A Taste of Spaine in Maine

Dr Paul Cienniwa playing the de Falla Harpsichord Concerto this past August, at the VentiCordi Festival in Kennebunk, Maine:

Blogwatch

Houston Dunleavy writes of a particularly good week:

[ link → It’s a pity every week isn’t like this one! ]

Apart from this, and as if that weren’t enough . . . .

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Cannot go wrong with a simply stupendous choir; here’s wishing Houston many such weeks more!

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Stuart Simon, on Deliberateness:

[ link → Habit #6: Impatience ]

Good question. “The math on that is in counting two beats and putting the five notes in as equally as you can. You have to feel this just as you have to anticipate the metronome’s next click.”

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All too few musical blog posts, perhaps, include the observation, She looked at me with murder in her eyes. But there’s the math of it, and there’s just acquisition of the experience of it. If music waited on math, there’d be much less music in the world, and much less variety of it.

Deep Night

Around a quarter to four, I lay awake. Thought about popping in the disc of the MIDI ‘realization’ of the Viola Sonata. As I turned that thought over in my mind, remaining prone, I tried to remember (and succeeded in remembering) what music I had listened to last.

Decided against cuing up the Opus 102. For it would not have lulled me to sleep, it would have engaged my mind for the full 26 minutes.

Some more work done (in spite of a long couple of days) on Tempus fungus.

About to send off a disc of Gaze Transfixt to a friend in Brooklyn.

Viola Sonata Missive

Dear N—,

I trust you’ve had an enjoyable summer!

I have an idea that I’ve already sent you the first two movements of the Viola Sonata . . . so for completeness’ sake, here I clutter your in-box with the third and final movement.

This movement actually includes the first of the music I ever wrote for the piece. Four years ago, on meeting violist Peter Lekx (who has become a great friend), I began (what I thought a the time would just be a single-movement work) Tango in Boston. I wrote a chunk of it, and then as I saw (a) how generally busy with various musical projects Pete was, (b) that half (and maybe more) of his attentions were at the time focused on early music, and (c) at the time, I still did not know a pianist who would be capable of the piece I was scheming . . . I set it aside.

At the time, though, I had talked about this beginning trunk of the piece with some on-line friends, including Dana Huyge, who was about to enroll at the Eastman School. I think I’ve told you the rest: that after a long interval, Dana pinged me with the suggestion that I finish “the viola sonata” for performance in a recital this fall.

— As I say, at the time I started sketching Tango in B, I wasn’t thinking multi-movement work . . . I think that Dana must have remembered “viola & piano,” and in the back of his mind, the piece became a viola sonata. I am glad that was the case, though, because I was electrified by the idea . . . immediately felt that the completed Tango would serve well as a third movement, and started into the first two movements.

So . . . the 2006 “fossil” of this movement is found in the first 70 measures of the now-completed piece. Though (to work backwards) for mm. 49-70, I had only the basso ostinato in the piano, and knew I wanted to add quite a bit “against” it; mm. 33-48 is largely intact from the old MS., for the most part the only re-composition is that I adjusted the RH; mm. 1-32 is most nearly “intact” . . . the adjustments there were mostly on the order of adding a couple of more overt tango-ish touches.

Well, there it is.

Cheers,
~k.

Carl Stalling (Not Karl Stalling)

The genius of Carl Stalling, and the wonderful ways in which it dovetailed with the rest of the team at Termite Terrace, was often revealed in subtle throw-aways. Daffy Duck (as Duck Dodgers in the 24½^th Century) reports to the Secretary of the Stratosphere, who announces that “the world’s supply of Illudium Phosdex, the shaving-cream atom, is alarmingly low.” In the score, Stalling quietly answers that line with two notes in the contrabassoon, an alarmingly low woodwind.

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The Viola Sonata has been finished for almost a week now.

For the Ensemble: Périphérie call, I was starting to think of an arrangement (and it still strikes me as a good alternate scoring for Counting Sheep). I am more and more inclined to write something new entirely, though.

Thoughts on the Cantata still percolate on a back burner, and I need to get together with Héloise, and get acquainted with her battery of recorders.

Just saying

In so many people’s minds there is this ethereal “Live the Dream” . . . and too little QC.

Time Past

The second Chicago song I ever remember hearing, is “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”

Ironically, the very first Chicago song I ever remember hearing, is “25 or 6 to 4.” (A song whose title betrays a concern with what time it is.)