Author: Laura Conrad

Report on the October 3 meeting

We played:

* Dowland, ??In Darkness Let me Dwell??
* ??Mille Regrets?? group:
** Susato, ??Mille Regrets??
** Josquin, ??Mille Regrets??
** Susato, ??Responce: Les miens aussi??
* Wilbye, ??Draw on Sweet Night??
* Mundy, ??My Prime of Youth??
* Sermisy, ??Vive la Serpe??

h3. Schedule

No known problems with having our regular dropin meetings every Tuesday at 7:45 PM at “my place”:http://www.laymusic.org/directions.html for the rest of October. November 7 will probably be an election break.

Report on the September 26 meeting

We played:

* ??Mille Regretz?? group:
** Susato
** Josquin
** Susato responce: ??Les miens aussi brief??
* Gabrieli, ??Canzon prima??
* Wilbye, ??Weep, O mine Eyes??
* Dowland:
** ??Come ye heavy states of night??
** ??White as lillies was her face??
** ??Fine knacks for ladies??

We decided the Susato response to ??Mille Regrets?? was worth learning, so I will transcribe it. I’ll probably also transcribe the 5 part Gabrielli, as we seem to be enjoying him, and we don’t always have enough people for the 6 and 8 part ones.

h3. Schedule

I don’t know of any reason we won’t be having our regular dropin meetings all the way through October. The first Tuesday in November will probably be another election break.

h3. Other events

The “New England Sacred Harp Convention”:http://neconvention.net is this weekend in Kingston, RI. If you don’t get enough singing time, this is a good way to fix that for a day or two.

You have a cooling rack

Those of us who are low on both money and storage space often look longingly at kitchen equipment catalogs like “The Bakers’ Catalog”:http://www.bakerscatalogue.com/ but don’t order the equipment.

One of the things I have concluded I don’t need is a cooling rack for baked goods. Not because I don’t bake, or don’t want to turn out fresh-baked rolls or cookies onto a rack where the bottom would be exposed to air, but because I already have something that works quite well.

Your stove came with a broiling pan, which is the largest size thing that fits comfortably in your oven. That pan has a rack that allows the fat from what you’re broiling to drip down to the bottom of the pan instead of frying the food it comes from.

If you turn that rack upside down on your counter, you can use it as a cooling rack for your rolls or cookies.

Additions

This week there are two new composers: “Benedetto Marcello”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/bycomposer.html#72 and “John Wilbye”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/bycomposer.html#73. They’re both people I’ve known about for years but never happened to transcribe anything by.

I transcribed the “Marcello Sonata III”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/365.html because I’m playing it at a “Master Class”:http://www.bostonrecordersociety.org/calendar/cal_popup.php?op=view&id=329, and needed to print out copies for an accompanist, the teacher, and the other attendees. I could have copied the facsimile, which is what I’m playing from, but the accompanist at least probably prefers not to have to read the switches to C clefs and some of the cramped and scrawled figures that are in the facsimile.

The fourth movement of the Marcello is the one that uses the same tune as “Danza, danza fanciulla gentile”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/363.html.

I had sung and enjoyed the Wilbye ??Draw on Sweet Night??, so when I ran into “Weep, weep mine Eyes”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/366.html in a box of music from a friend, I pulled it out for doing with the “band”:http://www.laymusic.org/windband.html and we turned out to really like it.

The score was at “cpdl.org”:http://www.cpdl.org, so I used the “the lilypond finale converter”:http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.8/Documentation/user/lilypond/Invoking-etf2ly.html to put it into the unbarred parts that we use. It probably would have been easier to just type it in my normal way, since I had to enter both the rests and the lyrics, but it does save some proofreading time.

Meeting report, September 12

h3. Schedule

Please remember that we will *not* be meeting on Tuesday, September 19. If you’re a Massachusetts voter, please remember to vote. I will be overseeing a free and fair election in Cambridge’s Ward 10 precinct 3.

We will be having our regular drop-in meetings from September 26 through the month of October. The first Tuesday in November will probably be a similar interruption in the schedule due to an election.

h3. Last Meeting

We played:

* Swan Group
** Guidiccioni, ??Il Bianco e Dolce Cigno??
** Gibbons, ??The Silver Swan??
** Arcadelt, ??Il Bianco e Dolce Cigno??
** Vecchi, ??Il Bianco e Dolce Cigno??
* Wilbye, ??Weep, weep mine eyes??
* Mundy, ??My prime of youth??
* Senfl, ??Wohl kumbt der Mai??
* Arthopius, ??Die bruenlin die da fliessen??
* Round group
** ??Cider Round??
** ??Three wise men of Boston??
** ??Benjy met the bear??
** Purcell, ??Tis Women??

h3. Other events

I’m going to be playing a “masterclass”:http://www.bostonrecordersociety.org/calendar/cal_popup.php?op=view&id=329
on Sunday, September 17. I don’t know who else is playing, but the Marcello Sonata I’m going to be doing is a lot of fun.

Sunday, September 24, is the “first meeting”:http://www.bostonrecordersociety.org/calendar/cal_popup.php?op=view&id=296 of the “Boston Recorder Society”:http://www.bostonrecordersociety.org. You can come try out all the groups for free and see if there’s anything you’d be interested in.

Additions

A bit miscellaneous this week.

A couple of weeks ago the “Cantabile Renaissance Band”:http://www.laymusic.org/windband.html ran through 5 tenor lieder by Ludwig Senfl [1]. “Wohl kumbt der Mai II”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/362.html is the one we liked best, so I transcribed it. Expect it to be on the program for next year’s Walk for Hunger.

“The new Gabrielli we’ve been learning”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/361.html is in a key that puts the top lines out of the range of my brass playing, and pretty high up for anyone. There’s some evidence that they actually played things like that down a fourth, so I “transposed it that way.”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/364.html. It probably isn’t an improvement for recorders, since the Alto part goes too low for an alto recorder, and the Tenor part goes pretty low for a tenor recorder. And recorder players who can handle the ornamentation in the top lines can play up to high B with no problem. But brass player’s lips will thank me.

I’m working on learning a Marcello sonata for recorder, whose last movement is similar to the Italian song “Danza, danza fanciulla gentile”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/363.html. If I were to perform it, I’d want to also include the song, which is by “Francesco Durante”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Durante, who was acontemporary of Marcello. Also, I was puzzled by the phrasing my “recorder teacher”:http://www.renaissonics.com” wanted me to use. So I’ve transcribed it, and transposed it into a less remote key.

fn1. London Pro Musica EML 295

Bread Machine Brioche

I’ve been making a lot of this, and the hostess of the last party I brought it to asked for the recipe, so since I’m typing it in anyway, here it is for my faithful blog readers:

It’s from the book that came with the Cuisinart bread machine, which died after 5 months, but the book is much better than the one that came with my shiny new cheap one from Amazon.

Makes 2 pounds of dough.

* 1/2 cup milk (I use rice milk)
* 4 eggs, large, at room temperature (I’m not fussy about the temperature)
* 1 stick unsalted butter (there really isn’t any reason to buy salted if you keep what you’re not using in the freezer)
* 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
* 2 tablespoons powdered milk (I actually use soy protein drink mix that I bought a large container of once and then didn’t like drinking it.)
* 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
* 3 3/4 cups bread flour (It really makes a difference using bread flour over all-purpose)
* 3 teaspoons yeast

Run the bread machine on the dough cycle. At this point you have a beautiful hunk of dough that’s elastic, not at all sticky and smells wonderful. The standard brioche where you roll a ball and then put a smaller ball on top of it must have happened because people just wanted to play with this dough. I’ve been using a mini-muffin pan with 24 small cups. Have the larger ball just fill the cup and the smaller ball perch on top of it.

You can also roll it out as thin as practical (less than an inch) and cut 3-4 inch circles and bake it on a cookie sheet for hamburger buns.

In either case, you get a better color on the result if you brush the rolls with an egg wash of one egg beated with one tablespoon of water.

Let rise for about half an hour after you’ve formed the rolls. Bake in a 350 degree (Fahrenheit) oven until the bottoms are browned. For the mini-muffin size this will be less than 20 minutes.

Report on the September 5 meeting

The next meeting of the Cantabile Renaissance Band will be on Tuesday, September 12, at 7:45 PM at “my place”:http://www.laymusic.org/directions.html.

I believe people decided not to meet on Tuesday, September 19, when I won’t be there for most of the meeting, because I’ll be Clerk at Ward 10 Precinct 3 in Cambridge.

h3. Last meeting

We played:

* Charlton arrangements:
** ??A-Roving??
** ??Pescator dell’Onda??
** ??A Policeman’s Lot?? (both 5 part and 3 part)
* Senfl, ??Wohl kumbt der Mai??
* Gabrielli
** ??Canzon prima?? 1615 for five instruments
** ??Canzon II??
* Dowland ??His golden locks??