28 June 2018

10 years ago today: The flight to Sibelius

There is a great deal of failure in the world, but take heart – hardly any failure is complete.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Seen in the elevator this morning:  People who wear glasses may be smarter.  We can certainly assert, with confidence, that if one needs glasses, it is smart to wear them.

Four years ago, there were Henningmusick sales.

Curiously, as this week I am reading tweets from my much-esteemed colleague, Nicole Chamberlain, that her patience with Finale is running thin, yea, super-thin – as I leaf through the archives, lo! I was reaching the end of my own Finale rope 10 years ago today:

Although timing and the graphic result all worked out, preparation of the parts for Brett’s wedding music surprised me by how much time the end-game consumed . . . far ‘hairier’ an experience than the prep of the parts for (say) Out in the Sun. And, as I am gearing up now to wrap up the ballet (I think I hear Allan [Santos] chuckling, but then, one is pleased to incite some mirth in so fine a chap), the experience with the parts for the Opus 93 indicates that post-production of White Nights will be sixfold hairier.

This sober consideration has prompted me to take seriously, for the first time, a switch from Finale to Sibelius.

And what the demo for Sibelius shows me about the interface between parts and scores, looks very good indeed. Honestly, it makes me wish I’d switched before work on the Opus 93.

For this weekend, though, it is still ‘pre-compositional’ refamiliarization with the project [i.e., the ballet], and allowing the intuitive musical notions to accumulate.

Well, and finding the sketches for Scene viii, which it will be about time soon to write out in proper scoring.

. . . And, in amusing hindsight, of course I did not, at last, actually address the task of Scene viii until Independence Day, last year.


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