Category: /alist

Ishmael and I have a gig on Saturday, and I had told both Bonnie
and Barney when I saw them that there wasn’t going to be an alist
meeting this week, so that Ishmael and I could get together and go
over the stuff for that gig. Anne had mentioned that the 22nd was the day
she would be flying back from Spain, so she wasn’t going to make the
meeting. And I didn’t send out an email invitation, so I wasn’t
expecting anyone but Ishmael to show up. Ishmael locked the door when
he came in.

So we were about half way through our program, and Sunny started
saying someone was at the door. I didn’t believe him, but my doorbell
has been a bit flakey, so I went down to check, and sure enough, there
was Anne. She had decided she really should stay up until her normal
bedtime, and that would be easier to do if she were singing.

So we told her she could dance for us, and she did some dancing and
some listening, and we finished going through our stuff and got out
the Morley trios.

We started with “Good Morrow, fair ladies of the May”, which we still
tentatively have on the list for the Walk. It went fine with the
three of us.

Then we did “Hold out my heart”, and moved to the sad ones in part
two, with “Farewell, disdainful”.

That didn’t go so well that we thought we should end with it, so we
did “Quand je bois” to finish off with.

Then we looked at Anne’s pictures of Spain and listened to the rest of
“Bruce Randall’s West Gallery Quire featuring Laura Conrad on
Serpent”.

Tuesday, February 8, usual time and place. As usual, please let me
know whether you can come as soon as possible.

Good news is that Bruce Randall will be able to play April 2 at the
Central Square Library.

We’ll have to start deciding what to play as soon as we know who can
come. I’m thinking of either as much of the river set as fits in the
time and works with the personnel (e.g. if we don’t have 5 people we
won’t do Silver Swan), or a drinking songs set.

So the sooner you decide whether you can make it on April 2, the
better.

I’m hoping to have the Heurteur that we liked a couple of weeks ago
transcribed, and print out some of the less familiar stuff from the
setlist at
so we
can try it out.

We mostly worked on the river music set, which is really two sets — the Psalm 137 set and the Silver Swan set.

• Bop duets
• Silver Swan Round
• Grace et vertu
• Bruce’s Wordsworth setting
• Campian, Babylon Streams
• Estans assis
• Billings, Lamentation over Boston
• Arcadelt, Il bianco e dolce cigno
• Dowland, Me, me and none but me

I think the conclusion was that the Arcadelt really belongs with
the other Silver Swan ones, but the round doesn’t. The Campian is ok,
but probably not interesting enough as is for 9 verses. It would of
course be better in a setting where people were singing along.

So our river music set(s) are shaping up to be:

• Campian
• Estans Assis
• Billings

• Gibbons
• Dowland
• Arcadelt

Comments, additions, deletions, order changes?

Schedule

Next week (February 15) is a regular rehearsal, to which we hope Bruce
and Stuart will come. Anne will be in Spain.

So the next possible A-list rehearsal is February 22. Note that
this is not a definite schedule until I send out the email invitation.

Blogmania

Bonnie was asking whether it was necessary to check the blog as
well as read the email.

My policy is that anything that affects scheduling will be sent out
by email.

However, I’m putting a lot of stuff that people here might be
interested in in the blogs. For instance, this morning I did the
corrections to the music that we found last night, and described them
in
the publishing blog

In other words, there isn’t going to be a rehearsal you’ll miss by
not reading the blogs, but if you want to know what I’m up to, you may
want to check both my personal blog

my
personal blog (which this is part of)

and

the www.laymusic.org site blog.

Money

I have signed up for Google ads on my site, and it looks like a small
number of clicks actually makes a noticeable amount of money. So when
you’re checking the site, if you have nothing better to do, click on
some of the ads. I get paid just for people clicking on them — you
don’t have to buy anything.

We did enough stuff that we wanted to remember doing that we decided I
would keep a log of A-list rehearsals, as well as the regular
rehearsals.

We started with a review of the French drinking songs at the back of
the book. “Changeons Propos” went so badly the first time that we
were surprised at how well the others went. “Vive la Serpe” is still
problematic. In my opinion, it’s because so many people are off the
beat so much of the time that it’s hard to count during the rests. It
got easier, but I think this one’s a real test of rhythmic precision.
Hence, one worth working on.

Anne had identified a Campian that might be a suitable part of a May
group. It was fun, but should probably be orchestrated with at least
some of the four verses sung by a soloist.

We finished with a bunch of Dowlands.

• Go, crystall teares,
• Weep you no more sad fountains
• Me, me and none but me
• The retirement party group, both “His golden locks time hath to
  silver turned” from the first group, and the three part one starting
  with “Time’s Eldest Son” from the Second Book.

Both “Go, crystall teares” and “Weep you no more sad fountains”
were worth working on some more.