Sorting Out All the Bliss

All he wants to do is sing “all she wants to do is dance.”
Oh, yeah, this song goes on! Long after the thrill of hearing it is gone.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

I think the acquisition of an understanding of irony is a step forward, not backwards

— The ever-dry Mr John Cleese

YouTube being one of a number of environments in which the search function is dodgy (I remain certain that I uploaded earlier a version of the Saltmarsh Stomp, but good luck finding it) if I search in a certain way on my channel, I see that in January of 2016, the piece freshly finished (it rather looks like I chopped the piece out on New Year's Day), I was sufficiently enthused to upload three versions of Things Like Bliss: what I then called the original version (version 1) was the four-minute Ur-text. As I wrote here, I came to like the piece longer, and so it seems that the original version 2 was the nine-minute result, and on adapting the piece for flute, I dubbed that version 2.1. It looks very much like I prepared another adaptation with mandocello (which suggests that at the time I was still hoping for a Ninth Ear performance) but we’ll leave that curiosity in its apparent evaporation. For my own satisfaction, and for clarification, leave us reboot the matter thus: Let the four-minute version remain a buried fossil. I pronounce the newly-completed clarinet and harp scoring Version 1, Opus 137 № 1. I shall presently apply myself to the alto flute, viola and harp adaptation for Ensemble Aubade, which will bear the designation Version 2, Opus 137 № 1b. And the luckless clarinet, two guitar and double-bass scoring will be Version 3, Opus 137 № 1a. And there the Things Like Bliss shall stand, or rather, lounge peacefully. I shall write about other Opus 137 matters another time.