On Periodic Local Disorder

 Honey, swat key Molly punts (a disorder of the garter).

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Yes, the chili was very nice. But it really has to be the last red meat I have. I mean already I’m going to have to detox and irrigate. Colonically this has set me right back.

— A Midwinter’s Tale

... but not local disorders.

Few (if any) will have looked closely enough to notice, but now and again I assign an Opus number, but then go on to compose a different piece entirely and unceremoniously move on numerically. Nevertheless, overall order is maintained. After composing my Opus 199, setting David Ossman’s poem “Retreat,” a piece for which at the time we had fair hope of a performance, a hope which has come a cropper, through a significant disruption suffered by a colleague (this not being the forum to tape that out.) That’s a sentence with its mechanical problems, but leave us proceed. I then decided that Opus 200 will be a short band piece, and I got some pre-compositional thought duly thunk and even partly settled on a placeholder title, to match the placeholder Opus number. I posted a bit about this in April. Possibly because I was never satisfied with the title(s) I seemed to be entertaining, I never took that crucial step of creating a Sibelius file for the Opus 200, a step which might likely have led to recording actual notes. So, when my publisher suggested/requested short utilitarian flute pieces, I designated that set of seven pieces the Opus 201, and the new bass clarinet duet, Lamentatio pro sorore sua, Opus 202. I’ve now begun work on Aaron’s Uneasy Sleep (having both begun work on the fixed media component, and taken the abovementioned crucial step of creating a Sibelius file) and this will be Opus 203. I then had a feeling, which it would be a disservice to associate with guilt, touching upon the Op. 200. I suppose the fact was, I held off work on the Op. 200 band piece while I still waited upon the possibility of the Op. 148 occupying a slot in the coming CRWE season. Having learnt that there is as yet no call for the Henning Second Symphony, I feel free to apply myself to writing the Op. 200, a bite-size band piece which will not hog half a concert, probably after I've got Aaron’s Uneasy Sleep wrapped up. Indeed, having recently watched a DVD of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I find that Shakespeare has given me a title for the Opus 200: Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail. Separately, eight years ago today, I went to Vermont to hear Ensemble Aubade play Oxygen Footprint.