Henning's Headquarters

[Karl Henning]

From your lips to the Boston Musical Intelligencer's ears 

[Karl Henning]

Okay, here is, not the finished piece, but the voice line for The Crystalline Ship.  I am waiting on feedback from the singer before proceeding with the accompaniment.

[Karl Henning]

PS/ There may be a squirrel in your mailbox . . . .

[TheGSMoeller]

PS/ There may be a squirrel in your mailbox . . . .

Woo-Hoo! Got it, even partial it's fantastic! 
Great job, Karl! Good luck again tonight!

[Karl Henning]

Quick back-of-the-envelope notes:

Concert tonight went even better.

Couldn't find an outlet convenient to my purposes, so . . . as I could not count on capturing the whole concert, I cherry-picked.  I do have the Squirrels complete!


The host at the venue recorded the entire concert . . . may be a week, but the whole lot will be available.


Met a fellow who used to direct a crack choir, and his wife says, it's time they got the choir back together;  and he mentioned specifically noticing that in my bio I wrote of the Credo as a work-in-progress.  So, who knows? . . .

[Karl Henning]

. . . the Squirrels get started . . . .

[Cato]

. . . the Squirrels get started . . . .

Even in truncated form, a most enjoyable work: note how the funky rhythm in the bass acts as a unifying factor throughout the work!

[Karl Henning]

I think I got the whole of the Saturday performance, will upload it tomorrow evening.

[Karl Henning]

Okay, here is, not the finished piece, but the voice line for The Crystalline Ship.  I am waiting on feedback from the singer before proceeding with the accompaniment.

Okay, D'Anna confirms that the writing fits her voice fine (which I expected . . . well, or I had written it otherwise, hadn't I?    ) So, getting to work on the bari sax accompaniment is on my desk for tonight.

Also had an idea of arranging Divinum mysterium for bell choir as tasteful accompaniment to my choir singing the chant.  It is high time they had another piece in their folder for practice.  We do still need plenty of practice with When the morning stars sang together...; plus we need all hands for that 'un, and one of my ringers has just left for a month's vacation (with my good leave).  Am also thinking of taking the Agnus Dei and arranging it for the ringers . . . that is already an expansion of the original thought, which (at the time that I started typing) was just to take the dona nobis pacem point of imitation and arrange it for bells . . . .

[Karl Henning]

All right, the latest trippy coincidence . . . the other day, I sent e-mail to Ed Broms, thanking him for keeping my Nunc dimittis in the St Paul choir's annual rotation, as it were.  Ed wrote back, "You know I'm no longer at St Paul's?"  I immediately replied, "My thanks are no less hearty for applying only to past kindnesses."

Item #2: I am grateful that Easter is as late as it is this year, for it gives me some more time to prepare for my first Holy Week at Holy Trinity UMC.  Congruent with this, the pastor (Larry, a most agreeable chappie) wants to make the weekly service more musical . . . and wants, for instance, that the Lord's Prayer be sung.  Happily, there is a chant version in our hymnal, which I think it will be fun to teach the choir to sing (to lead the congregation), and which I think will be a musically lovely addition to the liturgy.  (And the more beautiful music there is in the service, the better my engagement will seem to both the congregation and the pastor.)

(It is also the "more chant" vibe – of course, any chant is more – which the pastor emits, which suggested to me doing something with Divinum mysterium.)

I also recalled an English adaptation of a traditional Russian Orthodox setting of the Beatitudes (arrangement by Richard Proulx, I now am reminded) from the 1982 Episcopal hymnal . . . so I called my friend (and former fellow chorister) Bob Greiner, who is now admin for the Cathedral, about borrowing a hymnal.

So . . . while I stopped by to borrow a hymnal of Bob, I asked who the present music director is.

So now I have a name and an email address for the Interim M.D., and I've gone ahead and sent him the scores of the Kyrie and the Agnus Dei.  The fellow is from the UK, and because of a future "merger" between the Cathedral parish, and the parish of St John on Bowdoin Street, no one yet knows what will happen as of April.  But I consider it a posy of potential wins.

1. If he is kept on at St Paul's and likes my music, my work could be 'restored' to use at the Cathedral.

2. If he is not kept on at St Paul's and likes my music, a man of such musical talent will find some better place, and my work will find a fresh venue there.

3. The "merger" with St John's may (I imagine) mean a restoration of the weekly lunchtime recital series, and Henningmusick will ride again!

[Karl Henning]

Thank you!

[Karl Henning]

At long last . . . the clarinet/marimba duet is finished:

Listening to this (MIDI) after an interval, and having played in The Ninth Ear . . . I am thinking about adapting this for clarinet and mandocello.

[Cato]

This morning I listened to the three tracks you uploaded to Soundcloud.  Very nicely done.

I will need to wait until later this afternoon, but as mentioned earlier, even just a fragment of Jazz for Nostalgic Squirrels was fun!

Glad to read about the snowball of interest growing larger!

Listening to this (MIDI) after an interval, and having played in The Ninth Ear . . . I am thinking about adapting this for clarinet and mandocello.

It seems that getting hooked on mandocello music is no vice!   0:)

[Karl Henning]

An old Wooster friend posts about having at last emerged from the throes of a bad divorce.  I told her I'm going to borrow a phrase for a title:  Dysfunction and Outright Extortion.

[Karl Henning]

Okay, so it isn't The Musical Masterpiece of My Generation . . . but here is my first effort at choir plus handbells.

[Karl Henning]

Okay, so it isn't The Musical Masterpiece of My Generation . . . but here is my first effort at choir plus handbells.

It will be much easier for the ringers if I can flow that through only four pages . . . and I need to add the measure numbers to each measure . . . and since the choir will read from their own score (with the handbells staves reduced) with different pagination, I had better add rehearsal letters.

All that said, my first priority here is, to count how may bells are in use, and determine how many ringers the piece should employ.

Oh!  And on the train this morning, I started drawing up the bari sax accompaniment to The Crystalline Ship. Molto fluido is what I am thinking . . . .

[Karl Henning]

[snip]

I should like to give How to Tell (Chasing the Tail of Nothing) another go [....]

And I think the 15 April concert is the occasion . . . and I have been wishing to write a new piece for a quartet, the How to Tell trio plus.  Now, the instrument I have been wishing I might add, has been cello.  But, U2-like, I still haven't found the cellist I'm looking for.  So I am going to ask Charles if he is game to join in on double-bass . . . .

[Karl Henning]

Okay, Charles is in!

I need to review how to notate for the frame drum . . . .

[Karl Henning]

I'm aiming to keep the ringers to eight people for Divinum mysterium . . . which has meant (as I combed through the bass clef bells) a couple of octave displacements which do not in the least mar the musick.  I've kept the bass clef ringers to 3;  now to see if 5 ringers suffice for all the treble-dom . . . .

[Karl Henning]

An old Wooster friend posts about having at last emerged from the throes of a bad divorce.  I told her I'm going to borrow a phrase for a title:  Dysfunction and Outright Extortion.

And what better title for a piece whose première will be April 15^th?  This will be the flute, clarinet, double-bass & frame drum quartet.