Report on the December 6 meeting

Report on the December 6 meeting

[cantabile] Report on the December 6 meeting

We played:

  • Morley, Lo here another love
  • Ravenscroft
    • The olde dogge
    • My dame has in her hutch at home a little dog
    • Hey ho to the greenwood
    • Oaken leaves
  • Arcadelt, Il bianco e dolce cigno
  • Vecchi, Il bianco e dolce cigno
  • Dowland, Come, Heavy sleep
  • Dowland, Awake sweet love

Schedule

Having heard no clamour for a December 20th meeting, I have decided to
count the December 18th party as the meeting for that week, and
go to the Renaissonics
 concert.

So the schedule for December is:

  • Tuesday, December 13, 7:45 PM, regular meeting
  • Sunday, December 18, Party starting at 5 PM
  • Tuesday, December 27, 7:45 PM, regular meeting
Laura Conrad



Last modified: Wed Dec 7 09:25:30 EST 2005

Plans for the December 6 meeting

Plans for the December 6 meeting

[cantabile] Plans for the December 6 meeting

The next meeting of the Cantabile Renaissance Band is on Tuesday,
December 6, at 7:45 PM at my place. This meeting is finally back to
being a drop-in meeting.

We have lots of good new music to play, as well as all the old
music that we haven’t been doing because we’ve been rehearsing
for the performances.

  • Bonnie’s learned to transcribe into ABC, and has done
    several new Ravenscroft rounds for us.
  • At the Merry Wives of Windsor, they played a tape with an
    arrangement of the Holborne “Fairie Round” with words in the top
    line, so we may try doing that.
  • I can bring the Christmas box out, and we can do all the
    stuff we haven’t done for at least a year.
  • I have transposed the vocal “Canzonets for two voices” by
    Thomas Morley down so that most of us can sing them, so if we
    have a small group, we’ll do those.

Schedule

The Christmas Party will be on Sunday, December 18, starting at
around 5 PM. This is a come and tell everybody you know to
bring everybody they know (and enough food to feed them) party.
There will be lots of good food, drink, and especially music.
There’s an invitation you can print out to give people.

We should be having our regular drop-in Tuesday rehearsals on
December 6 and 13. This week’s poll is about whether we want to
meet on December 20. If I didn’t have the meeting, I would go
to the Renaissonics CD
release party. I’m willing to meet if lots of people want to
come, but if most people have other things they want to do as
well, we can consider the party as replacing the meeting.

On December 27, I’d definitely like to meet, as long as at least one or two
people would like to come.

Performing report

Thanks to everyone who participated in the performances over the
last month.

The Merry Wives of Windsor performances (Laura, Barney, Anne,
Bruce, Bonnie, Stuart, and Ishmael) brought live music to a
venue that usually doesn’t have it. The cast and audience both
felt that it added a great deal to the experience.

The Lowell performance (Laura, Frank Jones in his debut with the
group, Anne, Bonnie, and Paul) was in a really nice space, with
a very appreciative audience. I think we played as well as this
group is capable of at this time. The organizer who gave me the
check said she hoped we would be able to come back. I have a
tape of the second half, which we can listen to after Tuesday’s
rehearsal.

Future performing plans

We have several gigs lined up for the spring:

  • I expect to do the Walk for Hunger on Sunday, May 7, as we
    have for the last several years.
  • We will be playing on June 21 for an art exhibition opening
    on June 21. The theme of the exhibition is
    Dreams, so we will be learning some music related
    to that theme for this gig.
  • We are also discussing a concert sometime in July of the
    work of Jeremiah Ingalls.

So we may have a pretty busy spring and summer, so let’s relax and enjoy the
drop-in group while we have it.

Laura Conrad



Last modified: Sat Dec 3 12:09:48 EST 2005

Report on the November 29 meeting

We made a few decisions last night; please make sure your music is
marked to reflect them:

  • Drive the cold winter away will have an instrumental
    preceding the 3 vocal verses. I might play recorder only on
    the repeated sections of the vocal verses.
  • Slaves are they has been cancelled
  • Silver Swan is being done twice. The first time: Paul
    (recorder), Laura (recorder), Frank (recorder), Anne (voice),
    Bonnie (viol). The second time Laura will sing. We are
    performing in the original key, with one flat in the key
    signature.
  • Fair Phyllis: The vocal will precede the instrumental.

I will send updates to this when Frank and I decide what we’re
playing for our break session, and when Anna sends me the directions.

Playlist

  • Winter
    is icumen in     Frank and then Paul (rackett) play the ground, and
    when it’s established, Anne, Laura, and Bonnie enter with the tune.
    Laura cuts off.
  • Drive
    the cold winter away    , pages 10 and 11. Laura (recorder) and Anne,
    top line. Paul and Bonnie middle line. Frank bottom line. Anne
    sings all verses except # two. Instrumental, three verses vocal.
  • Three
    blind mice    . Laura (serpent), Frank, and Paul (rackett) start the Ravenscroft.
    Anne and Bonnie enter and sing. Anne looks puzzled, then stops and
    waves her arms. Everyone stops. Anne starts modern version, and all
    join in. Laura stops as usual.
  • Drinking
    rounds     from October 15 set. All 3 part rounds are Anne; Laura and
    Paul; Bonnie and Frank. All four part rounds are Anne; Paul; Laura;
    Bonnie and Frank.

    1. He that will an alehouse keep
    2. He that drinks is immortal
    3. I gave her cakes
    4. To Portsmouth
    5. Let us drink and be merry
  • Death set:
    • Silver
      Swan       All recorders, except for Anne and Bonnie. Parts from top: Paul, Frank,
      Laura, Anne, Bonnie. Second time, Laura sings.
    • Me, me
      and none but me       Parts: Paul (instrumental) or Anne (vocal); Laura;
      Bonnie; Frank and Paul (vocal).
    • Never
      weather-beaten saile       Parts: Paul (instrumental) or Anne (vocal);
      Laura; Bonnie; Frank and Paul (vocal)
  • Break sets:This may change after Frank and I have
    rehearsed. Paul should send me his proposed setlist,
    preferably with timings. Anne and Bonnie — do you have an
    approximate timing for yours?

    • Anne and Bonnie (maybe end with Daphne)
    • Paul, Van Eyck (Maybe Daphne)
    • Laura and Frank something from the Division flute, maybe
      Greensleeves (We may decide to put this before, or mixed
      with Paul’s van Eyck.)
  • Madrigal set:
Laura Conrad



Last modified: Wed Nov 30 10:37:39 EST 2005

Report on the November 28 meeting

Report on the November 28 meeting

[cantabile] Report on the November 28 meeting

It’s going pretty well. Tonight I want to go through basically in
order, except leaving the three-part things that Anne, Bonnie,
and I know really well to the end.

I have called Anna Ross and left a message, and we have exchanged
emails about where she should send the check. So I should have
more information by tonight.

Playlist

Below are the adjustments to the playlist. I’ve attempted to list
part assignments, but I may be remembering them wrong. Please correct
me if what I have isn’t they way you remember it. Please do this
before the rehearsal if possible, instead of taking up rehearsal
time.

  • Winter
    is icumen in     Frank and then Paul (rackett) play the drone, and
    when it’s established, Anne, Laura, and Bonnie enter with the tune.
    Laura cuts off.
  • Drive
    the cold winter away    , pages 10 and 11. Laura (recorder) and Anne,
    top line. Paul and Bonnie middle line. Frank bottom line. Anne
    sings all verses except # two. Instrumental TBD.
  • Three
    blind mice    . Laura (serpent), Frank, and Paul (rackett) start the Ravenscroft.
    Anne and Bonnie enter and sing. Anne looks puzzled, then stops and
    waves her arms. Everyone stops. Anne starts modern version, and all
    join in. Laura stops as usual.
  • Drinking
    rounds     from October 15 set. All 3 part rounds are Anne; Laura and
    Paul; Bonnie and Frank. All four part rounds are Anne; Paul; Laura;
    Bonnie and Frank.

    1. He that will an alehouse keep
    2. He that drinks is immortal
    3. I gave her cakes
    4. To Portsmouth
    5. Slaves are they
    6. Let us drink and be merry
  • Death set:
    • Silver
      Swan       All recorders, except for Anne. Parts from top: Paul, Frank,
      Laura, Anne, Bonnie.
      No instrumental. Possibly two verses. I am printing the parts in the
      original key, which seems to suit recorders better.
    • Me, me
      and none but me       Parts: Paul (instrumental) or Anne (vocal); Laura;
      Bonnie; Frank and Paul (vocal).
    • Never
      weather-beaten saile       Parts: Paul (instrumental) or Anne (vocal);
      Laura; Bonnie; Frank and Paul (vocal)
  • Break sets:
    • Anne and Bonnie (maybe end with Daphne)
    • Paul, Van Eyck (Maybe Daphne)
    • Laura and Frank something from the Division flute, maybe
      Greensleeves (We may decide to put this before, or mixed
      with Paul’s van Eyck.)
  • Madrigal set:
Laura Conrad



Last modified: Tue Nov 29 09:48:12 EST 2005

[cantabile] Plans for the November 22 meeting

The next meeting of the Cantabile Renaissance Band is on Tuesday,
November 22, at 7:45 PM at my place. This meeting is limited to
people doing the Lowell
gig on December 1. We’ll go back to being a drop-in group in December.

Below is a less tentative playlist. Please feel free to make
suggestions for additions or deletions.

Note that I’ve left out the Morley 2-voice canzonets on the grounds
that they will probably be part of one of the “break” sets. If this
doesn’t happen, we’ll add Girandola and Miraculous Love’s Wounding (at
least) to
the Madrigal set.

I think this is enough music that we can dump anything that doesn’t
go well on the 22nd, and not waste time on it on the 29th. If (when) we turn
out to need more rehearsal time, I’m hoping that Thanksgiving weekend
has some unscheduled time in it. I’m certainly expecting the 10-15
minute break sets to be rehearsed outside of our normal rehearsal
time.

I had been thinking that if we split into groups of two, Bonnie and
I would be one group, on the grounds that we’ve done a lot of duets
together over the years, but on further reflection, that would put the
two best bass line players in one group, so I’m thinking that Bonnie
and Anne could do a really good ballad set with Bonnie on viol, and
there are a lot of things Paul and I could do, and I’ll probably be
going to Fall River sometime before the concert, so we could get
together for a southern rehearsal.

[cantabile] Report on the November 22 meeting

Schedule

We clearly needed more rehearsal time, so we will be rehearsing
both Monday and Tuesday. Please arrive by 7:45, with your music
in order. Frank, if you came at 7:30, we could run the Division Flute
thing.

I will be talking to Anne Russo about what the arrangements are. I
will ask about handicapped accessibility. We start playing at 5, so I
assume everyone will want to be there by 4:30, to make sure we’re set
up and ready to start at 5.

Playlist

Below are the adjustments to the playlist. I’ve attempted to list
part assignments, but I may be remembering them wrong. Please correct
me if what I have isn’t they way you remember it.

  • Winter
    is icumen in     Frank and then Paul (rackett) play the drone, and
    when it’s established, Anne, Laura, and Bonnie enter with the tune.
    Laura cuts off.
  • Drive
    the cold winter away    , pages 10 and 11. Laura (recorder) and Anne,
    top line. Paul and Bonnie middle line. Frank bottom line. Anne
    sings all verses except # two. Instrumental TBD.
  • Three
    blind mice    . Laura (serpent), Frank, and Paul (rackett) start the Ravenscroft.
    Anne and Bonnie enter and sing. Anne looks puzzled, then stops and
    waves her arms. Everyone stops. Anne starts modern version, and all
    join in.
  • Drinking
    rounds     from October 15 set. All 3 part rounds are Anne; Laura and
    Paul; Bonnie and Frank. All four part rounds are Anne; Paul; Laura;
    Bonnie and Frank.

    1. He that will an alehouse keep
    2. Five Reasons (has been cut)
    3. He that drinks is immortal
    4. I gave her cakes
    5. To Portsmouth
    6. Slaves are they
    7. Let us drink and be merry
  • Death set:
  • Break sets:
    • Anne and Bonnie (maybe end with Daphne)
    • Paul, Van Eyck (Maybe Daphne)
    • Laura and Frank something from the Division flute, maybe Greensleeves
  • Madrigal set:

[diary] Adding a technorati link

technorati seems to be
having trouble with this dynamic blosxom blog, although it let me
claim the laymusic.org static
blog with no trouble. So I’m putting their code into this post to see
if that helps.

Technorati
Profile

From my log, it looks like they might be looking at the .rss feed,
which doesn’t have all the stuff in foot.html, which is where I put
the original link.

[diary] Using docbook

The idea of docboook is that you write one source file in sgml or
xml (which is a subset of sgml) and you can process it to get plain
text, html, rtf, or tex output, or put the information in a database,
or any other format that someone can write a program to read the input
and get the output.

This is an attractive idea for people who have to email to
collaborators, maintain a website, print hard copies, and keep track
of where they’ve put the stuff they do. (I’m sure I’d transcribed the
Ravenscroft “Three
Blinde Mice” before Bonnie did it this week, but neither of us
could find it).

However, before last night, I’d tried several times to get the
docbook toolchain to work, and never managed to get both text and PDF
out of the same file (using the test files I got off the web), let
alone have it magically solve my website database maintenance
problems.

Last night, I finally hit on the DocBook Install
mini-HOWTO, and it works!

Of course, the pathname to the DTD file isn’t exactly the same in
Debian as if you install everything from source, but slocate and
updatedb are your friends, and there’s a Makefile template that will
let you find the files once and then let the computer remember where
they are.

I’ll let you know if I manage to get it to clean the house and
roast the Thanksgiving turkey for me.

[publishing] Additions

The group has
been busy with gigs, so the transcribing has slowed down a little, and
the publishing had ground to a halt. But I’m trying to catch up.