[publishing] Added Dix Bransles de Champagne, by Claude Gervaise.

There’s really a lot to be said for being able to play lots of dances
together without page turns. And to do that, you need parts rather
than scores. And the Cantabile Renaissance
Band has some members who’d like to play more dance music. So I
might be doing more of both the Gervaise and the Susato in partbook
format.

[cantabile] Report on the June 21 meeting

It was restricted to people playing the Picnic on June 25, so it was
just Laura, Bonnie, and Barney.

We played:

At the picnic, we may also play “Piper’s Fancy”, which is some trio
arrangements of Playford tunes, which we have played many times
before.

[concerts] Camerata Trajectina at BEMF

The concert was all seventeenth century Dutch songs to do with
sailing. The 7-member group had three singers (Soprano, Tenor, and
Baritone), a recorder player, a violin, a bass viol and a lute, who
was also the director. Everybody sang along on the choruses.

That much singing of pretty but often uncomplicated music in a
foreign language could have gotten tedious, but I felt the
arrangements and “staging” were varied enough that I wasn’t bored.

Two songs were sung in English translation. In my opinion these
were among the most effective of the evening. Some leaving audience
members were heard complaining about the slightly accented English,
but I thought the diction was superb, and the songs were much more
effective for not requiring the audience to read along.

The lyrics to one piece were written to be sung to a psalm tune
that has a 6-part polyphonic setting by Sweelinck, so they did it that
way. The result was interesting, but probably not what the sailors
did on deck after a hard day in the rigging.

The instrumental backup was superb, and most of the singing was
very committed to the subject matter. I wish my group could find as
effective a way of presenting our drinking songs.

[sitenews] The Cafepress

store is open

At the moment, the only things you can buy are the Drinking Songs
book and a t-shirt with a nice Breughel picture which advertises the
drinking songs book. I will be gradually putting more of the
published music up for sale there, with promotional items for people
who want to help support and advertise the site, but find downloading
the free PDF’s works well for them as a way to acquire the music.

[cantabile] Schedule for the next few weeks

We’ll be having a regular rehearsal on Tuesday, June 14.
Unfortunately, it’s too early in the Boston Early Music Festival for
putting out flyers to bring in very many people, but I will
post an invitation to the relevant mailing lists. Please let anyone
who’s in town for the Festival know that they’re welcome to come play
with us.

Tuesday, June 21 will be limited to the people playing the Boston Wort Processors summer picnic on
Saturday, July 25.

After that, we resume our regularly scheduled drop-in sessions,
(almost) every Tuesday at 7:45 PM at 233 Broadway.

Publicity

I have rewritten the flyer, with help from
Ishmael, Anne, and Hope. Please take a look at it, print it out, and
bring it anywhere you think people would be interested. I’d still
like to find or manufacture a good graphic instead of the two serpents
that I used in desperation in June of 2000.

Addition

This week’s been a busy performing week, so only the new Dowland.

When the
poore Criple by the poole did lye,
 completes the three-part song that also includes
Thou
Mighty God

and When
David’s life by Saul was often sought
.

All three pieces are both rhythmically and harmonically
challenging. If you’re having trouble reading them, try getting
bassus and cantus solid before adding the altus and (especially) the
tenor.

[cantabile] Plans for the June 7 meeting

We have the third part of the three-part Dowland we’ve been working
on, so we’ll probably spend the bulk of the meeting trying to make the
whole thing sound like music. In addition we’ll continue working on
the two drinking songs we’re trying to get performable.

In addition, we have several things to decide:

  • I have the first copy of the Cafepress edition of the Drinking
    Songs book Since I no longer
    have double-sided printing capability, we have to decide how we’re
    going to deal with acquiring multiple copies of “finished” books. The
    possibilities include:

    • Buying in bulk from Cafepress. In this case, they would cost in
      the vicinity of $6 each if I order a few, and can probably be brought
      under $5 if I order as many as 15. It’s close to $10 to order an
      individual copy with shipping.
    • Copying double-sided at Kinko’s or somewhere and me binding with
      my comb binding machine. I’m not sure how much this costs, but I
      think it’s comparable to the bulk pricing at Cafepress, which also
      includes a nice color cover.
    • Someone with “free” xeroxing copying double sided, and me binding
      with my comb binding machine. This is obviously the cheapest way to
      get new books, if there’s someone with a good setup for doing this.
    • For this book, we have almost up-to-date copies which we can paste
      in edited versions of the pages that have changed. This might be the
      right solution for this book, but won’t work for the Dowland third
      book or the Pilgrim’s Solace.
  • Do we meet next week? I don’t have a conflict, and it might be
    fun to invite people who are in town for the early music festival to
    come join us. But I understand if people are overscheduled that week
    without this meeting.
  • I want to put out a flyer describing our group on the flyers table
    at BEMF. I’m about to take a crack at editing the current flyer,
    which no longer really describes the group very well. But if anyone
    else has ideas, let me know. In any case, I’ll have a trial version
    for proofreading, editing, etc. tonight.
  • I’ve sent information to at least some of you about the Wort
    Processors’ Summer picnic on June 25. We need to decide whether we’re
    playing, and if so, what. We might make the June 21
    meeting “performers only” if we decide to play.

I believe both Anne and Ishmael will be coming from another
commitment and will be a bit late, so maybe the official start time
for this one should be 8 PM.

[cantabile] Report on the June 7 meeting

We did:

  • Morley:
    • Good Morrow, fair Ladies of the May
    • Whether away so fast
    • Hold out my heart

    Dowland:

    • When the poore Cripple
    • O mighty God
    • When Davids life by Saul was often sought
  • Vive la Serpe
  • Slaves are they that heap up mountains

Decisions

  • We will meet next week, on Tuesday, June 14. Some people will
    have BEMF commitments, but there might be other people in town for the
    festival who would be fun to play with.
  • Ishmael can do some double-sided printing for us, so we haven’t
    yet made an order for the drinking songs.
  • Anne and Ishmael both have other commitments on the 25th. So I
    will check with Paul, and if he can’t come, maybe Bonnie, Barney, and
    I will resurrect some of the old recorder trio repertoire.
  • I got some feedback on the new version of the flyer. Check out the
    current version and see what you think.

[publishing] Additions

  • Dowland’s When
    David’s life by Saul was often sought
    . This is actually the second part of a three-part piece; the
    first was Thou
    Mighty God
    , added last week, and the third part is coming next week. This
    typesetting is an experiment in leaving the repeat notation the way
    Dowland wrote it, instead of trying to transcribe it into modern
    structures with first and second endings. I’d say it was a success
    with the Cantabile
    Renaissance Band     on Tuesday. See below for a description of how
    this works.
  • Odhecatonathon. I’m playing three pieces from the Petrucci
    Odhecaton on Saturday at my recorder teacher’s Student
    Recital    , and although we’re all playing directly from the
    facsimile, we found that it’s a lot easier to rehearse if there’s a
    score available. And it’s a lot easier to transcribe them if you have
    a modern score available. The printing is very clear, and much more
    beautiful than the modern printing comes out, but there are cases
    where it’s hard to tell a breve rest from a semi-breve rest from a
    minim rest. So while I had a book with a few scores available, I did
    several.

Repeat notation

I wrote about this problem last
week. This week, I decided that this was just another case of a
modern innovation that people who want to do music the way they did a
few centuries ago should abandon. So rather than set When
David’s life by Saul was often sought
 with a first and second ending, and some parts having a tied note
across the repeat, which I always find confusing, I’m just putting
segno’s in where Dowland did.

One reason this is a better notation for Dowland’s polyphony than
the more modern repeat structure is the difficulty in finding a good
place for the begin repeat. If everybody’s notes were ending on the
beats all the time, there would be no problem. However, in this
piece, there are very few places where there isn’t some part holding
the note over. A releated problem is that Lilypond refuses to print
the whole score unless I break some long notes up, because Lily
refuses to put only part of a note on a line (or indeed, to put only
part of a measure on a line).

[cantabile] Plans for the May 31 meeting.

We’ll have the next Dowland. It’s the second part of that
three-parter we started last week, so we’ll attempt that one again as
well.

If we have 5 parts, there’s a Holborne that we didn’t do two weeks
ago, and it might be fun to do some of the others again.

I’m committed to setting the three pieces from the Odhecaton that
I’m playing Saturday with John and Miyuki (BRS
calendar listing)
so we might do whatever I’ve finished of those, if people are
interested.

I’d like to continue working on Vive la Serpe and Slaves are they
that heap up mountains.

Report from the Memorial Day performance

I thought we played pretty well, considering. Unfortunately, it
wasn’t really quite a big enough party to justify background music,
and I don’t think we were holding the audience well enough to be
foreground music. The demo was written up in the Fall River Herald; I
can forward the writeup to anyone interested.