Rehearsing and A-Chronicling

 Where the druids were, they drew ids.

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

— William Carlos Williams

Whilst I saw the Light some time ago, so that I am now keeping a responsible log of Henning Ensemble performances, it is only occurring to me now (and this Dawn ought to have broken back in June when Paul Carson created the première of the St Petersburg Nocturne) that I ought to keep a log of performances (as and if I should come to know of them) of Henningmusick in which I am not directly involved. This is, after all the Goal: performances of my work which needn’t depend upon my own sweat. Don’t get me at all wrong: I love conducting and singing, and I long for the restoration of my left hand so that I shall play clarinet again. But only a select fraction of the planet will be able to hear those performances of my music which require my personal organization and participation.

The evidence of the program of our 8 April King’s Chapel concert is that we have performed the première of Amorphous and Forward-Looking, Op. 196. I do not, will not deny the documented fact, but only report the (probably embarrassing) fact that somehow, in the back of my mind, I came to believe that the piece still awaited its première, and that this mistaken notion is largely behind my intention to include it on our October program. However:

A. There’s nothing wrong with giving the piece a second performance, and

B. I was thinking that, better than having Greta sit that piece out would be adding a bassoon to the score. Watch This Space.

Greta has found the score to my arrangement of the Christmas Carol Joseph and Mary, whereof she and Eric have retained such fond memories still, the passing years notwithstanding. Greta found only the bassoon part and not a score to the Op. 61 Reflections upon a French Carol for clarinet, trumpet, bassoon and organ. However, I do have a typographically compromised PDF file of the score, which at a guess I tried to resuscitate when there was a “Finale Lite” product called Notepad, so perhaps a restoration is in the offing, after all.

One takeaway from chatting with my excellent friend and fellow Triad alumnus, Julian Bryson today, is that we shall at some point have the Henning Ensemble play a Bryson piece.