Eric S notapenguin's blog: "musicstuffs"

for March 11 07... - Elgar's string quartet in E minor. Even though or maybe because in this (and other works around the same time) he sounds less like "Elgar" - or rather, there's less of that Elgar that does put some people off, that did put me off once... - than before. (Information from www.elgar.org, in particular this page about the string quartet.) The quartet is one of the four works he finished - violin sonata, string quartet, piano quintet, cello concerto (1917-1919) before his wife's death in 1920 after which nothing emerged completed from his "workshop" other than brief suites, I believe (the incomplete sketches still amount to a handful in themselves, over a hundred- I'm not sure quite how many? pages of impressive music- including a third symphony in pieces whose completion/realization I've enthused over...) (Of these four works, I like the piano quintet, only know the violin sonata sort of, and love the cello concerto...) Its slow movement, rightly marked Piacevole (poco andante) (Peaceful - somewhat at an ambling pace may be a good translation - andante now means a somewhat slow tempo with a feeling of movement, I think- its history in music is interesting, but irrelephant here. :) Piacevole, peaceful, fits, though, yes... and a troubled peace, but not interrupted by possibly out of place feeling contrasts - the troubles, odd harmonies, progressions (that I don't associate with Edward Elgar but... there we are!) "feel" inside its melodic flow, belong, not inserted?) The opening of the third movement shoots in like a rocket after the song that precedes it, though :) I praised Gabriel Fauré in a very early post in this blog and recommended his chamber music highly. He also wrote a string quartet, also in E minor, also his only one, late in his life - in 1923, after Elgar's. The two remind me of each other, though Elgar's quartet slow movement impresses itself on my mind more. Glad I've heard both and fairly often though. (Not sure I have a recording of the Elgar just now aside from a very good and persistent memory- which led to the writing of this post, of course :) - of parts of it - I think I do, from a recent broadcast; I used to have a CD paired with one of Sir William Walton's two string quartets, very different from Elgar's, characteristic of Walton, worth hearing.) (Edit: may see about borrowing the score from the library, using LilyPond, stashing the openings of the movements at a later date.)

Recently read a very fine biography of about the first half of Stravinsky's life ("Stravinsky: A Creative Spring: Russia and France, 1882 - 1934" by Stephen A. Walsh) - hearing so much by Stravinsky I hadn't before and talks by people in his circle, etc., in this BBC program - all definitely "fitting together"... More later, to breakfast :)

(Taken out of my profile, maybe to be expanded, maybe junked *g*) Jean Sibelius symphony no. 6 in D minor (last heard in a BBC broadcast conducted by Leif Segerstam, but I had a very good Vladimir Ashkenazy/Philharmonia Orchestra recording for several years in college before giving it as a present to a friend. The seemingly Renaissance, or Tudor?, music-influenced opening to the final movement- I find the very opening arresting, the music that follows inspired and... bittersweet, nostalgic because of that style reminiscence? - the finale as a whole also inspired and an interesting structure... mixing C major and D minor ... (so does the opening movement...) before ending in a distressed, singing but somewhat restrained page settling on D minor not by chance...- keeps running over and over in my mind, both the opening, the active middle, the calm balancing conclusion...

Until tomorrow, this will be available over RealPlayer... http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/afternoonperformance/pip/ja09r/ Robert Simpson's (1921-1997) symphony no. 11, one of two of his symphonies I've yet to hear (and the last of them, premiered after his death). (One of his brass band works is also in the program.)

Was running into some troubles, but have now got 7 pages exactly done and done mostly properly I think ,175 bars (backwards from the end of the about 370-bar Rondo: Allegro finale of this 1840s work.) About 175 bars from the end or so starts a fugato* based on one of the main themes of the movement ... yes, near the beginning of the movement- I peeked and looked at the beginning ;^) *a fugue that's part of a piece, usually brief and usually rounded off at the end to lead into another section of the piece, as opposed to a regular fugue which is, well... a piece in itself

... erm. BBC Radio 3 (www.bbc.co.uk/radio3) is playing every note they can find of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky (sometimes more than once with different performers)- starting yesterday and ending Friday, but with their "Listen Again" link or some other ways, one can still catch yesterday's programs until next Sunday- in a program called, not that informatively, the "Tchaikovsky Experience". So yesterday afternoon EST (evening GMT) they broadcast Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony - conducted by Valery Gergiev, from a Philips CD- followed by Stravinsky's half-hour setting of part of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, his Threni, written from 1957-1958... from a recording that (I think) originally appeared on a CBS LP some years back (this work has only been recorded- twice? thrice?) - then a brief - less than five minutes - Tchaikovsky cantata "for the Jubilee of O A Petrov" (from a Russian LP). (Some of the performances are commercial recordings, some specially for the BBC and recorded in their studios, as often with them.) (Before the symphony, there was 8 minutes of Tchaikovsky vesper service, Stravinsky's Abraham and Isaac, his Symphony of Psalms- the other well-known piece of the evening... and his "Babel". Though the program does say details may change, and I taped it for future listening *blush*- I know for sure that the symphony and Threni were played, will check about the others. I haven't heard Threni, even from the recording at our library, in years, which may not speak well of it- actually it's a striking, memorable piece, weird yes but also good. The program is full of interesting and good things; Stravinsky's practically never-heard opera Mavra (listed as Shostakovich's Mavra unaccountably- someone needs to edit these things sometimes, likewise the violin concerto in the same part of the schedule- http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/tchaikovskyexperience/pip/9hza2/ will be on Wednesday morning; when do you hear some of Tchaikovsky's operas, for that matter (several of them on Thursday, Mazeppa and Le Rossignol today), or his "other" piano works and songs- or many of Stravinsky's songs- his last work, The Owl and the Pussycat... (mid-afternoon Wed.)? (And Stravinsky's brief but pretty stunning remembrance for a friend, In Memoriam Dylan Thomas- also broadcast Thursday, along with Agon and Tchaikovsky's Liturgy...) The work I'm really hoping to catch :) , which I listened to a number of times in college, is the rather brief -- compressed. Concise. ...- Variations: Aldous Huxley in Memoriam (ah, I see that's on today-- http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/tchaikovskyexperience/pip/gajav/ -- yay!! - fortunately again can probably catch it using their archives until a week from today, though I won't press my luck too much.)

I've posted a lot of graphic files (PNGs) created using the program LilyPond. Good practice and somewhat easier to do with time, except as I pose greater challenges for myself, but it does, it is a good idea, to explain briefly just what I'm doing. It's not point and click graphics to place the notes and write in words, as with programs like Encore, Finale, and I think Sibelius too. It's a lot more like computer programming- read the score, figure out what you want LilyPond to do (a quarter-note C in the violin followed by an eighth-note D, then hold a whole-note E-flat while the viola enters under it with a scale going up...) and figure out how to write that in LilyPond's own language. If your solution doesn't work, refer to the manual and try, try again until you find some clever solution that does. (The program and the manual are free from their website lilypond.org.) It's been fun, educational and might lead to some work for me; I'm glad I was introduced to it.

This past Sunday's Cowan Collection, Sunday Gala and 3 for All were, I gather, the last. (So I'll be listening in - the Listen Again link holds them until this next Sunday - and possibly taping for own-use; great shows. I voted for a CD of the Week on the Cowan Collection I think it was- I have a tape of that segment, will check..., left a note explaining my choice in the space allowed to do so, and was quoted, early in 2006 :) )

Carl (Karl) Gottlieb (Gottlob) Reissiger (enough alre.. I ... erm) (1784-1859) was a composer, not quite a contemporary of Beethoven or Schubert's, who wrote much music to be played by amateur chamber music lovers and pianists, more "serious-minded" works for the same groupings, and works for other ensembles too (at least ten settings of the ordinary of the Mass, the tenth of which was republished recently; at least one symphony; for example.) Very little-known now (not even the English Wikipedia has an article on him yet, I think- I intend to rectify that- though the German-language one does) but some of the larger college libraries have a work or two of his still in their collection. (The university where I work has early-publication - 1840s - scores of two of his piano trios, for example, and some other works.) Some of the images in my gallery were created by me after borrowing one of the piano trios we have in our library and using the free-license program LilyPond to create a new edition of Reissiger's score. I stopped all such projects for a month or so first when tackling some other projects with the same program that I have permission to work on but for copyright reasons, not share; then while visiting my parents (the computers there don't have LilyPond installed yet) and then thirdly, when I got back, because of illness and lack of mental strength- but I feel a bit like seeing if I might "rev up" by, say, creating a page with the last 20 bars or so of the Reissiger score. That might be the next image I upload, if I get it to work. Will see.

Not sure if there's a Julian/Gregorian calendar consideration to be made here (not in Austria in 1756, I think- will have to check), but I was just reminded that it's Mozart's birthday today. Well, it's not today but yesterday that I finished listening to that wonderful opera Idomeneo for the first time in full, but I'll still endeavor to celebrate - he's still one of my very favorite composers (after Beethoven and Bach- yes, JS..., who sometimes tie, but that's probably it). Favorite instrumental Mozart works, by the way (without voices) - the piano concertos (wonderful string quartets and late symphonies but the piano concertos, especially 1784's works on - nos. 14 in E-flat to no. 25 in C especially, but nos. 9 and 27 are fantastic in more than one sense, and if I could bring one only to a desert island, would it be no. 24 in C minor that grand but also truly tragic piece, or no. 17 in G both bittersweet and truly sneaky and jaunty too? (I had a tape coupling those two precisely, a joy and other emotions too, to play...) - or no. 23... - hrm... though no. 14 is its own miracle, so many of them are in their own ways; it's not a question I want to have to answer...) Favorite work with voices- don't know the operas well yet, but the unfinished mass in C minor he wrote as a promise (may I have Constanze's hand in marriage...) (something like that...) - is one of a very few works. I think I first heard it before reading Alfred Einstein's truly glowing praise but I'm not sure... (he describes it, unfinished though it is, as maybe the only mass really standing between Bach's in B minor, and Beethoven's Solemnis in D. This despite Haydn's wonderful twelve, and they are wonderful, especially those I've heard of the last six, a sort of continuation of the late Haydn symphonies just with voices and set to liturgical texts, not that that makes very much sense... ah well.) -Eric who now must rush to work, trying to be on time today.