. Taking a piece which I wrote (actually) for brass quintet, and adapting it as a choir piece.

It would be a way of both keeping the music purely my own, and yet I should have a private (mild) joke as to the other fellow’s musical expectations.

08 June 2009

Musicks Old & New II

This series has taken more than 20 years to put together. It provides a comprehensive collection of unreleased live material (absolutely no overdubs), beginning with the earliest tapes (7½ ips analog two-track), up to the most recent material from the 1988 big-band tour (48-track digital).

Great care has been taken to ensure the best audio quality, however, some early selections by the original Mothers Of Invention, though not exactly “hi-fi,” have been included for the amusement of those fetishists who still believe that the only “good” material was performed by that particular group. (Comparison to the performances of some of the later ensembles should finally put an end to that quaint fantasy.)

— Frank Zappa, “General Information” in the liner notes to volume IV of the You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore series

07 June 2009

Musicks Old & New I

Intrepid Soprano Jaya Lakshminarayanan provides a comprehensive overview of the BEMF. On the so-called “fringe concerts,” the Cascata ensemble, today and tomorrow (the 7th and 8th); Jaya herself is singing a program (accompanied by Alistair Thompson) tomorrow, Monday the 8th; and Newport Baroque will be playing concerts on the 9th and 11th.



Pursuant to this bulletin from last week, the composer is delighted to have received a recording of the 31 May performance of Bless the Lord, O My Soul. I meant to have a link ready for this post, but it was not to be.


06 June 2009

No Fun Being the Voice of Reason

The Beatles made some of their greatest music during the Apple years, but as a business it was a shambles. It was a massive, chaotic, drug-addled business with no controls and no direction. Money was wasted every second of every day, and if I said anything I’d be told, “Don’t be a drag, Al.”
Alistair Taylor

05 June 2009

Trivia

My feet don’t hardly make no sound,
Walking on, walking on the moon.
Sting (with The Police)


I’ve a friend who thinks he may not like Shostakovich. Please send suggestions for works you believe will turn him from this error!

(Note that where he works, they sometimes play the Eighth Quartet in the background. Under the circs., that may not be an apt suggestion.)



List of instruments given as ad libitum in the score of Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da requiem, Opus 20:
  1. Alto flute
  2. Alto saxophone
  3. Harp II
  4. Horns V & VI


And Cato writes (though exactly whereof, it were out of turn for me to reveal):

A more cheerless affair cannot be imagined! There was more joy while the Titanic sank! And at least the band played something nice!

04 June 2009

Revisiting old work

In a sack in an organ loft, where I had entirely forgotten that I might have left aught belonging to myself, was some music of mine. The sack was recently restored to me, and the most prominent object in the sack, something I had not seen (nor even much thought of) for several years, was a bound copy of my doctoral dissertation. It is a multi-movement work for three soli voices and symphonic band; it has never been performed (there was never any remote possibility of its being performed, even when I was still at Buffalo); it would not be practical for me to try to lobby for any prospective performance. I have sometimes wondered if I should ‘plunder’ its material for other projects, or maybe re-score the entire thing as a symphony. Invariably, when such thoughts cross my mind, I am shamed by any potential accusation of laziness, and I feel (sincerely) that I should prefer to just write fresh music.

The other thing is, I am not musically embarrassed by Uncondyssion’d Ayres. I’ve written a great deal since, and my art has improved. But nor do I mean that for disloyalty to this score; because, as I realize afresh scanning through its 154 MS. pages, I learned a great deal of craft through the process of conceiving, planning, composing, and manually inscribing the final draught of the music. And, even apart from its scale, it contains some of the finest music I had composed to date.

The page with the final double-bar is dated 16.ii.1997. In a big way, I am astonished at how distant that seems, in terms of all the music I’ve written since. I really don't think I should ‘touch’ it, but just leave it as is. Chances are, it will never be performed in my lifetime (goodness knows, I’ve many another piece written more recently, which has yet to be performed, for whose performance I am far more eager).

Fifty years after I am laid to my earthy rest, mayhap it will be performed. There is nice stuff in there; no, but I mean it . . . .

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03 June 2009

Habitual Wonderment

I told ye once in St Giles, Eben:
to beg forgiveness is a bad son’s privilege,
and to grant it the bad father’s duty.

—Andrew Cooke

My innocence these days is severely technical.
—Ebenezer Cooke, Gent., Poet & Laureate of Maryland

Dubious Documentation, Just A Bit Ere Yesterday Division

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How is it one copyrights in 1986 a foreword dated 1987? . . .

02 June 2009

Nearly Hot Off the Press

Audrey Cienniwa (cello piccolo) & Paul Cienniwa (harpsichord) play JS Bach, Viola da gamba Sonatas Nos. 1–3, Excerpts from Cantatas Nos. 175 & 183

[ link ]

Haydn Survey

Gradual and ongoing . . . though the start is being belatedly reported. I am making my way through the Adám Fischer / Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra complete symphonies in chronological order.



22.v.09
Symphony № 1 in D Major
Symphony № 2 in C Major
Symphony № 3 in G Major
Symphony № 4 in D Major
Symphony № 5 in A Major

28.v.09
Symphony № 6 in D Major, Le matin
Symphony № 7 in C Major, Le midi
Symphony № 8 in G Major, Le soir
Symphony № 9 in C Major
Symphony № 10 in D Major
Symphony № 11 in E-flat Major
Symphony № 12 in E Major

30.v.09
Symphony № 13 in D Major
Symphony № 14 in A Major
Symphony № 15 in D Major
Symphony № 16 in B-flat Major
Symphony № 17 in F Major
Symphony № 18 in G Major
Symphony № 19 in D Major
Symphony № 20 in C Major

01 June 2009

Order of Service 31.v.09

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From First Church yesterday.