Eric S notapenguin's blog: "musicstuffs version 2.0"

Used to do this a bit (when replacing current listening with something newer - had a thread I added to, in fact, with any lengthy description I wanted to keep for any reason :) Without any further adodedodedo, the last bit to go in the music section of my profile... Louis Spohr's string quintet in G major from his op. 33 (1810s) (see review of the CD in a later budget incarnation *g* - I remember buying the original, full-price version of this around 1995 or so and listening to it quite a few times just the night of the first day I bought it... lovely stuff.)

Something of a composer, writer and teacher (1881-1950, born in Poland but spent practically all of his life in Russia/the USSR, except for a stint in WWI I gather, and a ) with a "cult" following, I guess. (Prokofiev's best friend and "co-conspirator" in his student years, writing pieces together and occasionally annoying their professors... teacher of Khachaturian, Kabalevsky, Shchedrin, and quite a few others.) I first heard Miaskovsky's cello concerto (1944) on the radio, from an LP recording with Mstislav Rostropovich playing the cello part, twice during my first year of college, and several other works in the campus library (and, again, on the radio- good station near my college)- and since the Soviet record label Melodiya had recorded, and various labels here redistributed/licensed/..., quite a few works of his (see e.g. partial worklist and discography, this article by me mirrored at Myaskovsky.ru (the original is at www.kith.org), the site Myaskovsky.ru itself, for instance... -- anyway... (the Myaskovsky.ru site has been redone and doesn't seem easy to navigate now. The list of works is here.) While a lot of his 86 (87?) published works were recorded or at least circulated on private tapes, three important ones escaped fans like me until pretty recently (... well, about five years ago)- three of his symphonies, no. 4 from 1917-8, no. 14 from 1933 and no. 20 (yes- there are 27) from 1940, were unknown, by sound anyway. I did borrow a score of no. 20, photocopied the second section (Adagio, C major, pages 50-65) and made a MIDI of a 2-piano reduction in lieu of having some actual recording to listen to. I will say I loved the piece. Simple... (ish!) in structure, but among the better music I'd heard by this composer already - lovely and noble. A few years ago I did get to hear a recording of the 20th symphony (as originally conceived, not 2-piano reduction)- the only recording there's been, and even that, no longer available- (review here) (was listening to my copy of it last night and again today). The return of themes of the slow movement at the end of the piece should be loud, bombastic, annoying and shouldn't work (that is, it does seem hard to see how it could work), and maybe it's my own subjective attachment to the piece talking- in any case, the cheer of the last pages seems right.

(No, not Benjamin Franklin, though the reader would not be the first person to confuse them.) See this earlier blog for a few details on my long-term project. Writing this blog to note that I've been starting up again, after another too-long gap, for a bit - though not with a movement of Frankel's 6th symphony of 1969 but the finale of his 7th, of 1970, instead -- as my "typesetting raw material", since his stepson provided me with the scores of both, along with other works, when I visited him in London in 1999. (Much appreciated, that...) By the way, the 7th begins and ends with lines, written on the score but not meant to be spoken during performance, from Christopher Marlowe's play, Doctor Faustus: "That time may cease and midnight never come" (p.1 of the score) "The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike" (p. 133 - last page - of the score, at the bottom right) By this time (1970) he knew he had angina pectoris (see http://benjaminfrankel.org/?page_id=18 . He died in 1973, but "shadow of death" seems fair to describe those years in my opinion.) (These works have been performed a few times, and recorded - in the case of the 6th and 7th symphonies once each, on the cpo label out of Germany, about a decade ago. There are some brief sound samples of some works at the usual suspects - amazon, etc. - and longer ones at http://www.benjaminfrankel.org/ , along with biography and more information.)

Reading a science fiction novel - The Mocking Program - and reminded once again that Alan Dean Foster has very wide musical tastes... (he's heard of Braga Santos?... ...) (Same sci-fi/fantasy author - maybe best-known, if anything, for his "Flinx" and "Spellsinger" series - whose article on Brian's 4th sym I linked to in my last post in this blog, here.)

(which is the piece of music I'm listening to now; there's a budget recording - which I have - on Naxos, and I have a tape of the public premiere, as well...) Anyhow, a link to his interesting essay (also in my stash, I think...) here: -- http://www.havergalbrian.org/sym4_1.htm -- The piece itself is a setting of Psalm 68 (depending on what numbering, Bible, ... you're using- "Let God Arise" - Brian's symphony is called Das Siegeslied) in German (!) for chorus, soloists and orchestra. Lasting 45 minutes. Written in the mid-1930s. (And no, I don't think the composer was a Nazi sympathizer. But what...?) (I forget if I've posted about this before... or if "wars and rumors of war" are combining with the sounds running through my ears at the moment, and the hour of even', to make me want to post this just now. Not that I ever need much excuse.)

off to listen to John Foulds' "World Requiem" (1921-3, I think) (being broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in its first performance... at all... since Armistice Day 1926... - 90 minute or so work... so I will not have any window open at all (may log off, just may have the site open but all closed, then exercise, then be back.) Anycase, have a great afternoon! (6:30pm local in London where it's being performed, in Royal Albert Hall- http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/thechoir/pip/xzl2j/ Eric

piece of music listened to far too often in the last few days (and recommended) would have to be the 2nd symphony of _Rutland Boughton_ (British, 1878-1960), nicknamed (the symphony, not the composer) "Deirdre, a Celtic Symphony", probably originally a ballet score or possibly incidental music for the play "Deirdre of the Sorrows" (even more likely!!) by J. M. Synge. (Havergal Brian, another favorite British 20th-century semi-modern of mine, also wrote music for that play but, running into copyright troubles, collected what would have been the some of incidental music- the overture, I think, a substantial, strange and interesting work- into what turned into his 6th symphony, instead.) The "Deirdre" symphony - I should get back to this since I have things to do tomorrow. It's eerie how it takes digressions, divagations, paths aside... but ... ... gets where it's going... and ... the more I hear it? The more I hear that it was never in any doubt that it was going there. That there was always that current, always that feeling - especially in the long last movement of the symphony (titled "Young and Death"!)- that those shattering final chords were going to come. (And not the least... and not the only... lovely thing about this symphony by a "very British" composer is how the first of the three movements begins quietly, delicately, with a twisty and lovely tune passed around the orchestra... how that movement encompasses a whole range of moods, some tunes resembling popular shanties and loud ones too :)... (this is rather a sea symphony, and "Deirdre of the Shallows" I do think ends up drowned...) but that opening movement (The Young Girl: The Old King or the Young Lover) manages still to end in quiet mystery, midflight, midair... then the middle movement (Moonlight Idyll: Deirdre and Naisi) stays in the shadows mostly, as though having some quiet fun in the waves... until a threatening foghorn announces trouble and not without reason (the piece isn't really as point-by-point descriptive of the play as all that- I think- pieces which are like that, like some of those by Hector Berlioz, _not_ being high on my "list")- I think the opening "harmony" of the finale, like one Elgar uses in a piece of his, is something like this (not these exact notes)- c (held) - f (held) - Bflat (held) - Eflat ... not so much a harmony as a call to "wth?" especially after a mostly _very_ quiet 7 minutes preceding... again, that the 17 minute finale manages to hold focus despite, well, as many digressions as my own writing (erf) if not even more, says something about the composer's skill... and I think I'll leave that there. Unfortunately the only recording is (of course) out of print- his other two symphonies are available (... well, I think. Symphony 3 is on Hyperion's budget label Helios, symphony 1 is about to be released. Maybe no. 2 will be re-recorded, or the recording I adore so *g*, (Sir) Edward Downes conducting the BBC Philharmonic, might be reissued... who knows.) Your patients are appreciated, says the doctor on the referral. Nighters! And if you do hear any of this music in here or in stash, or etc., (or etc. or etc., or general conversation continued from there...) good to talk about such things (again, not just this.) Best!

www.imslp.org (to which I've linked rather often in my stash here, for many reasons) is no more. (The reasons may be seen on the main page- or any other. I will remove those links from my stash very soon and replace those that I can with links to other sites that have them- when of course the content of them was truly out of copyright, as most, at least, of them were. Though the fact that much on the site- including pages I linked to, though not, I think, including any Universal Edition scores, by chance anyway? ... (see the page) was in copyright in the EU while out of copyright in the US... was part of the problem...)

I don't think I mentioned this, though it amused. I still haven't heard it, and it wasn't entirely for amusement. (I intend to be on campus next week soon- I renewed some books so it doesn't have to be tomorrow. So i might borrow it then.) Clue: piece of music with mostly Spanish title, Italian composer, written in the late 1980s, dedicated to a Russian filmmaker (who had died in the 1980s.) Answer - Piece title- (since I doubt there are very too many so) - "No hay caminos, hay que caminar ... Andrej Tarkovskij" by Luigi Nono (written 1987, a year after Tarkovsky's death). No hay caminos, hay que caminar - possible translation : there is no way (route, road), traveler. You make the way, by walking it. I love the expression, and chose it for my nickname awhile back. (How bldy anticlimactic, not to mention parochial and all the rest of it, a way to end this... but I'm sleepy...)

didn't have anything much to do today (agh for suddenly disorganized schedule- eh, things will get better) so I am now sitting down with this version of LilyPond, trying to continue with some of the projects - like the ones that produced some of the images and PDFs of music scores I put in the gallery and stash, those that i made, of course, not others' :) - that I left off when I had to figure out the program again!