Interlude

Posted on by Dale

So, I was up in the middle of the night, hoping that my kidney stones were on the move at last, mainly because I don’t want to be on painkillers instead of vodka on Saturday night; apparently one should not do both, and surfing the web while I made sure I didn’t need to take another Vicodin, and I Stumbled across this website. It’s OK to go peek; it’s not going to engross you. Just get a good feel for it.

Pretty nice site, no? Well written, if a little chatty, and cleanly put together. Very non-amateurish, I thought.

And then I thought, waitaminute: what about this site?

I’ll cut to the chase. When I first came across the Pioneer Woman site, I thought it was just a little too produced to be real. It was quite possible that it was a front for a food conglomerate. I was, however, too lazy to check.

Now the Noble Pig site comes along, and I’m really thinking the whole thing is fake. For one thing, it’s a chore even for me to change the header image in my blogs. And Pioneer Woman even has dropdown menus and rollover buttons. Again, not impossible, but a pain. The photos on both are lit and shot exceptionally well. The writing, in both style and tone, is flawless. The recipes are undeniably appealing. Both are just a bit too well done.

I checked the bottom of both sites; both are “copyrighted,” and yes, I know my blogs say the same thing, but they’re boilerplate. Pioneer Woman says it was designed by this person (whose website does not inspire confidence), but the whole thing could be a front. Noble Pig merely gives the date.

I’m still too lazy to check, i.e., doing a Whois number on them; instead, I’m wondering why I’m so suspicious and why it should matter. Do I have some kind of deepseated prejudice against women who cook, such that I don’t believe they could achieve such online slickness? Am I so cynical that I think only a corporation would put up such a site?

If so, where’s the hook? Is the product placement all there is?

What are they up to? This is how madness begins.

67 days: Check it out!

Posted on by Dale

I didn’t think I’d get any work done tonight on III. Allegro gracioso, and instead I’ve nearly got the whole thing sketched out!

I’ve started playing with orchestration here and there, but it’s still mostly a sketch. There’s an odd bit in there where instruments sound like they’re tuned to a weird scale or something. I don’t know what that’s about.

But on the whole it’s quite what I wanted. Here’s the mp3.

68 days: experiencing a slight delay

Posted on by Dale

I doubt I will get much done on III. Allegro gracioso tonight, since the gastrointestinal distress which afflicted me on Saturday morning is now revealed not to have been connected to any quantity of tequila at all, but merely the precursor to a kidney stone, which settled in quite nicely during the course of today.

Even if we get back from seeking medical attention in time for me to work, I’m determined that I will be too medicated to do so.

update: Four and a half hours later, we got back home. IV fluids, CT scan, and of course absolutely no pain that might indicate I was anything but a drug-seeking hypochondriac. Fortunately, I guess that’s the word I’m looking for, the scans did reveal two stones, one on each side, just resting. I am armed with meds.

This is extremely irritating. First, of course, there’s the entire evening spent in the ER, and then there’s the possibility of the pain arriving just when I want to work. Hey, maybe it’s another chance to submit to Dionysus: enough Vicodin and I can whack out the rest of IV. Lento without batting an eye.

Feh.

69 days: no new stuff

Posted on by Dale

I didn’t get to work on the Symphony this weekend, but I am pleased to report that at tonight’s Masterworks rehearsal, I introduced “What a Wonderful Bird the Frog Are” and it was quite well received.

It’s a silly little song, of course, but in many ways it is quite perfect, and not an easy piece to learn. I asked them to ignore the time signatures, which switch between 2/4 and 3/4 nearly every other measure, and just to count eighth notes, especially eighth rests. A little work on parts, and they were singing it perfectly in about five minutes.

There’s always the doom factor, naturally, but we’ll just pretend we know nothing about that.

(Those who sang William Blake’s Inn said, with obvious insider pride, “Thank god it’s not Milky Way.” I just smiled quietly with them.)

74 days: Allegro gracioso

Posted on by Dale

I’m calmer today, thank you.

As you will recall, I was a little freaked by how quickly I had gotten to the recapitulation of this movement. Tonight I went back to the score paper and sketched out a couple of strophes that might reasonably be inserted here and there in what I already have. But none of it seemed to fit.

I also listened to my favorite waltz, the “Delirien” waltz by Josef Strauss, Johann’s younger and to my mind more melodic brother. I wanted to hear more of how he structured it. I mean, it’s all pretty formulaic, and I might as well use the formula. I don’t yet have a flutes-with-pizzicato strophe, and I don’t really have a Big Grand strophe, which ought to come second or third in the lineup. I’ve got the cute little twittery one (it’s about third), and a couple of the smooth, legato ones.

(At the moment, you can’t really tell how some of my bits are going to fulfill your expectations of a concert waltz, because so far all you’ve heard is the sketches in the strings. Some of those are going involve brass leads, cello variations, etc.)

I listened particularly to the end, where Josef has the return of the first strophe, followed by the return of the second, followed by the coda. I think I’m going to vary that. Instead of following the recapitulation with the second strophe, I’m going to toss in a new one, followed by the Big Grand Finale.

The new secondary strophe is in place, and before I share it I want to tweak it a lot, because I want to do a lot of interesting stuff to its repeat before heading into the BGF. But I’ve made progress, and I might actually be finished with III. Allegro gracioso by this time next week.

Just in time to use my spring break to plunge back into IV. Lento; allegro. That’s okay. I’ve been having ideas.

75 days: Allegro gracioso

Posted on by Dale

This is very odd. I’ve tweaked a few things (including a repeat on a section that was not repeated previously) and added another 16 measures of transition back to D major. And I think it’s almost done (except for the actual orchestration, of course). I’m not sure that’s good, is it?

Listen to it. When it reaches the end, what do you expect to hear next? If you’ve been paying attention, the opening phrase should return at that point, and then it’s all over but the coda.

That would be fine, but it’s barely two minutes long. Hmph. Perhaps something should come after the Big Syncopation and before the tremolo strings/horn bit, i.e., extend it before we hit the recapitulation and coda.

Or maybe it just needs to be 2:30 minutes long.

75 days: an interlude

Posted on by Dale

I’ve taken a quick detour tonight from the symphony and arranged my old song, “What a Wonderful Bird the Frog Are” for SATB chorus.

The reason? It’s on the program for the Masterworks Chorale’s May 30 concert, Laughter is the Best Medicine. That’s right, boys and girls (do any girls read this?), I’m having a piece performed.

This may cause alarm in some quarters, given that there seems to be a curse on the performance of my music. Last summer, just the thought of “Dance (for double bass duo and marimba” being performed, and “10. Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way” being given a readthrough, was enough to cause Sawyer Theatre at VSU to burst into flame.

And of course we all know how successful William Blake’s Inn has been.

Still, Masterworks is for the moment unaware of any such cosmic impediments, so we’ll just keep quiet and let them learn the piece. The scope of the disaster may expand even further, actually, since we’re also doing P.D.Q. Bach’s The Seasonings on the same program, which means there will be a small baroque orchestra at my disposal.

If you’ve never heard it, here’s the mp3, and here’s the PDF file of the solo version. (You can see the rest of the Frog Songs here.)

Now I even have time to work on III. Allegro gracioso for a while. Comment productif!

77 days (Paschal meditation)

Posted on by Dale

It is important in life to have the right tools. That is why, after spending the afternoon at the Honeas, with four or five or six blue plastic cups with champagne (with orange vodka from Mary Frances’ freezer), I am glad to have bought this last week a tilling fork and a “claw,” so that I might break free the soil in my herb garden, bound by weeds and grass not yet killed by sprayed herbicide. My neighbors, who were watching (I know because they interrupted me, this Eastre afternnoon), are lucky that it’s chilly enough that a) I kept my jeans on instead of donning my kilt, and b) as Jeff has mentioned elsewhere, that I kept my kilt on.

It is also important, when you’re fretting about theme and variation and orchestration, to have Beethoven and his sixth symphony on your iPod Shuffle as you till your garden, so that you can listen to that first movement over and over to find out his secrets, his manipulation of those very simple motifs, over and over, broken up into serviceable bits, layered upon layered, saecula saeculorum, amen, until you are lost in the purity of it all: idea multiplied until it’s whole. Listen to it: it’s all there, nothing wasted, nothing extraneous. It’s all there, guys. Listen to it.

This is why George Lichtenberg eventually abandons his work. Anything else is surface.

78 days

Posted on by Dale

In less than an hour it will be 77 days, but who’s counting? (And who’s kidding whom? As if anyone believes I will be working on this in the week preceding noon, June 8.)

As I indicated previously, I have abandoned IV. Lento temporarily and am working on III. Allegro gracioso. Something tells me that it’s not going to be as salutary as it might be in anyone else’s creative scheme, because unfortunately I have a natural gift for waltzes. This was a piece of cake, and I fear it’s only going to make the formal torture of thematic variation even worse when I return to the fourth movement.

I’ve done the first 60 or so measures. You’ve heard the first strophe, but the rest is new and just sketched out in the strings. Here’s the mp3.