We will be meeting tonight, Tuesday, March 8, at the usual time and
place.
Performing
We have to decide both what we’re playing on April 2 and what we want
to work on with John Tyson next week.
I know Barney said he couldn’t make it on March 15, but he’s also
not playing April 2, so that’s OK. I’ll be having a lesson with John
on Thursday, and talking to him then about what we want to work on, so
if any of Anne, Bonnie, Bruce, Ishmael, and Stuart can’t make it on
the 15th, I’l like to know by the 10th.
I’ve been saying that it will be either drinking songs or river music,
because April 2 is too early for May music. But lately I’ve been
thinking that there are two April songs on the May music program, both
of which are based on the same Italian poem. So my current thinking
is we do those, and either two “Silver Swan”s or two “Rivers of
Babylon”s.
So:
- April is in my mistress’ face
- Clear or cloudy
And either:
- The Silver Swan
- Arcadelt, Il blanco e doce Cigno
Or:
- Estans Assis
- Campian or Billings
Right now I’m leaning towards the Swans, on the grounds that it’s a
recorder society event, and the Billings isn’t really a recorder
piece.
So I want to run all of the above tonight, as well as the Vecchi
“Il bianco e dolce Cigno”.
New Music
We didn’t run the three-part Dowland I transcribed last week. It may
take more time that we have, but if not, it would be good to not leave
it on the spindle for too long.
John and I have been doing a couple of settings of “Adieu mes amours”,
and if I get around to transcribing the one from the Odhecaton, we
might do those.
If the weather leaves us with only three parts, we have a bunch more
French stuff to read through, or we can struggle through the Dowland 3
part things again. And of course run the French drinking songs.
If it’s only two parts, some of us will be getting good at Morley or
Lassus or someone.
Future directions
We have another deadline we should be considering, which is that the
Boston Early Music Festival is happening in June. The last two
festivals have been fairly fertile recruiting grounds for us, so we
should think about what direction we want the group to move in, since
that will affect how we want to advertise it.
Currently, the group is serving several functions:
- A place to sightread a lot of music that nobody hears or plays
very much. - A performing group.
- A place where people who are learning a new instrument can play it
with others. - A place for people to play and occasionally perform that doesn’t
require a weekly commitment.
(1) has been fairly consistent over the years; (2) is more
important now than it was two or four years ago, and (3) is losing
importance, although it was uppermost in my mind when I formed the
group, and is still emphasized in the website description.
(2) and (3) are pretty incompatible; (1) is actually an asset for
(2) although of course it takes up time we don’t have in the heat of
performance preparation. (4) is also incompatible with (2).
So I think the real thing we have to decide is do we want to emphasize
the performing, in which case we would probably want to recruit only
other people who are interested in performing, and would want to
reduce the drop-in component, and the encouraging beginners on new
instruments.
As you may have noticed, the rehearsal schedule for the upcoming
performances is a weekly schedule, although I’m not expecting everyone
to come every week. I’m considering reducing the drop-in component to
the group by saying that it meets every week, and possibly designating
one or two meetings a month as particularly suitable for new members
to come.
So we’ll talk about some of this tonight, and if you can’t make it
tonight but have opinions, please let me know.
