Of Joseph and Mary

 @naxosrecords: Whom do you think of when you hear Mahler’s Symphony No.2 “Resurrection"?”

Me: Uncle Fester. What do I win?

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

This would be a better world for children if the parents had to eat the spinach.

— Groucho Marx

One of the Henning Christmas scores from the dawn of the present century whereof Eric and Greta have kept gratifyingly warm thoughts all this while is an arrangement of Joseph and Mary, a carol which I discovered in the "old" Episcopal hymnal (must be two generations behind, now). They discovered the original score of my Opus 53 among their papers. That arrangement was for flute (I have no notion at this point of who might have played flute then—unless perhaps we hired Peter for the occasion) clarinet (yrs truly) bassoon (Greta) trumpet (Eric) handbells (I'm not convinced that we got anyone to ring them for that first performance) and organ (the late Bill Goodwin.) My own fondness for the carol may be judged by the fact that 15-ish years later I adapted the arrangement for HTUMC in Danvers: Violin (Pastor Larry's daughter plays beautifully) expanded handbells, and adding Youth Choir. Also, it looks like I recomposed the organ part so that part of my process now is deciding whether to use one or the other, or to meld them. As with reconstruction of Moose on the Loose, the hard part was getting the ball rolling. I am now roughly half done. I managed to get in some more work before PT at noon today ... on the whole I'm planning to finish it Saturday or Sunday.

Also, ten years ago today:

From the Pit of a Cave in the Cloud for soprano accompanied by flute, soprano recorder (doubling on tenor), bass flute (doubling on piccolo), and horn in F, setting a text by Leo Schulte, duration 12 minutes and a half, is done. That is a wrap on the Op.129 [12 Sep 2015]