CCAE Renaissance Ensemble concert on May 25, 2005

The calendar listing is on the
BRS calendar.

The report on the last concert is on
my blog. It now points to the audio recording by Dennis Ehn.

This program is a bit more ambitious than the last one, and should
be fun if we avoid disasters. There’s lots of good May music.
There’s a Loyset Compère hymn to the Virgin Mary that takes advantage
of the wonderful acoustic of the CCAE exercise studio. The serpent is
getting good at doing bass on dance music. There are two settings of
“Petite Camusette”, and 3 of “Suzanne un Jour”. And the program ends
with everyone bursting into song on “Sumer is icumen in”.

On a serious note, the Cambridge
Center is probably going to cancel both this class and the Baroque
Ensemble class. If you’ve been to the concerts, or enjoyed listening
to the recordings of them, you might want to write Jim Smith, the
director, and tell him you think that decision should be reconsidered.

[performing] Cambridge Center Renaissance Ensemble Concert, May 25

What was probably last concert of the Cambridge Center for Adult Education
Renaissance Ensemble took place before a standing room only crowd.
(There were only a few more people than usual, but there were fewer
chairs than usual.)

Last Sunday’s dress rehearsal must have been the kind that leads to
a good performance — almost everything was better in performance than
in rehearsal. I’m told my divisions on Suzanne un jour was an
exception, but I’m pretty sure that isn’t true. There might have been
a few things that worked better on Sunday, but I’m sure the
performance as a whole was more comfortable after a few more times
getting through it without falling apart.

In any case, nothing was a total disaster; a lot of the rough edges
that had been glaring on Sunday were fixed by Wednesday, and we
recovered from the new rough edges that had never happened before with
a fair amount of aplomb.

The cornetto playing is what I can do without warmup these days. I
was expecting the pieces to be easy, because neither of them has a Bb,
both have an easy range, and they were next to each other. However, in the Michael Altenburg the
Cantus Firmus has two pages of rest in a 3-page score, and the viols
needed to tune between the pieces. I should of course just insist
on brass players equal warmup time with the viol
tuning time, but I haven’t managed that yet. Another problem was that
the director asked for crisper articulation on the repeated notes in
the Altenburg, and I haven’t figured out how to do that well yet. The
repeated notes in “Come Live with Me” seem quite separate and much
prettier to me than the Altenburg ones, so maybe I should just ignore
direction like that.

My singing was almost entirely in the tenor range, since I have the
lowest voice of the 5 female singers. I was annoyed that she gave the
“Come live with me” solo to the baritone, because it was more
comfortable for him than for me as a mezzo, but it would have been
even more comfortable than that for me as a tenor. Anyway, I managed
to not push the low F’s and to sound pretty good on everything above
that. I blew the entrance on the C above middle C in Sumer is icumen
in (the last piece), though. I think if people want an exposed
entrance on c, they should give you a note above G some time before
that.

I got lots of compliments on the “Suzanne un jour” divisions. I
guess they were good. There are easier pieces to do divisions on.
And doing them with a lute player who takes 6 weeks to simplify his
part to what he can play in an 8-week term doesn’t give you much
rehearsal time.

The serpent playing was quite good. And the microphone
configuration I found with the borrowed mic last time produces better
balance with my mic, too.


Update: The pictures are in the serpent.laymusic.org
gallery.

[cantabile] Plans for March\\May 24 meeting

We’ll have at least one new Dowland. The next one is a
through-composed, 3-verse one, so it’s as much work as setting three,
and I probably can’t do that much (I have about half the work done for
the first one as of 9 AM this morning). But we’ll see.

I’ve changed two things in the Drinking Songs book, which I’m
gearing up to sell at . So we’ll
do “Vive la Serpe” (new key and some English underlay fixes) and “O
Portsmouth”.

People should be prepared to decide whether they want to sing in
Fall River next Monday, and if several of us want to, we’ll go over
what we want to sing. I would expect “Now is the Month of Maying” if
there’s a quorum, and a selection of drinking songs, although anything
we did at the Walk for Hunger should be still an option.

[cantabile] Report on the May 24 meeting

We did:

  • O Portsmouth
  • Vive la serpe
  • Dowland, Thou Mighty God
  • Slaves are they that heap up mountains
  • Now is the month of Maying

It looks like the Memorial Day cookout in Fall River will include
Laura, Bonnie, Anne, Barney, and Paul, but Ishmael is a maybe.

I propose for a program:

  • Now is the Month of Maying (Anne on Altus and Laura on Quintus,
    unless Ishmael shows up. Paul should bring the Rackett.)
  • Changeons Propos
  • Vignons, vignons
  • Quand je Bois. All these with the “old” route of 4-foot, French,
    English. Paul, you’re playing and singing bassus; use your judgement
    about whether to do it on recorder or cornetto.
  • After that, pass out the drinking songs books to any audience and
    invite participation in some of the rounds. Based on last night, we
    do “Slaves are they” only if the audience is very friendly and
    supportive, but we can do “Anacreon in heaven” in honor of Memorial
    Day in any case.

We’ll be working out schedules and rides when we know more about
the schedule in Fall River. Please remember that it’s a pot-luck
event.

[publishing] Additions

Anthony
Holborne wrote very polyphonic dance music. I’ve just put 5
pieces up. They’re a lot of fun — if it’s too complicated for your
group to sight read all at once, read two lines together.

The next Dowland is If that a
sinner’s sighs be angel’s food. It’s a little easier than the
last one, althought the inner parts are still pretty wild and crazy.
I sang Altus when we read it first, and then switched to Bassus on
serpent, and the Bassus is a lot easier. Our group finds it more
comfortable down a
third.

I’ve also added an English singing translation to Vive la
Serpe by Sermisy.

[cantabile] Report from the May 17, 2005 meeting

We played:

  • Lassus, Fantasia 25
  • Morley, Good morrow, Fair Ladies of the May
  • Vive la Serpe, with the new English words
  • Dowland, If that a sinner’s sighs be angel’s food (no cake to go
    with it)
  • Holborne group
    • Fairie round
    • Last Will and Testament
    • Galliard 40
    • As it fell on a holie Eve

It looks like at least some of us will do a short group of drinking
songs at the Memorial Day cookout in Fall River. If we have enough
people, I think we should include “Now is the month of Maying”.

[cantabile] Plans for the May 17 meeting

We’re meeting as usual tomorrow, Tuesday, May 17, at 7:45 PM at
my place.

We’ll have another Dowland.

We may have English words to “Vive la Serpe”, although they still
need a little work.

If we have 5 parts, there are a bunch of things I’d like to do,
including a bunch of Holborne’s that I’ve been transcribing for John
Tyson.

If we have only three parts, we can work on some more Morley
canzonets.

I didn’t hear back from my sister about singing at her Memorial Day
cookout, so I have pinged her. I said we needed to know if she hated
the idea, so that we could practice “Praise the Lord and pass the
ammunition” instead of “Dona Nobis Pacem” and crash someone else’s
Memorial Day event. If she sounds interested, we’ll discuss what to
play, and with what instruments. I think it might make sense to try a
vocals only with no music stands or instruments. It could be short.

[pdas] Back to TheKompany ROM

Having tested OpenZaurus 3.5.3 and found that for my purposes it
has gone backwards from OZ 3.5.2, I decided to go back to TheKompany
and let OpenZaurus mature without me for a while.

The backup program is quite good, so there’s very little work
involved in going back, if I decide to try something different and
don’t like the new thing. And there’s more software built for that
generation ROM than there is for the OZ ones. I believe that someone
can run the software with the compatibility libraries, but I haven’t
been able to.

[movies] The Fog of War

I was surprised at how good it was. He (Robert Macnamara) says a lot more things that
pacifists would say than you would expect from what he’s spent his
life doing.

Another unusual thing was that the “deleted scenes” section of the
DVD was about as good, and in some places more interesting, than the
regular video. It’s about another hour, so leave 2.5 hours for
watching the DVD rather than 1.5.

My grand scheme for consolidating communications bills won’t work

Originally posted to speakeasy.net.

I’ve just been through two experiences with the Speakeasy/Verizon
interface in the Boston area, and find the results disquieting.

What I was hoping to accomplish was to get Speakeasy naked DSL,
transfer my land line phone number to my cell phone, and stop paying
Verizon for the POTS that I don’t use very much, which breaks for
several days every year or two.

I called to order the naked DSL, and was told there was no problem; it
would take two install appointments and $6 more per month and a $99
installation fee. So I signed up, and COVAD came and installed a
line, and Speakeasy sent me a new modem.

The log for the install reflected that the line had been provisioned,
but there was a problem with the voltage.

After I pinged Speakeasy about the problem a week later, they called back
and said they were cancelling the order, because it seemed that my CO
didn’t have the right equipment to provide naked DSL.

Meanwhile, my current DSL line broke, and I was using dialup for over
a week. The details about this outage are at this
entry.
For this purpose, note that during the DSL outage I was using the Verizon POTS
line for several hours a day for dialup access to the internet.

So this means that not only can I not cancel the POTS line completely,
I’m nervous about even going to the minimal charge (3-4 times the
$6 that the naked DSL would have cost, had I been able to get it).

How do other people deal with this? I know there are ways to use a
cell phone as a modem for internet access; is there one that works
particularly well at a cheap price point in the Boston area? My
current service is T-Mobile with a pretty generic Motorolla phone, but
if I were saving money per month over my current Verizon + T-mobile
service I could afford to buy a better phone or change cell phone
service.

Is there any possible way to reverse the decision about the naked DSL?
It seems like a lot of all these problems may be Verizon’s business
plan to sell their own DSL — if someone threatened to expose this
(they’d need better cooperation from Speakeasy than I’ve been
getting), could the CO equipment suddenly become adequate?

It looks like the only widely-used broadband access in Boston that
doesn’t depend on Verizon is Comcast cable broadband. If you don’t
also pay for cable TV, this costs roughly what speakeasy DSL does for
less service (I actually use the ability to run servers and have a
static IP). But does anyone have Covad plus cellphone working with a
LINUX system for a noticeably lower price than I’m currently paying
for Verizon + t-mobile + speakeasy?