Henning's Headquarters

[karlhenning]

It can start that way, you know: four notes, and not being particularly afraid of the piano, and thinking (at some level), "You know, I think I like these four notes . . . ."

[karlhenning]

Not really a rant, though there's material for a rant in there.

[Bogey]

Paragraph 5 is key....

[karlhenning]

And . . . after Day 4 of the Reconquista:

[Haffner]

It can start that way, you know: four notes

The "Jupiter".

[karlhenning]

When a project such as this (stars & guitars) stretches further and further across the calendar, and I make slow progress, as much (or even more, it seems) by dogged persistence as by inspiration . . . at times I reach point where I'm not sure I know what my own piece is about, or what it is like.  And then . . . today in continuing to putter in Sibelius, I reset the playback to the start (and because of playback issues I probbaly mentioned, I have to sing the lower octave of the bass flute myself).

. . . "You know, I think I like these four notes . . . ."

The piece is really surprising me on the upside (as my office-mates would put it).  This score won't embarrass me, I don't think.

[karlhenning]

Reconquista, Day 5 (and with special thanks to Luke):

[karlhenning]

The M.D. of a Congregational Church just west of Boston heard the St Paul's broadcast of the choir singing Bless the Lord, O My Soul . . . and asks for the score.

[Cato]

The M.D. of a Congregational Church just west of Boston heard the St Paul's broadcast of the choir singing Bless the Lord, O My Soul . . . and asks for the score.

Yay team!  "Baby steps," to quote Bill Murray.

[karlhenning]

He inquired of a publisher/distributor first, but nobody carries it yet. Just one of those things. Of course, I sent the pdf file. It isn't as though giving this one away free will impact revenues 

[karlhenning]

Reconquista, Day 5 (and with special thanks to Luke)

There is much detail to be added, of course;  but for the raw material (notes, e.g.) the Sibelius file has caught up to vertically-finished MS.  So, what next?

The harp accompaniment which will run through the alborada is thrumming . . . I've plotted it all, but need for the MS. to catch up with that schema.

I could just input that straight into Sibelius, and that would be arguably an economizing of effort.  But I want to compose the flute 'monologue' on paper, with the harp there.

I could still economize the effort, input the harp accompaniment directly into Sibelius, and print it out with blank staves for the flute, and compose it that way.

There is still something ineffable I derive from the process of manually scrawling the harp, which will inform (and, I think, benefit) my composition of the flute 'monologue'.

[karlhenning]

Thrum-tee tum-tee thrum

[sul G]

Aha! I see chords split across staves! - did you follow my method or did you manage to find a better one?

This all looks wonderful Karl - thanks for the day-by-day insight into your creative process. So much more ordered than mine!! The whole thing looks like typical Henning - finding highly inventive, expressive ways to use simple building blocks (I'm thinking of the harp accompaniment to 'love awakes', for instance - it looks so simple and yet so expressively appropriate; the name Britten springs to mind here). It will be a real winner, by the look of it. 

[karlhenning]

I followed your method, thanks!  Why re-invent the wheel?    I haven't determined the rhyme or reason to it, but sometimes when I copy a split-staff chord elsewhere, the elongated stem makes it as pert of the copy, sometimes I need tomake the adjustement afresh.  But that is only an observation, not any complaint!  I love Sibelius to pieces . . . I did this whole section (the harp thrumming) in perhaps a third of the time it would have taken me in Finale (and, again, it already looks passably good on the page, where that alone would be another evening's work in Finale).

Many thanks for your kind remarks!

And now, the Day of the April Fool: no more approprite day, methinks, for sketching a bass flute alborada del gracioso . . . .

[karlhenning]

Ha! I've got a dumb mistake right at the start:  the harp pedal diagram indicates an E-flat, and yet the very first note the harp plays is an E-natural.  I thank my good angels that I haven't sent this to Mary Jane, yet!

What happened is, the harp note in m.4 was originally a D# in MS.  A week or two later, when I actually thought about how the pedaling should work, I decided (rightly or wrongly, who knows) that I wanted the D strings to start out natural, and I enharmonically changed the m.4 pitch to E-flat . . . but there's less time to change the E-natural to E-flat (two measures) than to change the D# to D-natural (three). (Of course, at this tempo, and with this relaxed rate of activity, there's just ample time all over.)

So . . . five minor clean-up adjustments to make in the first two systems alone 

[karlhenning]

Danish Cheese is Bleu | Even Finns Grill Asiago

[karlhenning]

As mentioned here, I have splurged my way to a kind of final double-bar.  I'll be a day or four taking stock, and making certain that everything is quite as I want it.  And in all events, today is a long day . . . and it won't be until Friday evening that I can fold the new material into the Sibelius file.  All the same, the heavy construction is done, and it's just a matter of (relative) tinkering.

One oddity (and I admit that I find it more amusing than aught otherwise):  as indicated on the second system of p.10, I've changed the A strings to A# before the end of the [F] section (vi. a dream of antique navigation).

Yet, when I composed the chords for the harp thrumming of [G], I used A-natural.

(a) I like both notions → (b) I don't wish to 'deselect' either, entirely → (c) there are plenty of pauses composed into the pacing of the thrumming harp → (d) perhaps I may make a major/minor game out of the course of the harp accompaniment of the alborada.

pp. 10 & 11

[karlhenning]

pp. 14 & 17

Two trivial documentary details . . . I started to scribble in the harp accompaniment on the bottom of p. 10 on the bus, and I miscounted.  So I cannabilized paper from the bottom of p. 17 (which I had all ruled out, but yet blank). [That's why the bar-lines don't align properly on the bottom system of p. 10. As if anyone cares . . . . ]

On p. 17, third system there is a correction, because I had miscounted and drawn in the final double-bar too early (that's why I have the word single hastily scribbled above the blacked-in double-bar before m. 445).  However, the bottom system still had the measure remaining from my p. 10 -oplasty, which I needed to correct my final double-bar error.

So, it all worked out.

[sul G]

This is all fascinating stuff - thanks for all these insights!

[karlhenning]

Okay . . . the Sibelius file has now 'caught up' with the MS., although not yet with all the notation 'fixes' I have scrawled onto hard copy of pdf files past.