Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost

[karlhenning]

Party at Luke's! . . .

[Luke]

Wild, isn't it!

[karlhenning]

I need one of Jeeves's pick-me-ups . . . .

[chasmaniac]

I need one of Jeeves's pick-me-ups . . . .

For the uninitiated, from Wiki: "This comprises an egg yolk, Worcestershire sauce, and red pepper (although Bertie sometimes speculates that there must be more to it). The cure is remarkably effective..."

[ibanezmonster]

Played through a bit of the score on guitar... sounds nice, so if you ever get around to some presentable form of recording (either computer or real), I'd definitely like to hear. 

[Luke]

Written some of a possible Christmas piece today, in the line of the others of the last four years, for the girls at my school. We'll see...it might be good, but the text is a bit of a cliche (Blake's The Lamb *yawn*) and it is a bit sutbborn in its two-bar periods at the moment.

[springrite]

Played through a bit of the score on guitar... sounds nice, so if you ever get around to some presentable form of recording (either computer or real), I'd definitely like to hear. 

Oh, come on! Your playing is presentable! Do it!

[ibanezmonster]

Oh, come on! Your playing is presentable! Do it!

Lol, well, I can't sing, and the guitar sounds an octave lower.

[karlhenning]

Teacher I knew at Wooster always said (and I understand now that he was citing, or echoing, an African proverb) If you can talk, you can sing . . . .

[Cato]

Luke!  I have downloaded the score of the Yeats song and will work on a mini-analysis over the next days.  I cannot listen to the piano work yet: perhaps on Saturday.

"Delays!  Delays!"   

I still intend to write that analysis!   

[Luke]

That's OK - it's hardly worthy of it, I am sure. There's that strange Fantasy, too - only two downloads of the reocrding so far, I hope it's not that bad!

Things are slowly returning. I've had other, non-musical projects on the go for a while, as well as just being incedibly busy, so there really has been no space for composing, but now I've started again, various projects present themselves. There's the big piano piece I have hinted at; there is White Modulations, which last week suddenly hit me once more as A Good Idea - I think I might make it a concertante piano piece. There is the Christmas piece, half-done now. And there is an odd piece for piano + mystery ingredient which I began and almost finished in early 2010, but which is coming back to me now, and which I hope to polish off in the next few days. I recorded 2/3rds of it yesterday...

[Luke]

And there is an odd piece for piano + mystery ingredient which I began and almost finished in early 2010, but which is coming back to me now, and which I hope to polish off in the next few days. I recorded 2/3rds of it yesterday...

Finished, and a recording is ready... I like it, but it's another odd one!

[karlhenning]

Finished, and a recording is ready... I like it, but it's another odd one!

Cool. Bring it forth!

[Luke]

OK - this is the third piece I've posted in a week or so, I hope that is noticed! (None of them are new, mind you, though this one was finished off only in the last couple of days..)

This is Around Fern Hill, whose source, of course, is the incomparable Dylan Thomas poem Fern Hill (maybe my favourite poem). Here it is for those who don't know it.

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

The poem is an innocence-to-experience, childhood-to-adulthood series of memories and images; one of the many things I love about it is the way Thomas uses words as musical motives, bringing back the same words over and over in different contexts, so that they accrue meaning and change implication as the poem progresses (the clearest are 'green,' 'golden' and 'time') The impression is of a circling which is also a progression, as throughout the life the same places and feelings are visited and revisted and invested with more and more meaning and more and more memory (but perhaps less and less reality). I imagined Fern Hill (which is actually a farm near Llangain in Carmarthenshire) as a real hill, and that the poem, and Thomas' life and memories and thoughts, and my piece too, circle around it, in something like the way a pilgrim circles Mount Kailas, that Tibetan peak which has always been important to my thoughts and which lies behind the second part of my orchestral piece Elegy and Ascent.

My piece is written for piano, but functions as a sort of background for Fern Hill itself, and in the recording I've made I have superimposed the famous recording of Dylan Thomas himself reading the poem. There are a specific points where the music 'fits' the sense of the words above it - many of these were deliberate but some were accidental and only found as I experimented with the precise positioning of the reading over the piano.

The piano piece itself, like the poem, falls into six 'stanzas', but (also like the poem) they are full of recurrent ideas. In fact stanzas 4-6 are essentially gentle palimpsests upon the music stanzas 1-3, as if the same ground is being revisited in the light of experience, age and knowledge (listen the opening music return at 'And then to awake...'). The music uses modes as I've often done in the last few years, and in a structural and interpretative way. So, there are 6 notes in stanza one, giving a bright, golden-green, fresh and sunny sonority; then one note is discarded and two added to give a 7 note mode for stanza two, and so on and so on until stanza six has 11 of the 12 chromatic degrees. The music therefore becomes denser, more chromatic, more dissonant and intense as the piece progresses, as innocence is lost, experience gained, time passes and death draws nearer.

Enough talk - here are the links. It's a strange piece, I know I like it, but hope others do too (I'm a bit disconcerted by the lack of comments on my last two uploads, as if people aren't quite sure what to make of them!)


score http://www.mediafire.com/?no6zykq6464c2z2
mp3 http://www.mediafire.com/?hycr77dymz2665f

[karlhenning]

Frabjous day! Luke, I'm a-whirl with housework for a few days yet, so do not mistake my slowness for disinterest!

[Luke]

By the way, parts of the last two pages of the score (where stanza 3 is overwritten into stanza 6) are fabulously difficult, maybe impossible, really, and no sooner had I written them than I more-or-less sightread them into a microphone. (I was quite excited, see, too excited actually to practise...) So there are three or four bars which are really far from accurate, but it doesn't matter too much, the musical point is made, and anyway Thomas's rich Welsh voice obscures my stupid wrong notes!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Well, I love 'Fern Hill', too. So it will be an interesting experience to listen to your musical reaction to it... I'll make some time for it tomorrow.

[Guido]

(I'm a bit disconcerted by the lack of comments on my last two uploads, as if people aren't quite sure what to make of them!)

Just need time to listen. I think maybe people have forgotten to check here regularly! And then forgotten how to appropriately respond!

[karlhenning]

I'm not properly up for air, yet.

[Cato]

"Delays!  Delays!"   

I still intend to write that analysis!   

Version 2.0

"Delays!  Delays!"   

I still intend to write that analysis!   

And tomorrow I am being whisked away to attend a wedding that I have no interest in attending: 5 hours in the car!

Oy!      Somebody help me!   0:)