Laura Conrad

Report on the January 11, 2011, meeting

We played:

Schedule

We will meet as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Starting in March, the meetings will be limited to people who
want to perform with us, but until then they will be open to
people who want to drop in.

NEFFA

We have been scheduled to lead a workshop at NEFFA (New England
Folk Festival of the Arts) on the music of Thomas
Ravenscroft. The description says:

Thomas Ravenscroft was one of the first people to
collect and publish English Folk Music, including rounds and
ballads. This workshop will be a chance for participants to sing
(or play) some of this music.

We’re tentatively scheduled for Middle School Rm. 108 on
Saturday April 16th, 9:00pm to 9:50pm.

What this means is that between now and April 16 we need to put
together a booklet of Ravenscroft tunes, with 50 minutes of easy
stuff and maybe half an hour of harder stuff. We’ll also need
several people to commit to coming and helping pass out booklets
and set up sections and sit next to people who might be insecure
without someone who knows the music to sit next to.

One implication of this work is that the Walk for Hunger program will
probably have lots of Ravenscroft on it. This means we can have the
rehearsals in March and the beginning of April open to people who
want to play with us at either or both of NEFFA and the Walk for
Hunger.

Report on the January 4, 2011 meeting

We played:

Praetorius, In Dulci Jubilo
Billings,
Africa,
Chester, and David’s Lamentation
Ravenscroft,
We
be souldiers three,
Holborne,
55. The
Night Watch, 56. Almaine,
60. The
Honeysuckle
Wilbye,
Sweet
honey-sucking bees, Weep, weep mine eyes
Farmer,
Fair
Phyllis
Ravenscroft,
O
my fearful dreams,

Schedule

We will meet as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Another knitted chair seat

Chair seat

The pattern for this one is St. Brigid from Aran
Knitting by Alice Starmore. The yarn is the Camilla
Valley Farms 8/8 (worsted weight) cranberry. (They got the
color better than my photography of the piece.) A chair cover
uses most of a one pound spool.

Central motif

Speaking of color, does anyone know why when you take a picture
of a person wearing a sweater, the color of the sweater is usually
pretty close to the real color, but when you try to take a closeup
of a piece of knitting, it’s always a different color from the
real thing?

Rope Cable

The yarn has a pleasant feel. Like most cotton yarns, it
doesn’t have the same stretch as wool, which I think is an
advantage in this application. You have to get used to not
splitting it as you knit, but I did OK after the first pattern
repeat. I was worried about the cost of shipping from Canada, but it’s
quite reasonable if you order enough at once.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=laymusicorg-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0486478424&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

A Tale Dark and Grimm

I’m glad Adam Gidwitz wrote this
book, because I’m sure lots of people have thought about
writing something like it. It’s one of the natural reactions
to a body of work, like the pre-bowdlerized Grimm fairy tales,
that comes from a point of view that’s foreign yet completely
recognizable.

He strings nine or so of the original tales together so that
they happen to one family, and form a story arc about two
children who leave home, have adventures, and return older and
wiser. The actual text of the tales is pretty much a
translation, but the interstitial matter is in several
completely different voices, some of which (like the one that
keeps saying how awesome everything is) are pretty
irritating.

So one is tempted to say that for good writing, you should get
yourself a good translation of the original brothers Grimm,
except that then you would start fantasizing about writing a
book like this, and you very likely wouldn’t do any better
than Adam Gidwitz. Except that maybe you would clarify the
sense in which you were using “awsome”.

And some of the modern writing is actually pretty good, and
does illuminate what speaks to the modern sensibility about
the primeval tale. For instance, here’s the commentary on how
Hansel and Gretel feel when they get home and the parents
apologize for cutting off their heads:

It will happen to you, dear reader, at some point in your
life. You will face a moment very much like the one Hansel and
Gretel are facing right now.

In this moment, you will look at your parents and realize
that — no matter what it sounds like they are saying — they
are actually asking you for forgiveness. This is a very painful
moment. You see, all of your life you’ve been asking for
forgiveness from them. From the age you can talk you are
apologizing for breaking this, forgetting that, hitting him,
locking her in the garage, and so on. So, having them ask
you for forgiveness probably sounds pretty good.

But when this moment comes, you will probably be in a
lot of pain. And you probably will not want to forgive
them.

In which case, what, you might ask, should you do?

Well, you could yell at them, and tell them about all the
ways they’ve hurt you. This is a good thing to do once, because
— believe me — they need to know. But this is the first step
on the road to forgiveness. What if you’re not even ready for
that?

You could pretend to forgive them. This I would not
recommend. It’s sort of like sweeping broken glass under the
carpet; the floor still isn’t clean, and somebody’s going to end
up with a bloody sock.

Finally, if you don’t want to forgive them, and you don’t
want to fake it, you can always go with Ol’ Reliable: Changing
the subject.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=laymusicorg-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0525423346&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

Micmacs

Moliere would have liked this
movie.

There isn’t really anything nicer than that to say about a
French farce. If you’re thinking that it’s virtuous to watch it
because of what it says about the international arms trade, you
are mistaken. What it says about the international arms trade is
that enough people find it distasteful that you can make the arms
traders the butt of the farce without making the audience
unsympathetic to the “good guys”.

Moliere used old men who are forcing themselves on young women
in that role; in this century we can use arms traders. But you
wouldn’t watch Moliere to learn about sexuality in the elderly,
and you shouldn’t watch this to learn about arms trading.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=laymusicorg-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B0045NXMJE&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

Report on the December 21, 2010, meeting

We played:

Praetorius, In Dulci Jubilo
pieces from Eric Katz’ Christmas songs from many
lands
Praetorius,
Psallite
Tchaikowsky-Ward, Dance of the Sugar-plum Fairy
Pieces from Carols for parties
Second movement from Festgesang,
Mendelssohn’s cantata celebrating the 400th anniversary of the
Gutenberg Bible, with the tune later used for Hark the
Herald Angels Sing
Great
Tom is Cast

Schedule

There will be a regular dropin meeting next week, and every
Tuesday for the next couple of months, starting at 7:45 PM at my place.

Everyone have a merry, joyous, happy, peaceful Christmas, New
Year, and whatever else you celebrate.

We are meeting tomorrow

Several people said they wanted to come, so there will be a
regular dropin meeting tomorrow, December 21, starting at 7:45 PM
at my
place.

There’s still lots of food from the party, so we’ll have a
post-party party (Polish has a word for this) after the meeting.

Report on the December 14, 2010 meeting

We played:

Pieces from Jacobean and Restoration Music for the
Recorder
Tomorrow shall be my dancing day
Morley Canzonets for 3 voyces, XIIII through
XVI
Vecchi and Arcadelt, Il bianco e dolce
cigno
Purcell, ‘Tis Women
Ravenscroft, To Portsmouth

Schedule

The party will be this Sunday, December 19 at 5:30 PM. Please
note the later than usual start time.

I forgot to discuss whether to meet next week after this week’s
meeting, so we’ll have to do it by email. If you’ve been coming
regularly and would prefer not to come, let me know. If you would
particularly like to have a place to go play Renaissance music on
Tuesday, December 21, let me know. If I don’t hear that anyone
wants to come, I’ll cancel it, since I’m sure I’ll have lots to
do, but I’m happy to meet if people want to come.
I’ll let you know by Monday morning.

In any case, we will meet on Tuesday, December 28 and
subsequent Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Party

I don’t require RSVP’s, since there will be plenty to eat and
drink, especially if everyone who comes brings some. But if you
know you’re coming, and what you want to bring, it would be useful
if you tell me, because people ask me what to bring, and it gives
me more idea of what to tell them.

Please invite people you know who might enjoy the party,
especially if you think they might be interested in joining the
group. You can point them to all the information.

The Messenger

This
movie was the standard Hollywood movie on my Netflix Watch Now
list that I was up to watching after spending the afternoon at the
Pub Carol Sing.
It’s about two officers on the Army’s Casualty Notification Team,
whose job is to tell the next of kin that their loved one has been
killed in action.

One interesting thing about it was watching Woody Harrelson
play the jaded older officer, after all those years of watching
him on Cheers as the dewy-eyed young kid.

Another highlight was an actual explanation of why you might
knock
instead of ringing: Woody Harrelson is explaining how they go
about doing their job and he says something like, “I always knock — there are a
lot of those doorbells that play some silly tune and if it’s going
‘Yankee Doodle went to town…’ and I start saying ‘The Secretary
of the Army wants me to extend his deepest sympathy…’, it just
doesn’t flow.”

Definitely worth watching if you’re tired, and maybe a bit
better than that.

The Skin Game

This
movie was made in 1931, with a script by John Galsworthy and
directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

It’s historically interesting — the opening screens specify
that it’s a “talkie”, and there isn’t any music in the
background. In other words, it’s a filmed play, since they
didn’t yet have the modus operandi for making movies with
sound that developed later.

There are a few points where you can see flickerings of what
Hitchcock would become, but most of the cinematography is pretty
primitive. The picture quality of the DVD leaves something to
be desired, and the sound quality is really bad in some
places.

The script is the kind of annoyingly simple-minded diatribe
about the class system that the Galsworthy plays I read in high
school were. (The novels are much better.)

So if you’re interested in the history of film, see this movie,
but if you want good drama or great cinematography, look elsewhere.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=laymusicorg-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B00000JQSB&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr