Little Enough Going On

 Very Nearly a Zappa Title N° 19: The Talk Show Never Stops

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

“Immediately, why? Will it spoil?”

—“No, but you will. Once you delay, you're lost, believe me.”

— The Twilight Zone (“The Chaser”)

... but what there is, let me dutifully report. In Where Does the Time Go?...nine years ago today was my first rehearsal of The Young Lady Holding a Phone in Her Teeth with Kammerwerke.

As to the present: At our inaugural reading, with the Redeemer/First Lutheran (new name t/b/d) choir of Joseph and Mary, there was an entirely reasonable request for a choral score with fewer page turns. Did that today. I mentioned yesterday a possible fresh pair of eyes for the Opus 200, and indeed, the colleague to whom I sent the score and MIDI demo and upon whom I count for the piece’s embassage, has responded with gratifying enthusiasm.

Mayfebruarybe

 My personal time zone, and its agreeably unsettled boundaries

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

The modern and melodious alteration of the name [Ossining] to Sing-Sing is said to have been made in compliment to an eminent Methodist singing-master, who first introduced into the neighborhood the art of singing through the nose.

— Washington Irving, ”Wolfert’s Roost”

We have not as yet absolutely pinned down the February date for the next concert at the church, but then, it’s not even Thanksgiving yet. The tentative program is the result of (A) restoring two pieces of mine to the program I originally conceived for King’s Chapel October date; (B) swapping the Opus 201 duets for the Dance Floor for the Introverted (which we have already played at the church); and (C) strewing the seven duets of the Op. 201 throughout the program:

Charms & Offertories

Karl Henning, Offertories I (Op. 201 Nos. 1-3 première) [3:00]
Robert Gross, Four’s the Charm [5:30]
Henning, Lamentatio pro sorore sua, Op. 202a [3:15]
Karl Henning, Amorphous and Forward-Looking, Op. 196c [6:00]
Henning, Offertories II (Op. 201 Nos. 4 & 5 (première) [2:00]
Kevin Scott, Min'khah (Offertory)—In remembrance Shoshanna C. Winson [11:00]
Henning, Moose on the Loose, Op.165a [6:15]
Henning, Offertories III (Op. 201 Nos. 6 & 7 (première) [2:00]
Henning, Peace! The Charm’s Wound Up, Op. 204 [4:00]
Henning, Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be, Op. 191c [2:30]

Also, we may have another band director reviewing/considering the Opus 200.

Out From the Past

 Huey Lewis was way ahead of his time with “I Want a Nude Rug.”

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

It happens sometimes. People just explode. Natural causes.

— Repo Man

Today I got a YouTube alert which began: Two years ago, The Beatles released. Well, The Beatles broke up when I was a teenager. In a real sense, they didn’t release a Corn Flake on which Lennon once sat two years ago.

Triad (which are no more) somehow permeated last night’s dreams. I was trying to get in touch with one fellow alum whom I’ve invited to furnish a piece for the Henning Ensemble. In the dream I explicitly reflected that there was a time in my life when I would get together with 8-12 superb colleagues once a week for ten weeks, twice a year. And I was in a conversion with two alums (one of whom—not to fall into the trap of “fact-checking” a dream—was not an alum.) Then, as if to underscore how the overall theme was The Dead Past, I was supposedly back at the office, asking a co-worker for a ride home since it was raining and I somehow did not have boots.

Then, out of the apparent Blue, this morning I found that Scott had sent me this old High School paper.

Quietly Carrying On

Another day, another comma whose absence was keenly felt:

“Ride On King Jesus”

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Art is the child’s vision, reborn in the artist’s hands.

— Paul Klee

It's the Bloggiversary again! Still blogging after 17 years.

For the February reprise of our October concert in King’s Chapel, we are about to have a pair of refresh rehearsals (not this week, but next.) Actually, “refresh+” rehearsals, since we’ll expand the program by restoring rep which was dropped. Later this month there will be a Utah performance of just what everyone was expecting. The list of noteworthy happenings since the last bloggiversary includes: the expansion of the Henning Ensemble to a sextet (when the planets align); the establishment of two new venues for the Ensemble (okay, new-ish in the case of the Woburn Public Library); a return to the practice of the Ensemble presenting the work of “outside composers”; the revival of Joseph and Mary; and passing the Opus 200 landmark; having the ear of a music director w/r/t Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail; and what looks like a reliable source of income to make up at last for that lost when my position at HTUMC was dissolved. Plans: Gotts finish Janky Juke Joint and the recorder arrangement of Away in a Manger. Should pin down the next Sextet date. There’s the Op. 179 Chamber Orchestra piece I should finally put to bed, too. (I mean, if it were not another purely speculative endeavor, it would have been finished by now—but there you have it, there’s always more Henningmusick than the Universe appears to require.) I think I should write three more short band pieces to shop around. Maybe the key to laying the groundwork for a performance of the Op. 148 Symphony is to strew briefer pieces abroad. As the Sextet program takes shape (including the Simple Music) perhaps I shall draw up another, shorter piece. We shall see.

The Winter's Tale in Woburn

 Incendiary indecency from a sociopathic cœlacanth

— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

Seen on Threads: I am a lawyer. The common misconception is that we’re all very intelligent. Giuliani and the other election deniers from 2020 have done a good job of clearing that up.

Watching a Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Winter’s Tale was (in addition to the interest of the play itself, of course) a good mental exercise for me. I’m out of practice approaching those plays with which I am not already familiar. Something I last did in Ray McCall’s Shakespeare class at the College of Wooster. (I wasn’t yet familiar with The Tempest, either, and why I plugged right into that one were an interesting q.) At one point, my ear so lulled by the environment of the language, I might almost have nodded off. The production itself was a bit of a hodgepodge, or, that was my impression. I don’t mean that derogatorily. That aspect might have made it more of a challenge for me to get an overall sense of the dramatis personæ (see “good mental exercise” above.) Were I more of a critic I might point at this or that element to serve a thesis that it is not one of the best plays, perhaps. But instead I found it engagingly entertaining, and isn’t that the point? Yes, Shakespeare wrote several plays which are monuments in English letters, but that doesn’t mean that I need look down my nose when he simply spins an entertaining yarn. The Tempest has really got in amongst me. But also, on a trivial level:  In the Firesign Theatre’s Sherlock Holmes spoof, The Case of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, one character is a businessman with a pignut plantation and a pig-oil beer brewery. (A Chicago mobster observes, “this pig-oil beer runs through you like a hot car.” So I am delighted at last to learn whence the Firesign pignut came.

And a friend/colleague, although presently on tour with one of his ensembles, took time to listen to and comment upon the Op. 200:

Terrific work! I enjoyed the many iterations of fugue, your inclusion of the BACH motif, the slowly stated fugue theme at about 9:59. Your elegant percussion parts, delicately blended in, are the perfect spices for this Shakespearean romp and meditation., Bravo!!!

As a result, I am revisiting it myself and finding that I am still highly pleased with the piece. 

Yuja Wang and Domingo Hindoyan in Boston

 Championing the unconscionably under-sung Loganberries of Wrath.

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

... when I waked, I cried to dream again

— Caliban, The Tempest

Domingo Hindoyan leads Boston Symphony in fearless Bernstein, Prokofiev, and Copland, pianist Yuja Wang solos with brilliance

From the Archive: Espying the End of The Nerves 25 Oct 2016

 When a man is invested in lies, he is never grateful to the person who tells him the truth.

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Groucho: You want to be a public nuisance?

Chico: Sure. How much does the job pay?

Symphony Update: Approaching the end of the first movement

Presently, the two pieces I have not been actively working on, yet not entirely neglecting are an arrangement of Away in a Manger for two recorders and, of course, Janky Juke Joint. Life is busy, and overall in agreeable ways.