Author: Laura Conrad

[cantabile] Report on August 30 meeting

We played:

  • Dowland group:
    • Flow my tears
    • A shepherd in a shade
    • Cease these false sports
    • Burst forth my tears
    • It was a time when silly bees could speake
  • Fair Phyllis
  • Drinking songs:
    • Vive la serpe
    • Vignons vignons
    • Let us drink and be merry

The Wort Processor’s Ciderfest will be on October 15 at Russell
Orchards in Ipswich. We will be deciding what to play over the next
couple of weeks, and to do that we need to know who will be playing.
Let me know as soon as you can if you’d like to play. There will be
at least one and possibly as many as three compulsory rehearsals for
this performance.

There is also a strong possibility of a gig in November playing in
conjunction with a production of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” at Theatre First in Davis
Square. I’ll be talking to them about repertoire, etc. next week.
The easy thing would be some drinking songs and Playford dances, but
if we wanted to get fancy, there’d be a possibility of a “rivers of
Babylon” and/or a Susannah group, since both of those are referred to
in the play. In any case, start thinking about whether you would want
to do a gig on November 11-13 and 17-19.

[pdas] More OpenZaurus testing ahead

A link to the OOO
Newsletter was posted today on the Openzaurus mail list. It has a
couple of hopeful developments:

  • They are about to release OpenZaurus 3.5.4. I abandoned
    testing 3.5.3 on the grounds that I couldn’t read the default terminal
    font on the screen, none of the font changing commands I knew about
    seemed to work, and I couldn’t make my normal USB connection work so
    that I could do terminal work from my desktop machine.
  • In the improvements section between 3.5.3 and 3.5.4, they report
    an implementation of True Type fonts for Opie, so it’s likely that the
    font-handling got some testing in this release.
  • Not in the newsletter, but the newsletter’s author, Mickey Lauer,
    reported a few weeks ago on the mailing list that he had ordered the
    microphone/earphone attachment for his Zaurus, so it’s possible that
    audio will have better testing on this release, too.

So when 3.5.4 comes out, I will test it, but if you read the
newsletter, you can see that the developers are working really hard on
problems that don’t seem at all related to my usability issues, so I
won’t be surprised if it is again not a step forward from 3.5.2.

[writings] Another limerick

There was a posting on the harp list this morning:

In a fit of curiosity, and as it was cheap, I purchased one of the 8
string Pakistani harp shaped objects. Now that I have satisfied
myself on several points of its utterly ludicrous design what do I do
with it? Ideas please- I have enough paperweights in my life.

That sounded like a limerick invitation, so I came up with:


Tacye's harp, which she bought on a whim,
Wouldn't play, though she plucked it with vim.
	 So she slices her bread
	 With the strings that are dead,
And her toast is now even and trim.

[cantabile] Plans for the August 23 meeting

We have the new Dowland, Cease these False Sports.

Anne is not going to be there, so we may not have anyone who only
sings, so it might be a good time to do some of our instrumental
repertoire. There’s at least one Holborne that we haven’t done;
there’s all the Dowland Pavannes, there’s been a recent request for
Gabrielli…

In addition, several people who aren’t regulars are planning to
come, so if they all actually make it, we’ll be able to do five and
six part stuff. Requests are welcome.

We don’t yet have a date for the Wort Processors Ciderfest, but it
will likely be in late October. I’m thinking about the sheep group,
so we may run some of those (Fair Phyllis, Burst forth my tears…).

[cantabile] Report on the August 23 meeting

We had a local maximum for recent years of 10 people attending. So
we were able to do some 5-part stuff with both 4-foot and 8-foot
choirs.

We did:

  • Farmer, Fair Phyllis
  • Holborne group:
    • Hermoza
    • Muy Linda
    • Fairie Round
  • Rameau, Avec du vin, endormons nous
  • Drinking songs:
    • Let us drink and be merry
    • He that drinks is immortal

I don’t know of any upcoming events to disrupt our normal weekly
schedule for the next few weeks. When we have a date for the
ciderfest, we’ll probably schedule a few meetings to prepare for that,
some of which will be open only to people who want to play there.

Other events

Judith Conrad is playing a clavichord concert on Sunday. Details
on the
BRS calendar.

Limerick writer

I discovered last weekend that I can write limericks these days.
I’ve tried before, but they never came. Probably all the writing I do
these days just makes rearranging words in my head easier than it used
to be.

The inspiration was the annual Boston
Wort Processors pub crawl. Jim Fitzgerald posted a “Night before
the pub crawl” and suggested that other people write crawl-inspired
poems. We agreed that the limerick was probably the most suitable
form, although there was also a suggestion of haiku.

This one I made up before the crawl:


A youthful wort once had a knack
Of tying six beers to his back
   As he finished one beer
   Drew the next past his ear
And continued to snarf the 6-pack.

And these two are day-after-the crawl ones:

A lazy young fellow named Fred
Kept deciding to go back to bed
     When his dog said, "We Walk!"
     He replied, "You should talk!"
And the dog followed where he was led.

A slippery fellow named Bill
Put some beer he'd brewed into a still..
    It came to a boil,
    And dripped out the coil,
And Bill took it instead of a pill.

And here’s the haiku I came up with.


lazy summer day
after the crawl
more beer soon

If I figure out how to do it about harps or serpents instead of
just beer, I could get published for a slightly wider public than
wortnet.

So here’s the first harp one:


A harper who knew how to flip
Levers, stopped as she snuck in a sip
     Of her wassail, but soon
     She lost track of the tune,
And she ended up getting no tip.

And here’s a serpent one:


A young serpent player named Joan
Tried to teach her C Serpent to moan.
      As she blew in the top,
      All she got was a pop,
So she went for a heart-rending groan.

[cantabile] Report on August 16 meeting

We did:

  • Amy Suffrez que je vous aime
    • 2-part version
    • 3-part version
  • Innsbruck (both settings)
  • Dowland group
    • Daphne was not so chaste
    • What if I never Speede
    • By a fountain where I lay
    • What poore Astronomers are they

We didn’t do the 5-part new Dowland because there were only 4 of
us. So we have that for next week, and there are a couple more from
book 3 that I want to check for range.

Other events

Those for whom the beer drinking part of the Renaissance Band experience is of
interest might want to drop in at the Boston Wort Processors
annual Pub Crawl on Saturday, August 20.

[cantabile] Plans for the August 16 meeting

The next meeting of the Cantabile Renaissance Band is tomorrow,
Tuesday, August 16 at 7:45 at my place.

We’ll have a a new Dowland (although there are lots of things
interfering with my getting to it). It will be the last of the
“Pilgrim’s Solace” ones. I may or may not get the lute part
transcribed in time. This one has an instrumental bass accompaniment
so it isn’t as critical as with the previous two which had solos which
were unaccompanied except for the lute. If it’s me doing bass, you’re
better off with me playing a part on the serpent than floundering on
the keyboard. A keyboard player committing to coming will increase
the probably of the transcription happining.

I’ll also try to get a new dance set transcribed, but if not, we’ll
do an old dance set. Requests are welcome.

The big news of the week is that I’m rearranging the unwieldy
individual notebooks into unwieldy group notebooks. This means that
only I have to figure out where to find the music, and nobody has to
figure out how to balance the large notebooks on their music stands.
This will mean that it’s practical to finalize the Dowland Book 3
typesetting. I’m also noticing a lot of good music in the notebooks
that we haven’t done for a while, so we might dig out some old
favorites.