Author: Laura Conrad

The next rehearsal of the Cantabile Renaissance band will be on
Tuesday, October 18 at 7:45 PM at my place.

This meeting is limited to the people planning to play our November
public performances. Those people should let me know in advance if
they won’t be able to come.

We’ll be working on firming up the playlist for the two sets. I’m
going to get the Greensleeves arrangements into E minor, and add the
hymnbook arrangement. I think with Dulcina, that will be enough
multiverse ballads, and the Babylon stuff has been cut from the script
they’re using anyway.

Here’s a slightly modified version of the last playlist we
published.

Before the play

• He that will an Alehouse Keep
• Dulcina
• O Portsmouth
• Quand je Bois
• All in a Garden Green, or Daphne, or maybe neither.
• Vignons, vignons
• Playford set, probably including Newcastle
• Fanfare, TBD

Intermission

• Greensleeves (This will include the “Division on a Ground”
  version, maybe a couple of sung verses, and maybe the Charlton
  arrangement for 2 recorders, although that’s pretty obviously
  anachronistic. (So is the Division on a Ground, but by fewer
  centuries.)
• Fair Phyllis
• Silly Bees
• Shepherd in a shade
• Changeons propos
• Vive la Serpe
• Another dance set, probably Playford, suggestions welcome. The advantage of Playford is that we have 3-part
  arrangements that some of us know pretty well. Since some of the
  people who can play can’t play every performance, we want to keep this
  as simple and fool-proof as possible.

We have volunteers who have offered to arrange a third part from
the keyboard arrangement to Dulcina, and to get some Playford
arrangements that are better for our purposes than the Marshall Barron
ones. This should happen in the next week or so, if it’s going to be
of maximum usefulness.

John Tyson says that it’s possible that he’ll have a Tuesday before
our gig, but he won’t know Tuesday the 18th. It looks like that’s
our best hope for having a coaching session.

We played:

• Newcastle
• Greensleeves
• Vive la serpe
• Fair Phyllis
• Silly Bees
• Shepherd in a shade
• Changeons propos
• Quand je bois
• He that will an Alehouse keep

Schedule

John Tyson can coach us on October 25, so I have scheduled that.

I
told him it was easier to organize rides for him here than to organize
the beer drinking at a different place from the rehearsing. So
can someone volunteer to pick him up on their way to rehearsal? Anne
and Stuart are the obvious suspects, since Bonnie and Bruce are coming
from the other direction, and Ishmael and Barney don’t come by
car.

Suggestions for which pieces it would make sense to work on with
John are welcome. I was thinking of Phyllis and “Vive la Serpe”, and
maybe one of the ballads. Bruce hasn’t done Dulcina, so it might make
sense to do that rather than Greensleeves.

This will mean that November 1 is our only normal rehearsal before
the November 11 opening night performance. We didn’t cover all the
music last Tuesday, so I think it would be really good to have another
rehearsal between November 1 and November 11, so that we can do all
the stuff Bruce has never seen before on November 1, and then do a
dress rehearsal on the new date. It looks like Thursday the 10th is a
possible date for that. Is that a problem for anyone?

New Gig

I’m writing the woman in Lowell that we would be happy to play an
hour of English Music on December 1.

After we throw out the French music, and put back the 17th and 18th
century drinking songs, we may be able to add a couple of things to
the November program, so requests are welcome. I was thinking
Anacreon might be a good choice.

• Sheep (and bee) set
  • Fair Phyllis (Cantus: Anne; Altus: Bonnie; Tenor: Ishmael; Bass:
    Barney and Laura)
  • Dulcina (Anne vocal; Laura Bass; accompaniment various)
  • It was a time when silly bees could speak (Cantus: Anne; Altus:
    Laura; Tenor: Ishmael and Barney; Bass: Bonnie)
  • A shepherd in a shade (Cantus: Anne; Altus: Laura; Tenor: Ishmael
    and Barney; Bass: Bonnie)
• Drinking Songs
  • Changeons propos (Cantus: Anne and Bonnie; Tenor: Laura; Bassus:
    Ishmael and Barney)
  • He that will an alehouse keep (Three part round)
  • He that drinks is immortal (Three part round)
  • I gave her cakes (Three part round)
  • Vignon, vignon (Cantus: Anne and Bonnie; Tenor: Laura; Bassus:
    Barney and Ishmael
  • Slaves are they (Four part round)
  • Vive la serpe (Cantus: Anne; Altus: Laura; Tenor: Ishmael; Bassus:
    Barney and Bonnie)
  • O Portsmouth (Three part round)
  • Cider Round, if we learn it.
  • Quant je boy
  • Let us drink and be merry (Three part round)

3 part rounds:

1. Anne and Bonnie
2. Ishmael and Barney
3. Laura

There are a lot of three part rounds, so we may decide to mix up
who starts.

4 part rounds:

1. Ishmael
2. Laura
3. Barney and Bonnie
4. Anne

This meeting is a dress rehearsal for the Saturday, October 15,
ciderfest performance.

This means that it is restricted to, and compulsory for, the people
who are playing that performance.

Please forget about thinking of this group as a drop-in group for
this meeting. Please arrive on time, with your music in order. If
you aren’t able to print music, please let me know that, so that I can
print music for you.

The list you should have in order is
here.
I’m not sure it’s actually necessary to print out the drinking songs
individually instead of playing from the drinking songs book, but
definitely all the madrigals should be printed out and in order. If
it rains and you want to do drinking songs from a book, you’ll have to
use one of the old ones.

I think it would be a good idea for us to start the rehearsals with
some idea of what part we’re playing. I think that’s pretty much
decided by our voice ranges except for me and Bonnie. Anne needs to
know which of me and Bonnie are playing bass so that she can hold down
the other part. Barney may feel he would rather double Anne than sing
a tenor or bass part that doesn’t fit his range. So Bonnie, can we
decide and let Anne know which of the following you want to play bass
on, and which I’ll do?

• Sheep (and bee) set
  • Fair Phyllis
  • Dulcina
  • It was a time when silly bees could speak
  • A shepherd in a shade
• Drinking Songs
  • Changeons propos
  • Vignon, vignon
  • Vive la serpe

We may decide that we don’t need instrumental bass for Changeons
Propos or Vignon, vignon, but I’m pretty sure we want it for
everything else on that list.

It has also been suggested that we should do a dance set. I think
that’s a good idea, but I suggest that we do three-part music that
Barney, Ishmael, and Bonnie can handle if I end up organizing. Anne
can bop along if she wants to, but I think expecting her to hold down
a solo part outdoors is unrealistic. If someone wants to organize
that in advance, that would be best, although you’re certainly welcome
to use my trio box if that would help.

The next rehearsal of the Cantabile Renaissance band will be on
Tuesday, October 4, at 7:45 PM at my place.

Until mid-November, our rehearsals are restricted to people who are
performing at one of our October or November gigs. You don’t have to
come to all the rehearsals, but please let me know by next week
whether you’re playing and which dates you want to play.

I got some work done on a couple of umpteen-verse ballads that
are mentioned in “Merry Wives of Windsor”. Look at the
Greensleeves book, and the
Dulcina book. We aren’t going to do all of those verses, but if
you see one or two you’d especially like to sing, now is the time to
lay claim. If anyone feels like doing more “arranging” than is there
(i.e., any at all for Dulcina, and more than a bass line for
Greensleeves), please feel free.

I think we should plan to have a real play list for the October 15
gig by the end of tomorrow night. Since it’s outdoors, I’d like to
concentrate heavily on things we can sing a capella in a tight
circle, so that we don’t get all spread out with music stands and not
able to hear each other.

So here’s a tentative list:

• Sheep (and bee) set
  • Fair Phyllis *
  • Burst Forth my tears * §
  • Dulcina
  • It was a time when silly bees could speak * §
  • A shepherd in a shade *
• Drinking Songs
  • Changeons propos
  • He that will an alehouse keep
  • Five reasons §
  • He that drinks is immortal §
  • I gave her cakes §
  • Vignon, vignon
  • Slaves are they * §
  • Vive la serpe *
  • O Portsmouth
  • Quant je boy
  • Let us drink and be merry §

* these are four parts, so if we don’t have four people, we won’t
do them.

§ Probably not on the November program either because of being an
inappropriate feeling, or from too late of a date.

This is probably too much, so we’ll cut some of the things that
don’t sound as good. Although if we aren’t doing instrumental verses,
it will go faster.

Most of the hard stuff on this list will also be on the November
list,

We did:

• Dulcina
• Greensleeves
• Fair Phyllis
• Burst Forth my tears
• Dulcina
• It was a time when silly bees could speak
• A shepherd in a shade
• I gave her cakes
• O Portsmouth
• Five reasons

As far as I know the people playing for the October 15 gig are
Laura, Barney, Anne, Bonnie, and Ishmael. In addition, these people
plus Bruce and Stuart will play some or all of the November dates. If
this list is incomplete or inaccurate, please let me know.

Schedule

Next week’s meeting, on October 11, will be limited to and
compulsory for the people playing on October 15.

The meetings on October 18 and 25 and November 1 (or substitute), 8
and 15 are limited to people playing the November gigs:

• Friday November 11th 8:00 pm (Bruce will
  miss this one)
• Saturday November 12th 8:00 pm
• Sunday November 13th 3:00 pm (we’ve
  decided to skip this one and go to West Gallery instead.)
• Thursday November 17th 8:00 pm (I think
  Barney said he’d miss this one.)
• Friday November 18th 8:00 pm (Bruce will
  miss this one)
• Saturday November 19th 8:00 pm (The West
  Gallery gig announced for this date has been cancelled, so we’ll be
  playing this date.)

Please check your calendars, and let me know if there are any other
scheduling problems.

We agreed that we’ll try to schedule a coaching session with John
Tyson for one of the November gig rehearsals. We’ll organize rides
for John to come to my place rather than trying to organize
beer-drinking in a place separate from the rehearsals.

After November 15, we will resume our regularly scheduled drop-in
sessions.

Longer term, we’re expecting to play the Walk for Hunger on May 7.
The BRS will probably do a Play the Recorder Month event in March some
time. We’ve talked to Kurt Hoffman about playing wallpaper music on
June 21 in Bridgewater, and we’re discussing playing at a Jeremiah
Ingalls event in July.

Playlist for October 15

We decided to drop “Burst forth my tears” on the grounds that it’s
too difficult to sing outdoors. I’m also dropping Five Reasons on the
grounds that we don’t have time to fix the ragged edges that showed up
last night. It’s plenty long enough of a program to drop more stuff
if ragged edges show up.

• Sheep (and bee) set
  • Fair Phyllis
  • Dulcina
  • It was a time when silly bees could speak
  • A shepherd in a shade
• Drinking Songs
  • Changeons propos
  • He that will an alehouse keep
  • He that drinks is immortal §
  • I gave her cakes §
  • Vignon, vignon
  • Slaves are they §
  • Vive la serpe
  • O Portsmouth
  • Quant je boy
  • Let us drink and be merry §

§ Probably not on the November program either because of being an
inappropriate feeling, or from too late of a date.

Please let me know if you need me to help you print copies to practice.

The next rehearsal of the Cantabile Renaissance band will be on
Tuesday, September 27 at 7:45 PM at my place.

This will be the last dropins-welcome meeting for a while, since we
have gigs in October and November that will require some real
reheasing with some approximation of the people who are going to
play. So if you’ve been wanting to see what we’re like, come now. If
you want to play the gigs, start coming now. If you don’t want to
play the gigs, but will miss us when we’re working on them, come now.

We’ll be mainly working on the music for the gigs, but other
requests are welcome.

Preliminary playlist for Merry Wives of Windsor

Based on the comments on last
week’s list, here’s a new version:

Before the play

• Daphne (We’re going to try a different arrangement this week)
• He that will an Alehouse Keep
• O Portsmouth
• Quand je Bois
• All in a Garden Green
• Vignons, vignons
• Playford set, probably including Newcastle
• Fanfare, TBD

Intermission

• Greensleeves (This will include the “Division on a Ground”
  version, maybe a couple of sung verses, and maybe the Charlton
  arrangement for 2 recorders, although that’s pretty obviously
  anachronistic. (So is the Division on a Ground, but by fewer
  centuries.)
• Fair Phyllis
• Silly Bees
• Shepherd in a shade
• Changeons propos
• Vive la Serpe
• Estans Assis
• Another dance set, probably Playford, suggestions welcome. The advantage of Playford is that we have 3-part
  arrangements that some of us know pretty well. Since some of the
  people who can play can’t play every performance, we want to keep this
  as simple and fool-proof as possible.

Can anyone who has copies of “Piper’s Fancy” bring them? I’m going
to transcribe the Daphne setting so that we can put it in the same key
we’re singing, but there’s no reason not to just use the others if
they turn out to be what we want.

I’ve started a directory for transcriptions for this gig — if you want to
see what’s done so far it’s
here.

There was some interest in doing the 25-verse ballads that are
mentioned in the play. We can look at them, and we are committed to
doing some of Greensleeves. The problem is that 25-verse ballads work
better when you have an audience that’s listening and can hear the
words, so I’m not sure this is the right venue for them. But we’ll
see what we can come up with.

Other News

I believe the Boston
Recorder Society still has openings in most of their groups, if
you want to do more music with some good professional coaches.

There’s a possibility of a gig on June 21 playing background music
for an opening of an art exhibition at Bridgewater State College.

The New
England Sacred Harp Singing Convention is this Friday and Saturday
in Newton. If you don’t normally do enough singing, this is a good
place to remedy that.