What Are You Practising / Composing Now?

[Richard Tarleton]

Another piece that rewards hours of effort getting some complex chords and discords under the fingers is Percy Grainger's arrangement of Dowland's Now, O Now I Needs Must Part (although the first section is quite easy - and old Percy has temptingly written in a bubble at the end of that section "You can finish here if you like!" )

Thank you for this! Never come across it before, I've now bookmarked a YouTube performance or two. I love those sonorous chords.

The finest version of the original song I've ever heard is the one by Martyn Hill in the Consort of Musicke's complete Dowland. I play the lute solo version (The Frog Galliard) which Dowland recycled for the song. I've posted this enchanting version of the song before.

The three pieces I'm playing at the moment are Dowland's Fantasias P1 and P73 (on the guitar, not the lute), and Luís de Narvaez' Conde Claros (22 very short variations on a traditional tune). I've more or less given up on the classical guitar repertoire and only play transcriptions of early music, and keep my G string tuned to F# which replicates the intervals on a renaissance lute and vihuela.

[Nick Armstrong]

Thank you for this! Never come across it before, I've now bookmarked a YouTube performance or two.

And thank you for flagging up the original, which I don't actually know!

Interesting to see the various YouTube performances.... The first two that came up when I searched (Natsuki Fukasawa and Jonathan Powell) aren't actually the same version as I have, not sure where theirs comes from. *

Mine's in the seemingly-official Grainger series of transcriptions published by Schott (a comment under the Japanese pianist's performance refers to this, and it being different from what she plays). The one I play features in a home-made video by someone called Brian Leahy - complete with awkward page turn which I've attempted to remedy by writing out the last bar before the turn and sticking it at the top of the next page (because the penultimate bar before the turn can be played by right hand alone, leaving me free to flip the page with the left hand). Some of Mr Leahy's notes are... surprising, I must double-check that I've been reading the score (esp the fistfuls of accidentals) correctly!

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* Solved: PG wrote a more difficult version, called the 'Concert Version', which seems to be published by Schirmer in the US. Much more fiddly: this is the tricky central section in that version





I'm glad I chanced upon the 'Non-Concert Version' which is quite tricky enough for me - and being less flashy, I think I prefer it too!


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[Richard Tarleton]

And thank you for flagging up the original, which I don't actually know!

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Re. awkward page-turns, anything with more than two pages I try to photocopy the next page and sellotape it too the last one to open out flat, securing it to the music stand with bulldog clips....but it does have a tendency in draughty surroundings to collapse at the crucial moment...

Re. Now o now - the original tune (the Frog Galliard) was supposedly written around the Duc d'Alençon's failed suit for QE1 (her "Frog"), the words added later. As it says in the Hyperion notes, Sometimes there is a tension between words and music that disrupts the ‘perfect balance’ for which lute-song composers are famous. This must have been deliberate. Now, O now, I needs must part is a good example. Few at the time, and certainly no one now, could say for certain whether there was any love involved in the duc d’Alençon’s unsuccessful suit of Elizabeth I. The Frog Galliard was associated with d’Alençon’s departure, and Now, O now put words to the tune. Elizabeth’s letters show that he wasn’t entirely convinced about her age. She disliked his pockmarked appearance; and they both felt aggrieved that the blandishments of love hadn’t produced enough hard cash to cement a marriage settlement. The jaunty triple metre may be intended to parody the supposed lovers’ sense of their own tragic misfortune or to reflect a courtship that had become something of a public farce, but the words and the nostalgia of the setting are unexpectedly moving.

[Pulcinella]

Practising languages here, as well as getting the notes right, for our next concert: Russian, Latin, Italian, German, French (both ancient and modern), and thankfully some English (though even some of that is old: Balulalow).
Primarily some different settings of the Lord's Prayer and Psalm 150, with a bit of Christmas thrown in.
And we're doing one piece from memory, too!
:eek:

[MrGongGong]

More drones
and a piece for a home-made electronic instrument and ensemble

[Pulcinella]

More drones
and a piece for a home-made electronic instrument and ensemble

Does this come with a Blue Peter warning (Don't try this on your own, children) or can anyone have a go?

[cloughie]

This afternoon, I acceded to a request to be rehearsal accompanist for a soprano with a manlgnificent sounding voice. But what is it about so many singers, who seem to imagine that keeping in time is utterly pointless? Staying with such singers is an utter nightmare.

As a singer I can understand your nightmare as I share your singer's wayward counting ability as I prepare for a local music festival. My admiration of accompanists is massive. Aah the optimism of a bungling amateur!

[Joseph K]

Currently practising on the guitar - J.S. Bach's fugue BWV 1000. Here's Julian Bream playing it -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSi7Uv2PMts

[Pianorak]

Although by no means a completist I have decided to add Nos 1 and 3 of the Brahms Intermezzi Op 117 to No. 2 which I have played for years. And just for kicks: improvising on the American Blues Scale - more of a challenge than I thought.

[Pulcinella]

Although by no means a completist I have decided to add Nos 1 and 3 of the Brahms Intermezzi Op 117 to No. 2 which I have played for years. And just for kicks: improvising on the American Blues Scale - more of a challenge than I thought.

These were my piano practical pieces for A level back in 1968: I thought/found them fiendishly diffficult then and probably still would, were I to look at them again.
Good luck!

[Serial_Apologist]

More drones
and a piece for a home-made electronic instrument and ensemble

You may know Adam Bohmann, who plays improvised music on the most letal-looking assortment of electronic gadgets I've ever seen, sometimes with sparks emitting from the equipment. I intend asking him if he's life-insured sometime - perhaps that should be soon!

[MrGongGong]

You may know Adam Bohmann, who plays improvised music on the most letal-looking assortment of electronic gadgets I've ever seen, sometimes with sparks emitting from the equipment. I intend asking him if he's life-insured sometime - perhaps that should be soon!

Indeed I do know his work, though not him in person, his brother does interesting things n'all

[MrGongGong]

Does this come with a Blue Peter warning (Don't try this on your own, children) or can anyone have a go?

Anyone will be able to have a go and make the instrument (and others)
It will be published as part of a large pan-EU project that i'm working on with lots of folks in different places
sadly the last time we will be included in this though

[Richard Barrett]

You may know Adam Bohmann, who plays improvised music on the most letal-looking assortment of electronic gadgets I've ever seen, sometimes with sparks emitting from the equipment.

I do know Adam (Bohman with a single "n") and have worked with him on a number of occasions (and indeed with his brother Jonathan). The first time was in 1984 when he still played the trumpet. The setup he normally uses these days doesn't consist of electronic gadgets though, but of a massive selection of sound-producing objects (often with a broken violin in the midst of it somewhere) which are amplified using contact microphones. Quite a few of the objects could however do you an injury, that's for sure.

& while I'm here, I'm just finishing a quartet for clarinet, trombone, cello and piano (with "tape" in one section) which ought to have been delivered to the players some weeks ago, although most of it has been... the first performance is a month from today, in the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, which ought to be an interesting place to visit. Each of its four parts is dedicated to a different American composer/performer: Cecil Taylor, Thelonious Monk, Eric Dolphy and Miles Davis.

[Richard Barrett]

& while I'm here, I'm just finishing a quartet for clarinet, trombone, cello and piano (with "tape" in one section) which ought to have been delivered to the players some weeks ago, although most of it has been... the first performance is a month from today, in the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, which ought to be an interesting place to visit. Each of its four parts is dedicated to a different American composer/performer: Cecil Taylor, Thelonious Monk, Eric Dolphy and Miles Davis.

Done, finally. The score, anyway. The electronic part is not so urgent since nobody needs to learn it. (I made a mockup version for the musicians to rehearse with.) Next: a piece for solo percussion, for an "instrument" I devised together with percussionist Peter Neville a few months ago - every square centimetre of a table is covered with a mixture of small instruments and found objects, and a microphone at each corner is send to a four-channel amplification system so that the sounds made on the table occupy the entire performance space. This is the first instalment of a new project involving the Elision ensemble.