The Lord is my concierge; I shall not loiter. Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. — Groucho Marx
Twelve years ago tomorrow:
Finished Après-mystère for flute and clarinet; that's a wrap on the Opus 113 № 2. [1 Sep 2013
And today: As bassoonist Greta Rosen is now a full member of the Henning Ensemble, I am alive to the appearance of having musically neglected her husband Eric Dewar, trumpet. And a new friend at Redeemer is Anne Disciullo, a hornist. Thus this arrangement, completed yesterday (pending input from the brass.)
I do need to see to Moose on the Loose, soon ... tomorrow night, the Henning Ensemble rehearseth.
People, merchandise and display cases all about, and I was in a department store with activity swirling around me. Out of the blizzard of activity, I heard someone sobbing. I wondered what the trouble was, but I could hardly make out any of the soft words. At last, one phrase came to me clearly: “the late 20th century.” And by the tone of voice and depth of feeling, I understood it to mean, not "the latter decades of the 20th century," but “the recently demised century.”
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
... then at 13 I was getting into traditional jazz, then about 15, getting into Parker, Parker With Strings. I loved the Parker With Strings album, phenomenal [...] I had no idea how anyone could be that good [...] about 20, Hendrix and Sgt Pepper and Bartók string quartets and Stravinsky, and my great epiphany was, I was hearing all these different kinds of music, but for me they were one Music. There was no difference. It was like you have lots of different musicians speaking different dialects, but the Music is One and this was my epiphany. And I was just about to go to University to take the green estate management to take over my father’s real estate firm and coming back from the Majestic Hotel one night, “A Day in the Life.” I didn’t know who it was and it came on the radio and suddenly at the end there’s this piano chord and ... and then I couldn’t go on to University in Real Estate. It had to change, and so I said to my mother and father, “Look....” So then I went on to London to unemployment and ignominy.
— Robt Fripp
Per Note (*4) to this post, I have prepared a version of Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be with bassoon rather than double-bass in the otherwise original quartet version, for use at King’s Chapel.
Imagine my pleasure this morning when friends at church told me that they had visited Grace Episcopal Church in Medford (two towns south of Woburn, Wonder of the North) a couple of weeks ago and that music of mine was played for the Prelude! Do I know the Music Director at Grace Church? I’m not at all sure that I do, but we must meet, indeed we must.
It’s not many days since I re-read The Hobbit with pleasure, and yet fewer days since re-watching the Rankin/Bass animation of that classic (If I knew that John Huston was the voice of Gandalf, I had forgotten. I don’t believe I ever realized that Otto Preminger voiced the Elf-King.) Curiously, twelve years ago today, I made an attempt to watch the Peter Jackson adaptation. The result before my eyes was exactly what you could have plotted from two data points:
The Lord of the Rings movies made so much money, a further incursion into The Hobbit was industrially inevitable, and
Jackson and his screenwriting team were not going to suddenly develop a passion for fidelity to the tone and text of Tolkien’s book(s)
A far, far pleasanter revisitation:
The first time I heard this, back at the dawn of my 20’s, it blew my musical mind, and immediately became part of my composerly DNA. And yes, I love it every bit as much still, as I discovered while turning my PT on to the album this past Friday. The ‘A’ material being in 7 is, erm, only the beginning. There is beguiling subtlety in the supple rhythm/meters of the ‘B’ section. The first two measures are 11/8 grouped as [4+4+3] then our ear is misled into supposing that there is a third repetition, but no! It’s 7/4 (yet not a return to the ‘A’ riff, as it is grouped [4+4+3+3] yet that initial [4+4+3] at first appears to affirm our expectation, which is turned base over apex by that final triplet which delays the big downbeat. I remember almost as if it had been yesterday parsing the meters mentally, and Robert Fripp became immediately and forever one of my musical idols.
Pace Tears for Fears: I cannot be the sole person who does not, in fact, want to rule the world.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
Don’t you “Don’t get riled, Sugar” me!
— Aretha Franklin in The Blues Brothers
Excellent rehearsal yestereven! And we have two more rehearsals this week a-coming. also, the Administrator at Redeemer is doing a great job promoting our concert locally! It looks like this concert, too, will livestream via Facebook. Watch This Space!
Kevin Scott’s piece for the October program at King’s will soon be ready, and Todd Brunel will write a piece for us at some point.
I did mention the other day the auld friend who will pass on the scores (which I have now sent him) to a local chamber outfit. It was he who commissioned both the Three Things That Begin with ‘C’ and the De profundis.
And, in “unexpected ways in which the Dick van Dyke Show was groundbreaking” ... Morey Amsterdam hadn't had a Bar-Mitzvah as a boy (his family was poor) ... so he was Bar-Mitzvahed on the air as a grown man on 2 March 1966. Funny episode, too, as Buddy mysteriously keeps asking to leave work early, and Rob and Sally come to realize that his excuses are fibs, and Rob shocks himself by wondering if Buddy is being unfaithful to Pickles. Very cute.
Our Dark Side of the Dance Floor II program is a week from tonight. and it is not too early to think about what our 14 October program at King’s Chapel will look like. My friends Robert Gross and Kevin Scott are writing pieces for us, so here are my present ideas for the concert:
Charms and Offertories
Robert Gross, Four’s the Charm (première) Karl Henning, Amorphous and Forward-Looking, Op. 196 (première)
Henning, A Dance Floor for the Introverted, Op. 178 № 2 (*1)
Kevin Scott, Offertories (première) (*2)
Henning, Lamentatio pro sorore sua, Op. 202a (*2)
Henning, Moose on the Loose, Op.165a
Henning, Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be, Op. 191c (*4)
Notes:
(*1) unless Peter and Carol would very much prefer launching the Opus 201 duets on this program.
(*2) depending, we might split them up rather than play them all at once (I'd consult the composer on this q. first, of course.)
(*3) a bass clarinet/bassoon version, as we shall be missing Todd..
(*4) we won’t have Dave on double-bass, so I’m toying with the notion of an all-winds version.
Aristotle, of course, was frequently right, for it is almost impossible, under the laws of chance, to be wrong all the time. Thanks to him we know that the Weasel does not bring forth its young by the mouth, as held by Anaxagoras. He also denied that Hyenas change their sex every year. He was only guessing, but it sounds like a good guess
— Will Cuppy, How to Become Extinct
Yesterday saw the very exciting revelation that my much-esteemed teacher, Jack Gallagher has completed his Third Symphony. It will come as no surprise that this listener can hardly wait for news of a performance. I recollect that the very first piece of Jack’s I ever heard at Wooster was his Resonances, a brilliant, nervy piece for four trumpets, exactly the sort of music which, if you’re a 20-year-old aspiring musician who went from [no idea how to get my butt to college] to [matriculated freshman] in about a year, has you thanking Providence for the circumstances which mysteriously brought you to study with the composer.
Also, this news of the freshly completed Third reminds me that I have not yet set myself to writing intelligently about the first two. Soon!
I have at last resumed contact with an old friend in Southern California the only soul as yet (apart from the late Wm Goodwin) to commission two Henning works. He invites me to send him three chamber pieces that he might pass them along to a group which is adjacent to the local Symphony. “...either from different periods (early, middle, present?) or of three different levels of accessibility (they have a pretty wide range, though they largely steer clear of the most rebarbative works)” I am tending to select The Mask I Wore Before, Op. 168, the quartet version of the Fantasia on a Theme of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Op. 197, and the Lamentatio pro sorore sua, Op. 202.
For the 14 October concert at King’s Chapel, my friend Robert Gross has composed Four’s the Charm. And another friend, Kevin Scott is writing us a new piece. Of my own music, I think to include Amorphous and Forward-Looking and, well, another piece or two ....
Oh, and nine years ago today:
Oxygen Footprint update: Wrote another half a minute of music this morning, two sections which are not contiguous either with The Piece So Far, nor with one another. I have the two remaining “gaps” of music planned out ... may well return to work in the latter part of the afternoon. [28 Aug 2016]
Chap on Twitter: How’s living in Boston as a composer?
Me: Simple: Do other things for a living. Write what you please.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
Jesse Eisenberg: With age comes wisdom
Alec Baldwin: With age comes exhaustion
— Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love
24 Aug 2010: Up to measure 150 of Suspension Bridge. About to reach the other side.
I’ve been in touch with the friend for whom I wrote the grateful song my voice unwearied raises, Op. 169 № 10, and he is weighing registrations. Sweet!
Inching closer to scheduling rehearsals for the October concert.
I sure never knew: major league baseball umpires are obliged to wear black underwear. But not, I suppose, necessarily négligé.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.
— Edgar Degas
Another ray of sunshine: an auld college friend responded to the Dark Side of the Dance Floor program:
“The Henning Ensemble” – very classy! Thanks for sharing this on what was my 63rd birthday. Your instrumentation = the best of wind quintet + string quartet. Nice choice. It’s so cool to hear your current voice, poetic, humorous and expressive as always.
Nine years ago today was the quiet roll-out of my radical peacenik religious sect: the Calm-ish.
And: On a veritable roll with Suspension Bridge![23 Aug 2010]
Although I have not done much actual work on it, these past couple of days, my musical brain has been considering the fixed media for the Opus 203. Unlike, say, Mistaken for the Sacred, in which interaction between the live activity and the fixed media is something rather aleatoric, I have felt that for Aaron’s Uneasy Sleep, I would emulate somewhat The Conquest of Emptiness in composing some interaction with the f.m. I have therefore been mulling what the “stuff” ought to be, and I think that I have an idea, or that I am going to borrow one from Robt Fripp. More soon.
Massachusetts: Scientists at the Saugus Doo Wop Research Institute today announced the discovery of something which can stop the Duke of Earl.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
I am fully aware of my mortality, but at 87 years old, I still wake up every morning with the desire to misbehave. Age is not a barrier when you find passion in what you do. The real secret lies in keeping your curiosity alive, continuing to learn, and not letting the fear of time stop you from enjoying life. Every day is a new opportunity to create, to laugh, and to show that it is never too late to move forward with enthusiasm and joy.
— Anthony Hopkins
Twelve years ago today: Eight trivial tweaks, and the Trumpeter [The Mystical Trumpeter, Op. 113 № 1] is done, no, but really, I swear! [22 Aug 2013]
I have posted not rarely of disappointments in communications or musical selection, so it is right to share the rays of sunshine, too.
Not long ago, I mentioned sending the Op. 4 piano pieces around. One friend has technical difficulties and may not have had any chance to read them. Another thanked me and remarked that the first two pieces “look manageable!” № 3 is a rhythmically quirky Toccatina, so I shall ask for more feedback when I can. Possibly Sunday. A third friend I have seen, but he made no mention of the pieces. He did speak of his testing a couple of job prospects. so I shall discreetly sound him out in a few weeks. The fourth friend wrote today:
[T]hank you so much for the three piano pieces! Playing Barefoot Among Dandelions on Sunday morning! I'll be in touch in a bit via messenger with more feedback about both the piano and organ pieces, all of which are wonderful. At the moment, every millimeter of brain is occupied with the Ravel [Trio]. I played your haunting setting of When Jesus Wept on both Good Friday and Palm Sunday. People were very moved by it, some to the point of tears.
On Wednesday, at Methuen Memorial Music Hall for a wonderful concert of Elgar, Sowerby, Peeters and Vierne by Dr Mark Dwyer, I met his Assistant at Church of the Advent, Andrew Scanlon, who responded very kindly to the e-mail message I sent following the concert.
What the man said while on his cell phone was, “A car just tried to run me over.” What the man did while concentrating on his cell phone was, just step off the curb without regard for his personal safety. Too dumb to live? You make the call....
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
It’s the simplest romance, rattles high in the air.
“Chicago,” from the Robt Fripp album, Exposure
21 Aug 2015: Just finished Neither do I condemn thee, flute duo, for Orlando Cela. Five minutes, but five minutes richly lived. A wrap on the Opus 132.
Honey, swat key Molly punts (a disorder of the garter).
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
Yes, the chili was very nice. But it really has to be the last red meat I have. I mean already I’m going to have to detox and irrigate. Colonically this has set me right back.
— A Midwinter’s Tale
... but not local disorders.
Few (if any) will have looked closely enough to notice, but now and again I assign an Opus number, but then go on to compose a different piece entirely and unceremoniously move on numerically. Nevertheless, overall order is maintained. After composing my Opus 199, setting David Ossman’s poem “Retreat,” a piece for which at the time we had fair hope of a performance, a hope which has come a cropper, through a significant disruption suffered by a colleague (this not being the forum to tape that out.) That’s a sentence with its mechanical problems, but leave us proceed. I then decided that Opus 200 will be a short band piece, and I got some pre-compositional thought duly thunk and even partly settled on a placeholder title, to match the placeholder Opus number. I posted a bit about this in April. Possibly because I was never satisfied with the title(s) I seemed to be entertaining, I never took that crucial step of creating a Sibelius file for the Opus 200, a step which might likely have led to recording actual notes. So, when my publisher suggested/requested short utilitarian flute pieces, I designated that set of seven pieces the Opus 201, and the new bass clarinet duet, Lamentatio pro sorore sua, Opus 202. I’ve now begun work on Aaron’s Uneasy Sleep (having both begun work on the fixed media component, and taken the abovementioned crucial step of creating a Sibelius file) and this will be Opus 203. I then had a feeling, which it would be a disservice to associate with guilt, touching upon the Op. 200. I suppose the fact was, I held off work on the Op. 200 band piece while I still waited upon the possibility of the Op. 148 occupying a slot in the coming CRWE season. Having learnt that there is as yet no call for the Henning Second Symphony, I feel free to apply myself to writing the Op. 200, a bite-size band piece which will not hog half a concert, probably after I've got Aaron’s Uneasy Sleep wrapped up. Indeed, having recently watched a DVD of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I find that Shakespeare has given me a title for the Opus 200: Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail. Separately, eight years ago today, I went to Vermont to hear Ensemble Aubade play Oxygen Footprint.
As regards my symphony — I have been writing it for about 3 years now & I believe it is finished — I have made a 2 pfte arrangement & will get that tried through to see if I can bear it ... The bits I have shown to people they do not like — Gustav [Holst] heard it all in an early version on 2 pftes — & was puzzled by most of it & disliked the rest.
— Ralph Vaughan Williams, writing to Sir Adrian Boult (and with characteristic self-deprecation) about his Fourth Symphony
Although I was not in any genuine rush, this afternoon sees the completion of the Lamentatio pro sorore sua, Op. 202 for two bass clarinets.
At first I thought that (like the Op. 201 flute duets, the Lamentation score would fit on few pages enough for the players to read from score, but brief as the piece is (three minutes) there need to be separate parts. No matter, ’tis easy enough. I am thinking the piece would make an apt addition to the Dark Side of the Dance Floor program on 5 September. We shall see if our two clarinetti bassi agree.
They can speak as breezily as they please about "the unmistakable thrill"; I know some who have mistaken the unmistakable thrill, and they’ll never be the same.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
I would learn later that radio and television people often have two voices. They have one for when the red light is on and another for when it’s off. Drive-time disc jockeys and local television sportscasters come to mind first. When they're speaking into a microphone, their voices drop a couple of octaves, and what comes out is something between Edward R. Murrow and Pat Summerall. In normal conversations, however, they often sound like a cross between Gomer Pyle and Phil Rizzuto talking about the Money Store. — Lewis Grizzard, If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I’m Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground
Mei Mei Luo & Paul Cienniwa’s performance seven years ago today of Plotting (y is the new x) Op.116 down Florida-way was an especially rich pleasure. It was a delight that there was a second performance of the piece at all. It was a not unexpected grace that the second performance was yet better than the (entirely satisfactory) première. And it was especially gratifying both that the very fact of the performance betokened the power of Paul’s faith in the music, and that the piece drew such commitment from Mei Mei.
A friend reported of the event:
Plotting was quite good, and robust enough to stand in company with Bach. Hopefully it will have a multitude of performances. The Hohvaness was less welcome, a beautiful last movement betrayed by opening movements that might have been edited out of a shlocky horror film score.
Today: more work on the Lamentatio. I’ll plan to finish perhaps tomorrow, perhaps Thursday. I’ve also reminded myself of how I have neglected the glancing inspirations for Aaron’s Uneasy Sleep and Simple Music.
From the Bureau of Sentimental Claptrap: “We don’t have tomorrow, but we had yesterday.”
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
To bigotry no sanction.
— Geo. Washington
Twelve years ago today: The Mystic Trumpeter is done! That's a wrap on the Op.113 № 1. [18 Aug 2016]
Today I made a start on a piece for two bass clarinets in memory of the sister we lost, Lamentatio pro sorore sua. She died alone, no one checking in on her (not even—or rather, most particularly—her deadbeat husband) of a diabetic coma. The raw fact is that if she had simply married even a moderately decent human being, our sister should still be with us.
I could swear that Chris Sarandon says, “Form a fruit squad!”
And, a headline on YouTube:
“You’ve been rolling your yoga mat the wrong way.”
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
I told the truth, Lord. How can I learn any moral lessons, if you keep confusing me like this?
— Matthew Broderick in Ladyhawke
First, the bad news: A fresh e-mail message informs me of another Call for which my submission was not selected. Yes, congrats to the selectees.
On Friday, as reported, I composed not one, but two of the duets. But I wrote too glibly when supposing that I would complete the seventh the following day (which is to say, yesterday.) I did indeed set faithfully to work, and composed some 16 measures. I seemed to reach a kind of impasse. Probably I was just tired. I wasn’t sure where to go thence, wasn’t sure I liked what I had written. Certainly was not in a position to press myself to finish. The sensible thing was to sleep on it and decide the next day whether I knew how to proceed, or would need to start afresh.
This morning, I was still unsure whether I cared for what I’d written. I’ve repeatedly endorsed the wisdom that the eraser is the composer’s friend (often at times when I seldom sought out that friendship) and, having slept on it, I resolved that a fresh start was called for. Before actually creating a Sibelius file for “a new number Seven” (“You are number Six”) I listened anew to the 16 measures I had composed yesterday, and found that whatever artistic hostility I had conceived against it was completely uncalled for, and I got back to work. The record will show, however, that I did not scorn to consider erasure.
Opus 201 Duets
№ 1: In the Shade of the Almighty, 1:40 № 2: He Who Shall Free You From the Snare, 2:00 № 3: Under His Wings You Will Find Refuge, 2:15 № 4: You Will Not Fear the Terror of the Night, 2:00 № 5: Nor the Arrow That Flies by Day, 1:40 № 6: Upon You No Evil Shall Fall, 2:30 № 7: When He Calls I Shall Answer “I Am with You,” 2:15
So partly I was recalling to myself the rapid composition of the Visions fugitives de nouveau for Scott. Partly, the times I composed pieces for the Rapido! competition. Partly, I enjoyed the discipline of writing in a deliberately simple musical language. And largely, I remembered a remark of my late colleague, Ivan Moody’s (I forget what piece I was working on at the time) when I wondered if I needed to add a new musical idea, and he said, You have enough material here already.
Anyone else think the phrase “resealable zipper” is redundant?
Socrates in Saugerties
Also sprach Saratoga
— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail
I cannot remember my mother ever spending a dime on herself for something she didn’t desperately need. When the old
’48 finally gave out in 1955, she did buy a new car, a green Chevrolet. When the salesman said, “I can put a radio in for another twenty dollars,” my mother said, “We already have a radio at home.”
— Lewis Grizzard, If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I’m Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground
To get the bad news out of the way first: Word has just come in that my submission was not one of the winners for the Holyoke Civic Symphony composition competition. Ah, well. Congratulations to the victors.
For consistency’s sake I had planned to title today’s post, Seven Flute Duets in Seven Days: Day 5. However, I composed Nos. 5 & 6 today, my brain taking advantage of the scheduling anomaly which resulted in my having no Physical Therapy today. It’s not actually cheating, of course. It does mean, though, that when I compose the seventh tomorrow, I shall be ahead of schedule. What can I say? It happens.
You have to follow a snake around before you know it. DeKay’s Snake always struck me as a quiet and well-behaved sort until I learned some of its habits. It mates at the age of eighteen months. You’d expect that of the Striped Swamp Snake, but hardly of DeKay’s. And I suppose there’s no use trying to hush up John’s Sea Snake, which mates when only six months old. At that age both the male and female John’s Sea Snake are sexually mature, and I don’t mean maybe.
— Will Cuppy, How to Become Extinct
Chuffing along with the Geistliche Gebrauchsmusik Flute duets. Finished № 4, You Will Not Fear the Terror of the Night, running about two minutes. Given that the seven duets in seven days angle is entirely arbitrary, how do I feel about it at the half-way point? While I should not be surprised if the summer heat is a factor, I’m certainly napping to let the brain re-charge for the compositional effort. It’s a worthwhile exercise, and I am pleased with the musical result. Tomorrow I’ll remain indoors and see how that affects the process.
“Chocolate for motivation” on a billboard. What a wonderful world.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
For those of you who have never met me, you might call me “the under-nourished Alfred Hitchcock”...
— Rod Serling on Night Gallery
The result of an arguably whimsical remark by Dolores August, I just finished a seven-minute piece for flute unaccompanied called August Haze. [13 Aug 2023]
I posted thereof the following day, which is atypically timely, I am partly pleased to see.
In the yet remoter past: True to my word (and to the request from Ensemble Aubade), making Incremental progress on Oxygen Footprint. [13 Aug 2016]
Also, and freshest of all: today I composed Opus 201 № 3, Under His Wings You Will Find Refuge, running about two minutes. Day 3 of Seven Flute Duets in Seven Days.
It’s harder for me, and I embarrass myself more readily, but I get more pleasure out of failing in a project that I am enthused over, than in succeeding at a project that I know I can do well.
— Woody Allen, artist
Yesterday, as duly reported, I succeeded in finishing the Opus 201 № 1, only that title is far too long to be practical, and abstruse into the bargain. So it has been rechristened, In the Shade of the Almighty, and today I managed to chop out the Opus 201 № 2, He Who Shall Free You from the Snare. № 1 runs some 90 seconds. № 2, perhaps two minutes. The pieces are designedly brief, yes. If anyone objects to my posting to the blog for each short piece, I scarcely know how I should answer. Today’s piece did cost me some effort: Is it over-arching bravado to publish that I mean to write a piece per day? I guess we shall find out.
Select intrusions of the Then Upon the Now. Two adjacent headlines seen online: “Gitmo jury recommends 14 years for al-Qaida cook” — “Top 5 beginning grill master grilling tips.” Johann Sebastian’s bodacious cousin in California, W.T.F. Bach. Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
Look, I probably should have told you this before, but you see...well...insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops. — Cary Grant, to his affianced in Arsenic and Old Lace
Six years ago, my first post-stroke summer, I wrote about Swiss Skis. Months earlier Peter and Becky had come to visit me in rehab and cheered me so with news that Oxygen Footprint had been such a success on tour that I was determined more than ever to compose two companion pieces.
Separately, I’ve sent the three piano pieces, Op. 4 to four pianist friends.
Yesterday, I mentioned a set of brief flute duets. Today I have decided both that these shall comprise Opus 201, in the first place, and that I shall, in the second place make this a personal challenge: Seven Flute Duets in Seven Days. And, who knows, maybe on the Eighth Day I shall Begin the Bass Clarinet Duet. And so, the Op. 201 № 1, qui habitat in abscondito Excelsi in umbraculo Domini commorabitur is now done.
Probably the funniest line in Spielberg’s Minority Report: “Take her to Radio Shack.” Funny not least because that Shack is boarded up.
More pop singers should exploit the phrase “You know what I don’t mean.”
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
Mr Aldridge, are you considering the question, or are you just dead?
— Jn Cleese, addressing a coffin in court
Gentle Reader, I posted earlier this summer modestly memorializing my pianist friend Scott Tinney. Facebook has become but a shell of itself (witness an ad which periodically crops up on my phone: “Social Media Is Pay-to-Play, Rise Above the Noise,” in its way, a masterpiece of cynicism fused with scorn for users who in fact socialize on social media. But for the time being, until the algorithm changes for some reason of monetization, one bittersweet benefit I yet enjoy on that platform is the occasional reminder of friends who have passed on. Thus, on 9 Aug, 2011, extremely gratifyingly, Scott wrote to me:
I finally got around to printing and reading Gaze Transfix’d yesterday. GOOD STUFF, MAN! It’s now part of my repertoire. Barbara Allen has a good friend in you, and now a good friend in me. Am now printing Lutosławski’s Lullaby, and will read it at my piano within a few little minutes. Sorry to be so long in doing these things, but you have no idea of the hell I´ve been living for the past 2 years. I´ll explain at another time... the internet place is about to close.
I should write more and it should have been timely, but for the present, I report simply that the Henning Ensemble concert in the Library went smashingly well.
In thinking of October in King’s Chapel as a quartet, I am thinking of a fresh arrangement of Le tombeau de W.A.G. For next summer, I am scheming a memorial piece in honor of my sister late Kim for two bass clarinets, since we´ve got ´em. I have not completely lost sight of Janky Juke Joint.
I’ve just been on the phone with my publisher, so I have a mental-cleanse project of a set of brief flute duos (for the passing of the Communion plate) to chop out.
And, completely separately: I’ve gone in very short order from never actually having heard Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody, to hearing it via Sirius in a friend’s Chevy, and almost immediately then heard a two-piano arrangement recorded by Katia & Marielle Labèque. The Universe is making up for lost time!
Pitches idea for a new sitcom: “The Tightrope-Walking Dead”
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
Angry at a bad review, Norman Mailer punched Gore Vidal at a party. On the floor, Gore said “Once again, words fail Norman Mailer.”
9 August 2012: Official start to work on a new piece for 17 winds & harp.
Thus on Twitter I declared the beginning of the Opus 107, In the Artist’s Studio (there’s a wide world in there.) In fact, I had started work the day before. It’s a piece I set to writing, purely for the joy of it, when I was full of elation for what a successful piece Out in the Sun had proven. That piece had begun life as a four-ish-minute exposition which I wrote simply because I liked the thought of the instrumentation. This again was exactly the case with the new piece. It was obliquely inspired by Hindemith’s Op. 49 Konzertmusik for Piano, Two Harps and Brass. I just felt that I wanted to compose a piece for harp with a passel of winds.13 years on, I can report that the piece has never yet been performed, but of course that is the risk of writing a piece of such peculiar, nay unique, scoring for which there was never any actual call. Bother all that, I’m mighty pleased to have composed it.
In a dream I met one of my college roommates, a German exchange student, on a beach. I pointed inquisitively at his feet. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “On the Baltic Sea, they’re called pflip-pflops.”
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count; it’s the life in your years.
The master, upon this, put his hand underneath the skirts of his coat, and brought out his flute in three pieces, which he screwed together, and began immediately to play. My impression is, after many years of consideration, that there never can have been anybody in the world who played worse. He made the most dismal sounds I have ever heard produced by any means, natural or artificial. I don’t know what the tunes were — if there were such things in the performance at all, which I doubt — but the influence of the strain upon me was, first, to make me think of all my sorrows until I could hardly keep my tears back; then to take away my appetite, and lastly to make me so sleepy that I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
Dickens, David Copperfield
A Dance Floor for the Introverted, Op. 178 № 2 in rehearsal
