Taking My Time

The Probability Space Force and the Martian of Error
— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

Now, I’ve had enough, my box is clean.
You know what I’m sayin’ and you know what I mean.
From now on, you’d best get on someone else;
While you’re doin’ it, keep that juice to yourself.
— Bob Dylan, “Odds and Ends”

As noted erewhile, the Op. 197 Rahsaan Roland Kirk Fantasia originated in my musical brain’s interstices while the track “A Laugh for Rory” was in heavy rotation because I learnt that our parakeet especially enjoyed it. It is a score of which I remain intensely proud, and I knew directly after last year’s successful première that I wanted to reprise it this year. It is a sufficiently complicated and challenging piece for the band that (if I may be forgiven the seeming immodesty of such a comparison) like Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps, it will wax ever better with repetition. I should therefore like to keep it in our repertory for next year (and hopefully we shall get a video document then) because there will be an interval long enow that it will not be tedious for our audience. I just need to check with the band to make sure they don’t flirt with ennui.

But I have already gotten ahead of myself. In the wake of the successful première of the Opus 197, as I believe has also been noted afore on the blog, the next piece I conceived for the full ensemble was to be a score designedly easier (far easier) to prepare, and thus was born the Op. 205 Simple Music. Last year we were able to program two concerts with the full (or practically full) Ensemble. I originally hoped for two such 2026 concerts. I feel highly fortunate (albeit my personal obstinacy was a factor) that despite months of uncertainty, we did ultimately present the 28 October program at the Library, both reprising the Op. 197 and premiering the Op. 205. I want to compose the next new piece for the full band. Still allowing ideas to flit through and potentially form, like musical coral polyps. Watch This Space.

Up-Cycling Danvers-Era Material? And Others

 In a parallel universe, the second surveyor’s name was Richardson; and the lands south of the Mason-Richardson Line were known colloquially as “Richardsie.”
— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

If ever I have deserved (which has not often been the case, and, I think, never), but if ever I did deserve to be soundly cuffed by a fellow mortal, for secretly putting weight upon some imaginary social advantage, it must have been while I was striving to prove myself ostentatiously his equal and no more. It was while I sat beside him on his cobbler’s bench, or clinked my hoe against his own in the cornfield, or broke the same crust of bread, my earth-grimed hand to his, at our noontide lunch.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance

It was a musically busy week: Henning Ensemble rehearsal Monday, Henning Ensemble concert Wednesday, went to Bedford to hear an excellent concert on the Middlesex Community College World of Music series on Friday, sang in the anthem at Hope Lutheran Church Sunday morning, and that afternoon went to North Andover for a wonderful Seven Times Salt concert. HTUMC has been on my mental periphery, as this past Friday was the funeral for one of my most loyal choristers, Jean Ebb. Friday is Physical Therapy day for me, so I could not attend. After Sunday’s service at Hope Lutheran Church, talking with Music Director Paul Carlson, it crossed my mind that I have a sizeable portfolio of Gebrauchsmusik-vibing arrangements from my tenure in Danvers, and that some of these might be found useful and appealing for the Hope choir.

Furthermore, when Dan Meyers and I caught up after the STS concert, he mentioned that he is now working at an Episcopal parish, so I thought along similar lines, plus deciding to send Dan the Nunc dimittis, Op. 87 № 9 and the Kyrie, Op. 106 № 1. And because I’ve also been meaning to send Ed Broms No One Has Time for Anything But Life ... I sent the Nunc and Kyrie to Ed, as well. One never knows, do one?

Bloggiversary XVIII

 One headline I am never reading aloud:
“Astronomers Found Something Cold and Wet Near Uranus.”
— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

In spite of this excellent start, little of importance happened in Egypt until the Third Dynasty, when Imhotep the Wise, architect and chief minister to King Zoser, invented the pyramid, a new kind of huge royal tomb built of stone and guaranteed to protect the body of the Pharaoh and a large amount of his property against disturbance for all time. That is to say, Imhotep the Wise originated the idea of concealing the royal corpse and his treasure in a monument so conspicuous that it could not possibly be missed by body snatchers and other thieves. Of course, the pyramids were always robbed of their entire contents, but the Pharaohs went right on building them for several centuries before they noticed the catch in this way of hiding things.
— Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody

Well, here we are 18 years and 1700 or so posts later. How did this even happen? How is it happening still?

Le Son du Milieu

 The code of the kosher witches:
Do no ham.
— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

I think the lesson is less about how to cure a creative block than about the value of changing the conditions in which you are trying to create. Sometimes the change may not be the one you expected, but that does not mean that nothing has changed.
— Luke Ottevanger

My friend Luke Ottevanger’s book, The Sound of the Place is now out! I’m still waiting for my copy, but there is a lovely long-form interview here.

The Livestream That Wasn't

Is mayhem ever obligatory, and does it thereby become musthem?
— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

"We all sat down [...] and looked at one another in a friendly but rather awkward way. It was the first practical trial of our theories of equal brotherhood and sisterhood; and we people of superior cultivation (for as such, I presume, we unhesitatingly reckoned ourselves) felt as if something were already accomplished towards the millennium of love. The truth is, however, that the laboring oar was with our unpolished companions; it being far easier to condescend than to accept of condescension.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance

Firstly and overarchingly importantly, the concert last night went smashingly and I brim with gratitude to/for my colleagues, and my happiness for the artistic endeavor is complete.

Unlike last year, it was not possible for the Library to stream the event. This is mere reportage of a fact, and in no way a complaint. The Library have continued to be a princely host and a warmly appreciated support.

My thought for a Plan B was to livestream on my own YouTube channel. I have never done so, so I knew there were imponderables. I knew there were things I did not know and I knew I did not even know what it was that I did not know. In brief, the only thing I succeeded in doing was to create the event on my channel, on my laptop. I did not know how I should fare, trying to launch the event from the YouTube app on my phone.

The good souls at the Library found a tripod and we succeeded in mounting my phone on the tripod. So far, still so hopeful.

However neither R. nor I could discern how the event might be set in motion. Alongside came J. who found guidelines for livestreaming via the mobile app, and my account simply does not qualify for that activity. For only one thing, it appears that an account must have 50 subscribers and by that criterion alone luck is just what I was out of.

We learnt all of this on the fly right at about the time the concert was to begin. If that sounds stressful, well maybe it was, maybe it was not. I owe hearty thanks to both R. & J. who were patient and actively helpful. Bottom line: enormously happy with how the concert went. Everything went as well as ever it did. I have good reason to be especially pleased with the Rahsaan Roland Kirk Fantasia. I was unusually well rested, which must have helped greatly. The pre-concert kerfuffle of figuring out at the eleventh hour that there would be no live stream notwithstanding, I was relaxed and centered. I felt an unusual degree of confidence, and that sympathetically flowed out to the band, meseemed.

 

Nearing Concert Time

 No pop singer but Billy Joel would sing, “I have been a fool for lesser things.” To be clear, I think that is to his credit.
— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

It is well that war is so terrible; we should grow too fond of it.
— Robert E. Lee

Our concert at the Woburn Public Library is Wednesday, and our dress rehearsal is tomorrow. We shall be ready.

Opus 213 Done

 When we drive through Middleton, I half-wonder if we've somehow missed either Beginnington or Endington.
— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
— Karl Popper

Smooth is not how the course of the Opus 213 ran. Just reporting, not complaining.  Illusions I Can Live With began life at a time when I was expecting that we should have only Carol & Peter for the 1 December King’s Chapel concert. As of September the 7th, the score ran to 40 measures and less than two minutes of music. At that point, the piece waited (first) upon organizational work for the Library concert, and then sat tight while I composed the 16 little pieces comprising the Opp. 211 & 214. None of these considerations was any absolute impediment to work on Illusions, but the subtextual fact was that although I had set down notes which I liked, I had not yet found a sense of direction for the piece. In fact, although not in the back of my mind, but indeed in the shade of my mind’s forefront, the question, whether I ought to just start afresh was long a low-impact nag.

But then, to my delight, Dan Zupan is ready to be restored to the Active roster, and the obvious musical solution was to make the piece a trio. To the point of “although I had set down notes which I liked,” above, every single note in the 7 September score remained untouched whille I gleefully added the bass clarinet. And poof! the Opus 213 is complete.