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

Spending some time learning how to use commands like "raise" to properly format the results (so that in the item I recently uploaded to "stash" the "espress." marker isn't barging right into a slur or tie but rises above it, things like that. So the image looks nice :) The program, even the early version I have, does much of this itself, but often needs a bit of tweaking.

That was embarrassing. Ok, uploading a corrected copy soon, in which the viola is playing the notes the composer actually wrote... (and this is from a typeset, readable score, not a manuscript photocopy like some of the ones I've worked from. That is: it's my reading comprehension's fault, not a "darn, it's hard to read!" problem.)

After shot, went to the library at Cornell, borrowed two sets of string quartet parts for possible LilyPond transfering over the next few months *g* (an early work by composer/teacher/theorist Salomon Jadassohn (1831-1902), his op. 10 in C minor ... a nearly-contemporary piano trio in F's first movement was converted by me to MIDI some years back, I liked it; also a later work, but before the composer's death in 1910, by a Samuel deLange, his 3rd quartet in G minor; about whom and about which- except from scanning the score- I know nothing!) Also, at the library, listened to organ works by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710-1784), harpsichord works by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788 - including a long fantasia written a couple of years after Mozart's in C minor... I wonder if CPE knew it? Mozart knew some of _his_ music but was more influenced himself by JS Bach's youngest son (CPE's youngest brother), Johann Christian Bach...) and finally two cantatas (no. 105 and one other) by JS Bach himself, which as almost always with his 200-plus surviving cantatas, I found enjoyable, striking, remarkable, etc. (again, yes, I'm an atheist and Bach had every intention of converting through music if he possibly could, and no one had a better chance of it it seems to me) Eric

also coinkidentallies ... erm, coincidentally the morning that a math summer program I used to go to, ended each summer (http://www.hcssim.org - oh, my bad- they end on the 11th now. The 17th is and was an important number though at that program and otherwise- http://www.vinc17.org/yp17/index.en.html (I also went to two concerts at Tanglewood during my second summer there, just before my first year at college. That ended up meaning very much to me. My first and last as I remember live Mahler concert, though not a good one... I became a "Mahler fan" a few months later :) ...) so-- spending the morning working now on the third flute/piccolo (one player, who takes both parts) line of the Frankel symphony movement I mentioned yesterday. Frankel's music is described in some detail, with a worklist and some RealAudio samples of complete movements, at the website Benjaminfrankel.org. (Including one from the 5th symphony, and another from the earlier violin concerto, dedicated to the memory of the 6 Million. Some recent works dedicated to the memories of other recent events might cause one to look cross-eyed at a piece so inscribed, but I suggest giving it a chance...) Eric

dating, since I've probably written about him already this year. He was born 150 years ago June 2nd, and the composer of the Pomp and Circumstance marches is receiving the full treatment. His cello concerto was played the first night of the London Prom concerts (and Land of Hope and Glory, the choral version of the trio of the first Pomp-and march, always is in the Last Prom concert each year); and a number of his other works are sprinkled throughout the season- with the effect that his range as a composer, the many-sidedness of the portrait- is harder to hide ;) . I picked up an issue of BBC Music Magazine back in July dedicated to the Elgar anniversary containing a CD of an Elgar 2nd symphony performance conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent (from a Prom Concert several decades ago - a friend in the UK had attended the event, enjoyed it, recommended the magazine to me in part because the performance was quite good and had not been released in any form between then and now *g*- have now borrowed another recording of the same work from the local library and will go listen to both for the first time I think and compare them; I've heard the work before but not really well.) Anyway, the magazine also contained recommendations for many lesser-known works by the composer- songs (solo and chorus), music for plays- and unusually good performances of better-known works. (Not an unusual survey of course, but for a composer I've only been slowly getting into over the years- starting with the sometimes quiet, sad 1918-9 string quartet and cello concerto, gradually getting to like his more "characteristic" (truly?) other works also...- a useful one!... anyhow, this is relevant to what little follows :) ... A set of his choral songs, one specifically recommended in the magazine issue in fact, was performed in one of the Proms last week- also one of the same sets I heard during my last visit to New York City and Long Island, when I stopped in at Lincoln Center Library and listened for about a half-hour to a CD of unaccompanied ("a cappella") choral music of his- a set written in 1907, four songs, "There is Sweet Music" (Tennyson) (difficult to sing, since the men first enter in G major then pause, the women then enter in A-flat - think about trying to tune your entrance properly!!... - many choirs refused to sing this, I gather, when it was first presented!... followed by settings of "Deep in my Soul", "O Wild West Wind" and a poem of Elgar's own, "Owls", described as "nihilistic" (and it is). (A set - opus 53 - of four remarkable brief-ish choral works from the time of his first symphony, written in Rome, and not the only such set he wrote throughout his career, either... one I did not hear - or rather- haven't heard yet, though it was on that same CD at the library, so I intend to return to it (I think maybe the library here has it too) - was "Go, Song of Mine" - which was more popular during his lifetime than those, anyway...)

Working on making a PDF of the Allegro second movement of Benjamin Frankel's symphony no. 6 (1969), using the program LilyPond (www.lilypond.org) (version 2.0.1, nothing more recent works with my machine and OS). So far: have of the flute 1/2, first violin, second violin, violas, cellos lines have 94 bars done (and nothing else for this movement. The first movement and third movement- out of five in all- are pretty substantially "transcribed" except for, well, a whole lot of retouching and a few lines- mostly percussion- not yet added- but are mostly done... I think... well, maybe "first or second draft" applies.) (Yes, I'm enjoying this a lot. The result of another such project, also not quite done, is the finale of a 1838(?) piano trio by Carl Gottlob Reißiger (1798-1859) (making him a near-contemporary of Franz Schubert, born 1797), the PDF from which is in my "stash" and some pages of which in various stages of progress are in my image gallery.)

by someone who really has to go'bed... (note: there is a score to this work, Medtner's opus 20 number 2, written in 1910 when my paternal grandfather was 10, that can be downloaded at IMSLP.org -- http://imslp.org/wiki/2_Tales_Op.20_%28Medtner%2C_Nikolai_Karlovich%29 -- hosted in Canada, where since the composer died in 1950, the work is public domain. My thoughts on recent suggestions (in the op-ed section of the New York Times) that copyright laws actually be extended indefinitely - no, I do not agree - another time...) So! Tempo heading: "Pesante. Minaccioso." -- or -- to translate. Heavy. Menacing. The work expands as an "ostinato" over a repeated bass which divides into descending lines (F# E# E - F# E# E D# D -- or something like that. To hear it played, go to the Hyperion Records Listening Room where you can hear both opus 20 Skazki in RealPlayer or Mp3 format in another recording - from the Hyperion Records label of course, Hamish Milne playing the piano. It's the second of the two works. (This is the realplayer link, for instance.) The piece, like many if not all of his skazki that I've heard - folk tales, ballades, not "fairy tales" which was usually the translation but suggests (also perhaps wrongly, for what is "light" about faerie? :) ) among other things a lightness of character foreign to most of his, to Rimsky-Korsakov's work of the same name, and to the written/folk genre too... - is characterful, concise. (Medtner wrote quite a few works for solo piano, and one for two pianos, called skazki; including a "sonata-skazka", his opus 25 no. 1, in three movements played without a break- whose slow second movement opens with a brief pre-echo, in the same key, of his good friend Rachmaninoff's Paganini Rhapsody's famous 14th variation... pre-echo, since that was written about three decades later.) (After the brief opus 25 no. 1 there's in that same set of sonatas, the opus 25 no. 2- in E minor, a one-movement, well, monsterpiece :) , quoting poet Tyutchev's "The Night Wind" on the first page and lasting about a half-hour... anyhow, later, may have a bit more to say about opus 20 no. 2 but for now... more music to listen to and sleep for much to do of a Friday even though the walk I was going to go on, has been cancelled.)

phone my doctor- overdue prescription arrangement- and to listen to Sorabji's Villa Tasca for an hour before work and doing a bit of this, and that. Then after work and exercise, might join a group and see The Bourne Ultimatum. Night!

Glad I finally figured out how to get the music at Naxos.com to work again. Only 1/5 of any given track (depending on the recording), but with for such a large distributor of recordings (especially classical - Naxos, Marco Polo, BIS), that's still of much interest; I have many recordings from those three labels on my shelves already, some of them there because the site once offered the opportunity to audition entire recordings, some of which (not enough to justify their expenses of course) I then did go and buy. (For example, Ernest John Moeran's 1937 symphony in G minor and his sinfonietta in C. The symphony combines a range of influences- from the English and Irish countryside (or so it seems??) to the music of Finnish contemporary, Jean Sibelius - but "the whole is more than the sum of its parts" and I find the work very exciting. And both the symphony and the sinfonietta (and the later cello sonata, on a Marco Polo CD that can also be heard in part at the same website) show how this composer was "not just another English Pastoral Composer" (if you know that particular type- the great ones did not conform to type but the lesser ones, as often with any school, did.) (See now-recent post to stash for page from which to download a free recording of Moeran's symphony :) )

Since Italian music terms (Adagio quasi un poco andante indeed) befuddling to some English speakers less conversant in the language (or in our own...) fly fast and furious in the typical music score, a look at a Wikipedia article like a> - well- couldn't hurt!