GMG Classical Music Forum

The Music Room => Composing and Performing => Topic started by: lukeottevanger on April 06, 2007, 02:24:08 PM

Title: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 06, 2007, 02:24:08 PM
OK, new board, new thread (for old thread click here (http://www.good-music-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,9746.0.html) - I expect I'll have to update this link at some point). As there's nothing pressing to add, I'll just open up by copying out from various places on that thread all the links to recordings and scores of my pieces. For those who've already seen them, I should point out that there are a few new links hidden in here. I had posted them into the thread on the old board, and I've only just realised they were wiped out by the last crash, last week. I was wondering why no one had downloaded them - now I know!

Quote from: lukeottevanger
I'm doing the pieces in chronological order, btw. I include a few descriptive words and page number references to places where the piece has already been discussed/described/responded to on this thread:

Nocturne - 1990 Earliest piece - a fluke? - but similar to some much later pieces. Pages 1 and 7 of this thread.
Nocturne - mp3] (http://www.esnips.com/doc/950d7206-580c-462e-ad1d-8665c592d849/Nocturne-small-file---mp3)
Nocturne - score] (http://www.esnips.com/doc/59913d0a-ccc6-4729-bfd0-eeaa3a02bac1/Nocturne---score)

Four Paz Songs - 1997 Pages 8 and 9
Recordings:
Amistad (http://www.esnips.com/doc/79193f23-f92c-461f-b893-6b2daf1994d7/1-Amistad-small-file)
En los jardines de los Lodi (http://www.esnips.com/doc/3e2a265f-a1f2-4ee8-85ac-a7eb84fc68c8/2-En-los-jardines-de-los-Lodi-small-file)
Lo identico (http://www.esnips.com/doc/0b110117-eaf7-4e1f-9cfc-2dbd5a347947/3-Lo-identico-small-file)
interlude - Madrigal (http://www.esnips.com/doc/3a139be5-180d-4abb-82ce-0e67a57464cf/4-interlude_-Madrigal-small-file)
Score:
Four Paz Songs score (http://www.esnips.com/doc/dd78e5fa-5f21-427c-9515-dedbac8d7560/Four-Paz-Songs---score)

Fragments - 1999-2000 series of miniatures exploring various technical ideas and romantic imagery. Various pieces discussed on page 2
Scores:
no 1 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/d7a19d6a-a735-4132-b558-69f758e6d8c5/01-Eintritt-(und-Lebewohl)-mit-Horner)
no 2  (http://www.esnips.com/doc/ac5cfea8-e9a4-4763-ad71-2b3355b356ee/02-Sunlight-and-Stillness)
no 3 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/2e0d56dc-c230-4f9c-8e89-767f4ea626e5/03-Nihtscada-I)
no 4 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/39ae1038-2fd9-4525-8e37-926150e6193e/04-A-cage-went-in-search-of-a-bird)
no 5 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/85e726ab-0051-4b3b-a897-30efc0a4c4d8/05-Perdendo)
no 6  (http://www.esnips.com/doc/70a814a6-f3a0-42a3-b58a-a5228cca9576/06-Black-Jack)
no 7 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/4a81c118-bbf9-4880-88a1-406a53656cd8/07-Pezzo-Oscuro)
no 8 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/e92fc5e2-74fa-43f0-8e1c-757bf039c147/08-Pastorale)
no 11 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/bbf07d74-d14b-4272-8a1d-9ee1ea12ea0a/11-Ostinati-Sonambulistici)
no 12 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/387d9e37-04a0-4ac5-aced-f962e427d636/12-Nihtscada-II)
no 13  (http://www.esnips.com/doc/320523b8-8df4-496d-a4f2-134e9d25a710/13-Schattenhaft)
no 14 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/a1d3a2f7-d61c-49b3-b2d4-98d99521fe66/14-Ruckblick) Same piece as Nocturne, included for completeness' sake

Cartographie  - 1999-2001 First three of aet of seven studies using chance elements and maps as source material, hence title. Not discussed yet.
Scores:
no 1 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/06817b67-516a-4bc1-b674-65cf53431f4e/1-Perdendo) same as Fragments no 5
no 2 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/42400155-d501-42bc-9292-8e9af09975f4/2-Voyages-A%5Bu%5Dstrales)
no 3 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/a97cea93-a87c-48b8-8a21-490b6430b343/3-Black-Jack) same as Fragments no 6
Recordings:
No 1 Perdendo (http://www.esnips.com/doc/d34dd4a2-501e-4a39-95a8-15d9d8e4ebd8/1-Perdendo-small)
No 2 Voyages A[u ]strales (http://www.esnips.com/doc/89cb422e-0d91-4641-ae32-04ea8c8b7509/2-Voyages-A%5Bu%5Dstrales-small)
No 3 Black Jack (http://www.esnips.com/doc/d1343128-bd0d-4020-a554-a79ba07a1023/3-Black-Jack-small)

Vox exigua et fusca - 2001 Rough, harsh viola solo - portrait of Nero-as-artist!
Vox exigua et fusca - score (http://www.esnips.com/doc/03c4f132-d554-42bf-839e-24e22cd39dda/vox-exigua-et-fusca---Score-(final.))

The Chant of Carnus - 2001 Concertante Trumpet piece based on Greek myth. Very rough rehearsal recording. Pages 9-11
Recording:
The Chant of Carnus (http://www.esnips.com/doc/7cf9496c-2d23-4e5c-9d3f-e3d9c2e01cd9/The-Chant--of-Carnus-small-file)

Memorial - 2002-4 Large, unfinished piano piece; all notes chosen 'by chance'; threnody. Discussed on pages 1 and 21
Recording:
Memorial (http://www.esnips.com/doc/547215e9-c13c-4f23-8408-403feaf1562a/Memorial-(small-file)---mp3)

Improvisations - 2003 all composed in brief bursts (half hour at most) over period of a few weeks. First pieces I wrote to simply trust my inner compulsions to some extent. Discussed on  pages 3, and 9-11
Recordings first:
Improvisation no 1 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/22ffeef3-8b5b-4986-aea6-122c21fd3c56/01-Improvisation-1-small-files)
Improvisation no 2 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/898c8d70-a74e-4c03-918e-fa3763ec2b4c/02-Improvisation-2-small-file)
Improvisation no 3 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/b4e7d31a-a76b-403c-a853-d14b00c8c276/03-Improvisation-3-small-file)
Improvisation no 4 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/ddcc09ec-c13b-48b4-8e48-fe1cd6878212/04-Improvisation-4-small-file)
Improvisation no 5 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/d0a015f0-9401-4d3e-b76b-3544eff14056/05-Improvisation-5-small-file)
Improvisation no 6 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/bd4dd73d-f29c-4c5d-910b-c5a778f69bc8/06-Improvisation-6-arc-en-ciel-small-file)
Improvisation no 7 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/66c9a395-12f5-4e1d-b7a3-a74743eb0508/07-Improvisation-7-small-file)
Improvisation no 8 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/8f228a6a-b072-4608-9dcc-e432bb0101db/08-Improvisation-8-small-file)
Improvisation no 9 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/7e9f0e4d-e2d4-4610-8e0d-55dcba62aa31/09-Improvisation-9-small-file)
Improvisation no 10 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/eb0ae586-6af9-4069-ade1-17fa5948fed8/10-Improvisation-10-small-file)
Improvisation no 11 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/bbbdcb00-5fd2-4ec2-a245-10b7b164f6ce/11-Improvisation-11-small-file)
Improvisation no 12 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/e2ad0820-89d9-4cad-9ca9-8543b5d99fbd/12-Improvisation-12-small-file)
Improvisation no 13 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/e0ebfe81-ca14-48f8-926c-13ff07bcea8d/13-Improvisation-13-small-file)
Improvisation no 14 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/f1e2cb55-7563-49ee-a221-84a38f114afb/14-Improvisation-14-small-file)
Improvisation no 15 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/461164a4-cbe3-496f-a7f4-d42f92b29724/15-Improvisation-15-small-file)
Improvisation no 16 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/67df94ee-1dd1-4884-be37-25439448d4d2/16-Improvisation-16-small-file)
Improvisation no 17 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/bd9dbb6d-64ab-4737-a6a0-b52a463ad064/17-Improvisation-17-small-file)
Improvisation no 18 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/e73c957e-6339-4168-84ce-486470f5f49b/18-Improvisation-18-small-file)
Improvisation no 19 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/a142bda8-88b9-4866-b900-22bc86be6c08/19-Improvisation-19-small-file)
Improvisation no 20 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/6001e5c3-5883-4012-a3e3-1aba6d75a0c6/20-Improvisation-20-small-file)
And scores:
Improvisation no 1 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/2acef39b-9ae1-4811-84af-5882e84e2a4e/improv1)
Improvisation no 2 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/035efd74-321a-4c5a-b5f6-74175fda0b21/improv2)
Improvisation no 3 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/290fc9b1-bf6d-4423-81bc-2cb37c7439cd/improv3)
Improvisation no 4 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/04cf43b8-f08b-4db7-b53c-9950b7dbca40/improv4)
Improvisation no 5 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/22be9722-1869-4156-a30d-4684cbf44209/improv5)
Improvisation no 6 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/8de1bf4b-f9fe-4e82-9bc4-9ca01c754a9d/improv6)
Improvisation no 7 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/44a4808c-673f-419a-96b3-78a41581c543/improv7)
Improvisation no 8 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/89f4ddef-7f11-44e6-a572-1e1d3ba13803/improv8)
Improvisation no 9 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/f3b46c82-f10e-4244-9288-31297f4bd884/improv9)
Improvisation no 10 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/5f175ded-3652-4c24-8c50-99ede705c28a/improv10)
Improvisation no 11 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/b75da5db-e34d-491c-a522-9e087199fdd1/improv11)
Improvisation no 12 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/a6408c2f-4028-41f3-98da-8ff9427278fb/improv12)
Improvisation no 13 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/aaac0d57-7217-413e-aa3a-4463c672e301/improv13)
Improvisation no 14 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/365839f5-2998-451c-8366-9adb21a905b2/improv14)
Improvisation no 15 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/9167728c-c2b0-4d98-a230-6f873c0f9121/improv15)
Improvisation no 16 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/ba7110e7-fa51-4f7d-b9ff-d92d5fddc40a/improv16)
Improvisation no 17 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/ad848a75-a467-4700-b9f9-681b6ee781b2/improv17)
Improvisation no 18 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/229757c3-9911-413a-902b-1c3315b97b1b/improv18)
Improvisation no 19 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/165c1ccf-f72b-49fc-a2f8-60569056487b/improv19)
Improvisation no 20 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/35d40bf1-aaf7-432c-9572-a33c9fa36a56/improv20)

Through the Year - 2003 20 pieces for children/about childhood, composed one per day in Autumn 03. Very 'English'  - mild, wistful, simple. Written with my own daughter (my son wasn't born yet), nieces and nephews in mind. Simple and unambitious though they are, I think these are among my very best pieces. There are five for each season, starting with Autumn. Discussed page 4.
Recordings:
no 1 Piano Practice on a Rainy Day (http://www.esnips.com/doc/8bdc7dec-8b45-40ca-9194-c2499178ed46/01-Piano-Practice-(Rainy-Day)-small-file)
no 2 A Walk in the Woods (http://www.esnips.com/doc/378ec5fd-7f61-49dd-8f98-9e98832aca9a/02-A-Walk-in-the-Woods-small-file)
no 3 A Fallen Leaf (http://www.esnips.com/doc/950630da-f51e-4263-8dc0-5ccd56ac3b5c/03-A-Fallen-Leaf-small-file)
no 4 Mountain Echoes (http://www.esnips.com/doc/383e4a59-f6c7-4d02-ae71-1f1b9932bf71/04-Mountain-Echoes-small-file)
no 5 Evening Bell - Birds Circle Overhead (http://www.esnips.com/doc/1dc4d218-7068-4ff0-a702-62de1b0d6001/05-Evening-Bell---Birds-Circle-small-file)
no 6 Snow Starts to Fall (http://www.esnips.com/doc/84ac03af-874e-4b75-ab7d-62e207bb15b6/06-Snow-Starts-to-Fall..-small-file)
no 7 Sunset (http://www.esnips.com/doc/9c0c22d2-93a1-4e7b-beb8-088d17aaaf53/07-Sunset-small-file)
no 8 Cat By the Fireside (http://www.esnips.com/doc/bdc80fb5-a616-460b-9285-24969983de67/08-Cat-by-the-Fireside-small-file)
no 9 Dreaming (http://www.esnips.com/doc/c0078fa2-7984-47f8-95fe-717b6d8c6f2b/09-Dreaming-small-file)
no 10 Moonsong (http://www.esnips.com/doc/0327665c-f4f6-400e-a00d-b55ba3592640/10-Moonsong-small-file)
no 11 Dawn (http://www.esnips.com/doc/0c7f16b9-6913-47fc-9f73-fd5756dc8f63/11-Dawn-small-file)
no 12 Hats Blow Away on a Blustery Day (http://www.esnips.com/doc/bef920ac-7f01-4492-b783-e1bd9dddf11a/12-Hats-Blow-Away..-small-file)
no 13 Clouds in Puddles (http://www.esnips.com/doc/2dff2377-5168-4235-989b-d7996531db61/13-Clouds-in-Puddles-small-file)
no 14 New Shoots (http://www.esnips.com/doc/f0865373-b304-4a9a-832f-81bc37f2c024/14-New-Shoots-small-file)
no 15 Rainbow (http://www.esnips.com/doc/0f256afd-383b-44b6-a7e4-14876fb4d2bd/15-Rainbow-small-file)
no 16 By the River (http://www.esnips.com/doc/292a2cc9-adf4-4816-99aa-2282de1539d4/16-By-the-River-small-file)
no 17 Hide and Seek (http://www.esnips.com/doc/85c51a1d-12d2-4d3c-b643-9e0f9ae816c8/17-Hide-and-Seek-small-file)
no 18 Dreams By the Sea (http://www.esnips.com/doc/593f2332-22c4-42ee-9c0e-c524fcb7234c/18-Dreams-by-the-Sea-small-file)
no 19 Butterflies (http://www.esnips.com/doc/ff38fb99-be7f-4268-b9e8-3c8eccc8ff2d/19-Butterflies-small-file)
no 20 Piano Practice on a Sunny Day (http://www.esnips.com/doc/e56ce2cd-36bf-4618-bfa5-b7a4ecdd1812/20-Piano-Practice-(Sunny-Day)-small-file)
and scores (gaps at the top of each are for the insertion of a picture designed for each piece):
no 1 Piano Practice on a Rainy Day (http://www.esnips.com/doc/099a9f8c-0348-4de5-8e83-3c2d620f128a/y01)
no 2 A Walk in the Woods (http://www.esnips.com/doc/bd6bd374-2d79-44b9-835d-31c66c974345/y02)
no 3 A Fallen Leaf (http://www.esnips.com/doc/1c7051d2-89d6-4ff9-86ce-729433cda836/y03)
no 4 Mountain Echoes (http://www.esnips.com/doc/089ca950-e39b-4cd8-861d-1aa99c438f69/y04)
no 5 Evening Bell - Birds Circle Overhead (http://www.esnips.com/doc/2b44bc84-e2ba-4ef2-b3c1-418380d90e45/y05)
no 6 Snow Starts to Fall (http://www.esnips.com/doc/fa8c2592-582e-42ea-b654-4cd281a53ed6/y06)
no 7 Sunset (http://www.esnips.com/doc/645b0a86-6cbc-46d2-894b-c2e9f005f4f9/y07)
no 8 Cat By the Fireside (http://www.esnips.com/doc/84771918-a6a5-4fee-bc80-fd944e9c43a8/y08)
no 9 Dreaming (http://www.esnips.com/doc/c9bff0a4-9eb0-4cbb-ad69-82472f10df5d/y09)
no 10 Moonsong (http://www.esnips.com/doc/5cd0f912-5e6b-4770-8002-5301f296bff1/y10)
no 11 Dawn (http://www.esnips.com/doc/f9bf99b0-e2fc-4f3e-af7c-bd1fbe7f639a/y11)
no 12 Hat Blows Away on a Blustery Day (http://www.esnips.com/doc/3c913613-a75b-4955-a497-801aa80052df/y12)
no 13 Clouds in Puddles (http://www.esnips.com/doc/735f215b-9654-47eb-a23f-af71dc2bbbca/y13)
no 14 New Shoots (http://www.esnips.com/doc/76a404aa-7153-4ee6-a711-a6f70dd44ea5/y14)
no 15 Rainbow (http://www.esnips.com/doc/4c59405e-4aa1-4852-a352-fe02c7da42f3/y15)
no 16 By the River (http://www.esnips.com/doc/2c6be32b-f6e6-4a6e-a191-81170fdb7381/y16)
no 17 Hide and Seek (http://www.esnips.com/doc/706df98b-2169-4aa9-8376-83ec7e5b3d12/y17)
no 18 Dreams By the Sea (http://www.esnips.com/doc/7927cc0d-43df-422a-8b20-13745734ec08/y18)
no 19 Butterflies (http://www.esnips.com/doc/026d2e05-0259-4809-a7b7-d2254f4f31f9/y19)
no 20 Piano Practice on a Sunny Day (http://www.esnips.com/doc/61ada4b6-5d2c-4a09-9cb8-5d21ac98a4e3/y20)

Little Christmas Pieces - 2003 Interpretations of Christmas carols; three of them (no 1, 5 and 7) set two similarly-themed carols against each other, in the hope that the inherent beauties of each will reflect against the other. Though it doesn't sound it, the first one is in some ways the hardest thing I've written... at least 50 takes till I got this still inaccurate recording! Discussed pages 21-21, 27-8

Recordings
no 1 Angelus-Birjina (http://www.esnips.com/doc/82f3f468-9ad4-4838-91c2-d9e928e21e1e/01-Angelus_Birjina-small-file)
no 2 Bethlehem (http://www.esnips.com/doc/11c8877e-3f94-4595-88e1-35ae7836badc/02-O-Little-Town-of-Bethlehem-small-file)
no 3 Zezulka (http://www.esnips.com/doc/ede21931-44f3-47f0-a50f-786e40c070f5/03-Zezulka-z-lesa-vylitla-small-file)
no 4 Hajej (http://www.esnips.com/doc/c2e0eec5-e74c-45d0-97f5-2a2ed05ef817/04-Hajej,-nynej,-Jezisku-small-file)
no 5 Thy endere-Sweete (http://www.esnips.com/doc/76fcaf2e-814f-4e35-a5ca-c060596e8002/05-Thys-endere_Sweete-was-the-song-small-file)
no 6 Lully (http://www.esnips.com/doc/d3a3644c-067d-435e-8c29-f1415ab9ab96/06-Lully,-lulla-small-file)
no 7 Apple-Wonder (http://www.esnips.com/doc/59117e22-eeea-420b-82b7-520f1ad86a15/07-The-apple-tree_I-wonder-small-file)
Scores
no 1 Angelus-Birjina (http://www.esnips.com/doc/951884e6-6a69-4236-b5ac-d1f992e884df/1birjina)
no 2 Bethlehem (http://www.esnips.com/doc/8c92d995-18e3-4b94-85e6-934a4c2a4342/2bethlehem)
no 3 Zezulka (http://www.esnips.com/doc/5619b75a-d9ac-47a1-91f4-020353d2ca4b/3zezulka)
no 4 Hajej (http://www.esnips.com/doc/564e08ce-8644-4092-a61a-03fa3e10e87d/4hajej)
no 5 Thy endere-Sweete (http://www.esnips.com/doc/63a2d983-fd72-43b0-bbf9-35b24dc44877/5thys)
no 6 Lully (http://www.esnips.com/doc/89153919-9c8b-44b8-b19e-c9db23d5b899/6lully)
no 7 Apple-Wonder (http://www.esnips.com/doc/c3bd6a56-3f86-4df4-a329-5950226b8b5a/7appletree)

Psyche Sonata - 2004. Thoughts of consciousness v. subconsciousness; the thinking mind v. the intuitive mind.... Tonal, but often very drably so, due to droopy chromatics.... Mentioned on page 23

Recording
Psyche Sonata (http://www.esnips.com/doc/c225b7ad-7c64-4f04-9b75-77d53a055531/Psyche-Sonata---small-file)
Score
Psyche Sonata (http://www.esnips.com/doc/052945ee-b178-494a-81d0-8f25ef66c06f/Psyche-Sonata)


X - 2004 Tiny little tenth anniversary piece for my wife - ten note row (rich in whole tones, hence Scriabinesque 'French Sixth' harmony), 10/4 time sig.....unfortunately only 7 bars!  ;D  Page 6, page 18.

Recording
X (http://www.esnips.com/doc/11169caa-b3aa-4f8f-a1b1-019752beccb4/X---mp3-small-file)
Score
X (http://www.esnips.com/doc/bac5ad7f-4f8f-427a-a2c7-f11c7bcd1483/2004---X)


Night Music - 2004 My first pieces for clavichord, composed intuitively, like the Improvisations, but late at night, as befits the instrument. Pages 6 and 8. Headed by Shelley quotation:

'Music, by the night wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument'

Recordings
Night Music 1 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/37e0302e-007b-4bd3-ba7d-0eb6d96a813d/Night-Music-I---mp3-small-file)
Night Music 2 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/9fa4b8c7-11a8-4383-ba36-c57ce5350f9e/Night-Music-II---mp3-small-file)
Night Music 3 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/d43b3312-bbbd-4d75-931b-97cfba2ea9c6/Night-Music-III---mp3-small-file)
Scores
Night Music 1 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/911a1011-1760-4ff1-af8e-4b6968535b08/I)
Night Music 2 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/bf267b20-251e-4067-8912-7b60a0593c57/II)
Night Music 3 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/ce788717-c24c-4f29-86d6-a3b6d892631b/III)


Unfinished Study - 2005 Bright, summery piece jotted down in 5 minutes on holiday in France. Loose limbed two part writing with some influence of Martinu and Perusio!!   ::)  ;D  Page 19

Recording
Unfinished Study (http://www.esnips.com/doc/d8d504b9-2ed1-4c1f-821a-42566de06db9/Unfinished-Study---mp3-small-file)
Score
Unfinished Study (http://www.esnips.com/doc/ca828885-4d35-42d8-9bb5-76eacb18fc7b/2005---Unfinished-Study)

Individuation and Enlightenment2005-2007 Just finished this set of pieces for clavichord/prepared piano. Stylistically more representative, I think. Full notes on 'performance direction' PDF; no. 8 is tacet, so no mp3 (I only uploaded the PDFs a couple of weeks ago or so, but I assume at some point they will be deleted, so I've uploaded them elsewhere too, and the links are below). The recording.....no, let's not be coy, my playing - is pretty abysmal on some of these numbers; I can only hope the pieces are better than my performance suggests.

Recordings
01 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/d37d9228-2e5d-4c54-bf77-079099bf17df/01small)
02 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/79397ee4-7375-4e03-8d5f-63d665f146ca/02small)
03 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/a2698988-8cdc-455b-b2cd-a5ed71bf5472/03small)
04 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/7abf421f-ac91-4563-90a3-4d087d26bb5a/04small)
05 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/7807865f-97fe-444e-83fe-bc22e7676c19/05small)
06 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/1b54c101-626b-46f4-91cf-6512df02a62d/06small)
07 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/ecf89658-e21a-4a55-9a82-e9f56976063f/07small)
09 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/5aa08a83-1f8c-4571-8d6e-d20420907acc/09small)
10 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/e547213e-86e3-4a51-8c67-55a669b2d580/10small)
Scores
01 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/2c52b4c0-6159-4f53-8e6d-9e256e244f99/01)
02 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/b85700da-1bea-4053-b04b-45db265312c7/02)
03 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/12341b86-d941-4408-9dd6-06afb9b9e12c/03)
04 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/8277b3a2-8a87-4647-af87-f6e493cbc28a/04)
05 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/1df77c10-4cce-45e7-aaba-778489b6a129/05)
06 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/276e5a0b-2888-4c9d-9e64-d5e7bc5f789f/06)
07 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/426f187d-896f-4cc4-bea1-95c4db553aba/07)
08 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/86badc12-1cbf-4212-8f25-fb74e60fd1f5/08)
09 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/d0d6f145-2814-4048-8bc7-fa66d2fcafba/09)
10 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/2522cb2f-e772-4c0a-a9db-5862cfd40dd8/10)
Performance Directions (http://www.esnips.com/doc/798f75bb-fdb3-422a-87dc-97f5f98d50cd/I-and-E---performance-directions-etc.)

...mi ritrovai... New Year's Day 2006. In same 'personal' vein as the I and E pieces, particularly the first of them.

Recording
...mi ritrovai... (http://www.esnips.com/doc/9a8c47d8-3d61-457f-b07f-af84ec25c78a/mi-ritrovai----small-file)
Score
...mi ritrovai... (http://www.esnips.com/doc/1d4aeee5-a3ad-40f3-98d5-604e57bba745/...mi-ritrovai)

Nightingale Sonata 2006-2007 Concerned with John Clare (my most local 'Great British Artist') and his vision of the Edenic and timeless bliss of childhood, and its subsequent loss. Superficially....and perhaps at a deeper level too...it  takes the 'form' of a trip made to Royce Wood, home of 'Clare's' nightingales  - its central portion quotes, slowly and statically, 'The Nightingale', a quasi-folksong collected and notated by Clare himself.

Recording
Nightingale Sonata (http://www.esnips.com/doc/ed18c6e2-a8d8-4874-8b7d-57767b0c4d54/Nightingale-Sonata---small)
Score
Nightingale Sonata (http://www.esnips.com/doc/448a6e50-3680-4caf-858e-af2e7b8526f6/Nightingale-Sonata)

A lullaby to silence 2006. Self-explanatory. Title from Keats. Discussed page 15 and pages 20-21

Recording
A lullaby to silence (http://www.esnips.com/doc/1073bfe0-8ad4-438a-be4c-a4c2b460bd4e/A-lullaby-to-silence-small-file)
Score
A lullaby to silence (http://www.esnips.com/doc/dfbe65ee-dd65-4558-ad00-fbf4428ae55a/A-lullaby-to-silence)

Improvisation in 4ths, 5ths, 7ths and 9ths 2006 Again, self-explanatory.

Recording
Improvisation in 4ths, 5ths, 7ths and 9ths (http://www.esnips.com/doc/d15ad9f0-b01d-4b1d-9eae-fa7568f06921/Improvisation-in-4ths,-5ths,-7ths-and-9ths-small-file)
Score
Improvisation in 4ths, 5ths, 7ths and 9ths (http://www.esnips.com/doc/37965d90-aed2-4427-913a-a327566f4ac0/Improvisation-in-4ths,-5ths,-7ths-and-9ths)

Correspondences 2006 A piece prompted by our own Eugene, the correspondences between works quoted in his own compositions, and our own correspondence with him and each other. (More than!) fully described pages 22-23

Recording
Correspondences (http://www.esnips.com/doc/f5c7c9bc-f235-49b4-a1dd-b61b3aae425d/Correspondences-small-file)
Score
Correspondences (http://www.esnips.com/doc/d4f1a190-619a-4a01-9719-c02aa66b4e81/Correspondences)

Sonata 2007 My most recent piece, and the one which has been more significant than any other to me, I think. Discussed pages 29-32

Recording
Sonata (http://www.esnips.com/doc/cce0e49f-c94b-4cf6-9bef-9fc4c9499738/Sonata---small-file)
Score
Sonata (http://www.esnips.com/doc/f34c8a56-324e-4363-856b-6dcfaffd0c5f/Sonata)

And that is nearly it, as far as my compositions with recordings goes....there are a few others, but apart from anything else their scores are in (gradual) preparation, and I'd like to keep them all together for the sake of neatness. Don't forget - I've reduced the quality on all these mp3s for the purposes of quick up-and downloading.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on April 06, 2007, 02:25:36 PM
Hi, Luke!

Nice to see you back in action! I'll start downloading presently. :)

Maciek
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on April 06, 2007, 04:23:21 PM
Improvisation no 17 links to Improvisation no 18. And so does Improvisation no 18.

I did manage to find no 17 in your esnips folder though. :)

Maciek
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: rappy on April 07, 2007, 12:27:04 AM
I just listened to your latest sonata. Fascinating ending! What are the "N ..."s for?

Did you play it yourself? The recording is very good.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 07, 2007, 12:55:10 AM
Quote from: MrOsa on April 06, 2007, 04:23:21 PM
Improvisation no 17 links to Improvisation no 18. And so does Improvisation no 18.

I did manage to find no 17 in your esnips folder though. :)

Maciek

Thanks for bringing that to my attention! It should be fixed now. :-[
Quote from: rappy on April 07, 2007, 12:27:04 AM
I just listened to your latest sonata. Fascinating ending! What are the "N ..."s for?

Did you play it yourself? The recording is very good.

Yes, that's me playing. I'm pleased you like the recording too - the quality is reduced a lot on this version, but to be honest I'm not sure how much difference it makes!

The 'N's indicate (to me and to the interested performer - in certain respects they are only like a key signature change) the derivations of the notes used at this point. The piece uses two strictly limited modes - marked 1 and 2 in the score - and goes on to explore some of the intersections and interactions in the 'development' section - where you'll see bars marked 1-2 and 2-1. The Ns in the coda mean 'negation' - in other words, the notes used are the 'other' notes of the chromatic set.

I know that this sounds a very cerebral way of composing*, but it is in fact an example of the process of stripping-down and finding what is essential that I was talking about in my last post on your thread just now. Using these limited modes is something that my music naturally tends towards (try the Individuation and Enlightenment pieces or ...mi ritrovai for this approach in its purest form); making them interact in this way is the next stage in my development, bringing some dynamism to the form but retaining an inner harmonic logic. For instance, in this case the effect of using the 'negations' is undeniably that of opening harmonic doors and letting in new and unexpected light, right at the end of the piece, which is what I intended. The fact that this seemingly abstruse way of choosing notes is in fact simple, directly audible and leads to interesting results is what has allowed me to feel confident in using it.


*though the closest thing I've seen to it, Xenakis's Herma - where it is used in a different way (based on sets of notes, not modes) for different reasons, and to very different effect - makes any cerebralism in my approach seem like the work of a toddler! Compare my N1 to this indication of the notes used on the last page of that piece (might not show up properly for you, who knows, but you get the general idea!):

                                                        __________
             __  __          __       __        __ __                                     __ __                                       __ __    __
ABC + ABC + ABC + ABC = (AB + AB)C + (AB + AB)C
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: rappy on April 07, 2007, 01:21:49 AM
I think I've understood now. I didn't see the 1 at the beginning  :o
Don't you think strict rules like that limit your possibilities of expression? (That would be a discussion similiar to the 12-tone problem)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 07, 2007, 02:09:51 AM
Quote from: rappy on April 07, 2007, 01:21:49 AM
I think I've understood now. I didn't see the 1 at the beginning  :o
Don't you think strict rules like that limit your possibilities of expression? (That would be a discussion similiar to the 12-tone problem)

That's a very good question, and the answer is, no I don't, firstly because I don't follow any strict rules, I've just found the method which chimes best with my own proclivities, musical and extra-musical, and because I make every decision at every step of the way, based on musical considerations.

Essentially what I am doing is composing using modes - of the same sort as dorian, phrygian or indeed major and minor, though not these ones themselves. Any limitations of expression are only of the same type as the limitation effected by only working in, say, the dorian mode. Now, you certainly can see these as expressive limitations, but I think really they are expressive bonuses, given that in a certain sense, the more chromatically saturated a texture is, the more expression tends towards the same point. In other words, limiting the pitches you can use gives a certain strength and a particular colour and character to a piece which is unobtainable in any other way. Pragmatically speaking, I find that a mode of 6 or 7 notes has enough notes to be workable with whilst limiting itself enough to have its own character; 8 notes or more is useful if you wish to fill in the harmony a little, add subjectivity etc.; 5 notes or less for simpler, more statuesque pieces or as chordal source material. Though I haven't chosen my modes this baldly and manipulatively!

However, using only a single mode certainly does make for shorter pieces, or more sectional pieces, I think - intense and highly expressive but unable to develop beyond a certain point. That's what I found with the my single mode pieces, like Individuation and Enlightenment and ...mi ritrovai..., which is why they are all so tiny (btw, all the I and E pieces use 6 note modes except 4, of which one is a 4 note mode (#7) and one a 9 note mode (#10) - I think these two illustrate well what I was describing at the end of the last paragraph). That brevity in itself is fine, esepcially when it is concomitant with epxressive strength, but when I wanted to write longer pieces I was unable to do so. The method of combining, negating and intersecting modes which I used in the Sonata, though it looks ever-so-mathematical, is really no such thing - it's just a way of making more harmonic source material available, and thus increasing the potential duration and expressive scope (not expressivity) whilst ensuring that there is a cohesion there too.

For instance, if I have two modes of six notes each, which share two of those notes (say, G and D) and which between them are lacking two notes (say C and Ab - I've chosen these two pairs because that's what happens in the Sonata) I can use (for starters):

Mode 1 - 6 notes
Mode 2 - 6 notes
Mode 1-2 - 4 notes (really 1-I(2+1), but I don't like that so much!)
Mode 2-1 - 4 notes (ditto)
Mode 2+1 - 8 notes
I(Mode 2+1) - 2 notes    (I= intersection)
N(Mode 1) - 6 notes
N(Mode 2) - 6 notes
N(Mode 1-2) - 8 notes
N(Mode 2-1) - 8 notes
N(Mode 2+1) - 2 notes

Yes, I know how horrible all this looks, and I feel odd writing it, because I don't think about it in the calculating way it implies - composing with this sort of thing at the back of your mind is really only the same thing as composing whilst weighing up the expressive differences between (7 note) diatonicism and (8-12 note) chromaticsm. In other words, it's standard fare. All the list above really shows, if you see past the jargon, is a selection of modes, or chords, or dyads around which I can hang the structure of my piece. And because what I said above is true - that writing modally may in one sense limit expressive range but in another sense intensifies the expression that it does span - using a variety of related modes like this (with, importantly greater or lesser numbers of notes and degrees of chromatic saturation) gives the piece a much greater expressive scope whilst still retaining the expressive strength of the individual modes and ensuring the coherence of the whole.

The key to the thing is a certain humilty, I think - to me, it is more important that the piece is sincere,  direct and strongly expressive within itself, even if the result is just a short, simple piano piece, than that it strives to be [potentially able to] express everything and ends up not expressing anything particularly strongly. After all, though my Sonata may not [attempt to] express the 'whole world', what it does express it does well enough; if I want to explore different avenues of expression there is nothing stopping me writing another piece, using different modes, to do just that.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 07, 2007, 08:49:34 AM
Howdy, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 07, 2007, 08:51:53 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on April 07, 2007, 08:49:34 AM
Howdy, Luke!

Hey, you made it! I feel honoured to get your first post!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 07, 2007, 09:03:48 AM
You know, in a parallel universe where I had been able to sign on to the new forum earlier, I re-started your thread for you, under the title Ottevanger's Omphaloscopy :-)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 07, 2007, 09:05:59 AM
Thank heavens for small mercies!

(Notice how restrained I was - I had similar thoughts re. the Henning residence!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on April 07, 2007, 10:44:04 AM
Hey, I wanted to start threads for the both of you!

Now you can starting thanking the heavens above! :-X ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Mark G. Simon on April 07, 2007, 03:33:14 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on April 07, 2007, 02:09:51 AM

Mode 1 - 6 notes
Mode 2 - 6 notes
Mode 1-2 - 4 notes (really 1-I(2+1), but I don't like that so much!)
Mode 2-1 - 4 notes (ditto)
Mode 2+1 - 8 notes
I(Mode 2+1) - 2 notes    (I= intersection)
N(Mode 1) - 6 notes
N(Mode 2) - 6 notes
N(Mode 1-2) - 8 notes
N(Mode 2-1) - 8 notes
N(Mode 2+1) - 2 notes

Yes, I know how horrible all this looks, and I feel odd writing it, because I don't think about it in the calculating way it implies -

Yeah, when you put it in chart form like this it looks intimidating. But the mode idea itself sounds sensible. And I'm sure it becomes automatic pretty soon, so that you don't have to think about it too much.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 08, 2007, 12:29:15 AM
Thanks for that - you're exactly right (and I'm glad you think the idea sounds sensible). If you replaced that list with one that went:

C major scale
G major scale
Chromatic scale
Diminished seventh chord
etc - you get my drift!

you get the same sort of thing - a group of resources that taken together help a composer to find his way. Now of course in tonal music it would be possible to 'explain' all chords, modes and scales as being just a subset of the chromatic scale, but that, though correct, would be missing the point somewhat, because it isn't how composers use them - they use them as separate but related and mutually-enriching resources. In the same way I might use a four-note mode, which is a subset of a nine-note mode, as something related but functionally different, not just as a limited version of the larger set.

Apart from the fact that I think it works, the really important thing about this method for me - combined, importantly, with quite a few other principles I tend to follow - is that I have arrived at it through long and intense thought, supplemented by coincidence and moments of inspiration. In combination with these other principle it is the 'right' way for me, I think. That feeling gives me so much more confidence as a composer - the knowledge that I can create a unique but coherent set of harmonic source materials in this way, and that I can use their implications to shape them in suggestive ways (the 'negations' at the end of the Sonata, for example, being one among infinite possibilities of this sort) has opened up new avenues for me.

I imagine, Mark, that your use of and approach to the 5-29 set springs from a similar combination of abstract thinking and gut instinct that it is the right approach for you.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 09, 2007, 01:01:08 AM
Am spending Easter Monday morning in the garden trying to compose something a little clarinety [I'm not here insde at the computer at all  ;D]. Struggling a little bit, to be honest, but it will start to flow soon, I hope.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 09, 2007, 04:01:21 AM
Garden's a good spot for clarineterly inspirings :-)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Mark G. Simon on April 09, 2007, 04:40:22 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on April 08, 2007, 12:29:15 AM
I imagine, Mark, that your use of and approach to the 5-29 set springs from a similar combination of abstract thinking and gut instinct that it is the right approach for you.

I was just thinking while reading your description of your modes that we're both trying to do something similar, which is carve out a distinctive piece of the pitch universe through self-imposed limitations on pitch selection.

Good luck on the clarinety work.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 11, 2007, 12:45:31 PM
Aforementioned clarinety thing giving me a bit of trouble, I wrote out a quick piece for solo flute today, a study just to get my eye in - called Ad Marginem, because of the simple way it moves towards registral extremes, though there's no big deal about this. The title, btw, is from this amazing picture by Paul Klee (to be viewed as if looking upwards from the bottom of the Nile)

(http://www.abcgallery.com/K/klee/klee19.JPG)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 19, 2007, 07:55:52 AM
Clarinet piece starting to pick up pace a little now, thank goodness.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on April 19, 2007, 08:26:07 AM
I'm hoping all this soliloquising will lead to some solo cello music!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on April 19, 2007, 08:32:40 AM
I have actually been thinking a lot about solo cello music, and I thought it would be really interesting to commission works that. like the Bach Suites, contain no articulation marks or dynamic markings, and no precise tempo indications, and seeing how composers deal with the challenge. I think to much of modern solo stuff relies on 'effects' and solo string scores are usually amongst the worst for copious amounts of detail. If Bach could get the astonishing range of subtleties that he does, using only the tonal system, then think what would be possible now. There is of course the 5th Sarabande, which astonishes me every time I hear it - those wide intervals and almost atonal harmony - Its just three lines long, and contains every semitone! I think that it approaches the level of achievement of the Chaconne for solo violin (though that's just my personal feeling and I'm sure blasphemous in Bachian circles).

I realise that this idea wouldn't be apt in all situations, but I think it might be interesting.

Oops. Sorry to use your thread as a musing tuffet! I must stop that.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 19, 2007, 08:42:52 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on April 19, 2007, 07:55:52 AM
Clarinet piece starting to pick up pace a little now, thank goodness.

Splendid! You know I'll be most pleased to have a look whenever you're set with it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 19, 2007, 08:43:28 AM
Quote from: Guido on April 19, 2007, 08:32:40 AM
I have actually been thinking a lot about solo cello music, and I thought it would be really interesting to commission works that. like the Bach Suites, contain no articulation marks or dynamic markings, and no precise tempo indications, and seeing how composers deal with the challenge. I think to much of modern solo stuff relies on 'effects' and solo string scores are usually amongst the worst for copious amounts of detail. If Bach could get the astonishing range of subtleties that he does, using only the tonal system, then think what would be possible now. There is of course the 5th Sarabande, which astonishes me every time I hear it - those wide intervals and almost atonal harmony - Its just three lines long, and contains every semitone! I think that it approaches the level of achievement of the Chaconne for solo violin (though that's just my personal feeling and I'm sure blasphemous in Bachian circles).

Don't see why it should be. It's only lesser in that it's shorter, has fewer notes and is less overpowering in archtectonic terms. But its relatively few notes, Webern-like, contain a huge amount. This was the piece I chose to play at my Grandfather's funeral, in fact. I think it's the one our Sean mentions frequently too, isn't it?

Anyway, I like your idea. At some point I might take you up on it!

Quote from: Guido on April 19, 2007, 08:32:40 AM
Oops. Sorry to use your thread as a musing tuffet! I must stop that.

No, on the contrary. Muse away - it's a pleasure to host it ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 19, 2007, 08:43:57 AM
Guido, I am sure Luke is too gracious a host to object.

And anyway, the world needs more musing tuffets!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 19, 2007, 08:45:29 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on April 19, 2007, 08:42:52 AM
Splendid! You know I'll be most pleased to have a look whenever you're set with it!

Thanks - that would be great. It has a piano part, by the way...

Still a long way to go with it, I hasten to add.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 19, 2007, 08:47:58 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on April 19, 2007, 08:43:57 AM
And anyway, the world needs more musing tuffets!

A phrase good enough to seem to call out for a thread of its own, somehow - something like Mahler Titan's Musing Tuffet... but on second thoughts, no - what is an Omphaloskeptic Outpost if not a synonym for a Musing Tuffet, I ask you? Keep your musing right here!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on April 19, 2007, 08:50:43 AM
I have been playing the Bernstein Clarinet Sonata on the cello quite alot lately. Its all very high in the cello register of course (and I imagine a lot more effort than it would be on the clarinet) but I love it so much (and I think it sounds better on the cello! :P). Yo-Yo Ma recorded it (along with what is, I think, the finest recording of the Ives Piano Trio) and its sublime (apparently Berstein OKayed the idea before he died...). The clarinet is the cello of the wind family!

I'm quite pleased with musing tuffet myself! I will endeavour to use it more often.

And about the Bachian style solo cello piece - I don't know if it would work at all, it was just an idea..

Thinking about this a bit more - I just remembered that this is how Carter's amazing Cello Sonata was composed (sort of). When he handed it to Greenhouse (the cellist) it had very scant dynamic markings, and absolutely no slurs or articulation marks of any kind, though the tempos were already fixed. Carter asked Greenhouse to add them on his own as he saw fit, and he would review them later. I wonder if this means that the markings can be iterprted quite loosely, or whether Carter was completely happy with Greenhouse's ideas (presumably he was at least slightly, otherwise he wouldn;t have published it that way. Apparently no one wanted to publish it initially).

I think one of the main reasons that I find it interesting as an idea, is that it blurs the line between composer and performer/interpreter somewhat, a line that has been much sharpened and focussed in recent years, something which I think is a real loss to music.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 26, 2007, 09:44:46 AM
Clarinet music! We want it!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 26, 2007, 10:18:07 AM
Not to worry, Karl. Though I often seem to have stalled in the past few months, not in this case. I'm working on it as often as time allows, but being really careful, taking my time and being more ruthless than usual - happy to cross out pages of work for the greater good. I'm hoping this is going to be one of my better pieces.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 26, 2007, 10:20:11 AM
I understand gradual work, around other things . . . I had not at all imagined that you had stalled, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 02, 2007, 03:26:55 AM
Working on it every minute I can - which isn't as impressive as it sounds, as I don't have many minutes! However, the middle movement is now pretty much done, I think, and the first movement about half done, maybe slightly more. Third movement hardly begun yet....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 02, 2007, 03:45:30 AM
Gradual progress, excellent!  That's the ticket!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 06, 2007, 01:51:11 PM
The middle movement has been playable all the way through for a few days now; and I've been working intensely on the last movement today, so that it's nearly complete, at least in first draft. The first movement is still missing a minute or two of music, but the whole thing is now taking proper shape at last.

Given the amount I'm working on it, it is odd that I'm not more pleased with it - from note to note I think it is OK (which makes it harder to tinker with, though I'm doing so more than I usually do), but I'm not sure about it as a whole yet, for all sorts of reasons. But then that's why I'm keeping working at it...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 07, 2007, 05:06:51 AM
This is great news. So is it a sonata?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 07, 2007, 05:18:46 AM
Well, speaking as someone who has not yet seen the score  ;) . . .

Any work for single-line instrument plus piano, in three movements, can plausibly be called a sonata.

I think one could even 'get away' with that, if none of the movements makes any particular reference to sonata-allegro design.

Though the determining factor will perforce be, what Luke feels like calling the work  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 07, 2007, 11:19:10 AM
Yes, it is indeed a Sonata (one with an added titular noun as in previous pieces, actually). Been writing a few of those recently, it seems, but this is the first multi-movement one. More work today - I'm still concerned, amongst other things, about the balance between intuition and design in the piece (given that I've been such an intuition-first kind of composer recently) and also, of course, about technical clarinet matters (can it play pattern x at speed y naturally and that sort of thing). In my head it's all fine, but I stand to be corrected - as a cellist of sorts I know exactly how it feels to have something written for one that looks cellistic to the composer but is pointlessly tricky in actuality. I will consult before putting the final seal on the piece, of course.


Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 07, 2007, 11:39:54 AM
Luke, not to criticise your work, which I admire without reservations, but for the sake of exchanging opinions - don't you think composers should sometimes expand the standard way an instrument is played? Wasn't for instance,Tchaikovsky's 1st Piano Concerto considered completely unplayable when it was first written? And look at it today - part of the standard piano repertoire! Actually, I must say I like your respectful approach (I remember you saying quite a lot about this on other threads) but sometimes I wonder... >:D ;D

Maciek
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 07, 2007, 12:20:26 PM
Interesting question!

I agree with your general point, actually - but I also feel that to be 'healthy' a work should be well-balanced on all levels, of which performance difficulty is one. That is to say - a piece which is extraordinary and new in all other aspects is perfectly within its rights to ask the player to do extraordinary and new things (the most extraordinary and new pieces also therefore being the most difficult - Ferneyhough's Unity Capsule or cello Time and Motion Study, for instance), but something is out of kilter if a piece which is in other respects perfectly simple in design and effect can only be so by demanding outlandish contortions or mental gymnastics of its performer. (This is where Satie gets a deliberately perverse pleasure, sometimes, I think, which is supportive of my point rather than otherwise.) I remember talking to Rappy about this re. his trombone sonata - not that his piece was outlandishly difficult for the player necessarily; I'm not a trombonist so I don't know. In that case I was worried that if it did turn out to be very tricky then the piece's style and context would be out of step with the technique it required.

My new piece is pretty modest in proportions - approx. 6 minutes - 4 minutes - 6 minutes - and is structurally very straightforward (though with some more subtle interconnections between movements); the harmonic language is again based on the modal technique I used in my piano Sonata, though is obviously a little more involved - this means, naturally, that pitches recur with greater frequency than normal; rhythmically too the piece avoids extreme complication (there are some passages which look complex - the notation starts out simple but leads by logical steps up various tuplet-haunted alleys! - but which, when looked at carefully, also turn out to be fairly straightforward). In toto, the piece is a normal clarinet sonata with plenty of indivdual features but nothing drastically extraordinary about it; I'd like its performance difficulty to be of the same sort. The piano part, I know, is of this type - intricate, active, but never overly finger-twisting.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 07, 2007, 01:05:10 PM
Yes, Rappy's Trombone Sonata was the thread I had in mind (thanks for reminding me where it was ;D). Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I was hoping to start a heated discussion ending in a flame war so that I, as a newly fledged mod, would have something to do. ;) But your thoughts are so reasonable I cannot but agree... ;D What a perfectly balanced approach!

Maciek
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 07, 2007, 02:15:52 PM
Quote from: MrOsa on May 07, 2007, 01:05:10 PMI was hoping to start a heated discussion ending in a flame war so that I, as a newly fledged mod, would have something to do. ;)

Oooh - a flame war, on a thread of mine!? I can only dream of such activity! Keep on trying, please!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 07, 2007, 02:43:25 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 07, 2007, 02:15:52 PM
Oooh - a flame war, on a thread of mine!? I can only dream of such activity! Keep on trying, please!

Maybe if you mentioned Mahler more often... ::) 0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 07, 2007, 02:53:05 PM
Flame war, here? Impossible.

Though I mention in passing that I consider Luke a finer composer overall than Elgar  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 07, 2007, 02:57:35 PM
Quote from: MrOsa on May 07, 2007, 02:43:25 PM
Maybe if you mentioned Mahler more often... ::) 0:)

How dare you sully my thread with that name! You, sir, are a cad!


;)

(there, how was that? - any flames yet?)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 07, 2007, 02:58:50 PM
A cad?  You dare call Maciek a cad?  Why, you pup!  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 07, 2007, 02:59:25 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 07, 2007, 02:57:35 PM
(there, how was that? - any flames yet?)

Almost there but not yet.

No, wait a minute...

Quote from: karlhenning on May 07, 2007, 02:53:05 PM
I consider Luke a finer composer overall than Elgar  8)

Quick! Run for cover! It's coming! ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 07, 2007, 03:01:05 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on May 07, 2007, 02:53:05 PM
Though I mention in passing that I consider Luke a finer composer overall than Elgar  8)

I'd hold fire on making any judgements until you see my clarinet writing....

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 07, 2007, 03:03:18 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on May 07, 2007, 02:58:50 PM
A cad?  You dare call Maciek a cad?  Why, you pup!  ;D


That's more like it! [rubbing wands together and warming them on the flames.... of the burning manuscript of Mahler 10 I just discovered in the garage >:D]
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 07, 2007, 03:10:21 PM
But you said you were holding fire!

Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 07, 2007, 03:03:18 PM
the burning manuscript of Mahler 10 I just discovered in the garage >:D]

Good riddance! >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 07, 2007, 03:13:03 PM
Yes, that unexpected forty minute long central movement looked like a bit of a bore...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 07, 2007, 03:31:39 PM
OK, hopefully this will work: Wagner is an even worse composer than Beethoven - Its all just aural wanking to my ears.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 07, 2007, 03:36:44 PM
LOL! Now I'm picking myself off the floor. :D













Because, frankly, how could there ever be a composer worse than Beethoven? ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 07, 2007, 03:38:40 PM
That tactic might work, Guido, but only once Sean comes over here. It's precisely the discussion we've had more than once before, of course, though not perhaps in such fruity terms. ;D




Edit - just saw that, Maciek - LOLOL!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 07, 2007, 03:41:03 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 07, 2007, 03:38:40 PM
That tactic might work, but only once Sean comes over here.

Just you wait till I have my say about tonality... ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 07, 2007, 04:16:19 PM
Tonality: the resort of pathetic lowest common denominator idiots who just hate thinking, and composers that use tonality are complete sell outs and hate art. There were no great composers before Schoenberg.

(Wow its so much easier writing conceited toss than thinking hard about things. Maybe I should do this for a living and become a music critic! I'm not far off as it is!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 08, 2007, 02:01:48 AM
On second thought - why waste my time on that outdated subject... ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on May 08, 2007, 09:07:02 AM
Quote from: Guido on May 07, 2007, 03:31:39 PM
OK, hopefully this will work: Wagner is an even worse composer than Beethoven - Its all just aural wanking to my ears.

Come off it Guido, who are you, Casanova reincarnate?

And the big W is masculinity in music as never thought possible...





Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 08, 2007, 09:51:36 AM
Quote from: Sean on May 08, 2007, 09:07:02 AM
And the big W is masculinity in music as never though possible...

Tchah!  Only girlie-men wear silken underthings.

W's type of masculinity is the Village People singing "Macho Man."
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on May 08, 2007, 10:12:30 AM
Karl, Wagner would have had the Rheinmadens swimming in your blood before making for his next feminine conquest...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 08, 2007, 10:18:07 AM
Conquest of the corset shop. A bloodthirsty transvestite is still a transvestite. Talking of which, there have never been, nor will there ever be a great female composer because women lack the obsessional mindset required to reach artistic perfection. Also they lack any real sense of creativity.

Tristan and Isolde is about love! Love for Christ's sake!! If he were manly it would be about cars and war and strippers.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 08, 2007, 10:30:51 AM
Quote from: Guido on May 08, 2007, 10:18:07 AM
If he were manly it would be about cars and war and strippers.

Careful, Guido! I think I sense a libretto commission coming your way...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 08, 2007, 10:55:20 AM
A man's stripper. (http://www.amazon.com/Paint-Stripper-23940/dp/B000GAUXHY/ref=sr_1_5/002-7979366-0336018?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1178650492&sr=1-5) <-- Family Friendly, Don't Worry!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 08, 2007, 11:05:52 AM
(salivating:)
Oooooh, I need to get that!!! :o
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: bwv 1080 on May 08, 2007, 11:09:11 AM
Quote from: MrOsa on May 08, 2007, 11:05:52 AM
(salivating:)
Oooooh, I need to get that!!! :o

Stick with Vodka, sniffing that stuff can be dangerous
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: springrite on May 08, 2007, 11:10:45 AM
Quote from: bwv 1080 on May 08, 2007, 11:09:11 AM
Stick with Vodka, sniffing that stuff can be dangerous

Sniffing? I am sure he's more virtuosic than that!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 08, 2007, 11:16:19 AM
Well, Luke, with the way this thread is going now I'm sure you couldn't be happier. >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 08, 2007, 11:32:02 AM
I have literally no idea what happened after my last post - not one of the posts makes sense!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 08, 2007, 11:42:23 AM
Oh, as if your last post did make sense!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 08, 2007, 11:49:16 AM
Guys, I am so grateful for the sterling work you've been conducting on behalf of my little old thread - I'm touched, I tell you   :-*  At last a flame war to call my very own!


Now, carry on...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 08, 2007, 11:50:15 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on May 08, 2007, 10:55:20 AM
A man's stripper. (http://www.amazon.com/Paint-Stripper-23940/dp/B000GAUXHY/ref=sr_1_5/002-7979366-0336018?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1178650492&sr=1-5) <-- Family Friendly, Don't Worry!

You realize, this originated as a tool for editing Wagner scores and libretti.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 08, 2007, 11:52:25 AM
Quote from: MrOsa on May 08, 2007, 11:42:23 AM
Oh, as if your last post did make sense!
Haha, well they do say that squirrels hate ducks!

What I meant was that I sensed the next comments were rather more nonsequitur as we moved into more post modern flaming.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 08, 2007, 11:55:15 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on May 08, 2007, 11:50:15 AM
You realize, this originated as a tool for editing Wagner scores and libretti.

..until it was realised it was a little too delicate a tool for the task at hand.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 08, 2007, 12:02:21 PM
Is
Quote from: Guido on May 08, 2007, 11:52:25 AM
post modern flaming
the sort of flaming that hangs its argument on spurious stylistic referentiality and quotation? ;D You big
Quote from: karlhenninggirlie-man
you
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 08, 2007, 01:03:35 PM
Well, at least we're back on musical ground... ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 08, 2007, 02:00:36 PM
This really isn't very convincing... why don't I start by posting a little message I sent to Sean:

QuoteI listened to Tosca, and I have to say that it's one of the strangest and if I'm being honest worst pieces I have heard that is considered to be 'major literature'. It's just melody! Where's the harmony and rhythm?!! It sounds like what I wish I could have composed aged 10 - is all Puccini's music as vacuous as this?

I was of course being a little facetious, but it really did mystefy me - why is this music seriously discussed? I understand (and appreciate even!) the lovely tunes, but given that that is all there is it makes for very unfulfilling and strangely dissapointing listening. I literally couldn't believe how little non-implied harmony there was!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 08, 2007, 02:07:20 PM
I... er... ehm... er...

(dumbfounded)

No, it's no use. How can I go into a flame war when I'm speechless...?

Anyway: I beg to differ. Puccini was for a long time my favorite opera composer, the only one apart from Szymanowski that I tolerated in fact. So... well... I'm just not buying what you wrote there! Come on, Tosca is amazing! I don't even understand what you mean, saying there's no harmony there - but of course there is!!!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 08, 2007, 02:08:37 PM
Who is the better opera composer - Puccini or Luke. Well, that's an entirely different question (especially assuming Luke hasn't composed an opera so far)...

Maciek
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: bwv 1080 on May 08, 2007, 02:57:49 PM
well Luke this thread should have given you the inspiration for your first opera: a pastiche of cut up Wagner scores and libretti all done under the influnce of huffing paint stripper.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 08, 2007, 03:05:22 PM
Why is Tosca amazing? I was so bored by the the end of it - just a collection of mawkish (I use that word too much, but I love it!) tunes pasted together to form a dramatic but painfully dull story.

I know there is harmony (again I was being a little inflammatory!), but its just so simplistic whenever anyone is singing that I found it laughable.

All of it is effects...

I realise I must be missing something, because it is not famous for no reason - maybe I should just try listening to some of the other operas, and just get into it that way. (I have begun to appreciate Mahler in a similar way). I just feel that the music is insincere and has too much surface emotion, without saying anything truly meaningful. Give me Vanessa or Tristan any day (two operas recently discovered by me.)

(BTW - I know this is all a deeply heretical line to take, and that its essentially a prolonged and uninteresting insight into my struggles to understand music that people usually have no trouble liking and understanding. But you guys are always so helpful! Why is that I like so much music that other people find difficult and abstruse, and find so much standard fair so difficult to listen to?)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Mark G. Simon on May 08, 2007, 05:08:33 PM
Guido, you are certainly kinder to Tosca than Joseph Kerman, whose roasting of the opera contains such phrases as "shabby little shocker", "... of café music banality throughout", and "the orchestra screams the first thing that comes into its head".
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 09, 2007, 06:13:23 AM
Haha... I'll have to look his stuff up!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 09, 2007, 06:22:59 AM
Quote from: Guido on May 09, 2007, 06:13:23 AM
Haha... I'll have to look his stuff up!

There's a revised edition out of Opera as Drama ::

(http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/41G8T0VVDDL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 09, 2007, 10:22:19 AM
Quote from: Mark G. Simon on May 08, 2007, 05:08:33 PM
"the orchestra screams the first thing that comes into its head".

Well, if Puccini was the first to apply some sort of alleatoric technique, then I'm all the more impressed!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 09, 2007, 11:30:19 AM
Kerman's phrase applies above all to the very end of the opera which is indeed, on these terms, an almost inexplicable fiasco.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 09, 2007, 11:34:03 AM
Janacek, however, nicked a bit of Butterfly for his Katya (the entrance music of the eponymous characters), so Puccini can't be all bad.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 09, 2007, 11:43:45 AM
See?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on May 09, 2007, 11:46:28 AM
Luke, by the way I just got hold of Broucek for the first time, haven't played it yet but looking forward to it (I know the other major ones now, apart from Sarka and The Beginning of a romance)...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 09, 2007, 11:51:51 AM
Quote from: Sean on May 09, 2007, 11:46:28 AM
Luke, by the way I just got hold of Broucek for the first time, haven't played it yet but looking forward to it (I know the other major ones now, apart from Sarka and The Beginning of a romance)...

Well, they're the least important of the nine, not really major ones at all, so I think you're doing fine!

I adore Broucek, but it is in some respects the hardest of the late five to click with, which is to do, I think, with the plot and the comic pace, and the way these impact upon the kaleidoscopic music. Give it a little time if it doesn't take hold at once.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on May 09, 2007, 01:37:41 PM
Also recorded a broadcast of the choral Songs of Hradcany recently- good stuff, an underrated one I think.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 09, 2007, 10:01:37 PM
Yes, I agree - one of his subtler works. I have the Wood recording, which has some more fairly unusual couplings and is worth tracking down.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 18, 2007, 05:44:43 AM
Not to hurry you, at all, Luke! Just a friendly check-in on the State of the Clarinet Sonata  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 18, 2007, 06:24:26 AM
Just checking this at work, which is a new one for me!

The thing is near finished now - just one or two troublesome spots in the first movement to do, and then of course a thorough round of editing. But the bulk of it is done. ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 18, 2007, 06:25:54 AM
Splendid!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 18, 2007, 06:28:05 AM
I hope the finished object doens't come as an enormous let down, given the lengthy wait! Much easier when I write a piece in 5 minutes - then if it's crap I have an excuse ;D ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 18, 2007, 10:19:10 AM
Well, you can always say that you simply worked on it too long. 8)

(But, of course, you won't need to say anything like that at all because there will be no reason for excusing yourself.) :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 21, 2007, 02:50:13 AM
Well, the piece is finished. When I realised, with a shock, that I had finally joined the whole thing together in a way I am happy with, I had a peculiar sensation such as I haven't had before with a composition. I've grown so used to rejigging the piece, suddenly having the thing done felt odd and empty; I had to go and have a lie down, and I slept for a few hours! ;D

You won't be surprised to hear, however, that i still have to tie up the loose ends before I can post the thing here.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 21, 2007, 05:31:51 AM
Bravo, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 22, 2007, 05:54:41 AM
Not quite ready to put up the score yet, but later today I might put up a strange little recording I've cobbled together. Not having a clarinetist to hand, but convinced that I could still do better than MIDI, I've made a little experiment. Last night I recorded the piano part of the sonata; today, in my daughter's bedroom, on (believe it or not!) her Yamaha keyboard, I recorded a 'clarinet' part, and overdubbed it onto the piano part. I only had time for one take of each (and I really should have practised the piano part first!), so there are a few mistakes; obviously ensemble would be much better if both instruments were playing at the same time; and I need to work on the balance, as the 'clarinet' is much too low in the mix at present. But it works, in principle, and is vastly more human and flexible than the MIDI version. [Continue to] watch this space. ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 22, 2007, 06:00:10 AM
You interest me strangely, Luke  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 22, 2007, 07:10:41 AM
Needs must, Karl!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 22, 2007, 10:31:18 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 22, 2007, 05:54:41 AM
[Continue to] watch this space. ;)

You bet I will! A chance to hear you playing the clarinet! Wow! ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 22, 2007, 10:49:04 AM
how exciting!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 22, 2007, 10:55:29 AM
Guido, I think you should record Luke's clarinet line on the cello, what do you say?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 22, 2007, 11:40:36 AM
I hope there's no mocking my mock-up going on  ;D At some point I will ask my clarinet teacher to cast her eye over the piece, but this version will do for now.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 22, 2007, 11:50:35 AM
Glasgow Intelligencer: Luke does for the clarinet what Hockney's Polaroid did for portraiture! A good night out!   ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 22, 2007, 11:54:45 AM
I would be more than happy to play the clarinet line on the cello! Unfortunately I don't have a microphone...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 22, 2007, 11:59:29 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on May 22, 2007, 11:50:35 AM
Glasgow Intelligencer: Luke does for the clarinet what Hockney's Polaroid did for portraiture! A good night out!   ;D

You'd better believe it, Karl.  ;D

(You're making me all shy, you know  :-[ ;D )

Guido - I'm not sure how well the piece would transfer across; I think it would need quite an overhaul. However, I'm considering picking on the cello for my next waste-of-time. And, if so, I promise not to recreate it in the slightly bizarre way I'm doing now (I'll probably just pop 45 minutes down the A14 with my microphone and knock on your door)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 22, 2007, 12:29:57 PM
Haha! Well you can play the cello too, I'm sure just as well as I can. My skills are somewhat...atrophied - bloody Cambridge not letting me practice enough.

Very good news all round
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 22, 2007, 01:04:50 PM
Like your new avatar, Guido! Did you draw it yourself?

(Sorry for the off topic - didn't know where to post this. Don't think it's personal enough for a PM. ;D)

(Also - there's always a chance of a flame war breaking out so why not try? ;))
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 22, 2007, 01:05:37 PM
It is time for another Outpost Flame War!

;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 22, 2007, 03:44:16 PM
Its a portrait of Rostropovich drawn by Dali. Here's the full picture:

(http://www.jsbach.net/images/dali-rostropovich.jpg)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 22, 2007, 03:58:01 PM
Will it be very rude if I say I don't think it's a perfect likeness...? 0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 23, 2007, 04:30:27 AM
Yes. It would.

But seriously, I think it really captures comething of his essence - in the posture or face or bow arm, or something... Of course its a just a scribbled sketch as a gift to Rostropovich, but I like it!

Also - Wot, no recording?!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 06:05:48 AM
It's coming. Just doing a bit more editing on it right now, actually. Though don't let that foster any illusions...

I've been thinking about my next piece today. It will, indeed, probably be a cello piece. I'm keen to keep up the momentum I've got going with this current piece.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 23, 2007, 06:08:26 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 06:05:48 AM
I've been thinking about my next piece today. It will, indeed, probably be a cello piece. I'm keen to keep up the momentum I've got going with this current piece.

How about a clarinet/cello duet, Luke?  My friend the violist is introducing me to a cellist who, he assures me, likes playing new music.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 06:52:32 AM
Well, that's a very interesting idea, Karl. I had in mind, tediously enough, another piece with piano. But I might reconsider. Wait till you've heard this effort, though, before you suggest performing any Ottevanger!

I've withheld long enough; here at least are my notes to the piece; the mocked-up recording and score will follow soon, I promise.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 23, 2007, 07:00:32 AM
Well, the textual notes don't frighten me  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 23, 2007, 08:16:15 AM
Cello and piano! I don't know any clarinettists...

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 23, 2007, 09:42:31 AM
You must choose, Luke. Use the Force!  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 23, 2007, 11:18:31 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on May 23, 2007, 06:08:26 AM
How about a clarinet/cello duet, Luke?  My friend the violist is introducing me to a cellist who, he assures me, likes playing new music.

Why not ask Luke to use the force on a clarinet, viola and cello trio?

Just a thought... ::)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 23, 2007, 11:19:52 AM
An excellent thought, Maciek!  The violist has chops, too.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 23, 2007, 11:28:30 AM
I suddenly realized we may be going against Guido here. Why not make the clarinet and viola parts ad libitum, Luke? ;D

(Boy, we'll soon have the whole piece planned out before Luke even knows he's being asked for it. ;D)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 23, 2007, 11:29:32 AM
Guido, come to Boston!  Then, you'll know a clarinetist!  :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 11:42:54 AM
...not in the Biblical sense, I assume. :o

How about a compromise - clarinet, cello, piano? Never been done before  ;) [cough]op114[/cough]
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 23, 2007, 11:45:06 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 11:42:54 AM
...not in the Biblical sense, I assume. :o

Well, if so, I will not be that clarinetist . . . .

QuoteHow about a compromise - clarinet, cello, piano? Never been done before  ;) [cough]op114[/cough]

Here, at least, the difficulty is that I have yet to meet a musically dependable pianist.

But at some point, I will.

So, write what you feel musically motivated to write!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 11:48:48 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on May 23, 2007, 11:45:06 AM
Here, at least, the difficulty is that I have yet to meet a musically dependable pianist.

Really? You surprise me.

The idea of clarinet and cello is rather appealing, I must say....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 23, 2007, 11:55:37 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 11:48:48 AM
Really? You surprise me.

The former music director here at St Paul's was an organist rather than pianist, though still game to try some piano music.  But now that he's "gone Salem," I am practically piano-less.  I'm trying out the new fellow this June with Mirage, which has very low-stress piano writing . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 23, 2007, 12:28:17 PM
This arguing about exactly what Luke should be concerning himself with next could easily turn into a flame war! I get the feeling that Luke generally writes what he is compelled to write...

On the general subject of cello/clarinet works: Phyllis Tate wrote a rather brilliant piece for clarinet and cello if I recall correctly (though it has been a long time since I have heard it.) A cursory glance at Amazon produces no recording results - Does anyone own a recording? I'm quite fond of Leighton's Variations on an American Hymn tune for clarinet, cello and piano (though not my favourite of his opus...).

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 23, 2007, 12:35:26 PM
Quote from: Guido on May 23, 2007, 12:28:17 PM
This arguing about exactly what Luke should be concerning himself with next could easily turn into a flame war!

And what are we waiting for!?   ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 23, 2007, 12:38:14 PM
http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=6672878&cart=543450533&style=classical

Here are sound clips of the Tate work.

Well Karl, I was just waiting for you to say something stupid so that we could get started. Something like: "the clarinet is a serious instrument worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as the cello."
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 23, 2007, 12:43:48 PM
Heaven preserve us from clarinettocelli!  >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 12:51:52 PM
That's a kind of pasta, isn't it?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 23, 2007, 12:53:20 PM
No, the vermicello is decidedly a stringy instrument  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 12:55:03 PM
Vermicello: n Instrument of the chordophone family, its strings differing from the cello's in being made out of rat gut.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 23, 2007, 01:10:20 PM
.....
























...........


























Er... Wanted to post something inflammatory but couldn't come up with anything. I'm such a gentle soul, you know... 0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 01:29:39 PM
OK, I'm going to take my life in my hands. Be gentle with me:

Here's (http://www.esnips.com/doc/ac70a163-3779-4616-a111-f6541987f37f/piano-and-keyboard-clarinet-mix-small-file) a link to the very low bitrate mp3 of the piece (2 mb for an 18 minute+ piece  :o ).

And here's (http://www.esnips.com/doc/4bed9fa0-eca8-4ff0-8c4d-cc2e04880140/Canticle-Sonata) the link to the score of the piece. Part of the deal is: download the mp3, you must download the score too ;) ;D I'll be checking.... $:) ;)

Neither are quite finished, but I think I've kept up this silly charade of making you wait long enough and am conscious that the longer I make you wait, the more disappointed in the end product you will be.

The mp3 will have to do until the piece is played by a living, breathing clarinetist. Its flaws, of course, are obvious to anyone who reads the score alongside, which is exactly why I'd encourage you to do so. Just bear in mind how it was made, and that I only had time for one take of each part! There was quite a lot of cutting, pasting and amplifying to be done after the recordings were made, and clearly it hasn't always worked.

The score is not quite the final article. Above all I want to go through and re-input metronome marks; those in the score at present just made it sound OK on Sibelius; also dynamic markings etc. need to be fleshed out. You might notice that a couple of bars on page 6 are different in the clarinet part. The score needs to be updated with this alteration too. When the thing is finally done, I'll put it up and take this one down, but this gives a fair idea for now.


On with the flaming. >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 23, 2007, 01:37:38 PM
Let's see if I can rough it up a bit...

Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 01:29:39 PM
Part of the deal is: download the mp3, you must download the score too ;) ;D I'll be checking.... $:) ;)

Well, smarty-pants, for the time being I'm only downloading the score. And what are you going to do about that, eh? >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 01:40:16 PM
You haven't downloaded the score. I see all. Don't mess with me, big boy. >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 01:42:55 PM
Although, more seriously, I don't care at all if you do it that way round (i.e. download score only) - the score is a representative document, apart from the minor details I mentioned. I can't say it's not what I meant. It's the other way round (download mp3 only) which leaves me feeling unsure. I must learn to relax, I think..... ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 23, 2007, 01:43:18 PM
Oh, yes, I have. It's 26 pages long, starts with the clarinet playing a G and ends with it playing a D. Or is that sort of stuff in the notes (I'm not sure, I haven't read them yet)?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 23, 2007, 01:44:25 PM
Anyway, shoot - ask me anything you want! I'm ready to prove to you that I have downloaded the score, smarty! >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 01:45:04 PM
Lucky guess. ;D :P

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 23, 2007, 01:47:35 PM
So, you're ignoring my challenge, eh? I thought you wouldn't have the guts for a manly fight...! [where's the "sneer" smiley...?]  >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 01:48:12 PM
[Once again, Maciek, can I say how much I appreciate your work on behalf of my flame war]

OK, refreshing the esnips screen doesn't work. If I go back from the beginning I see that two of you suckers have indeed downloaded it. Though obviously not Maciek, who's obviously bluffing.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 01:53:02 PM
Those notes, G and D, by the way, are a constant motive throughout the first and third movements. But I've only just realised that they must be an involuntary hommage to Saul.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 23, 2007, 01:54:22 PM
Didn't you know MrOsa was my new screen name? ???

Cheers,
Saul
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 23, 2007, 01:55:05 PM
Sorry, that shoul have went:

Didt you knew MOsa was my knew scren name?

Saul
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 01:56:01 PM
Well, I did wonder. After all, there can't be two people with such an appalling intellectual hold on reality, can there? >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 01:57:07 PM
That's better. Used the Saul Check button that time, I see.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 23, 2007, 02:33:41 PM
QuoteThose notes, G and D, by the way, are a constant motive throughout the first and third movements. But I've only just realised that they must be an involuntary hommage to Saul.

lol!

QuoteDidn't you know MrOsa was my new screen name?  ???

Cheers,
Saul

LOL!

I have listened and read simulatneously an I see your concerns as you outlined them, but as a first idea of what it might sound like - I like it alot! I don't know if I would be able to deal with those sorts of rhythms if I were playing it, but I remember you saying that they were often easier than they looked...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 02:38:06 PM
Thanks! The rhythms are only an issue in the opening music (and on its return) and, as you say, they are easier than they look. Nothing worse than a triplet in there, of course; it's only the layerings of the parts which makes it more complex. The idea is that the parts are loosely connected, heterophonically, if you like, but they go their own way - play them cooly and relaxed-ly and they almost play themselves. It's the kind of writing I've used quite a lot in various piano/clavichord pieces over the last couple of years, as you know. One of those things I feel very comfortable and natural writing, which I therefore allow out quite frequently! ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 23, 2007, 02:42:29 PM
Also Rózia is so sweet its almost like a parody of cuteness! This is my anti -flaming post.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 23, 2007, 03:20:28 PM
Awwwwww... ;D 8) :-*
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 03:23:06 PM
Oh, if we're going to have a love-in now, may I mention my daughter too, who, though she doesn't know it, is now 22 minutes into her 6th birthday? Another round of Awwwwwws please.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 23, 2007, 03:24:50 PM
Awwwwww... ;D 8) :-*

Happy birthday! Give her my best wishes tomorrow! (From the Polish guy who calls her a genius ;D)

:-*
Maciek
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 03:26:40 PM
Will do!

(She likes my new piece, btw, though she asked why it was called a Canticle Sonata if no one was singing in it. Which is a fair point....)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 23, 2007, 03:27:16 PM
See? She is a genius. 8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 03:28:21 PM
You don't have to convince me!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 23, 2007, 03:29:20 PM
 ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 03:32:34 PM
One Holst forgot, it seems: Guido: The Bringer of Love
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 23, 2007, 03:37:09 PM
Yes, where has all the jolly flaming spirit suddenly gone? ::)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 23, 2007, 03:41:00 PM
Bask in the warm coruscating radiance of my aura of all-embracing love. Or it might be radioactive contamination. Whatever.

I still can't get over the brilliance of the words of that song. And the fact that she's already pointing out gaps in your reasoning doesn't bode well... (and the reasoning of a 1st class Cambridge graduate no less!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 23, 2007, 03:43:08 PM
Ah, Cambridge is overrated. :P ;)

You should know. ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 23, 2007, 05:41:08 PM
You've lost that flame-throwing feeling . . . oh-oh that flame-throwing feeling . . . .

The downloads must wait until tomorrow (Chowder Time), Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 24, 2007, 11:19:16 AM
What? No one jumping to defend the university where the hero of my thesis studied? I'm really disappointed, gentlemen... $:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 24, 2007, 11:39:20 AM
Nah, I think you were probably about right to start with. ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 24, 2007, 12:26:43 PM
Perhaps you should!

Today I learned that I am studying Science at the university that is ranked highest in science in the world. I am glad to say that I am adding nothing to that reputation.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 24, 2007, 01:03:29 PM
Quote from: Guido on May 24, 2007, 12:26:43 PM
...Today I learned that I am studying Science...

Wow, the stuff they're teaching there nowadays! I had it easy, I can see...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 24, 2007, 01:30:20 PM
Luke that was mainly for those uninitiated few who don't have psychic powers like you or I (the true requisite to get into Cambridge), who may not know that I am doing science. I don't know why I thought it needed capitalising...

But yes you did have it easy - Cambridge has a new system of "dumbing up" everything, or everyone rather so that we all feel that what we're doing is really difficult, when actually it just makes no sense whatsoever. Ah the beauties of academia!

(Goedel's incompleteness theorem is one of the most interesting things I've learned about here, and its not even in my course! Basically though, the whole of Maths has somewhat suspect foundations... naturally they (mathematicians) stay rather quiet about it (Though that may be the Asperger's))
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 24, 2007, 01:33:36 PM
Hey, I thought you were choosing stamp collecting?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 24, 2007, 01:35:47 PM
Well that is in reference to Rutherford's quotation:

QuoteAll science is either physics or stamp collecting.

At the beginning of the year Physics was my subject of choice... Now (or next year rather) I will be doing Geology, History and Philosophy of Science and Psychology. (!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 24, 2007, 01:38:27 PM
You've come a long way! :o 8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 24, 2007, 01:42:20 PM
I always wanted to study either Maths or Musicology. How I ended up on Polish Studies is beyond me... ??? (In high school, I even wrote an essay about Goedel's theorem in connection to 20th century literature! :o ::) :-\)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 25, 2007, 02:05:03 AM
OK, level with me! If 6 of you have downloaded the piece and only one has commented, am I to take that as an implicit negative response? That's not fishing - I ask because I too am turning against the piece somewhat! I was so involved in writing it that I began to find it hard to assess its quality; revisiting it now that I haven't looked at the score for a couple of days, I feel rather deflated. Note-to-note it is mostly OK or better, I think, it still 'sounds like me' (not always something I am comfy with, as I'm not always comfy with myself, but which, as I've emphasized in the past, I prize highly in music) and there are some solid and interesting structural features. But the whole thing seems quite impersonal, perhaps because of over-thinking, perhaps because it is a relatively formal piece which doesn't always sit comfortably with me. Or is that conclusion overly omphaloskeptic in itself?  ;D :-\ :-\ :-\ :-\

Perhaps this is a way for me to discover, once and for all, what I suspected - that I am better in 1) smaller forms and 2) more intuitive composition. Well, so be it - I may just return in that direction.

Of course, it may turn out that you all love the piece, in which case, ignore all that - it is obviously an utter masterpiece ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 25, 2007, 03:36:00 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 25, 2007, 02:05:03 AM
OK, level with me! If 6 of you have downloaded the piece and only one has commented, am I to take that as an implicit negative response?

Ach! I have not downloaded yet!  Sorry to keep you waiting, Luke!

In the spirit of 'leveling with you', it may well be next week.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 25, 2007, 04:31:01 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on May 25, 2007, 03:36:00 AM
Ach! I have not downloaded yet!  Sorry to keep you waiting, Luke!

In the spirit of 'leveling with you', it may well be next week.

No problem at all Karl. - I'm grateful that you intend to do so at all. :) It will be good to get a variety of outside opinions, however, given my doubts!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 25, 2007, 04:38:03 AM
From what I've seen and heard of your work, Luke, maybe I have fewer doubts about you than you do, yourself  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 25, 2007, 07:10:18 AM
I suppose it will be easier to judge once Karl has given its premier (and w have all duly been sent a recording of said premiere!). I will write some more notes on the matter once I have listened a few mre times, and when i have time. As I've already said, I do really like it, but I also think its quite austere, harmonically at least, in comparison to your other pieces, perhaps this is why you think it might sound impersonal (but then a real clarinet will add greater warmth of course.) I like the way in the central movement there are little hints of romantic beauty, but they are like snatches that sem to dissolve away (reminds me of Goldschmidt in that way). I will have to listen again, I've probably said too much already on only two listens... I'll keep stumm until I have heard it a few more times.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 25, 2007, 01:13:49 PM
Quote from: Guido on May 25, 2007, 07:10:18 AM
I suppose it will be easier to judge once Karl has given its premier (and w have all duly been sent a recording of said premiere!). I will write some more notes on the matter once I have listened a few mre times, and when i have time. As I've already said, I do really like it, but I also think its quite austere, harmonically at least, in comparison to your other pieces, perhaps this is why you think it might sound impersonal (but then a real clarinet will add greater warmth of course.) I like the way in the central movement there are little hints of romantic beauty, but they are like snatches that sem to dissolve away (reminds me of Goldschmidt in that way). I will have to listen again, I've probably said too much already on only two listens... I'll keep stumm until I have heard it a few more times.

Thanks, Guido, I think you are right to discern a certain austerity; it's there deliberately. I wanted to refine and 'classicise' the upsurge of heterophonic tendencies which I encourage in my more intuitive pieces, and that led to this Sonata being extremely linear and even properly contrapuntal to a certain extent. So, the two 'subjects' of the first movement are very clearly written in four and two parts respectively; and the second movement is mostly built up of superimposed flowing lines in imitation, augmentation and diminution of each other [the texture of this movement, with its calmly fluid lines, was the first thing I decided on for the piece, btw - the quotation at its head, 'humble, precious, chaste' stands for many of the musical concerns that are important to me in general]. Only the central chorale of that second movement, which forms the fulcrum of the whole piece in many ways, is strongly homophonic, at least until the last movement, which serves as a recapitulation and synthesis of much of the previous two movements as well as a chaconne in its own right.

Whether or not this classicizing austerity is 'a good thing' is a more moot point, and is probably the thing I can't decide myself just yet. It implies a certain distancing which I am uncomfortable with; but at the same time it leaves the music free to stand for itself, which is obviously positive. I will slog on with the omphaloskepsis... ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 27, 2007, 05:40:41 AM
....starting to enjoy the piece again....

Still more distance from it, and now I'm starting to be able to appreciate it just as a piece of music, not as That Piece I've Been Caught Up In For Weeks.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 27, 2007, 09:09:46 AM
Are youy ever moved by your own compositions? I recently read a story that Shostakovich started weeping when he first heard his string quartet no.8 being played because he was so moved, and I found the story very strange, but I couldnt't say why. I suppose I think its more normal now, but still I find it a little odd...

Couldyou put a composerly perspective on the matter?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 27, 2007, 09:41:18 AM
Well, yes, I am, but it would be hard to say whether that was because of their own intrinsic qualities or simply because of associations the piece may have for me, which are presumably stronger in the composer of a piece than in any other listener. In fact, as you'll have noticed I do sometimes get very bound up with my pieces and find it hard to disentangle myself from then when I've finished, to step back and adjudge them coolly. Witness my last two or three posts. :-\

In the spirit of humilty I'd suggest that the latter is more true than the former; that is, that if some of my pieces move me it is because they have associations more than because they are particularly good. But also, in fact, I'm sure that the power of association is much stronger than we tend to realise anyway, so that even a bona fide masterpiece by a proper composer might move me more because of an association it has for me than because of the piece itself. Quality doesn't necessarily come into it at all, in fact - remember Noel Coward's line about the potencty of cheap music? In the end, then, it's hard to say where one ends and the other begins.

That was a bit of a ramble, wasn't it?  ;) Anyway, FWIW, the pieces of mine which move me most, if that is the word, are:

the Four Paz Songs - in this case, apart from happy student memories, the music doesn't really have any assocations for me; I still tend to think this is one of my better works and the formal trajectory of the music is quite affecting, I feel.

the Through the Year children's pieces - these are bound up with my own children, with memories of my own childhood; they are mild, gentle and also I think very English pieces. Again, I find it hard to judge their quality - part of me thinks they are the best thing I've ever done, perhaps because they affect me so strongly. Part of me thinks, don't be stupid, man.

the Unfinished Study for 'autobiographical' reasons gone into on the previous thread

the Nightingale Sonata - I've put this one up on the previous thread and again in this one, but for some reason hardly discussed it. In contrast to the first two works I mentioned, I'm pretty sure this one must be full of holes and flaws. But over and above that, it says exactly what I wanted it to say (and you know I think that directness, humanity and honesty is more important than mere slick technique any day, as I've said recently about Tippett and as I've repeated ad nauseum about Janacek). The piece springs from a deep place and experience, I think, and I can't hear it without their being summoned up again.

the recent piano Sonata as much as any of these pieces, because in my mind it is very much bound up with my grandmother who died earlier this year. Again I obviously find it hard to hear this piece without those thoughts in mind, but I do think that this piece too, thanks partly to that modal technique, probably has quite a strong formal trajectory like the Paz Songs and the new Canticle Sonata which are quite affecting in themselves.

I'm coming to find the last pages of my new Canticle Sonata quite moving too, I must say; their simplified recollection of the opening of the first movement works quite well in this respect I think.

But, as I say, for the reasons I've outlined I often find it very hard to judge my own works, and am eager to hear other opinions.


Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 28, 2007, 02:23:27 PM
This gave me an idea: in the listmania spirit, why don't we start a "5 of my own works that I find most moving" thread? That would help Guido explore the notion further...

Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 25, 2007, 02:05:03 AM
OK, level with me! If 6 of you have downloaded the piece and only one has commented, am I to take that as an implicit negative response? That's not fishing - I ask because I too am turning against the piece somewhat! I was so involved in writing it that I began to find it hard to assess its quality; revisiting it now that I haven't looked at the score for a couple of days, I feel rather deflated. Note-to-note it is mostly OK or better, I think, it still 'sounds like me' (not always something I am comfy with, as I'm not always comfy with myself, but which, as I've emphasized in the past, I prize highly in music) and there are some solid and interesting structural features. But the whole thing seems quite impersonal, perhaps because of over-thinking, perhaps because it is a relatively formal piece which doesn't always sit comfortably with me. Or is that conclusion overly omphaloskeptic in itself?  ;D :-\ :-\ :-\ :-\

Perhaps this is a way for me to discover, once and for all, what I suspected - that I am better in 1) smaller forms and 2) more intuitive composition. Well, so be it - I may just return in that direction.

Of course, it may turn out that you all love the piece, in which case, ignore all that - it is obviously an utter masterpiece ;D

I can't say anything as I'd like to listen to the recording first. And for some reason downloading the file crashes my browser. This has nothing to do with you, Luke - it's a problem I've had before. To make it work, I need to remove the WMP plug-in. Problem is, either I can't find it, or its name has changed... >:( I'll get it done this week, I hope. Just don't have the time to sieve through those files right now (and I was away during the weekend).

Maciek
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 28, 2007, 02:25:40 PM
Thanks Luke - interesting stuff. (No I don't remember Noel Coward's line - sorry!)

Karl - your thoughts?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2007, 02:31:16 PM
Quote from: MrOsa on May 28, 2007, 02:23:27 PM
To make it work, I need to remove the WMP plug-in.

Would it help if I could get the file into another format?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 28, 2007, 02:33:15 PM
Quote from: MrOsa on May 28, 2007, 02:23:27 PM
This gave me an idea: in the listmania spirit, why don't we start a "5 of my own works that I find most moving" thread? That would help Guido explore the notion further...

I just realized this may not sound serious. Well, it is - only I don't think the thread would get enough responses to make it worthwhile. But it would be interesting for us heathen to watch composers forced (well, almost) to make those choices and to come out into the open about their feelings... >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 28, 2007, 02:34:30 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2007, 02:31:16 PM
Would it help if I could get the file into another format?

Probably. But I need to remove that plug-in anyway because it's messing my internet browsing all the time - it simply doesn't work well with neither Opera nor Mozilla. >:(
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2007, 02:38:58 PM
Quote from: MrOsa on May 28, 2007, 02:33:15 PM
I just realized this may not sound serious. Well, it is - only I don't think the thread would get enough responses to make it worthwhile.

Please feel free to host the party here, Maciek! ;D

Quote from: MrOsa on May 28, 2007, 02:33:15 PM
But it would be interesting for us heathen to watch composers forced (well, almost) to make those choices and to come out into the open about their feelings... >:D

Yes, indeed - 'twas a most cathartic experience. Though with my obvious introspective tendencies, it wasn't exactly difficult for me to do ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 28, 2007, 02:58:48 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2007, 02:38:58 PM
Please feel free to host the party here, Maciek! ;D

There (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,1208.new.html) you go! ;D 8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on May 28, 2007, 03:08:28 PM
no way........ i just noticed this thread today, can you believe that?!  :o

and it looks like there's a bunch of stuff at the first page- nice! gotta check that stuff out
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2007, 03:11:32 PM
Quote from: greg on May 28, 2007, 03:08:28 PM
no way........ i just noticed this thread today, can you believe that?!  :o

and it looks like there's a bunch of stuff at the first page- nice! gotta check that stuff out

That's all stuff that was put up on the old board, not sure if you downloaded it there or not. I seem to remember you got some of it at least. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on May 28, 2007, 03:17:37 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2007, 03:11:32 PM
That's all stuff that was put up on the old board, not sure if you downloaded it there or not. I seem to remember you got some of it at least. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!
:)
yep, i think i'll download all of it at once first and then listen to it all and then comment (might take awhile).

the other stuff was partial files, lasting less than a minute  :P (yeah, that was very frustrating)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2007, 03:21:12 PM
Quote from: greg on May 28, 2007, 03:17:37 PM
:)
yep, i think i'll download all of it at once first and then listen to it all and then comment (might take awhile).

the other stuff was partial files, lasting less than a minute  :P (yeah, that was very frustrating)

Yes, I remember now - they weren't supposed to be partial files, I uploaded them whole! But Filelodge had problems and eventually shut down altogether. What I'm using now is much better and more user-friendly.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on May 28, 2007, 03:31:50 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2007, 03:21:12 PM
But Filelodge had problems and eventually shut down altogether.

8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 31, 2007, 03:40:14 PM
Luke, you're wasting your time on "Who's Online" again! $:) Why not post something interesting and worthwhile instead? 8) Like I'm doing right now... ;D

Maciek
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 31, 2007, 03:45:25 PM
Quote from: MrOsa on May 31, 2007, 03:40:14 PM
Luke, you're wasting your time on "Who's Online" again! $:) Why not post something interesting and worthwhile instead? 8) Like I'm doing right now... ;D

Maciek

Yes, I saw you checking out Who's Online whilst I was doing the same ;D. You know me - 'I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry', as Cage said. Or rather, as usual I'll wait for someone else to say something interesting first. In that spirit, have you got anything to add here?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 31, 2007, 03:46:13 PM
QuoteLuke, you're wasting your time on "Who's Online" again!  Why not post something interesting and worthwhile instead?  Like I'm doing right now...
Yeah!... yeah..
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 31, 2007, 03:52:30 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 31, 2007, 03:45:25 PM
In that spirit, have you got anything to add here?

Yes, I'd like to say I find Guido's last post interesting and very intriguing...

I hope it's only the beginning of a whole series...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 31, 2007, 03:55:17 PM
Me too, most mysterious...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 31, 2007, 04:00:27 PM
It was more a visual representation of a great xclamation of agreement, and then realising that I was falling into the same self referential trap... or something... I suppose it could be a whole series... if you wanted... or something
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 31, 2007, 04:02:24 PM
QuoteI hope it's only the beginning of a whole series...

Hey wait a minute! What are you saying about my previous posts?!!

And that's an exciting spelling of exclamation in the last post. I won't change it. Not ever.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 31, 2007, 04:06:46 PM
Quote from: Guido on May 31, 2007, 04:02:24 PM
And that's an exciting spelling of exclamation in the last post.

Don't you mean xciting?

(I won't change mine ither... ;D)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 31, 2007, 04:07:17 PM
No, that was seriously a typo!

REALLY!

>:(
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 31, 2007, 04:14:20 PM
I like littering Luke's thread with irrelevancies until the next puff of interesting stuff comes from Luke himself. Am listening to the first piano concerto of Shostakovch (not by conscious choice - its after the Second Cello Concerto on my itunes!) and I had forgotten how good it was! Also I love goldschmidt! I do have concerns about the soloist being heard in the cello concerto, which makes me hesitate to audition with it for concerto competitions (especially as there are so many other pieces I want to play - Shostakovich 2nd, Englund, Fini, Walton, Bernstein, Bartok, Barber, Hindemith, Martin, Albert, Bliss and others among them!). I am also listening to Andre Previn's music too much. Too much...

and the thread returns to chilling silence once more, as one of its illuminaries thinks up a witty response to the ramblings of this dangerous and troubled  fanatic.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 31, 2007, 04:17:51 PM
Quite intriguing double spacing of that last word. Nice.

Anyhoo, I forgive you for any offence you may have caused me, be it unintentional or not. Like Jebus himself I am, in his resplendent majesty and perfect knowledge (but not so much knowledge that free will becomes impossible. Obviously). ;D

Seriously - I will type out a response to your 'religion' email response, but I'm still angry at deleting my last attempt!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 31, 2007, 04:20:14 PM
Actually, I just wanted to say I like Shosty's 1st PC too. More than his 2nd PC, though I like that one as well.

And I still haven't finished with one thing:

Quote from: Guido on May 31, 2007, 04:02:24 PM
Hey wait a minute! What are you saying about my previous posts?!!

I thought you would just go on repeating that same post for a while. Answering

Yeah!... yeah..

to everything.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 31, 2007, 04:21:45 PM
This thread is getting a little strange, BTW.

And Luke has little (if anything) to do with it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 31, 2007, 04:22:57 PM
What are you on about, Guido? Have you been imbibing?

Personally, my mind is full of higher thoughts. I'm pondering the formal implications of the tonal ambiguities implicit in my modal technique, as I have been for the last three or four days. Fruitful stuff. But not for launching into discussion at 1:20 in the morning perhaps.

Have another drink, instead.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 31, 2007, 04:26:41 PM
I was just trying to stimulate some more responses by saying some slightly off puttingly odd things. Unfortunately I'm not even remotely drunk. I cannot wait for Suicide Sunday.

Hmm Up until a few minutes I thought I liked the second piano concerto more - the slow movement! but Now I'm not so sure. Thankfully I don't need to choose!

QuoteI thought you would just go on repeating that same post for a while. Answering

Yeah!... yeah..

to everything.

That's such a good idea. I will definitely do that more often from now on!

(Also possibly typos may have made my posts a little more bizarre than they should have been...)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 31, 2007, 04:28:27 PM
Quote from: Guido on May 31, 2007, 04:26:41 PM
Hmm Up until a few minutes I thought I liked the second piano concerto more - the slow movement!

...blatant Beethoven PC5 rip-off... ;D Think about it, the evidence is all there...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 31, 2007, 04:32:11 PM
Yeah!... yeah..
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 31, 2007, 04:33:25 PM
But then think of all the ripoffs in the 1st PC!

The competition is tough here...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 31, 2007, 04:36:17 PM
When the music's as good as it is, and the model is as good as it is I don't really care! Brahm's violin concerto is ridiculously similar to Beethoven's. Ridiculously.

The 2nd Shostakovich PC was written for an audition for his son was it not?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 31, 2007, 04:39:41 PM
Just keeping the spirit of the thread alive:

Wow! I just noticed I'm a "VETERAN MEMBER"!

Wow! Wow!

Do I get a present or something?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 31, 2007, 04:56:13 PM
I presumed that Veteran member meant that you only had less than the full compliment of limbs and/or digits from dedication to posting new responses. Have you in fact worked down your fingers into stumps?

And very nice use of Wow! Wow!

I think that, like 'musing tuffet', this particular affectation is a keeper.

I must stop saying maudlin, mawkish and schmaltzy. Although I am fascinated by this attribute in alot of music, and would like to explore it. I've thought about starting a thread about it, but I don't really have enough to say about it to justify doing that. All I can say is that I think its very interesting and don't think its necessarily a bad thing, despite the negative connotations of the words.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on May 31, 2007, 05:02:24 PM
Quote
schmaltzy

That's a nice one. I've got to start using it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 31, 2007, 05:14:17 PM
Quote from: MrOsa on May 31, 2007, 05:02:24 PM
I wouldn't know - I've almost lost my sight peering at the screen. And I don't feel touch anymore either (from the typing)...

haha

Schmaltz is a good word, as is Schlock (see my recent post). I think that the slow movement of the second piano concerto could justifiably be called Maudlin or Mawkish, but I would contend in a good way. Hmm...

Now listening to the Piano Quintet. Must go to sleep and contemplate... Sleep and contemplate..
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 01, 2007, 04:26:23 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 31, 2007, 04:22:57 PM
Personally, my mind is full of higher thoughts.

Count on Luke to elevate the discourse, I always say!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 01, 2007, 04:33:53 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on June 01, 2007, 04:26:23 AM
Count on Luke to elevate the discourse, I always say!  :)

In alt Karl, sempre in alt.... ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on June 01, 2007, 05:57:41 AM
is it okay if i post a few hundred posts about nothing real quick to become a veteran member, too?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 01, 2007, 05:59:57 AM
No, we want content, Greg -- and especially on Luke's thread!

Although Luke does host the occasional flame-war for purposes of publicity, in which endeavor I support him unreservedly  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 01, 2007, 06:30:21 AM
Call that unreserved support? Why, I oughta.... >:D ;D ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 02, 2007, 04:15:56 PM
Careful there Luke - that's almost an emoticon Symphony!

Actually that's not a bad idea!

Brandis Emoticon Symphony no.1
I.Allegro Maestoso: $:) :-\ ???
II.Adagio Affetuoso: 0:) :'( :-*
III.Scherzo: ;D >:D :P
IV:Allegro:  8) :D $:)

Who am I kidding. That's the worst idea ever. Ever...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on June 02, 2007, 04:43:44 PM
Well, frankly, the first part is a bit too tame for my tastes. I do like the rest though. The second starts off a bit strange but it gets better later on, the scherzo is truly diabolical, and I love the way the finale is rounded off by a return to the opening subject of the first part! part!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 03, 2007, 05:50:18 AM
I know it's not perfect, but I'm glad that you aprecciate the subtle details. details.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on June 03, 2007, 11:07:01 AM
Check out the new thread (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,1324.new.html)!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 03, 2007, 12:01:28 PM
Yeah! yeah..
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 03, 2007, 01:46:01 PM
I interrupt this learned discourse to bring news of a new poem by my daughter - well, you did ask ;D. She composed this whilst on holiday in Tenerife this week:


Moon Shine


Moon Moon Moon Moon
The moon is made of cheese
You'll never be able to reach it
Or eat it
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on June 03, 2007, 02:03:58 PM
Succinctly put and very true! And sad in a way... Sigh. :'(
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 03, 2007, 02:13:12 PM
Such insight into the futility of the human condition at such a tender age... ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 03, 2007, 02:33:41 PM
Anyway....[trying to get back on topic slightly] anyone managed to download and listen to/read through the sonata yet?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 03, 2007, 03:48:43 PM
QuoteMoon Shine

Moon Moon Moon Moon
The moon is made of cheese
You'll never be able to reach it
Or eat it

I bloody love that!

I havent been able to liste any more as of yet. But then no-one else has yet commented at all, so I still have some excuse. And exams. exams.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 03, 2007, 04:38:00 PM
I'm perfectly okay with never being able to eat the moon  0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 04, 2007, 02:03:43 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on June 03, 2007, 04:38:00 PM
I'm perfectly okay with never being able to eat the moon  0:)

Karl, where's your sense of ambition, man!

or, put more poetically:

...aye, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp
or what's a heaven for...

(some Browning - Andrea del Sarto - I approximately remember from A level English)

My daughter is only working in the grand line, it seems
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on June 04, 2007, 08:05:44 AM
i'd REALLY like to comment right now, but i want to listen to everything first and then say something about everything.

but........ there's a lot of files that won't play. Like Correspondences and the Sonata. So I don't know what to do  ???
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 04, 2007, 11:35:16 AM
Strange  ??? Is anyone else having problems? I played the sonata (among other things) on the computer at work the other day, it didn't seem to have any problems. How odd  ???
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on June 04, 2007, 11:36:36 AM
Greg, how many times do I have to repeat? ::) Get yourself a download manager! $:) ;D 8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 04, 2007, 11:51:06 AM
They're not very big files, as I've shrunk them all by resampling them at a low bitrate for the purposes of uploading them. So I doubt that's the problem, though I rather hope that's all it is.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on June 04, 2007, 11:51:36 AM
Quote from: MrOsa on June 04, 2007, 11:36:36 AM
Greg, how many times do I have to repeat? ::) Get yourself a download manager! $:) ;D 8)
that brings me to another question (btw, i do usually use Getright for most stuff)
how do you save the mp3 files? i REEAAAAAAAALLY would like to save them  :'(
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 04, 2007, 12:18:55 PM
When you click on the link the page that opens ought to have to have a download button. It does when I do it, anyway!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 04, 2007, 12:39:55 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 01:29:39 PM
OK, I'm going to take my life in my hands. Be gentle with me:

Here's (http://www.esnips.com/doc/ac70a163-3779-4616-a111-f6541987f37f/piano-and-keyboard-clarinet-mix-small-file) a link to the very low bitrate mp3 of the piece (2 mb for an 18 minute+ piece  :o ).

And here's (http://www.esnips.com/doc/4bed9fa0-eca8-4ff0-8c4d-cc2e04880140/Canticle-Sonata) the link to the score of the piece. Part of the deal is: download the mp3, you must download the score too ;) ;D I'll be checking.... $:) ;)

Luke, I've just listened to the first and second movements.  Beautiful piece!  I like it a great deal.

Most of it is perfectly idiomatic for the clarinet.  The only thing that seems to invite trouble so far is m. 62 of the second movement, page 14.  The clarinet line is in C, yes?  That high F# to G trill is easily manageable written at that pitch;  it's up in the nosebleed range, where fingerings are peculiar, and I'll need to check with clarinet in hand to see if it works in transposition (for the B-flat clarinet, that's G# - A) . . . but maybe there's an easy trill-key cheat that I just need to 'discover'.

But from a sheer musical viewpoint, I love the piece!  Wish I had a pianist to play it with!  (And at some point, there will be a pianist.)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 04, 2007, 12:46:35 PM
Thank you very much, Karl - I am really pleased it meets with your musical approval so far; I hope the concluding chaconne rounds things off nicely for you.  :)

The trill you mention - and there's a similar one in the last movement - is, as you can guess, one of the passages I had in mind when I originally mentioned my unease about the clarinettinessitudity (sorry, I've just finished reading Giles Goat-Boy!) of the thing. The only thing that reassured me was that both passages are rather desperate climaxes, at the peak of crescendi, so at least there's no disjunction between the strain the performer may feel and the emotional tone of the music at this point. I find it hard to imagine how I could change either of these passages, but if it comes to it I will figure out a way!

Thanks once again.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 04, 2007, 12:56:20 PM
...well, I suppose I could eliminate the trilling nature of things somehow - slow it down somewhat anyway - though I'd prefer to be able to leave as is if possible. And the pitches themselves are pretty vital...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 04, 2007, 02:57:27 PM
Let it stand, until I check!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on June 06, 2007, 06:47:46 AM
there's no download button when I use Internet explorer OR Mozilla Firefox.....

:(

that sucks, i guess it runs away when i open the page
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 06, 2007, 11:37:30 AM
Just so I know, is anyone else having the problems greg is having? In downloading from my links, I mean, I don't know about any other problems he has.... ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 06, 2007, 12:21:41 PM
You need to register before you can download the sound files. Registration is free and quick though.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 06, 2007, 12:24:02 PM
No problem to report here.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on June 07, 2007, 06:42:35 AM
Quote from: Guido on June 06, 2007, 12:21:41 PM
You need to register before you can download the sound files. Registration is free and quick though.
oh, that's must be it, lol
wow, that was ridiculous  ;D

off to register now!  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 21, 2007, 04:15:05 AM
Just a note, Luke, that my experience with Mirage this week unfortunately confirms that I don't yet know a pianist to do the Canticle Sonata justice.  But I will, I tell you!  I will.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 21, 2007, 01:34:07 PM
Not to worry, Karl! I've ignored the piece for the last few weeks, so that I can return to it fresh, and probably change one particular section of it, I think - I was never too happy with it, but couldn't find another way to make it work. Hopefully a little space will help. The point being, what you've seen isn't quite the finished article yet anyway.

By the way, have you had a chance to work out fingerings for those tricky high trills? I'm pretty sure I can change things around if necessary.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 22, 2007, 03:43:18 AM
Thank you for reminding me of my promise to investigate that trill, Luke!  My recital this week rather preoccupied me, though I ought still to honor promises given  :)

I've got my clarinet with me today, as I'm rehearsing Schubert with a soprano at 11.  I think it will divert her if she hears me test-driving that trill  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 22, 2007, 04:26:03 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on June 22, 2007, 03:43:18 AM
I've got my clarinet with me today, as I'm rehearsing Schubert with a soprano at 11.  I think it will divert her if she hears me test-driving that trill  ;D

;D You are playing The Rock to her Shepherd, I assume. That trill would scare off all the sheep, it is true.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on June 22, 2007, 06:23:45 AM
i finally remembered to sign up for that site... i'm getting there, Luke!  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 23, 2007, 06:43:25 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on June 22, 2007, 04:26:03 AM
;D You are playing The Rock to her Shepherd, I assume. That trill would scare off all the sheep, it is true.

You think sheep have the sense to take fright at that trill?  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 05, 2007, 05:12:48 AM
i was thinking of writing a big review about all of your pieces, but I'll just try to keep my thoughts short and simple since it's been like a week since I've even listened to your stuff and some of my thoughts have escaped me.

The Chant of Carnus- smashing ending!  :o
Through the Year- I've already commented on it before. I just LOOOOOOVE it! The more I listen the more I love it. The ideas are amazing, piano exercises, just white-note pieces and pieces with just glissandos, wow. And you manage to make it sound interesting and good at the same time.
Unfinished Study, X, A lullaby to silence- you know, these aren't even long enough to give thoughts on, lol
Sonata, Nightingale Sonata, Psyche Sonata- these 3 sonatas i liked, too. But there is one thing I wanted to mention, just one small detail. I think it was during the Sonata that I noticed parts where it sounded like the left hand was just playing simple two note figures that weren't really adding anything. You probably could've made a more interesting accompaniment in that part/those parts.
Correspondences - sweet! hehe
Four Paz Songs- I saved this one for last because..... it just might be my favorite. Seriously, the first piece especially is just perfect, every note. I don't know what to say other than it totally hits the spot. Four Paz Songs vs. Through the Year, which is my favorite- i don't know. I'm thinking Four Paz Songs, but Through the Year is also really good. hmmmmmmm


Anyways, I've been wanting to say that the music you have here sounds like stuff by a composer who should be famous! And Four Paz Songs and Through the Year is some of the best stuff I've heard on the internet. I don't understand why you don't have better recordings, or any recordings that are professionally done because I REALLY would like to have your music with better sound quality.

If everyone else had to choose a favorite work by Luke, what would it be?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 05, 2007, 05:18:05 AM
Luke really ought to be better known.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 05, 2007, 05:26:23 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on July 05, 2007, 05:18:05 AM
Luke really ought to be better known.
maybe he should get into rap....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 05, 2007, 05:29:51 AM
Quote from: greg on July 05, 2007, 05:12:48 AM
If everyone else had to choose a favorite work by Luke, what would it be?

I've enjoyed everything I've listened to so far.  My favorite, though, must be the Canticle Sonata.

Once Luke resolves that small matter of the trill, I mean  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 05, 2007, 08:08:38 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on July 05, 2007, 05:29:51 AM
I've enjoyed everything I've listened to so far.  My favorite, though, must be the Canticle Sonata.

is there a sound file of this?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on July 05, 2007, 08:23:46 AM
Here:

Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 23, 2007, 01:29:39 PM
OK, I'm going to take my life in my hands. Be gentle with me:

Here's (http://www.esnips.com/doc/ac70a163-3779-4616-a111-f6541987f37f/piano-and-keyboard-clarinet-mix-small-file) a link to the very low bitrate mp3 of the piece (2 mb for an 18 minute+ piece  :o ).

And here's (http://www.esnips.com/doc/4bed9fa0-eca8-4ff0-8c4d-cc2e04880140/Canticle-Sonata) the link to the score of the piece. Part of the deal is: download the mp3, you must download the score too ;) ;D I'll be checking.... $:) ;)

Neither are quite finished, but I think I've kept up this silly charade of making you wait long enough and am conscious that the longer I make you wait, the more disappointed in the end product you will be.

The mp3 will have to do until the piece is played by a living, breathing clarinetist. Its flaws, of course, are obvious to anyone who reads the score alongside, which is exactly why I'd encourage you to do so. Just bear in mind how it was made, and that I only had time for one take of each part! There was quite a lot of cutting, pasting and amplifying to be done after the recordings were made, and clearly it hasn't always worked.

The score is not quite the final article. Above all I want to go through and re-input metronome marks; those in the score at present just made it sound OK on Sibelius; also dynamic markings etc. need to be fleshed out. You might notice that a couple of bars on page 6 are different in the clarinet part. The score needs to be updated with this alteration too. When the thing is finally done, I'll put it up and take this one down, but this gives a fair idea for now.


On with the flaming. >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 05, 2007, 08:38:23 AM
Quote from: Maciek on July 05, 2007, 08:23:46 AM
Here:

cool! thanks, Maciek.

oh yeah, how do you pronounce your name?

is it like:
"Ma" (as in "MAll")
"Ci" (as in "CHeek")
"Ek" (as in "chECK"), and with the accent on the first syllable?
(that's my wild guess)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 05, 2007, 11:50:22 AM
Quote from: greg on July 05, 2007, 05:12:48 AM
i was thinking of writing a big review about all of your pieces, but I'll just try to keep my thoughts short and simple since it's been like a week since I've even listened to your stuff and some of my thoughts have escaped me.

The Chant of Carnus- smashing ending!  :o
Through the Year- I've already commented on it before. I just LOOOOOOVE it! The more I listen the more I love it. The ideas are amazing, piano exercises, just white-note pieces and pieces with just glissandos, wow. And you manage to make it sound interesting and good at the same time.
Unfinished Study, X, A lullaby to silence- you know, these aren't even long enough to give thoughts on, lol
Sonata, Nightingale Sonata, Psyche Sonata- these 3 sonatas i liked, too. But there is one thing I wanted to mention, just one small detail. I think it was during the Sonata that I noticed parts where it sounded like the left hand was just playing simple two note figures that weren't really adding anything. You probably could've made a more interesting accompaniment in that part/those parts.
Correspondences - sweet! hehe
Four Paz Songs- I saved this one for last because..... it just might be my favorite. Seriously, the first piece especially is just perfect, every note. I don't know what to say other than it totally hits the spot. Four Paz Songs vs. Through the Year, which is my favorite- i don't know. I'm thinking Four Paz Songs, but Through the Year is also really good. hmmmmmmm


Anyways, I've been wanting to say that the music you have here sounds like stuff by a composer who should be famous! And Four Paz Songs and Through the Year is some of the best stuff I've heard on the internet. I don't understand why you don't have better recordings, or any recordings that are professionally done because I REALLY would like to have your music with better sound quality.

If everyone else had to choose a favorite work by Luke, what would it be?

Wow, thank you greg! I'm very touched!

Out of interest, with respect to the Sonata - have you downloaded the score? and if so, could you point me in the direction of the bars where you sensed the left hand to be lacking? I'd like to look over them again in the light of this. :) Edit - one thing I'd say is that, though it may well sound like it, the left hand isn't conceived of as being particularly 'accompanimental' in this piece, because the whole thing is pretty contrapuntal, and there aren't really any repeating 'accompaniment' figures. However, that doesn't mean you might not be right!

Thanks again for taking the time to listen - are there still pieces left for you to try? If so, can I suggest that if you liked Through the Year, you may like the Christmas Pieces too. Among the other collections I personally value particularly are the Improvisations, the Night Music pieces and the Individuation and Enlightenment pieces.

Quote from: karlhenning on July 05, 2007, 05:29:51 AM
I've enjoyed everything I've listened to so far.  My favorite, though, must be the Canticle Sonata.

Once Luke resolves that small matter of the trill, I mean  :)

Karl, I am effectively on holiday as of tomorrow. At which point revisiting that score takes on high priority again!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on July 05, 2007, 12:12:33 PM
Quote from: greg on July 05, 2007, 08:38:23 AM
cool! thanks, Maciek.

oh yeah, how do you pronounce your name?

is it like:
"Ma" (as in "MAll")
"Ci" (as in "CHeek")
"Ek" (as in "chECK"), and with the accent on the first syllable?
(that's my wild guess)

You're very close! :o I don't think anyone has been that close before! Seriously!

"Ma" (as in "MAll") - Nope. The "a" is "open", like in A-ha!
"Ci" (as in "CHeek") - Yes!
"Ek" (as in "chECK") - That's right!
, and with the accent on the first syllable? - Exactly!

The best English rendition I've managed to come up with so far is this:

Matcheek
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 06, 2007, 08:37:25 AM
Quote from: Maciek on July 05, 2007, 12:12:33 PM
You're very close! :o I don't think anyone has been that close before! Seriously!

"Ma" (as in "MAll") - Nope. The "a" is "open", like in A-ha!
"Ci" (as in "CHeek") - Yes!
"Ek" (as in "chECK") - That's right!
, and with the accent on the first syllable? - Exactly!

The best English rendition I've managed to come up with so far is this:

Matcheek
ok...... if i don't get this right, this is gonna bother me.
the A in "mall" does sound like the A in "aha"- but maybe it doesn't in the English accent, maybe that's what you were thinking of?
other examples: fall, tall, stall, etc. but NOT the A in "apple"

is it 2 or 3 syllables? Like Ma-ciek or Ma-ci-ek?
when you wrote "Macheek" that kinda confused me.... is it "Check", "Cheek", or "Chi-ek"?

(this is so hard when you're not communicating verbally, lol)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 06, 2007, 08:40:22 AM
Enough about Maciek for a while, Greg; get to listening to Luke's Canticle Sonata!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 06, 2007, 08:55:55 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 05, 2007, 11:50:22 AM
Out of interest, with respect to the Sonata - have you downloaded the score? and if so, could you point me in the direction of the bars where you sensed the left hand to be lacking? I'd like to look over them again in the light of this. :) Edit - one thing I'd say is that, though it may well sound like it, the left hand isn't conceived of as being particularly 'accompanimental' in this piece, because the whole thing is pretty contrapuntal, and there aren't really any repeating 'accompaniment' figures. However, that doesn't mean you might not be right!
i'm totally wrong, it's not the Sonata, lol.
I just found it, the Psyche Sonata, on pages 2 and 4 where the left hand plays that repeated, somewhat stationary figure. Listening to it again, you know, it's doesn't actually sound bad at all. It's just that in my mind I could hear the left hand moving around a little bit more. Such a small thing, anyways.


Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 05, 2007, 11:50:22 AM
Thanks again for taking the time to listen - are there still pieces left for you to try? If so, can I suggest that if you liked Through the Year, you may like the Christmas Pieces too. Among the other collections I personally value particularly are the Improvisations, the Night Music pieces and the Individuation and Enlightenment pieces.
I think I've listened to everything you've posted on the first page, but a couple of them I can't remember if i did listen or not. I have them all saved, anyways, so I'll make sure to listen to all of them.  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 06, 2007, 08:56:16 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on July 06, 2007, 08:40:22 AM
Enough about Maciek for a while, Greg; get to listening to Luke's Canticle Sonata!
oh yeah! thanks for the reminder
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on July 06, 2007, 11:43:45 AM
Sorry, Luke - just one more. ;D

Quote from: greg on July 06, 2007, 08:37:25 AM
other examples: fall, tall, stall, etc. but NOT the A in "apple"

OK then - let me rephrase:
"Ma" (as in "MAll") - Nope. The "a" is "open", like in Apple!

Quote
is it 2 or 3 syllables?

Two syllables: Ma-ciek

But the "ci" stands for a palatalized "ts" sound as (roughly) the CH in CHeek.

So it's more or less:
Mah-chee-eck.
(yes, that is one syllable too many but it's close enough)

Quote
when you wrote "Macheek" that kinda confused me.... is it "Check", "Cheek", or "Chi-ek"?

Chi-ek

But Match-eek is a pretty good approximation (especially when you want to communicate in writing ;D.

Anyone want to write a vocal piece with the various possible pronunciations of my name as text? ;D ;D ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 07, 2007, 12:56:11 PM
Quote from: Maciek on July 06, 2007, 11:43:45 AM
Sorry, Luke - just one more. ;D

OK then - let me rephrase:
"Ma" (as in "MAll") - Nope. The "a" is "open", like in Apple!

Two syllables: Ma-ciek

But the "ci" stands for a palatalized "ts" sound as (roughly) the CH in CHeek.

So it's more or less:
Mah-chee-eck.
(yes, that is one syllable too many but it's close enough)

Chi-ek

But Match-eek is a pretty good approximation (especially when you want to communicate in writing ;D.

Anyone want to write a vocal piece with the various possible pronunciations of my name as text? ;D ;D ;D
ok, i get it now  8)

Quote from: Maciek on July 06, 2007, 11:43:45 AM
Anyone want to write a vocal piece with the various possible pronunciations of my name as text? ;D ;D ;D
sure, i could provide the Japanese pronounciation:
マッチェク    "Mattchekku"
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 07, 2007, 12:57:25 PM
listened to the Canticle Sonata yesterday.
very interesting stuff, I enjoyed it. It has a soundworld in its own, i don't know how you do it, Luke...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 07, 2007, 01:13:09 PM
Trade secret, greg..... ;D

it's all in the modes. And the rhythmic structure. And the heterophony....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 07, 2007, 01:18:44 PM
Oh, and thanks for the clarification about which Sonata you meant, greg! I can see why you would feel that way about the sections you mentioned. The simplicity of circling around three notes, using less chromatic harmony, was deliberate here, to let the music float upwards without stress - supposed to be something like subconscious/spirit/inspiration floating free, at the risk of sounding pretentious (the chromatic twisting motives at the opening of the piece are deliberately opposed, and linked in my mind to conscious thought and questioning etc). obviously I haven't composed anything much like this piece since then - as I've said before, I seem to retreat into more traditional tonal/formal writing when I'm thinking about other issues, as I was when I wrote that one. But comment taken on board... :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 07, 2007, 01:25:11 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 07, 2007, 01:18:44 PM
to let the music float upwards without stress - supposed to be something like subconscious/spirit/inspiration floating free, at the risk of sounding pretentious
yeah, that was exactly the feeling i got while listening. Repeated listenings definetely help you to understand the music better.  :-X

oh, and that's my secret, if it is even one at all... but don't tell anyone
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 10, 2007, 07:19:30 AM
I've made minor changes to Canticle Sonata on the generous and considered advice of Dr. Henning, concerning a couple of very high trills in the second and third movements. The changes were so simple to make that I find myself doubting them, whether they are effective or whether I took the easiest routes - I'll put them up for your consideration later on (the updated score is on another computer).

Karl, did you ever get a chance to listen to the last part of the piece, BTW? I'm interested as to your opinion on the chaconne movement, and the cyclic elements.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 10, 2007, 08:09:32 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 10, 2007, 07:19:30 AM
.. . The changes were so simple to make that I find myself doubting them, whether they are effective or whether I took the easiest routes - I'll put them up for your consideration later on (the updated score is on another computer).

Excellent! I love it when the repairs are simplicity itself!

QuoteKarl, did you ever get a chance to listen to the last part of the piece, BTW? I'm interested as to your opinion on the chaconne movement, and the cyclic elements.  :)

Thanks for the reminder, Luke!  I've at last listened to the third movement just now.  (You're right, that other trill wanted consideration.)  Having now heard the piece in its entirety, we have to adjust < unreserved enthusiasm for two-thirds of the piece > to < unreserved enthusiasm for work in toto >.  The entire Sonata is beautiful and well made;  I particularly enjoy the broad arc, the pitch-world which is graciously unforced, the fluidity and playfulness of the rhythm.

I want to listen again, and again, but you've got a winner here, Luke!  Congratulations!

We must take thought for breaths at some point.  There's no need to re-write anything (I don't think);  there are a lot of long lines, and we should take thought (both as a courtesy to the performer, and as indication of composer's wishes) for adding the odd breath-mark.  It's something you don't want to 'micromanage', of course, so we're not talking extensive notation . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 10, 2007, 08:11:31 AM
And especially, I enjoy the Canticle Sonata for its fresh character;  it is a distinguished addition to the clarinet repertory.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 10, 2007, 09:20:29 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on July 10, 2007, 08:11:31 AM
And especially, I enjoy the Canticle Sonata for its fresh character;  it is a distinguished addition to the clarinet repertory.

Blimey, Karl! I don't quite know what to say. I must state, however, that as well as being overwhelmed that you like the piece itself so much, I am also grateful that you have picked out as features which pleased you things which I prize highly - the 'unforcedness', the 'fluidity'. Thank you ever so much.  :)  :)

Except, prosaically that you are of course quite right about the long phrases. Another thing which needs a little attention, perhaps.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 10, 2007, 09:33:34 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 10, 2007, 09:20:29 AM
Except, prosaically that you are of course quite right about the long phrases. Another thing which needs a little attention, perhaps.

Can you prepare a clarinet part easily?  Don't worry about it being 'finished' graphically, so long as it's generally legible :-)  Provide one for draught purposes, and I'll marshal thoughts about breaths.

It's very exciting to have been just at the periphery of the creation of such a fine piece, Luke.

One of our former choristers is a fine pianist;  the trouble being that, just when I learnt that he is a fine pianist, he pulled up stakes and moved to New York.  But I'm sounding him out for when he might be visiting (his family are still here in Boston).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 10, 2007, 10:41:40 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on July 10, 2007, 09:33:34 AM
Can you prepare a clarinet part easily?  Don't worry about it being 'finished' graphically, so long as it's generally legible :-)  Provide one for draught purposes, and I'll marshal thoughts about breaths.

Great - thank you again! I can run off a clarinet part through Sibelius; I've had one half-finished for a while in fact. I'll get down to it soon. :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 10, 2007, 12:23:56 PM
It is a great piece... This reminds me of the great praise that was given to Weirdears' piano sonata on the last forum...

http://www.good-music-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,1617.msg52348.html#msg52348

It's a also a really great piece - I can't work out how to download the files though... (i.e. I can only play them on the computer anyone have any ideas?

One idea below - to right click the link and save the target. I will try it now.

http://www.broadjam.com/player/player.asp?play_file=13030_131868
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on July 11, 2007, 03:48:47 AM
Having a quick listen to the first movement of the Canticle sonata, the cross rhythms and occasional rather folky ornaments caught my attention, along with those chord sequences stretching up and away wistfully in the higher register, leading us to new vistas; as with much of your work there's a sense of ambiguity and strong emotions beneath the surface. Redolent also of the SVS's free atonality, particularly Webern and some of his clarinet writing and various arrangements. I'm not sure there's much of Berg's Four Pieces though, but perhaps a little of Finzi's open air writing in his Five Bagatelles: you have your own voice. Sounds episodic on first hearing but also reconciles itself nicely towards the end of the movement.

Also listened to the opening of the 2007 sonata- sadness and elegance cascading in a way somehow reminding me, as I think I said once before, of certain slow moving scif-fi films of the 70s...

Well done Luke & will have a listen to the other movements anon.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on July 11, 2007, 04:15:27 AM
There are short cl&pf pieces I know by Bliss, Chausson and Messager but wouldn't compare these to yours much, and, perhaps a little closer, clarinet sonatas by Bax, Cooke & Poulenc.

I'm presently into Du Fay's secular music, and I know you know your medieval repertory: doesn't your music have some of the same kind of melancholy?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 12, 2007, 03:29:52 PM
Thanks for those comments, Sean - perceptive as always. The reference to medieval music is particularly pertinent and well-made I think. Of course, this Sonata takes as a starting point certain lines of St Francis, though I'm not sure to what extent this itself pushed me towards any medievalisms; more to the point is the use of modes (although not any medieval ones by any means).

But even more 'medieval', I suppose is the kind of melodic writing I use (constantly varying little motives) and the way it is layered. The music is almost entirely linear until the mid-point of the whole Sonata, which is more chorale-like; those little ascending chord sequences you noted vanishing up at the top of the piano in the first movement are like a presentiment of this; and in the last movement more chordal music is heard at times too. Mostly, though, there are quietly independent-but-related lines, as in the opening music, or the opening of the second movement - this kind of writing, which I vaguely call 'loose polyphony' is something I've noticed and encouraged in lots of my more recent pieces, but I'm not sure it doesn't have its roots, for me, in some of that '14th-century avant garde' music we've discussed before (Perusio and so on). Certainly, perhaps the very first piece I wrote in this way - the Unfinished Study of a couple of years ago - opens with a very conscious reference to the opening of Perusio's Le Greygnour Bien, which has always been one of 'those' pieces for me, one that forms a focus for one aspect of my musical thought.

Thanks for helping to draw this more strongly to my attention, Sean - you know how I mull over these things! It's another little trait to throw into the mix!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Mark G. Simon on July 12, 2007, 05:40:50 PM
Luke, I downloaded your sonata and the score has no noteheads, just beams and stems. What gives?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on July 12, 2007, 06:22:01 PM
Ars nova and De Vitry's anomalous period of layered polyphony! I wish I could give better critiques though- my analytical skills aren't really there... All sounds great though.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 13, 2007, 03:38:07 AM
Quote from: Mark G. Simon on July 12, 2007, 05:40:50 PM
Luke, I downloaded your sonata and the score has no noteheads, just beams and stems. What gives?

I have no idea, Mark! I assume it downloaded OK for everyone else  ???  I'll attach a copy to this post so you can try again - we'll see what happens.

NB - this is not the revised version towards which Karl has given his clarinetty advice. And beyond that, I am still not completely happy with a large chunk of the first movement, so at some point I will deal with that too. IOW - this score is not quite the finished article!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Mark G. Simon on July 13, 2007, 04:44:11 AM
Same deal. No noteheads.

I've downloaded Rappy's violin concerto and everything is there. It's only your scores that give me this problem.

I have a particular interest in this piece, since it's for clarinet.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 13, 2007, 04:46:59 AM
It's vexatious that we can't figure out what's not compatible between the Acrobat readers;  this is trouble we've had sharing files more than once, Mark.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Mark G. Simon on July 13, 2007, 04:55:54 AM
I could update to Acrobat 8.0, but then I'd also have to upgrade the operating system, then probably most of my other software as well.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 13, 2007, 04:57:29 AM
I could fax you Luke's piece, if that is convenient for you, Mark?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Mark G. Simon on July 13, 2007, 05:09:10 AM
I'm going to see if Owlice can get it at her computer at work.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on July 13, 2007, 01:52:11 PM
Mark, why not try another pdf reader? My default one is Foxit because it is much "lighter" than Acrobat and therefore loads MUCH faster. But every now and then I run into the kind of trouble you describe - which is when I switch to Acrobat, and that usually does the trick. So switching to another pdf reader might be all it takes. :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: owlice on July 16, 2007, 09:33:04 AM
It looks be-yoo-ti-ful on my screen. :-)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 16, 2007, 09:36:16 AM
Yoo-hoo, owlice!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 23, 2007, 04:26:14 PM
TTT

(Sure, I miss the matey old flame-wars!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 14, 2007, 04:08:41 PM
So what's going on on the composing front Luke?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 15, 2007, 12:23:28 AM
Bits and pieces - one big piece, one small one. But rather than flooding the thread with my musings (as with previous pieces), I'm trying to keep quiet unless and until I actually have something to show for it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 15, 2007, 04:00:06 AM
But, nay, bring on the musings, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on October 15, 2007, 03:42:52 PM
Yes, go ahead with the musings, if you feel like it, Luke! They are always very welcome and a great read too!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 21, 2007, 06:46:51 AM
Is it time for another publicity creating flame war? I think it might be! might be!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 21, 2007, 07:42:51 AM
Please feel free - this is a flame-friendly zone.

To be honest, over the last few days I have been trying to get my thoughts together in a presentable form as requested above, but you know me - never use one word where thirty will do. A habit I find hard to kick, though it's the opposite of the way I compose, I think. So I'm trying to trim down the 4000+ words I've written, and whilst I'm at it, also to trim it of some of the more toe-curling moments without altering the sense too much... Hard work, I can tell you!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on October 21, 2007, 10:20:27 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 21, 2007, 07:42:51 AM
Please feel free - this is a flame-friendly zone.

To be honest, over the last few days I have been trying to get my thoughts together in a presentable form as requested above, but you know me - never use one word where thirty will do. A habit I find hard to kick, though it's the opposite of the way I compose, I think. So I'm trying to trim down the 4000+ words I've written, and whilst I'm at it, also to trim it of some of the more toe-curling moments without altering the sense too much... Hard work, I can tell you!
this could've been a post of me describing myself, Luke  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on November 20, 2007, 06:11:01 AM
Yes, well, obviously I failed to marshall my thoughts into a presentable state, though I did try my best, honest! However, perhaps I ought to TTT my thread and keep it from slipping onto page 2.

Actually, there is a little thing to report, in fact - of the two pieces I mentioned being in the process of writing, the smaller one has been finished for some time. It is a pieces for girl's voices and piano written for the chamber choir at my school, and to be performed at their (rather wonderful and very English) carol concert in a few weeks' time (think: candlelit small Norman church in the middle of the countryside and all the cliches of the nine lessons sort....lovely)

It's quite hard for them - they are pretty young and have varying abilities - but they are actually managing it quite well now, and it should be OK for the performance. I tried to stuff the piece with hidden tricks to make it easier for them (notes to latch on to, various symmetries etc.) but I am not as experienced in the choral domain as (e.g.) Karl so I may have miscalculated at times; also I don't have a fraction of his skill as a choral trainer, for sure. But, pretentious old sod that I am, I wasn't prepared to change my way of writing too much. It's been hard-won, as this thread and the old one testify, and I don't want to let myself work in other directions whilst I'm getting used to it. In the end, I think I managed to find a very good compromise, and I'm happy with the piece itself, though there's still some nervousness on my part about the performance, I can tell you!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on November 21, 2007, 04:57:44 AM
Quote from: G...R...E...G... on October 21, 2007, 10:20:27 AM
this could've been a post of me describing myself, Luke  ;D

You must be thrilled Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on November 21, 2007, 07:58:24 AM
What's the text?

(Is there one?)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on November 21, 2007, 01:49:03 PM
Here's the score as it stands. I may of course be altering it in the next few days.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on November 21, 2007, 04:36:36 PM
I'm not surprised they find it difficult! Will the concert be recorded?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on November 21, 2007, 11:02:36 PM
Hopefully. Or a rehearsal. It's not so much that it is difficult - actually, they catch on to it pretty well. It's more that they think that it must be difficult, and that tends to inhibit them somewhat. Once they are persuaded that, yes, they are getting it right, and it sounds good, they realise that it isn't as hard as they assumed, and the sound grows in confidence.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on November 22, 2007, 08:14:00 AM
Quote from: Guido on November 21, 2007, 04:36:36 PM
I'm not surprised they find it difficult! Will the concert be recorded?
doesn't look that difficult, since the tempo is supposed to be slow.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on November 22, 2007, 08:27:27 AM
What does the little tick at bar 22 mean (in brackets)?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on November 22, 2007, 08:30:17 AM
It means they could take a breath here, if they need it to reinforce their top notes. They don't, however.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on November 23, 2007, 12:52:15 PM
Quote from: Guido on November 21, 2007, 04:36:36 PM
I'm not surprised they find it difficult! Will the concert be recorded?

Actually, I recorded them today during a run-through. It's very rough, and I don't think it would be fair to them to put it up for general consumption; I'll wait till I have a better version. The microphone was closer to the altos than the sopranos, and catches some of their difficulties a little too revealingly! But it's a useful thing for me to listen to and decide what to concentrate on next.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on December 09, 2007, 01:25:06 PM
The carol concert/service was this evening, with my piece a part of it. It went pretty well, I think. In the end I've come to the conclusion that I was right all along in my careful planning of its degree of difficulty: the piece judges the capabilities of the girls pretty accurately - it pushes them to the limit of what they can do, but they can do it, and it was quite an achievement for them. Tuning still a little suspect in the lower voices at times, tone was sometimes a little rough in those same voices, and they needed holding together in some places, but otherwise fine. People seemed to like it, though of course it wasn't a typical concert audience, so I'm not sure how many people even noticed that one item was a world premiere  ;D But people whose opinion I value were particularly nice, and our excellent and very professional singing teacher, who was there to play the organ, was particularly perceptive and full of touching praise, which meant a lot.

I have a slightly better recording of a rehearsal last week, but I'm in two minds about putting it up, for more than one reason - it still isn't perfect and so I'm not sure I want it to represent my wishes; also I don't think it is fair on the girls to post their singing, especially with imperfections, without warning or consent.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on December 09, 2007, 06:21:50 PM
well, i wanna hear..... how about they just remain anonymous? It's not like i know them.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on December 10, 2007, 04:01:40 AM
Bravo, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on December 10, 2007, 04:07:02 AM
Thanks, Karl

I had to leave as soon as the service was over last night, but I'm back at school now and have had more nice comments from parents and staff relayed to me from those who remained behind longer. Very gratifying.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: BachQ on December 10, 2007, 04:08:56 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on December 09, 2007, 01:25:06 PM
I have a slightly better recording of a rehearsal last week, but I'm in two minds about putting it up, for more than one reason - it still isn't perfect and so I'm not sure I want it to represent my wishes; also I don't think it is fair on the girls to post their singing, especially with imperfections, without warning or consent.

Post your music ........ already .......

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on December 10, 2007, 12:24:52 PM
Bravo from me too, Luke!

Quote from: lukeottevanger on December 09, 2007, 01:25:06 PM
I don't think it is fair on the girls to post their singing, especially with imperfections, without warning or consent.

But you could ask them, couldn't you? Or would that be imposing on them (are they afraid of you? ;))?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on December 18, 2007, 02:25:39 AM
....minor mention on the school's website... (http://www.riddlesworthhall.com/news/Carol_Service.php)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on December 19, 2007, 02:46:56 AM
Nice.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on December 19, 2007, 02:50:49 AM
And a bit odd too... ;D

Quotewe also enjoyed a Russian Christmas Prayer

??? ::)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on December 19, 2007, 04:38:08 AM
What can I say?  ;D

That was a reading by a Russian girl at the school, and we enjoyed it (actually, it was my favourite bit, though my 6 year old leaned over to the headmaster and whispered 'I don't understand this!'  0:) ), so I guess strictly speaking, this is an accurate piece of reportage.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on December 19, 2007, 04:57:52 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on December 18, 2007, 02:25:39 AM
....minor mention on the school's website... (http://www.riddlesworthhall.com/news/Carol_Service.php)
oh, so you really do exist! cool  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on December 19, 2007, 06:18:35 AM
No, this is just all one of your famous dreams..... >:D

Watch out for that pink bunny on a speedboat behind you...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on December 19, 2007, 08:58:19 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on December 19, 2007, 06:18:35 AM
No, this is just all one of your famous dreams..... >:D

Watch out for that pink bunny on a speedboat behind you...
hm.... how'd you know? Oh well, the pink bunny is on the speedboat because he's trying to get it started, except he's too dumb to figure it out. There's no gas inside, and it's on carpet. What a weird dream...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on December 19, 2007, 01:24:09 PM
Curious.  It isn't often I think of pink bunnies, but they are invariably cruising on speedboats . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on December 19, 2007, 01:39:56 PM
Do you have these fellas in America?

(http://i12.ebayimg.com/01/i/000/ae/04/2054_2.JPG)

Greg has something of the Duracell bunny about him, though I can't put my finger on what it is....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on December 20, 2007, 05:56:07 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on December 19, 2007, 01:39:56 PM


Greg has something of the Duracell bunny about him, though I can't put my finger on what it is....
wait..... what?! Duracell bunny? didn't know there was one!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 14, 2008, 08:48:37 AM
Have you got any recorded examples of your superlative orchestration? I don't think I've heard any piecs by you for large forces...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 14, 2008, 11:05:09 AM
Quote from: Guido on January 14, 2008, 08:48:37 AM
Have you got any recorded examples of your superlative orchestration? I don't think I've heard any piecs by you for large forces...

'Superlative'? - I can dream! Short answer is no - the closest is The Chant of Carnus, but the orchestra is only 14 + small string section and trumpet solo. And the recording doesn't show it at its best, though there are moments when it lets rip a little....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 14, 2008, 11:15:08 AM
Shame. Superlative just referring to the other thread where you claimed that it was the one thing that you knew that you could do - since you're a pretty modest kind of guy I thought I'd push the boat out with the adjective.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on January 14, 2008, 11:54:16 AM
too bad you don't know anyone who'd be willing to help you out getting an orchestral piece or something performed...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 14, 2008, 12:54:03 PM
It's not exactly that - in fact I have a possible avenue at the moment which is in some respects tempting to explore further. But my mind doesn't really run along orchestral lines at the moment, I'd have some difficulty forcing it to.

FWIW, here are a couple of pages from my two large orchestral works - dating from 1996 and 1997. They seem a very long time ago and a very distant kind of music to that which I have gradually been able to focus in upon. Which is another way of saying, don't judge me by them - I am 95% a different composer now!

The first one is from Ophruoeis, which is a piece for alto flute and orchestra, with some good pages and no doubt dozens of poor ones
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 14, 2008, 12:57:24 PM
....and the second one is from Processional, written a year later, and scored for solo piano, five solo voices (optionally pre-recorded) and orchestra. At this point, about three quarters of the way through, some of the score becomes semi-graphic, with indefinite noteheads and suggestive notation.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on January 14, 2008, 01:47:39 PM
beautiful!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 15, 2008, 12:25:41 PM
Have either of these pieces been performed?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 15, 2008, 12:30:34 PM
Of course not! The first one is the one which 'won' (or whatever) the CUMS competition competition in 1996 (judged by Holloway), but as we established on the old thread, it didn't really win, not officially. Robin told me informally that it would have won, but because the forces were too big for CUMS, whose performance of the winning piece is the prize, no winner was officially selected that year. (I hadn't written the piece with any thought of entering it for a competition, hence the unreasonable demands!)

Looking back, though, I'm rather glad it didn't win. I don't think I could have coped with the stress and the inevitable rewrites which would have been necessary, in copious amounts!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 15, 2008, 12:47:17 PM
haha fair enough. I remember you talking about this actually. I know that you are not very forth coming with your compositions, but have you ever sent any of your works to any chamber groups and/or pianists?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 15, 2008, 12:53:18 PM
Not without being asked to first. And I don't think it is likely to happen, either.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 15, 2008, 01:00:56 PM
Well, I'm neither a chamber group, nor a pianist, but I'm asking for your Canticle Sonata to be finished in a foreseeable future, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 15, 2008, 01:05:45 PM
Ah well, that's different! That's a request, so it will be honoured!

I'd like your honest opinion, Karl (and anyone else) - I've long ago (well, immediately you told me, really) sorted out the trill issue (I think), but I can't get over niggly feelings about the first movement, particularly its central portion. But I've had trouble getting my mind into the same gear it was in when I was writing the piece, which would be necessary to make any reworking function, I think. An outside view on the matter would be appreciated - and might spur me on, too.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 15, 2008, 01:44:14 PM
Is your keyboard/clarinet and piano recording still online? - I couldn't find it on the first page of the thread...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 15, 2008, 01:49:32 PM
No, it's further into the thread, here (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.msg25259.html#msg25259). Let me know if you can't get it to work.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 15, 2008, 01:51:12 PM
Listening to it myself, as it happens. I've just started the last movement. I'm really not sure about the first movement, though the outer sections are mostly fine and effective to my mind, but movements 2 and, as I recall, 3, seem good to me.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 15, 2008, 01:52:25 PM
Excellent - I will download it again. I don't knw where I put the original download!

P.S. reply no.53 onwards is hilarious... Its time to rekindle the flame war.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 15, 2008, 02:00:57 PM
Which bars are you referring to when you say middle section?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 15, 2008, 02:17:19 PM
Well, I find it hard to tell where it starts to go wrong, if it does, but it all occurs sometime between bar 56 and bar 121. That's not to say that everything within these limits is suspect.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 15, 2008, 02:35:58 PM
...of course I've got in mind Brahms's precept, something along the lines of 'if you have the slightest doubt about it, scrap it'. Probably the right thing to do, but as there's a kernel of nutritious goodness in there somewhere, I need to root it out before I throw the rest away.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 15, 2008, 04:25:10 PM
I really like 83 onwards but I agree that 56-83 is weaker than what comes before or afterwards (though there is a lovely moment from 67-69). My own feeling is that music looses its direction a bit here - the improvisatory figures just sound a tiny bit too improvisatory! (that is to say slightly aimless :-[)... But I'll leave it to Karl and the proper composers on this forum to suggest what you should correct and suggest how you might go about it...

It really is a very good piece though - I can't wait to hear it with a real clarinet (and at a non-ear-damaging bit rate!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 15, 2008, 05:36:08 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on January 15, 2008, 02:35:58 PM
...of course I've got in mind Brahms's precept, something along the lines of 'if you have the slightest doubt about it, scrap it'.

I have doubts about Brahms's precept, so I've scrapped it  8)

I will take another, and fresh, look, Luke;  point us to the sound-file (I'm sure I know where to find the score at the office).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 16, 2008, 12:32:00 AM
Karl, there's a link-to-a-link a few posts up. I'll post a score with the revisions I made to the trills later today if I can, although of course they only affect a few bars.

Guido - thanks for those comments. As I see it, bar 56-86 are a necessary bit of freewheeling, with the texture thinning out and slowly thickening again. Modally speaking they represent a transition to a point when both modes are present (bar 79); motivically its phrases are paraphrases of the opening phrases of the piece. However, I agree that the lines themselves may need to be re-conceived.

But I'm not really happy with the music after 86 either; it reverses the process, but it seems to take too long, and to become a bit stodgy. But it's one of those things where if you pull at it only slightly, the whole thing starts to become unravelled. I might have another look at it today....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 16, 2008, 03:55:37 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on January 16, 2008, 12:32:00 AM
Karl, there's a link-to-a-link a few posts up. I'll post a score with the revisions I made to the trills later today if I can, although of course they only affect a few bars.

Yes, please, and, good!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 17, 2008, 04:17:27 AM
I managed to spare an hour or two on the piece last night, but, as I feared, I may have made it worse (good job I still have the original!). I'll plough on tonight, hopefully, or at least at the weekend.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: BachQ on January 17, 2008, 04:35:20 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on January 15, 2008, 05:36:08 PM
I have doubts about Brahms's precept, so I've scrapped it  8)

:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: johnQpublic on January 17, 2008, 06:33:39 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on January 17, 2008, 04:17:27 AM
as I feared, I may have made it worse (good job I still have the original!). 

Been there many a time. Usually it means I fear to throw (forget) the original even though I know it's not quite right. And it also means many future re-writes ahead....sigh
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on January 24, 2008, 01:54:26 PM
Where the heck have I been when this thread was moving along? ???

Well, anyway, I'm back... 0:)

Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on January 14, 2008, 01:47:39 PM
beautiful!

My reaction exactly! :D I mean that was exactly the word that crossed my mind - in English, no less! ;D

I especially like the second one. But both really are beautiful looking scores! :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 24, 2008, 02:01:18 PM
As long as they look good, who cares what they sound like, eh?  ;D

BTW, I have been working on the clarinet/piano Canticle Sonata and have made some changes, but the problem remains, if to a lesser extent. So more work is still required. I've also made some tiny changes to the Sonata (piano) which I will post as some point, for form's sake. Though the changes are hardly noticeable, for the most part.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on January 24, 2008, 02:09:02 PM
Hey, with my score reading skills it would be presumptuous to say anything about what it sounds like. All I can say is that I really like what it looks like (where "look" is in fact an approximation of "I imagine it sounds", BTW ;D).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 24, 2008, 02:12:19 PM
As the composer, I can hardly claim to be in a much more advanced situation! Never having heard it, I can only hope that it sounds like I imagine it does, too.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on January 24, 2008, 02:17:36 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on January 24, 2008, 02:12:19 PM
As the composer, I can hardly claim to be in a much more advanced situation!

LOL! Now that's what I call ironic! ;D ;D ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 25, 2008, 04:20:37 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on January 24, 2008, 02:01:18 PM
BTW, I have been working on the clarinet/piano Canticle Sonata and have made some changes, but the problem remains, if to a lesser extent.

Very glad that the Canticle Sonata has been benefiting from your attention, Luke;  and sorry both that you find a problem, and that I have been unable to be attentive . . . been pressing to get the Passion in a condition for the choir to read it at nest week's rehearsal . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 25, 2008, 09:54:37 AM
Luke - out of interest - can you read a score by looking at it and hear the harmonies in your head?

My second question, and this may sound flippant, but I was interested to see that you said you had to build up the modes again in the 'problem passage', which I guessed because of the numbers and letters above the bars along with + signs, but really, do you feel you have to? Why not break the rules? I guess these questions are more aimed at the question - why do you stick to your self imposed rules... a philosophic question rather than critical...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 25, 2008, 01:12:43 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on January 25, 2008, 04:20:37 AM
Very glad that the Canticle Sonata has been benefiting from your attention, Luke;  and sorry both that you find a problem, and that I have been unable to be attentive . . . been pressing to get the Passion in a condition for the choir to read it at nest week's rehearsal . . . .

Not a problem in the slightest!  :)

Quote from: Guido on January 25, 2008, 09:54:37 AM
Luke - out of interest - can you read a score by looking at it and hear the harmonies in your head?

Depends on the complexity of the score, of course, so the answer is on a sliding scale from 'yes' to 'only to some extent'! That's not much help, is it!

Quote from: Guido on January 25, 2008, 09:54:37 AMMy second question, and this may sound flippant, but I was interested to see that you said you had to build up the modes again in the 'problem passage', which I guessed because of the numbers and letters above the bars along with + signs, but really, do you feel you have to? Why not break the rules? I guess these questions are more aimed at the question - why do you stick to your self imposed rules... a philosophic question rather than critical...

Not flippant, an interesting question. There are a few answer, some specific to this particular part of this particular piece, some general. In no special order, not very well expressed and probably not covering everything I think about the issue:

1 - The use of the modes in this passage is not a superimposed, abstract device, but an integral part of the music, like a 'significant' modulation in a fully, functionally tonal piece. The total conception of this part of the music is well unified, I think - the form and the modes are bound together here, and I am happy with the result; the problem I am having lies at a different level. In this case, the first sections of the sonata, up to the problem area, present the two basic modes, (plus a few occurences of myterious '1+2'); the problem section simply adds notes to mode 1 until it becomes modes 1+2, and then subtracts them to leave mode 2. The musical effect is of an increase and then a decrease in harmonic density, like a wave coming in and receding, but leaving the shore in a different state.

2 - this is really part of the above - this modal particular point of modal transition is not what is causing the problems for me here, so 'bending the rules' wouldn't really help.

3 - more generally, and forgive the digression. I was teaching someone some Brahms today, and was illustrating for her what I find to be one of the most impressive aspects of his music. That is that the deep expressive beauty of the piece is not acheived at the expense of structural precision and rigour; the two are held in a perfect, mutually-reinforcing and touching balance which itself, in its own way, is a remarkable act of counterpoint, one of Brahms's strongest suits (Mozart and Bach are the only ones comparable, it seems to me). Think, for instance, of the first piece of op 119 (and the example could be multiplied many times over - comparable examples are swarming in my brain already). There are these extraordinary chains of descending thirds, creating utterly new and very subtle chords before your very ears, but the whole is held together by an unobtrusive canon between soprano and bass. Or in one of the most lyrical of the Schumann Variations, op 9, in which the bass is the exact, simultaneous inversion of the treble, but is then made to go in canon with it too.... In both cases, I find that the tenderness of the harmony etc. is only reinforced by the strength of the lines within which it is enclosed. In fact, in Brahms's particular case, I think it goes even further than that, but that's for another thread.... Anyway, what I have drawn from that is not only that one needs to balance the one with the other, but that rigour is an expressive device in itself. Also, that the best music is constructed strongly from every angle, so that it 'holds water' however one looks at it, the composer being aware of the import and implications of their use of seemingly limiting technical devices. I've always strived to write music of this sort, though whether I've managed is another matter.

4 - in fact, of course, I have no problem in principle with allowing a good degree of 'give' in technical matters - after all, this is in effect what a 'tonal answer' is (at this point I'm reminded of the way the tonal answer is sometimes used as part of the argument against the intervallic rigour of twelve tone technique). But in practice, and in all honesty, in this particular modal way of writing, I neither find this technical 'give' necessary nor, in fact effective. Using the modes as I have been doing creates (and is intended to create) music of an unusual ambiguous and 'floating' harmony* Playing around with the modes, then, whilst acceptable in principle as I said above, only serves to muddy the waters in actuality, whereas keeping the modes pure makes the music more lucid and the modal interactions more effective.

*six note modes, for instance, are usually enough to suggest two or three tonal centres without conclusively pinning the music down to one, and I have a mental image of the mode floating in space like a 3D object around which the music/composer/listener walks, seeing (hearing) the thing from various angles like an Alexander Calder mobile. Each of the Individuation and Enlightenment pieces works in this way, then; in the piano Sonata, the first section, in mode 1, can be hard as three 'views' of the mode; then a similar thing happens with mode 2, etc. The Canticle Sonata works in a similar but more complex way - the opening melodic paragraphs in mode 1, each on one bar shorter than the last, for instance, are also a variety of views of the mode, exploring various different harmonic implications without ever conclusively settling for one (or being able to)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 26, 2008, 03:54:54 PM
Very interesting. 
QuoteUsing the modes as I have been doing creates (and is intended to create) music of an unusual ambiguous and 'floating' harmony'
this is exactly how I experience it, and I have to say that I find I can never be totally comfortable with it. Even when I find it very beautiful, there is something very nervous and restless about it - it never seems to 'settle' like normal harmony does. I'm not sure it will with repeated listening either - I feel that that 'freely floating' sound is an integral and very unique part of it.

Incidentally now that you have broadband could you upload the recordings of the two recent piano sonatas without the hideous amount of compression that you had to use before? That would be great!

Those late Brahms piano pieces are really very special. Are the earlier piano sonatas as good? You haven't mentioned them to me.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on January 26, 2008, 04:02:24 PM
Quote from: Guido on January 26, 2008, 03:54:54 PM

Those late Brahms piano pieces are really very special. Are the earlier piano sonatas as good? You haven't mentioned them to me.
oh yeah, all of his piano music is amazing- the only rival he has, in my opinion is Prokofiev.
The most interesting thing about Brahms, i think, is his use of rhythm......



Quote from: lukeottevanger on January 25, 2008, 01:12:43 PM

*six note modes, for instance, are usually enough to suggest two or three tonal centres without conclusively pinning the music down to one, and I have a mental image of the mode floating in space like a 3D object around which the music/composer/listener walks, seeing (hearing) the thing from various angles like an Alexander Calder mobile.
wow, that's a very interesting thought.... i wonder if there's some formula to that maybe? i haven't thought of it much.....
1 note = 1 tonality, 2 note = 2 tonalities of course, but beyond that i guess it depends on which notes you have and how you use them.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 26, 2008, 11:23:01 PM
Guido, I'm not ignoring your last post, I just have to go out for the day in a few minutes. I'll reply this evening. But replying to Greg's point is a bit quicker:

Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on January 26, 2008, 04:02:24 PM
wow, that's a very interesting thought.... i wonder if there's some formula to that maybe? i haven't thought of it much.....
1 note = 1 tonality, 2 note = 2 tonalities of course, but beyond that i guess it depends on which notes you have and how you use them.

Depends on how you define 'tonality' - does a piece made up only of, say, the note C imply only a tonality of C or does it, by persisting so long, imply itself to be a dominant of some sort? So perhaps 1 note = many tonalities. And of course (sticking to 12 tone ET), all 12 notes = all tonalities too. But in between = say I had a mode made up of C, D, F, G, A, B - there's an implication of something like C major, of a Lydian F, of a Dorian D and a Mixolydian G, but without any of these being fully determined. The music can move from one to the other without a single point of modulation. This leads to the 'floating' tonality I described, which, though Guido finds it troubling, is very much to the point in my mind - more later on that.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on January 27, 2008, 06:32:43 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on January 26, 2008, 11:23:01 PM
Guido, I'm not ignoring your last post, I just have to go out for the day in a few minutes. I'll reply this evening. But replying to Greg's point is a bit quicker:

Depends on how you define 'tonality' - does a piece made up only of, say, the note C imply only a tonality of C or does it, by persisting so long, imply itself to be a dominant of some sort? So perhaps 1 note = many tonalities. And of course (sticking to 12 tone ET), all 12 notes = all tonalities too. But in between = say I had a mode made up of C, D, F, G, A, B - there's an implication of something like C major, of a Lydian F, of a Dorian D and a Mixolydian G, but without any of these being fully determined. The music can move from one to the other without a single point of modulation. This leads to the 'floating' tonality I described, which, though Guido finds it troubling, is very much to the point in my mind - more later on that.
i understand a lot more with that explanation, really.
a really obvious demonstration of this would be Terry Riley's In C, or more specifically the performing version of it that i've written out myself, which tends to go back and forth between C Lydian, G Mixolydian and E Minor...... and i mention this one because, unlike most other music, that's all it does- no modulations, and it even sounds interesting.  :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 27, 2008, 01:27:32 PM
OK, I'm back....brace yourselves!  ;D

Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on January 27, 2008, 06:32:43 AM
a really obvious demonstration of this would be Terry Riley's In C, or more specifically the performing version of it that i've written out myself, which tends to go back and forth between C Lydian, G Mixolydian and E Minor...... and i mention this one because, unlike most other music, that's all it does- no modulations, and it even sounds interesting.  :D

Greg - picking out Terry Riley is very pertinent - he's been quite an example for me; though this modal technique of mine didn't come from anywhere except my own proclivities, I was interested to see it echoed precisely in Riley's Y Bolanzero, about which he has said:

Quote from: Terry RileyThe entire material, the Oriental sounding melodies as well as the floating harmonies which do not seem to want to settle on a single center [my italics] are derived from the scale (ascending A-Bb-C#-E=F-G-A and descending A-G-F-E-C#-C natural Bb-A-Cl). This has a scalic relationship to the North Indian Raga, Madhuvanti...

His wonderful set of pieces (to be improvised upon) for just-tempered piano The Harp of New Albion work in a similar way, which is why they are such an important work for me.

Quote from: Guido on January 26, 2008, 03:54:54 PM
... this [floating harmony] is exactly how I experience it, and I have to say that I find I can never be totally comfortable with it. Even when I find it very beautiful, there is something very nervous and restless about it - it never seems to 'settle' like normal harmony does. I'm not sure it will with repeated listening either - I feel that that 'freely floating' sound is an integral and very unique part of it.

Guido - thanks for your thoughts - interesting as always. My responses, as usual in no sensible order!

1 - firstly, of course, I wouldn't dream to 'argue' with your reactions (as if that was possible!), nor want to change them. But nevertheless:

2 - perhaps I ought to try to describe why this 'floating harmony' is a specific aim for me; it may help you to see where it 'comes from'.

3 - however, before that, just technically on the matter of 'closure' or the harmony 'settling' as you put it:  the use of the modes doesn't make this impossible at all - there are plenty of cadences with a good feeling of closure in the piano Sonata or the Canticle Sonata, I think, though none of them are emphasized, which is more to do with the tone of the music than the modes themselves. Shorter pieces which use only one mode like the Individuation and Enlightenment pieces are also often strongly oriented around particular keys (the first, just for instance, is clearly and strongly in G minor, but with strong F minor hints in the central section). The use of two modes and related modes in the Canticle Sonata means that the piece also has traditional areas of harmonic 'sweep' - though I've reserved them for rare occasions, such as the lead-up to the centre of the middle movement, or climactic points in the third movement. The piano Sonata certainly ends in floating ambiguity, but this is a deliberate choice, and I chose to use until-then unheard 'negations' of the modes to achieve this effect.

4 - one thing which attracts me to the technique is that this kind of open-ended modality is both more and less expressively specific than more fully-chromatic or fully-modal music. The music takes on the specific expressive colours of the modes towards which it hints, but avoids the relative greyness which greater chromatic saturation could tend towards. One of the first pieces I wrote with the technique, ... mi ritrovai... is as good an example of this as any - it slips between tonal centres and expressive types undemonstratively but quite clearly.

5 - this is the really important bit, I suppose. As you'll know from my endless banging-on about it, I regard a composers' 'being-true-to-himself' as of absolutely vital importance; without it, the music is pretty worthless to my mind. The lack of demonstrative closure or settling in my modal pieces is certainly in tune with my character. I have a very strong tendency towards timidity, as you can see from (among other things) my lack of interest in thrusting my music forwards. This timidity has always been echoed in my music as a tendency to avoid anything in the least 'showy' - I've been aware of this for years and years, but I used to fight against it, thinking it was a weakness; now I welcome it. So, certain pretty standard parts of being a composer come very unnaturally to me - the big gesture, the strong close or sweeping harmonic sequence - in fact, anything that says to the audience 'listen to me'! Those big pages of orchestral score I posted above are examples of precisely the thing - they go so much against the grain; I adored writing them but to some extent they were applied 'cerebrally', from 'the outside'. All this lack of desire to make any kind of big statement is hard to square with wishing to write music, I know, but there we are. I don't like the power games that this whole thing implies - to me, music is more important than a composer exercising magic and wizardry over his listeners, and I much prefer the image of the composer who simply presents the listener with a world to enter, to take or to leave.  This floating world, with a minimum of intervention from the composer, is what the modal technique gives me. Any 'big gestures' that remain in e.g. the Canticle Sonata, which is a much more 'classical' work than its companions, are therefore a mini-triumph for me, as they are both really 'meant' and implied in the musical material itself.

6 - implicit in the idea of music and composer being as closely unified as possible is the conclusion that if someone doesn't like the music one writes, this shouldn't be taken as cause for offence. As I've said before, if my music is really and truly an expression of myself, and therefore something I can't really change, nor wish to - and I've come to think that in this at least, I have succeeded - then someone not liking it is only like someone not liking the shape of my ears (that was the example I gave before!) The same, of course, goes for someone who likes it....!

8 - also staying true to small tendencies of mine - I like my music to drift from and to silence. Not any old silence but the silence described by Zen as 'ma', a kind of 'meaningful silence' which follows on noise, heard for instance in the breathing gaps between phrases in shakuhachi playing...or in the gaps between frogs croaking at nighttime, or whatever! My modal pieces tend to work in short breath-like phrases, each one reaching ending with something which, then, we might describe as an 'open closure', which leads into the silent space after it and hopefully makes it similarly 'meaningful'.

7 - There is one more thing, a very important one for me, though I'm not sure if it need be important for the listener. It is linked to the imagery with which I described the modes earlier - as a kind of 3D, floating object around which one walks. I do have a kind of obsession with this concept, a spiritual thing in some ways, and also a Jungian one - the mandala-like circling around the singular point at the centre, which Jung would see as the Self (this goes someway to explaining my chosen avatar, for those of you who know what it is). The circling motion eventually leads inwards - this is the process which Jung would call Individuation (as explored in my pieces of that name), and it is this 'individuation', or to use Janacek's terminology 'introspection', for which I'm looking, both for my music and, I suppose, for myself. I know I'm beginning to sound a little like Sean here, and in fact when he talks about things tangentially connected with this I do think that he approaches closer to sense than elsewhere. But importantly, I'm not proposing some Seanian Grand Truth in this - just something that has importance for me, and that has worked for me in some surprising ways. As you might be able to guess, this is something I could talk about at length, but the gist of it, musically, is that I want my music to be this 3D floating object, undemonstrative, to be walked around and seen from every side, with the underlying idea that in circling around something one comes closer to its essence than if one imposes oneself on it.

Quote from: Guido on January 26, 2008, 03:54:54 PM
Incidentally now that you have broadband could you upload the recordings of the two recent piano sonatas without the hideous amount of compression that you had to use before? That would be great!

Yes, OK, I'll get onto that....

Quote from: Guido on January 26, 2008, 03:54:54 PM
Those late Brahms piano pieces are really very special. Are the earlier piano sonatas as good? You haven't mentioned them to me.

Short answer - no. Long answer - the third sonata is a wonderful, virtuoso work of full-blooded early[ish] Romanticism, with much of the subjectivity that you get in early Brahms. It has been much-recorded, deservedly, whereas the other two sonatas have been less well-served. The first sonata is less successful but still a fine work, with deliberate echoes of the Hammerklavier. The second sonata is one of Brahms's weakest works in some respects, straining at the seams too much (e.g. it has the only three stave layout I can remember in Brahms) and bursting with Sturm und Drang double octaves etc. The middle movements are very good indeed, however.

However, slightly later but still 'early' are the op 10 Ballades - extremely fine pieces, somewhat Schumannesque, but with strong Ossianic tinges and very original keyboard writing. And as I've mentioned before, my favourite Brahms piano music outside the late sets is the set of variations on a theme of Schumann op 9, which themselves have a deliberately Schumannesque allusiveness (and ellusiveness) and which even have their own Brahmsian parallel to Schumann's 'F[lorestan und E[usebius]'. These are really extraordinary pieces, highly subjective and multi-layered in their referentiality, the sort of thing that really allows a performer lots of space - I adore playing them. Here's some dude playing them on youtube (a few mistakes and odd tempi), just to give you an idea (it's in three parts) (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NfB1wXWPEnw)

Go still later and you get to another couple of sets of variations, that 'on a Hungarian melody' (good) and that 'on an original theme' (extremely good indeed). The latter is Brahms at his most D major-lyrical (see Nanie, Violin Concerto, Second Symphony, and indeed many of the Schumann Variations) and is really a gorgeous piece, its keyboard layout and counterpoint at times recalling no one but Webern. These three variation sets are forgotten alongside the classicising edifice of the Handel set and the pyrotechnics of the Paganini sets, but for my money at least the two I have singled out are every bit as fine and many times more personal.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 27, 2008, 02:09:30 PM
As usual, thanks for your thought provoking and comprehensive notes. With regards to the Brahms - I just listened to the Schumann Variations for the first time yesterday, and then instantly listened to them 3 times again. I adore the set of variations by Schumann that they are based on - the Geistervariationen which are just heartbreakingly beautiful (as you probably know, the last thing he composed before he died and repressed by Clara*). I will look out those two variation sets by Brahms.

I'd like you to know that the unease that I feel does not translate to dislike, but merely a new feeling that I have derived from music, which can only be a good thing. I am very very fond of the plainly titled Sonata, and I think the Canticle sonata will have a similar impact on me when the real clarinet version is played.

*Incidentally the theme is very similar to the one in the late violin concerto - Which is another work that I feel is just stupidly and blindly denigrated... Without question for me one of the most affecting and beautiful pieces of the Romantic period.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 27, 2008, 02:18:01 PM
Quote from: Guido on January 27, 2008, 02:09:30 PM
As usual, thanks for your thought provoking and comprehensive notes. With regards to the Brahms - I just listened to the Schumann Variations for the first time yesterday, and then instantly listened to them 3 times again. I adore the set of variations by Schumann that they are based on - the Geistervariationen which are just heartbreakingly beautiful (as you probably know, the last thing he composed before he died and repressed by Clara). I will look out those two variation sets by Brahms.

Ah - that's a different set of Schumann Variations you are talking about, I think - the piano duet set, a completely different (though also wonderful work)! The Schumann Variations which I meant (and gave the youtube link to) are for piano solo, and based on the first of Schumann's Bunte Blatter. But all are good!

Quote from: Guido on January 27, 2008, 02:09:30 PMI'd like you to know that the unease that I feel does not translate to dislike, but merely a new feeling that I have derived from music, which can only be a good thing. I am very very fond of the plainly titled Sonata, and I think the Canticle sonata will have a similar impact on me when the real clarinet version is played.

Cheers - no, I understand completely. My post was really an attempt to describe the reasons which lie behind my writing such rootless stuff! And you gave me a good excuse to write about it in a way I haven't been able to do before.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 28, 2008, 12:36:48 PM
As requested by Guido, I've uploaded the original-quality versions of two piano pieces - the Nightingale Sonata (an odd, clumsy, very personal and tonal piece reveling in its rural naivety and ineptitude, inspired by aspects of the life and writings of John Clare - I don't think I've talked about it much here before) and the more recent, modal piano Sonata. I'm not sure if there will really be much discernable difference in quality between these files and those previously linked to, but you're welcome to try. I fear that no amount of improvement to the quality will help the many shortcomings here, especially in the 'Nightingale' piece, of which, however, I am strangely fond.

Nightingale Sonata (http://www.esnips.com/doc/06f88183-75dc-4580-9207-79241552fdf5/Nightingale-Sonata---first-draft)
Sonata (http://www.esnips.com/doc/0757793d-85d3-466e-b427-6fb3aeee57db/Sonata)

Let me know if the links don't work for you.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 28, 2008, 03:51:22 PM
How do I donwload those bad boys?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 29, 2008, 01:14:52 AM
Yes, this is confusing me. All the stuff I linked to before, e.g. in the first post on this thread, is in the same folder as these new uploads, and given that almost everything appears to have been downloaded many times, I can only assume that the old links worked for everyone. I didn't upload anything for quite a long time, but when I did (with the mystery scores PDF and with these two sonatas) they seem to be more difficult for people to get their hands on, though at least two people have managed since I stuck them up last night. I don't understand how some people can and some can't.

However, check PMs...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on January 29, 2008, 06:40:47 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on January 27, 2008, 01:27:32 PM
OK, I'm back....brace yourselves!  ;D

Greg - picking out Terry Riley is very pertinent - he's been quite an example for me; though this modal technique of mine didn't come from anywhere except my own proclivities, I was interested to see it echoed precisely in Riley's Y Bolanzero, about which he has said:

His wonderful set of pieces (to be improvised upon) for just-tempered piano The Harp of New Albion work in a similar way, which is why they are such an important work for me.

Guido - thanks for your thoughts - interesting as always. My responses, as usual in no sensible order!

1 - firstly, of course, I wouldn't dream to 'argue' with your reactions (as if that was possible!), nor want to change them. But nevertheless:

2 - perhaps I ought to try to describe why this 'floating harmony' is a specific aim for me; it may help you to see where it 'comes from'.

3 - however, before that, just technically on the matter of 'closure' or the harmony 'settling' as you put it:  the use of the modes doesn't make this impossible at all - there are plenty of cadences with a good feeling of closure in the piano Sonata or the Canticle Sonata, I think, though none of them are emphasized, which is more to do with the tone of the music than the modes themselves. Shorter pieces which use only one mode like the Individuation and Enlightenment pieces are also often strongly oriented around particular keys (the first, just for instance, is clearly and strongly in G minor, but with strong F minor hints in the central section). The use of two modes and related modes in the Canticle Sonata means that the piece also has traditional areas of harmonic 'sweep' - though I've reserved them for rare occasions, such as the lead-up to the centre of the middle movement, or climactic points in the third movement. The piano Sonata certainly ends in floating ambiguity, but this is a deliberate choice, and I chose to use until-then unheard 'negations' of the modes to achieve this effect.

4 - one thing which attracts me to the technique is that this kind of open-ended modality is both more and less expressively specific than more fully-chromatic or fully-modal music. The music takes on the specific expressive colours of the modes towards which it hints, but avoids the relative greyness which greater chromatic saturation could tend towards. One of the first pieces I wrote with the technique, ... mi ritrovai... is as good an example of this as any - it slips between tonal centres and expressive types undemonstratively but quite clearly.

5 - this is the really important bit, I suppose. As you'll know from my endless banging-on about it, I regard a composers' 'being-true-to-himself' as of absolutely vital importance; without it, the music is pretty worthless to my mind. The lack of demonstrative closure or settling in my modal pieces is certainly in tune with my character. I have a very strong tendency towards timidity, as you can see from (among other things) my lack of interest in thrusting my music forwards. This timidity has always been echoed in my music as a tendency to avoid anything in the least 'showy' - I've been aware of this for years and years, but I used to fight against it, thinking it was a weakness; now I welcome it. So, certain pretty standard parts of being a composer come very unnaturally to me - the big gesture, the strong close or sweeping harmonic sequence - in fact, anything that says to the audience 'listen to me'! Those big pages of orchestral score I posted above are examples of precisely the thing - they go so much against the grain; I adored writing them but to some extent they were applied 'cerebrally', from 'the outside'. All this lack of desire to make any kind of big statement is hard to square with wishing to write music, I know, but there we are. I don't like the power games that this whole thing implies - to me, music is more important than a composer exercising magic and wizardry over his listeners, and I much prefer the image of the composer who simply presents the listener with a world to enter, to take or to leave.  This floating world, with a minimum of intervention from the composer, is what the modal technique gives me. Any 'big gestures' that remain in e.g. the Canticle Sonata, which is a much more 'classical' work than its companions, are therefore a mini-triumph for me, as they are both really 'meant' and implied in the musical material itself.

6 - implicit in the idea of music and composer being as closely unified as possible is the conclusion that if someone doesn't like the music one writes, this shouldn't be taken as cause for offence. As I've said before, if my music is really and truly an expression of myself, and therefore something I can't really change, nor wish to - and I've come to think that in this at least, I have succeeded - then someone not liking it is only like someone not liking the shape of my ears (that was the example I gave before!) The same, of course, goes for someone who likes it....!

8 - also staying true to small tendencies of mine - I like my music to drift from and to silence. Not any old silence but the silence described by Zen as 'ma', a kind of 'meaningful silence' which follows on noise, heard for instance in the breathing gaps between phrases in shakuhachi playing...or in the gaps between frogs croaking at nighttime, or whatever! My modal pieces tend to work in short breath-like phrases, each one reaching ending with something which, then, we might describe as an 'open closure', which leads into the silent space after it and hopefully makes it similarly 'meaningful'.

7 - There is one more thing, a very important one for me, though I'm not sure if it need be important for the listener. It is linked to the imagery with which I described the modes earlier - as a kind of 3D, floating object around which one walks. I do have a kind of obsession with this concept, a spiritual thing in some ways, and also a Jungian one - the mandala-like circling around the singular point at the centre, which Jung would see as the Self (this goes someway to explaining my chosen avatar, for those of you who know what it is). The circling motion eventually leads inwards - this is the process which Jung would call Individuation (as explored in my pieces of that name), and it is this 'individuation', or to use Janacek's terminology 'introspection', for which I'm looking, both for my music and, I suppose, for myself. I know I'm beginning to sound a little like Sean here, and in fact when he talks about things tangentially connected with this I do think that he approaches closer to sense than elsewhere. But importantly, I'm not proposing some Seanian Grand Truth in this - just something that has importance for me, and that has worked for me in some surprising ways. As you might be able to guess, this is something I could talk about at length, but the gist of it, musically, is that I want my music to be this 3D floating object, undemonstrative, to be walked around and seen from every side, with the underlying idea that in circling around something one comes closer to its essence than if one imposes oneself on it.

Yes, OK, I'll get onto that....

Short answer - no. Long answer - the third sonata is a wonderful, virtuoso work of full-blooded early[ish] Romanticism, with much of the subjectivity that you get in early Brahms. It has been much-recorded, deservedly, whereas the other two sonatas have been less well-served. The first sonata is less successful but still a fine work, with deliberate echoes of the Hammerklavier. The second sonata is one of Brahms's weakest works in some respects, straining at the seams too much (e.g. it has the only three stave layout I can remember in Brahms) and bursting with Sturm und Drang double octaves etc. The middle movements are very good indeed, however.

However, slightly later but still 'early' are the op 10 Ballades - extremely fine pieces, somewhat Schumannesque, but with strong Ossianic tinges and very original keyboard writing. And as I've mentioned before, my favourite Brahms piano music outside the late sets is the set of variations on a theme of Schumann op 9, which themselves have a deliberately Schumannesque allusiveness (and ellusiveness) and which even have their own Brahmsian parallel to Schumann's 'F[lorestan und E[usebius]'. These are really extraordinary pieces, highly subjective and multi-layered in their referentiality, the sort of thing that really allows a performer lots of space - I adore playing them. Here's some dude playing them on youtube (a few mistakes and odd tempi), just to give you an idea (it's in three parts) (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NfB1wXWPEnw)

Go still later and you get to another couple of sets of variations, that 'on a Hungarian melody' (good) and that 'on an original theme' (extremely good indeed). The latter is Brahms at his most D major-lyrical (see Nanie, Violin Concerto, Second Symphony, and indeed many of the Schumann Variations) and is really a gorgeous piece, its keyboard layout and counterpoint at times recalling no one but Webern. These three variation sets are forgotten alongside the classicising edifice of the Handel set and the pyrotechnics of the Paganini sets, but for my money at least the two I have singled out are every bit as fine and many times more personal.

wonderful thoughts, again.
i suppose In C would come close to floating tonality, but not quite there, because it does rest on C, Em, G, etc. If the music where more equally distributed, i guess then it'd qualify.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 29, 2008, 10:45:24 AM
Still can't seem to download it. Where would the download button be?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on January 29, 2008, 11:15:56 AM
Did you try right-clicking (Save As...)?

(I can't get the link to work for the same reason as always: the embedded WMP always crashes my browser and I'm too lazy to switch over at the moment... 0:))
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 29, 2008, 11:20:06 AM
OK - I never saw this (http://esnippers.typepad.com/esnippers_den/2007/12/the-download-bu.html) (assuming you can read that page!). Anyway, it's essentially a new policy which I didn't know had come into force - I have to edit the details for all my mp3 files now for them to be downloadable. I've done so for the new two so far, so try them again now. Click on the filename to be taken to a page with a player and a download button.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 29, 2008, 11:37:50 AM
Sorry for all that hassle, guys - I hope this helps!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 29, 2008, 11:47:11 AM
I think I've got it a-working!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 29, 2008, 11:59:55 AM
Excellent! All files (I think) now downloadable once again.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 29, 2008, 12:10:03 PM
I seem to be listening in reverse order :-)

Started with the Sonata, which is charming.  The recording of the Nightingale Sonata sounds distant, but I like what I hear, there, too!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 29, 2008, 12:13:17 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on January 29, 2008, 12:10:03 PM
The recording of the Nightingale Sonata sounds distant...

Yes, it is - the problem was the room I recorded it in, and the piano I was playing. The beginning is very quiet indeed, but it gets a little clangorous in the middle, and too much so on this recording. I've been trying to smooth things out a little today, so I might be able to post a better rendering later.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 29, 2008, 12:13:56 PM
What do you see as the problems with the Nightingale Sonata? - I really like this too.

Also my comments about the 'uneasyness' that I feel don't apply to the modal piano sonata - just the Canticle Sonata. Maybe the modes used in the piano Sonata are more similar to the familiar major/minor modes?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 29, 2008, 12:44:43 PM
Quote from: Guido on January 29, 2008, 12:13:56 PM
What do you see as the problems with the Nightingale Sonata? - I really like this too.

Thanks!

Well, it is somewhat clunky and simplistic in figuration at times - deliberately so. As I said earlier, it has a kind of 'rural' aspect, lacking sophistication. It's quite Ivesian, though, not in sound but in its inspiration - themes of transcendentalism of place, time etc. - and also in some details which the score reveals quite clearly.

Quote from: Guido on January 29, 2008, 12:13:56 PMAlso my comments about the 'uneasyness' that I feel don't apply to the modal piano sonata - just the Canticle Sonata. Maybe the modes used in the piano Sonata are more similar to the familiar major/minor modes?

No, in both Sonatas the basic modes are pretty simple and rich in straightforward tonal implications - the opening phrases of the Canticle Sonata circle around clear tonal centres (G minor, E flat, B flat, F minor...) just as much as the opening phrases of the piano Sonata, I think. But in the piano piece I don't use any derived modes until the coda, where they effect a kind of disintegration and disappearance. In the Canticle Sonata I make more use of combined modes - 'development' section of first movement, certain sections of the last movement - and one use of total chromaticism (which can be explained as any mode + its negation if one is so minded!) in the very centre of the sonata at the middle of the second movement.

So in fact, your 'uneasiness' might be being caused less by the 'floating harmonies' of the six note modes as by the more complex harmonies created when modes are combined and derived, especially when that gives more notes and a greater degree of chromaticism. Though of course I may be very wrong in this assumption.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 29, 2008, 12:54:06 PM
Most recent version of Nightingale Sonata score attached. Only very minor alterations from previous version - this one is a tiny bit closer to the recording, though.


Edit - as I'm looking at the piece more this evening, I'm spotting a few other things that need changing. So I'll take this down for now and repost an even more final (  ;D ) version soon.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 29, 2008, 01:00:50 PM
You might be right... I don't know!

QuoteWell, it is somewhat clunky and simplistic in figuration at times - deliberately so. As I said earlier, it has a kind of 'rural' aspect, lacking sophistication. It's quite Ivesian, though, not in sound but in its inspiration - themes of transcendentalism of place, time etc. - and also in some details which the score reveals quite clearly.
Just goes to show that complexity isn't everything - The Lark Ascending is also very simple, but oh so effective!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 29, 2008, 01:03:09 PM
There's another odd thing about it, which I discussed once before in passing, and that is that the score is just not as pleasing to the eye as [most of] my other pieces. Not to my eye, anyway. Not that this matters in itself, not in the slightest - but it is an indication that something qualitatively different is going on in this piece. Not better or worse, just different.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 29, 2008, 01:22:37 PM
Quote from: Guido on January 29, 2008, 01:00:50 PM
Just goes to show that complexity isn't everything - The Lark Ascending is also very simple, but oh so effective!

Interesting, given the subject matter and rural Englishness of my piece, that you should draw this comparison. And squirm-inducingly humbling!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 29, 2008, 02:06:28 PM
Spent the last hour or so mucking around with the recording of the Nightingale Sonata trying to make it more presentable. I might be getting somewhere, but the problem is making the quiet music at the beginning louder only serves to make the pedal noises and intense reverb. etc. more prominent. So don't hold your collective breath.... ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 30, 2008, 03:33:42 AM
OK, this new version of the Nightingale Sonata recording (http://www.esnips.com/doc/6fb64658-5f23-40c9-b979-52f34f88d9ea/Nightingale-Sonata---compressed) is the best I can manage - heavily compressed, the quiet stuff louder and the loud stuff quieter, and with some attempt to blend out the worst thumps and bumps. Best not to listen on headphones, I must say!

Whilst visiting the esnips site, I saw that I received my first comment 10 days ago (you can see how little I visit it!). I wasn't fully conscious that this was a possibility - unlike others there, I don't use the site for its 'community' features (why would I when I have GMG  :P ?) or for hawking my wares. No tagging or slideshows or descriptions of any sort from me, thank you! So I was a bit surprised to get a comment at all. Quite an odd one, really - about my piece 'X':

QuoteNice piano work.This is easy listening at its best.

!!! ;D Don't know what to make of that! Listen to the piece and see if you agree.... (http://www.esnips.com/doc/11169caa-b3aa-4f8f-a1b1-019752beccb4/X---mp3-small-file)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 30, 2008, 04:13:04 AM
I'm going to download trhe score for the Sonata, Luke.  I think that Ed might want to play it for an opening Voluntary some Sunday.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 30, 2008, 04:21:56 AM
Small notational remark on the Sonata, which may just be a matter of preference;  but to my eye, there are some measures in the LH (say the entire first system, even) where I should find it a little easier to have the LH cast in treble clef, so that the low G is third ledger-space below the staff, rather than have the top of the staff crowding between the staves with all those ledger-lines.  OTOH, Luke, if you really prefer it the way as notated, I would not presume to gainsay you :-)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 30, 2008, 05:59:02 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on January 30, 2008, 04:13:04 AM
I'm going to download trhe score for the Sonata, Luke.  I think that Ed might want to play it for an opening Voluntary some Sunday.

Karl, I would be flattered! What a wonderful idea! If he/you think it will work in that way, I'd be very pleased. Only.....can I request a recording if by any chance it goes ahead?  ;D ;D

Quote from: karlhenning on January 30, 2008, 04:21:56 AM
Small notational remark on the Sonata, which may just be a matter of preference;  but to my eye, there are some measures in the LH (say the entire first system, even) where I should find it a little easier to have the LH cast in treble clef, so that the low G is third ledger-space below the staff, rather than have the top of the staff crowding between the staves with all those ledger-lines.  OTOH, Luke, if you really prefer it the way as notated, I would not presume to gainsay you :-)

You might be right - I don't have very strong feelings about it. It's only a matter of one ledger line, after all! I think I probably went the way I did because I quite like the idea of the piece starting from 'the centre' and gravitating towards higher and lower registers later - but choosing bass clef is only symbolic in that respect, and it the smallest of small deals.

However, as I said the other day, I have made some small alterations to the score, and I'll have a go with your suggestion too. If you're going to print it out, wait until I post the revised version!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 30, 2008, 06:13:12 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on January 30, 2008, 05:59:02 AM
Only.....can I request a recording if by any chance it goes ahead?

My dear fellow, I am counting on it!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on January 30, 2008, 10:35:42 AM
OK, a couple of revised scores:

Sonata - just some tiny note changes. I didn't change the clef at the beginning because doing so would make things tricky soon after, where the left hand begins to descend a little further down.

and

Nightingale Sonata - again, the changes are tiny, and in this case don't really affect the notes at all, except for one small corrected misprint
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on February 23, 2008, 07:17:07 AM
What news from the outpost?

EDIT: While we're waiting how about a flame war?

perlman, stern, szigeti, szeryng, milstein, kogan, haendel, heifetz, elman, menuhin, kreisler, oistrakh, mintz, shaham, gitlis, wieniawsi, zuckerman, bell, joachim, auer, kremer, vengerov, rabin.

All the great violinists were Jewish. It is impossible to be both a Christian, and a good musician*. So... yeah. Maybe this is too controversial for a flame war. Or maybe you're just a big Christian.

(*Please ignore Rostropovich and Casals. Let's limit ourselves to violinists here)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on February 24, 2008, 03:31:11 PM
Hang on, fella. You're making the basic mistake of confusing violinists with musicians here.  >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on February 26, 2008, 11:44:00 AM
Last post was too much... deleted.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 26, 2008, 11:45:34 AM
Quote from: Guido on February 26, 2008, 11:44:00 AM
Last post was too much... deleted.

Oh, now you've done it.

Put on that asbestos underwear, dude!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on February 27, 2008, 08:36:57 AM
Yeah, I saw it, Guido. Shocked to the core, I was...  ;D

Anyway, as regards the Outpost itself, and the [lack of] activity it documents - no, I haven't done anything at all recently. But then, looking through my scores the other day, it occured to me - don't know why it hasn't before, perhaps because there are some exceptions - that I tend to do most of my composing between about May and October. As the sun comes out I seem to become more creative! Certainly I think there's stuff bubbling underneath, so I'm hoping that spring will bring more music  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 27, 2008, 08:46:47 AM
Ah-ha! There's been a post posted at the outpost!  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on February 27, 2008, 08:50:56 AM
Yes, the outpost is now in a post-'without post' state.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on February 27, 2008, 02:40:49 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on January 30, 2008, 03:33:42 AM
OK, this new version of the Nightingale Sonata recording (http://www.esnips.com/doc/6fb64658-5f23-40c9-b979-52f34f88d9ea/Nightingale-Sonata---compressed) is the best I can manage - heavily compressed, the quiet stuff louder and the loud stuff quieter, and with some attempt to blend out the worst thumps and bumps. Best not to listen on headphones, I must say!

Whilst visiting the esnips site, I saw that I received my first comment 10 days ago (you can see how little I visit it!). I wasn't fully conscious that this was a possibility - unlike others there, I don't use the site for its 'community' features (why would I when I have GMG  :P ?) or for hawking my wares. No tagging or slideshows or descriptions of any sort from me, thank you! So I was a bit surprised to get a comment at all. Quite an odd one, really - about my piece 'X':

!!! ;D Don't know what to make of that! Listen to the piece and see if you agree.... (http://www.esnips.com/doc/11169caa-b3aa-4f8f-a1b1-019752beccb4/X---mp3-small-file)

Very interesting!

And Beautiful!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 28, 2008, 04:14:24 AM
Yes, Luke does lovely work!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on February 28, 2008, 08:41:09 AM
Thank you both  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on February 28, 2008, 09:04:10 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on February 28, 2008, 08:41:09 AM
Thank you both  :)

Do you study composition? Have a teacher?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on February 28, 2008, 12:26:33 PM
No - I did study composition (a little, at Cambridge University, though I'm mostly self-taught) and I am a music teacher.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: (poco) Sforzando on February 28, 2008, 12:33:36 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on February 28, 2008, 08:41:09 AM
Thank you both  :)

I have only looked at the score so far and will get to the Mp3 when I return home from work. But my first thought is that you are writing as a 21st-century Chopin (which I intend as a compliment).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 01, 2008, 03:59:01 PM
Luke, make some room in your inbox!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 01, 2008, 10:33:38 PM
Quote from: Sforzando on February 28, 2008, 12:33:36 PM
I have only looked at the score so far and will get to the Mp3 when I return home from work. But my first thought is that you are writing as a 21st-century Chopin (which I intend as a compliment).

Taken as one, don't you worry! Though I find it odd that this piece, which I see as both very personal and rather peripheral to the line of my music, is getting this attention! Not a complaint, mind you....

Quote from: Guido on March 01, 2008, 03:59:01 PM
Luke, make some room in your inbox!

Ooops - people have sent me so many nice links etc that I'm loathe to delete a large number of my PMs, so my inbox is constantly hovering around the 95% mark at the moment! There's some free space now....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 03, 2008, 02:28:08 PM
As I said to Guido the other day, I've realised that I tend to do more of my composing from spring to autumn, and true to form, today was the first time since October that I have set pencil to paper, during an unexpected spare hour at work. Just a short-ish piano piece, modal, much in the vein of some of the other pieces I've written in the last year or so, though a little more extended than those to which it is otherwise most similar. I'm in the process of inputting it into Sibelius; once I have, and once I've recorded a version of it, and if I'm still happy with it, I'll put it up here, though it's nothing to get excited about.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on March 03, 2008, 02:59:52 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on March 03, 2008, 02:28:08 PM
As I said to Guido the other day, I've realised that I tend to do more of my composing from spring to autumn
i have to say....... some similarities are really strange...... first i have to ask- Is it that you just don't like composing in the winter or that it's harder to compose in the winter for you?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 03, 2008, 03:38:39 PM
Neither, really - I like composing at any time, and I don't find it technically harder to compose in the winter. For me, composing isn't something that is 'hard' or 'easy'; instead, it is something that either happens or it doesn't, and I have little choice in the matter! So, as I said before, I do compose at all times of the year, but I realised the other day that I tend to be more active once the weather gets sunny! Most of my better or larger pieces were composed with the sun outside, and an open window, or staying up through summer nights until dawn, and most of my memories of the act of composition involve some factor of this sort. Today, for instance, I was sitting at the piano at work with the sun beating down through the window, and many of the pieces I've written recently have gone through their initial stages in similar conditions. I love to feel the sun and the wind as I sit at the piano, and generally to feel and hear the natural world stirring and growing around me - I tend to get a little lost in it, and I find it spurs on my creativity, especially the creation of the intuitive, organic and texturally proliferating pieces I'm tending towards at present.

For these reasons, and because the piece written today is the first stirring of my compositional urge this year, the piece is tentatively titled 'Quiverings' - for now!

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on March 04, 2008, 06:44:57 AM
well, if you lived down here, you wouldn't have to wait months for the sun to be out- you'd definitely be composing year-round  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 04, 2008, 10:37:25 AM
 ;D What are you saying about the British weather?  ;D (Today it snowed, hailed, rained heavily and was also beautifully sunny..... ::)  ??? )

Although in seriousness, I don't think it is a bad thing to have 'on' and 'off' time - remember Mahler in his little hut composing during the summer, or Brahms similarly. Others too, of course. Not that I'm comparing myself, naturally........! I don't think it is necessarily a good thing to be permanently creating, and that a little time for reflecting and absorbing is also good, if only so that the next period of creativity can be even richer.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 04, 2008, 10:42:22 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on March 04, 2008, 10:37:25 AM
. . . I don't think it is necessarily a good thing to be permanently creating, and that a little time for reflecting and absorbing is also good, if only so that the next period of creativity can be even richer.

To each, as may best suit him!

In all events, Luke, I am far too pleased with the musical result of your work, to find anything like fault with your method  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on March 04, 2008, 11:01:46 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on March 04, 2008, 10:37:25 AM
;D What are you saying about the British weather?  ;D (Today it snowed, hailed, rained heavily and was also beautifully sunny..... ::)  ??? )

Although in seriousness, I don't think it is a bad thing to have 'on' and 'off' time - remember Mahler in his little hut composing during the summer, or Brahms similarly. Others too, of course. Not that I'm comparing myself, naturally........! I don't think it is necessarily a good thing to be permanently creating, and that a little time for reflecting and absorbing is also good, if only so that the next period of creativity can be even richer.
Good point, it's definitely best to alternate between learning and writing, whether it's one season (or one day) at a time.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 04, 2008, 01:40:21 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on March 04, 2008, 10:42:22 AM
To each, as may best suit him!

In all events, Luke, I am far too pleased with the musical result of your work, to find anything like fault with your method  8)

I wouldn't dignify something of which I was until recently unaware with the title 'method'! But as you suggest - if it is working, for me, I shouldn't want to change it, and I don't.

I found five minutes in which to dash off a quick and slightly sloppy recording of the piece today. But I need to let it settle, and to tinker with the score, before I put it up. Not that it is anything particularly exciting, mind you!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 20, 2008, 04:00:11 AM
Luke, this (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,6750.msg158361.html#msg158361) was a fine post.

And I thought mine was an engaging reply (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,6750.msg158425.html#msg158425), but curiously it found no audience.

Ah, well.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 20, 2008, 05:29:15 AM
Pearls and swine, Karl, pearls and swine (oink). Though mine were mostly [cut-and-]paste pearls...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 21, 2008, 07:03:42 AM
New composition from the Ottevanger stable this morning. My 6-year-old daughter's first go (as you can see, she toyed with quavers in 4/4, but the muse told her crotchets in 8/4 represented its intentions more precisely):

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 21, 2008, 07:04:43 AM
And 'The Composer Plays'....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on March 21, 2008, 07:14:43 AM
hehe..... 
not even 1' long  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 21, 2008, 07:16:34 AM
A miniaturist, like her father....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on March 21, 2008, 07:19:05 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on March 21, 2008, 07:16:34 AM
A miniaturist, like her father....
;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 21, 2008, 05:46:52 PM
Great! It's quite lovely in its little way! What does the title refer to?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 22, 2008, 12:57:42 AM
Well, you see, the first two notes skip from C to E, and it is for Mummy. Complex and cryptic, huh?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on March 22, 2008, 01:19:19 AM
A tense and questing piece, Luke!

(Btw - could you point me to some of your own pieces? Saves me a frantic search...)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 22, 2008, 03:40:14 AM
Most of them are linked to on the first page of this thread, but more recent ones are obviously scattered throughout the rest of it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 22, 2008, 10:24:01 AM
Luke: Ed and I had a bite to eat together after The Long Good Friday Spiel;  and one item which arose in the conversation is, he is planning to play your piano piece as a Voluntary before summer.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 22, 2008, 10:31:38 AM
That is exciting news, Karl!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on March 22, 2008, 10:54:05 AM
Luke, I have started to listen to your music ('Through the Year'). I'll react to them without reading, if I can, any of the reactions that already have come your way.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 22, 2008, 10:56:23 AM
Naturally! Those pieces are amongst my favourites, but not representative of my other music, being rather intimate (well, that's not unusual for me!) tonal-traditional and child-centred.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 22, 2008, 11:16:42 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on March 22, 2008, 10:24:01 AM
Luke: Ed and I had a bite to eat together after The Long Good Friday Spiel;  and one item which arose in the conversation is, he is planning to play your piano piece as a Voluntary before summer.

Is this the nightingale sonata?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 22, 2008, 11:56:49 AM
I'm assuming Karl means the plain-and-simple Sonata, not the clunky Nightingale one. The former is the piece he spoke about in this context earlier.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on March 22, 2008, 02:39:05 PM
Okay. I listened to 'Through the Year' three times (the first time without the scores). What strikes me? These are very poetic miniatures, simple but not simplistic. The child in the composer is alive and well. They show imagination, humour and colour. A few remarks:

2. Something you could whistle whilst walking;
3. 'A Fallen Leaf' - very affecting;
8. One of my favourites, even at a first hearing;
10. My other favourite, because of its magical modulation (reminds me of Holst, 'The Perfect Fool');
13. Lovely and tender;
16. Rhythmically fine;
18. Most layered piece, Ivesian in its combination of musics.

It's not difficult to understand why 'Through the Year' is your favourite piece, Luke.

I'll explore your other, 'adult' pieces with great interest the coming days.

Johan
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on March 22, 2008, 02:41:45 PM
Quote from: Jezetha on March 22, 2008, 02:39:05 PM

It's not difficult to understand why 'Through the Year' is your favourite piece, Luke.

My favorite, too....... either that or the 4 Paz Songs.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 22, 2008, 03:09:57 PM
Thanks for listening and for those comments, Johan - you've isolated some of my own favourites, I think, though I am fond of them all. The sequence from 5 - 11 (a kind of evening-night-morning sequence, also covering the end of Autumn, Winter and the beginning of Spring) might be my favourite part of the cycle, a sort of mini-cycle within the larger one.

I should point out that Through the Year isn't my single favourite work, just one of them. Of those available here, others include, in chronological order:

Four Paz Songs
Improvisations
Sonata
Canticle Sonata


but a Brianite like you will be used to listening-through ropey performances and dodgy recordings and might find something to like in the only orchestral piece available here, The Chant of Carnus (nothing very Brain-like about it, unless it be the underlying military menace, breaking out into march at points, and the roots in Greek myth).


Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 22, 2008, 04:47:50 PM
And I, for one, eagerly look forward to the Canticle Sonata soon achieving a condition to the composer's satisfaction  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 23, 2008, 12:08:24 AM
Actually, Karl, I'm awaiting your feedback on the version of the score I posted a while back, which I think might be an improvement on the previous one (though I haven't looked at it myself since January and can't quite remember what I've done!). Here it is again for your perusal!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 23, 2008, 08:48:55 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on March 22, 2008, 02:39:05 PM
Okay. I listened to 'Through the Year' three times (the first time without the scores). What strikes me? These are very poetic miniatures, simple but not simplistic. The child in the composer is alive and well. They show imagination, humour and colour. A few remarks:

2. Something you could whistle whilst walking;
3. 'A Fallen Leaf' - very affecting;
8. One of my favourites, even at a first hearing;
10. My other favourite, because of its magical modulation (reminds me of Holst, 'The Perfect Fool');
13. Lovely and tender;
16. Rhythmically fine;
18. Most layered piece, Ivesian in its combination of musics.

It's not difficult to understand why 'Through the Year' is your favourite piece, Luke.

I'll explore your other, 'adult' pieces with great interest the coming days.

Johan

As well as Luke's suggestions above (my favourite of which are the Paz Songs and the Sonata), might I draw your attention towards the little Christmas pieces too. They are all miniatures and simple but not simplistic much like the childrens pieces, but I find them extraordinarily affecting (particularly no.6 - Jesus Christ the Apple tree) - their Ivesian layering of the vernacular elements of the Christmas carols and more mystical elements creates a unique aura around them that is just extraordinary. And I don't even believe in Jebus!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on March 23, 2008, 09:00:44 AM
I intend to listen to everything, so the 'little Christmas pieces' won't be overlooked...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: GilFray on March 26, 2008, 06:42:07 AM
Dear Sir: I listened to your 2007 Piano Sonata while perusing the score and thought it lovely in a pastoral vein. I am fond of Lydian inflections and like your use of them here. The logic of a Neapolitan cadence to arrive at the final tonic cadence out of the  Messiaen-ish bird song pedaled haze was gratifying in the implications of resolving the the upward inflection of the raised fourth through balancing it with  the flatted second to the tonic. I anticipate more pleasure in listening to other items you have posted as my time permits. Nicely performed, too. Hope you could take a listen to some of the music i have posted.  I would be curious to read what you thought of them. Thanks, gil fray.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on March 30, 2008, 06:39:06 AM
Thanks for your kind comments. Although the piece is written using a technique I describe as 'modal' I don't use the term intending to imply traditional descriptions of melodic inflection such as Neapolitan (or phrygian, dorian and so on), so it is interesting to see you use that terminology here. But of course you are right - it doesn't matter what words are used, my first mode tends to stress a sharpened fourth, whereas the modal negation at the the end of the piece hints at a 'phrygian' A flat-G for the first time (there have been no A flats at all until this point). If you hear that as sucessfully balancing the previous tendency then I can only be pleased - it wasn't done deliberately, except in as much as my use of 'modal negations' has an in-built, deliberate tendency to invert previous modal implications.

I will listen to your pieces in a few days when I can give them more time!

Thanks again.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on March 31, 2008, 05:05:43 AM
Quote from: GilFray on March 26, 2008, 06:42:07 AM
I am fond of Lydian inflections and like your use of them here.
the first scale i fell in love with  0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Joe_Campbell on April 04, 2008, 12:11:41 PM
Since your inbox is full, Luke:

I found the music to Decaux's 'Clair de Lune,' if you'd like. I think it's the only thing he ever wrote for piano. I'll email it to you if you'd like.

PM your email addy if you'd like :)

Joe
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on April 04, 2008, 01:30:50 PM
Quote from: JCampbell on April 04, 2008, 12:11:41 PM
Since your inbox is full, Luke:

I found the music to Decaux's 'Clair de Lune,' if you'd like. I think it's the only thing he ever wrote for piano. I'll email it to you if you'd like.

PM your email addy if you'd like :)

Joe
Me, too...... and I have a recording. Sweet stuff....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on April 05, 2008, 11:56:10 AM
Quote from: JCampbell on April 04, 2008, 12:11:41 PM
Since your inbox is full, Luke:

I found the music to Decaux's 'Clair de Lune,' if you'd like. I think it's the only thing he ever wrote for piano. I'll email it to you if you'd like.

PM your email addy if you'd like :)

Joe

http://www.geocities.co.jp/NatureLand/5390/impressionist/decaux/english.html

Here it lists other pieces. Sounds very interesting indeed.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 05, 2008, 01:24:15 PM
Sorry for turning up late to my own thread! Joe, that sounds very interesting - PM is in the post! I could have sworn I had something by Decaux somewhere here, but searching turns up nothing, so obviously not! :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on April 06, 2008, 08:40:54 AM
While there's a bit of a fallow period here can anyone tell me where John Cage said that repetition was a sort of change, and exactly the way he said it?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 06, 2008, 09:31:01 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on April 05, 2008, 01:24:15 PM
Sorry for turning up late to my own thread! Joe, that sounds very interesting - PM is in the post! I could have sworn I had something by Decaux somewhere here, but searching turns up nothing, so obviously not! :)

Thanks for sending it, Joe - looks marvellous, and I can't wait to print it out and play it! But I was almost right, btw - I didn't have any Decaux here, but I had seen some recently: a little organ piece, which is actually to be found via that link you sent me recently. It's nothing like as interesting as the piano piece, though, which must be why I didn't download it. According to Wiki, Clairs de lune is his only surviving piece at all (not just the only one for piano) - just shows how far you can trust Wiki, then!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 06, 2008, 09:42:39 AM
Quote from: Guido on April 06, 2008, 08:40:54 AM
While there's a bit of a fallow period here can anyone tell me where John Cage said that repetition was a sort of change, and exactly the way he said it?

No doubt Cage said something along these lines at some point, but (thanks Google!) the line seems to be most famous as written by Brian Eno as one of the aphorisms of his 'Oblique Strategies' cards. Here (http://www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies/) for an online version of the cards; here (http://www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies/) for an introduction
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 06, 2008, 09:54:19 AM
....elsewhere Eno says:

Quote from: Brian EnoAnother psychoacoustic area that I've been extremely interested in, as is probably evident, is repetition and the effect of repetition. One of the Oblique Strategies that I wrote actually says, "Repetition is a form of change." The point of that comment was to make it clear that repetition doesn't really exist. As far as your mind is concerned, nothing happens the same twice, even if, in every technical sense, the thing is identical. Your perception is constantly shifting. It doesn't stay in one place. So a lot of the work I've done has involved repetition or drones, which are another form of repetition. It has relied on some kind of perceptual modification as being the composer of the piece really. What you do is, you offer something that allows the listener's perception to become a composer.

This is evidently true, and has been observed by other composers, Cage no doubt included (I'm having trouble remembering exactly where I've read the observation made by others, but I know I have done!)- a phrase repeated does not have the same sense second time around, because it is heard with the weight and presence of the first playing in the listener's mind.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on April 06, 2008, 10:06:50 AM
I am reminded of Heraclitus: No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 06, 2008, 10:25:18 AM
[attempt to wrench thread back towards its subject]
I suppose the central section of my Nightingale Sonata is an example of this - a 'folktune' called 'The Nightingale' (probably Dutch in origin) collected and notated by John Clare (an early example of the Bartok/Kodaly/RVW/Janacek phenomenon? ;D ) - is played through only once, but in a deliberately uniform environment. The tune itself contains a lot of internal repetition, so that it is hard to recall exactly which version of which phrase happens at which point. We end up with a couple of minutes of relatively uninflected music which seems to bulk larger in the music than in strict temporal terms it really does. The effect is that, although nothing really happens, by the end of the tune the music has become hypnotic - under the weight of its own lack of change it has taken on a stasis that is [meant to be] a reflection of Clare's ideas on childhood and eternity, with which, for him, the song of the nightingale was very much entangled, as a couple of quotations show:

...The eternity of song
Liveth here...

...and still the haunts of its annual visit are in the self same spots the paradise of our young hearts first extacys - green thickets where the leaves hide him from all but joys...

(Clare's orthography)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on April 06, 2008, 10:32:56 AM
Helping you wrench back the thread to its subject...

I have two mp3s of the Nightingale Sonata, Luke - one 'first draft', the other 'compressed'. Is there any difference? I also have the score - belonging to which version? I am going to listen to it tonight.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 06, 2008, 10:36:23 AM
There are almost no differences - the compressed version irons out some of the nastier moments in the first draft recording (I know, I know, compression is classical music's enemy no 1, but believe me, it was required here!). Technically, the piece is still in its first draft stage - but I can't envisage changing it now. An odd little piece, if you ask me. I'm not sure how I feel about it, though I think it achieves what I wanted it to.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on April 06, 2008, 10:41:28 AM
Thanks for the info Luke and good work in steering the thread back on track. It was my A level music teacher who said that Cage said that thing, and seeing as he was a buffoon, it's qute likely that he got it wrong. But I think it is an interesting point nonetheless.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 07, 2008, 03:27:19 AM
Quote from: Guido on April 06, 2008, 10:41:28 AM
Thanks for the info Luke and good work in steering the thread back on track. It was my A level music teacher who said that Cage said that thing, and seeing as he was a buffoon, it's qute likely that he got it wrong.

;D ;D  The hardest thing about my A level music course was holding back from correcting the teacher when he told us misleading information. Sometimes it was impossible, as I saw my fellow pupils diligently noting down 'facts' which I knew were wrong - I had to meekly suggest that perhaps things weren't quite as they had been explained. I must have been a real pain to teach, but OTOH, it's a hard situation to find oneself in!

As a teacher now, of course, I can see things from the other side - standing up in front of a class is not the least stressful situation one can be in (not for me anyway), all the time trying to be conscious of the needs of each pupil, of time constraints, etc. etc., and one can catch oneself slipping up even on a subject one knows inside out.

Quote from: Guido on April 06, 2008, 10:41:28 AM
But I think it is an interesting point nonetheless.

It certainly is. It's so important when composing to try to bear in mind the almost physical 'mass' of the music as it builds, and to try to balance things accordingly (not that I necessarily manage this at all). The sometimes almost comical extended repetitions of tonic chords at the end of a large Beethoven symphonic Allegro, for example, are instances of LvB trying to find the correct 'mass' of tonic to balance the weight of his excursions outside this key in the development. This mass isn't just a matter of counting bars, either; it's something similar to the difference between clock-time and ontological time in music perception, I think.

Any luck with the Nightingale piece, Johan?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 07, 2008, 03:29:33 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on April 07, 2008, 03:27:19 AM
As a teacher now, of course, I can see things from the other side - standing up in front of a class is not the least stressful situation one can be in (not for me anyway), all the time trying to be conscious of the needs of each pupil, of time constraints, etc. etc., and one can catch oneself slipping up even on a subject one knows inside out.

Coraggio!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 07, 2008, 03:32:01 AM
I'm getting there Karl! But I must be honest - if finances eventually allow, I'm looking longingly at a return to simple ol' piano teaching/accompaniment work.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 07, 2008, 03:40:11 AM
In ways, I understand.  Though I largely enjoyed my experiences in front of classes as a teaching assistant, I really haven't found any powerful pull to go back there.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on April 07, 2008, 03:42:24 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on April 07, 2008, 03:27:19 AM
Any luck with the Nightingale piece, Johan?

Yes! I must say you have 'aural imagination', Luke. I like the Nightingale Sonata very much, and I can't see where you might improve it - structure and trajectory are clear and relatively straightforward.

When I look back/hear back across the pieces I have heard so far - and I am still in my Ottevanger infancy - there is an obvious delight in sonority and atmosphere. Your talent is unmistakable.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 07, 2008, 03:49:20 AM
Well deserved tribute, Johan, well spoken.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 07, 2008, 04:37:23 AM
Yes, thank you, Johan. And for taking the time to listen, too. :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 07, 2008, 08:47:46 AM
Just come fresh from - at last - being able to play through those Decaux Clairs de lune (quite pleased with my sightreading today, I think I did some approximate justice to them anyway).  My fingers are still buzzing!

Interestingly enough, the first two especially reminded me of nothing so much as some of the music of my own Improvisations (though vastly superior, of course), particularly my own no 12, which like those two Decaux pieces features a kind of 'litany' - a short motive projected through various changing harmonies (the harmonies in the Decaux are vaguely similar to mine too) - before a spiralling upwards to a textural climax. (Links to these pieces of mine are in the first post of the thread for those interested)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Joe_Campbell on April 07, 2008, 12:46:08 PM
You were able to make it through 'la mer?' >>bows<<

I find it interesting that two titles in this piece were already used by Debussy (Clair de lune & la Mer)

I found similarities in the first two pieces to 'Impressions of the Tames' by Ornstein. So, indirectly, I'm comparing Luke to Ornstein!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on April 07, 2008, 01:03:31 PM
Quote from: JCampbell on April 07, 2008, 12:46:08 PM
You were able to make it through 'la mer?' >>bows<<

Well, I won't pretend it was note-perfect - some things got a little more sketchy towards the end! The interesting thing about that one, I thought, was that the 5:3 which looks like it's going to blight anyone trying to sightread the piece, actually turns out to be quite gratifying to play. Decaux introduces it very adroitly, so that the hand just slips into it - one of the harder things was to force the hand out of the 5:3 into the supposedly much easier 6:3 and back again at later points in the piece! Nice early use of complexity-ish 'nesting' too, though not exactly Ferneyhoughian in its fearsomeness! But actually, I thought the earlier three pieces were even more interesting - he makes such resourceful use such a tricky premise: three very slow pieces which only episodically quicken in figuration. Extremely impressive music!

Quote from: JCampbell on April 07, 2008, 12:46:08 PM
I find it interesting that two titles in this piece were already used by Debussy (Clair de lune & la Mer)

I found similarities in the first two pieces to 'Impressions of the Tames' by Ornstein. So, indirectly, I'm comparing Luke to Ornstein!

Have you looked at Ornstein's Arabesques yet? Or his Songs of 1917? I think they are the best of his really wild, freely atonal stuff, and they too are reminiscent of the Decaux in their powerful ostinati and outrageous technical and harmonic writing.

For more brooding, elemental virtuoso piano seascapes, don't forget things like Ireland's Song of the Springtides (third movt of Sarnia) or Bridge's The Midnight Tide - somewhat easier, both of them, especially the Bridge, but still a nice challenge. The Ireland is a masterpiece (the whole set)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 14, 2008, 11:33:22 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 14, 2008, 10:38:24 AM
@ Karl

I have - I'm working and want to get home to check my files before I answer. But, briefly - I put a revised verson of the score up at the Outpost a while ago, and I'm waiting for your clarinetly feedback on it. I think (though, as I say, I need to check) I'm happy with it. Will get back to you more definitively later on....

Ach! Well, when you do get definitive, give me a pointer, old thing!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 14, 2008, 11:41:15 AM
What's your opinion of it? - the revised version is on the bottom of page 22 of this thread.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 14, 2008, 12:30:11 PM
I.

Quite substantial reworking of mm. 66-78, works nicely.

I really like the expansion of the gesture resulting in mm. 96-101, and I think the revised passage that follows much stronger.

For the new mm. 107-115, I like the new version better again, I think reducing the registral range of the clarinet for that passage better matches the stillness of the accompaniment.

II.

m. 62, the fix is simple, and perfect.

I liked it very well before, and now it's better still.

Clarinet in B-flat, right? When do I get a transposed part?  :D

Edit :: typo . . . cannot have a clarinetist misspelling clarinet
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 14, 2008, 12:33:09 PM
Excellent - thank you!

I will get the clarinet part worked up in the next few days. I need to be at another computer to do it, or I'd be at it right now!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 17, 2008, 01:15:04 PM
A nice phone call today - asking me to write an orchestral work to be performed (hopefully) February next year.  :) :) :) :) Same orchestra/conductor as did The Chant of Carnus (the conductor said he's still haunted by the imagery of that piece 6 years later, which is rather gratifying).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on May 17, 2008, 01:20:35 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 17, 2008, 01:15:04 PM
A nice phone call today - asking me to write an orchestral work to be performed (hopefully) February next year.  :) :) :) :) Same orchestra/conductor as did The Chant of Carnus (the conductor said he's still haunted by the imagery of that piece 6 years later, which is rather gratifying).

This is terrific news, Luke! 'A feather in your cap' and all that. Congratulations. It will be interesting to see/hear what you will come up with...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 17, 2008, 07:39:03 PM
Go, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on May 18, 2008, 06:51:20 AM
That's what I like to hear, Luke!  ;D
I honestly can't wait to hear the piece.....
any idea what the title will be?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 18, 2008, 07:08:16 AM
This sounds great Luke! Where might it be performed?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 18, 2008, 12:51:26 PM
It will be in that glamorous hub of British cultural life, Leicester.  ;D

And Greg, no, no idea on the title yet, though I do have some ideas about the piece itself. Still in the very first stages, though - nothing to report yet.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 18, 2008, 01:50:52 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 18, 2008, 12:51:26 PM
It will be in that glamorous hub of British cultural life, Leicester.  ;D

And Greg, no, no idea on the title yet, though I do have some ideas about the piece itself. Still in the very first stages, though - nothing to report yet.

Well for one it will need a long cello solo with orchestra that can also act, almost miraculously, as a stand alone piece! ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 18, 2008, 01:51:54 PM
Not a million miles from what I was pondering anyway, in fact....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 18, 2008, 03:56:01 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 18, 2008, 01:51:54 PM
Not a million miles from what I was pondering anyway, in fact....

This makes me  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 18, 2008, 10:36:59 PM
Good. But don't get your hopes up - the concert will probably feature the Schumann Piano Concerto, so another concertante work might be too much. OTOH, last time I wrote a concertante piece for trumpet which was paired with the Beethoven Emperor Concerto, and that wasn't a problem, so who knows?

More to the point, though, is that I haven't decided myself yet. And I'm putting off giving it any extended thought until time permits. Next week might be an opportunity...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2008, 04:10:04 AM
Beginning to get things down on paper. Lots of ideas, potentially quite good - but only a few pages of notes so far!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 28, 2008, 04:14:24 AM
Excellent! Many is the time where it's just a matter of getting started: all the rest follows.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2008, 04:25:44 AM
Hope so!

Oh, and Karl - that clarinet part is almost done now. It was delayed because it was on my wife's laptop which had a pretty nasty series of crashes last week. But it ought to be completed soon. As I made it I realised that I'd missed out quite a few details of dynamics etc when writing out the complete score, and filling in those, in both score and part, is what's holding up completion. Well, that and work on the new piece!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on May 28, 2008, 04:25:51 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2008, 04:10:04 AM
Beginning to get things down on paper. Lots of ideas, potentially quite good - but only a few pages of notes so far!

Good luck with this new project, Luke!

Quote from: karlhenning on May 28, 2008, 04:14:24 AM
Excellent! Many is the time where it's just a matter of getting started: all the rest follows.

And that goes for composing fiction, too
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2008, 04:29:44 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on May 28, 2008, 04:25:51 AM
Good luck with this new project, Luke!

Thanks! I'm off outside to my makeshift Mahlerian composing shack now  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on May 28, 2008, 04:31:35 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2008, 04:29:44 AM
Thanks! I'm off outside to my makeshift Mahlerian composing shack now  ;D

;D

May we expect cowbells?!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 28, 2008, 05:10:55 AM
The Gustav Mahler Composing Tarpaulin . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 28, 2008, 05:22:50 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2008, 04:25:44 AM
Hope so!

Oh, and Karl - that clarinet part is almost done now. It was delayed because it was on my wife's laptop which had a pretty nasty series of crashes last week. But it ought to be completed soon. As I made it I realised that I'd missed out quite a few details of dynamics etc when writing out the complete score, and filling in those, in both score and part, is what's holding up completion. Well, that and work on the new piece!

I understand entirely!  In fact, there are all sorts of errata to fix on the viola part of The Mousetrap (though Pete's been a real trooper, unflinchingly and uncomplainingly cooperative).  We got a couple of The Evil Pages sounding pretty close to right, pretty close to tempo.  I think that the several biorythms of your clarinet part being ready, and my clarinet being in fighting trim for the June recital, will converge most happily  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on May 28, 2008, 05:24:45 AM
(http://home.casema.nl/mostertbuijs/figuren/mahler08red.jpg)

Mahler's 'Komponierhäuschen' between 1893 and 1896 (Steinbach am Attersee, now on a camping site).

Another one now serves more basic needs...

Although composing is a very basic need, too, for some of us!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2008, 05:43:51 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on May 28, 2008, 04:31:35 AM
;D

May we expect cowbells?!

You may not.  ;D Bells of other sorts, perhaps, but bovine ones, no...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on May 30, 2008, 01:43:11 PM
Finally, I can upload both a more final version of the Canticle Sonata and a clarinet part for Karl's perusal (and any other clarinetist who want to cast their eyes over it)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 30, 2008, 01:45:55 PM
Very good.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 04, 2008, 03:18:31 AM
Any chance to play through it yet, Karl? Does it look do-able (or even readable)?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 04, 2008, 04:02:06 AM
Haven't played through just yet, Luke.  Somehow I'm just noticing a lot of high A (written);  I'm going to sit down with it and play it Sunday evening . . . it's just that kind of week  :)

Don't know how I missed this (I think I was reading earlier with an eye to the clarinet line subject to the transposition) . . . p8/m121, that tremolo is across the break. Manageable, but at fortissimo is apt not to sound so smooth as it would on a stringed instrument.  Not that it need be changed;  just an advisory.

A few typographic details:

1. pagination seems odd (!) p2 is marked p1

2. bottom line of p1, accel dashes are crowding brackets

3. top of "p1" (actual p2), maybe some cues for the last two measures of the 19mm block of rests in 5/8?

4. p2/m86, something odd's happened to the bracketing (ditto m90, m94)

5. bottom of p2/m126, tie on the A's is crossing stem.

6. top of p4. "echo tone" could be nudged up out of the way of the beam

7. In general, sometimes accidentals crowd stems or noteheads of the preceding note (second line of p4, e.g.), a little visually distracting.

8. top of p6, end of first line, diminuendo hairpin crowds stem of the A

9. top line of p8 . . . may just be me, but I think the B#/D# bits were easier read as C-nat/E-flat (and then with corrective E-naturals);  that will also keep the C-natural-to-A intervals immediately legible.  Your average single-line instrumentalist is going to wonder why, if there's a B# (which can induce panic all on its own), the A's are natural.

10.  p9, end of second line: tempo marking crowds the triplet bracket.

Not that any of that is awfully important.  It's a fine piece, which we want other clarinetists to take a look at, too;  and this sort of 'scrubbing' is a necessary evil.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 04, 2008, 05:34:52 AM
Overall, eminently playable, and I am looking forward to giving this a trot with Kwoon ere long!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 04, 2008, 05:36:08 AM
Thanks for that detailed response, Karl - it's good to have a fresh and understanding eye cast over the piece. I'll get to work on the changes when I can, but that may take some time as my wife's laptop is now consigned to the scrapyard and for some reason Sibelius stopped working on my PC a year or two ago. (No matter how often I uninstall and reinstall it....  >:( )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 04, 2008, 05:37:56 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on June 04, 2008, 05:36:08 AM
Thanks for that detailed response, Karl - it's good to have a fresh and understanding eye cast over the piece. I'll get to work on the changes when I can, but that may take some time as my wife's laptop is now consigned to the scrapyard and for some reason Sibelius stopped working on my PC a year or two ago. (No matter how often I uninstall and reinstall it....  >:( )

Glad to be of assistance, Luke; and I well know the value of having a second pair of eyes comb through a score! Happy to serve you in this capacity;  and I am keen, also, to play this for an audience.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 05, 2008, 04:28:46 AM
A bit of light relief this week! My lovely year five class (9-10 year olds) have worked so hard this year that we have some spare lessons to have fun in. So, with some 'help' from them on Monday I gathered some of their thoughts about what they've done this year, and then during spare minutes in the week I turned them into a one-off song full of 'in-jokes' for the class to practise and perform at the informal end-of-year concert. Though its just a simple little thing, I'm really pleased with what I've done - it has lots of little details and coincidences of text and music which have come off very happily. I'll post the score when I've managed to set it into Sibelius, so that you can see the medievalisms, the Marseillaise references and so on in their appropriate places, but here are the words, just for now.

The song is structured on the conceit that whilst most of year five played the 'tarantara-ing' policemen in the school's production of The Pirates of Penzance this year, one of them, Phoebe, who was given the starring role of major general (and carried it off with great aplomb for such a young girl) is still living off her past glories... italics = spoken

Phoebe, coming onstage singing to herself:
'I am the very model of a modern major general...'

Speaking voice, rushing on and interrupting:
No, no, no, Phoebe, we're not singing that anymore. You have to let it go! This song is about what we learnt this year in Year Five

All onstage, to sing:
We're the year five generation,
A group of girls with imagination.
This is what we learnt about this year
(but it's just our interpretation!)

What shall we do first?

History!

1
History was gruesome!
Ordeal by fire and water;
Black Death carried by the rats
And battles filled with slaughter!
We learnt about historic men
And conquests that were seminal....

Phoebe
I was the very model of a modern major general...

All
Oh, Phoebe!

We're the year five generation,
A group of girls with imagination.
This is what we learnt about this year
(but it's just our interpretation!)

What next?

French!

2
In Madame Jones's French class
We've not eaten snail or frog.
She takes the register en français...
And then we walk her dog!
She shows which nouns are masculine
And which of them are femeral...

Huh?

Phoebe
I was the very model of a modern major general...

All
Get over it, Phoebe!

We're the year five generation,
A group of girls with imagination.
This is what we learnt about this year
(but it's just our interpretation!)

Shall we have a middle 8?

Yes! Here we go:

This is our year five song,
Full of words that are much too long,
But that doesn't fill us up with anger -
What can you expect
When he's got a name as long as Ot-te-van-ger?!

3
English (Mrs Wallace-Jones):
We learn to punctuate.
We learn to read and write and rhyme
And never...
Never!!
...never to be late!
We look up funky words
Like 'hieroglyphic' and 'ephemeral'
And
(All, clamping Phoebe's mouth shut) Phoebe was the model of a modern major general!

How shall we finish?

(sung in canon)
That was our year five song,
And we hope it was not too long,
But just so we don't push it too far
Let's slip offstage
Tarantara, tarantara, tarantara, tarantara..... (fade)


Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 05, 2008, 05:31:04 AM
Just knocked off this really shoddy version of the song, for those who want a laugh, intentionally meant or otherwise - follow it along with the words, imagining the spoken phrases in the various gaps (obviously the first bit of speech goes before the music starts). There's a little introduction, of course.

Ignore the out-of-tune piano and my dodgy playing - my little boy was messing around my feet whilst I played! I cocked up the second and third verses as I sort of forgot to play the vocal line as well as my silly Marseillaise reference (verse 2) and other stuff (verse 3). 'Forgot to play' or mangled up....  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 05, 2008, 05:32:20 AM
Dodgy playing deserves your support!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 05, 2008, 05:36:35 AM
I am one of its most loyal adherents....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on June 05, 2008, 05:38:00 AM
Luke, does your name really rhyme with anger, with a hard g? I thought it rhymed with 'hangar' or 'banger'...

(I'll listen to your classic rendition shortly...)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 05, 2008, 05:46:33 AM
The difference is slight, only one of emphasis really - it wouldn't be uncommon to find someone whose g's are identical in anger and banger. I'm 'Ottevanger' with the harder G when I'm enunciating clearly (or shouting at someone!); with the softer one when I'm speaking normally! In the song the girls sing my name evenly and precisely, (each syllable staccato e tenuto  ;D ) to emphasize its oversyllabification - so it will rhyme with anger perfectly!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 05, 2008, 05:51:03 AM
Oops - I mistyped the text back then. I didn't really think one could rhyme 'imagination' with 'imagination'. Would show a lack of imagination, anyway. Should read

We're the year five generation,
A group of girls with imagination.
This is what we learnt about this year
(but it's just our interpretation!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 05, 2008, 05:53:06 AM
It's been a lot of fun just writing silly words and silly music for kids to enjoy letting their hair down to!  ;D ;D No omphaloskeptic theorising for once... what a relief!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on June 05, 2008, 05:53:16 AM
'Anger' and 'banger can rhyme, you're right. It all  depends where in the British Isles you come from.

Thanks for this definitive explanation of the Ottevanger Conundrum.  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 05, 2008, 05:56:58 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on June 05, 2008, 05:53:16 AM
'Anger' and 'banger can rhyme, you're right. It all  depends where in the British Isles you come from.

Or simply what mood you're in!

Quote from: Jezetha on June 05, 2008, 05:53:16 AMThanks for this definitive explanation of the Ottevanger Conundrum.  ;)

No problem. It's something that's been plaguing us for generations!

Of course, to be pronounced properly, in a Dutch stylee, I'd have to say my name another way entirely.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on June 05, 2008, 06:03:48 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on June 05, 2008, 05:56:58 AM
Of course, to be pronounced properly, in a Dutch stylee, I'd have to say my name another way entirely.

Well, to be honest, when I mention you to my wife I pronounce your name in the Dutch way!

Just listened to your piece - very neatly done, that Marseillaise quote! But I had hoped to hear you singing/giggling...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 05, 2008, 06:15:50 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on June 05, 2008, 06:03:48 AM
Well, to be honest, when I mention you to my wife I pronounce your name in the Dutch way!

I hope so too!

Quote from: Jezetha on June 05, 2008, 06:03:48 AMJust listened to your piece - very neatly done, that Marseillaise quote! But I had hoped to hear you singing/giggling...

Trust me, you really don't want to hear that...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on June 05, 2008, 06:19:10 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on June 05, 2008, 06:15:50 AM
Trust me, you really don't want to hear that...

I have insurance.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 05, 2008, 09:38:13 AM
I love it! Post a recording when it happens!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 05, 2008, 09:50:16 AM
I'll see what I can do  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 19, 2008, 03:03:05 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on June 04, 2008, 05:36:08 AM
Thanks for that detailed response, Karl - it's good to have a fresh and understanding eye cast over the piece. I'll get to work on the changes when I can, but that may take some time as my wife's laptop is now consigned to the scrapyard and for some reason Sibelius stopped working on my PC a year or two ago. (No matter how often I uninstall and reinstall it....  >:( )

How we doing here, Luke?  My recital now wrapped up, I am keen to follow up with Kwoon and see about a time to get together and have a lash at your piece.  Depending on Kwoon's availability, we could put this on in a recital this fall.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 19, 2008, 04:20:24 AM
Not 'alf as keen as I am! I'm very exited about the prospect, Karl, though I haven't talked about it much as I don't want to bug you!

Latest is - my wife has a new laptop; all my stuff was saved as the old one was breathing its last; Sibelius is now installed on the new laptop. Therefore I'll be able to do those last little bits this weekend, I think.

In 'Other News':

Though I'd filled up a notebook with work on the prospective orchestral piece, and even written some preliminary pages of score, I've somewhat cooled on the idea - which I never described, and which there's no point describing now! But that process has helped me understand what it was about 'the idea' which is important to me, and what can be shed, and that in turn is helping me to formulate a new idea, more streamlined, more manageable, and equally exciting to me. More when I've got something more concrete to show for it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 19, 2008, 07:03:53 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on June 19, 2008, 04:20:24 AM
In 'Other News':

Though I'd filled up a notebook with work on the prospective orchestral piece, and even written some preliminary pages of score, I've somewhat cooled on the idea - which I never described, and which there's no point describing now! But that process has helped me understand what it was about 'the idea' which is important to me, and what can be shed, and that in turn is helping me to formulate a new idea, more streamlined, more manageable, and equally exciting to me. More when I've got something more concrete to show for it.

Thanks Luke. Keep us posted with any developments. When was the last time you composed an orchestral work?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 19, 2008, 03:14:46 PM
Actually, it was ages ago - The Chant of Carnus, finished Christmas 2000, performed February 2002. That piece was one of the last things I wrote before my daughter was born (May 2001), and from that point on I really moved away from the aesthetic of the 'big statement' inherent in orchestral music - you might recall me talking about that, in rather distressed terms, when the Outpost was originally started.

So, as you know....

no, hang on....

[Omphaloskeptic rambling alert - humour me, I haven't done this for ages, and it's relevant in my own mind at the moment even if not in anyone else's! Please skip this if you find such stuff distasteful]

As you know, I think a lot - too much? - about the hows and whys of my music, and how it reflects my life, so I've been aware of every little ebb and flow in my aesthetic stance, in my listening and working preferences, and I've also been aware of why these changes have occured, and what they mean. I also know for certain that fatherhood, the perspective that gave and the impatience with adolescent posturing in the face of 'real life' that it engendered in me, had everything to do with it. But writing a new orchestral piece encourages me to  take a single retrospective glance at what's happened to my music since The Chant of Carnus (and since Mila's birth). In that wide sweep I'm able to see two main trends in my attitudes and in the resulting music, which leave evident traces in my better or more representative pieces.

The first trend was towards reduction, thinning things out, stripping them down to essentials. That's where we came in when the Outpost was first started - me worrying and bemoaning the fact that my music, whilst pleasing to me, was vanishing into its own intimacy (one has to be careful how one reads that!). This reductionism goes hand-in-hand with a growing desire to create music which, whilst still human and expressive, is 'low-impact' or 'non-interventionist' - music which glides without imposing itself in big statements. Using a semi-improvising method of composing helped me to achieve this.

The second trend is harder to describe. In one, technical sense, it was the discovery of a natural, personal  and compatible way to take the bare bones of the very personal style I'd uncovered in the previous stripping-down, and to turn them - re-assemble them, almost - back into bigger statements. That technique, of course, is the modal technique I've described in this thread, which started small and simple - in the Individuation and Enlightenment pieces, for instance - but which grew into a technique which could help to create something larger, more formally strict, more teleological and 'classical' like the Canticle Sonata. The technique also creates formal implications which lead inevitably to such 'big statements' as occur in that clarinet work - but now these big statements are wholly natural and unforced; they don't feel like the adolescent posturing which I hate so much.

The other side of this second trend is the hard one to discuss, which is why I've never done so here. And I'm still not quite sure how to. Suffice it to say that the modal technique provides me with a musical means of writing music which closely parallels some non-musical concepts - concepts of psychology, of 'the self' and the spatial imagery of 'the centre' at which one finds this self, and with it one finds stillness - which are quite profoundly important to me. The Jungian-Zen intersection to be seen in the Individuation and Enlightenment pieces is one aspect of this concern of mine, but it's something that in general I find fascinating, compelling and helpful on a personal level. The idea of being able to create music which in a very real way functions similarly, so that the music itself contains the sort of 'centering' I'm (vaguely) talking about, is very exciting for me - but I didn't realise the potential of the modal technique for doing so straightaway, and in fact I haven't yet written a piece which uses the technique in these ways, which only after I'd written the Canticle Sonata did I suddenly realise were implicit in it. This orchestral piece will hopefully be the first to do so, and so, for this reason and others, it will be a very different piece from the aggressive, rough and dichotomous world of The Chant of Carnus.

There was a point, back in 2005 or so, when vast swathes of the central Romantic repertoire were anathema to me, for the reasons implied in all of the above. If I'd been asked to write an orchestral piece at that point, I think I would have found it impossible to do so. But gradually that core repertoire has seeped back for me - though now I listen to it with a wiser, more mature head than I did when I last heard it. Mahler, who had become a totemic symbol for me - 'I haven't been able to listen to a Mahler symphony since 2002' - well, I've been spinning Barshai's 5 and 10 and Schoenberg's reduction of Das Lied incessantly this week.  ;D In this sense that wilderness I was in, which itself had a calm stillness at its centre which I needed to reach, to understand and to absorb before returning to the hurly-burly - in this sense it was both necessary and immensely helpful.

I am well aware, btw, of the ridiculousness of all this talking about music - too much talk, not enough music to justify it. But as you all know by now, this is the only way which works for me, even if I only manage to eke out a few meagre drops of music as a result!

I now retreat back into my shell. Or 'Mystery scores' as it is also known....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on June 19, 2008, 03:27:58 PM
Very interesting read, Luke.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 19, 2008, 03:29:56 PM
You made it all the way through?  :o :o Alive?  :o :o :o
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 19, 2008, 04:22:17 PM
Quote from: Jezetha on June 19, 2008, 03:27:58 PM
Very interesting read, Luke.

Ditto.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 20, 2008, 03:03:38 PM
Don't know what compelled me to do this, but this afternoon I scanned in and made a PDF of my first large orchestral piece, Ophruoeis, from 1996. It's full of the most cringemaking things, but if you've got a spare 69 MB hanging around, ( :o ) you're welcome to download a copy (http://www.esnips.com/doc/916178eb-d693-41c6-a5af-a7856a6502ee/Ophruoeis---score). Let me know if the link doesn't work for you.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 20, 2008, 03:38:40 PM
Two other things today:

1) I decided to re-look at some songs setting ancient Egyptian poems which I first wrote about 4 years ago (edit, for clarity - I wrote the songs, not the poems!  :P ). Whilst unearthing them...

2) I rediscovered the score to a solo cello piece - Guido, take note! - which I wrote on New Year's Day 2001. It's a curiosity, perhaps, no more I suspect. I'll typeset it into Sibelius and post it up here as soon as I can get to it. And at some point I'll have to decide if I'll accept it into my 'official list'
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 22, 2008, 01:53:13 AM
No response to my score of Ophruoeis yet, though I think a few people have downloaded it. Perhaps it would help people get a handle on what is quite a large piece if I uploaded my notes to the piece (http://www.esnips.com/doc/986e4e77-8708-4fe0-9c4b-ed12b7f9c379/Ophruoeis---notes). I wrote them a long time ago, so I'm not sure how coherent they are.  ;D  :-\
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 22, 2008, 01:58:27 AM
If you're reading those notes, please remember that I wrote the piece 10 years before I ever knew of Poju's existence.  ;D You'll see what I mean....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on June 22, 2008, 06:36:58 AM
too bad you don't have any sound files......

the only thing i can say after looking through it is that it looks very modern, and it looks like what i'd expect a Norgard score to look like if I ever had a chance to read an entire one.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 22, 2008, 06:47:43 AM
Thanks for downloading, Greg!

Modern? Well, certainly - it's quite complex, uses some quite unusual orchestral techniques, some strange compositional techniques too. But the musical material it draws on includes music with very direct, melodious writing, and because of that much of the music has some kind of rootedness in tonality, at a greater or (much) lesser distance.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on June 22, 2008, 06:53:32 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on June 22, 2008, 06:47:43 AM
But the musical material it draws on includes music with very direct, melodious writing, and because of that much of the music has some kind of rootedness in tonality, at a greater or (much) lesser distance.
is this what you mean by the 'strange compositional techniques'? or something else?
i see a few unusual orchestral techniques- lots of glissandos going on, in one bar i think you tune the bass string up and down for a few seconds and then have the alto flute enter again. Seems like a nice sonority.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 22, 2008, 07:02:13 AM
Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on June 22, 2008, 06:53:32 AM
is this what you mean by the 'strange compositional techniques'? or something else?

No, or only part of it. Read the 'notes' file - they say most of what is to be said about this piece. All a bit bizarre! But in addition to what is mentioned there there are also some areas of improvisation in the music which are a bit strange....and odd notations like that in the centre of page 16 (page 19 of the PDF)

Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on June 22, 2008, 06:53:32 AM
i see a few unusual orchestral techniques- lots of glissandos going on, in one bar i think you tune the bass string up and down for a few seconds and then have the alto flute enter again. Seems like a nice sonority.

There's all sorts of weird stuff going on* if you look carefully, though I'm not sure that's a good idea! Some of it probably wouldn't work, I realise now, but I'm not going to change anything in this piece - just let it stand as a monument both to youthful folly and youthful idealism!

*harp played with plectrum....or with pedal in between positions a la Varese....woodwind players asked to produce 'breath only' sounds.....and so on and on.... ::)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 22, 2008, 07:10:49 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on June 22, 2008, 01:53:13 AM
No response to my score of Ophruoeis yet, though I think a few people have downloaded it.

I have not, yet, but will.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on June 22, 2008, 07:16:06 AM
didn't read the notes yet, but did catch the bottom, which i have to laugh at!  :D

QuoteOphruoeis won the 1997 Cambridge University Musical Society Composition Competition - although as I have no
idea how many other entries there were to the competition that year (if any!) the prestige of this award seems dubious.
It had been composed with no thought to entering the competition, and so its orchestral demands, particularly in the
percussion department, were not geared to the CUMS orchestra - this fact made the performance which usually comes
with a win in this competition impossible.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 22, 2008, 10:03:31 AM
Yes, funny that - but for all the uncertainty about whether or not the nearly-award actually means anything, the whole thing is still quite important for me, in that it led to memorable conversations with Robin Holloway which did a lot to give me confidence.

I'm uploading the score to Ophruoeis's sister work, Processional, as I type. The two pieces were inspired by the same place in France, the latter one being darker than the glinting earlier work. Processional is more advanced than Ophruoeis, I suppose - but it's no less a crazy folly full of idiocies, I realised as I looked through the score again whilst scanning. Link soon. In the meanwhile, for your delectation, here's a very posed photo taken of me whilst I was composing the final pages of Processional  ;D :

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 22, 2008, 11:33:39 AM
Here you are - the score to Processional (http://www.esnips.com/doc/5ff4d19b-a8dc-41f5-9c40-338f60a2f5cd/Processional---score)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on June 23, 2008, 07:01:57 AM
Wow: now i know what you mean when you said you often go do the orchestration first.  :o
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 23, 2008, 11:28:40 AM
 ;D Although that should be understood in the past tense - hasn't been the case recently, of course, and won't be with the piece I'm planning.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on June 23, 2008, 12:39:39 PM
Love the photo, Luke. Absolutely love it - it should be on the flap of your collected works' sleeve! Heck - it should be on the cover of volume I (yes, "The Youthful Follies")!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 23, 2008, 01:51:23 PM
It's a good photo, but not dark enough for my liking.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 30, 2008, 08:42:59 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on March 03, 2008, 02:28:08 PM
...today was the first time since October that I have set pencil to paper, during an unexpected spare hour at work. Just a short-ish piano piece, modal, much in the vein of some of the other pieces I've written in the last year or so, though a little more extended than those to which it is otherwise most similar. I'm in the process of inputting it into Sibelius; once I have, and once I've recorded a version of it, and if I'm still happy with it, I'll put it up here, though it's nothing to get excited about.  :)

Well, obviously I didn't get excited about it either, since I did nothing about putting a version of it up here. But I have a few minutes now, so here we go, my vernal, spring-like piece which probably sounds much the same as everything else ;D:

Quiverings - score (http://www.esnips.com/doc/e7c70ac5-4753-49d6-a7bd-3626748a3185/Quiverings)

Quiverings - mp3 (http://www.esnips.com/doc/25bb8338-a5c8-405a-9de9-701585a8e5f4/Quiverings)

as I say, nothing new, just another bit of typically Ottevangeresque 'pointless modal noodling' (to quote someone re. Hovhaness on the 'what are you listening to' thread recently). Three things I am all for, though - pointlessness, modality, and noodles.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 30, 2008, 08:52:45 AM
Ottevangeresque . . . bring it on!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 30, 2008, 09:09:03 AM
Or is it Ottevangerian? Ottevangerine? Or, indeed, Ottevangeroid? Whatever, consider it brought on.  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: mn dave on June 30, 2008, 09:15:12 AM
Are all of these mp3s piano pieces? Sorry, but I haven't dug through the whole thread.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 30, 2008, 09:19:01 AM
Most of them. I've been rather focussed in that area recently. Some songs too, and one orchestral piece. And some clavichord pieces  ;D >:D . Also links to lots of scores....most of the links are on the first page of this thread, others scaterred through the rest of it, but if you click on one and follow the links to my 'lukeottevanger's other stuff' esnips folder you can see everything in one place.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 30, 2008, 09:20:36 AM
....Ottevangerine Dream......  0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: mn dave on June 30, 2008, 09:21:21 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on June 30, 2008, 09:19:01 AM
Most of them. I've been rather focussed in that area recently. Some songs too, and one orchestral piece. And some clavichord pieces  ;D >:D . Also links to lots of scores....most of the links are on the first page of this thread, others scaterred through the rest of it, but if you click on one and follow the links to my 'lukeottevanger's other stuff' esnips folder you can see everything in one place.

Thanks. Very helpful. Maybe I'll put an Ottevanger playlist on my iTunes.  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 30, 2008, 09:22:51 AM
Beware poor quality recordings! Bad pianist + bad piano + bad recording equipment +  bad acoustics + little time for retakes = cringing on my part.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: mn dave on June 30, 2008, 09:24:12 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on June 30, 2008, 09:22:51 AM
Beware poor quality recordings! Bad pianist + bad piano + bad recording equipment + little time for retakes = cringing on my part.

:o  Now I'm scared.

;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 30, 2008, 09:25:17 AM
I find it's best to dampen expectations before we even get started!  ;D Then no one gets hurt....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 30, 2008, 09:25:41 AM
When the composer cringes . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 30, 2008, 09:27:42 AM
Do you never cringe, Karl, when hearing your music played not quite as you wanted to hear it?  ;D

In seriousness, Dave, I can give you some idea of places to start if you want, a little bit later. Minimising risk and all that.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: mn dave on June 30, 2008, 09:28:58 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on June 30, 2008, 09:27:42 AM
Do you never cringe, Karl, when hearing your music played not quite as you wanted to hear it?  ;D

In seriousness, Dave, I can give you some idea of places to start if you want, a little bit later. Minimising risk and all that.

That would be swell. Maybe a disc's worth.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 30, 2008, 10:24:00 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on June 30, 2008, 09:27:42 AM
Do you never cringe, Karl, when hearing your music played not quite as you wanted to hear it?  ;D

And I cringe all the more when I am one of the perpetrators performers.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 30, 2008, 10:55:35 AM
Quote from: Mn Dave on June 30, 2008, 09:28:58 AM
That would be swell. Maybe a disc's worth.

OK, then. Here are the pieces of mine that seem to have gone down best here. You'll find links to all of them scattered around my esnips page, but many of them are also on the first page of this thread.

Four Paz Songs – 1997 – Greg's favourites, these ones have always been talked about gratifyingly, starting with the time Robin Holloway told me they were 'phenomenal' – a memorable moment for me, as you can tell.

Improvisations – 20203 – Ex-GMGer Eugene (Ugh) said these were his favourites, and that he played them often. These were the first pieces where I used a simple technique of semi-improvising the compositions, setting myself strict rules (e.g. if the first thing you play doesn't please you, don't compose a piece today) and composing them in a relatively short period.

Through the Year - 2003 – 20 pieces, 'for children' in the Kinderszenen sense. Specifically my children, of whom only the first was around at the time – these are misty, very English pieces in my mind. It's very important to me to keep the connection to childhood as alive and well as possible in my music.

Little Christmas Pieces – 2003 – similar to the above: nostalgic and English sounding, I think, but also simple and childlike. Guido is particularly fond of the above two sets, and so am I.

Individuation and Enlightenment – 2005-7 – no one else has said much about these, but despite their tiny size they are really important in my own development – the first pieces where I explored the use of modes, without the use of transpositions. A meeting of Zen and Jung, which is very significant in my mind – they represent a new and healthy start for me after a period of angsty difficulty!

Nightingale Sonata – 2006 - – a clunky, tonal piece, significant for me not so much in its music as in what lies behind that. Others seem to like it, however – Sforzando said it was as if I was composing like a contemporary Chopin, which I took rather well!

Sonata – 2007 - very important to me, this one – composed around the time my grandmother died and reflective of that (for me only, of course), it is also the first piece in which I used a technique of combining modes, and using their intersections and negations to provide new material.

Canticle Sonata - 2007 - with Karl in mind! A clarinet sonata in which that modal technique essayed in the Sonata enabled me to write a much larger, more formally complex and goal-oriented work. I think it succeeds well; Karl says it's his favourite of my pieces. At present it's only available in a horrible mocked-up version, though. I wouldn't download it yet - wait till there's have a better one!

There are other, single movement, short pieces which I think work well too – for instance the clavichord pieces Night Music, the Lullaby to Silence and the Improvisation in 4th, 5ths, 7ths and 9ths. Also there is the orchestral piece The Chant of Carnus (2000) – a very rough and badly spliced recording of a rehearsal. That piece is an equally rough, violent work – successful in many places, especially the second half (probably the first half too, but that bit is performed quite badly on the recording). I like it, but it isn't how I write now – as I have a current commission from the same orchestra, that fact is on my mind at present!

As mp3s, I imagine these ought to fit on a disc easily, with room to spare. Though I may have guessed wrong...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: mn dave on June 30, 2008, 10:58:06 AM
Thanks for your time. That'll come in handy. I look forward to listening.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 30, 2008, 10:59:02 AM
....just read that back. Don't think I've ever used the phrase '....for me' so much!  :-[ Some editing required...

Oh and - no problem! Hope you find something to enjoy in all that.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on June 30, 2008, 11:02:26 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on June 30, 2008, 10:55:35 AM
Through the Year - 2003 – 20 pieces, ‘for children’ in the Kinderszenen sense. Specifically my children, of whom only the first was around at the time – these are misty, very English pieces in my mind. It’s very important to me to keep the connection to childhood as alive and well as possible in my music.

Little Christmas Pieces – 2003 – similar to the above: nostalgic and English sounding, I think, but also simple and childlike. Guido is particularly fond of the above two sets, and so am I.

Don't forget me.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on June 30, 2008, 11:05:16 AM
Well, obviously everyone of taste and discernment loves those pieces  ;D  0:) How could they not?  :P But Guido's been particularly vocal about it, I suppose. Appeals to the part of him that loves nostalgic, Englishy stuff, I think.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: mn dave on July 01, 2008, 10:20:43 AM
I downloaded the 4 Paz songs. 32 kbps?! You must be joking.  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 01, 2008, 10:22:39 AM
There was a reason for that, way back when I orginally uploaded them...perhaps I should upload a fuller version. OTOH, the recording quality is so poor in the first place I'm not sure you lose much! Watch this space - I'm going home in a while, so I might do it then.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: mn dave on July 01, 2008, 10:33:49 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 01, 2008, 10:22:39 AM
There was a reason for that, way back when I orginally uploaded them...perhaps I should upload a fuller version. OTOH, the recording quality is so poor in the first place I'm not sure you lose much! Watch this space - I'm going home in a while, so I might do it then.

Who's singing on those? I haven't listened hard yet, but I will soon.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 01, 2008, 12:01:38 PM
Quote from: Mn Dave on July 01, 2008, 10:33:49 AM
Who's singing on those? I haven't listened hard yet, but I will soon.

It was about 11 years ago. Her name was Abi Boreham - she was about 19, a soprano in the choir of a neighbouring college. She lost her voice the morning of the recording!  :o   Didn't hinder her top Cs, as you can hear! I've since seen her name on high-profile CDs by the Holst Singers and the Choir of London - I did a search on her to see if I could find a link, and I discovered that she's married now - Abi Hooper.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 02, 2008, 09:21:21 AM
My little year 5  0:) s sang their song today (see a couple of pages back) - great fun! Went down well with their schoolmates - we had to encore it.   :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on July 02, 2008, 09:38:26 AM
QuoteThis is our year five song,
Full of words that are much too long,
But that doesn’t fill us up with anger -
What can you expect
When he’s got a name as long as Ot-te-van-ger?!

Ah yes, I remember it well...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 02, 2008, 12:25:20 PM
Also, phone call from conductor of my orchestral piece - date confirmed for 21st February.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 02, 2008, 12:26:18 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 02, 2008, 12:25:20 PM
Also, phone call from conductor of my orchestral piece - date confirmed for 21st February.

Très cool, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 02, 2008, 12:33:59 PM
Now all that remains is the small matter of writing the thing.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 02, 2008, 12:38:40 PM
Bring it on!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 02, 2008, 02:47:37 PM
A little musing on my musing tuffet (© Guido)

I think I've made it clear how ambivalent I am about the whole idea of publicising my music. I regard this thread really as just a chat between friends which happens to have the recurrent conversational springboard of my own compositions. As far as pushing my music on people, sending it off for competitions etc. - I've never done this, and I never will. That simply isn't why I compose - I compose to discover myself, more than anything else. I remember Saul once advising me to publicise myself in the same way he does....... yes, well.... Anyway, in the light of this, I just wanted to share a fragment of Molière's Misanthrope, in Richard Wilbur's translation, which struck me as I read it this morning. I couldn't resist the extremely apposite insertion of a subtle hyphen. See if you can spot it  ;D :

Sir, these are delicate matters: we all desire
To be told that we've the true poetic fire.
But once, to one whose name I shall not mention,
I said, regarding some verse of his invention,
That gentlemen should rigorously control
That itch to write which often afflicts the s-ul;
That one should curb the heady inclination
To publicize one's little avocation;
And that in showing off one's works of art
One often plays a very clownish part.

...of which danger I'm more than aware!

Please carry on.....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on July 02, 2008, 02:55:56 PM
Spotted.

'Surgically done, amice', Karl would say...  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 02, 2008, 04:25:58 PM
Even were I to suggest that you publicize yourself, Luke . . . the fellow you mention would not be my proposed model  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on July 02, 2008, 11:29:37 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 02, 2008, 02:47:37 PM
As far as pushing my music on people, sending it off for competitions etc. - I've never done this, and I never will. That simply isn't why I compose - I compose to discover myself, more than anything else.

I started writing for exactly the same reason, and kept at it in relative solitude until I was 30. But once you are absolutely certain the things you write are good, it becomes imperative others know that too. It did so for me, at least. What enriches you, may enrich others. I personally think your things deserve exposure. Never say never, Luke.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 03, 2008, 03:59:22 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on July 02, 2008, 11:29:37 PM
I started writing for exactly the same reason, and kept at it in relative solitude until I was 30. But once you are absolutely certain the things you write are good, it becomes imperative others know that too. It did so for me, at least. What enriches you, may enrich others. I personally think your things deserve exposure.

Thus, my enthusiasm for the Canticle Sonata is entwined together with a sense of what an ill turn we do the world not to have such a piece sounding in an audience's ears.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 10, 2008, 04:41:39 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 02, 2008, 02:47:37 PM
Sir, these are delicate matters: we all desire
To be told that we've the true poetic fire.
But once, to one whose name I shall not mention,
I said, regarding some verse of his invention,
That gentlemen should rigorously control
That itch to write which often afflicts the s-ul;
That one should curb the heady inclination
To publicize one's little avocation;
And that in showing off one's works of art
One often plays a very clownish part.


What a fantastic poem! I love the rytmic sense in it (not very technical language, but then I know very little about poetry!).

Also have just caught up on this thread - I would love to see the cello piece before I leave for America on Tuesday.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 10, 2008, 09:19:04 PM
Quote from: Guido on July 10, 2008, 04:41:39 PM
I would love to see the cello piece before I leave for America on Tuesday.

You're right - it is probably best to be well fortified before such a crazy undertaking....  ;D

It might not be possible, for various boring reasons, but I'll see what I can do.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 11, 2008, 07:18:15 AM
yay!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 20, 2008, 12:16:54 AM
Guido must be well into his American sojourn by now, and obviously I wasn't able to fulfil his request. Sorry.  :(

OTOH, a few pages ago Karl kindly made some detailed suggestions after carefully proof-reading the clarinet part of my Canticle Sonata. I thought I'd be able to get it done quickly - but then, for some reason, couldn't find the Sibelius files of either the revised score or the clarinet part deriving from it  :o A few days ago, I turned them up, however, so I've finally been able to follow Karl's suggestions. A couple I didn't entirely follow were:

1) places where Karl suggested enharmonic changes - I changed the B#s to Cs, but not the D#s to Ebs

2) the bar with the trem across the break - simply because I want it that way and, not being a clarinetist, don't know exactly how difficult this actually is. If it truly is ridiculously tricky, then I will make one more revision and stick the lower note up the octave.

Anyway, here's the revised part - mostly relevant to clarinetists, I suppose, but you're all free to have a copy if you want.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 20, 2008, 05:18:46 PM
Hi Luke (and everyone else!), writing from Utah... Just thought I'd check in.

That's fine with the score... Just when you're ready I'd love to have a little look through. I'm back home on the 10th of September, but may be trying a carbon fibre cello while I'm out here (www.luisandclark.come)

Contemporary music news: I saw Ades' Powder her Face recently at the Royal Opera in Covent Garden, and I have to say the experience left me rather cold. Though it is an entertaining and amusing work, I'm not convinced it hangs together as a whole - there's nothing really to latch onto musically - no particular moments of beauty or any that are that memorable. The characters are rather shallow, but then that is part of what the opera is about, but I didn't really feel that I felt much for any of them apart from perhaps the Baroness. It just seemed a bit long considering that very little was happening dramatically (including in the music)... This sounds like I am slating it, but actually I rather enjoyed going, but I just am not convinced by the score. As I said though it was rather witty and contained an obligatory controversial nude scene and one where the Baroness was operatically felating her hotel attendant... Maybe I was expecting too much - it was a rather early work by him after all. My favourite pieces by Ades are Tevot and Arcadia I think - I used to like Asyla quite a bit, but have some how gone off it since hearing Tevot. He's meant to be writing a cello piece for Steven Isserlis - it was at one point a concerto, but may now be a cello/piano piece - I'm not sure if he finished it in time for Aldeburgh.

Anyone got any thoughts on this opera?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 27, 2008, 09:38:34 AM
Just possible I may be making some headway with my orchestral piece. I don't want to say much as I tend to jinx things when I talk about them too early. However one thing I will say is that, for some obscure reason, I felt that a section of the piece I want to write needs to be part of a previous work of mine, re-thought orchestrally, and that's the bit I've done. 59 bars of (very slow - of course!) music. The second section will be (or will seem) faster and fresher.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on July 27, 2008, 09:45:18 AM
Mahler compared talking about a work in statu nascendi with peeking into the womb of a pregnant mother... Nevertheless - which previous work have you partially "re-thought orchestrally"?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 27, 2008, 09:54:07 AM
The one whose rediscovery was the impetus behind my first Omphaloskeptic Outpost, on the previous incarnation of GMG. It's a very long, complex, virtuosic, experimental, 'hardcore' - and unfinished! - piano piece called Memorial. No-one else commented on it (except Sean IIRC) but it's important to me; I remember the excitement of finding the score, dashing off an essentially sightread recording and listening to it repeatedly in a somewhat spellbound state as if it was the work of another composer, which, in a way, it was. However I think about this work, it seems to exist 'in the past', in memory - its subject matter, its musical material, its own history of loss and rediscovery. And that memory-drenched state is the reason I feel it needs to be in this piece, to be balanced by a piece which is much more 'in the moment.'

There, I've said too much. The thing will doubtless not get written now!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 28, 2008, 03:26:50 AM
...nevertheless, work continues  :D ....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 28, 2008, 03:48:20 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 28, 2008, 03:26:50 AM
...nevertheless, work continues  :D ....

Excellent!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 28, 2008, 03:54:24 AM
Yes, it feels unexpectedly comfortable to be working with an orchestral piece again, after so long. Like turning a corner and finding oneself in a familiar place. It helps, perhaps, that the initial work is 'only' orchestration. Perhaps that's another reason that whatever-it-was told me to revisit this old piece in this way.

Fairly soon this bit will be done, and then the harder work begins.

BTW, Karl, does the new clarinet part look better?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 28, 2008, 04:06:57 AM
Only just downloaded it, Luke, thanks for the reminder.  Will have a look later today.

By the way (and not that you need at all attend to this now, but I say this now to get it placed in your Composing Queue), even while I am at odds trying to find an accompanist for the Sonata . . . if you feel inclined to write a piece for unaccompanied clarinet (anywhere in the 3- to 10-minute range), that I could arrange to put together without seeking a second musician . . . just keep it in mind, if you please!  Or even, if you will allow me, I request!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 28, 2008, 04:12:23 AM
I'm more than pleased to do so!

I think the first expression marking will be 'with aristocratic sensuousness'....

BTW I gave a copy of the Canticle Sonata to the clarinet teacher at my school at the end of the summer term. We'll see what she makes of it in September, perhaps.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 28, 2008, 04:14:31 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 28, 2008, 04:12:23 AM
I think the first expression marking will be 'with aristocratic sensuousness'....

Well, I shouldn't have the least notion of how to interpret the marking, then  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on July 28, 2008, 05:08:03 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 28, 2008, 03:54:24 AM
Yes, it feels unexpectedly comfortable to be working with an orchestral piece again, after so long. Like turning a corner and finding oneself in a familiar place. It helps, perhaps, that the initial work is 'only' orchestration. Perhaps that's another reason that whatever-it-was told me to revisit this old piece in this way.

Revisiting an old piece can be inspiring, I know this from experience. When you have, ideally, made progress since then - and not only artistically -, you recognize what is still 'unfinished business' in the earlier work, which gives you both a sharper sense of where you have been/where you are now and what else could be done - fueling the new enterprise and adding to your confidence.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 29, 2008, 04:25:40 AM
Having finished this section of the piece - or so I thought - I felt unsatisfied, and realised it needed something more in the centre, so I am working on another part of Memorial which ought to function well in this position. We'll see soon enough...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 29, 2008, 06:08:55 AM
Sorry to use this as an hour-by-hour diary! Having experimented with inserting this extra section into the middle of what I'd already done, I've decided that it doesn't quite work after all. Memorial itself is a dreamlike sequence, basically a piece in stasis from which 'things' emerge and subside. That works paradoxically well in a long piece such as Memorial is - the very length of the piece builds up a force of its own. But in a shorter work such as this orchestral version will be, I feel there needs to be a kind of catalytic central point from which my last section emerges 'logically' as it were. And it doesn't with the experiment I just made, even though the music itself was good, and the orchestration I was making was rewarding. I shall have to think again....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 30, 2008, 04:21:03 AM
I'm tentatively dipping my toes into the second section of the piece. And lordy, it's good fun. There must be something wrong here, I'm not supposed to be enjoying it like this...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 30, 2008, 04:21:33 AM
And why not?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 30, 2008, 04:49:24 AM
I'm suspicious of anything that comes so easy! I worry that this means my mind isn't working properly, that I'm satisifed with something that is actually no good at all. But I'll worry about that later.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on July 30, 2008, 04:51:44 AM
There's a stylistic gulf between part one and part two that I was planning, but which is more striking than I'd imagined. I'll either have to bring the two somewhat closer together or scrap part one - which maybe would be fine. I'd keep it as  stand-alone piece in that case. But we'll see how things pan out.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on July 30, 2008, 05:24:10 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 30, 2008, 04:49:24 AM
I'm suspicious of anything that comes so easy! I worry that this means my mind isn't working properly, that I'm satisifed with something that is actually no good at all. But I'll worry about that later.

When you feel a work resists being written, you know it's actually there. Still - some things really 'write themselves', fortunately!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 30, 2008, 06:15:43 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 30, 2008, 04:49:24 AM
I'm suspicious of anything that comes so easy! I worry that this means my mind isn't working properly, that I'm satisifed with something that is actually no good at all. But I'll worry about that later.

Quote from: lukeottevanger on July 30, 2008, 04:51:44 AM
There's a stylistic gulf between part one and part two that I was planning, but which is more striking than I'd imagined. I'll either have to bring the two somewhat closer together or scrap part one - which maybe would be fine. I'd keep it as  stand-alone piece in that case. But we'll see how things pan out.
Maybe you could post something when you finish so we can tell whether or not you're losing your mind- and if it's good enough, go with it, if not, just rework it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Joe_Campbell on July 31, 2008, 11:12:21 PM
Quote from: Jezetha on July 30, 2008, 05:24:10 AM
Still - some things really 'write themselves', fortunately!
Exactly! Scriabin wrote his 5th sonata in a few days!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on August 02, 2008, 02:29:14 PM
Quote from: JCampbell on July 31, 2008, 11:12:21 PM
Exactly! Scriabin wrote his 5th sonata in a few days!
There ya go, there's a good example!
another good one is (i heard Ben Zander saying this on the recording) the 2nd movement of Mahler's 3rd- he "wrote it in a day" (although i seriously doubt that, he probably just made sketches or a general outline).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on August 17, 2008, 10:31:51 AM
Whilst away on holiday I did a great deal of tinkering with my orchestral piece, which is taking some sort of shape now, though still has a very long way to go indeed. And for light relief, as well as to keep my hand in, as the holiday came to an end, I mucked about writing some fugues on rather well-known subjects. Enough said on those, I think....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on August 17, 2008, 11:34:06 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 17, 2008, 10:31:51 AM
Whilst away on holiday I did a great deal of tinkering with my orchestral piece, which is taking some sort of shape now, though still has a very long way to go indeed. And for light relief, as well as to keep my hand in, as the holiday came to an end, I mucked about writing some fugues on rather well-known subjects. Enough said on those, I think....

I don't think so. Which 'rather well-known subjects', pray?  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on August 17, 2008, 12:42:49 PM
I prefer not to reveal my sources until the whole magnificent magnum opus is completed. Or not, as the case may be.  ;D Suffice it to say, the set operates under the working title The Wart of Fugue. And, if it's not obvious, it doesn't 'count' as anything more than a bit of silliness, not a proper 'opus' at all.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on August 17, 2008, 12:45:10 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 17, 2008, 12:42:49 PM
I prefer not to reveal my sources until the whole magnificent magnum opus is completed. Or not, as the case may be.  ;D Suffice it to say, the set operates under the working title The Wart of Fugue. And, if it's not obvious, it doesn't 'count' as anything more than a bit of silliness, not a proper 'opus' at all.

;D ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 17, 2008, 02:33:42 PM
Wherefore "wart" thou, Luke?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on August 17, 2008, 02:53:15 PM
You mean where? Based at 43°34'36.96"N 3°05'01.27"E And very nice too, as you can guess!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on August 18, 2008, 12:06:41 PM
As long as it's not a Brittney Spears theme used as a subject for a fugue, we're okay....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on August 18, 2008, 02:03:41 PM
....damn, where's that delete key?.....


If only you knew, Greg, if only you knew....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on August 18, 2008, 03:08:19 PM
AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
>:D
http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/tgDcC2LOJhQ
:'(
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on August 18, 2008, 05:09:44 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 17, 2008, 12:42:49 PM
the set operates under the working title The Wart of Fugue.

Lol! Welcome back.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on August 19, 2008, 04:28:46 AM
Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on August 18, 2008, 03:08:19 PM
AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
>:D
http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/tgDcC2LOJhQ
:'(

Ravishing! I played my fugue # 7 through for the first time this morning; it's a little more Shostakovich-y than this rather JS Britney number, but of course that's because the subject is Berlin's angsty epic Take My Breath Away. My # 12 is more Bach-like (especially the countersubject); in that one the subject is Europe's The Final Countdown.    ;D ;D ;D ;D Holiday fun, what can I say? My brother, brother-in-law and I had great fun thinking of the cheesiest possible subjects....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on August 19, 2008, 04:46:31 AM
Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on August 18, 2008, 03:08:19 PM
AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
>:D
http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/tgDcC2LOJhQ
:'(

Thanks. I enjoyed that!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 19, 2008, 04:47:47 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 19, 2008, 04:28:46 AM
Holiday fun, what can I say?

Live the dream, dude!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on August 19, 2008, 07:06:17 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 19, 2008, 04:28:46 AM
in that one the subject is Europe's The Final Countdown.   
:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on August 21, 2008, 12:02:37 PM
How about Spice girls Wannabe for cheese - you could assign the rap with pitches like in Different Trains. Or maybe, failing that, one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's gorgonzoloidal offerings.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on August 21, 2008, 12:28:35 PM
The thinking was to stick as much as possible to 80s one-finger synth hooks and riffs, with their 'I'm a keyboard wizard' reek of pretentiousness. For instance, the 'Crazy Frog' Axel F theme makes a good fugue subject, I must say.....

I didn't manage to stick entirely within this remit, however. Not when the seductive 90s charm of Aqua's Barbie Girl were suggested by my sister-in-law. That makes a corking subject too....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on August 21, 2008, 12:31:25 PM
I ought to emphasize that since coming home I've been paying attention to the real job in hand again, I'm glad to say.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Symphonien on August 22, 2008, 01:30:11 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 21, 2008, 12:28:35 PM
The thinking was to stick as much as possible to 80s one-finger synth hooks and riffs, with their 'I'm a keyboard wizard' reek of pretentiousness.

Have you seen  this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6USa0zUMmqI)? A hilarious parody of that sort of thing, and of the Eurovision Song Contest! :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on August 22, 2008, 04:58:54 AM
Truly inspiring! Thank you so much!  ;D Though I spotted that the keyboard players - one of them, anyway - used more than one finger on each hand, which makes them a bit flash and virtuoso, I think.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 22, 2008, 05:06:19 AM
Soon we shall need to reflect on the majesty of Alan Zavod's "volcano" keyboard solos, I should think . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on August 23, 2008, 07:28:31 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on August 21, 2008, 12:28:35 PM
The thinking was to stick as much as possible to 80s one-finger synth hooks and riffs

Will that be a performance direction for the first statement of each fugue subject? :D Might actually make some a little tricky!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on August 26, 2008, 09:35:20 AM
Work continues on the orchestral piece (which is really two pieces, about five minutes each). Very close to finishing it now, at least in the sense of having continuous music from A to Z. I'm in the W or X region now, I suppose  ;D No doubt there will need to be a long process of editing and revising, as with the Canticle Sonata, but somehow I don't have many doubts about anything I've composed so far, which wasn't entirely the case with the Canticle doodad. So maybe the editing won't take so long.

Sibelius's MIDI playback being so shoddy - don't get me started! - I've taken a very long way round in order to create a more satisfactory mock-up. Recipe as follows:

1) Copy full score into new file
2) add new instrument lines for places where Sibelius can't cope well with e.g. widely differing dynamics between two parts on one stave or where it has previously assigned the wrong sound
3) Extract parts
4) edit parts further
5) save parts as audio files
6) open audio files in wave pad editor
7) fine-tuning: fade-ins and fade outs; reverb where necessary; changing dynamic envelopes etc. etc.
8 ) combining all constituents parts into one mix

and of course many other niggly little problems on the way. But the results are much better than I expected, with the usual provisos. Hopefully I'll be able to post the reconstruction and the score in the next few weeks.  :) :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 26, 2008, 09:37:23 AM
Splendid, Luke, splendid!  :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 03, 2008, 03:09:34 AM
All is sorted out, Luke, and I'm rolling my sleeves up even now.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 03, 2008, 03:21:39 AM
And donning a pair of rubber gloves too, I hope.

(For everyone else- I've sent Karl a copy of the still-very-much-unfinished score + MIDI mock-up of my piece, for a much-needed bit of fellow-composerly advice/reassurance; when the piece is complete, you'll all get to see it straightaway)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 03, 2008, 03:26:27 AM
Oven mitts, for this is hot stuff, indeed  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 03, 2008, 03:49:56 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 03, 2008, 03:21:39 AM
And donning a pair of rubber gloves too, I hope.

(For everyone else- I've sent Karl a copy of the still-very-much-unfinished score + MIDI mock-up of my piece, for a much-needed bit of fellow-composerly advice/reassurance; when the piece is complete, you'll all get to see it straightaway)

I don't expect this 'much-needed bit of fellow-composerly advice/reassurance' will become public domain? I have a keen interest in the artistic process...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 03, 2008, 06:03:17 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 03, 2008, 03:26:27 AM
Oven mitts, for this is hot stuff, indeed  :)

If it gets too bad there's always this option:

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 03, 2008, 03:54:33 PM
The attentive looking-o'er has begun.  Will report in the morning.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 06, 2008, 10:15:47 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 03, 2008, 03:54:33 PM
The attentive looking-o'er has begun.  Will report in the morning.

Has morning broken? What news from the Outpost, Karl?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 06, 2008, 11:34:34 AM
Guido, this is the first day I've been able to sleep later than six!  ;)

I liked the brace of pieces immediately, and needed some 'absorptive' time.  And (as I anticipated) the liking has increased with familiarity.

[I feel Luke's pain w/r/t the MIDI, absolutely . . . he has scored it with an ear for lovely, spare subtleties, and MIDI responds with "squawk."]

The Elegy feels to me like a speaker waiting to catch his breath; then, having found his voice, he is content to weigh his words, and let each syllable possess meaning.  (And I do hope Luke doesn't mind my indulging in such an illustration, for I myself know its shortcomings . . . .)  It is a delicate fabric of chaste understatement, with fleeting passages of warm chorales in the brass and then the strings;  and I am sure I am only waiting in line behind the composer in eagerness to hear this played by actual players rather than the necessarily short-falling electronic shadow.

(My one scoring concern is the flutes in mm. 43-44, Luke . . . I don't think they can manage a true forte down there, and they may be apt to be covered by the clarinets and brass, which can be perfectly strong there.)

The Ascent (which I read yet in uncompleted form) plays out in a very satisfying 'narrative'.  It opens with a fine intensity and focus, in which it begins not so much as a contrast to the Elegy, but as an energized outgrowth thereform;  I especially like the irregular subdivision of the seven . . . that will be tricky for a large ensemble, but it is entirely manageable (and will ensure that they work it out, for performance).  (Great cantabile trombone solo;  I could see that being some listeners' favorite take-away from an initial hearing.)  The contrasting section with flute, piano, and mallets is an expert stroke.  And the transformed return to A ideas is marvelous, with the new ostinato in five.

A wonderful brace of pieces, and I am very excited that an occasion has arisen for them!

Luke, have you finished the Ascent yet?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 06, 2008, 12:19:40 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 06, 2008, 11:34:34 AM
Guido, this is the first day I've been able to sleep later than six!  ;)

I liked the brace of pieces immediately, and needed some 'absorptive' time.  And (as I anticipated) the liking has increased with familiarity.

[I feel Luke's pain w/r/t the MIDI, absolutely . . . he has scored it with an ear for lovely, spare subtleties, and MIDI responds with "squawk."]

The Elegy feels to me like a speaker waiting to catch his breath; then, having found his voice, he is content to weigh his words, and let each syllable possess meaning.  (And I do hope Luke doesn't mind my indulging in such an illustration, for I myself know its shortcomings . . . .)  It is a delicate fabric of chaste understatement, with fleeting passages of warm chorales in the brass and then the strings;  and I am sure I am only waiting in line behind the composer in eagerness to hear this played by actual players rather than the necessarily short-falling electronic shadow.

(My one scoring concern is the flutes in mm. 43-44, Luke . . . I don't think they can manage a true forte down there, and they may be apt to be covered by the clarinets and brass, which can be perfectly strong there.)

The Ascent (which I read yet in uncompleted form) plays out in a very satisfying 'narrative'.  It opens with a fine intensity and focus, in which it begins not so much as a contrast to the Elegy, but as an energized outgrowth thereform;  I especially like the irregular subdivision of the seven . . . that will be tricky for a large ensemble, but it is entirely manageable (and will ensure that they work it out, for performance).  (Great cantabile trombone solo;  I could see that being some listeners' favorite take-away from an initial hearing.)  The contrasting section with flute, piano, and mallets is an expert stroke.  And the transformed return to A ideas is marvelous, with the new ostinato in five.

A wonderful brace of pieces, and I am very excited that an occasion has arisen for them!

Luke, have you finished the Ascent yet?

Not yet - I've rather lost impetus. I've made a few attempts at it, but none are quite right, so experience teaches me it's best just to wait a few days.

Thanks for your generous comments, Karl, and of course for taking the time to peruse the piece so thoroughly. I share your worry that an orchestra may struggle with coordinating various sections of 'Ascent' - and yet I can also see no real rhythmical problems inherent in the parts themselves. It's a conundrum - the thing seems perfectly simple to me, and yet I know how any distrust of a composer amongst the members of an ensemble can quickly spread so that what ought to be a pretty lucid playing around with metre becomes perceived as much more thorny than it really is.

Re the flutes in bar 43-4 - the idea here is that they are merely a constituent part of the texture, but that as the other instruments fade out they become more prominent - at the end of 44, only flutes and clarinets are playing. It might be a good idea to mark the clarinets down a shade, however - I take the point!

Many thanks again  :) :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 06, 2008, 12:27:16 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 06, 2008, 12:19:40 PM
. . . I share your worry that an orchestra may struggle with coordinating various sections of 'Ascent' - and yet I can also see no real rhythmical problems inherent in the parts themselves. It's a conundrum - the thing seems perfectly simple to me, and yet I know how any distrust of a composer amongst the members of an ensemble can quickly spread so that what ought to be a pretty lucid playing around with metre becomes perceived as much more thorny than it really is.

It's well written, well 'assembled' . . . it's just going to be one of those cases where the group will need a little patience and application to fit it all together properly.  With your lazier sort of group, the attitude is going to be a bit like, "Well, we never have this much trouble putting Beethoven together . . . ." (and the attendant, "Well, but nobody nowadays writes like that, do they?")  But I trust the outfit under advisement is not so scurvy a lot  :)

Quote from: LukeRe the flutes in bar 43-4 - the idea here is that they are merely a constituent part of the texture, but that as the other instruments fade out they become more prominent - at the end of 44, only flutes and clarinets are playing. It might be a good idea to mark the clarinets down a shade, however - I take the point!

That should serve.

Fun piano writing in the score, too!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 06, 2008, 11:17:24 PM
Thanks for the report Karl - really looking forward to hearing this.  :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 07, 2008, 04:06:08 AM
Quote from: Guido on September 06, 2008, 11:17:24 PM
Thanks for the report Karl - really looking forward to hearing this.  :D

My internet connection slowed down to a crawl yesterday evening (from 1700 k to 40...). So, a bit belatedly, I fully endorse Guido's message!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 09, 2008, 04:53:41 AM
Just the place to introduce my new avatar.

It looks like a Zen ensō, I think, but with a central point which calls to mind the Void, the Self, the ineffable centre of experience. All important concepts to me and my music.....

But actually, my 4-year old Felix did it at school today (his fifth day of school). I asked him what it was. Like the Zen sensei he is, Felix-roshi enigmatically replied:

Nothing.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 09, 2008, 04:56:38 AM
I may be overanalyzing the matter, of course; but I see the outline and stylized pupil of an eye.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 09, 2008, 05:04:39 AM
I did ask, but apparently not...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on September 09, 2008, 12:02:28 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 09, 2008, 04:56:38 AM
I may be overanalyzing the matter, of course; but I see the outline and stylized pupil of an eye.
Either that, or a circle with a dot in the middle.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 09, 2008, 12:06:45 PM
Hush your mouth.  ;D  I love my new av. It was always going to take a lot for me to change the old one, but when I saw Felix's perfect circle - like Giotto's, I feel  0:) - I knew that here was the new one, alright.  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 09, 2008, 12:14:28 PM
Greg seems pretty easy in the matter of circles . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Joe_Campbell on September 09, 2008, 09:01:05 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 09, 2008, 12:06:45 PM
Hush your mouth.  ;D  I love my new av. It was always going to take a lot for me to change the old one, but when I saw Felix's perfect circle - like Giotto's, I feel  0:) - I knew that here was the new one, alright.  ;D
What was your old avatar anyways?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on September 09, 2008, 09:45:08 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 09, 2008, 04:56:38 AM
I may be overanalyzing the matter, of course; but I see the outline and stylized pupil of an eye.

No, you don't. What every guy sees first in that picture is, of course, a t-i-t, nothing else.

Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 09, 2008, 04:53:41 AM
But actually, my 4-year old Felix did it at school today (his fifth day of school). I asked him what it was. Like the Zen sensei he is, Felix-roshi enigmatically replied:

Nothing.

A Zen teacher would actually say: what does it tell you that it is?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 09, 2008, 10:23:43 PM
The most famous conversation in the history of Zen: Bodhidharma expounds the new philosophy for the first time, c. 475 AD:

Emperor Wu: I've built thousands of temples in my country, how much merit I've accumulated?

Bodhidharma: Nothing.

Emperor Wu: I've endowed thousands of monks in my country, how much merit I've accumulated?

Bodhidharma: Nothing.

Emperor Wu: I've published thousands of Buddhist scriptures in my country, how much merit I've accumulated?

Bodhidharma: Nothing

Emperor Wu: Well what is the fundamental of Buddhism?

Bodhidharma: Nothing, just emptiness, vast emptiness [mu]

Emperor Wu: You think who you are?

Bodhidharma: I have no idea
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 09, 2008, 10:40:59 PM
Quote from: M forever on September 09, 2008, 09:45:08 PM
No, you don't. What every guy sees first in that picture is, of course, a t-i-t, nothing else.

Hadn't even occurred to me, but then, in context, coming from the brush of this boy - and look at that enlightened visage, btw - it wasn't likely to. I suppose, though, that in a deeper sense the female breast is indeed the centre and fount of existence, the spiritual home of the childlike Self, so maybe you have a point here ....  ;D ;D ;D ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 10, 2008, 03:46:23 AM
A charmer!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 10, 2008, 04:07:15 AM
Is your in-box prepared for inundation, Luke?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 10, 2008, 04:23:51 AM
PMs made need a little clearout, but if you mean my hotmail account, then please fire away!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 10, 2008, 04:45:07 AM
Hotmail ahoy!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 10, 2008, 05:50:34 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 09, 2008, 10:40:59 PM
Hadn't even occurred to me, but then, in context, coming from the brush of this boy - and look at that enlightened visage, btw - it wasn't likely to. I suppose, though, that in a deeper sense the female breast is indeed the centre and fount of existence, the spiritual home of the childlike Self, so maybe you have a point here ....  ;D ;D ;D ;D

Lovely boy. I could be seeing things, but is there something Slavonic in his traits? Does he, for example, look like someone on the Czech side of your family?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 10, 2008, 05:53:24 AM
Like the new avatar. What was the old one?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 10, 2008, 05:55:23 AM
Some mountain or other.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 10, 2008, 07:33:01 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on September 10, 2008, 05:50:34 AM
Lovely boy. I could be seeing things, but is there something Slavonic in his traits? Does he, for example, look like someone on the Czech side of your family?

No. He doesn't look like anyone else in the family, IMO. Though some say he looks a bit like me, where my daughter looks quite a lot like my wife. The latter is true, but I find it hard to see the former. In fact I'm not sure Felix is related to anyone. I think he just self-germinated, parthenogenetically.  ;D It would explain a lot....

However, he's the funkiest, most adorable little boy you'll ever meet, like a wind-up bath toy (says his swimming teacher) or like a cartoon character which has escaped into real life (complete with feet that run frantically on the spot before his body moves off; he even provides his own Batman-like KAPOW!! sound effects to punctuate everyday conversation - 'Daddy, are we going to .....SHAZAMM!!! - Tesco!?')
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 10, 2008, 08:21:19 AM
Quote from: JCampbell on September 09, 2008, 09:01:05 PM
What was your old avatar anyways?

Quote from: Guido on September 10, 2008, 05:53:24 AM
Like the new avatar. What was the old one?

Was it that intruiging? I loved it, and might well swap back at some point. It's a thangka of a Tibetan mountain which has obsessed me, for a variety of reasons, for quite a few years (I have a whole shelf of books devoted to it at home, and a folder on the PC groaning with thousands of photos and films of it  ::) ). The mountain is a 6000+ metre peak called Kailash, and it's an extreme place in all respects - the most holy place on earth by some measures (as it's sacred to no less than four religions); the most inaccessible and the highest major place of pilgrimage; part of a sacred landscape which also includes the highest large lake in the world, a place equally sacred; traditionally it's also seen as the source of four of the continent's major rivers. It's a stunningly beautiful place whose geography is characterised in all sorts of ways by unearthly symmetries and resemblances - maybe I'll share my most striking photos with you at some point (if you do a Google search you'll likely come up with some good ones, but patient delving unearths the real treasures IMO) - and every square inch of it is redolent with religious, spiritual or mythical connotations. I've visited it so many times in my thoughts and through countless photos of even the least inspiring parts that I feel I now know most stretches of the long circumabulation 'kora' circuit which the pilgrim undergoes, sometimes prostrating the whole way round, through snow, rock, ice, up steep gradients at extreme altitudes. Climbing the mountain, naturally, is forbidden, though at one or two places off the main circuit the most intrepid vistor can get close enough to touch the mountain wall.

All that just makes the very thought of the place hum with powerful resonances, but as I'm not really a religious person I was always somewhat mystified as to what it is about this place that enthralls me so much. At some point I realised that the roots of this obsession, though not easy to define quickly are something to do with the more archetypal qualities of Kailash - shape, symmetry, scale, symbolism - that chime perfectly with some of my more philosophical, psychological and omphaloskeptic concerns.

The second part of my orchestral piece is written very much and very specifically with Kailash in mind, even though it's resolutely not important that anyone else is aware of that fact. I'm sure I'll be talking more about that nearer the time, if anyone can bear to read any more of this tosh!  ;D ::)

Perhaps you can see why I always quietly left unanswered previous questions about my avatar - not something I can easily mention just as an aside, even though it may not seem terrifically interesting to anyone else.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 10, 2008, 08:22:22 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 10, 2008, 07:33:01 AM
No. He doesn't look like anyone else in the family, IMO. Though some say he looks a bit like me, where my daughter looks quite a lot like my wife. The latter is true, but I find it hard to see the former. In fact I'm not sure Felix is related to anyone. I think he just self-germinated, parthenogenetically.  ;D It would explain a lot....

However, he's the funkiest, most adorable little boy you'll ever meet, like a wind-up bath toy (says his swimming teacher) or like a cartoon character which has escaped into real life (complete with feet that run frantically on the spot before his body moves off; he even provides his own Batman-like KAPOW!! sound effects to punctuate everyday conversation - 'Daddy, are we going to .....SHAZAMM!!! - Tesco!?')

:) :) :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 10, 2008, 08:25:49 AM
Thank you for all that, Luke.

I meant no disrespect, BTW:

Quote
Some mountain or other.

But, I think you would take it in the right spirit.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 10, 2008, 09:28:07 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 10, 2008, 08:25:49 AM
Thank you for all that, Luke.

I meant no disrespect, BTW:

But, I think you would take it in the right spirit.

Yes, of course! I hope and expect everyone else finds my peculiar interest in this thing as ridiculous as it clearly is.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 10, 2008, 09:33:05 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 10, 2008, 09:28:07 AM
Yes, of course! I hope and expect everyone else findspeculiar interest in this thing as ridiculous as it clearly is.

You're offering that as ridiculous?

Clearly, mon ami, you don't know from ridiculous!  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 10, 2008, 10:06:41 AM
For those interested...


I'm not at home, so I can't get to my folder of Kailash photos, but here are some pretty classic views which actually did crop up on page one of a Google image search! Some of these are among the images most often lifted for use on pages which mention Kailash, so they are pretty well-known.


From the south-west, the Kailash range rises suddenly out of the Tibetan plain:
(http://www.good-will.ch/pd/images/sc_kailash1.jpg)

And similarly from the south, here by Chiu Gompa (monastery) on the shores of Lake Manasarovar
(http://www.cybernet1.com/himalaya/images/kailash_from_darchen.JPG)

North face, one day into the kora. Not the best photo around, this....
(http://www.good-will.ch/pd/images/sc_kailash2.jpg)

And again...
(http://www.bergfuehrer-suedtirol.it/uploads/pics/kailash_01.jpg)

(http://helloji.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/kailash_lingam.jpg)
One of the most famous shots of Kailash, but a rare viewpoint, from above the Inner or Nandi parikrama (=kora). We see the 'Arhat' or Nandi rock (Nandi is Shiva's bull) which kneels before Shiva's mountain (for Hindus Kailash is the abode of Shiva and Parvati). The inner kora is reserved for those who've done the outer one 13 times (except in the year of the horse, when you only need to have done the outer one once  :D ) and it's actually pretty dangerous and terrifying by all accounts. It takes you right under the sheer face of the mountain, from where falling (atmalinga) rocks rain down upon you (a gift of the gods!).

(http://www.sacredsites.com/asia/tibet/images/mt-kailash-500.jpg)
This photo of Kailash's south face is taken from the beginning of the inner kora route, as you can see. The triangular shape you see rising at the foot of the mountain is the high point of the inner kora – IIRC it's the highest point you can reach around the mountain, including the more famous Dolma La high point of the outer kora

Well, you get the gist.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 10, 2008, 10:50:41 AM
Stunning.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 11, 2008, 05:57:36 AM
Felix now tells me, mischievously, that his picture is actually an aerial view of a bonfire with a circle of sticks lying around it. I get the feeling he just made that up....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 11, 2008, 06:00:22 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 11, 2008, 05:57:36 AM
Felix now tells me, mischievously, that his picture is actually an aerial view of a bonfire with a circle of sticks lying around it. I get the feeling he just made that up....

We like a creative lad what thinks on his feet.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 11, 2008, 06:40:33 AM
It's obvious, though, isn't it, now he's said?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on September 11, 2008, 09:01:55 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 10, 2008, 07:33:01 AM
No. He doesn't look like anyone else in the family, IMO.

Does he look like the mailman?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 11, 2008, 09:18:10 AM
Bad boy

(would explain his - and many other small boys' - adoration of Postman Pat*. But alas, our postperson is of the female persuasion)

*though he's more a Thomas boy, to be honest. Desperately unoriginal, I'm afraid.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on September 11, 2008, 11:05:50 AM
OK, if it is not the mailman, take a good look around your circle of friends then.  >:D

BTW, I don't recall you ever posting your own picture, or have you? It is always nice to have a vague idea of what the people look like we are corresponding with here.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 11, 2008, 11:08:59 AM
Quote from: M forever on September 11, 2008, 11:05:50 AM
OK, if it is not the mailman, take a good look around your circle of friends then.  >:D

BTW, I don't recall you ever posting your own picture, or have you? It is always nice to have a vague idea of what the people look like we are corresponding with here.

Yes, I have, somewhere. A few pages back on this thread is a picture of me, though more than 11 years and a good few pounds ago!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 11, 2008, 11:14:43 AM
Quote from: M forever on September 11, 2008, 11:05:50 AM
BTW, I don't recall you ever posting your own picture, or have you? It is always nice to have a vague idea of what the people look like we are corresponding with here.

We probably need a more current photo of you & me in the MFA shop . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on September 11, 2008, 11:36:05 AM
I think I will work at the MFA* in the not too distant future. If I am correctly informed, they are building a new wing or building there right now which will also have an auditorium, and we will be putting in the film projectors and sound systems.


*Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 11, 2008, 11:39:59 AM
The renovations will take some few years yet; doesn't surprise me that they will involve equipment requiring your professional services!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 11, 2008, 11:52:34 AM
Don't know if you managed to find it, M, so here it is again. I'll root around and see if I can find one that is both more up-to-date and vaguely humanoid, but to be honest that's asking quite a lot.



Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on September 11, 2008, 11:54:24 AM
I just heard we are supposed to install the film equipment in December or January. But that is too far away to predict an actual timeframe. Typically, the construction part of most projects is behind schedule anyway. I just finished a new screening room for Harvard for the film studies school. That took 2 1/2 months. Not because it takes that long to install the projectors and do the sound system, but because between every step and the next, we had to wait for weeks for other elements to be finished until we could proceed. So I expect the MFA project will also take quite a while.

Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 11, 2008, 11:08:59 AM
Yes, I have, somewhere. A few pages back on this thread is a picture of me, though more than 11 years and a good few pounds ago!

Is it the one labeled "while composing Processional"?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 11, 2008, 12:03:26 PM
Yes! See above....  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on September 11, 2008, 12:05:22 PM
You are much younger than I thought.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 11, 2008, 12:06:48 PM
Really? Don't forget to add on the 11 years - I'm 32.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 11, 2008, 12:12:36 PM
Deleted - that photo was too horrible to inflict on you poor people!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 11, 2008, 12:15:16 PM
Not really 'worse for wear', only a little en famille. So it ain't a publicity photo, so what?  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 11, 2008, 12:16:28 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 11, 2008, 12:12:36 PM
Deleted - that photo was too horrible to inflict on you poor people!

You overstate the horror a great deal  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 11, 2008, 12:19:06 PM
You saw it, did you, in the half a minute is was up!  ;D ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 11, 2008, 12:22:35 PM
Hey, the Outpost is one of my regular haunts here, what can I say?  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on September 11, 2008, 03:35:18 PM
What do you mean, was up. I still see the pic attached to your post a few posts above this one.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 11, 2008, 05:05:17 PM
The second photo?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 12, 2008, 02:50:46 PM
Going through a period of feeling intensely disenchanted with my orchestral piece. Having not worked on it for a week or two, all the 'rush' I feel whilst composing is gone, and looking at it more dispassionately I'm really not at all sure about it for all sorts of reasons. But I have to decide what to do about this quickly, of course - something needs to be done by (let's say) November. I can wait it out and see if I grow to like the piece again - that's happened before. Or I can rewrite it, though at present I can't see how. Or I can start something new, though I like the basic premise of this piece a great deal and would write something connected to it. Not a nice feeling, this.  ??? ??? :-\ :-\
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 12, 2008, 03:19:19 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 12, 2008, 02:50:46 PM
Going through a period of feeling intensely disenchanted with my orchestral piece. Having not worked on it for a week or two, all the 'rush' I feel whilst composing is gone, and looking at it more dispassionately I'm really not at all sure about it for all sorts of reasons. But I have to decide what to do about this quickly, of course - something needs to be done by (let's say) November. I can wait it out and see if I grow to like the piece again - that's happened before. Or I can rewrite it, though at present I can't see how. Or I can start something new, though I like the basic premise of this piece a great deal and would write something connected to it. Not a nice feeling, this.  ??? ??? :-\ :-\

Sorry to hear about this. On the one hand I am dissapointed that we wont be able to hear it sooner, but on the other hand I'm sure we all want to hear a work that you are completely happy with. Good luck with it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 12, 2008, 04:03:49 PM
Tut, tut, Luke!  The feeling of 'inertia', all right, that's understandable, and you've got to get the pump primed again;  regrettable, but hardly fatal, and we'll all rally 'round.

The disenchantment, though, is nonsense! You've got the makings of a fine brace of pieces there.  I go through this all the time with Maria, who not infrequently goes through a period of hating whatever painting she's just been working on.  I don't quite understand what's happening (I haven't really experienced any comparable aversion to my composition, for instance -- and no, that doesn't mean that my musical work is at all better than, or even equal to, Maria's painting), but from time to time I'm in this somewhat surreal situation of seeing before me a lovely canvas, yet I'm in the same room as an artist who wants to paint over it.

So, I don't know, maybe this is something like what you're stepping through, Luke.  But there is nothing the least wrong with your scores, and you just need to find your way back on track to write up the ending to Ascent. Patience!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 12, 2008, 04:04:33 PM
Maybe it will help if some of us suggest an ending for the Ascent?

I'm thinking wind machines, here . . . .

8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on September 12, 2008, 04:07:01 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 12, 2008, 02:50:46 PM
Going through a period of feeling intensely disenchanted with my orchestral piece. Having not worked on it for a week or two, all the 'rush' I feel whilst composing is gone, and looking at it more dispassionately I'm really not at all sure about it for all sorts of reasons. But I have to decide what to do about this quickly, of course - something needs to be done by (let's say) November. I can wait it out and see if I grow to like the piece again - that's happened before. Or I can rewrite it, though at present I can't see how. Or I can start something new, though I like the basic premise of this piece a great deal and would write something connected to it. Not a nice feeling, this.  ??? ??? :-\ :-\

But a good thing and a good sign. All good composers were/are fiercely self-critical. Talent and craftsmanship are important, but that quality is probably even more important.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on September 12, 2008, 04:50:37 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 12, 2008, 02:50:46 PM
Going through a period of feeling intensely disenchanted with my orchestral piece. Having not worked on it for a week or two, all the 'rush' I feel whilst composing is gone, and looking at it more dispassionately I'm really not at all sure about it for all sorts of reasons. But I have to decide what to do about this quickly, of course - something needs to be done by (let's say) November. I can wait it out and see if I grow to like the piece again - that's happened before. Or I can rewrite it, though at present I can't see how. Or I can start something new, though I like the basic premise of this piece a great deal and would write something connected to it. Not a nice feeling, this.  ??? ??? :-\ :-\
That's how I feel sometimes..... well, November can be here before you know it. That's all I'm going to say.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 12, 2008, 10:52:22 PM
I am as Karl in this in never having had any aversion to anything I have ever written. BUT - getting stuck is very familar. When that happens I always am overlooking something. So - find out what is missing.

I wonder if your disssatisfaction has something to do with the unity of the piece, as it is a structure with an old and a new element? Perhaps you have to reinforce - if that is at all possible - the connection between the two pieces?

You'll get there.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 12, 2008, 10:55:19 PM
Quote from: Jezetha on September 12, 2008, 10:52:22 PM
I am as Karl in this in never having had any aversion to anything I have ever written. BUT - getting stuck is very familar. When that happens I always am overlooking something. So - find out what is missing.

I wonder if your disssatisfaction has something to do with the unity of the piece, as it is a structure with an old and a new element? Perhaps you have to reinforce - if that is at all possible - the connection between the two pieces?

You'll get there.


Thanks guys.

I don't feel exactly stuck, just as if I'm suddenly seeing the piece in a new way. You might be right that the bipartite old-new structure of the piece has something to do with this, but OTOH I do feel there's some connection there somewhere (specifically musical ones as well as ones that only exist in my head!). What's more, one of the only things that's making me feel better about the second piece is that the first piece prepares for it. The second piece starts with a bang, and its structure, effectively, is to do with the thinning-out of that bang to a single point. But it's only going to be about 5 or 6 minutes long - and so far only about 4 - and there's something in the proportions of this big bang fading so quickly that I'm not happy with. The presence of an equally long, very slow and predominantly very quiet first movement helps to ammeliorate the balance a little, I think.

Tell you what, guys, have a look at the score up to the point at which it is 'finished' (though evidently it isn't really that either). The last page, where the music goes into 3/8, is just an indication of the sort of thing that will happen here, however. Please don't be afraid to point out any places where you sense structural or other problems.  :)


Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 12, 2008, 11:19:08 PM
Thanks, Luke. I have to go The Hague shortly to borrow some books from the Royal Library - one of my favourite destinations -, but I'll have a(n amateur) look at the score later...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 13, 2008, 03:34:01 AM
Cheers Luke! My score reading skills are really not up to much, so I can't really comment on the structure, unfortunately.

I did have a few tiny points to make when reading through the cello part (and string parts in general) - currently open strings and harmonics are both notated with the same symbol - a circle. I find it nice if open string are notated with a 0 rather than an o just to show the difference... a petty thing I know, but you would be surprised at what a difference it makes.

The other thing is that is bar 67 - the cello part and viola part have harmonics which are rather easier to find in first position when sitting in the orchestral section. However, I have foud that people in general are woefully ignorant of how to play harmonics, even simple ones like these - that it would be a fourth on an open string doesn't really occur to them. Even very talented players at Cambridge have difficulty with this (to my continual surprise).

Sorry for these tiny nit picky things ::), I'm sure they're the last thing on your mind at the moment... Just thought I'd mention them before I forgot. I look forward to being able to hear it. :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 13, 2008, 07:54:22 AM
Quote from: Guido on September 13, 2008, 03:34:01 AM
Cheers Luke! My score reading skills are really not up to much, so I can't really comment on the structure, unfortunately.

I did have a few tiny points to make when reading through the cello part (and string parts in general) - currently open strings and harmonics are both notated with the same symbol - a circle. I find it nice if open string are notated with a 0 rather than an o just to show the difference... a petty thing I know, but you would be surprised at what a difference it makes.

The other thing is that is bar 67 - the cello part and viola part have harmonics which are rather easier to find in first position when sitting in the orchestral section. However, I have foud that people in general are woefully ignorant of how to play harmonics, even simple ones like these - that it would be a fourth on an open string doesn't really occur to them. Even very talented players at Cambridge have difficulty with this (to my continual surprise).

Sorry for these tiny nit picky things ::), I'm sure they're the last thing on your mind at the moment... Just thought I'd mention them before I forgot. I look forward to being able to hear it. :)

Thanks Guido

Re the harmonic sign - unfortunately there's only one sign on Sibelius (I think), or at least only one that's quick to do! Re the high harmonics, you might be right. It might be my imagination or peculiarities of my own cello, but I always prefer to play passages like this 'in the right place', as it were, rather than as open+fourth harmonics - they seem to have better resonance, and to ring on better, as this passage demands, though as I say, that may be more in my head than anything. But I may renotate them, you have a point.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 13, 2008, 07:57:35 AM
Just parenthetically (breakfast is nearly ready, and I've just been puttering to get the laptop WiFi connection restored) . . . the Royal Library at The Hague is just the place I'd be delighted to hang with Johan  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 13, 2008, 08:01:38 AM
Am I right? This place? Hmm, not bad!

(http://iesr.ac.uk/images/2006/03/03/den-haag-8.png)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 13, 2008, 08:04:06 AM
Well, I've only just invited myself, so I should hope you might come along, as well, Luke.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 13, 2008, 08:04:48 AM
Count me in!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 13, 2008, 08:06:36 AM
Libraries I have known: the library of my university days:

(http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/images/photos/library1.jpg)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 13, 2008, 08:09:46 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 13, 2008, 08:01:38 AM
(http://iesr.ac.uk/images/2006/03/03/den-haag-8.png)

Alas, that's the entrance to Het Binnenhof (the Inner Court). You can find the Dutch Parliament there. For enlightenment, though, I go here:

(http://www.zilverbank.nl/zilverfeiten/beeld_jg02/02_02_kb.jpg)

You can see 'KB' - Koninklijke Bibliotheek...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 13, 2008, 08:12:56 AM
Blame Google. And my ignorance.  :-[ :-[
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 13, 2008, 08:20:54 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 13, 2008, 08:12:56 AM
Blame Google. And my ignorance.  :-[ :-[

The seat of Dutch government isn't world-famous...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 13, 2008, 09:41:59 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 13, 2008, 07:54:22 AM
Thanks Guido

Re the harmonic sign - unfortunately there's only one sign on Sibelius (I think), or at least only one that's quick to do! Re the high harmonics, you might be right. It might be my imagination or peculiarities of my own cello, but I always prefer to play passages like this 'in the right place', as it were, rather than as open+fourth harmonics - they seem to have better resonance, and to ring on better, as this passage demands, though as I say, that may be more in my head than anything. But I may renotate them, you have a point.

Oh no, you are definitely right that they ring more up 'in the right place' - this is just a fact of string physics. I'm not sure how one might specify this... The only way I can think of adding 0 (that is zeros rather than circles) is by adding lyrics to the part and just putting a 0 above ever relevant note, then changing the font size to very small. A bit clumsy perhaps, but it might work
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 13, 2008, 12:18:39 PM
I'll revisit your score in an hour-ish, Luke.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 13, 2008, 03:06:47 PM
Okay, Luke. I just listened to Elegy and Ascent. I can hear three things - a movement up, a movement down and a plateau of fulfilment. There is a battle going on between melancholy and joy. The Elegy droops sadly, but it also gathers strength. When the Ascent starts everything that was repressed in the Elegy bursts into new life. I think the two pieces are one and keeping them separate is unnecessary. Descent and ascent are what matters. There are wonderful things in the Ascent, I can hear a sort of ecstasy even. The remainder of the (one) piece I would imagine as a battle between the forces of descent and ascent. I can even imagine the piece ending where it began, like a sort of pyramid.

These are my first thoughts. I am already quite taken with many of the things I have heard!

If you unify the piece, it should get a new title.

P.S. You were right in thinking the two pieces are connected. To this listener it certainly sounds that way.

Morning addition - my first reaction is somewhat impressionistic, I know...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 14, 2008, 03:18:07 AM
After listening to Ascent a few times - bars 1-44 (where the 5/8 section starts) sound extremely inspired. High point - the marvellous transition in bars 16-26! I find the 5/8 a bit mechanical, it doesn't really 'move'. But when we reach bar 58, things improve markedly again, in a very Tippettian way (the one of The Midsummer Mariage and the Corelli Fantasia).

Are you aware of Ravel in that repeated flute phrase (33-35), which the trumpet takes up? Shades of the Lever du jour (Daphnis)?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 03:26:37 AM
Edit - a new reply from you, I see. I'll post this, then read it.


Thanks so much, Johan, for those thoughts, impressionistic or not! It's really fascinating to read your impression of the formal content of the work, and the way the two parts bind together or not. Especially so because I didn't prime you with a 'program note' filled with my own ideas and plans about this issue (I did for Karl, the poor man!). So your reaction....

Quote...I can hear three things - a movement up, a movement down and a plateau of fulfilment. There is a battle going on between melancholy and joy. The Elegy droops sadly, but it also gathers strength. When the Ascent starts everything that was repressed in the Elegy bursts into new life. I think the two pieces are one...

is therefore based solely on the notes and not on any ideas I might have placed there. Not that this wasn't the case with Karl's thoughts on the piece, but I'm sure you all know what I mean - your reaction actually doesn't entirely chime with my own ideas about the piece (though it doesn't diverge much), but is even so on a formal level positive and persuasive (and naturally equally valid). This pleases me a great deal, because I always worry about the idea that my music might only work when read in conjunction with a program note. That this piece, without one, can be heard interpreted in a slightly different way, and still work, is good to hear; perhaps there is the suggestion also that the piece has some independent, individual strength of character under its skin. I hope so.

So, I'm pleased that you've sensed a unity there, and that you've felt the Elegy is a kind of preparation for the Ascent. To me, the Elegy is a necessary 'prefatory action' (that's Scriabin's phrase, I think), a kind of honouring ritual before the Ascent. The two pieces were written using entirely different methods, of course, and most links between them are purely fortuitous, but I think that these tenuous links are enough in this case. My biggest concern is with the Ascent - but then I've been listening to too much Harvey and Radulescu recently (two composers whose philosophical concerns and formal ideas are often very similar to my own) and my uncertainty about my piece might simply be down to this! I find it hard to pinpoint passages that I really dislike, you see, just a vague sense of worry.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 03:40:10 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on September 14, 2008, 03:18:07 AM
After listening to Ascent a few times - bars 1-44 (where the 5/8 section starts) sound extremely inspired. High point - the marvellous transition in bars 16-26! I find the 5/8 a bit mechanical, it doesn't really 'move'. But when we reach bar 58, things improve markedly again, in a very Tippettian way (the one of The Midsummer Mariage and the Corelli Fantasia).

Very interesting re the 5/8 - this was a passage that was originally shorter, and which worked well but which wasn't in proportion to the rest of the piece. I had to extend it, which was quite hard and it could well be that this is the cause of the artificiality you sense. I sense issues here too, but I also sense a couple of mitigating factors:

For some reason the Midi file goes out of sync quite badly in this 5/8 section too, which doesn't help; I also had to make some other quite drastic alterations to the Midi in this section for various tedious reasons. More important than these two factors, though, is the fact that I actually want a kind of stasis here, a kind of harmonic and motivic suspension, but I would certainly like it to sound a little more magical than the Midi makes it (or maybe the fault is mine, not the Midi's). A small part of the idea of the decreasing bar lengths which you may have noticed - 7/8, 6/8, 5/8, 4/8, 3/8 (you can guess what comes next!) is the taming of forwards-pushing rhythmic-ostinato-driven music in the 'odd' numbered bars (therefore above all in the 7/8)  by the lyrical 'even' numbers, with their prominent piano parts. Hence the 5/8 retains the rhythmic ostinato of the 7/8, and its heterophonic nature, but is deliberately more stable, (= static, suspended). I will, however, look at it again.

Mind you, I also have worries about the 7/8. And the 6/8 and 4/8. And the 3/8, 2/8 and 1/8 aren't written yet!  ;D

Quote from: Jezetha on September 14, 2008, 03:18:07 AMAre you aware of Ravel in that repeated flute phrase (33-35), which the trumpet takes up? Shades of the Lever du jour (Daphnis)?

Hey, that's more than possible! Ravel is one of my very favourite composers (and my list of these is pretty eclectic!), though I don't often have cause to mention him here. The flute solo which precedes this, intertwined with the piano part, may well be similar too.

As an aside, here's proof of the poorness of the Midi - that's a horn, not a trumpet!!  ;D ;D

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 14, 2008, 03:48:38 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 03:40:10 AM
I actually want a kind of stasis here, a kind of harmonic and motivic suspension, but I would certainly like it to sound a little more magical than the Midi makes it

As an aside, here's proof of the poorness of the Midi - that's a horn, not a trumpet!!  ;D ;D

I listened with the score on screen - I had made the page so small to see the whole of it, that's why I heard a trumpet, but didn't see it was a horn!

Back to your remark - of course you want stasis, that's as clear as anything, but even stasis in music - music is time filled with meaningful sound - must still be moving things forward in a sense. But I know you know that.

I am very grateful for the opportunity of hearing your work in statu nascendi!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 03:52:39 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on September 14, 2008, 03:48:38 AM
Back to your remark - of course you want stasis, that's as clear as anything, but even stasis in music - music is time filled with meaningful sound - must still be moving things forward. But I know you know that.

Yes, that's the important point. I quite agree. I in turn am grateful to you, Karl and (potentially) Guido for your opinions on the piece. With the section under discussion for instance - I'm close to it and find it hard to see things clearly, but this statement of yours helps me to do so.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on September 14, 2008, 05:23:43 AM
Luke, you have the sound file(s)?

ok, the most interesting thing that catches the eye might be the piano part on the first page  :D
seriously, would you even hear it at a performance?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 07:51:55 AM
Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on September 14, 2008, 05:23:43 AM
Luke, you have the sound file(s)?

ok, the most interesting thing that catches the eye might be the piano part on the first page  :D
seriously, would you even hear it at a performance?

Yes, you would. You'd be surprised, perhaps - stamping hard on a piano pedal produces not only the thud of foot on pedal, but also the noise of the action and, very usefully, a haze of harmonics as the dampers leave the strings sharply. It also makes the piano receptive to the noise of the instruments around it, acting like a resonating chamber, although this last depends on a number of factors.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 14, 2008, 08:35:48 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 07:51:55 AM
Yes, you would. You'd be surprised, perhaps - stamping hard on a piano pedal produces not only the thud of foot on pedal, but also the noise of the action and, very usefully, a haze of harmonics as the dampers leave the strings sharply. It also makes the piano receptive to the noise of the instruments around it, acting like a resonating chamber, although this last depends on a number of factors.

The most remarkable example of this I can think of is in that famous recording of Part's Fur Alina by Alexander Malter, but this is not in the score of course. Are there any examples of this in the orchestral repertoire already?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 08:49:15 AM
Quote from: Guido on September 14, 2008, 08:35:48 AM
The most remarkable example of this I can think of is in that famous recording of Part's Fur Alina by Alexander Malter, but this is not in the score of course. Are there any examples of this in the orchestral repertoire already?

Yes, though right now I can't remember precisely where! But for now here it is in Schnittke's Piano Quintet, and I'll think on about examples from elsewhere

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 14, 2008, 10:24:48 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 03:26:37 AM
. . . but I'm sure you all know what I mean - your reaction actually doesn't entirely chime with my own ideas about the piece (though it doesn't diverge much), but is even so on a formal level positive and persuasive (and naturally equally valid). This pleases me a great deal, because I always worry about the idea that my music might only work when read in conjunction with a program note.

Understood;  I don't believe you need suffer any such doubt in the case of this work, Luke;  it hangs together musically very well.

I think you're fine with the plan to break into something quite Otherwise at letter W (you remember I have the piece not quite from A to Z . . . .) IMMO (in my musical opinion) that will works perfectly well both from musical, and from your 'narrative', considerations.

Success, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 14, 2008, 10:27:04 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 03:40:10 AM
Very interesting re the 5/8 - this was a passage that was originally shorter, and which worked well but which wasn't in proportion to the rest of the piece. I had to extend it, which was quite hard and it could well be that this is the cause of the artificiality you sense. I sense issues here too, but I also sense a couple of mitigating factors:

For some reason the Midi file goes out of sync quite badly in this 5/8 section too, which doesn't help . . . .

Truly, the MIDI does not serve you well there;  I must act on my promise to return to the score, Luke; off the cuff, though, I had no quarrel with that section in my earlier session.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 14, 2008, 10:28:42 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on September 14, 2008, 03:48:38 AM
Back to your remark - of course you want stasis, that's as clear as anything, but even stasis in music - music is time filled with meaningful sound - must still be moving things forward in a sense. But I know you know that.

This is definitely a case, Johan, where MIDI almost invariably fails, while actual musicians realizing the score (even where it is 'music of stillness') will work.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 14, 2008, 10:30:25 AM
Dang! Got to go back to work from my break;  but the Outpost is a delightful place to hang out for a break from the MFA shop  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 14, 2008, 10:36:36 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 14, 2008, 10:27:04 AM
Truly, the MIDI does not serve you well there;  I must act on my promise to return to the score, Luke; off the cuff, though, I had no quarrel with that section in my earlier session.

Quote from: karlhenning on September 14, 2008, 10:28:42 AM
This is definitely a case, Johan, where MIDI almost invariably fails, while actual musicians realizing the score (even where it is 'music of stillness') will work.

Of course the MIDI lets Luke down. But I feel a lack of tension or, put differently, there comes a point at which I get the feeling the section will be a bridge. Waiting for other music to appear isn't good.

But I could be wrong...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 10:44:49 AM
Maybe a wind machine will help....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 14, 2008, 10:53:58 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 10:44:49 AM
Maybe a wind machine will help....

Cheeky...  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 12:20:52 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 08:49:15 AM
Yes, though right now I can't remember precisely where! But for now here it is in Schnittke's Piano Quintet, and I'll think on about examples from elsewhere

Well, there are plenty of examples in solo piano literature - Sciarrino with his fascination with piano timbre in all its aspects is very fond of this technique, either the audible pedal attack (first example - it's one of the main timbral ideas in this piece) or release (second example). Rzewski's more outré pieces - such as some numbers of The Road - naturally feature it (third example). And Bolcom uses the accent given by pedal release to give held chords a 'kick' (fourth example). These are only some examples - I'd imagine that a composer such as e.g. Lachenmann (about whom I have little knowledge), who shares Sciarrino's interest in usually-ignored sounds would use this technique too ....

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 12:24:01 PM
...as to examples in the orchestral repertoire, I'm sure there are more than this one, but I can't yet remember where. It's going to bug me till I find them! Anyway, this is from Benjamin's At First Light - notice that he trusts the effect so much that he allows it a very important role, kicking off a sudden convulsion on the trumpet's previous high D flat:

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 14, 2008, 12:33:34 PM
Wow, as ever your knowledge of scores is scary! :) Which movement of the Benjamin is that from?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on September 14, 2008, 12:36:59 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 12:24:01 PM
...as to examples in the orchestral repertoire, I'm sure there are more than this one, but I can't yet remember where. It's going to bug me till I find them! Anyway, this is from Benjamin's At First Light - notice that he trusts the effect so much that he allows it a very important role, kicking off a sudden convulsion on the trumpet's previous high D flat:

I doubt you can actually hear that properly in that situation.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 12:45:57 PM
You can on the CD, at any rate. It's a surprisingly loud sound, a combination of bass drum (in deep resonance) and tam-tam (in rich harmonics).

(The sudden activation of all possible piano harmonics also sounds quite 'spooky' - when teaching beginners the piano it's good fun to include this effect at some point along the way when demonstrating the little 'haunted house' type pieces that usually crop up when they reach A minor. I once managed to make the pupil scream and fall off her chair with a well placed pedal accent  >:D >:D Well, you have to do something to enliven the boredom  ;D )

Guido, it's from near the end of the second section of the piece - the trumpet hits a D flat, as you see; the music then focusses on this D flat, then D flat + G, before subsiding to that startling page where Benjamin tries to find ever quieter sounds - ping pong ball dropped in a glass; newspaper ripped at ever decreasing volumes. This in turn leads into those haunting chords which start the third movement.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 12:53:39 PM
Quote from: M forever on September 14, 2008, 12:36:59 PM
I doubt you can actually hear that properly in that situation.

No, I must give you credit - I thought you could hear it clearly (as I just said, though when I said 'it's a surprisingly loud sound' I wasn't specifically meaning here but as a general effect), but listening back to check it's not as clear as I'd remembered, though you can make it out. This is partly because the tempo is so quick here that the piano thud simply becomes 'one' with the thud of the pizzicati in the strings.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 01:18:08 PM
Quote from: Guido on September 14, 2008, 08:35:48 AM
The most remarkable example of this I can think of is in that famous recording of Part's Fur Alina by Alexander Malter, but this is not in the score of course.

BTW, I don't have that recording - where does this audible pedaling happen? It could be done so as to make a sort of sense, I think - this piece, in itself a highly significant one, has one of the most 'significant' pedal markings I know of, and it would make sense to make this even more audible to the listener. It's a pedal release though, not a depressing of the pedal.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 14, 2008, 03:09:45 PM
The peddle sound happens at the end of the second to last line.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 03:19:17 PM
Thought so - that makes sense. As I said, this is a significant piece - Part's first tintinabular work (though not  purely so) and also the work with which he broke his compositional silence of a few years. And the pedal lift at the end of the penultimate line is also significant in that it marks the end of the pattern-making of the music till this point (phrases increasing by one note each time, then decreasing), and in that it's where Part choses to gently-but-firmly disrupt the tintinabuli 'T voice' (triad voice, left hand) with a C#. Part obviously felt the beauty and weight of this C# and the pedal lift that reinforces it deeply - he marked the manuscript with a flower at this point. So it doesn't seem wrong to me that a performer should choose to lightly emphasize the moment somehow as you describe.

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on September 14, 2008, 05:19:47 PM
Well, listening to Elegy and Ascent was quite an experience. A very original sound world to me- the only thing like it that i can think of is something contemporary by Ades- although i wouldn't be surprised if it was also influenced by George Benjamin (and not just the effect), though i've never heard his music.......

i suppose you wanted a real tam-tam sound in MIDI..... if the program you used doesn't have it, that makes me feel horrible since i've written for the instrument but have had to use the sound for cymbals only, because they don't have a sound for tam-tam.

The bass drum sound REALLY nice- is that the standard sound? What I do in Noteworthy, for an orchestral bass drum sound (instead of drum kit), is something i learned from opening a midi file on the internet- in fact, it's the last movement of Mahler's 10th, and you really need a good sound for that.
this is what i do: use the taiko drum setting, the write a cluster in the bass clef. E F G A is good enough. There's no comparison.....

I wonder if such a thing could be done with the tam-tam sound? I might have to experiment with that........  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Symphonien on September 14, 2008, 06:01:14 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 12:20:52 PM
...I'd imagine that a composer such as e.g. Lachenmann (about whom I have little knowledge), who shares Sciarrino's interest in usually-ignored sounds would use this technique too ....

Just wanted to chime in to confirm here that Lachenmann does indeed make use of the depressing of the pedal in Ein Kinderspiel (Child's Play), specifically the 7th piece "Schattentanz / Shadow Dance". The piece consists of an insistent rhythm using only the top two notes over a cluster of strings held open in the lowest octave of the piano for resonance. Towards the end, the rhythm degenerates into a series of isolated attacks accompanied by bashing the pedal simultaneously, then just the pedal by itself repeated ad lib. The last page of the score is attached.

A video on Youtube of a pianist playing the first (Hänschen klein) and last (Schattentanz) pieces of this set can be seen  here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GGfRVpIUtg).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 11:08:47 PM
Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on September 14, 2008, 05:19:47 PM
Well, listening to Elegy and Ascent was quite an experience. A very original sound world to me- the only thing like it that i can think of is something contemporary by Ades- although i wouldn't be surprised if it was also influenced by George Benjamin (and not just the effect), though i've never heard his music.......

Thanks, Greg. I don't know who it sounds like - at least two composers, though, because the two pieces are completely different! I like to think they both sound like me, though - Ascent in particular is composed entirely using the modal technique you've seen me going on about on this thread, and has many similarities to my recent piano pieces.

Benjamin is a composer whose scores I know much better than I know Ades', so any influence would more likely be from him than from the latter - though not the pedal sound. Though I'm able to find examples elsewhere, that's just a technique that I know works from my own playing. However, the contemporary composers who I'm aware of with even more similarity to this piece - though vastly superior, more sophisticated - are, as implied above, Jonathan Harvey (e.g. try his Body Mandala CD for some wonderful contemporary orchestral writing with similar philosophical concerns and a similar symbolic use of gesture) and Horatiou Radulescu (who's also got interests close to mine, and whose piano music uses spectrally derived modes in a way that reminds me of mine - I can only wish!). I think you'd love both these composers.

Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on September 14, 2008, 05:19:47 PM
i suppose you wanted a real tam-tam sound in MIDI..... if the program you used doesn't have it, that makes me feel horrible since i've written for the instrument but have had to use the sound for cymbals only, because they don't have a sound for tam-tam.

Yes, it's a disappointment, that one. But then most of the MIDI instruments are just as bad!

Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on September 14, 2008, 05:19:47 PM
The bass drum sound REALLY nice- is that the standard sound? What I do in Noteworthy, for an orchestral bass drum sound (instead of drum kit), is something i learned from opening a midi file on the internet- in fact, it's the last movement of Mahler's 10th, and you really need a good sound for that.
this is what i do: use the taiko drum setting, the write a cluster in the bass clef. E F G A is good enough. There's no comparison.....

I wonder if such a thing could be done with the tam-tam sound? I might have to experiment with that........  8)

Re the bass drum - each instrument you hear on this MIDI mock up was 'recorded separately' and treated to a little enhancement in a wave editor before being recombined (that's where the problems with coordination in the 5/8 happened). In the case of the bass drum, I simply applied a lot of reverb to the standard bass drum sound, on which a trill otherwise just comes out as a lot of very fast but still distinct repetitions with no blending at all.


*****

@ Symphonien - thanks for that! Nice to have my suspicion confirmed! I'm sure I've heard of this piece, too, perhaps as played by Ian Pace  ??? ??? ???
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Symphonien on September 15, 2008, 12:57:38 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 11:08:47 PM
@ Symphonien - thanks for that! Nice to have my suspicion confirmed! I'm sure I've heard of this piece, too, perhaps as played by Ian Pace  ??? ??? ???

A quick Google search turned up  this page of selected concerts (http://www.ianpace.com/text/concerts01-02.htm), which reveals that he has performed it at least once in London on 19 August 2000, so it is in his repertoire (along with a couple of other Lachenmann pieces).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 15, 2008, 03:34:28 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 11:08:47 PM
. . . a trill otherwise just comes out as a lot of very fast but still distinct repetitions with no blending at all.

Oh, yes; I have had occasion to amuse my Maria more than once with that little artifact  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 15, 2008, 03:53:28 AM
I looked over the score again on the bus ride in, Luke.

Now, just what is the trouble?  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 15, 2008, 03:54:49 AM
I wish I knew!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 15, 2008, 04:01:59 AM
Allow me to rephrase the question: How may I assist you?  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 15, 2008, 04:04:57 AM
The ostinato in the 5/8 doesn't seem too me to pose any trouble;  I have taken it as read, though, that it is meant to hang in the background, so that the xylophone will be played with probably the softest mallets.  (If that really proves too much, still, it could be recast for marimba, I should think.)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 15, 2008, 04:09:25 AM
Wel, not hang in the background, but quietly drive from the background.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 15, 2008, 04:15:46 AM
Yes, you're right there - as long as the rhythm, with the mix of 3-semiquaver groups and 3-triplet-semiquaver groups, as in the 7/8, remains clear.

I think my main worry is to do with scale. Ascent seems correctly proportioned but maybe too short, to me. Perhaps rather 'bitty' because of this. OTOH, this way it matches Elegy fairly precisely, and in any event, I'm not sure how feasible extending the various sections would be.

I think this may be one of those moments of doubt I sometimes have which eventually pass - I'm feeling a little more positive than a few days ago, but still unsure.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 15, 2008, 04:25:18 AM
Anyway . . . you're considering how to end the second piece, right?  I think it is something of a distraction to second-guess, just at present, the present state of the second piece.

You must work in whatever manner you find suitable, so feel free to disregard the following completely . . . my inclination is to suggest that you find a quiet compositional 'place' to discover the end.  You've generated so much work already with the "A to W," that you probably don't want to work too hard at the end.  For one thing, if what you feel you want is an ending of stillness (and I think this is apt, too), you don't actually need a great deal of material for two minutes of closing-out.

Well, perhaps I've just been obscure, so that no disregard is necessary  8)

Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 15, 2008, 04:15:46 AM
I think my main worry is to do with scale. Ascent seems correctly proportioned but maybe too short, to me. Perhaps rather 'bitty' because of this. OTOH, this way it matches Elegy fairly precisely, and in any event, I'm not sure how feasible extending the various sections would be.

No, I don't think you want to do any 'stretching' here.  I think that the perceived breadth of a 'static' final two minutes is likely to correct any feeling that the overall piece may be too short.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 15, 2008, 04:27:59 AM
One question - what is the trajectory of Ascent? Do we reach a summit of sorts in the end? If the sections are links, what is the chain you are creating?

Addition - I see Karl is asking/saying the same thing...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 15, 2008, 04:34:18 AM
@ Karl:

I think that may be correct, Karl - as you know, the music will continue to 'refine itself' and reach ever higher, calmer ground until the final single bar of 1/8. And yes, maybe as you suggest, this will provide the balance the music needs.

As far as the final sections go, I know almost precisely what I want, btw, but I've just been fiddling around with a few slightly different approaches to it, including a slightly Lutoslawskian aleatory approach in the 2/8 section, hazy, 'random' little constellations of G and F#, pp.

Thanks for this - it's actually a good dose of reassurance  :)

@ Johan:

Hang on a minute, I'll dig out an answer for you
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 15, 2008, 04:37:07 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on September 15, 2008, 04:27:59 AM
One question - what is the trajectory of Ascent? Do we reach a summit of sorts in the end? If the sections are links, what is the chain you are creating?

This is the relevant section of the little note I sent Karl when I initially sent him the score and sound files; you'll see my usual philosophical/pychological concerns crop up again here  ::) :

QuoteEssentially the idea is that the Ascent is as much (or more) metaphorical and metaphysical as it is about mountains, although the latter idea is at the forefront of my mind, and a glance at my avatar shows the mountain I have in mind. The concept is of the ascent as analogous to the search for Self and for the joy of living in the Now - the attainment of the singularity that is the very summit of the mountain and the very centre of our Self. For this reason the piece features modes (of course) of, in turn, 7, 6 and 5 notes, and then their various intersection of 4, 3 and 2 notes, before the final 1-note intersection - the only note they all share, G (at which point, I think, the music will shower into G's harmonics, a whole new family of notes-within-a-note; but that's another story). At the same time metre contracts from 7/8 down to 1/8. The odd number bars (apart from the final 1/8) are underpinned by ostinato rhythms and are propulsive in nature; the even numbers, or at least 6/8 and 4/8, are more lyrical, spotlighting the piano, 'my' instrument; perhaps the movement from one type to another, and between related harmonic areas, gives a feel of '1st and 2nd subjects' and even of sonata form - I don't know, and the question hasn't been at the front of my mind whilst composing.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 15, 2008, 04:44:00 AM
I get it.

Well - then I could be mistaken if I thought the 5/8 section too static. Now I could interpret it as the harbinger of the singularity to come, instead of something that impedes the onward momentum. A 'wrong end of telescope' kind of misinterpretation...

And now I have to fetch my little girl from school!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 15, 2008, 04:46:46 AM
That's the idea, yes - things are thinning out, simplifying, and doing so happily. But I still take the point about this section, and suspect there's something to it.

Hopeful of finding time to actually work on the piece tonight, rather than sit thinking about it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 15, 2008, 04:48:36 AM
Not that you should resist action . . . but thinking about it, is part of the work, too.

(Don't want to overdo the thinking, though, maybe . . . .)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 15, 2008, 04:52:10 AM
Unfortunately one can't help thinking when time to actually put pen to paper is short. It's a dangerous habit, though!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 15, 2008, 07:53:35 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 15, 2008, 04:46:46 AM
That's the idea, yes - things are thinning out, simplifying, and doing so happily. . . .

With a difference, of course, but interesting resonance. (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,9.msg227100.html#msg227100)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on September 15, 2008, 11:32:49 AM
Quote from: Symphonien on September 14, 2008, 06:01:14 PM
Just wanted to chime in to confirm here that Lachenmann does indeed make use of the depressing of the pedal in Ein Kinderspiel (Child's Play), specifically the 7th piece "Schattentanz / Shadow Dance". The piece consists of an insistent rhythm using only the top two notes over a cluster of strings held open in the lowest octave of the piano for resonance. Towards the end, the rhythm degenerates into a series of isolated attacks accompanied by bashing the pedal simultaneously, then just the pedal by itself repeated ad lib. The last page of the score is attached.

A video on Youtube of a pianist playing the first (Hänschen klein) and last (Schattentanz) pieces of this set can be seen  here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GGfRVpIUtg).
Awesome! Thanks for posting that page on here- i've been familiar with that piece for a few years now (i mean, it's hard to forget), except that pedal part never came in mind when I brainstormed references for that technique.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on September 15, 2008, 12:07:26 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 14, 2008, 11:08:47 PM
Thanks, Greg. I don't know who it sounds like - at least two composers, though, because the two pieces are completely different! I like to think they both sound like me, though - Ascent in particular is composed entirely using the modal technique you've seen me going on about on this thread, and has many similarities to my recent piano pieces.

Benjamin is a composer whose scores I know much better than I know Ades', so any influence would more likely be from him than from the latter - though not the pedal sound. Though I'm able to find examples elsewhere, that's just a technique that I know works from my own playing. However, the contemporary composers who I'm aware of with even more similarity to this piece - though vastly superior, more sophisticated - are, as implied above, Jonathan Harvey (e.g. try his Body Mandala CD for some wonderful contemporary orchestral writing with similar philosophical concerns and a similar symbolic use of gesture) and Horatiou Radulescu (who's also got interests close to mine, and whose piano music uses spectrally derived modes in a way that reminds me of mine - I can only wish!). I think you'd love both these composers.

Yes, it's a disappointment, that one. But then most of the MIDI instruments are just as bad!

Re the bass drum - each instrument you hear on this MIDI mock up was 'recorded separately' and treated to a little enhancement in a wave editor before being recombined (that's where the problems with coordination in the 5/8 happened). In the case of the bass drum, I simply applied a lot of reverb to the standard bass drum sound, on which a trill otherwise just comes out as a lot of very fast but still distinct repetitions with no blending at all.


*****

Awesome.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 15, 2008, 01:23:41 PM
OK, having listened to it in its entirety 5 times I feel like I can share my opinions on it. First let me say that what you have here is very beautiful. I do think that there is a disparity between the movements as it stands, but my feeling is that this is not caused by the extremely different approaches you take to the compositions in terms of method of construction, tonality, harmony, orchestration, and most importantly rhythmically etc etc. There are enough similarities here that I think they could work together very nicely - the first movement reminds me of Kurtag in his more consonant moments (the orchestral piece I know are ...Quasi una Fantasia, Doppelkonzert, Stele, Answered Unanswered Question), and the second movement reminds me a bit of Adams Harmonielehre (though these are probably both because I have been listening to these composers a fair amount in the last few weeks!) Anyway, I think the disparity arises from the energy level of the pieces - the first is so fragmentary, unsure and hushed compared to the relentless energy of the second movement which erupts out of nowhere. I'm trying to look for another word other than energy to describe what I mean, but am failing, so it will have to do. Personally I think the problem might be solved a little by maintaining the chorale material through bars 43 to 48 more so that it doesn't falter here, but rather continues through until the strings take up the choral. Maybe lengthen oboe and clarinet lines or add more piano chords, or maybe just add more parts.

This is just my opinion, and not being a composer I wouldn't trust it too much! Sorry I couldn't be of more help, and that my analysis is rather basic.

I really like it though and like it more with each hearing. I seem to keep reading in places in this forum that new works get sometimes played twice in a concert - I wonder if you could wrangle that one in!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on September 15, 2008, 03:50:46 PM
Quote from: Guido on September 15, 2008, 01:23:41 PM
OK, having listened to it in its entirety 5 times I feel like I can share my opinions on it. First let me say that what you have here is very beautiful. I do think that there is a disparity between the movements as it stands, but my feeling is that this is not caused by the extremely different approaches you take to the compositions in terms of method of construction, tonality, harmony, orchestration, and most importantly rhythmically etc etc. There are enough similarities here that I think they could work together very nicely - the first movement reminds me of Kurtag in his more consonant moments (the orchestral piece I know are ...Quasi una Fantasia, Doppelkonzert, Stele, Answered Unanswered Question), and the second movement reminds me a bit of Adams Harmonielehre (though these are probably both because I have been listening to these composers a fair amount in the last few weeks!) Anyway, I think the disparity arises from the energy level of the pieces - the first is so fragmentary, unsure and hushed compared to the relentless energy of the second movement which erupts out of nowhere. I'm trying to look for another word other than energy to describe what I mean, but am failing, so it will have to do. Personally I think the problem might be solved a little by maintaining the chorale material through bars 43 to 48 more so that it doesn't falter here, but rather continues through until the strings take up the choral. Maybe lengthen oboe and clarinet lines or add more piano chords, or maybe just add more parts.

This is just my opinion, and not being a composer I wouldn't trust it too much! Sorry I couldn't be of more help, and that my analysis is rather basic.

I really like it though and like it more with each hearing. I seem to keep reading in places in this forum that new works get sometimes played twice in a concert - I wonder if you could wrangle that one in!
I actually have the feeling that the lack of connection IS the connection- it's almost like an Adagio succeeded by a Scherzo (though not Scherzo in mood) or a Sonata-Allegro. The striking difference is what makes it feel part of a whole for me.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 16, 2008, 09:24:45 AM
Thanks, guys. Guido's put his finger on something I sense might be a problem, namely the way Ascent just erupts, not just dynamically but in every other way too - it has purpose, drive, repetition, a unified harmonic field, and so on. A very small thing I did to bring the two closer together - I mean, really tiny! - which probably isn't very evident on the MIDIs, is to have the final bass drum roll of Elegy crescendo suddenly to finish relatively loudly. This isn't what one expects at this point, and I'd hope that it creates a feeling of expectation - 'what's coming next?' - that will pull the two together. I might mark in the score that the gap between the pieces should be short...

As I'd hoped to do, I managed some work yesterday, but I didn't write anything I wasn't expecting to write, so it's not anything to write home about.  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 16, 2008, 09:29:40 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 16, 2008, 09:24:45 AM
Thanks, guys. Guido's put his finger on something I sense might be a problem, namely the way Ascent just erupts, not just dynamically but in every other way too - it has purpose, drive, repetition, a unified harmonic field, and so on. A very small thing I did to bring the two closer together - I mean, really tiny! - which probably isn't very evident on the MIDIs, is to have the final bass drum roll of Elegy crescendo suddenly to finish relatively loudly. This isn't what one expects at this point, and I'd hope that it creates a feeling of expectation - 'what's coming next?' - that will pull the two together.

These seemingly small momentary details make great differences. (No, it isn't on the MIDI [* shudder *])

:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 16, 2008, 09:31:05 AM
But the end of Elegy, with its D minor chord, also feels (to me) like a sort of dominant preparation for the G minor that opens Ascent.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 16, 2008, 09:32:42 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on September 16, 2008, 09:31:05 AM
But the end of Elegy, with its D minor chord, also feels (to me) like a sort of dominant preparation for the G minor that opens Ascent.

Yes.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 16, 2008, 10:08:53 AM
Yes, indeed, that quasi-dominant hadn't escaped me - and it's one of those binding factors I mentioned previously, and I'm very grateful to it.

If I speak in a slightly impassive tone as if I had nothing to do with any of this, that's because to a large extent that's true. Elegy ending with a D minor chord and Ascent opening in something like G minor were foregone conclusions before any sort of planning happened, for various reasons. Likewise the prominence that G is given throughout Elegy - as the first note, as the note on which those repeated timp/cello/clarinet raps occur... - is fortuitously echoed in Ascent, which is 'all about G', as is revealed more and more, until it is finally the only note left.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 16, 2008, 10:11:23 AM
Welcome the fortuitous, says I.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 16, 2008, 10:12:56 AM
Believe me, I do. When composing is surrounded by 'coincidences' of this sort I tend to take it as confirmation that I'm on the right sort of tracks. Sometimes the coincidences are quite shocking!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 16, 2008, 10:19:40 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 16, 2008, 09:24:45 AM
Thanks, guys. Guido's put his finger on something I sense might be a problem, namely the way Ascent just erupts, not just dynamically but in every other way too - it has purpose, drive, repetition, a unified harmonic field, and so on. A very small thing I did to bring the two closer together - I mean, really tiny! - which probably isn't very evident on the MIDIs, is to have the final bass drum roll of Elegy crescendo suddenly to finish relatively loudly. This isn't what one expects at this point, and I'd hope that it creates a feeling of expectation - 'what's coming next?' - that will pull the two together. I might mark in the score that the gap between the pieces should be short...

As I'd hoped to do, I managed some work yesterday, but I didn't write anything I wasn't expecting to write, so it's not anything to write home about.  ;D

Yes that's exactly what I meant, and no I hadn't noticed that crescendo in the recording (and can't have been reading the score too well at that point either!). Maybe it needs to be a tad less subtle...

This reminds me of the end of Shostakovich's Second cello concerto which ends on that piano low cello D for dozens of bars as the percussion skitters  insect like above it; after it peters out, the cello crescendos to an accent. It's an incredible ending to an incredible piece, but this has always been to me an insinuation of death - a final beat and a thud.

[/digression]
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 16, 2008, 10:20:58 AM
Dammit, can't do anything original!  ;D ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 16, 2008, 10:21:59 AM
Shocking, but (hopefully) not appalling!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 16, 2008, 10:28:46 AM
That's the problem with these post modern times we're living in!

Really though, it's just my brain wandering... the Shostakovich is not very similar really - the crescendo is not a preparation for anything at all.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 16, 2008, 10:38:39 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 16, 2008, 10:21:59 AM
Shocking, but (hopefully) not appalling!


You refer to the coincidences? No, thankfully never appaling, just confirmatory. The composition of Ophrueois, particularly, was littered with many of these concidences (of time, place, symbolism, name etc. etc.) and strangely enough it was at least in part those coincidences that kept me ploughing on with what was quite a labour-intensive score - 'Come on Luke, keep going, there must be something to this piece after all....' But Ophruoeis is far from the only example.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 16, 2008, 11:03:16 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 16, 2008, 10:08:53 AM
Yes, indeed, that quasi-dominant hadn't escaped me - and it's one of those binding factors I mentioned previously, and I'm very grateful to it.

If I speak in a slightly impassive tone as if I had nothing to do with any of this, that's because to a large extent that's true. Elegy ending with a D minor chord and Ascent opening in something like G minor were foregone conclusions before any sort of planning happened, for various reasons. Likewise the prominence that G is given throughout Elegy - as the first note, as the note on which those repeated timp/cello/clarinet raps occur... - is fortuitously echoed in Ascent, which is 'all about G', as is revealed more and more, until it is finally the only note left.

Interesting. Must have another look/listen...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 18, 2008, 05:31:59 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 16, 2008, 10:38:39 AM

You refer to the coincidences? No, thankfully never appaling . . . .

No, they wouldn't be ; )

Shocked and appalled is just such an entrenched phrase . . . I was dithering. (You don't mind my dithering occasionally? I'll try to keep it quiet.)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 18, 2008, 05:33:03 AM
How's the Ascent, Luke?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 18, 2008, 05:34:34 AM
The Outpost is the place to dither, of course. Expressly desgined for the purpose. Here, we offer a home for all those who wish to dithering or to sit on a 'musing tuffet' (© Guido).  $:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 18, 2008, 05:35:04 AM
Quote from: KarlHow's the Ascent, Luke?

Progress is being made. But it would have been quicker simply to climb Everest, wouldn't it?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 18, 2008, 05:36:45 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 18, 2008, 05:35:04 AM
Progress is being made. But it would have been quicker simply to climb Everest, wouldn't it?

The grooming facilities are certainly unparalleled:

http://www.youtube.com/v/0F2SJS6B1wQ
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 18, 2008, 05:44:15 AM
Indeed, the facilities are unparalleled. Witness my daughter's favourite photo of Everest (hope you can read the caption):

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 18, 2008, 05:46:13 AM
Brave chap, answering the call at that altitude.  Things may be apt to freeze off at those temperatures . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 18, 2008, 05:47:21 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 18, 2008, 05:46:13 AM
Brave chap, answering the call at that altitude.  Things may be apt to freeze off at those temperatures . . . .

A hero, indeed.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 18, 2008, 05:49:47 AM
It rather puts a new light on all my symbolic talk of the summit of a mountain being a single point, infinitely small (no disrespect to this climber, but the cold does seem to have shrunk things somewhat).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 18, 2008, 05:51:26 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 18, 2008, 05:49:47 AM
It rather puts a new light on all my symbolic talk of the summit of a mountain being a single point, infinitely small (no disrespect to this climber, but the cold does seem to have shrunk things somewhat).

Now I understand the shrinkage of your time signatures!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 18, 2008, 06:01:30 AM
LOL!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 24, 2008, 04:38:37 AM
Meter shrink . . . we can talk about it, now . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Ugh! on September 24, 2008, 05:10:25 AM
39 pages, gasp, I need to apply for a research grant to browse through the outpost  :P :D A mountain indeed, but the ascent will be rewarding I am sure...  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 24, 2008, 09:38:29 AM
Quote from: Ugh! on September 24, 2008, 05:10:25 AM
39 pages, gasp, I need to apply for a research grant to browse through the outpost  :P :D A mountain indeed, but the ascent will be rewarding I am sure...  8)

Absolutely!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 24, 2008, 02:22:36 PM
Yes, and it's 39 pages of continuous, searing, intense, waffle intellectual debate. Honest.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 24, 2008, 02:30:15 PM
Almost as an aside, although Ascent is still not entirely finished, I am sorely tempted to leave it hanging for a while longer in order to embark on another orchestral project which is tempting me. If I'm right, once started, it won't be a piece which takes long to compose - I know, roughly, how it will work already - and the idea is to have two pieces to offer to the conductor of February's concert. Who knows, maybe he'll even want to do both!

Working title for the new piece, just to tantalise a little: White modulations
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 24, 2008, 02:41:48 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 24, 2008, 02:30:15 PM
Almost as an aside, although Ascent is still not entirely finished, I am sorely tempted to leave it hanging for a while longer in order to embark on another orchestral project which is tempting me. If I'm right, once started, it won't be a piece which takes long to compose - I know, roughly, how it will work already - and the idea is to have two pieces to offer to the conductor of February's concert. Who knows, maybe he'll even want to do both!

Working title for the new piece, just to tantalise a little: White modulations

Interesting news, Luke! (I haven't been very active here lately. My wireless connection ran into problems last Saturday.)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 24, 2008, 02:46:16 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 24, 2008, 02:30:15 PM
Working title for the new piece, just to tantalise a little: White modulations

Oooophff! Consider me tantalised.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 24, 2008, 02:52:38 PM
Is it a cello piece? It's a cello piece isn't it. Definitely a cello piece. Yup. What's that, you give me your word it's a cello piece? That's very kind of you!  :-*

Seriously though... White modulations suggests to me strongly something using modes. Either that or it's a white supremacist's view on tonality.  >:D

Sorry for the astonishingly irritating nature of this post.

(And the above post script reminds me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPNaSUe9y5I)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 24, 2008, 03:43:27 PM
Quote from: Guido on September 24, 2008, 02:52:38 PM
Is it a cello piece? It's a cello piece isn't it. Definitely a cello piece. Yup. What's that, you give me your word it's a cello piece? That's very kind of you!  :-*

Seriously though... White modulations suggests to me strongly something using modes. Either that or it's a white supremacist's view on tonality.  >:D


Yes, that is a problem, isn't it! That's why it's only a working title, I suppose. Though a shame it carries those overtones - as a title I rather like it, and it's very suitable for the music I have in mind.

You're right on the modes, of course, though 'modulations' doesn't only concern this; 'white', also, doesn't only concern the colour. Cryptic, huh?  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on September 24, 2008, 03:51:49 PM
QuoteEither that or it's a white supremacist's view on tonality
Luke could write something like Mexican modulations.........

(if there is such a thing- i don't hear much modulating in mariachi music)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 24, 2008, 04:22:51 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 24, 2008, 02:30:15 PM
Working title for the new piece, just to tantalise a little: White modulations

Splendid title, and consider Guido tantalized!  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Joe_Campbell on September 24, 2008, 06:58:19 PM
Well, white could mean white keys on the piano, so maybe modes of C major?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 24, 2008, 11:07:52 PM
This is turning into Mystery Scores 2.0.  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 25, 2008, 02:48:11 AM
Quote from: JCampbell on September 24, 2008, 06:58:19 PM
Well, white could mean white keys on the piano, so maybe modes of C major?

Yes, there's ever so much room for white just meaning white.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 25, 2008, 05:18:16 AM
Or white.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 25, 2008, 05:28:56 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 25, 2008, 05:18:16 AM
Or white.

White as in reactionary?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 25, 2008, 05:32:59 AM
Erm, white as in bleached of color.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 25, 2008, 05:38:41 AM
White. As in: White
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 25, 2008, 05:39:46 AM
Myriad applicabilities having nothing to do with . . . race.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 25, 2008, 05:43:33 AM
Or colour, of course.

So, White modulations it remains, until and unless I think of something better.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 25, 2008, 05:44:14 AM
40 pages now. Another page of profound insight for Eugene to plough his way through, poor guy.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 25, 2008, 05:54:18 AM
Eugene of the Steadfast Plough
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 25, 2008, 08:59:16 AM
A few quick stats:

Luke has the dubious honour of being the 9th most frequent poster on this forum. (Though his post count is dwarfed by the faintly ridiculous total that Karl has racked up).

I have the even more dubious honour of being the 6th most frequent topic starter on the forum...  :-[

The Mystery Scores thread is the 6th most visited and 5th most posted on thread.

Luke also accounts for over 28% of the posts in the Composing and Performing board(!)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 25, 2008, 09:29:29 AM
Some truly frightening facts there, thank you.

Most worrying is the 'time spent online' statistic that one can't avoid, though. Really? 60 days of my life?  :o :o :o
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 25, 2008, 09:50:48 AM
That means that from the date that you registered, over 11% of your life has been spent on this forum.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 25, 2008, 10:09:21 AM
Only 11%  ;D Not so bad as I thought

Make me feel better - work out the same stat for Johan  >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 25, 2008, 10:11:25 AM
He is not in the top 10...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 25, 2008, 10:21:09 AM
He is for time online - one place above me, incredibly!  :o
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 25, 2008, 10:24:51 AM
Quote from: Guido on September 25, 2008, 10:11:25 AM
He is not in the top 10...

Oh sure, kick him when he's down, Guido!  For shame!  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 25, 2008, 10:35:10 AM
Did it myself. Not as dramatic a difference as I thought - 16% of Johan's life

19% for Harry, if my calculations are correct. Must be something in the water over there.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 11:02:08 AM
Quote from: Guido on September 25, 2008, 08:59:16 AM
I have the even more dubious honour of being the 6th most frequent topic starter on the forum...  :-[

Why, perish the thought! I see absolutely nothing dubious in that, that... prestigious accolade. You should be proud of yourself, son.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 25, 2008, 11:04:41 AM
Before either of you can lay any claim to it, you'll have to wrest the adjective dubious from № 1 in that category.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 25, 2008, 11:07:00 AM
....click, click.... aha, I see what you mean.  >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 25, 2008, 11:09:26 AM
Quote from: Jack NicholsonYou guys are a disgracle to dubious!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 25, 2008, 11:11:34 AM
So which thread is in line to overtake Elgar in the Top 10 Topics (by Replies) category?  >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 25, 2008, 11:15:02 AM
Don't know. Do you?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 11:47:39 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 25, 2008, 11:04:41 AM
Before either of you can lay any claim to it, you'll have to wrest the adjective dubious from № 1 in that category.

Oh, you mean that... ringer.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 25, 2008, 11:49:48 AM
Dubioushvili
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:12:47 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 25, 2008, 11:11:34 AM
So which thread is in line to overtake Elgar in the Top 10 Topics (by Replies) category?  >:D

The lineup, more or less:

Sir Edward Elgar 1426
Oil & Economic Meltdown 1305
Vaughan Williams's Veranda 1049
Greatness in Music 953
What concerts are you looking foward to? (Part II) 855
Bruckner's Abbey 842
Handel vs Bach... 837
What do you look like? 821
Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost 810

Bear in mind that for some obscure reason ;D the Elgar thread is locked - so no need to worry about that one.
For reasons similarly obscure the Handel vs Bach thread is locked as well.
If people start massively reporting posts on the other 6 threads, those will get locked too.
And then Luke, taking his time, can calmly creep to the top.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:13:56 PM
And please, remain calm, that really is "foward" in the thread title. 0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:14:30 PM
And also "Omphaloskeptic".
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:14:40 PM
 ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:14:57 PM
See, already I'm helping!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:15:16 PM
If you want to get to the top - that's the way to do it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:15:53 PM
Change the thread into a chat, and hope that Rob's hardware can take it. ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 25, 2008, 12:35:19 PM
What
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 25, 2008, 12:35:39 PM
a
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 25, 2008, 12:36:01 PM
good
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 25, 2008, 12:36:21 PM
idea.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:45:34 PM
Good?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:45:46 PM
 ???
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:46:05 PM
Great
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:46:15 PM
!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:46:25 PM
 $:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:47:21 PM
(oh dear - if this gets out of hand rob will probably have to implement some sort of blocking system :-[)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 25, 2008, 02:52:32 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 25, 2008, 10:35:10 AM
Did it myself. Not as dramatic a difference as I thought - 16% of Johan's life

19% for Harry, if my calculations are correct. Must be something in the water over there.

Well, we have a LOT of it. But Britain is 'surrounded by the bl**dy substance', as an English friend of mine once remarked. That must have had an effect, too...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 25, 2008, 03:49:22 PM
Quote from: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:12:47 PM
The lineup, more or less:

Sir Edward Elgar 1426
Oil & Economic Meltdown 1305
Vaughan Williams's Veranda 1049
Greatness in Music 953
What concerts are you looking foward to? (Part II) 855
Bruckner's Abbey 842
Handel vs Bach... 837
What do you look like? 821
Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost 810

Bear in mind that for some obscure reason ;D the Elgar thread is locked - so no need to worry about that one.
For reasons similarly obscure the Handel vs Bach thread is locked as well.
If people start massively reporting posts on the other 6 threads, those will get locked too.
And then Luke, taking his time, can calmly creep to the top.

Most helpful, indeed, Maciek; looks like we have here a Stealth Outpost . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 25, 2008, 03:53:52 PM
Quote from: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:13:56 PM
And please, remain calm, that really is "foward" in the thread title. 0:)

Yes, that's just plain wrong.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 25, 2008, 03:54:45 PM
Quote from: Maciek on September 25, 2008, 12:14:30 PM
And also "Omphaloskeptic".

Well, what's your quarrel there, Maciek?  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 26, 2008, 10:35:38 AM
Just another one-liner for the hell of it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 26, 2008, 12:27:14 PM
And on another tangent....

A day or two ago I rediscovered a score of mine written when I was but a lad of 15 (it wasn't lost, actually, but I simply haven't dared look at it for a long time!).

And it's a hideous thing, all told! It shows my teenage [musical] preoccupations all too clearly - a sniff of RVW's Sea Symphony here, a waft of the push-pull chords from Shaker Loops there, and, oooooh, don't these seventh and ninth chords and clustered seconds sound scrummy. Everything clustered around the middle, figurations basic or non-existent, no real rationale for the large orchestra beyond my teenage love of large orchestras...... [squirm]. Here are the first and last pages, for a laugh. The score paper - lovely stuff bought in Prague and wasted back in the UK - is too big to fit in the scanner, so I've had to make up these composite images.

First page

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 26, 2008, 12:27:54 PM
Last page

The opening and closing sections of the piece, and the link between the two choral settings, are probably the best music in here, which doesn't say much for the rest!

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 26, 2008, 12:28:41 PM
I bring up this whole farrago simply because I'm interested to be reminded that the 'mountain' theme that's now present in Ascent is present here, too - in the texts 'set' (I use the word loosely), one Tang Chinese, one Aztec. I don't, however, recall being particularly obsessed by mountains back then. My interest in high pointy places has grown continually since I've been living in a very low, flat one (i.e. for the last 14 years). To show the almost Edwin Abbot-esque flatland in which I live, here's my village, annotated for Greg's sake in the light of his recent score-deficiency-based anguish

Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on September 25, 2008, 11:30:38 AM
I'm so jealous, I might have to devise a plan to break into Luke's house and steal all of his scores.......






Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 26, 2008, 12:43:04 PM
BTW, I ought to thank you guys for the excellent 'debate' you seem to have had last night - what a delightful surprise awaited me when I woke this morning!  ;D

All of which puts me in mind to host another flame war. Such a long time since the last one, from which some lines still give me reason to reflect - Guido, for instance, was responsible for the following classics:

Quote from: Guido on May 07, 2007, 03:31:39 PM
Wagner is an even worse composer than Beethoven - Its all just aural wanking to my ears.

Quote from: Guido on May 07, 2007, 04:16:19 PM
Tonality: the resort of pathetic lowest common denominator idiots who just hate thinking, and composers that use tonality are complete sell outs and hate art. There were no great composers before Schoenberg.

Quote from: Guido on May 08, 2007, 10:18:07 AM
[re Wagner]Conquest of the corset shop. A bloodthirsty transvestite is still a transvestite. Talking of which, there have never been, nor will there ever be a great female composer because women lack the obsessional mindset required to reach artistic perfection. Also they lack any real sense of creativity.

Tristan and Isolde is about love! Love for Christ's sake!! If he were manly it would be about cars and war and strippers.

Genius.  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 26, 2008, 12:48:38 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 25, 2008, 03:54:45 PM
Quote from: MaciekAnd also "Omphaloskeptic".

Well, what's your quarrel there, Maciek?  ;)

Don't forget, you can blame Slonimsky for that one. He's the one I stole it from....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 26, 2008, 12:53:36 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 26, 2008, 12:43:04 PM
All of which puts me in mind to host another flame war. Such a long time since the last one, from which some lines still give me reason to reflect - Guido, for instance, was responsible for the following classics:

Genius.  8)

Many thanks to the person(s) causing this fine invective...  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on September 26, 2008, 01:21:13 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 26, 2008, 12:28:41 PM
I bring up this whole farrago simply because I'm interested to be reminded that the 'mountain' theme that's now present in Ascent is present here, too - in the texts 'set' (I use the word loosely), one Tang Chinese, one Aztec. I don't, however, recall being particularly obsessed by mountains back then. My interest in high pointy places has grown continually since I've been living in a very low, flat one (i.e. for the last 14 years). To show the almost Edwin Abbot-esque flatland in which I live, here's my village, annotated for Greg's sake in the light of his recent score-deficiency-based anguish







Thank you. I'll use that as a map.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Joe_Campbell on September 26, 2008, 01:25:06 PM
Watch out for that steeple when you parachute. They come up on you!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 27, 2008, 04:31:44 PM
Luke! Help!  ;D

QuoteTwo Three quick Sibelius questions:

1.  I started a treble-clef score, and the default playback sound is a piano.  How do I change that?

2.  Ties? Slurs?

2.  Double-bars?

3.  In cut time, I have a bar which is half-note triplets, in which the first half-note value consists of an eighth-rest plus a dotted-quarter-note;  how do I do it?  :)

Thanks!

Whittled these down . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 27, 2008, 06:27:35 PM
Quote
3.  In cut time, I have a bar which is half-note triplets, in which the first half-note value consists of an eighth-rest plus a dotted-quarter-note;  how do I do it?  :)

I found out a way, which seems to me a bit convoluted.  So if there's some easier way, great . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 27, 2008, 06:53:19 PM
Quote
1.  I started a treble-clef score, and the default playback sound is a piano.  How do I change that?

This still eludes me.  Thanks!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 12:32:52 AM
The triplet question:

1) enter a half note (or half note rest)

2) triplet-ize it (quickest is to use ctrl+3, but for more options, more complicated tuplets, or to change settings re. brackets, ratios and so on right-click -> tuplet -> [whatever you want to do]; when you click out of this, your cursor will be 'loaded' with your new tuplet, so click on your half note and it will become a triplet)

3) divide your first triplet half note (or rest) however you need to.

The important principle is to work top-down - create the largest division first, then work within it. This is how you can create innumberable levels of 'nested tuplets' for instance.


The playback question:

I'm less good at this sort of thing. A quick cheat would be to create a right-hand only piano stave (in 'instrument' dialogue, you have options to delete one or other hand (piano [a] and piano [ b])). But what you really need to do is go to Play -> Edit sound sets -> choose the appropriate device -> etc. Or, what usually works for me, Play -> Devices -> choose a different playback option.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 02:33:37 AM
Sorry, misread your playbeack question - thought you wanted a piano sound. To change it you need to fiddle around with your sound sets (rarely seems to work for me, though!), but it's easier just to choose the instrument you want initially i.e. rather than 'treble stave' choose 'oboe' or whatever. Treble stave, I suppose, is just a default for music examples, theory work and so so.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 28, 2008, 04:45:45 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 12:32:52 AM
The triplet question:

1) enter a half note (or half note rest)

2) triplet-ize it (quickest is to use ctrl+3, but for more options, more complicated tuplets, or to change settings re. brackets, ratios and so on right-click -> tuplet -> [whatever you want to do]; when you click out of this, your cursor will be 'loaded' with your new tuplet, so click on your half note and it will become a triplet)

3) divide your first triplet half note (or rest) however you need to.

The important principle is to work top-down - create the largest division first, then work within it. This is how you can create innumberable levels of 'nested tuplets' for instance.

All right;  that's what I should have guessed, only I was diffident about altering that initial half-note to the eighth-rest-plus-dotted-quarter-note.

My roundabout solution was to alter the meter of that measure to 3/2, enter my notation "straight," 'tupletize' it, then restore the meter to 2/2.

I've known that what I really need to do, is just spend time with it . . . last night was a productive session, really.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 28, 2008, 04:55:39 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 02:33:37 AM
Sorry, misread your playbeack question - thought you wanted a piano sound. To change it you need to fiddle around with your sound sets (rarely seems to work for me, though!), but it's easier just to choose the instrument you want initially i.e. rather than 'treble stave' choose 'oboe' or whatever.

Yes, broadly the same in Finale.  Menu drilldown is necessarily somewhat different.

Changing the initial patch for a given staff in Finale was (well, is, I must suppose) a bit weird . . . it would look like changing one drop-down field would do it, but no, it wouldn't, there was another drop-down field which is the real driver, and you have to be sure to change that one.  And it is up to you (after the initial document set-up, that is) to manage channel numeration, another area of potential patch-change failure.

Thanks for your patience, Luke!  Will try some more this evening, and will report!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 28, 2008, 05:23:17 AM
At the point last night where I decided to stop, though . . . I need to add a fresh metronome marking. Help?

:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 06:08:56 AM
Right-click -> Text -> Metronome mark -> click where wanted -> whilst cursor is flashing, right-click to access noteheads for the metronome mark.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 06:12:03 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 28, 2008, 04:45:45 AM
All right;  that's what I should have guessed, only I was diffident about altering that initial half-note to the eighth-rest-plus-dotted-quarter-note.

Yes, as long as you create the triplet on the fundamental half note first.

Quote from: karlhenning on September 28, 2008, 04:45:45 AM
My roundabout solution was to alter the meter of that measure to 3/2, enter my notation "straight," 'tupletize' it, then restore the meter to 2/2.

Wow, that's nearly as roundabout as some of my methods!

Quote from: karlhenning on September 28, 2008, 04:45:45 AM
I've known that what I really need to do, is just spend time with it . . . last night was a productive session, really.

Good - feel free to ask more questions and I'll try my best, though can't guarantee that my solutions are the 'official' ones (nor that I'll be able to provide solutions every time!)  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 28, 2008, 06:23:10 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 06:12:03 AM
Yes, as long as you create the triplet on the fundamental half note first.

I'm still "missing" how to make such an alteration, even as I am sure it is embarrassingly simple!  :-[

Quote from: LukeWow, that's nearly as roundabout as some of my methods!

A comfort!  :D

Quote from: LukeGood - feel free to ask more questions and I'll try my best, though can't guarantee that my solutions are the 'official' ones (nor that I'll be able to provide solutions every time!)  :)

Well, but it is of value to garner 'unofficial' solutions from the heat of battle (where someone else has already won that ground) . . . I'll stop that runaway simile now, thank you . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 28, 2008, 06:29:05 AM
Made lots of (graphic) progress this morning . . . just added 18 (very 'notey') measures . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 06:32:53 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 28, 2008, 06:23:10 AM
I'm still "missing" how to make such an alteration, even as I am sure it is embarrassingly simple!  :-[

Assuming you have made the triplet, you now have three half notes (or half note rests) in the bar, under the triplet bracket. You can then change them just as you would change any note. That is - select the note[ s] to be changed and then, using the keypad, select  the change you want to make.

Sometimes, for complex reasons which are hard to describe but which will shortly become intuitive, a highlighted note doesn't alter when one selects something on the keypad (that's quite useful, of course). If this occurs, and you want to make the alteration, press Esc once. Pressing twice deselects the note and the keypad entirely.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 06:34:25 AM
Looks great - the trumpet piece, yes?

Looks so good, in fact, that I begin to think you must be able to do all the things I've been trying to help you towards - and therefore that I've misunderstood the nature of your problem. Let me know if so!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 28, 2008, 06:34:51 AM
I've got to ship off to the MFA, or I'd go straight to Sibelius to try it out.

It'll keep until this evening, though  ;)

Thanks again, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 28, 2008, 06:37:02 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 06:34:25 AM
Looks great - the trumpet piece, yes?

Looks so good, in fact, that I begin to think you must be able to do all the things I've been trying to help you towards - and therefore that I've misunderstood the nature of your problem. Let me know if so!

Thanks! It is indeed the trumpet piece . . . still not quite half what I've drawn up in MS., which itself is far from the complete piece.

Well, I'm still not sure how I should alter that initial half-note to a rest-plus-note . . . though (thinking on the fly) I could make the initial 'event' of the triplet a half-rest, and maybe that's the answer?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 28, 2008, 06:37:39 AM
Luego!  :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 06:49:00 AM
I'm confused - was I trying to answer the right question? Though yes, as I said, you need to start creating the bar by entering a half note of some sort...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 28, 2008, 10:58:35 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 06:49:00 AM
I'm confused - was I trying to answer the right question?

Sorry to have confused you; yes, your answer is sound!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 28, 2008, 04:18:10 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 02:33:37 AM
Sorry, misread your playbeack question - thought you wanted a piano sound. To change it you need to fiddle around with your sound sets (rarely seems to work for me, though!), but it's easier just to choose the instrument you want initially i.e. rather than 'treble stave' choose 'oboe' or whatever.

Yes, I see that now  ;)

I haven't fiddled aright to 'fix' it;  but it isn't worth the bother in this case.  I know what a trumpet sounds like  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 10:44:11 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 28, 2008, 04:18:10 PM
Yes, I see that now  ;)

I haven't fiddled aright to 'fix' it;  but it isn't worth the bother in this case.  I know what a trumpet sounds like  8)

I would simply have created a score for trumpet rather than for treble stave. You could still do that, of course, with a little copy-and-pasting, but you'd need to do some reformatting to make your new score look as good as your old one! (Not too much in this case, though, as what you've shown of your score so far seems to be sticking to Sibelius default settings from what I can see)  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 02:53:51 AM
In touch with the conductor-to-be of Elegy and Ascent, I asked him if he had a copy of a review of my previous piece, The Chant of Carnus, which I only ever heard of verbally. He's just sent me it, so I reproduce it here for fun:

Quote from: Neil Crutchley, Leicester MercuryA world premiere, Abramski and an old favourite too
---------------------------------------
University Sinfonia with Ron Abramski
Fraser Noble Hall, Leicester
Review by Neil Crutchley
WITH a world premiere and an appearance by Ron Abramski, this concert was bound to be interesting — and so it proved.
Luke Ottevanger, whose Chant of Carnus was played for the first time, certainly knows how to write effectively for the orchestra.
His work is based on the legend of Carnus and is a study in victimisation, of one voice against the crowd.
Here, the single voice was represented by the solo trumpet, (David Cutler).   It was both compelling and moving.
Michael Sackin drew impressively committed playing from his forces (the work is dedicated to this orchestra and conductor)...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 02:56:54 AM
...and another, this one written by a participant, the horn player Roger Swann, who keeps an online diary of all his positive musical experiences (he doesn't mention the less enjoyable aspects!):

Quote from: Roger Swann2nd Feb 2002 - 7:30 pm, University of Leicester Sinfonia- Michael Sackin - Ron Abramski (piano)
Fraser Noble Building, London Road, Leicester
Roger Swann = horn
The main thrust of the concert was the first performance of "The Chant of Carnus" by Luke Ottevanger. This work is based on the greek myth describing how Carnus (the name means 'trumpet') was murdered whilst chanting prophetic verses, being mistaken for an enemy magician. The composer points out the parallel with 'mob rule' overpowering individual voices in contemporary society.
David Cutler took the challenging trumpet part in his stride (both metaphorically and literally) as he approached the orchestra in stages before his final annihilation.
The piece showed a good sense of structure and certainly developed towards the exciting climax. Some of the tone colours around the piano writing seemed to be borrowed from Messiaen's note book but none the less one looks forward to hearing (or performing) more works by Luke Ottevanger.

...was never sure about that Messiaen comment - applicable to other pieces of mine, possibly, but not this one, to my mind!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 29, 2008, 03:04:42 AM
Positive feedback is always nice...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 04:13:35 AM
More relevantly, Elegy and Ascent is now complete 'all the way to Z', in that I've reached the double bar. But I still need to go back and fill in some sketchy textures in the last couple of minutes.

Work on White Modulations hasn't progressed at all yet - I'm letting the idea live with me a little before I get down and dirty with actual notes. Also, I haven't had much opportunity to do more than think about it yet. But I'm very keen to get started - I can imagine it working nicely. BTW, another working title could be White Christmas. I don't see any problem with that, do you?  ;D ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 29, 2008, 04:32:21 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 04:13:35 AM
More relevantly, Elegy and Ascent is now complete 'all the way to Z', in that I've reached the double bar. But I still need to go back and fill in some sketchy textures in the last couple of minutes.

Can't wait to see/hear the result.

QuoteWork on White Modulations hasn't progressed at all yet - I'm letting the idea live with me a little before I get down and dirty with actual notes. Also, I haven't had much opportunity to do more than think about it yet. But I'm very keen to get started - I can imagine it working nicely. BTW, another working title could be White Christmas. I don't see any problem with that, do you?  ;D ;)

No. Just check it out with the copyright owners, though.  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 04:34:11 AM
 ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 04:43:30 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 04:13:35 AM
More relevantly, Elegy and Ascent is now complete 'all the way to Z', in that I've reached the double bar. But I still need to go back and fill in some sketchy textures in the last couple of minutes.

Excellent!  May I have a look?  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 04:45:05 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 10:44:11 PM
I would simply have created a score for trumpet rather than for treble stave. You could still do that, of course, with a little copy-and-pasting, but you'd need to do some reformatting to make your new score look as good as your old one! (Not too much in this case, though, as what you've shown of your score so far seems to be sticking to Sibelius default settings from what I can see)  :)

I've thought of that (with but the fleetest of thought). . . may do, may do.

Many thanks, again!  No questions this morning  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 04:47:37 AM
Quote from: Karl HExcellent!  May I have a look?

Yes, I'll post it here, but not this minute - the score is on my wife's laptop (where I have to do all my Sibelius work, the program not functioning on the PC for some reason - this is just one of the many reasons why my typesetting jobs always take longer than they ought to!). If you can wait a day or two then I ought to have the whole thing finished properly.




Though I said that about the Canticle Sonata, and look how many revisions I had to make of that one!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 04:49:20 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 04:45:05 AM
Many thanks, again!  No questions this morning  ;)


Can I read that as 'I'm getting more used to it'?  :D

(Or as 'I haven't had time to do any more work on it'?  ;D ;D )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 04:57:38 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 04:49:20 AM

Can I read that as 'I'm getting more used to it'?  :D

(Or as 'I haven't had time to do any more work on it'?  ;D ;D )

Well, I did not work at Sibelius this morning . . . I did get some more work in last night.  That work, though, was more on the order of trying to catch up more with the MS., and the two or three matters I still haven't figured out, I left for another day.

On balance, getting more used to it.  And I am very pleased that it should be be so . . . I'm taking this trumpet piece as the occasion to roll up my sleeves for Sibelius, so that (I hope) when this score is in the can, I am in sufficent readiness that I can just get back into production on the ballet.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 29, 2008, 06:42:21 AM
Thank you, Jezetha and Luke for your compliments on my previous flame waring. I feel this peace time has come to an end though, and Flame War II must commence. I was going to start by writing a diatribe against your resectve favourite composers, but thought that you would retaliate by insulting mine, so I'm staying one step ahead of the game and will slate my three favourites, thusly. You'll never outsmart me!

The problem with Finzi seems to be his complete lack of personality, severe lack of talent, reactionary conservatism, liking for and wholesale stealing of third rate trivial folksy wolksy English ditties and tunes and the nasueating provincial rhetoric of the poems he chooses to set and his 'ideas' on mortality, the arts and the place of the artist. What maudlin bullshit!

Barber is in some ways even worse, given that he showed some discernable early talent - Oh big whoop, you're a clone of Brahms except with added sevenths and ninths, aren't you a clever boy! I ascribe the paucity of his output to his homosexuality - this mental illness clearly contributed to the effete and mawkish nature of his music, and also to the pathetic whining he resorts to in all of his songs - my criticism of Wagner (see previous post) stands here too - Knoxville - a nostalgic remembrance of the past??! Real men don't talk about the past - he should have written about beating his wife (in the future), shooting animals, football hooliganism and all other the other male pleasures in life.

Ives is a total fraud. Not only a compulsive liar, he seems to have pulled off the greatest con of the century: there exist some people who think his music is good. The music is bombastic and pompous, horrendously self important, indulgent, terrible to listen to, and then horribly sentimental. Funny? More like funnot. Transcendental? More like transcendbollocks. And I've got news for you Ives: God doesn't exist so that invalidates that part of your 'music' too.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 29, 2008, 06:46:11 AM
In a reticent mood are we, Guido?

;D ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 06:47:01 AM
Problem with that, Guido, is that it's entirely true from beginning to end. How can I argue with that?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 06:49:21 AM
Quote from: Guido on September 29, 2008, 06:42:21 AM
Thank you, Jezetha and Luke for your compliments on my previous flame waring. I feel this peace time has come to an end though, and Flame War II must commence.

Oh, go into a wardrobe and inhale egg substitutes!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 29, 2008, 07:18:17 AM
Well, now that I've covered my weaknesses, I guess I can start insulting your favourite composers then. Watch out Janacek, Lutoslawski, Brian, Shostakovich(?)!!!

Needless to say, I don't like any of them. >:(
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 07:18:28 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 26, 2008, 12:27:54 PM
Last page

The opening and closing sections of the piece, and the link between the two choral settings, are probably the best music in here, which doesn't say much for the rest!

Delighted to have a look at these early pages, Luke.  And at even an early stage, you had no fear of leaving 'blank space' on the score!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 07:20:22 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 04:13:35 AM
. . . BTW, another working title could be White Christmas. I don't see any problem with that, do you?  ;D ;)

Quote from: Eamonn non BingTings is pretty bad dere at de moment, but dere does seem to be some hope of a constitutional settlement.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 07:22:06 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 02:53:51 AM
In touch with the conductor-to-be of Elegy and Ascent, I asked him if he had a copy of a review of my previous piece, The Chant of Carnus, which I only ever heard of verbally. He's just sent me it, so I reproduce it here for fun:


Thanks!  We knew we couldn't be your first fans!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 10:37:01 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 07:18:28 AM
Delighted to have a look at these early pages, Luke.  And at even an early stage, you had no fear of leaving 'blank space' on the score!

No, indeed! To be honest, these are among the sparser pages of the score, although I actually think that the opening, scored for horns, trombone and timpani, would neverthless be pretty sonorous and quite effective (shades of The Gothic, Johan? - I hadn't even heard of it at this point!). But the whole score, even when everyone is playing, has a kind of 'substance-less' look to it....

I've been thinking of some of my other youthful idiocies tonight - I wish I knew where I'd put them, because I do remember some vaguely pearly bits among the dross. There's an SATB piece which I wrote as an exercise at school (aged 16 or 17, I suppose) and which I sent to Cambridge as part of my application. I totally forgot I'd sent it until after I'd successfully got my place there, when my one-time-interviewer and then-director-of-studies John Deathridge told me how impressive he'd thought it was.

There are all sorts of things I'd like to find, piano, orchestral, vocal, dating back to the age of maybe 13 or so. I've tried to find them recently without success, so I don't hold out much hope, but I'll try to look again, perhaps tonight.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 10:52:22 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 10:37:01 AM
I've been thinking of some of my other youthful idiocies tonight - I wish I knew where I'd put them, because I do remember some vaguely pearly bits among the dross. There's an SATB piece which I wrote as an exercise at school (aged 16 or 17, I suppose) and which I sent to Cambridge as part of my application. I totally forgot I'd sent it until after I'd successfully got my place there, when my one-time-interviewer and then-director-of-studies John Deathridge told me how impressive he'd thought it was.

I am not surprised!  And I am sure you are grossly overstating the "idiocies"!  Snap out of it!  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 11:14:51 AM
No, no, that SATB one was genuinely quite good, and the first piece I'd written in which I felt true compositional satisfaction - every note was necessary, every note contributed, form, text and content were in balance. I wish I could find it - though I can hear every note of it in my head right now, which is perhaps indication itself that I was doing something right.

But there are idiocies there too, certainly. I remember a piece which sat halfway between a Satie Gymnopedie and a Polovtsian Dance  ;D  :-\  ::) ......no, now I think of it, maybe it was two pieces, one more Satie, one more Borodin - that wouldn't be so bad, actually. I quite wish it was the former, though, because then, if I rediscover it, I could rename it Gymnopedie Polovtsienne.  ;D  Worse than this are all the hideously notated pieces from my really early composing days [shudder]

The more I think, the more of these pieces I can recall, and the more eager I am to see them again, to relive my innocent youth more than anything. I can remember the 'story' behind all of them, and it's made me fondly reminiscent....  ::)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 11:26:17 AM
As I reflect on the reminiscence-value of finding the Petersburg Nocturne, I understand.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 11:28:00 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 11:14:51 AM
No, no, that SATB one was genuinely quite good, and the first piece I'd written in which I felt true compositional satisfaction - every note was necessary, every note contributed, form, text and content were in balance. I wish I could find it - though I can hear every note of it in my head right now, which is perhaps indication itself that I was doing something right.

Splendid!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 12:06:23 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 11:26:17 AM
As I reflect on the reminiscence-value of finding the Petersburg Nocturne, I understand.

The difference being that your piece is the work of an already-experienced composer, the pieces I'm thinking of are the works of a young boy who has just discovered this way of life!  ;D

I'm worried that in a fit of embarrased self-hatred (in my 20s) I destroyed or binned these pieces. Now that I've learnt to love my younger self a little more more (in my 30s), or at least to see these early errors as steps on the way elsewhere, I desperately hope I wasn't so rash!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 29, 2008, 01:03:53 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 12:06:23 PM
The difference being that your piece is the work of an already-experienced composer, the pieces I'm thinking of are the works of a young boy who has just discovered this way of life!  ;D

I'm worried that in a fit of embarrased self-hatred (in my 20s) I destroyed or binned these pieces. Now that I've learnt to love my younger self a little more more (in my 30s), or at least to see these early errors as steps on the way elsewhere, I desperately hope I wasn't so rash!

I certainly hope so, too, as it is fascinating to see the curve of your own development.

(OT - I was a rather self-assured adolescent, and so I have most of the things I ever wrote from my 13th year onward. Things started to get interesting and already quite characteristic when I was 15/16. And I found my literary voice at 17. Still - it has taken me another 30 years to concentrate everything I know and can in one massive work (which I am still busy working on). Poetry has become a sideline lately (wrote two poems in the last three days).)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 01:05:14 PM
Quote from: Jezetha on September 29, 2008, 01:03:53 PMPoetry has become a sideline lately (wrote two poems in the last three days).)

You know what I'm thinking, don't you?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 29, 2008, 01:18:22 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 01:05:14 PM
You know what I'm thinking, don't you?

You sound like that Conservative Party slogan! (No, I don't...)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 02:46:55 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 28, 2008, 06:08:56 AM
Right-click -> Text -> Metronome mark -> click where wanted -> whilst cursor is flashing, right-click to access noteheads for the metronome mark.

Yet another instance (I am both pleased and grateful to say) where it is actually easier than I was expecting.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 02:58:51 PM
Double-dotting?  (I'm working around my ignorance with ties . . . .)

Found it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 29, 2008, 03:49:45 PM
Quote from: Jezetha on September 29, 2008, 01:18:22 PM
(No, I don't...)

He's suggesting that you start Jezetha's jubilant jamboree, or Johan's yurt of youth. Or some similarly alliterative thread dedicated to your works.

By the way I am amazed (and also vaguely scared) that you were both capable of producing work that you are still happy with at such a young age... mature voice at 17? That's scary.

The fact that virtually all of Janacek's most celebrated music was produced after he had been alive for haf a century really is food for thought. So many other composers didn't make it past middle age or somehow lost impetus at that age... makes me wish that so many composers had been able to compose for just a few years longer...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 29, 2008, 04:08:24 PM
Quote from: Guido on September 29, 2008, 03:49:45 PM
He's suggesting that you start Jezetha's jubilant jamboree, or Johan's yurt of youth. Or some similarly alliterative thread dedicated to your works.

By the way I am amazed (and also vaguely scared) that you were both capable of producing work that you are still happy with at such a young age... mature voice at 17? That's scary.

I was rather scary when I was 17... Luke has his Mountain obsession, I broke through to my central myth when I was 17. It underpins everything I write. Alas, a special thread for my work is impossible - I write in Dutch. I have translated one story into (British) English, though. It was written in 1994 and published in 2003. I have attached it. Those interested can get an idea of what sort of a writer I can be.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 29, 2008, 04:10:48 PM
Quote from: Jezetha on September 29, 2008, 04:08:24 PM
I was rather scary when I was 17...

May not be quite in the way you meant . . . but I had a lot of rough edges at that age.  I wouldn't be 17 again, if they paid me  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on September 29, 2008, 04:21:56 PM
Quote from: Jezetha on September 29, 2008, 04:08:24 PM
I was rather scary when I was 17... Luke has his Mountain obsession, I broke through to my central myth when I was 17. It underpins everything I write. Alas, a special thread for my work is impossible - I write in Dutch. I have translated one story into (British) English, though. It was written in 1994 and published in 2003. I have attached it. Those interested can get an idea of what sort of a writer I can be.

There are no pictures... :(

Pictures would be good!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 06:20:29 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 29, 2008, 12:06:23 PM
I'm worried that in a fit of embarrased self-hatred (in my 20s) I destroyed or binned these pieces. Now that I've learnt to love my younger self a little more more (in my 30s), or at least to see these early errors as steps on the way elsewhere, I desperately hope I wasn't so rash!


As of two minutes ago....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 06:21:36 AM
(No mystery scores points for guessing that one)

I now have an enjoyable spell of going through these old pieces ahead of me. At least, I hope it's enjoyable. Maybe I'll even set the SATB piece into Sibelius tonight, if it scrubs up OK...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 30, 2008, 06:30:39 AM
exciting
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 30, 2008, 06:32:41 AM
Quote from: Guido on September 30, 2008, 06:30:39 AM
exciting

seconded
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 07:13:29 AM
Thirded!

about 1/3 of the way through now, (rediscovered some cello pieces, Guido, which may appeal to your tastes  ;D !). Some of it isn't not too bad, in all of it is a kernel of something good. Very interesting to me to see how the dissatisfactions I felt at the time with these pieces, but was unable to put a finger on, are now understood with an embarrassed clarity. It's also as clear as day what I had been listening to as these pieces were composed - Respighi, jazz and others rear there heads but ever-presents are Ravel (unsurprisingly), Satie and Vaughan-Williams (surprinsing to me now, but maybe I was more deeply steeped in him than I knew at the time!). Scriabin also, in the later pieces (from about age 17/18).

These years, then, were obviously a time when I was absorbing, absorbing, absorbing - then, once at university, came a few years of trying to do my own thing, before the intensive stripping down of the last three or so years, as documented in the various Outposts.... fascinating for me to see.

Still haven't found the SATB piece, but I assume it's in there somewhere. All sorts of orchestral stuff coming out of the bag now, too!  :o 8) ::)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 30, 2008, 07:23:25 AM
This is all very interesting to hear! I'm sure I would be interested in the cello pieces. Had you had any teaching in counterpoint/harmony/composition before you reached university?

I cam accross accross a glut of little fragments that I had notated between the ages of 13 and 16 - never turned into pieces as I was never as organised/driven as you appear to have been, but there are some nice ideas there too. Unfortunately I have moved no furthur with my abilities!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 30, 2008, 07:38:02 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 06:21:36 AM
(No mystery scores points for guessing that one)

Oh, I have my suspicions, to be sure . . . .

Quote from: LukeI now have an enjoyable spell of going through these old pieces ahead of me. At least, I hope it's enjoyable. Maybe I'll even set the SATB piece into Sibelius tonight, if it scrubs up OK...

Excellent!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 09:04:56 AM
There are som many goodies here it's going to take a while to go through them all. I think the next step will be to make a chronological list, with descriptions, so that you can see what there is and what it's like....bear with me, though!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 30, 2008, 09:17:23 AM
Terrific!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 30, 2008, 09:58:42 AM
Once you've made the list I'm going to have to check the watermarks and undertake a thorough hand writing analysis, because I suspect that you are predating your youthful scores to make you look more brilliant, revolutionary and innovatory (despite the fact that you have never made any such claims to this effect.) It's also pretty obvious that you are going to 'jack up' the level of dissonance in these youthful scores as you type them into Sibelius, and also add cross rhythms and aleatoric effects. You're a pretty cunning character, but I've got your number - there's really no proof that you wrote any of these scores much before 2007. Addionally I have other composer's testimonies to this fact, and I am going to resolutely refuse to question their own motives.

$:)  >:D

;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 10:11:47 AM
(http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/grail/inlines/05_scale.jpg)

It's a fair cop.  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 30, 2008, 10:54:13 AM
Guido finds fresh application for his Ives Pocket Fraud Decoder
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 11:02:29 AM
Here we are then, warts and all - a quickly knocked-up Sibelius-ified PDF of Before Sleep, an SATB work composed as a homework for school, when I was 17 or so. With a rough MIDI, entirely unvarnished!

;D ;D ;D


EDIT - attachments removed (there are better ones on the next page)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 11:06:20 AM
Only just listened to it myself - among other hideousnesses a strange cut-out of the lower voices for some of the last page. Best to follow with the score, I think, for this reason and, of course, to follow the text.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 30, 2008, 11:09:46 AM
That is lovely, Luke!  If you wouldn't mind just a little layout clean-up (really de minimus), I know a fellow in Boston who (a) would like this, (b) would have use for it in the church where he serves, and (c) would (I believe) have his choir sing it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 30, 2008, 11:21:42 AM
Luke, I've Bcc'd you.

Timing is excellent, because I've just had this fellow's ear a bit today.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 30, 2008, 11:31:01 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 11:02:29 AM
Here we are then, warts and all - a quickly knocked-up Sibelius-ified PDF of Before Sleep, an SATB work composed as a homework for school, when I was 17 or so. With a rough MIDI, entirely unvarnished!

;D ;D ;D

Fascinating, Luke. I'm going to look and listen.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 30, 2008, 11:44:28 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 11:06:20 AM
Only just listened to it myself - among other hideousnesses a strange cut-out of the lower voices for some of the last page. . . .

Yes, noticed that right off, of course (and I should go back and listen a second time).

And, that e-mail msg I copied you on?  We've got the green light.

All I'd suggest is clearing the bass text on p.1 from the copyright info, and the first systems of pp. 2 & 3 have the alto text and tenor directions a little in conflict.

Other than that, it's good for reading!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 30, 2008, 11:44:51 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on September 30, 2008, 11:31:01 AM
Fascinating, Luke. I'm going to look and listen.

Oh, I think you're going to like this, Johan!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 30, 2008, 11:50:16 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 30, 2008, 11:44:51 AM
Oh, I think you're going to like this, Johan!

Yes, I already do - a really lovely piece. That chord in bar 27 is exquisite (incomplete ninth chord?)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 30, 2008, 11:54:05 AM
Nice setting. My favourite bars are 1-2 and 29-30. I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 30, 2008, 12:11:40 PM
Paul's going to look at it when he's at the church tomorrow, Luke, so there's breathing room.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 12:22:51 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 30, 2008, 11:09:46 AM
That is lovely, Luke!  If you wouldn't mind just a little layout clean-up (really de minimus), I know a fellow in Boston who (a) would like this, (b) would have use for it in the church where he serves, and (c) would (I believe) have his choir sing it.

[and the following posts]

I would be delighted, Karl - totally unexpected, this, as I only had this sudden yearning to dig out old pieces yesterday! I'm very glad you all like it - I must admit I have a soft spot for it too.

As the resident expert on this sort of thing, do you think it would work? The long-held notes in the middle not too tedious; the high B not too high? (I could take it down a semitone...if the low E flat isn't too low for the basses!).

Anyway, I'll sort out those little layout issues soon, and get a better copy to you (still, it looks pretty good for half an hour on Sibelius, doesn't it!  ;) )

Still haven't got to the bottom of these pieces. I've discovered various unfinished orchestral pieces which ring deep bells in my mind, but I can't remember what prompted them. And there are also some more recent pieces - various try-outs at quartets which look not-too-bad.

Also, most recent of all, (but still nearly 12 years old) another SATB piece which I wrote at university as part of my composition portfolio, to go alongside the Four Paz Songs (one of my best pieces, I think) and Ophruoeis (which must have been put in there to dazzle them with a multitude of notes rather than for its quality!). I never cared for this SATB one at all - it had to be written to fulfil the criteria, but my heart wasn't fully in it. But I haven't looked over it properly yet - maybe it's better than I remember. Though it was the Four Paz Songs, not this chorus, that got me my First, I'm pretty sure (Robin Holloway pretty much told me as much)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 30, 2008, 12:33:19 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 12:22:51 PM
. . . do you think it would work? The long-held notes in the middle not too tedious; the high B not too high? (I could take it down a semitone...if the low E flat isn't too low for the basses!).

I wonder who Paul's other bass is (I know one of his basses, who's more a baritone, and I don't think he can get a low E to speak);  as long as that note is covered by the other guy, though, they should be all right.

The high B, as long as he has a singer or two who have that note in a comfortable spot (and this is not at all uncommon), it's entirely manageable.  I certainly wouldn't alter the score.  Anyway, choir directors are apt to do a piece a semitone or a whole tone up or down to suit their group (generally with the composer's awareness, I like to think, if the composer yet walks the earth).

It's a good piece, written well as is;  no, I shouldn't alter it.

Quote from: LukeAnyway, I'll sort out those little layout issues soon, and get a better copy to you (still, it looks pretty good for half an hour on Sibelius, doesn't it!  ;) )

Very well done!  You set me a fine Sibelius example  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 12:45:18 PM
Quote from: Guido on September 30, 2008, 07:23:25 AM
This is all very interesting to hear! I'm sure I would be interested in the cello pieces. Had you had any teaching in counterpoint/harmony/composition before you reached university?

No, none at all worth speaking of. And actually, not very much whilst at university either. In the first year there were very old-fashioned (and very scary) counterpoint lessons with Stephen Cleobury in Gibbs' building, but these didn't help with anything practical. Later on there were some fun composition supervisions with Andrew Lovett, who liked my music and was very uninterventionist. But other than that, no, nothing.

Quote from: Guido on September 30, 2008, 07:23:25 AM
I cam accross accross a glut of little fragments that I had notated between the ages of 13 and 16 - never turned into pieces as I was never as organised/driven as you appear to have been, but there are some nice ideas there too. Unfortunately I have moved no furthur with my abilities!

Dig them out, Guido. Guido's Guide Camp has a ring to it, wouldn't you say?  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 30, 2008, 02:30:38 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 12:45:18 PM
No, none at all worth speaking of. And actually, not very much whilst at university either. In the first year there were very old-fashioned (and very scary) counterpoint lessons with Stephen Cleobury in Gibbs' building, but these didn't help with anything practical. Later on there were some fun composition supervisions with Andrew Lovett, who liked my music and was very uninterventionist. But other than that, no, nothing.

Interesting. That reminds me - Lovett has written a piece for cello, keyboard and electronics (excitingly called Unknown Terrors) which I heard about somewhere and have been meaning to have a look into. The description of it was very impressive as far as I remember...

Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 12:45:18 PM
Dig them out, Guido. Guido's Guide Camp has a ring to it, wouldn't you say?  ;D

Guido's Guild Guide? Guido's Gooey Dough? They're not really place-namey enough. Guido's... Garrison, Grange?

When I say fragments I usually mean two or three bars - really not worthy of a thread, but as I say, I like the ideas. I'd love to continue a few of them, but alas, my compositional skills are not up to it. This more than anything, is why I wish I played piano. Maybe I'll put them into Sibelius anyway so that I won't loose them.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 02:32:03 PM
Just in case you need to know now, Karl - two misprints in the score that I've just spotted:

b 27 - soprano is A, not A flat (this is the chord Johan mentioned liking, but it's not right!)

b 34 - soprano last note is G, not E. Thought that sounded wrong!

Small changes, but they make a lot of difference!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 02:32:56 PM
There are some Lovett scores at the BMIC site, but I have them on a disc somewhere too...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 02:35:07 PM
Yes, they have loads - just stick 'Lovett' in the search engine (http://www.bmic.co.uk/collection/searchform.asp)

A treble clef beside a piece's name means there's a score available to download (or sometimes just a sample). Unknown Terrors is viewable but not (easily) downloadable.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 30, 2008, 02:36:15 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 02:32:56 PM
There are some Lovett scores at the BMIC site, but I have them on a disc somewhere too...

Yes I just found it... How does one save it?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 02:38:53 PM
If you click on the piece name, rather than on the treble clef, you can see the root page for the piece. It will give a 'download score' option if that's available. You need to be registered to do so (but it's free and no-hassle).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 30, 2008, 02:40:53 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 02:32:03 PM
Just in case you need to know now, Karl - two misprints in the score that I've just spotted:

b 27 - soprano is A, not A flat (this is the chord Johan mentioned liking, but it's not right!)

b 34 - soprano last note is G, not E. Thought that sounded wrong!

Small changes, but they make a lot of difference!

When you've got a fresh score . . . hang on, I'll send e-mail.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 02:50:27 PM
Better?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 30, 2008, 02:51:33 PM
I'll look later; Mamochka is calling me to dinner.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 03:01:03 PM
Slightly better sound file, too. NB the 'slightly' - but the notes are right, this time!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 30, 2008, 03:31:58 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 02:32:03 PM
Just in case you need to know now, Karl - two misprints in the score that I've just spotted:

b 27 - soprano is A, not A flat (this is the chord Johan mentioned liking, but it's not right!)

b 34 - soprano last note is G, not E. Thought that sounded wrong!

Small changes, but they make a lot of difference!

Already killing my darlings, are you?  ;)

Thanks for the revised PDF and MIDI!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 03:37:58 PM
Ha! Actually, the correct version of the chord is much better, I think - a fairly pungent, painful dissonance for the word 'pain'. One of the things I think this piece succeeds in is in the way it modulates the level of dissonance carefully and accurately, so that it can move from diatonic writing to fairly dissonant stuff without jarring. I remain pleased with it nearly 15 years after writing it - that's practically unprecedented for me.

Of the many other pieces I've looked through today, there are one or two others which could do with dusting down and maybe a tiny tweak here and there. Then we might have some presentable stuff. There are two cello+piano 'Elegies' of which the second is much better and quite well done, I think, though the central bars may need a little rationalisation. Guido might want to see this one, so I'll work on a score tomorrow, if I can satisfy myself on the matter of that middle section.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 30, 2008, 03:43:06 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 03:37:58 PM
Ha! Actually, the correct version of the chord is much better, I think - a fairly pungent, painful dissonance for the word 'pain'. One of the things I think this piece succeeds in is in the way it modulates the level of dissonance carefully and accurately, so that it can move from diatonic writing to fairly dissonant stuff without jarring. I remain pleased with it nearly 15 years after writing it - that's practically unprecedented for me.

Having listened, I agree. The chord is 'cleaner', less purple (if you know what I mean). The effect is the same, though.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 03:49:03 PM
Good! Yes, exactly, more astringent, but the same harmonic roots.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 03:54:18 PM
BTW, Johan - Guido was right a couple of pages back: 'what I was thinking' was that I wish we could get a look at your writing, though obviously there is a language barrier which most of us can't easily surmount. So - thanks for the posting of your short story. As yet, I've had no chance to print it out and read it at my leisure, but I snuck a look at the first couple of paragraphs. That's quite an opening, isn't it! Quite a set of images - I'm really looking forward to allowing myself to sink into it further. Thanks again.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 30, 2008, 03:59:31 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on September 30, 2008, 03:54:18 PM
BTW, Johan - Guido was right a couple of pages back: 'what I was thinking' was that I wish we could get a look at your writing, though obviously there is a language barrier which most of us can't easily surmount. So - thanks for the posting of your short story. As yet, I've had no chance to print it out and read it at my leisure, but I snuck a look at the first couple of paragraphs. That's quite an opening, isn't it! Quite a set of images - I'm really looking forward to allowing myself to sink into it further. Thanks again.

Johan, I've had my typical preoccupations; please remind me of this link/document.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 30, 2008, 04:35:06 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 30, 2008, 03:59:31 PM
Johan, I've had my typical preoccupations; please remind me of this link/document.

Look here, Karl:

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.msg232435.html#msg232435

And thanks for your reaction, Luke. This story is only the tiniest part of a much larger whole. Still, it is representative. I have done my best on the translation, and I am not wholly dissatisfied with the result...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 30, 2008, 04:41:23 PM
The new midi voices are much better! I like the piece much more hearing it now.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 01, 2008, 01:41:46 AM
Quote from: Guido on September 30, 2008, 04:41:23 PM
The new midi voices are much better! I like the piece much more hearing it now.

That's interesting, because the sounds I used are exactly the same as before! What must have happened is that, the first file being a MIDI file, your computer played it with its own MIDI settings, and they didn't match mine. But the second file was an mp3 of the MIDI file as it appears on my computer, so that it sounds the same for you as for me.  Must remember to do it the mp3 way in future!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 01, 2008, 02:06:15 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 01, 2008, 01:41:46 AM
That's interesting, because the sounds I used are exactly the same as before! What must have happened is that, the first file being a MIDI file, your computer played it with its own MIDI settings, and they didn't match mine. But the second file was an mp3 of the MIDI file as it appears on my computer, so that it sounds the same for you as for me.  Must remember to do it the mp3 way in future!

Bingo! (All I had to add just yet.  Must get it together, and pop out to catch the bus.)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 01, 2008, 03:53:13 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on September 30, 2008, 04:35:06 PM
Look here, Karl:

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.msg232435.html#msg232435

Thanks, Johan! Got it!  Will read a bit later this morning.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 01, 2008, 03:58:44 AM
Luke, I've e-mailed the refreshed score to Paul (perhaps you already have on your own?)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 01, 2008, 04:50:01 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on October 01, 2008, 03:53:13 AM
Thanks, Johan! Got it!  Will read a bit later this morning.

Excellent! But - no rush...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 01, 2008, 05:07:10 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on October 01, 2008, 04:50:01 AM
Excellent! But - no rush...

Yes; quiet space is needed for proper attention.  Now that I won't need this evening's train-ride for composition (today), I shall read your prose!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 01, 2008, 06:19:15 AM
Luke, do you have a score of the Chant of Carnus? Listening to it as I write.

Later: the climax is terrific (after 10').
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 01, 2008, 07:01:30 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on October 01, 2008, 06:19:15 AM
Luke, do you have a score of the Chant of Carnus? Listening to it as I write.

Later: the climax is terrific (after 10').

Yes, the best bit in the recording - the orchestra can forget any pretence of trying to play the notes and just let rip!  ;D ::) ::) They also manage the second section quite well.... Other than that  :o :o :o

There's a score in my esnips folder somewhere, I think - feel free to search around for it. I can't give you a link right now, but I will later. There's a page missing from it, towards the end, I think (my absent-mindedness), but otherwise it's OK
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 01, 2008, 07:13:13 AM
Actually, I do have time (currently due piano pupil is ill) - but I've realised the score isn't up, as I thought it was. I will try remedy that for you. Unfortunately it comes in 4 parts, I can't remember why. Bear with me, this might take some time!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 01, 2008, 07:43:41 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 01, 2008, 07:13:13 AM
Actually, I do have time (currently due piano pupil is ill) - but I've realised the score isn't up, as I thought it was. I will try remedy that for you. Unfortunately it comes in 4 parts, I can't remember why. Bear with me, this might take some time!

Patience is a cardinal virtue.  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 01, 2008, 07:55:40 AM
Your help is needed, Luke. Perhaps you know this...

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,9332.msg233134.html#msg233134
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 01, 2008, 07:59:04 AM
Do we have a score?  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 01, 2008, 08:03:04 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 01, 2008, 07:59:04 AM
Do we have a score?  ;D

Do you have ears and a profound knowledge of the repertoire?  ;)

If you could feed the clip into Sibelius so that a score came out, that would be something!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 01, 2008, 09:27:53 AM
Have spent today writing up a lot of tiny fragments into sibelius - loads of little things I had forgotten about from ages ago. Reminiscing is nice!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 01, 2008, 09:59:52 AM
Ooh, exciting! Can we expect to see the founding of a new composer's settlement soon?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 01, 2008, 12:17:04 PM
The Chant of Carnus, score, in four parts for some reason, and with a missing page in part 4. Hope the links work:

http://www.esnips.com/doc/ae7b0297-17b7-43fc-b630-d14fb3f34314/The-Chant-of-Carnus---Score1

http://www.esnips.com/doc/f0b0368b-11cc-48a3-b481-28f6c4fe4e0c/The-Chant-of-Carnus---Score2

http://www.esnips.com/doc/24880980-c1a6-4078-8333-5a9cd5d1aa13/The-Chant-of-Carnus---Score3

http://www.esnips.com/doc/33c61550-9141-4bbd-b22d-853ccab79c25/The-Chant-of-Carnus---Score4

(look for the download button below the window in which the score appears)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 01, 2008, 12:26:59 PM
Yes, everything worked! Thanks!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 01, 2008, 12:47:49 PM
Houston, we have operability . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 01, 2008, 04:19:51 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 01, 2008, 09:59:52 AM
Ooh, exciting! Can we expect to see the founding of a new composer's settlement soon?

Possibly. I'm working on two other things at the moment, that I actually like and think might come together if I put a lot of work into them.

I'll tell you what - I'll upload all the tiny little fragments that I wrote up today, along with the few complete pieces, which I think you've already seen. Please don't expect anything at all great (just lots of tiny sketches I found), and if you do choose to try them, I request that you try them in real life - they invariably sound much better on real cellos/pianos (the piano will generally require lots of pedal.) - since alot of this is just me bashing the piano, the sound of the instrument is rather important (and sibelius barely copes with a couple of pieces). Some things are silly, like the sq fragment, while other things I think are more interesting. Just a few curiosities from my child hood!

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=85b03aac3371ec39ab1eab3e9fa335ca617cf3e00c3d8873
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on October 02, 2008, 01:11:17 AM
Is there any way you can export this to a pdf or an image or something? Please. :-* :-* :-* Not all of us have Sibelius, you know. ::) :P

(Or is there some sort of "Sibelius Reader" around, a counterpart to Finale Notebook??)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 02, 2008, 01:16:52 AM
Quote from: Maciek on October 02, 2008, 01:11:17 AM
Is there any way you can export this to a pdf or an image or something? Please. :-* :-* :-* Not all of us have Sibelius, you know. ::) :P

(Or is there some sort of "Sibelius Reader" around, a counterpart to Finale Notebook??)

I have a Sibelius plugin installed in my Opera browser, called Scorch, which makes it possible to see and listen to scores made with Sibelius. In the case of Guido's files, though, I think I would have to take an account at the Sibelius site first and then upload them to make them visible, I think...  ???

http://www.sibeliusmusic.com/

Edit: upload of scores is good for people who want to sell their music via Sibelius. I think Guido must convert the files for us non-Sibelians...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on October 02, 2008, 01:41:09 AM
Actually, it works with Scortch! Just "open" IN OPERA and the score will display.

It's not as easy as that for me, though, because I'm not on a Windows machine. After a short hassle (had to install a Windows internet browser in Wine - a Windows emulator - then install the Windows version of Scortch there). However, in my version the scores are tiny, hardly readable - I will probably have to tweak the Wine video settings somewhere, I'll report back if it works (in case there are other Linux users around). Right now have to get back to work. Cheers everyone.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 02, 2008, 02:10:54 AM
Quote from: Maciek on October 02, 2008, 01:41:09 AM
Actually, it works with Scortch! Just "open" IN OPERA and the score will display.

It's not as easy as that for me, though, because I'm not on a Windows machine. After a short hassle (had to install a Windows internet browser in Wine - a Windows emulator - then install the Windows version of Scortch there). However, in my version the scores are tiny, hardly readable - I will probably have to tweak the Wine video settings somewhere, I'll report back if it works (in case there are other Linux users around). Right now have to get back to work. Cheers everyone.

DAMN... You're brilliant! I'll have a try.

Works!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 02, 2008, 02:13:58 AM
Damn . . . Maciek is brilliant!  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 02, 2008, 02:49:31 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on October 02, 2008, 01:16:52 AM
I think Guido must convert the files for us non-Sibelians...

Surely we are all Sibelians round here, though, even if not all Brianites. (sitting on my musing tuffet......I think a rival notation pacakage called Brian - default setting: side drums come in threes - would be fantastic!)

Thanks, Guido - haven't had a chance to look through these yet (shouldn't really do so on the school's computer) - a PDF would be good, actually, even for those like me who do have Sibelius.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 02, 2008, 02:52:19 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 02, 2008, 02:49:31 AM
Surely we are all Sibelians round here, though, even if not all Brianites. (sitting on my musing tuffet......I think a rival notation pacakage called Brian - default setting: side drums come in threes - would be fantastic!)

Thanks, Guido - haven't had a chance to look through these yet (shouldn't really do so on the school's computer) - a PDF would be good, actually, even for those like me who do have Sibelius.

Very good!  ;D (And an unreconfigurable tamtam stroke at the end of every composition.)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 02, 2008, 02:53:45 AM
Naturally. (And double dots should be the first available option - you have to search around for single ones.)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 02, 2008, 02:55:42 AM
...The Sibelius Scorch to be replaced by the Brian Burn...


...And instead of the opening of Sib 5 when the program starts up, we hear the pounding opening of The Gothic.... wow!  8)

I want it!!!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 02, 2008, 02:57:32 AM
We forgot the (distant) brass bands, of course.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 02, 2008, 03:01:03 AM
'Untuned Percussion' drop-down menu to run as follows:

Timpani
More Timpani
More Timpani
More Timpani
More Timpani
Scarecrow
Side drums (3)
More Timpani
Bass Drum
Another Bass Drum
More Timpani
Wind machine
Bird Scare
Scaring bird device
Rattle (to scare birds)
Long drum or Log drum, it's up to you
More Timpani
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 02, 2008, 03:17:13 AM
 ;D ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 02, 2008, 03:48:39 AM
Quote...The Sibelius Scorch to be replaced by the Brian Burn...


...And instead of the opening of Sib 5 when the program starts up, we hear the pounding opening of The Gothic.... wow! 

I want it!!!

LOL!

Thing is, I'll have to create 25 pdfs and 25 midis... (for things that hardly seem worth it!) Maybe I'll do it later.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 02, 2008, 04:10:40 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 02, 2008, 02:49:31 AM
...I think a rival notation pacakage called Brian . . . .

When will Bwian be weweased?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 02, 2008, 04:15:57 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on October 01, 2008, 04:50:01 AM
Excellent! But - no rush...

Well done, Johan!  Enjoyed reading, though I doubt I should enjoy shopping for groceries there.  Bohuslav & Taco is mighty fine, deserves to be an intersection in East L.A.  You could let Tom Waits mention it in a song, but you should negotiate a good permissions deal.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 02, 2008, 04:22:45 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on October 02, 2008, 04:15:57 AM
Well done, Johan!  Enjoyed reading, though I doubt I should enjoy shopping for groceries there.  Bohuslav & Taco is mighty fine, deserves to be an intersection in East L.A.  You could let Tom Waits mention it in a song, but you should negotiate a good permissions deal.

Thanks, Karl! I hope some of the force and stylistic individuality of the original came through. This is the best I can do.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 02, 2008, 04:25:47 AM
Strong, and a good voice.  Wish we could read more of your work!  I once toyed with the idea of learning Dutch (perhaps predictably, when Louis Andriessen was a visiting professor at Buffalo) . . . but I'm sure I don't have time for the learning curve in order properly to appreciate your work in your own tongue!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 02, 2008, 04:31:36 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on October 02, 2008, 04:25:47 AM
Strong, and a good voice.  Wish we could read more of your work!  I once toyed with the idea of learning Dutch (perhaps predictably, when Louis Andriessen was a visiting professor at Buffalo) . . . but I'm sure I don't have time for the learning curve in order properly to appreciate your work in your own tongue!

Yes, my use of Dutch is quite demanding...

First I'll have to finish and publish my magnum opus. Then it has to reach and convince a Dutch audience. And then foreign publishers will, hopefully, be interested. I hope I'll live to a ripe old age...

[Sorry for hogging your thread, Luke. It'll pass...  0:)]
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 02, 2008, 04:40:18 AM
Luke won't mind; this sub-topic will yield presently to a neighborly flame war  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 02, 2008, 06:07:55 AM
Luke doesn't mind: the Outpost welcomes squatters.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 02, 2008, 06:31:30 AM
Here's Pdfs, and a few midis. Warning: some of these 'pieces' are very juvenile and silly!

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=85b03aac3371ec39ab1eab3e9fa335ca055404f9b7c61579

I like the way the harmony of the one bar '3 cello piece' makes no sense without the melody (or top line). I'm pretty sure that was exactly what I was aiming at! Also at making nice harmonies using just three notes at a time (I cheated on the last note...)

I've also just found a rather curious set of variations for solo cello in Aminor - the neatness of these has to be seen to be believed! I'll scan it later.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 02, 2008, 06:47:43 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 02, 2008, 06:07:55 AM
Luke doesn't mind: the Outpost welcomes squatters.

Squatter's grateful, kind Sir.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 02, 2008, 02:53:02 PM
Well, I've typed out my thoughts on the first few of the early pieces I rediscovered the other day. There are still at least twice this number to work through though, so hopefully I'll be able to post my thoughts about them too in the next few days.

What pleases me is that even the worst pieces here have one or two redeeming features. What pleases me even more is that I really can see trends slowly emerging in my music from the very off, even if at first they are so faint as to be hardly present, and only visible from this great distance - ten years ago I'd have been oblivious of them.

January 1990 - 'Dorian' Variations for piano
The first variation, with a 4 against 3 cross rhythm, must take that from somewhere else, but I'm not sure where; the second is a music box a la Liadov's, or the one in Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio - I knew both these pieces at this time, so either could be the source. The third, very heavy and deep in the bass, possibly derives from Liszt's Funerailles; the fourth seems relatively original; the fifth has a jerky rhythmic exchange between the hands which probably comes from the inroduction to the Finale of Beethoven op 106, no less! The last variation is just massive chords pounding away - the most striking example of the discrepancy between form, content, style, technique and tone that I now think is one of the first things a composer needs to understand.

Early 1990 - Three Preludes for piano
A bit better - Ottevanger the miniaturist already! No 1 is simplest and best, patterns of chords ascending and descending over a rocking bass in 3/8, which is nowadays my time signature of choice! They're all in triple time actually. No 2 is obviously written under the influence of a Borodin Polovtsian Dance (the famous pounding one in ¾); it evidently tries to be harmonically dramatic, with plunging confident basses - but actually they're rather unfocussed. No 3 is equally obviously under-the-influence, this time of a Gymnopedie. It has some charming moments but too much repetition and - again - a misjudgement of stylistic coherence taking the form of a mini cadenza on a dominant pedal.  ::)

Early 1990 - Trumpet Sonata
This is the earliest of my pieces to have been performed - maybe it was the earliest concert with my music in too. This sets a standard which has become typical - all the pieces of mine which have been played, from then to now, have been from my worst pieces, with the exception of Carnus. This Sonata is trash in so many ways - tonally static in the extreme, and unadventurous in figuration (I've found these chords that I like and I'm not going to risk disturbing them!'). But it's got some nice jazzy tunes, which are positive and attractive.

May 1990 - 'Miniature Symphony'
Ha! This would be great if it wasn't for the notes...... orchestration badly-balanced throughout, BTW. First movement is best, a study in 5/8, light and dancing, quite rhythmically complex. Second movement is dire, obviously written under the influence of the Pines of the Janiculum; third movement a fast and heavy Scherzo in 7/4 (not too bad); last movement for strings only (possibly under the spell of Ravel's Fairy Garden) reducing in numbers until only a quartet is left, playing simple quasi-classical tonic and dominant stuff (was I being 'knowing' here??). This work is the first to show my tedious early reliance on triads-expanded-to-tenths in the left hand/bass register - used pretty heavily from here on for quite a while.

July 1990 - Concerto Grosso (flute, clarinet, sax and strings)
In one movement only. Some nice ideas floating around - I seem to have had conviction in what I was doing and more of an ability to plough on than I do now, seized as I am with self-doubt etc.

September 1990 - Improvisation for piano trio
Continuing the trend of my worst pieces getting played - this one is just terrible, the only piece I can't find a redeeming feature in. I was obviously relishing luscious sevenths, but as in the Trumpet Sonata once I find them I can't vary the ways in which I deploy them. All sorts of terrible things here, I shudder to think of it, even though the surface sounds pretty from moment to moment. This piece was played at the BAFTA centre in London in front of the Geoffrey Howe or Douglas Hurd (I always got them confused!). I can't imagine why now, but I obviously came out alive....

October 1990 - Prelude and Canon for piano
The Prelude is nice - it sounds quite Janacekian in places, especially the restrained closing cadence which is rather like one in 'Come With Us' from On an Overgrown Path. That's a piece that I learnt for my ABRSM grade 7, possibly around this time, so maybe it rubbed off, though I don't remember things that way. (It's also in a Janacekian flat key). The Canon, in contrast, is rubbish, just a silly whimsy. I knocked off a quick recording of the Prelude and copied out the score - here they are:

[edit - corrected version of score appears a few posts down, so the one attached here has been deleted]
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 02, 2008, 02:54:01 PM
October 1990 - Piano Sonata
This one was looked over by the professor of music at Leicester University who thought it the best of the pieces he saw - very complementary actually. Still, though it has some striking ideas and is verging on being quite effective, there are still countless ill-judged moments: a 'rhetorical' dominant seventh in an inappropriate place; a peroration in B major whose power and triumph seems unjustified in context; a scherzando section in the slow movement which is ungainly and too hard for its material. Finally, the last movement, which could have been the best, is too short - a simple ABA over three pages. Ah well....

October 1990 - Nocturne for piano
For years I've been saying that this is the only one of my early pieces which I consider wholly successful - it always featured on my 'list of works' even long after all its contemporaries were happily shedded. In fact, it was the first piece I ever posted at the Outpost, and you can see score and hear mp3 via links on page one of this thread. It's a very short, empirically composed thing . This is significant, I think: it was composed in a very short time, exactly as my Improvisations were nearly 13 years later - and they, too, are not only among my better pieces but also were a significant stage in my 'finding myself' musically speaking. The contrast between cold tolling basses/icy treble glints and warm harmony in the middle of the keyboard is simple and affecting, to my ears. It's essentially atonal too, and in that was a first for me.

January 1991 - violin piece (looks like a Habanera) - violin and piano
Doesn't just look like one - this seems heavily influenced by Ravel's Vocalise-Habanera. I learnt a cello arrangement of that, possibly around this time, which would explain things..... This might have been destined for a girl at school, an excellent violinist and pianist and general musician. I thought I was enamoured of her at the time. From this vantage point, however, I know that I wasn't, I just thought that I ought to be and remember trying to convince myself that I was: after all, we were the two most advanced musicians in the school, surely we ought to...... Ridiculous things, teenagers!  ::) ::)

February 1991 - 'Rhythm Study' - piano
I remember writing this one - it's connected to that same girl. I didn't really like her, and she didn't really like me, so obviously things weren't meant to be, but I recall trying to fabricate some kind of rage about this failure and pouring it into some violent bashing of the piano, which turned into this piece. And it's a piece with its own merits, perhaps. Here's a very rough mp3...


Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 02, 2008, 02:54:45 PM
...and a score

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 02, 2008, 02:55:23 PM
March 1991 - Music for Strings
An odd one - possibly Bach's Brandenburg 3 lies behind it somewhere, in that it is laid out for instruments in sets of three. It's also quite imitative and vaguely contrapuntal. It is also an attempt to be light-hearted and humorous. Not sure it succeeds, but I'll look at it in more detail soon...

May 1991 - Piano Sonata
Something in my mind connects this obscurely with Chopin's second sonata - perhaps I was playing that at this time (very possible, actually). But all it shares that I can see now is a five-flats key signature. I thought this was great at the time - I'm rather under whelmed now. The slow movement is very short but quite effective - it's rather jazzy, but with a wide-leaping and almost atonal melody line which I remember being rather proud of. The last movement is jazzy again, and like the first sonata's finale it's a too-short ABA (though slightly longer).

June 1991 - Two Pieces - piano
First one isn't too great - a kind of two-chord blues. Second is more interesting. It opens with a sequence of chords and a recitative-like line which a  played backwards to finish the piece (and it works too!). In between is a rather RVW-like line over those ubiquitous 10ths (a certain vein of RVW certainly linked back to his piano piece The Lake in the Mountains, which I loved to play at this time, is often discernible in my music at this time).


That's enough for now. More as I get through them/record them/set them into Sibelius.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 02, 2008, 03:33:43 PM
Wow, thanks Luke!
So in 1990 you would have been 14? I love the feeling of nostalgia that things like these can evoke. It always represents so much more than just the notes or the music.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 02, 2008, 04:17:30 PM
Delighted to read your annotations, Luke; and I look forward to checking out the scores and mp3s.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 02, 2008, 10:58:51 PM
The sentiment's the same in Delft - fascinating comments, Luke! And thanks for those uploads.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 03, 2008, 04:38:45 AM
Quote from: Guido on October 02, 2008, 03:33:43 PM
Wow, thanks Luke!
So in 1990 you would have been 14? I love the feeling of nostalgia that things like these can evoke. It always represents so much more than just the notes or the music.

Yes, and Yes. My birthday's towards the end of the year, so for most of 1990 I was 14, yes.

I'm feeling very indulgent towards all these pieces at the moment - it's so interesting to be reminded that even back then, I was best, freshest and most inspired in empirically- and swiftly-composed miniatures. The large pieces are ambitious, and often have good ideas, but invariably fail badly.

They're proving interesting teaching aids too - the kids at school, so often full of 'I can't do.......', are intruigued to see that, though at their age their teacher 'couldn't do' either, by the time he was a few years older he certainly 'could do'. A few of the kids are at the stage I was at at that age - making tentative and error-strewn attempts to notate their little ideas: it's nice to be able to show them that I was the same, and that with work I managed to get somewhere which they find impressive, and quickly.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 03, 2008, 05:09:12 AM
Bravo!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 03, 2008, 05:34:08 AM
(Misprint alert - in that little Prelude, fourth line, fourth bar - G natural, not G flat  :-[ )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 03, 2008, 06:10:00 AM
To expand on my one-word post (above) . . . in many ways the most important aspects of composing will likely remain ineffable and mysterious.  But I think that for much of the 'lay public', it is much more entirely an impenetrable cloud of mystery, than really need be.  So I admire and applaud your having found immediate and personal pedagogical use for your early compositional efforts, Luke.

I don't expect Music ever to be "demystified" by (say) Better Science;  but all we can do to tear away some of the needless veils, is all to the good.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 03, 2008, 06:24:33 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on October 03, 2008, 06:10:00 AM
To expand on my one-word post (above) . . . in many ways the most important aspects of composing will likely remain ineffable and mysterious.  But I think that for much of the 'lay public', it is much more entirely an impenetrable cloud of mystery, than really need be.  So I admire and applaud your having found immediate and personal pedagogical use for your early compositional efforts, Luke.

I don't expect Music ever to be "demystified" by (say) Better Science;  but all we can do to tear away some of the needless veils, is all to the good.

Yes. There is mystery to all 'creativity' (hate the word), but we don't need mystique.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 03, 2008, 07:53:27 AM
I am keenly curious, though, Johan . . . how is it you've come to dislike the word creativity?

Luke will yield us space on his Musing Tuffet . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 03, 2008, 08:37:46 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on October 03, 2008, 07:53:27 AM
I am keenly curious, though, Johan . . . how is it you've come to dislike the word creativity?

Luke will yield us space on his Musing Tuffet . . . .

1) Although the term refers to an ability or a force I recognize, it has been devalued through over-use and misapplication to non-deserving persons and activities;

2) 'Creativity' implies an affinity with divine creation - but artists don't create life, or being, only the very powerful and very durable (in the greatest cases) semblance of it; procreation is the only creation, in my opinion, and even then the parents are only passing on, as it were, the miracle they are themselves.

3) 'Creativity', for me, is above all the transformation of your own life force into another, symbolic, form that, hopefully, will endure. But it is secondary to the thing you are transforming, Life itself, thus - not 'creativity'.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 05, 2008, 12:56:49 AM
Blimey, the G flat obsession in my typesetting that Prelude was worse than I thought! I've obviously been so convinced by its Janacek similarity that I slipped in a (Janacek favourite) D flat key signature instead of the A flat one it should have had!  :o :o ::) ::) :-[ :-[

Error corrected, here's the file again. I delete the attachment from above, and those 6 of you who've downloaded it probably ought to replace it with this one.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 05, 2008, 12:59:43 AM
Good morning and replaced.  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 05, 2008, 03:07:38 PM
To continue with the survey of my recently rediscovered earliest music (which started here (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.msg233713.html#msg233713):

June 1991 - ?? ?? - orchestra
Very odd this - an untitled and unfinished set of 3 orchestral movements (were there meant to be more? - I can't remember). Again the old familiar flaws of previous orchestral pieces - the perrenial 10ths in the bass register, the static inner and lower parts, the orchestration problems/misconceptions. But beyond this there is some interesting and quirky individuality here. The 1st movement is preludial - a bold unison melody over those ubiquitous static, 10th-based harmonies, with a brief violin solo in the middle. It ends in E flat major, but oddly notated - D# G A#. I find it hard to think that this is a mistake, and the other quirks in the piece lead me to think that it is deliberate, for a reason I can't now remember or fathom. The 2nd movement is equally odd, pitting a slow string choral (and again the solo violin, even more prominent and extended this time) against an odd trio of solo flute, solo horn, and solo..... xylophone!! The misconception here is that these three soloists share similar types of material which leaves the non-sustaining xylophone as rather an odd-man-out - maybe, again, this was deliberate. 3rd movement is incomplete, and another bizarre one. Among other things it features a clangourous outburst with prominent swaying bells which were surely influenced by parallel sections in Holst's Saturn. This movement is more sectional, with some interesting ideas; the music stops as pairs of flutes, oboes and horns begin a canon which plays against itself in augmentation and double augmentation.

July 1991 - Music for Piano and Orchestra
Back to earth with a bang. For all its flaws the previous piece was full of Ideas. This one - a concertante thing (with noticeable echoes of the Khachaturian Piano Concerto in the initial cadenza and the following orchestral section) - is much less original. Some of the ideas are nearly good, I suppose - but the same orchestration problems remain. I mean this seriously, and not meaning to disparage or reopen old debates - the stasis of my non-melodic parts and the bland sonorousness of my 10th dominated harmony reminds me of nothing so much as a certain type of film score writing...

August 1991 - Mountain Rhapsody - chorus and orchestra
This is the piece which I rediscovered the other day (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.msg231280.html#msg231280), and whose rediscovery prompted me to search out all this other stuff. It has the same flaws as the previous pieces (why the hell couldn't I do something about them? - I recall, vaguely , a feeling of disatisfaction with some of these aspects of my music even then). But there are some improvements. It is structurally good - the text settings (of T'ang Chinese and Aztec poetry) are often pretty flaccid stuff, but the hinges, beginning, middle and end, are strong, full of momentum, and tie the piece together well. I remember that composing these passages I had the sense of inevitability and conviction that I often get with my best composing. It was only in brief flashes here, but at least it was present somewhere.

October 1991 - Elegy - cello and piano
Built on parallel triads, with a nice enharmonic mediant shift in the middle. A shame about the 'nonchalant' little unaccompanied tune inserted before the end - the idea is OK, but not the execution.

January 1992 - Prelude, Fugue and Fantasy - piano
Yes, the Fugue really is before the Fantasy! Startlingly awful, this one. There was again some 'romantic' impulse (or something of the sort) behind this one. I viewed the piece itself as a kind of catharsis in which the fugue and the fantasy were a kind of catalyst through which the emotion is transformed into self-knowledge - there's even a quotation from VW's Sea Symphony near the end, the part which sets 'Now first it seems my thoughts begin to span thee'. I note in passing that this piece exhibits a technique I used to use when writing fugal or canonic entries - each is a fifth above the last, so that instead of (say) C-G-C-G we get C-G-D-A - it's also in the Mountain Rhapsody and, to look forward a little, in Before Sleep, which you've already seen and in which it actually works! Anyway, this pieces is terrible and should never be heard - it was merely intended to be something like a personal confessional or diary entry - but I suppose it does show the first glimmerings of an interest in finding a musical parallel to the acquisition of self-knowledge, which became so necessary and so central later on, as you all know.

April 1992 - Requiem - soloist, chorus, orchestra
Unfinished. The text is set with very little repetition, which means that the music is too fragmentary to gather much momentum. The ideas are pretty well-defined, more than in the previous pieces, but the style, especially in the first movement, is often more derivative - above all from the obvious Verdi and Britten models (it looks like the Berlioz was in my mind too, but it can't have been as I'd never seen or heard it at this point). Also possibly Brian's Gothic (behind the profile of some of the brass fanfares) and, at one specific point, the central parts of Holst's Mars. The opening movement, which sets the text up to 'Salva me fons pietatis' has some arresting ideas, especially at the beginning and at the end, where some powerful momentum is built up, and some larger-scale harmonic planning pays off. The second movement, Libera me, which is where the composition breaks off, opens in a much more tonally ambiguous area, with a build-up of ostinati which is more 'contemporary'. The solo voices enter in turn - B, T, A, S - and quickly, each taking two lines of text. The rising tessitura parallels a rise in tension, an increase in speed,  in motion and harmonic complexity; there's an implied progression (In musical style) from past to present also, but it isn't hammered home in too obvious a manner. There the music breaks off...

Undated - Untitled - orchestra
Undated, untitled and also unfinished, this piece probably comes from about this time, taking as clues the manuscript paper, the handwriting, and my observations on the development of my technique and habits (not my style, I can't really speak of a unified style here, of course). This is a slow orchestral movement in 5/4, and an improvement again, with interesting ideas now accompanied by fewer moments of banality. I think this was supposed to be a symphonic poem, possibly Nordic in inspiration. Looking at the score gives me a mysterious and unplaceable frisson, as if it has some forgotten significance.

May 1992 - Elegy (no 2) - cello and piano
Much better than the previous one - this is actually pretty good, confident, exploiting the cello well and mostly getting the relationship between size and technique 'right'. The exception is the cello figuration in the middle, which is a little too hard, too prominent and too 'big' for this moment. I made a quick and ad hoc improvement on it the other day, and tried to record it.....but my cello playing is much worse than it used to be ( I hardly play any more) and I really wouldn't presume to inflict it on you. Here's the score to be getting on with, though. Fancy it Guido?

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 05, 2008, 03:11:54 PM
Again - very interesting, Luke! And now I'm off to bed...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 05, 2008, 03:13:09 PM
There are still a few more pieces to go through, taking me up to the end of my school days (aged 17/18 - Before Sleep being one of these). And after that there are still one or two more forgotten-about pieces which date from later, university days, when I was somewhat more mature, about the time I was composing Ophruoeis and, later, the Four Paz Songs.

Amongst all these are a couple of brief orchestral scores which I've set in Sibelius, and which I'll post up here for fun at the appropriate point.

(Funny, all this emphasis on older pieces when there are plenty of later, better works which have never even been mentioned here!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 05, 2008, 05:12:09 PM
Wonderful to read your reflections on this fascinating process of 'discovery', Luke.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 06, 2008, 06:40:51 AM
Next installment - these are all pieces associated with my A level music studies at school (aged 17-18). Our teacher would set us a few composition tasks as practise for the pieces we would be asked to write for our portfolio, and, showy sod that I was, I determined to stretch each task a little further than he expected....

October 1992 - Threnody - solo cello
The simple remit - to compose for a solo non-keyboard instrument for the obvious reasons of using idiomatic range, techniques etc. My response was this long and difficult Threnody, which packs in a large number of cellistic tricks. It has good stuff in it - nice motivic work, good and appropriate use of the instrument - but as often in these early pieces it succumbs to the temptation of the 'big tune' too easily. Here's the place to stick in a photo of me playing the cello at about this time! I'm not sure if my nonchalant giving of the finger is intended for the photographer (I've always hated having my photo taken) or if it was accidental in the course of the action!

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 06, 2008, 06:42:01 AM
November 1992 - Theme and Variations - piano
Obviously, here we were asked to write a set of variations to extend our stylistic range, to think about decoration, figuration, varying harmony etc. I took this as an excuse for a bit of fun, extending a simple, unaccompanied theme in 9/8 beyond its natural life....
Variation 1 - the theme is given a rich harmonisation
Variation 2 - the theme is turned into a waltz
Variation 3 - an interlocking-hands toccata (which ends up far too difficult to play!)
Variation 4 - a pastoral, high up on the piano in what is effectively 21/8 - this is very like VW's Lake in the Mountains again, in sound though not in any specifics.
Variation 5 - a big, rhapsodic, lyrical variation
Variation 6 - a fast, percussive variation in a Bartokian additive rhythm technique (mostly 6/8+7/8+3/8)
Variation 7 - a funeral march whose double dotting softens into a triplet (with consolatory harmonies which now remind me of moments in Liszt's Dante Symphony - this was unconscious, I think, but it was a piece I loved and knew very well back then)
Variation 8 would have been a fugue but, frankly, I couldn't be bothered - I thought I'd done enough and so did my teacher!

I recorded some of this a week or so ago - maybe I'll put it up for fun later....

December 1992 - Largo - orchestra
This wasn't written specifically for school, but it did end up as the 'free' part of my A level composition portfolio. It's quite blatantly written under the shadow of that wondrous slow movement of Shostakovich's 5th symphony, which I was playing at exactly this time as a member of the LSSO (one of the finest moments of my musical life was playing this piece in Les Invalides - we gave a performance which we all thought was pretty darned electric - in the photo below you can see us taking the applause: I'm the fourth desk cello, first player). Here, the influence of the Shostakovich is seen in, among other things, the rising incipit, the wind solos and specifically the entrance of a low second flute towards the end (which is a poor echo of a spellbinding moment in the Shostakovich). From the point in the last third of the piece where the strings set up a trem. to the point where the flute re-enters, I later wrote that the music was to be reworked - and it certainly needs it here. But I evidently never got round to it, so stet.

There's a score here too.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 06, 2008, 06:42:25 AM
January 1993 - Before Sleep - SATB
You've seen this and - sort of - heard it already. It was simply an SATB exercise for school. The text was that which had been set for the previous years' A level.

Early 1993 - untitled piece - flute and piano
In this case we were aksed to write an accompanied piece whose piano part was more than just basic chords and arpeggiations. Again, I responded with as florid a piece as I could reasonably get away with, deliberately making the piano part outstrip the flute part without upstaging it (that being the hard part). The floridity prompted a rhythmic and textural complexity and a rather Scriabinesque harmony which both appear here for the first time in my music - but both are features which are very natural for me, as my later music shows (see, for instance, the Improvisations of 10 years later, which are in some respects the real beginning of my composing). This piece, then, is good humid fun, spoilt and scarred by a ridiculous moment of rodomontade leading into the the 'recap' - ridiculous in context, that is - it's a kind of dominant preparation which is perfectly OK but completely out of place. I may cut these two bars, though, and ressurect the piece.

********

A long gap of about a year, now. There are couple of still-missing pieces that may belong here. One is another cello solo, which I remember as more concise and restrained than the Threnody - I believe I wrote it very fast, and intensely. The other is a song written for school. I remember it clearly - it wasn't 'me' at all, but it worked well on its own terms, I think.

********

Now three short piece written for the exam itself, rather than as exercises.

March 1994 - Pavane - piano
Written in four parts, a kind of Frenchified Renaissance pastiche.

April 1994 - Ave Verum Corpus - SATB
OK, this, but not as good as Before Sleep, perhaps.

April 1994 - Rumba - piano
Does what it's supposed to do!

One more installment, later....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 06, 2008, 10:55:55 AM
Hmm... don't have a mic but would love to record the second elegy. I'll try and find one. Also would need a pianist. Is the threnody going to be released? Great picture of you playing the cello!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 06, 2008, 01:02:58 PM
You are doing something, Luke, I intend to do after I have finally finished my novel - retrace my steps, reassess the trajectory of my artistic development. I read your posts with fascination (and I like the picture!)

OT - I am completely obsessed by a piece of music at the moment: Albéric Magnard's Chant funèbre (1895). Gorgeous. To those interested:

http://www.mediafire.com/?njmhhzzonyq

Michel Plasson conducts the Toulouse Capitole Orchestra.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 07, 2008, 03:43:03 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on October 06, 2008, 01:02:58 PM
You are doing something, Luke, I intend to do after I have finally finished my novel - retrace my steps, reassess the trajectory of my artistic development. I read your posts with fascination (and I like the picture!)

Thanks, Johan. I've tried to keep tabs on my compositional development, initially since about 1996, and then with renewed vigour and completeness since about 2005. I keep a very full and comprehensive set of notes on each piece, complete with any appropriate extra-musical appendages (pictures etc). (Those notes are going to need extensive revision now!) But until now these early compositions have never been included in that account - what was covered was, so to speak, adolescent-to-man; what I've been filling in these last few days is boy-to-adolescent*, and though the music itself sometimes seems a world away from where it is now it is possible, retrospectively, to see the odd glimmer of what was to come even in the earliest works. I hope that what I've written so far suggest as much.

*'Baby-to-boy' - from my very first compositions aged about 11 to the first listed here written at 14 - is not possible, as that music is well and truly gone now.

Quote from: Jezetha on October 06, 2008, 01:02:58 PM
OT - I am completely obsessed by a piece of music at the moment: Albéric Magnard's Chant funèbre (1895). Gorgeous. To those interested:

http://www.mediafire.com/?njmhhzzonyq

Michel Plasson conducts the Toulouse Capitole Orchestra.

Great! Thank you. It's possible I have this on LP - looks familiar - but I can't unearth it right now, so I downloaded this gratefully.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 07, 2008, 06:00:17 AM
Quote from: Guido on October 06, 2008, 10:55:55 AM
Is the threnody going to be released?

I don't think so. I feel it would need a lot done to it to make it presentable. But I'll have a closer look.

There's another cello piece, from 2000, which might be on its way here soon - it's the one I mentioned ages ago, and which I got quite a way through setting into Sibelius but never finished doing the job on (it's a real bugger, Sibeliusly speaking).

This piece also has a sister work which is really very freeform indeed, an invitation to improvisation more than anything. This latter work, which was the first to be composed, was written for my wife (another cellist!) to play whilst pregnant with our first child - it's relaxed open-endedness was intended to allow her to play entirely stress-free and focusing 'inwards'! I think she played it as intended, once or twice, but she's much more pragmatic and less hippie-ish than me, and not as able to relax into improvisation in the way I would, so I don't think it got many outings!

The second piece, the one I've been typesetting, uses the same basic sets of notes - let's not mince words, there's a 12 note row in this piece, but I'd hesitate to describe it as serial - in a more dramatic and virtuoso way. I'm not sure it's much cop, though. You can let me know what you think when you see it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 07, 2008, 08:28:02 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 07, 2008, 06:00:17 AM
I don't think so. I feel it would need a lot done to it to make it presentable. But I'll have a closer look.

There's another cello piece, from 2000, which might be on its way here soon - it's the one I mentioned ages ago, and which I got quite a way through setting into Sibelius but never finished doing the job on (it's a real bugger, Sibeliusly speaking).

This piece also has a sister work which is really very freeform indeed, an invitation to improvisation more than anything. This latter work, which was the first to be composed, was written for my wife (another cellist!) to play whilst pregnant with our first child - it's relaxed open-endedness was intended to allow her to play entirely stress-free and focusing 'inwards'! I think she played it as intended, once or twice, but she's much more pragmatic and less hippie-ish than me, and not as able to relax into improvisation in the way I would, so I don't think it got many outings!

The second piece, the one I've been typesetting, uses the same basic sets of notes - let's not mince words, there's a 12 note row in this piece, but I'd hesitate to describe it as serial - in a more dramatic and virtuoso way. I'm not sure it's much cop, though. You can let me know what you think when you see it!

These sound fascinating. When you say that your wife played it once or twice, do you mean in concert? Does she give recitals?

I can't remember if I asked this already, but on the cello elegy no.2 are the harmonics suggestions or are they performance directions. bar 17 for instance seems to be an obvious case of the latter, but with bar 32-33 I'm not so sure - does it mean that you want it in thumb position after the G harmonic there?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 07, 2008, 09:01:25 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on October 06, 2008, 01:02:58 PM
You are doing something, Luke, I intend to do after I have finally finished my novel - retrace my steps, reassess the trajectory of my artistic development. I read your posts with fascination (and I like the picture!)

OT - I am completely obsessed by a piece of music at the moment: Albéric Magnard's Chant funèbre (1895). Gorgeous. To those interested:

http://www.mediafire.com/?njmhhzzonyq

Michel Plasson conducts the Toulouse Capitole Orchestra.

Thanks for this! Fantastic piece.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 07, 2008, 09:14:34 AM
Quote from: Guido on October 07, 2008, 08:28:02 AM
These sound fascinating. When you say that your wife played it once or twice, do you mean in concert? Does she give recitals?

Oh, no! I wrote the piece for her to play when pregnant, as I said - with the idea of the music being felt by the baby. That's all I mean by saying she played it a couple of times!

Quote from: Guido on October 07, 2008, 08:28:02 AMI can't remember if I asked this already, but on the cello elegy no.2 are the harmonics suggestions or are they performance directions. bar 17 for instance seems to be an obvious case of the latter, but with bar 32-33 I'm not so sure - does it mean that you want it in thumb position after the G harmonic there?

Bars 11-12 - the harmonics are what I meant, as they underscore the change of harmony from flat to 'white note'
Bars 17-20 - again, the harmonics here are vital - their different tone colour is part of the 'argument' of the piece.

I play them like this, obviously:

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 07, 2008, 09:15:54 AM
The harmonics at the end, however, are not quite so precisely defined. I simply wanted the end light, flautando, so notated as harmonics any notes which could easily be played as such.  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 07, 2008, 09:19:48 AM
Good, this is what I thought. Additionally, playing the harmonics down there gives a subtly different tone colour, as we have previously discussed on this thread.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 07, 2008, 09:21:51 AM
To clarify, they're notated as in the above pic in the original score; I didn't do them that way this time simply because at one point I was going to make an mp3 of the MIDI of this one, and fully indicated harmonics get in the way of such things!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 07, 2008, 09:25:06 AM
BTW, here's a rough copy of the flute and piano piece I referred to above. (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.msg234711.html#msg234711)  ;D

Rather ridiculous, isn't it!? Still, with a little editing I could make something presentable of it....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 07, 2008, 09:26:01 AM
On a tangent... I recently became the proud owner of the score of that 1656 bar, 90 minute long behemoth that is Patterns in a Chromatic Field by Morton Feldman. It's rather difficult and endlessly subtle in its variations. I think I remember saying that it had microtones in it, but it doesn't as such... He uses a lot of double sharps and double flats, such that the intervals look much wider than they are (the first three notes are Bbb Ab F##, which looks like a fourth, but of course is actually a second) this is surely significant, and I am positive that he would have wanted Bbb as a Bbb and not an A - of course, whether it comes out as such is another matter - it's really fast and as I said rather difficult. Another truly wonderful piece.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 07, 2008, 09:28:25 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 07, 2008, 09:25:06 AM
BTW, here's a rough copy of the flute and piano piece I referred to above.  ;D

Show off.  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 07, 2008, 09:29:32 AM
Why?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 07, 2008, 09:37:37 AM
QuoteAgain, I responded with as florid a piece as I could reasonably get away with, deliberately making the piano part outstrip the flute part without upstaging it (that being the hard part).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 07, 2008, 09:58:14 AM
Ah yes - I must have been a right git, mustn't I?  ;D Rarely does the look of a score say so much about its composer!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on October 07, 2008, 11:08:44 PM
That's an odd way to notate harmonics. Normally, the circle shows which note is to be executed as a harmonic and at which pitch it sounds. The diamond is usually written over a solid note which is either the open string or a stopeed note, for artificial harmonics over stopped notes, to show where on the string the player is supposed to play the harmonic - which often results in a completely different note in a different octave. It is strange to see the two symbols mixed like this.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 08, 2008, 02:43:20 AM
Quote from: M forever on October 07, 2008, 11:08:44 PM
That's an odd way to notate harmonics. Normally, the circle shows which note is to be executed as a harmonic and at which pitch it sounds.

...as in the PDF score I attached ...

Quote from: M forever on October 07, 2008, 11:08:44 PMThe diamond is usually written over a solid note which is either the open string or a stopeed note, for artificial harmonics over stopped notes, to show where on the string the player is supposed to play the harmonic - which often results in a completely different note in a different octave. It is strange to see the two symbols mixed like this.

Trust me, M, I know about harmonic notation. There are three reasons that I notated the harmonics like this of which the first two are least important

1) this was a quick illustration for Guido, who understands cello harmonics perfectly well, as to how I obtain the desired effect here. There was no need to put in the open string over which the harmonic is played as he knows what's going on....

2) (not really a reason, but a contributory factor)for MIDI playback reasons writing out the open string (or stopped note) under the harmonic is a bit of a pain. I have a strict resolution never to let software limitations affect my notation choices, but in this case the fact is to be taken in conjunction with the fact that

3) despite what you say very often the single, unattached diamond notehead is shown like this. When this is done the implication is that the harmonic is to be played over an open string. Writing this way makes the score less cluttered and easier to read. One of the finest orchestrators and most accomplished writers for harmonics, Ravel does this all the time - e.g the closing chord of the first movement of the Rhapsodie Espagnole, in which only one of the many harmonics has the lower note written in, this being the only artificial harmonic in the chord. All the other, single diamond headed notes are to be played over open strings. (He usually notates the intended sounding note too, as here, and as I do in the original score of this piece of mine - but this was unnecessary in the above image because Guido already knew which notes were intended to sound.) This is Ravel's established practice, in fact - you'll find it all over the place in his scores. Here it is as a PDF attachment - forgive the sloppiness of the presentation, I'm at work and the staffroom PC is pretty badly equipped with image-making software!

That last reason is the most important - this way of notating natural harmonics is fairly common practice. There are many options in harmonic notation, of course, but this way (which is offered as an established method in orchestration primers) seems to me the cleanest and least cumbersome.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 08, 2008, 03:03:28 AM
Absolutely Luke - I'm surprised that M has not seen that before - it's in countless scores (and it's also surprising that he would think that you still don't 'get it' after owning literally thousands of scores!). One could list many more examples. When one writes a diamond headed note on that E above middle C, it would be truly perverse to play it on the D string (though a harmonic does exist there).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 08, 2008, 07:31:51 AM
It should be noted in Luke's example that the two lower staves are Double Bass, and the next two lowest are cellos (a harmonic at the augmented fourth certainly wouldn't sound as indicated if that second to bottom line were a cello part!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 08, 2008, 08:07:28 AM
Yes, correct. So the notation is used for double bass too. As I said before, Ravel's scores are littered with this sort of harmonic notation - his complex and frequent use of harmonics is one of the secrets of his orchestration. A book could be written about it (perhaps that's what I should have done my MPhil on....  ;D )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 08, 2008, 08:15:47 AM
Here's a great example from the opening of his exquisite Mallarme songs - this gorgeous texture goes on for pages and pages. Note that here he doesn't notate the sounding pitches, only the diamond-headed finger-placements - this is the sort of notation that M said was 'odd' and 'strange' earlier, but as I said, it's the standard thing with some composers.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 08, 2008, 08:18:00 AM
(sorry, I just find all this notation stuff fascinating! I could go on about it all day...)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 08, 2008, 08:30:37 AM
...for instance, here's a great example from Daphnis (which is absolutely chockful of this sort of notation - the very first violin notes, for instance). Here are the birds at the beginning ot the 'dawn' music. Ravel uses the single diamond notehead for natural harmonics (produced over an open string) and the diamond+normal notehead for artificial harmonics (produced over a stopped note):
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 08, 2008, 08:34:52 AM
Without being an expert, I must say I knew I had encountered this kind of notation, too, but less consciously (as I was just reading along, not playing the music myself).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 08, 2008, 08:42:46 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 08, 2008, 08:18:00 AM
(sorry, I just find all this notation stuff fascinating! I could go on about it all day...)

Don't apologize; I'm the same.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 08, 2008, 08:55:30 AM
Haven't heard those Mallarme Songs, but they certainly look beautiful!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 08, 2008, 09:07:42 AM
They are - absolutely stunning, some of Ravel's very best. Pair them up with the Madegascan songs (another ensemble+voice number - flute, piano, cello, you will adore them!) and you have some of the greatest vocal music I know.

I'm an enormous Ravel fanatic - among the 'greats' he's the only one who is alomost alongside Janacek in my personal pantheon. (Brahms too, but he's too ubiquitous to mention.) That's why I mentioned my prospective MPhil - when I was considering doing it, Ravel was to have been the subject. To me, though, however wonderful his orchestral music, and however much it is his best-known, it's the chamber music and the songs which are absolutley essential. I'll send you links to the Mallarme and Madagascan songs later tonight....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 08, 2008, 11:36:35 AM
With that in mind (and indulge my little diversion!)

Whether M intended it to or not, this little trip into the land of harmonic notation has prompted me towards some conclusions which I sensed but never articulated before, and for that I'm grateful. I'm always very interested in unearthing the subtle ways in which the notation (as opposed to the sound it signifies) illuminates the character of the music and its composer's preoccupations, and Ravel's use of solitary diamond-headed notes is one such.

Ravel's music, as I've said, is full of some of the most extraordinary use of harmonics I know of - but perhaps the majority, it seems to me, are the diamond-head-only natural harmonics I've been talking about above. Artificial harmonics, with the diamond+lower note notation, whilst hardly a rarity in Ravel, are certainly not as prominent. It seems to me that Ravel consciously distinguishes between the natural and the artificial harmonic - as I've shown, this distinction is made in the notation itself - and his musical conception is so fully integrated with his instrumental conception that at all points where he wishes for the 'natural harmonic' sound, the harmony is constructed so as to allow this to occur. Perhaps that's why sharp keys, and especially G major, are such favourites for Ravel's orchestral works.

Looking at Debussy - because he's so obviously comparable in other ways to Ravel - one notices a different approach. Debussy doesn't distinguish between natural and artificial harmonics as Ravel does. Where one appears, the other usually does too, both mixed up together. This equality of emphasis is reinforced by his use of the same notation for both - diamond+lower notes, the more common notation, as M described. Debussy's lack of distinction between types of harmonic - and it's common to most composers, Ravel really being an exception - is both more idealistic than Ravel (in that it makes the assumption that artificial harmonics are interchangeable with natural ones in terms of key, difficulty, sonority and technique, which they aren't) and less idealistic (in that it lacks Ravel's ultra-refined differentiation between the two.)

This inquest into harmonic notation, then, tells me something which I knew but had never put into words - that Ravel's sensitivity to string tone was so profound that it affected the actual substance of his music, not just its orchestral garb. Put another way, in Ravel, orchestration and substance are the same thing.

And then there's the appearance of the score, seen in purely aesthetic terms.  Ravel's single hollow diamonds are less cluttered, more ethereal looking, simple and suspended than the fully-written out version (or, worse, the fully-written-out-version-with-indication-of-sounding-pitch-often-including-octave-sign-or-alternative-clef which often clutters up other composers' scores - Schoenberg is a pain in this respect!). Where the latter carries with it technical advice, the single diamond is more poetic, as befits the peculiar and magical sound of the natural harmonic. So, when Ravel writes a bass line like this one, from Ma Mere l'Oye (the second bass part is entirely made up of these floating harmonics in this magical movement) the aesthetic effect is truer to the floating refinement of the music itself than a fuller, more fussy notation would have been.

I'd note in passing that another composer who uses Ravel's diamonds-only for natural harmonics is Enescu - which fact ought to reinforce my supposition that this sort of notation is used by composers who understand string technique particularly well. Enescu, however, from the scores I've seen, doesn't seem to distinguish between natural harmonics and artificial ones in terms of their sound; he doesn't shape his compositions and choose his keys so as to maximise the use of natural harmonics as Ravel seems to.

Enough on harmonics.....  ::)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 08, 2008, 11:48:05 AM
For a while I was fascinated by the possibilities of natural harmonics (see the Sibelius fragments... I'm sure there were many more things at one point...) - And even experimented with trying to find the most beautiful schordatura tuning that would produce more interesting combined overtone series than plain parallel fifths (a lot of notes repeat, for instance). I wish I could still find the place that wrote them down.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 08, 2008, 12:12:46 PM
Fascinating insights too!  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 08, 2008, 12:16:54 PM
QuoteEnough on harmonics.....

. . . now, impressions of celebrities . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 08, 2008, 01:06:46 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 08, 2008, 11:36:35 AM
Enough on harmonics…..  ::)

Fascinating read, Luke. You have illuminated a difference between Ravel and Debussy (and in passing, Enescu) and - these last posts give me a strong idea of what you admire in other composers and what you are attempting yourself.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 08, 2008, 01:58:04 PM
Brief addendum - Walton also writes harmonics this way - e.g. Mystery Score 125, from his Violin Concerto (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,3125.msg94962.html#msg94962).

Also, to see some superb Ravelian natural harmonics with this diamond-head-only notation, look at his Piano Trio and his Duo Sonata, two late, great works. Tzigane, of course, with its concern for virtuosity and tone colour, is absolutely full of them too - whole lines with nothing but diamonds, melodies conceived to be played on natural-harmonics only, arpeggios in natural harmonics flying all over the place (two images attached for fun below)...

As a related issue, Ravel is fascinated by the use of harmonic glissando but, unusually for a composer of his time, he occasionally slows it down to highlight the 'out-of-tune' natural harmonics. There's a great example for trombone in Daphnis; the cello at the end of the first movement of the Piano Trio also does this, slowly climbing up the C string in a manner reminiscent of the way it climbs the G string in Ligeti's Second Quartet! Another one descends slowly from very high up on the G string (B in alt  :o ) in the last of the Madagascan Songs (followed by pizz. natural harmonics like distant drum beats). Speeded up, we find the same use of 'out-of-tune' partials in the harmonic glissandi of the left hand Concerto. All of these, however, been fingered at the same pitch position as the resultant sound, are written with normal noteheads+harmonic circles. I just thought it was interesting to see Ravel indulging in this exploitation of natural microtones. I wonder if RVW, who uses the same technique to the most potent effect in his 3rd symphony, learnt it from Ravel, his erstwhile teacher.... Whatever, after these two unlikely trailblazers I don't see it picked up again properly for quite a while (Ligeti being the obvious example).

And now that really is enough! (Do you think notation gets me a little too excited?  :-[ :-[  ;D ;D  ??? ???)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 08, 2008, 02:27:14 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 08, 2008, 01:58:04 PM
And now that really is enough! (Do you think notation gets me a little too excited?  :-[ :-[  ;D ;D  ??? ???)

No.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 08, 2008, 03:31:10 PM
Just to show it isn't just Ravel....the first two scores I pulled out as likely suspects:

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 08, 2008, 03:54:35 PM
Ah, Arcadiana. This along with Tevot is my favourite work by Ades. That moment at the end of the second movement is just fantastic.

Very wise to include those samples or M might have claimed that this was a quirk of Ravel's writing. Who knew belabouring a point could be so much fun?!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on October 08, 2008, 04:37:08 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 08, 2008, 01:58:04 PM
the cello at the end of the first movement of the Piano Trio also does this, slowly climbing up the C string in a manner reminiscent of the way it climbs the G string in Ligeti's Second Quartet!

Nice bit of postmodern thinking.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 09, 2008, 06:32:13 AM
Query in another thread (as possibly of general interest). (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,8955.msg235711.html#msg235711)

And, Luke! . . . what is the State of the Orchestral Piece Project?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 09, 2008, 06:45:25 AM
I must be honest - I haven't looked at it in the last week or two. But that's because a) it's so close to completion that I've relaxed a shade too early and b) I know I will have an opportunity to get it done this Sunday. That's the plan, at any rate.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 09, 2008, 06:46:00 AM
Very good.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 09, 2008, 06:54:38 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 09, 2008, 06:45:25 AM
I must be honest - I haven't looked at it in the last week or two. But that's because a) it's so close to completion that I've relaxed a shade too early and b) I know I will have an opportunity to get it done this Sunday. That's the plan, at any rate.

Fingers crossed. Touch wood. God willing... All the same - good news!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 09, 2008, 09:01:49 AM
Quote from: Maciek on October 08, 2008, 04:37:08 PM
Nice bit of postmodern thinking.
Why's it postmodern?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on October 09, 2008, 11:22:21 AM
Reversed chronology.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 09, 2008, 02:53:15 PM
Quote from: Maciek on October 09, 2008, 11:22:21 AM
Reversed chronology.
:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 12, 2008, 09:48:07 AM
Hmmm.....not as much time as I thought to work on E+A today, but here's something like a possible completion. I think. This is extremely hot off the press, so don't expect it to stay like this. Also, because I haven't worked on it for a while, I'm not really in the swing of it today - I composed because I had been preparing to do so today, not because I had an urge to. There wasn't much imagination required today, however - the pieces was basically finished in my head weeks ago.

No midi mock-up for this, and I don't think I'll be able to do one - those last pages would be tricky!

[Attachment deleted just for now - a couple of mistakes/omissions to sort out]
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 12, 2008, 09:51:41 AM
And now, Joe, I may have the time and mental capacity to reply to your PM!  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 12, 2008, 09:57:30 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 12, 2008, 09:48:07 AM
Hmmm.....not as much time as I thought to work on E+A today, but here's something like a possible completion. I think. This is extremely hot off the press, so don't expect it to stay like this. Also, because I haven't worked on it for a while, I'm not really in the swing of it today - I composed because I had been preparing to do so today, not because I had an urge to. There wasn't much imagination required today, however - the pieces was basically finished in my head weeks ago.

Huzzah!  Will gladly take a look at this, Luke.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 12, 2008, 10:06:12 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on October 12, 2008, 09:57:30 AM
Huzzah!

Indeed. Excellent news, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 12, 2008, 10:25:33 AM
Blimey - I can see some pretty blatant things missing already (like the trumpet part on the last page!  :-[ ::) )! Might need to give me an hour or two to check it through. Still, the score I've posted gives a pretty good idea of what the whole will look like.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Joe_Campbell on October 12, 2008, 10:44:19 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 12, 2008, 09:51:41 AM
And now, Joe, I may have the time and mental capacity to reply to your PM!  ;D
I await with baited breath. ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 12, 2008, 03:18:23 PM
Wot, no scoar?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 12, 2008, 03:27:12 PM
It was there, and then it went. But it will be back soon, complete with the minor changes I noticed were needed as soon as I'd posted it.  ::)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 12, 2008, 03:35:32 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 12, 2008, 03:27:12 PM
It was there, and then it went. But it will be back soon, complete with the minor changes I noticed were needed as soon as I'd posted it.  ::)

I'm glad I have a collector's item, then...  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 12, 2008, 03:40:37 PM
Well, you know, when a chap can prevent the proliferation of error in his own work, why not?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 12, 2008, 03:42:32 PM
It's a regretable trait of mine, to post things here on the spur of the moment, and then to realise...ooops! Post in haste, repent at leisure.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 12, 2008, 03:43:50 PM
Not a bit of it, Luke;  we're always chit-chatting about works in various stages of not-finished.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 12, 2008, 03:46:13 PM
Of course! I sometimes spare a thought, however, for those pre-final-version scores of e.g. the Canticle Sonata or the piano Sonata which were downloaded by guests viewing the page. Ah well, can't be helped - my own fault in any case!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 12, 2008, 03:53:11 PM
Make some space in the ol' inbox would you chap?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 12, 2008, 03:56:10 PM
Is it full again? Sorry - consider it done.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 13, 2008, 09:38:47 AM
Another version of the score, more cautiously named this time!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 13, 2008, 09:53:25 AM
I like the ending.

Nit-picky editing note:  which plays a continuous roll, two spelling errata.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 13, 2008, 09:57:22 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on October 13, 2008, 09:53:25 AM
I like the ending.

Nit-picky editing note:  which plays a continuous roll, two spelling errata.

;D That's what I pay you for! I make a lot of slips like this, working at the laptop, but I hope I pick most of them up!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 13, 2008, 10:02:00 AM
We all make those little mistakes, and rely on others' eyes to assist in mending them  :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 13, 2008, 10:13:26 AM
Also, let me compliment you specifically on how graceful, elegant, and organic (meaning how naturally it 'belongs' to the earlier material, not that it smells funny) an ending you've composed here.  I don't know how much you may have labored (or not) over this, Luke, but the result is of apparent ease;  nor does it look as if there was any point at which you had done writing earlier, and wondered whither hence.

Well done!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 13, 2008, 01:42:45 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on October 13, 2008, 10:13:26 AM
Also, let me compliment you specifically on how graceful, elegant, and organic (meaning how naturally it 'belongs' to the earlier material, not that it smells funny) an ending you've composed here.  I don't know how much you may have labored (or not) over this, Luke, but the result is of apparent ease;  nor does it look as if there was any point at which you had done writing earlier, and wondered whither hence.

Well done!

Thanks, Karl.

Truth is, I always knew how the piece would continue - the whole thing was conceived in one sweep, though the slightly aleatory techniques used in the last few pages were only decided on after the piece was half done. (If I hadn't used them, I'd have composed something which sounded pretty much the same as this, though). Apart from this, it was only the details which needed to be worked over, and I found it quite tedious to do so, which was at least part of the reason for the delay.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 13, 2008, 02:56:10 PM
Understand that situation, entirely.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 13, 2008, 03:47:11 PM
Very nice ending - can't wait to hear it. IT's also visually very arresting - would do the mystery scores thread proud!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 13, 2008, 03:55:35 PM
Also do you know who will be doing the honours of playing the piano part in the performance? Might it be your good self?

something nit picky in the score - it's not entirely clear what the second cellist is meant to be doing in bar 64 of the ascent - is it just a rest missing here?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 13, 2008, 10:33:58 PM
Here? Can't see a problem.... maybe I'm being stupid!

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 13, 2008, 10:34:29 PM
(I like having this private army of proof-readers!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 13, 2008, 11:31:27 PM
In Ascent you have expressed a mountain in time signatures, Luke: from base (7/8) to summit (1/8).

Ah, to hear a real orchestra getting its teeth into this... Will the performance be taped?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 13, 2008, 11:38:01 PM
Quote from: Jezetha on October 13, 2008, 11:31:27 PM
In Ascent you have expressed a mountain in time signatures, Luke: from base (7/8) to summit (1/8).

Ah, to hear a real orchestra getting its teeth into this... Will the performance be taped?

I'll make sure of it. Might even get someone to film it too. Though if, as suspected by Guido, I end up playing the piano part, that may not be a good idea!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 13, 2008, 11:44:04 PM
Of course, Ascent is implicitly full of Kailash-related imagery, thus of Buddhist and Hindu imagery. But the real theme of the music is non-doctrinal. The mountain is a metaphor for the Self, and thus in ascending it one comes closer to the centre and the essence. Here's something from the mystic Christian tradition I found the other day which is also appropriate (Angelus Silesius):

I am a hill of God, and must myself ascend
That God may then reveal his face to me, my friend.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 13, 2008, 11:54:21 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 13, 2008, 11:44:04 PM
Of course, Ascent is implicitly full of Kailash-related imagery, thus of Buddhist and Hindu imagery. But the real theme of the music is non-doctrinal. The mountain is a metaphor for the Self, and thus in ascending it one comes closer to the centre and the essence. Here's something from the mystic Christian tradition I found the other day which is also appropriate (Angelus Silesius):

I am a hill of God, and must myself ascend
That God may then reveal his face to me, my friend.

I understand completely. The Mountain also plays a role in my work, helped too by my German surname, Herrenberg, which translates as Mountain of the Lord(s)...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 14, 2008, 03:52:45 AM
Sorry - just assumed that the triplet applied to both lines. It doesn't.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Homo Aestheticus on October 14, 2008, 08:04:56 AM
Luke,

OT:

When you get a chance please delete a few of your private messages; your inbox is completely full.

Thanks.     :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 14, 2008, 09:21:42 AM
Aren't I Mr Popular today, then!  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 14, 2008, 10:21:28 AM
Well, and why should today be any different?  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 14, 2008, 12:18:42 PM
Sorry to do this to you -  here's a better version. The last page was bugging me, but this more streamlined version is more like it. Elsewhere, string mutes more carefully notated, and the typo picked up by Karl corrected.

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 14, 2008, 12:23:11 PM
(Note the double bass harmonic on the last page  ;D ;D >:D >:D )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 14, 2008, 01:24:19 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 14, 2008, 12:23:11 PM
(Note the double bass harmonic on the last page  ;D ;D >:D >:D )

M's immortality is assured.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 14, 2008, 01:26:32 PM
M Forever, indeed!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on October 14, 2008, 02:04:08 PM
It is not entirely clear though how that harmonic is intended to be plated. It probably is supposed to be the one where the C on the G string is. In which case, it would sound as G two octaves above the open string (the G that the violin clef circles around).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 14, 2008, 02:07:37 PM
Yes, that's the one - the violin and, in fact, everyone else too, apart from the piano.

And, as I showed with my previous examples (from Ravel, Ades, Powell, Walton, Enescu, and I could have found many others - I saw the same in a Schnittke score today...) this kind of notation is common practice. When used, a natural harmonic on the nearest available string - the G string here, as you say - is indicated. So there's no doubt about which string is intended, just as there isn't in all those score samples I posted.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on October 14, 2008, 02:16:25 PM
So is this supposed to be a sounding C or G?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 14, 2008, 02:17:37 PM
As I said, it's as you said. The G.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 14, 2008, 02:47:26 PM
M Forever is just being obstreporous. Makes a change.

anyway, I do actually have a genuine question about harmonics now - the viola one at "3 still slower" is not possible play. Unless you meant to make it a diamon head (!) which would of course produce a G an octave higher. And a similar question of that 1st violin harmonic at "5 - still slower". Obviously, that one is producible on the fourth or at the actual pitch of the note way up in the stratosphere on the G string. My guess is that these things are all to do with Sibelius playback not being able to deal with harmonics...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 14, 2008, 02:55:22 PM
Quote from: Guido on October 14, 2008, 02:47:26 PM
M Forever is just being obstreporous. Makes a change.

anyway, I do actually have a genuine question about harmonics now - the viola one at "3 still slower" is not possible play. Unless you meant to make it a diamon head (!) which would of course produce a G an octave higher. And a similar question of that 1st violin harmonic at "5 - still slower". Obviously, that one is producible on the fourth or at the actual pitch of the note way up in the stratosphere on the G string. My guess is that these things are all to do with Sibelius playback not being able to deal with harmonics...

No, these are just open strings (as is the cello one at no 2). Limitations of notation, perhaps!

FWIW, to my mind the note+circle = octave harmonic (i.e. one which sounds at the pitch where the finger is placed) or open string, whichever makes sense. And in fact, I always assumed that was the norm, but perhaps you've learnt differently. Or perhaps all this talk of harmonics is sending you down the path of seeing harmonics where they aren't intended!

So, to my mind, and common practice as I read it - note+circle = open string/octave harmonic
                                                                   - diamond = placement for non-octave natural harmonic
                                                                   - note+diamond = artificial harmonic
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on October 14, 2008, 02:56:15 PM
I didn't before see the examples you posted a few pages back. Whatever other composers may have done in the past, it is better if you are more specific exactly because there are so many different ways to notate harmonics. I only looked at the first example you gave from the Ravel score, but I am not sure why you chose that - it illustatrates exactly what I meant. For instance, in the bass part at the bottom, you can see that he writes one harmonic A with a circle which means this sounding note (an octave lower, of course) is supposed to be executed as a harmonic which means the octave harmonic on the A string. There is really no other option. The E is notated as a diamond and Ravel clarifies that by giving the small solid note to indicate the sounding pitch. Which in this case means that harmonic is supposed to be played on the A string, a fifth above the open string, NOT the octave harmonic on the E string.

In any case, I can tell you from my time as an orchestral musician that there is often a lot of confusion about harmonics when they aren't notated very explicitly. Just from a practical point of view, it is better if the composer is as specific as possible. The easiest and quickest way to use the diamond is simply to add a letter or number for the string on which this note is supposed to be played (in this case, "A" or "III", but it isn't necessary because of the small solid note). The diamond then indicates the location of the harmonic on that string. This is particularly important when we are dealing with "modern" music in which a "traditional" harmonic (in he sense of harmonies used) context isn't necessarily there which makes it easy to clarify which sounding pitch is meant.

It is just good style and a matter of courtesy towards orchestral musicians to give specific indications which don't necessitate guessing or detective work.
I have played a lot of contemporary music in orchestras, and often, you have to ask the composer (if he is present) or the conductor what exactly is meant not only when it comes to harmonics, but also to other effects and playing techniques. All too often, the composer and/or conductor don't immediately know themselves, they have to look in the score and start figuring stuff out. That is embarrassing and costs unnecessary time. By that time, the musicians' respect for the music and the composer is on its way out, too.

So when you get a chance to get your music played, you can be ivory tower man and start a discussion with the musicians about which composer wrote like this or that, or you can just be specific from the beginning. It is in the best interest of your music and its reproduction that you are.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on October 14, 2008, 02:58:44 PM
Quote from: Guido on October 14, 2008, 02:47:26 PM
M Forever is just being obstreporous. Makes a change.

anyway, I do actually have a genuine question about harmonics now - the viola one at "3 still slower" is not possible play. Unless you meant to make it a diamon head (!) which would of course produce a G an octave higher. And a similar question of that 1st violin harmonic at "5 - still slower". Obviously, that one is producible on the fourth or at the actual pitch of the note way up in the stratosphere on the G string. My guess is that these things are all to do with Sibelius playback not being able to deal with harmonics...

This is a really stupid post. M was trying to help Mr O from the perspective of a former professional who has often encountered these problems, not being "obstreporous".

And then you go on asking questions about what is actually meant there yourself. Are you trying to make a complete fool out of yourself?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 14, 2008, 03:22:05 PM
Quote from: M forever on October 14, 2008, 02:58:44 PM
This is a really stupid post. M was trying to help Mr O from the perspective of a former professional who has often encountered these problems, not being "obstreporous".

And then you go on asking questions about what is actually meant there yourself. Are you trying to make a complete fool out of yourself?

I was actually asking a question which had nothing to do with the kind of harmonics that you are whinging about. It would be far too much to ask you to actually look at the materials under discussion though of course! It's just plain rude not to acknowledge the wonderful score samples that Mr. O has so kindly provided you - surely an invaluable opportunity to learn, nicht war? Odd when you are normally so concerned with being right. Anyway, I'm not interested in this petty frippery - it's just tedious beyond words, so lets please leave it at that.

QuoteFWIW, to my mind the note+circle = octave harmonic (i.e. one which sounds at the pitch where the finger is placed) or open string, whichever makes sense. And in fact, I always assumed that was the norm, but perhaps you've learnt differently. Or perhaps all this talk of harmonics is sending you down the path of seeing harmonics where they aren't intended!

Well personally, I would indicate an open string with a 0 (zero) rather than a circle, but the confusion is probably arising because I will play open strings wherever possible! ;D I am shameless!

@ the musing tuffet: We're playing Brahms 2 in CUSO this term - had a chance to sight read that infamous opening cello line from the second movement - I can see why every major professional orchestra sets this as an excerpt!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 14, 2008, 03:24:24 PM
So Ravel, Enescu, Walton, Ades, Schnittke etc. are wrong, then?

In my first example - the only one you comment on, I notice, presumably because it's the only one which even slightly relates to your idea of how things should be done - Ravel does indeed give a few 'sounds as...' indications, but no more than that. There's no indication of the lower note except with the artificial harmonics - importantly, this makes the score at this point, which could otherwise be a hard-to-untangle mess of harmonics, much easier to read. In the too-plentiful other examples - the ones you ignored  ;) - and in dozens of others I could show you - just the diamond is given. Pretty common practice, as I say.

It's emphatically not 'ivory tower', this, M  - it's just a desire for clarity, for not cluttering up the score when it's not necessary. That double bass harmonic, for instance - if that was Schoenberg he'd not only write in the lower G, he'd also superimpose and parenthesise a small treble clef with a miniscule G on it, or perhaps a G in bass clef but with an 'octave' line. To me, this seems excessive, and out of aesthetic kilter with the music as it is here. (It's fine in the Schoenberg String Trio, for instance, because the manic, fussy and complex notation is in keeping with the nature of the music itself).

And that last point is important to me, as a composer: I think notational choices are expressively important, as I mentioned in my longest post on Ravel's notation (someone as highly attuned as you are to the smallest nuances of phrasing etc. ought to see that Ravel's notation in the Ma Mere l'Oye example I gave impacts on the way the music seems to the performer, and thus possibly impacts on the way he approaches playing it - and whether it does or not, it's an interesting clue as to Ravel's conception of the music here, I think, and thus valuable). I think that a composer's notational choices can reflect the character of the music (and of the composer, perhaps) very well, and just as I'm determined never to change my notation style because Sibelius makes it easier to work another way, so I'm determined to write the music the way it seems right to me. I'm not dogmatic about my notation, either - in other pieces I've indicated the sounding notes too, or written in the lower note, or both. But here it simply doesn't seem necessary - the passage is too simple and self-evident.

I'm sorry if your own experiences playing contemporary music have been confusing, and that the composers didn't always seem to know what they wanted. But it's pretty clear, I hope, that I know precisely what I want, how to achieve it, and that the notation I'm using isn't outlandish but has a pretty good pedigree (doesn't come much finer than Ravel, IMO). I've never had performers confused by my notation before; I've never known other performers confused by this sort of notation (and I know plenty of performers, from amateurs to the finest professionals). But if someone raises a hand and says 'what does this mean', it will be a matter of seconds to tell them.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on October 14, 2008, 03:32:17 PM
Quote from: Guido on October 14, 2008, 03:22:05 PM
It's just plain rude not to acknowledge the wonderful score samples that Mr. O has so kindly provided you - surely an invaluable opportunity to learn, nicht war?

I have seen all that stuff and even more variations many times over, little college boy cellist. That is why I am urging him to be more specific. In his own best interest. A well meant tip from someone who knows what he talks about from professional experience. So that is an area you should just keep out of. BTW, it's "wahr", not "war".

Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 14, 2008, 02:55:22 PM
FWIW, to my mind the note+circle = octave harmonic (i.e. one which sounds at the pitch where the finger is placed) or open string, whichever makes sense. And in fact, I always assumed that was the norm, but perhaps you've learnt differently. Or perhaps all this talk of harmonics is sending you down the path of seeing harmonics where they aren't intended!

So, to my mind, and common practice as I read it - note+circle = open string/octave harmonic
                                                                   - diamond = placement for non-octave natural harmonic
                                                                   - note+diamond = artificial harmonic

A circle generally means the sounding pitch, it doesn't have to be an octave harmonic. For instance, the last E in that bass part by Ravel could also simply be written as the E on the second line above the system, with a circle over it. But there is mor than one way to play that. Ravel is more specific, for good reasons. He usually is.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on October 14, 2008, 03:42:25 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 14, 2008, 03:24:24 PM
So Ravel, Enescu, Walton, Ades, Schnittke etc. are wrong, then?

In my first example - the only one you comment on, I notice, presumably because it's the only one which even slightly relates to your idea of how things should be done

I didn't say that they were wrong. I said there are many, sometimes confusing ways to notate that. I have no absolute idea how things should be done. But I know there are many different ways which often cause things to be less than clear.

Just forget it, OK? I just meant to help. Just be ivory tower man. You are too much of a genius to accept tips from idiots like me who never got beyond scratching around in professional orchestras but never composed timeless musical materpieces. Who am I to tell a genius like you how you could be more easy to understand in your notation?

Man, I have had to deal with people like you way too often when I still played professionally. I have also dealt with some - very occasionally - who were actually open to practical tips and questions. Usually they were the better ones. Like Philip Glass with who I had the pleasure to work last year and who was open to questions and who wanted things to be as clear and unmistakeable for the players as possible. Reminds me of the old French bass player I once met whose father was a bass player, too, and he told me that he had told him how Ravel sometimes came to the podium in rehearsal or even concert breaks to show manuscripts to the bass and other string players and ask them if everything he wrote was clear and playable. But that is below your dignity, apparently. So you shouldn't use Ravel as an example. You are so much better than he was.

I actually had a few comments about some of the music you posted, but since you aren't even interested in a discussion of notation, I will refrain from saying what I thought. You aren't interested in real criticism anyway, just in ass kissing from other posters. Good luck with your incredible and infallible genius.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 14, 2008, 03:46:46 PM
Oh, just seen your latest post. Looks charming. Let me send this first...

Quote from: M forever on October 14, 2008, 03:32:17 PM
I have seen all that stuff and even more variations many times over, little college boy cellist. That is why I am urging him to be more specific. In his own best interest. A well meant tip from someone who knows what he talks about from professional experience. So that is an area you should just keep out of. BTW, it's "wahr", not "war".

So Ravel is wrong, then. I see. BTW, if you'd seen 'all that stuff and even more variations many times over' before, why did you say that my use of it was so 'odd' and 'strange'? Perhaps you don't like it, but it's neither odd, strange nor wrong.

QuoteA circle generally means the sounding pitch, it doesn't have to be an octave harmonic.

...yes, that's true, I wasn't thinking clearly there. But when used in this way - as, for instance, and to stick with Ravel, in the cello parts I mentioned in the Piano Trio and the Madagascan Songs - it's usually used so that the finger is at the same pitch as the note produced, as is always the case with octave harmonics - (harmonics are a pain to describe in words sometimes!)... And that's what I really meant.

QuoteFor instance, the last E in that bass part by Ravel could also simply be written as the E on the second line above the system, with a circle over it. But there is mor than one way to play that. Ravel is more specific, for good reasons. He usually is.

Except that, as I've shown, he isn't. That first example I gave, even though very sparse by the standards you described, is unusually prescriptive for him (I couldn't find better at the time because I was at work and didn't have a long slot at the computer). He very rarely writes in 'sounds as...' notes - this is one of the few examples - and he never, to my knowledge, indicates the lower note for natural harmonics.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 14, 2008, 03:49:32 PM
Quote from: M forever on October 14, 2008, 03:32:17 PM
I have seen all that stuff and even more variations many times over, little college boy cellist. That is why I am urging him to be more specific. In his own best interest. A well meant tip from someone who knows what he talks about from professional experience. So that is an area you should just keep out of. BTW, it's "wahr", not "war".
::)
A typo. I am German too you know. Again, let's please end this; as I said it's really very tedious - even for someone as immature as I am. This great thread is being sullied!

On a brighter note it would genuinely be really great to get your comments on the latest orchestral work or any of Lukes piece, beyond the technical details.
EDIT: forget I said this then! One has to wonder what has gone wrong in a person's life, when at 39 they still post stuff like that!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 14, 2008, 04:04:24 PM
No hurry, Luke. (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,92.msg237453.html#msg237453)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 14, 2008, 04:06:30 PM
Quote from: M forever on October 14, 2008, 03:42:25 PM
I didn't say that they were wrong. I said there are many, sometimes confusing ways to notate that. I have no absolute idea how things should be done. But I know there are many different ways which often cause things to be less than clear.

You said it was odd and strange, implying that I'd done something other composers don't do. Except that they do.

QuoteJust forget it, OK? I just meant to help. Just be ivory tower man. You are too much of a genius to accept tips from idiots like me who never got beyond scratching around in professional orchestras but never composed timeless musical materpieces. Who am I to tell a genius like you how you could be more easy to understand in your notation?

You really are very touchy, aren't you? Note here your advanced-level attempts at button-pushing:

1) the second use of the phrase 'ivory tower'. You used it last time and I responded, so you figure you'll try it again.

2) the third reference to yourself as a professional and the implied (though hidden below a layer of sarcasm) one-up-manship. I've never been a professional bassist, M, no. But I'm a well-trained, well-listened, and as far as I know well-thought-of, experienced musician nevertheless. To tell the truth I'm usually only too ready to doubt myself, but with this question of harmonic notation I'm perfectly satisfied with the way I've done things. (And let's face it, we're talking about a tiny number of very easy-to-play notes here)

3) a couple of jibes with 'genius', trying to make it appear/convince yourself that I have an inflatedly high opinion of myself. Which, if you've read any of this thread, you'll know is very far from the case.

QuoteMan, I have had to deal with people like you way too often when I still played professionally.

'People like me'? The exchange we've just had reveals nothing about me. It would do, perhaps, if you'd presented me with some alternative notations which I'd never seen before and I rejected them out of hand simply because I felt like rejecting them. And maybe that's what you think happened. But of course it wasn't - I may never have played bass professionally, but I've played string instruments enough, studied scores enough etc. etc. to know all the various alternatives. And I picked the one I thought best for my music, and am happy with it, and am willing to take the (IMO very small) risk that it will confuse the poor players far too much. I do apologise for the sins of knowing my own mind and being informed on the subject.

QuoteI have also dealt with some - very occasionally - who were actually open to practical tips and questions. Usually they were the better ones. Like Philip Glass with who I had the pleasure to work last year and who was open to questions and who wanted things to be as clear and unmistakeable for the players as possible. Reminds me of the old French bass player I once met whose father was a bass player, too, and he told me that he had told him how Ravel sometimes came to the podium in rehearsal or even concert breaks to show manuscripts to the bass and other string players and ask them if everything he wrote was clear and playable.

...Yes, Ravel was concerned to keep his scores clear and playable, you are correct. And he used this notation every time. So I guess that means he and the players he consulted with thought it was clear and playable after all....

QuoteBut that is below your dignity, apparently. So you shouldn't use Ravel as an example. You are so much better than he was.

I actually had a few comments about some of the music you posted, but since you aren't even interested in a discussion of notation, I will refrain from saying what I thought. You aren't interested in real criticism anyway, just in ass kissing from other posters. Good luck with your incredible and infallible genius.

You know absolutely nothing about me and my own view of myself (which is about as far from 'I'm a genius' as can possibly be imagined - I compose because I love it, not because I think I have immortal messages for mankind) so all of this is just spouting off from someone who - let's face it - had clearly simply forgotten that Ravel (and others) wrote/write in the way he disapproved of and is now trying to find a way around this inconvenient fact. By viciousness, it seems, in the time-honoured M way.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 14, 2008, 11:14:32 PM
Quote from: Guido on October 14, 2008, 03:49:32 PM
This great thread is being sullied!

Indeed.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 15, 2008, 03:05:48 AM
Although, Luke's gracious and measured response is an inspiration.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 15, 2008, 03:40:58 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on October 15, 2008, 03:05:48 AM
Although, Luke's gracious and measured response is an inspiration.

He may be no genius, but he certainly is a saint (I'll get in touch with Benedict).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Homo Aestheticus on October 15, 2008, 04:54:58 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on October 15, 2008, 03:40:58 AMHe may be no genius, but he certainly is a saint.

Undoubtedly.

And doesn't this thread show once and for all what a creep M Forever can often be ?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 15, 2008, 05:04:32 AM
Quote from: The Ardent Pelleastre on October 15, 2008, 04:54:58 AM
Undoubtedly.

And doesn't this thread show once and for all what a creep M Forever can often be ?

Let's stick to Luke's works, just to avoid a further derailment, my dear Debussyan.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Homo Aestheticus on October 15, 2008, 05:05:48 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on October 15, 2008, 05:04:32 AM
Let's stick to Luke's works, just to avoid a further derailment, my dear Debussyan.

Agreed my friend.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 15, 2008, 05:06:23 AM
Well said, Johan.

I am delighted with the finished state of Elegy & Ascent, and I don't care who knows it  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 15, 2008, 07:04:51 AM
Have been doing a little proof-reading on E+A today, and I also heard back from the conductor, who has been through the score with a fine-tooth comb and found a couple of things to query and a couple of easy-to-rectify mistakes. (No problem with understanding the harmonics though  ;D ). He seems very pleased with it all, so things look positive.

In a spare couple of half-hours today I also wrote a little Christmas anthem for S A and piano, in the vein of the one I wrote for the girls at my school last year. It was just on a whim - if it turns out OK maybe we'll try it out on them, but I'm easy either way.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 15, 2008, 07:07:16 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 15, 2008, 07:04:51 AM
Have been doing a little proof-reading on E+A today, and I also heard back from the conductor, who has been through the score with a fine-tooth comb and found a couple of things to query and a couple of easy-to-rectify mistakes. (No problem with understanding the harmonics though  ;D ). He seems very pleased with it all, so things look positive.

Watson, the game is afoot!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 15, 2008, 07:09:40 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 15, 2008, 07:04:51 AM
Have been doing a little proof-reading on E+A today, and I also heard back from the conductor, who has been through the score with a fine-tooth comb and found a couple of things to query and a couple of easy-to-rectify mistakes. (No problem with understanding the harmonics though  ;D ).

Excellent!  And especially, no surprise here:

Quote from: LukeHe seems very pleased with it all, so things look positive.

Onward & upward!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 15, 2008, 07:13:16 AM
So what's the word on manning the piano?  Are you under the impress?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 15, 2008, 09:05:35 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on October 15, 2008, 07:13:16 AM
So what's the word on manning the piano?  Are you under the impress?

He asked about that, actually. There's a piano concerto on the programme (Beethoven 4, yum yum) and the soloist could be asked to do it, he said, but he also implied that I'd welcome to do so to, and I think I'll take him up on that. He remembered the Carnus performance, in which the pianist drafted in - a fairly old man who I'm told died this summer, I'm sorry to say - hadn't looked things through and made a few very serious and prominent counting howlers.

By coincidence I played through the whole piano part today, for the first time as an orchestral part rather than as part of the composing process - it's very do-able.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 15, 2008, 09:11:18 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 15, 2008, 09:05:35 AM
. . . hadn't looked things through and made a few very serious and prominent counting howlers.

Hmm . . . sounds like a certain organist of recent acquaintance, in a piece by someone you know  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 15, 2008, 10:24:04 AM
You might be playing Beethoven 4?!

EDIT: oops! Didn't see that the right way round at all.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: M forever on October 15, 2008, 10:43:43 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on October 15, 2008, 03:05:48 AM
Although, Luke's gracious and measured response is an inspiration.

Indeed it is. Very gracious and measured to make such a big, several-pages-long fuss out of what was simply a well-meant side remark. But then of course everything M says is evil. Good thing I didn't say anything about the music. All these threads are just for you and Karl to tell each other what geniuses you all are, and for others to confirm that. If mentioning that the harmonics notation could be clarified a little by just adding a letter or number (and how much work is that?) triggers such a response, who knows what would have happened if I had said something critical about the music? Good thing I didn't.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 15, 2008, 10:55:29 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 15, 2008, 07:04:51 AM
In a spare couple of half-hours today I also wrote a little Christmas anthem for S A and piano, in the vein of the one I wrote for the girls at my school last year. It was just on a whim - if it turns out OK maybe we'll try it out on them, but I'm easy either way.

What text?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on October 15, 2008, 11:20:36 AM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 14, 2008, 03:24:24 PM
So Ravel, Enescu, Walton, Ades, Schnittke etc. are wrong, then?

They are all wrong! So are the books on orchestration that point out their score examples and explain this form of notation. It's just a big conspiracy, I knew it!  :'(
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 15, 2008, 11:22:11 AM
They weren't all wrong.

But Adès, all right, he was wrong  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 15, 2008, 11:56:18 AM
Quote from: M forever on October 15, 2008, 10:43:43 AM
Indeed it is. Very gracious and measured to make such a big, several-pages-long fuss out of what was simply a well-meant side remark. But then of course everything M says is evil. Good thing I didn't say anything about the music. All these threads are just for you and Karl to tell each other what geniuses you all are, and for others to confirm that. If mentioning that the harmonics notation could be clarified a little by just adding a letter or number (and how much work is that?) triggers such a response, who knows what would have happened if I had said something critical about the music? Good thing I didn't.

It's not what you say that is evil, it's how you say it and the way you carry yourself that excites the disgust and extreme frustration that you commonly witness in other people when they try to interact with you in anything like an serious or adult manner. And evil is far too strong a word - your comments are far too insipid for that! You are entertaining for a while, but the way you see every single conversation and interaction here as a competition that you need to win just becomes very wearisome. You've heard all this before, and I know nothing is going to change, but let's please not pretend that you are some victim here. I'm also not aware that the word genius has been used to describe any person or person's music who posts on this forum.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 15, 2008, 12:01:14 PM
Talking of Adès, I just listened to Fool's Rhymes, Gefriolsae Me and January writ - really great pieces - beautiful, pithy and very individual, just like I like 'em!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 15, 2008, 12:09:07 PM
Quote from: M forever on October 15, 2008, 10:43:43 AM
Indeed it is. Very gracious and measured to make such a big, several-pages-long fuss out of what was simply a well-meant side remark.

Look back at that 'several-pages-long-fuss' and you'll see that it's really a few posts in which I quickly move away from addressing your initial point and just enjoy exploring some aspects and implications of notation in Ravel and elsewhere. Quite soon it's not really addressed towards you at all (and to everyone else I keep apologising for continuing my observations - I was simply enjoying the delving into scores) - except for the point at which I say that I'm grateful for your raising the subject as it's led to some interesting lines of thought. But you don't see that, it seems - you assume that the whole thing is 'about' you. You read my comfortableness with my choice as an arrogant spurning of your professional opinion; my pointing out other examples by trustworthy 'proper composers' is discomforting to you because it shows up that you, too, the self-proclaimed enemy of inaccuracy, also forget things.

Quote from: M forever on October 15, 2008, 10:43:43 AM
But then of course everything M says is evil. Good thing I didn't say anything about the music. All these threads are just for you and Karl to tell each other what geniuses you all are, and for others to confirm that.

I must have missed the telling-each-other-we're-geniuses part. I just thought that this thread, and Karl's, and the scores quiz one, were simply friendly places where, in practice, a fairly small number of people tend to hang out and chat without bitchiness (until now  ::) ). To me, the biggest feature of this particular thread - it's in the very title, for goodness' sake - is its lack of confidence and its soul-searching. You'd do well to find a less confident composer, or you would until very recently, when I've started to feel that what I'm writing is of more quality. Before you got narked at me, you commented positively on that self-doubt yourself (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.msg226417.html#msg226417), remember?:

Quote from: MBut a good thing and a good sign. All good composers were/are fiercely self-critical. Talent and craftsmanship are important, but that quality is probably even more important.

But now - based on nothing more than my happiness with a notational choice (and a pretty insignificant one, too) you're pretending that I'm an arrogant self-proclaimed genius. I can only guess at your reasons for doing so, but whatever they are, you know full well that it bears no relation to reality. (And it's extra-funny, really, because the most notable flashing-about-of-credentials round here comes from you.  ;) )

Quote from: M forever on October 15, 2008, 10:43:43 AM
If mentioning that the harmonics notation could be clarified a little by just adding a letter or number (and how much work is that?) triggers such a response, who knows what would have happened if I had said something critical about the music? Good thing I didn't.

And if mentioning that I'm aware of other these methods of harmonic notation and that I'm satisfied with this often-used one (and how much of a big deal is that?) triggers such a response as your completely unjustified personal attacks on me, who knows what would have happened if I had said...well, I'm not going to say  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 15, 2008, 12:12:39 PM
Quote from: Guido on October 15, 2008, 12:01:14 PM
Talking of Adès, I just listened to Fool's Rhymes, Gefriolsae Me and January writ - really great pieces - beautiful, pithy and very individual, just like I like 'em!

Is the Gefriolsae Me recording the King's one? I remember the day they recorded that one - the choral scholars were all abuzz about the piece!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 15, 2008, 12:57:38 PM
Quote from: lukeottevanger on October 15, 2008, 12:12:39 PM
Is the Gefriolsae Me recording the King's one? I remember the day they recorded that one - the choral scholars were all abuzz about the piece!

Yes, it is. I can see why they were!

Fool's Rhymes has echoes of Les Noces in it - Ades' favourite piece apparently.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on October 15, 2008, 01:05:29 PM
Quote from: Guido on October 15, 2008, 11:56:18 AM
It's not what you say that is evil, it's how you say it and the way you carry yourself that excites the disgust and extreme frustration that you commonly witness in other people when they try to interact with you in anything like an serious or adult manner. And evil is far too strong a word - your comments are far too insipid for that! You are entertaining for a while, but the way you see every single conversation and interaction here as a competition that you need to win just becomes very wearisome. You've heard all this before, and I know nothing is going to change, but let's please not pretend that you are some victim here. I'm also not aware that the word genius has been used to describe any person or person's music who posts on this forum.
"Do you think I'm smart? Oh, please, accept my smartness and knowledge! I hope I can display what I've accomplished and learned so I can be accepted and admired! But if it's in doubt, oh man, you iz be hurtin' my feelings  :("


I apologize. That was low.

Anyways, speaking of Ades, was that stuff really said i Powder Her Face? I listened to it once awhile ago, and i heard a line that was really filthy.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 15, 2008, 01:13:29 PM
As is so often the case Greg, I have very little idea what you are talking about. ( :P ???) Who is the small text aimed at? I don't know what stuff you are referring to, but yes there are some 'filthy' lines in it, a scene in which the main character sings her way through a blowjob, nudity, several sexual references etc. etc. I saw it staged at the Royal opera house recently, and wasn't quite convinced by it - a bit light and silly for my tastes, and rather unmemorable - very unlike much of his other music. The CD I have of it doesn't really make for a better impression. Arcadia, Tevot, the aforementioned choral pieces, origin of the harp and many other pieces though really excite me.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on October 15, 2008, 01:15:58 PM
Quote from: Guido on October 15, 2008, 01:13:29 PM
As is so often the case Greg, I have very little idea what you are talking about. ( :P ???) Who is the small text aimed at? I don't know what stuff you are referring to, but yes there are some 'filthy' lines in it, a scene in which the main character sings her way through a blowjob, nudity, several sexual references etc. etc. I saw it staged at the Royal opera house recently, and wasn't quite convinced by it - a bit light and silly for my tastes, and rather unmemorable - very unlike much of his other music. The CD I have of it doesn't really make for a better impression. Arcadia, Tevot, the aforementioned choral pieces, origin of the harp and many other pieces though really excite me.
That's all I really needed to know, thanks.
I just remembered a line from it, and wasn't sure if I was imagining it........
i agree about Tevot, though.

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 15, 2008, 01:23:35 PM
I should add that Powder her Face is of course brilliantly written. It's just not my cuppa, and didn't really convince me as a whole.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on October 16, 2008, 02:10:33 PM
Just in case bystanders watching this thread might think it is for some reason off limits to mods or that insulting Luke and Karl is somehow part of the Forum Guidelines: it is not and it is not. M Forever's unpleasant (to say the least) comments have been left here on purpose and that decision has been consulted with Luke. However, it hasn't been finally decided by the mods if the offending part of the discussion won't eventually be removed after all, so be prepared. If the level of discourse drops to name calling once again, it probably will (be removed, I mean). $:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on October 16, 2008, 03:11:25 PM
Quote from: Maciek on October 16, 2008, 02:10:33 PM
Just in case bystanders watching this thread might think it is for some reason off limits to mods or that insulting Luke and Karl is somehow part of the Forum Guidelines: it is not and it is not. M Forever's unpleasant (to say the least) comments have been left here on purpose and that decision has been consulted with Luke. However, it hasn't been finally decided by the mods if the offending part of the discussion won't eventually be removed after all, so be prepared. If the level of discourse drops to name calling once again, it probably will (be removed, I mean). $:)
Oh, don't remove his posts- that'd make him create another thread to complain against the moderators.

(http://spyhunter007.com/Images/eric_cartman_southpark.gif)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: lukeottevanger on October 19, 2008, 11:24:49 AM
Yes. Well.

Anyway
, I've been going through the score to E+A quite carefully; the conductor found a couple of typos too, and I've been adding more detailed dynamics throughout. It looks much better IMO, even though the changes are small.

Secondly, in addition to the little Christmas S A + piano anthem I wrote on Wednesday, I wrote another the day after. Neither is quite finished, but the essentials are all there to work on, in the next week hopefully. One of them (don't know which yet) will possibly be performable by the girls at my school, like Eternal Peace last Christmas - but we won't have long to learn it, and they've got a lot else to learn, so I might not put my own music forward this year!

Finally, prompted by a question from Guido earler, and feeling that I've 'lived with' the idea of White Modulations long enough to know that it isn't likely to pall on me, I've made a few very tentative and tiny inroads into it today.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 27, 2008, 01:19:41 PM
Luke, do you know "Les Adieux in Janáček's Manier" from Kurtag's Jatékók? It's a lovely miniature. I'd love to get the whole Jatékók series on CD. Got Ives' 114 songs today for £5 from amazon! yay!
Title: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: sul G on February 20, 2009, 04:34:30 AM
So, I was scrabbling about on the internet and came across the fact that Luke Ottevanger's orchestral piece is being performed tomorrow - blimey, it's all over the internet, hard to miss as long as you carefully type "Ottevanger Elegy and Ascent" into Google. So on his behalf - I'm sure he won't mind, mostly because I am him - I've taken squatter's rights on his abandoned outpost (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.0.html) and suggest that discussion, if there is to be any, resume here. Unless there's some way to unlock the old one, which I doubt.

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: sul G on February 20, 2009, 04:35:24 AM
I'm quite stressed about tomorrow, let it be known!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: Mark G. Simon on February 20, 2009, 04:43:01 AM
Donworryaboutit!

It'll go off fine. And even if it doesn't, people will enjoy it just the same.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: sul G on February 20, 2009, 04:45:57 AM
You're probably right! I don't have concerns about the piece itself (perhaps I should!) but about how the performance will go. It hasn't had the most ideal of preparations, shall we say. And also about having to give a talk beforehand - a real swine to prepare this was, and I'm not sure if I'm going to say too much, or whether people will be expecting something different. Ah well - it's my piece, I can say what I want!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: sul G on February 20, 2009, 04:48:12 AM
The score itself, as it finished up - I'm not sure I ever posted this at the original outpost.

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: sul G on February 20, 2009, 04:49:47 AM
...and the (probably too long) note for the piece (I think all of this was covered in the original thread, but maybe not all in one place):

Elegy and Ascent (2008)

Elegy – Memorial Trio and Chorale
Ascent - ...towards Ishaan...

Elegy is made of up two orchestrated extracts from Memorial, a long, unfinished piano piece of mine dating from 2001. That piece is strongly bound-up with the idea of 'fate', and for this reason every note of it was chosen by chance operations (the drawing of cards giving the notes and the order in which they are to be played). The advantage of this process is the way in which it tends to throw up odd correspondences – hints of other music, familiar musical gestures etc. – and to grant the composer glimpses of mysterious avenues which would otherwise have been unseen and unexplored. In the case of Memorial the thousands of chance-determined notes at times coalesced into particularly unified sections I called 'trios'. The first section of Elegy is the first of these trios, whilst the second section is a chorale which closes the completed portion of Memorial. To me, the original Memorial is inseparable from the idea of 'memory', not just because the music itself is concerned with remembrance but because it is an old work of mine which was lost, found, lost again and finally given a place here in Elegy. Among other memory-filled gestures suggested to me by the cards, you will hear a violin shyly tuning up, horn calls – a typical Romantic signifier for memory and distance – and, entirely coincidentally but fittingly given tonight's programme, the 'fate' motive of Beethoven's Fifth.

In contrast with this collection of memories and familiar gestures, Ascent is entirely concerned with a movement towards a single point of 'now-ness', a point equivalent to Eastern concepts of enlightenment, to Western (Jungian) ones of the individuation of the Self, and indeed to any journey towards a state of integration, coherence, completion, including an artist's journey towards a personal style.  Ascent is therefore also piece of 'now' in that it uses modal techniques and other compositional approaches which I have developed in the last few years – techniques and approaches which are in tune with my own musical character but which I don't imagine would be appropriate for anyone else, and which are in themselves the result of this search for (musical) Self. 'The new' is thus presented here growing out of 'the old', but in fact Elegy prefaces Ascent simply because I found that it had to: I was unable to compose the literally Self-centred second piece until it had been balanced and contextualised by a more communal one.

At its simplest this 'modal technique' uses small collections of pitches which are never transposed and which leave tonal implications present but ambiguous and fluid, creating a harmonically floating, circling effect. A more complex version, suitable for writing larger pieces such as Ascent, uses the various intersections and negations of a number of different modes (that is, the notes they share, the notes they don't include, and other combinations of this sort) to create more sets of notes, and therefore to give unlimited structural possibilities akin to those created by the various key centres in a piece of tonal music. In Ascent this structure is based on the fundamental concept of reduction towards a single point. Three basic modes are used, of 7, 6 and 5 notes, selected so that their various intersections are of 4, 3, 2 and 1 notes - in other words, the notes used tend towards a unity, the single note G which all the modes share. As the music progresses from a seven-note mode to a single note, so the rhythmic structure of the piece contracts, from 7/8 to a final bar of 1/8 (odd-number metres - 7/8, 5/8, 3/8 - are characterised by more propulsive, ostinato-driven music than the reflective even-number metres, which feature the piano prominently).

The abstract concerns outlined above are objectified for me in the shape of Mt. Kailash, a Tibetan peak sacred to four religions. My long-standing fascination with this mountain is probably connected to my interest in the idea of the elusive centre (or the Self), and the way in which it is implied by my 'circling' modes. The looming, unattainable Kailash is seen as the omphalos, the axis mundi, the centre of everything - to climb it would be sacrilegious; instead pilgrims circle it in a long high altitude route called the Kora or Parikrama. The four faces of Kailash point towards the cardinal points of the compass and in Hindu iconography have their own names and specific qualities - destroyer, creator, sustainer, compassionate one. But there is a fifth face, Ishaan, which faces upwards, showering blessings on mankind - the summit of the mountain, where the four lower faces merge into one unity. Though no one climbs Kailash this symbolic ascent is thus implied, and it is the ascent my piece draws on. In my mind, the notes of the three modes and their first three intersections – the sets of 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 notes – which are physically present on paper and under the players' fingers, are analogous to the physical faces of Kailash, facing out for all to see. But the final G, like the summit, Ishaan, faces upwards, and like Ishaan it showers out invisible blessings - at this point a G bell is struck, radiating not tangible, written notes, but a haze of harmonics, as if, on reaching the summit, the note itself has been transfigured into new dimensions.

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: karlhenning on February 20, 2009, 06:23:04 AM
Quote from: sul G on February 20, 2009, 04:45:57 AM
You're probably right! I don't have concerns about the piece itself (perhaps I should!) but about how the performance will go.

No, you need have no reservations about the score, which is fine music.  As Mark says, don't sweat the performance . . . the piece will still make a good impression!  Break a leg (preferably the conductor's, afterwards)!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: Guido on February 20, 2009, 06:25:54 AM
Nice notes - clear and well written. Not too long.

Are you tinkling the ivories during the performance?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: sul G on February 20, 2009, 06:28:07 AM
Yes I will. It's harder than I thought - not technically, but in terms of trying to choose whether to go with the conductor or the orchestra  ;D ;)

Oh, and Karl, it isn't the conductor's fault. He's been putting in an immense amount of effort.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: sul G on February 20, 2009, 06:31:23 AM
I hope you all noticed the extent of sul-G-ness in the score....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: karlhenning on February 20, 2009, 06:54:51 AM
Quote from: sul G on February 20, 2009, 06:28:07 AM
Oh, and Karl, it isn't the conductor's fault. He's been putting in an immense amount of effort.

Of course!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: karlhenning on February 20, 2009, 06:56:07 AM
Quote from: sul G on February 20, 2009, 06:28:07 AM
Yes I will. It's harder than I thought - not technically, but in terms of trying to choose whether to go with the conductor or the orchestra  ;D ;)

Somewhere up in heaven, John Cage is smiling.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: Guido on February 20, 2009, 07:32:24 AM
Which heaven would that be?   >:D   

Can we expect a recording? Or are you going to be coy and say it depends on the quality of the performance!?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: bhodges on February 20, 2009, 07:33:39 AM
Good luck, and try not to fret about things.  Savor the moment!

--Bruce
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: sul G on February 20, 2009, 07:41:37 AM
Quote from: Guido on February 20, 2009, 07:32:24 AM
Which heaven would that be?   >:D   

Can we expect a recording? Or are you going to be coy and say it depends on the quality of the performance!?

Consider me coy. You guessed right.

I will record the rehearsal as well - maybe I'll be able to splice something decent out of it. But no promises!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: Mark G. Simon on February 20, 2009, 08:25:03 AM
Quote from: sul G on February 20, 2009, 04:49:47 AM
...and the (probably too long) note for the piece (I think all of this was covered in the original thread, but maybe not all in one place):

Elegy and Ascent (2008)

Elegy – Memorial Trio and Chorale
Ascent - ...towards Ishaan...

Elegy is made of up two orchestrated extracts from Memorial, a long, unfinished piano piece of mine dating from 2001. That piece is strongly bound-up with the idea of 'fate', and for this reason every note of it was chosen by chance operations (the drawing of cards giving the notes and the order in which they are to be played). .....

I trust this is what you've put in the printed program notes, not what you plan to deliver orally before the performance. For a spoken introduction it looks to me to be very very very long. Time yourself speaking it as if you were addressing an audience in a large hall. Anything longer than a 2 or 3 minutes is going to make the audience fidget and say "shut up and just give us the piece already!!"

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: Maciek on February 20, 2009, 08:36:15 AM
Unless you spice it up with lots of hilarious jokes. In which case they'll hope you never get to the piece itself. ;D

Anyway, where was I? Ah!


How wonderful to see the thread revived!
:D :D :D :D :D :D 8)

Quote from: sul G on February 20, 2009, 04:34:30 AM
Unless there's some way to unlock the old one, which I doubt.

Actually, that could be done very easily, and I could stitch all the posts from this thread onto the old ono, no problem. BUT you won't be able to lock it up by yourself anymore, since it's not really you but someone named lukeottevanger who started that thread in the first place. But you could always drop one of the mods a line, if you wanted it locked (or perhaps our almighty admin is capable of relaying Luke's rights over to you - but even if he could, would he?? ;D).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: karlhenning on February 20, 2009, 08:40:25 AM
Quote from: Maciek on February 20, 2009, 08:36:15 AM
Actually, that could be done very easily, and I could stitch all the posts from this thread onto the old one, no problem.

That is as I had guessed.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: Maciek on February 20, 2009, 02:05:30 PM
Shouldn't that new nick of yours be "sul G bell"?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: sul G on February 20, 2009, 02:59:50 PM
Quote from: Mark G. Simon on February 20, 2009, 08:25:03 AM
I trust this is what you've put in the printed program notes, not what you plan to deliver orally before the performance. For a spoken introduction it looks to me to be very very very long. Time yourself speaking it as if you were addressing an audience in a large hall. Anything longer than a 2 or 3 minutes is going to make the audience fidget and say "shut up and just give us the piece already!!"



Thanks Mark. You're right, for a spoken intro that would be very long! Actually, what I'm going to say is longer still, however - but I'm not saying it as an introduction standing in front of the audience just prior to the piece being played; I'm saying it earlier in the evening, as a separate more detailed talk about the piece for those who want to attend. Hopefully it won't be too long for that (I did a similar talk before the performance of The Chant of Carnus which seemed to go down OK)

Maciek - I'd be more than happy for the unlocking to occur as you say it could. But I'll leave it up to you...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on February 20, 2009, 03:06:36 PM
Merged and unlocked. Enjoy. $:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 20, 2009, 03:10:05 PM
Wow!

1) that was quick

and

2) that is cool!

Thanks! The Outpost is reinhabited!  8)  Sorry for the hiatus, folks  :-* :-*

And now I must go to bed. Will report in when I get a chance, probably not till Sunday unless I'm lucky and you guys aren't.... Good night!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 20, 2009, 03:17:50 PM
...though before I go, I've just read over the last few pages of the thread as it was left in October, and I thought, perhaps I ought to report on how the Case of the Confusing Harmonics concluded.  ;) ;) ;)

First rehearsal, strings only. Lead cellist comes up to me. 'I've been looking forward to playing your piece, Luke, you gave us such fun things to do last time.'

'Thank you! I hope you enjoy it this time too - here's your part.'

'Thanks. Oh, look, some harmonics' [proceeds to play them correctly]
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 20, 2009, 03:18:31 PM
Was that naughty?  :-\ :-\
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on February 20, 2009, 03:43:34 PM
No, it was exactly what any musician would have expected to happen.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 20, 2009, 04:25:40 PM
; )
Title: The Two Outposts Made One
Post by: karlhenning on February 20, 2009, 04:26:31 PM
Thanks, Maciek, for the thread merge!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: karlhenning on February 20, 2009, 04:28:43 PM
Quote from: Guido on February 20, 2009, 07:32:24 AM
Which heaven would that be?   >:D   

Where no one gets at all bored.

Quote from: sul G on February 20, 2009, 02:59:50 PM
Thanks Mark. You're right, for a spoken intro that would be very long! Actually, what I'm going to say is longer still, however - but I'm not saying it as an introduction standing in front of the audience just prior to the piece being played; I'm saying it earlier in the evening, as a separate more detailed talk about the piece for those who want to attend. Hopefully it won't be too long for that . . . .

You'll gauge that at the time; you can always skip whatever and improvise.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on February 21, 2009, 05:44:54 AM
Great to see this thread unlocked.  :D

So the premiere is today?  :o
I'll have to imagine while at work that I'm actually there, listening to it.  8)

Looks like you're being performed alongside Beethoven...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost (under new management)
Post by: Mark G. Simon on February 21, 2009, 06:49:08 AM
Quote from: sul G on February 20, 2009, 02:59:50 PM
Thanks Mark. You're right, for a spoken intro that would be very long! Actually, what I'm going to say is longer still, however - but I'm not saying it as an introduction standing in front of the audience just prior to the piece being played; I'm saying it earlier in the evening, as a separate more detailed talk about the piece for those who want to attend. Hopefully it won't be too long for that (I did a similar talk before the performance of The Chant of Carnus which seemed to go down OK)

Everyone who attends will know what they're in for. It will be fine.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on February 21, 2009, 07:33:53 AM
Luke! I was in Amsterdam last night. I have only just returned. GOOD LUCK!!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on February 21, 2009, 07:43:26 AM
Quote from: sul G on February 20, 2009, 03:17:50 PM
...though before I go, I've just read over the last few pages of the thread as it was left in October, and I thought, perhaps I ought to report on how the Case of the Confusing Harmonics concluded.  ;) ;) ;)

First rehearsal, strings only. Lead cellist comes up to me. 'I've been looking forward to playing your piece, Luke, you gave us such fun things to do last time.'

'Thank you! I hope you enjoy it this time too - here's your part.'

'Thanks. Oh, look, some harmonics' [proceeds to play them correctly]

;D ;D ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 21, 2009, 08:07:10 AM
Here's hoping the composer doesn't mind that I reproduced his notes (with attribution) . . . . (http://henningmusick.blogspot.com/2009/02/wish-i-might-be-there-dept.html)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 22, 2009, 12:38:52 PM
No, Karl, of course I don't.  :)

Thanks, everyone, for your best wishes here and via email and Facebook. The afternoon rehearsal yesterday was the first time some of the orchestra members had turned up, so it's no surprise that they were among the more noticeable culprits mistake-wise yesterday - blasé brass can be a bit of a problem (lead trombone, playing my piece for the first time, reassured me by saying, 'it's OK, I'll just play what's in front of me', which makes me wonder why he didn't - for me, at any rate, he rather ruined the last page of the piece, though the audience didn't notice). Elegy, which had been fine in rehearsal, suffered from a lead violin full of nerves, who started his simple solo a half a bar early, which makes a difference at this slow tempo - the next page or so was taken up with the players trying to reorient themselves. Ascent went fairly well, though, and generally the sense of the piece was well conveyed. I had some very nice compliments afterwards (even got asked for an autograph  ;D ), and so I can't complain too much, though the non-attendees buggering stuff up does niggle.

The concert was recorded professionally, but I won't put that up here. I recorded both concert and rehearsal on my own machine (a new one, better than the last one) and ought to be able to splice them together to get rid of the worst mistakes, though a perfect version won't be possible. (The rehearsal parts will probably include talking from the conductor, among other things.)

Pre-concert talk was fine, btw. I had copious notes and I stuck to the sense of them whilst ad lib-ing more than I thought I would, but it worked OK.

Oh, and Guido/Karl - the order was: Beethoven PC4 - my piece - interval - Beethoven Symph 5. This was nothing to do with me, but was, in fact, about as perfect an order as could be imagined. A lyrical concerto in G; a piece (first note G) whose first half is full of memories of the sort of music heard in that concerto, and whose second half is an ever-more-calm ascent towards G; a Symphony (first note G) which represents an ascent of a different sort - strife-filled, from dark to light. What's more, there's a brief quotation of the Beethoven symphony in Elegy - all coincidental!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on February 22, 2009, 12:44:48 PM
Great to hear Luke, and I greatly look forward to hearing the recording.

People not turning up is just the pits, and apart from anything is just rude, showing contempt towards both the other players and the composers too.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 22, 2009, 12:59:15 PM
Well, you know, the absences were for the Beethoven rehearsals too. But I guess you can just about get away with that. But for a piece you've never seen before, it's just not on, IMO.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 22, 2009, 01:10:23 PM
The horn player (no complaints about him) who wrote a review of The Chant of Carnus has also done one of Elegy and Ascent.

Quote from: Roger SwannIt was fascinating to work on Luke Ottevanger's "Elegy and Ascent" - here receiving it's world premier - with the composer playing the piano part in the orchestra. The first half of this piece is an evolution of an earlier work (Memoirs [Memorial, actually]) as the composer explained during his pre-concert talk. The second half started in a manner reminiscent of the music of John Adams but as the ascent proceeded led inexorably to the nominal G harmonically rich bell (actually a Tibetan prayer bowl hit rather than stroked) that represents the culmination of the upward journey. The orchestra played the piece reasonably well given the lack of familiarity with the idiom for many of the members.

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on February 22, 2009, 01:47:33 PM
I have been thinking of you a lot today, Luke, so - thanks for your description of what transpired last night. I wish a professional orchestra would tackle your piece. Let's hope it's only a matter of time. In the meantime I can't wait to get an aural glimpse of Elegy and Ascent in the near future...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 22, 2009, 01:52:56 PM
Thanks for the kind thoughts, Johan!  :) Hopefully won't be too long till I can put up a recording, though I don't imagine I'll be able to do it tonight. Other stuff to catch up on which I've been neglecting.  :-[ :-[
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on February 22, 2009, 02:31:10 PM
Quote from: sul G on February 22, 2009, 01:52:56 PM
Thanks for the kind thoughts, Johan!  :) Hopefully won't be too long till I can put up a recording, though I don't imagine I'll be able to do it tonight. Other stuff to catch up on which I've been neglecting.  :-[ :-[

No rush. First things first.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 22, 2009, 02:34:00 PM
And you'll need your best Brianites 'listening-through' ears on, of course!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 22, 2009, 03:57:24 PM
Ho capito, amico!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 22, 2009, 04:03:24 PM
Quote from: sul G on February 22, 2009, 12:38:52 PM
Oh, and Guido/Karl - the order was: Beethoven PC4 - my piece - interval - Beethoven Symph 5.

I'd worked that out at last ; ) (https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4688712006005012664&postID=5970374508014520720)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 22, 2009, 04:16:11 PM
Quote from: Guido on February 22, 2009, 12:44:48 PM
Great to hear Luke, and I greatly look forward to hearing the recording.

People not turning up is just the pits, and apart from anything is just rude, showing contempt towards both the other players and the composers too.

Welcome to egocentric, I'm-more-important-than-you-are-so-why-would-I-keep-my-promises America!

Luke: you should quote Jimmy Durante: "I'm surrounded by incompetents!"
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 22, 2009, 04:21:36 PM
Quote from: Cato on February 22, 2009, 04:16:11 PM
Welcome to egocentric, I'm-more-important-than-you-are-so-why-would-I-keep-my-promises America!

Luke: you should quote Jimmy Durante: "I'm surrounded by incompetents!"

;D

I'm in It'll-be-alright-on-the-night-probably-doesn't-matter-what-notes-I-play-anyway Britain, though. May be a worldwide problem!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on February 22, 2009, 11:03:21 PM
Quote from: sul G on February 22, 2009, 02:34:00 PM
And you'll need your best Brianites 'listening-through' ears on, of course!

They never leave the sides of my head.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on February 23, 2009, 04:52:39 AM
Thanks for the report, Luke. And looking forward to the recording! :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on February 24, 2009, 12:59:41 PM
QuoteElegy, which had been fine in rehearsal, suffered from a lead violin full of nerves, who started his simple solo a half a bar early, which makes a difference at this slow tempo - the next page or so was taken up with the players trying to reorient themselves.
Ouch!
I can't wait to hear the rehearsal... especially that piano pedal stomp.  :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 24, 2009, 01:03:22 PM
Quote from: G Forever on February 24, 2009, 12:59:41 PM
Ouch!
I can't wait to hear the rehearsal... especially that piano pedal stomp.  :D


;D That isn't audible on the recording, really - the piano was at the back of the hall and so, like some of the percussion, the stomping doesn't come out well. In any case, during the rehearsal, which is in general the better take, I didn't want to pump it too hard and damage it before the Beethoven concerto was played! When I really went for it it worked nicely, though!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on February 24, 2009, 01:07:13 PM
Oh, that's okay. Next time, you could buy another piano and make all the people who missed the performance pay for it. Just use a contract.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 24, 2009, 01:16:31 PM
Yes, that sounds workable!  :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 24, 2009, 02:29:49 PM
What a good neighbor! Didn't want to mess up the pedal for the Beethoven!  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 24, 2009, 03:09:12 PM
She needed it more than me! The piano was once very nice - an excellent Steinway. But despite being tuned that morning, it had already slipped a little, and the tone up top was not always very good. This didn't affect my piece, but it did spoil things for her a little.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 25, 2009, 04:15:22 AM
How goes the splice, lad?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 25, 2009, 06:49:15 AM
Slowly, slowly...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on February 25, 2009, 02:39:22 PM
Faster, faster!!  :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 26, 2009, 11:24:00 PM
Festina lente
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on February 27, 2009, 12:28:50 PM
Quote from: Guido on February 25, 2009, 02:39:22 PM
Faster, faster!!  :D
, we need another master!!!


hmm just remembered that saying. Is this something everyone knows, because I only remember it from all the way back in kindergarten, on the tire swing.  ;D
(and surprised i even remember it in the first place)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on February 27, 2009, 01:58:49 PM
never heard it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on February 27, 2009, 02:00:59 PM
Oh? I thought it was a typical tire swing saying.

;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on February 27, 2009, 02:02:15 PM
Don't you just love how this always inevitably happens on Luke's thread?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on February 27, 2009, 02:03:17 PM
It's because Luke has so many fans who eagerly await his appearance days on end. And when he doesn't show up for a very long time they... well, get bored. And start chatting idly to pass the time.

That's my theory.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on February 27, 2009, 07:14:02 PM
Quote from: Maciek on February 27, 2009, 02:00:59 PM
Oh? I thought it was a typical tire swing saying.

;D
Really? So you're saying you've heard it before?

Quote from: Maciek on February 27, 2009, 02:02:15 PM
Don't you just love how this always inevitably happens on Luke's thread?
The more you make us wait, Luke, the more we'll derail your thread.  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 28, 2009, 12:47:51 AM
 ;D Derail away, fellas - you know that I'm happy for the thread to provide an arena for OT merriment!

I'm not deliberately taking a long time over the splice - and please don't expect anything wonderful when the file does appear. It's simply that the registered version of the editing software that I'm using is on my wife's laptop, and it has a few useful functions that the non-registered version (on my PC) doesn't. So my access is rather limited. Also, I do have a job to do and children to take care of - so far, I've only managed to give about an hour to the splicing!

Listening over, though, there are some bits which are OK, but a few sections which I won't be able to make anything good of no matter how I splice. It's odd, because these are bits which I thought sounded OK in the hall...

Whilst we're all waiting I suppose I could fill you in on anything of interest that happened in the outpost's temporary closure....though there isn't much. I composed another little carol for the girls at my school to sing at Christmas, and they did a pretty good job. I like this one; it has a deliberately childlike simplicity and gaucheness (no complex dynamic markings etc). As I write this I'm getting a bit concerned because I can't find the recording I made, which wasn't too bad.... I may have to ask them to sing it through once more for me next week.

Actually I wrote two little carols, both in quick dashes on consecutive days. (They are both modal, in very simple ways - the first uses a F major scale, but isn't in F, the second a C major scale, but isn't in C; both, for some reason, end with a low C# in the bass). The second one is the one I wrote for the girls, the one they sang. Here's the score of both.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 28, 2009, 12:52:17 AM
Apart from that, not much happened. There were all the rehearsals for Elegy and Ascent, which, if I'd been here, I would have kept you updated on. But no more. I expect to compose more in the spring - as I've said before on this thread, that's often when things start up. In fact, it's a nice morning outside, one of the first of the year round here, and I can almost feel the urge to sprout a few more notes begin right now....

The piece I was talking about cryptically before I left - White Modulations - didn't get done (well, two or three pages did). But I still want to do it. It's a really nice idea, I think, too good to let go. I may have another go at it soon. But there are plenty of other things I want to do too.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 28, 2009, 03:43:00 AM
Quote from: sul G on February 28, 2009, 12:47:51 AM
;D Derail away, fellas - you know that I'm happy for the thread to provide an arena for OT merriment!

You are a princely host!

Quote from: sul G. . . Listening over, though, there are some bits which are OK, but a few sections which I won't be able to make anything good of no matter how I splice. It's odd, because these are bits which I thought sounded OK in the hall...

I'm sure you were not hallucinating.  The difference that can settle in between how one heard the performance in the hall, and how a recording's 'profile' takes shape . . . bah!

. . . which must explain for others my fierce devotion to my friend Shauna, who did the recording for the June recital.  Though my mind knows that it is knowledge and experience rather than magic, she made the first recording of any performance of my music which faithfully depicts the event.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 28, 2009, 03:54:35 AM
I think I may be hallucinating, though, Karl - when I first listened back to the various recordings I'm sure there were things in them that aren't there now, and vice versa too! But something almost listenable is gradually emerging, in spite of all that.

Hey, just for completeness' sake, here's the church where the girls sing at Christmas. It's our school church, St Peter's, Riddlesworth, literally 10 meters from the school itself, though this photo doesn't show much of that:

(http://www.genealogysource.com/riddlesworth_P92308~1.jpg)

My classroom, btw, is the ground floor, right hand side of this photo:

(http://www.ukstudy.com/pic/Photos/Photo38.jpg)  8) 8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 28, 2009, 04:02:51 AM
Sorry, indulge a little idle googling - nice to find one's places of work online.....

photo of church interior:

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2099/2370154723_6a71f9595c.jpg?v=0)

and better photo of school:

(http://pro.corbis.com/images/PY001734.jpg?size=67&uid=%7B1d1e1f6f-aa09-4907-a2de-2995e7b91735%7D)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 28, 2009, 04:09:19 AM
Quote from: sul G on February 28, 2009, 12:47:51 AM



Actually I wrote two little carols, both in quick dashes on consecutive days. (They are both modal, in very simple ways - the first uses a F major scale, but isn't in F, the second a C major scale, but isn't in C; both, for some reason, end with a low C# in the bass). The second one is the one I wrote for the girls, the one they sang. Here's the score of both.

(My emphasis above)

To my mental ear, in the first carol, your m/M 7th/9th bass line finds the C# as the best resolution, especially with the C/D 2nd in the bar before, providing a (kind of) Phrygian A major mode.

For the second carol, I hear a polymodality struggling with a D Dorian and an E Phrygian with A minor lurking in the background, the 16th notes beginning on D in bar 48 act as a gateway leading the ear again to an A major/Phrygian conclusion.

Do you know the book by French composer Avenir de Monfred called The New Diatonic Modal Principle of Relative Music ?  It could be of interest to you: de Monfred advocated new modal scales and polymodality as a worthy opponent to what he would have considered "dodecacophony" (i.e. he was no friend of Herr Schoenberg's).   :o    

How that could happen I have no idea!   8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 28, 2009, 04:30:29 AM
Thanks for that very interesting post - interesting in more than one way, and I'll try to follow up the book you mention. I don't know how much you've been following this thread, but if you have then you'll know that this ambiguity of tonal centre is exactly what I'm searching for, at least in pieces like these two which use only one mode - polymodality, as you say, or simply a tonal focus which shifts easily and without drama from one centre to another. The opposite of classical modulation, in that sense. The C# in the first carol works musically and in its relationship with the text, I think, but it isn't in the mode - I have no problem with breaking my own 'rules' for musical reasons. In the second carol the C# also works for the same reasons, and it nicely lights up the final open fifth A-E, which otherwise implies A minor - but it also links the two carols together, as intended.

As regards:

QuoteIt could be of interest to you: de Monfred advocated new modal scales and polymodality as a worthy opponent to what he would have considered "dodecacophony"

No, I haven't heard of de Monfred, and this sounds fascinating. I know for sure that nothing I'm doing is at all new - even the idea of intersections, unions and negations appears elsewhere (to very different effect in Xenakis, for instance), and naturally there have been all sorts of experiments with composition in vaguely similar ways (think of Debussys' Voiles, for instance, though here no relationships between the two modes are exploited). And in fact, to my mind, my modes and derived sets really only function in a way similar to the various types of harmony one might find in a tonal piece - even something with a pompous name such as an intersection has its similarities to a pivot chord in tonal music.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on February 28, 2009, 04:53:37 AM
Wow! I'm jealous that you work in such a nice building! >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on February 28, 2009, 06:02:19 AM
May I invite you to repost those here (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,11331.msg280484.html#msg280484)? :-*
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 28, 2009, 06:15:35 AM
Quote from: sul G on February 28, 2009, 04:30:29 AM
Thanks for that very interesting post - interesting in more than one way, and I'll try to follow up the book you mention. I don't know how much you've been following this thread, but if you have then you'll know that this ambiguity of tonal centre is exactly what I'm searching for, at least in pieces like these two which use only one mode - polymodality, as you say, or simply a tonal focus which shifts easily and without drama from one centre to another. The opposite of classical modulation, in that sense. The C# in the first carol works musically and in its relationship with the text, I think, but it isn't in the mode - I have no problem with breaking my own 'rules' for musical reasons. In the second carol the C# also works for the same reasons, and it nicely lights up the final open fifth A-E, which otherwise implies A minor - but it also links the two carols together, as intended.

As regards:

No, I haven't heard of de Monfred, and this sounds fascinating. I know for sure that nothing I'm doing is at all new - even the idea of intersections, unions and negations appears elsewhere (to very different effect in Xenakis, for instance), and naturally there have been all sorts of experiments with composition in vaguely similar ways (think of Debussys' Voiles, for instance, though here no relationships between the two modes are exploited). And in fact, to my mind, my modes and derived sets really only function in a way similar to the various types of harmony one might find in a tonal piece - even something with a pompous name such as an intersection has its similarities to a pivot chord in tonal music.

I no longer have a copy: even Cato's vast archives have limits, especially if he wants to keep Mrs. Cato happy!   0:)  And so I have given away a good deal of my music library throughout the decades.

Anyway, I do recall that de Monfred showed examples of his own works with idiosyncratic key signatures with e.g. Bb and C# which allowed a kind of simultaneous D major/minor or A# and C# for an even more curious scale on B natural.

His works obviously never caught on, but there might be something of value for you in his polymodality theory.

One obscure CD has a small organ work of his called In Paradisum.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Organ-Club-75th-Anniversary-CD/dp/B00005Q322
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 28, 2009, 03:06:35 PM
OK, let's take the plunge (http://www.mediafire.com/?inyninnzgci)

Very far from perfect, and my splicing leaves the odd click and jump. And there's lots of chat from the conductor in the parts taken from the rehearsal. And of course, the orchestra....well, you know. But you get the idea, and you'll all be able to 'listen through', I'm sure.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 28, 2009, 03:08:06 PM
Ha! I spelled the piece's name wrong! 'Rename file', please....


EDIT - I was able to rename the file at Mediafire, even though it had been uploaded. I didn't know there was an option to do that.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on February 28, 2009, 03:50:04 PM
Far more beautiful than I could have imagined - truly fantastic piece, I don't know what else to say! Really, really wonderful.

On a more quizzical/light hearted note - in some ways the completely unintelligable conductor is a rather spooky and oddly quite good and interesting addition to the Elegy!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on February 28, 2009, 03:55:07 PM
Thanks you, Guido. That's very kind of you.  :) :)

I'm glad he sounds so muffled, of course - but even so you can hear the musicality in his voice; even though much of the time he's only counting out beats (mostly in Elegy, which is so slow and in which the 4/4 bar is often beat as if in 3 or 5) you can hear he's almost singing it: he really felt the music, I think.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on February 28, 2009, 07:36:36 PM
The Elegy was basically ruined by background noise. The Ascent, though, not so much. There's moments which are just yummy magic, like bar 44, with the triangle and xylophone background and clarinet entrance. Overall, a very enjoyable piece- I just wish it were longer.  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on March 01, 2009, 01:07:26 AM
Just listened. Of course, recording and performance could be better, but the music still speaks quite clearly. In Elegy I get a strong sense of something enormous wanting to take shape, call it an 'inchoate mountain', if you will... In Ascent you hear different musics all on their way towards the summit. The most thrilling moment for me occurs in bar 81, when the tenor trombone enters - here Elegy and Ascent are finally joined.

Congratulations, Luke! I do have a strong suspicion, though, that when you have the time and the inspiration, something far bigger will come of which this piece is only the both ravishing and impressive preliminary.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 01, 2009, 02:05:55 AM
Quote from: Jezetha on March 01, 2009, 01:07:26 AM
Just listened. Of course, recording and performance could be better, but the music still speaks quite clearly. In Elegy I get a strong sense of something enormous wanting to take shape, call it an 'inchoate mountain', if you will... In Ascent you hear different musics all on their way towards the summit. The most thrilling moment for me occurs in bar 81, when the tenor trombone enters - here Elegy and Ascent are finally joined.

Congratulations, Luke! I do have a strong suspicion, though, that when you have the time and the inspiration, something far bigger will come of which this piece is only the both ravishing and impressive preliminary.

Thanks for listening. Interesting point about bar 81 - something does happen here, maybe, beyond the mere notes, and it's interesting that you feel this to be a connection to Elegy.

Re something bigger - who knows? Perhaps next will be a symphony, then; I'm planning on writing 33.  ;D

(In some respects, however short Ascent is, I do in fact feel that writing it was a true ascent for me, and that having reached that single G I might indeed be able to go on to bigger, better things.)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 01, 2009, 04:06:56 AM
My listening must wait until (a) I've sung some Rutter and (b) sold some postcards of Hockney, Renoir & Monet . . . but I look forward keenly to listening this evening!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 02, 2009, 05:10:22 AM
Just tried listening back to the file here at school and the whole thing was nastily distorted (among other things, quite a bit too high). So were other files I tried to listen to, so it's probably the school computer - but it might be best to check what you hear against the score just in case!

Greg, I hope there isn't too much background noise in Elegy - barring a few coughs and the conductor, obviously. The rumble at the beginning and elsewhere is supposed to be there - that's the bass drum; at other points the trickery I've had to resort to is fairly obvious (I'll never make a recordign engineer!) but doesn't exactly count as background noise...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 02, 2009, 05:35:13 AM
Just downloaded it!  Cannot listen just yet, I test-listened to the first two-ish minutes . . . very excited!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 02, 2009, 06:53:27 AM
 :) Pleased it downloaded properly!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on March 02, 2009, 01:03:26 PM
Quote from: sul G on March 02, 2009, 05:10:22 AM


Greg, I hope there isn't too much background noise in Elegy - barring a few coughs and the conductor, obviously. The rumble at the beginning and elsewhere is supposed to be there - that's the bass drum; at other points the trickery I've had to resort to is fairly obvious (I'll never make a recordign engineer!) but doesn't exactly count as background noise...
What was that in the background- chipmunks?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 02, 2009, 02:18:38 PM
Where, Greg? Are you sure you didn't have it playing at the wrong pitch, as the staff computer at my work was doing today!  ;D The only extraneous noises I can hear apart from the conductor are a few coughs..
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 02, 2009, 02:53:27 PM
There are a few clicks which enter due to the editing process - these occur because the sound wave isn't smooth.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on March 02, 2009, 06:27:16 PM
Quote from: sul G on March 02, 2009, 02:18:38 PM
Where, Greg? Are you sure you didn't have it playing at the wrong pitch, as the staff computer at my work was doing today!  ;D The only extraneous noises I can hear apart from the conductor are a few coughs..
It's most noticeable at 1:24. Sounds like an angry chipmunk coughing and then giving a lecture.


I don't think it's the wrong pitch, because I compared that opening violin line to what I played, and their the same notes. It does seem to have the sound of something slightly sped up, though.

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's sped up, but the pitches just aren't altered enough to notice.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 02, 2009, 10:39:24 PM
Hmm, doesn't sound that way to me - just like someone coughing (1st clarinet, I think it was) and then the conductor saying 'molto vibrato' to the strings. So, if it also sounds a little fast then perhaps there's something wrong your end. I had precisely this problem on my PC a few months ago. I don't know why, and it fixed itself, but in the meantime I found that if I played files using e.g Quicktime instead of WMP then the problem disappeared. So, you could try that, just to check...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 02, 2009, 11:42:51 PM
Quote from: Guido on March 02, 2009, 02:53:27 PM
There are a few clicks which enter due to the editing process - these occur because the sound wave isn't smooth.

Yes, that's right. The odd thing, though, is that even when one examines the wave closely one can't see these clicks. If you could I'd have got rid of them (simply 'declicking' the whole file didn't have any effect). But having listened a few more times I think there's a lot more I can do to the file.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 04, 2009, 08:52:50 AM
Apart from Roger Swann's review (posted earlier) the only other review I can find comes from my brother's blog! ;D So, as he confesses, it's hardly unbiased, but here it is FWIW (he links to your blog, Karl):

Quote from: Luke's brotherWell I'm not the best placed to review Saturday evening's performance of Luke's new work, Elegy and Ascent, what with being a musical ignoramus and a very biased brother. I enjoyed it immensely, though, and his excellent talk beforehand (and our chats), and his reflections on how he reached this point in his artistic development, added a lot to the listening experience. It was fascinating to hear how he had, in the first half of the composition, taken part of a piano piece and redrawn it for orchestra. The original piece was composed using the chance (the drawing of cards) and Luke used a set of rules and his aesthetic sense to thread his way through this in a way that, as he pointed out, could only be his - another composer would have found another route through the chaos and made a different sort of beauty of it. To orchestrate this then, I suppose, added an extra layer of "human intervention" to the original randomness, as of course do the processes of conducting and performing the music. The second half of the Elegy and Ascent was very different but complementary: ordered but complex, and built around many interlocking, subtle and erudite ideas, as is usually the way with Luke's music. I won't say more for fear of sounding like I'm flattering my little brother, and we really can't have that. It would be even worse and kind of irrelevant to say we're proud of him, but...

I do hope that out there on't interweb somewhere somebody competent has done a proper job of reviewing the performance. One thing I have found, though, Karl Henning's blog where he previewed the concert and included Luke's notes. Also, if' you like to read scores, you can find lots of Luke's work on Scribd here (although not as yet Elegy and Ascent, I think). Hopefully in due course there will be a recording to listen to, too.

(of course, if you hang round this thread, you'll have got scores etc. already)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 04, 2009, 08:55:09 AM
Got to say, I don't know how my stuff got on Scribd, because I didn't put it there; somehow it has all the PDFs that are uploaded to Esnips - does anyone know how Scribd works?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 04, 2009, 09:14:15 AM
Oh, and the professionally-recorded CD of the concert arrived today. I haven't listened to it yet, and of course it will contain all the snarl-ups which I've tried to get rid of in the file I created. But it may well present the bits that went well in a better light, so maybe I'll be able to make a few extracts if I think it's worth it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 04, 2009, 09:16:50 AM
Hmm, don't know aught of Scribd. (And YHM, sully!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 04, 2009, 09:18:50 AM
Do I? Where?  ???
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 04, 2009, 09:20:23 AM
Quote from: sul G on March 04, 2009, 09:18:50 AM
Do I? Where?  ???

When you're not cold, you're [ ]
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 04, 2009, 09:22:39 AM
OK, got it! Thought you meant here...  :-[
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on March 04, 2009, 02:30:33 PM
Quote from: sul G on March 02, 2009, 10:39:24 PM
Hmm, doesn't sound that way to me - just like someone coughing (1st clarinet, I think it was) and then the conductor saying 'molto vibrato' to the strings. So, if it also sounds a little fast then perhaps there's something wrong your end. I had precisely this problem on my PC a few months ago. I don't know why, and it fixed itself, but in the meantime I found that if I played files using e.g Quicktime instead of WMP then the problem disappeared. So, you could try that, just to check...
You're completely right. I'm opening it using MusicMatch Jukebox, and it sounds just right. The chipmunks were really sped up sounds of the conductor. Ah, man... sounds so much better at this tempo, too.
I've had that problem with Windows Media player before, but it wasn't exactly the same way. If you open up a certain file type- it's either FLAC or something else, it'll work but just be sped up versions of the file.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 04, 2009, 02:38:24 PM
Good! That's a relief! Thanks for re-trying.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on March 05, 2009, 07:01:36 AM
Just reposting some thoughts Luke has already read in a PM (with slight rewordings here and there):

I listened to Elegy and Ascent and have to say I find Ascent simply a beautiful piece. Now, beautiful is not a word I use lightly and there's really very little in contemporary music, even among the output of my favorite composers, that I would describe that way. There are lots of "fun" pieces, and "enjoyable" pieces, and "fascinating" pieces and all that. But beauty is very rare (I'm not saying it's better but... well, perhaps it actually is). And I really think your piece is beautiful, listening to it is a wonderful emotional experience (there's probably something there for the intellect as well but the piece is very moving so I don't really notice ).

This is not to say I didn't like Elegy either. But here I have trouble making out the music clearly because of the quality of the recording. There's lots of detail that I want to hear better and that sort of distracts me from actually listening to the music...  Anyway, my feelings about Elegy are different, it doesn't so much arouse my feelings as much as a sort of curiosity. So the experience is a bit more "abstract", it's more like listening to see "what will happen next".

That difference between the two movements actually makes for quite a rewarding "total" listening experience.

I can't help but feel my description is amateurish and very superficial. I wish I could say something more substantial and with more sense. ::)

It would be great to hear Elegy and Ascent performed by an excellent orchestra! I noted that the ensemble used here had a truly exceptional pianist! No, seriously, his assured, smooth playing really stood out.

Let me just congratulate you on doing such a great job (on more count than one)!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 05, 2009, 07:20:22 AM
Lovely tribute, Maciek, and Luke's music is fully worthy of it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 07, 2009, 02:06:45 AM
I have listened to it quite a few times now and I have to say I think both movements are very beautiful in their different ways. The first reminds me of Kurtag, especially Stele or the Grabstein - these small gestures and fragments that somehow fit together to create a far greater whole.

It's nothing like I imagined it - the dangers of MIDI I guess.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 07, 2009, 04:30:59 AM
Yes, useful in some ways, MIDI is to be 'listened past'.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 07, 2009, 09:32:50 AM
Thanks everyone for all these thoughts. Maybe it's just because I'm the composer, but to me the MIDI file, whilst obviously not 'alive', and though it lacked the all-important last few pages, was a fairly good representation of the piece. Perhaps when one isn't the composer, who has every note of the piece living in his head in any case, the MIDI is harder to 'listen past', to use Karl's words.

I have a few pieces that want to be written. Some of them are no more than instrumental ensembles (I have a long-held, persistent hankering to write a string trio, that being my favourite chamber grouping); some of them come with a few very amorphous 'sensations' attached. And one of them, the White Modulations piece I mentioned here some time in September or October last year, is more fully-formed than that. It's an orchestral piece and right now my thoughts are turning back to smaller-scale groups - but maybe I should encourage myself to think big. Certainly the idea has me hooked.

Yesterday the singing teacher at my school, who is on the board of a fine group of players called Chamber Orchestra Anglia (http://www.chamberorchestraanglia.co.uk/) gave a strong hint that he'd like me to write something for them - for string orchestra, to be precise. But that's the merest chink of a possibility at the moment, taken from a snatched conversation in the corridor outside the staffroom! So perhaps it would be best not to think too much about that yet....or maybe I should!

Maybe I should have a poll: should Luke write:

a) White Modulations
b) string orchestra piece
c) string trio
d) set of songs to poems by Franz Werfel
e) Cello sonata
f) something else?

Guido, I shall take your vote for e as read, shall I?  ;D ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 07, 2009, 09:37:20 AM
My vote is conditional:

1.) If Chamber Orchestra Anglia demonstrate interest, then a string orchestra piece.
2.) Otherwise, White Modulations
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 07, 2009, 09:49:28 AM
Your vote has been counted and verified  $:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on March 07, 2009, 12:29:32 PM
1) I love works for string orchestra - the almost vocal flexibility of the strings, the power and richness of the sound.

2) There can never be enough orchestral Ottevanger.

So - I go with Karl.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 07, 2009, 02:04:31 PM
Obviously I go for the cello sonata... but... I think after doing so many works for smaller ensembles or single player and given the success of this last orchestral project, maybe you should do some larger scale pieces (go with the flow as't'were...). If you already have the idea for white modulations then I'd run with it.

A string trio sounds delicious though. Or that song cycle (maybe with obligato cello?? - I have been listening a lot to Previn's songs for soprano, cello and piano with texts by Toni Morrison* and I think they are probably the best thing he's done. Great cello sonata too!).

Who'd have thought that what a composer should compose next would ever go to an X-factor style public vote?!!

In conclusion, I'm willing to wait for a cello work! 0:) (But not too long!) ;D

*On a tangent, I'm pretty sure she's a nobel prize winner... yes, Wikipedia has decreed it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on March 07, 2009, 07:19:01 PM
My vote is obvious...... anything orchestral, of course. Although you've got a lot of great piano music, I think it's about time to catch up with the massive forces of doom.....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 07, 2009, 09:45:36 PM
Thank you all for voting. I hope you all free empowered and enfranchised by taking part in this process.  0:) Of course, it may seem peculiar - as Guido says

Quote from: Guido on March 07, 2009, 02:04:31 PM
Who'd have thought that what a composer should compose next would ever go to an X-factor style public vote?!!

...but in the spirit of true democracy I will feel free to ignore the results of the poll if they don't suit me!

The problem with writing the orchestral piece is only that it may not get played, whereas something smaller will be more likely to get an outing. And it's only fair to say that though White Modulations will be orchestral, it won't be a big orchestra. So 'Massive Forces of Doom' may be slightly misleading, Greg, though I like the terminology and think that you ought to use it yourself  ;D - I can see it now: Concerto for Electric Guitar and Massive Forces of Doom.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on March 08, 2009, 04:31:57 AM
I'm late but since the vote wouldn't count anyway, let me cast it: I find string trio and song cycle the most alluring suggestions. But, to tell the truth, I'd be happy with anything (or rather everything). Heck, even a cello sonata. >:D ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 08, 2009, 04:33:20 AM
Do I detect a slight hint that you want to publicise your work more?! ;D Getting an outing was never mentioned before! This can only be a good thing.

Do you find the effort to output ratio of orchestral works to be different to chamber works?

QuoteI can see it now: Concerto for Electric Guitar and Massive Forces of Doom.

This does sound like a good idea. Write it Greg!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 08, 2009, 09:27:50 AM
Quote from: Guido on March 08, 2009, 04:33:20 AM
Do I detect a slight hint that you want to publicise your work more?! ;D Getting an outing was never mentioned before! This can only be a good thing.

No, not exactly. I think I'll always be a wallflower. But it's nice to hear one's stuff realised, and that's one reason why writing for solo piano or piano+one is so instantly rewarding! (Though I need to get something sorted out for the Canticle Sonata, which still awaits a clarinetist and pianist getting together.)

Quote from: Guido on March 08, 2009, 04:33:20 AM
Do you find the effort to output ratio of orchestral works to be different to chamber works?

Well, simply physically, yes. When I was writing Ophruoeis there was one passage where I would spend nearly an hour writing each bar! The passage was only about 10 bars long, but it was agony to write - it was purely physical labour, no need for input from the brain, and I remember staying up to 6 in the morning writing that passage, with the Atlanta Olympics on in the background, and hearing about the Atlanta bomb going off live. That's an extreme example, of course, but the principle holds. More importantly, though, ideas that seem destined for orchestral dress come along less often and need a different type of thought, for me anyway, though I can't really explain how the thought is different.

Quote from: Guido on March 08, 2009, 04:33:20 AMThis does sound like a good idea. Write it Greg!

Yes. Or the Oil and Economic Meltdown Symphony, for mixed chorus (singing texts taken from Bloomberg) and Massive Forces of Dm.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 08, 2009, 09:43:37 AM
QuoteYes. Or the Oil and Economic Meltdown Symphony, for mixed chorus (singing texts taken from Bloomberg) and Massive Forces of Dm.

LOL!  >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 08, 2009, 09:47:13 AM
Quote from: sul G on March 08, 2009, 09:27:50 AM
No, not exactly. I think I'll always be a wallflower. But it's nice to hear one's stuff realised, and that's one reason why writing for solo piano or piano+one is so instantly rewarding! (Though I need to get something sorted out for the Canticle Sonata, which still awaits a clarinetist and pianist getting together.)

Well then, I wouldn't want to stop you writing that cello sonata then!

Quote from: sul G on March 08, 2009, 09:27:50 AM
Well, simply physically, yes. When I was writing Ophruoeis there was one passage where I would spend nearly an hour writing each bar! The passage was only about 10 bars long, but it was agony to write - it was purely physical labour, no need for input from the brain, and I remember staying up to 6 in the morning writing that passage, with the Atlanta Olympics on in the background, and hearing about the Atlanta bomb going off live. That's an extreme example, of course, but the principle holds. More importantly, though, ideas that seem destined for orchestral dress come along less often and need a different type of thought, for me anyway, though I can't really explain how the thought is different.

Oh gawd!! That's pretty astonishing...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 08, 2009, 10:44:16 AM
Quote from: Guido on March 08, 2009, 09:47:13 AM

Oh gawd!! That's pretty astonishing...

It was stuff like this. Probably shouldn't have taken quite so long, but a combination of writer's cramp and semiquaver-dazzle-blindness (  ;D ) was taking its toll...

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 08, 2009, 11:13:16 AM
Quote from: sul G on March 08, 2009, 09:27:50 AM
No, not exactly. I think I'll always be a wallflower. But it's nice to hear one's stuff realised, and that's one reason why writing for solo piano or piano+one is so instantly rewarding! (Though I need to get something sorted out for the Canticle Sonata, which still awaits a clarinetist and pianist getting together.)

Clarinetist at the ready.  And the harpist who read through my Lost Waters is also a pianist, so we may be able to get the long-awaited Canticle Sonata into train.

Remind me:  what unfinished business remains on that 'un?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 08, 2009, 11:39:07 AM
As far as I remember, none. Let me check the part over...


edit - ah, the most recent version (which is itself fairly old now) is on the other computer. But IIRC I was happy with it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 10, 2009, 10:37:21 AM
No, I definitely could see bars of that complexity taking that long. What happened to CUMS composing competition winners in the days before extracting parts from a Sibelius score - did the composer have to write out all the parts too?!

QuoteMore importantly, though, ideas that seem destined for orchestral dress come along less often and need a different type of thought, for me anyway, though I can't really explain how the thought is different.

This is interesting.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 10, 2009, 10:42:32 AM
Quote from: Guido on March 10, 2009, 10:37:21 AM
No, I definitely could see bars of that complexity taking that long. What happened to CUMS composing competition winners in the days before extracting parts from a Sibelius score - did the composer have to write out all the parts too?!

Perhaps the competition paid copyists.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 10, 2009, 12:57:46 PM
Not if my experience is anything to go by - I copied some of the parts for Huw Watkins' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huw_Watkins)* CUMS winning piece without any payment! On the other hand, he asked me to, as CUMS were being rubbish about getting them done on time, so it was really a favour for a friend and maybe he never told them that I'd done the work for them. Maybe I should phone him up and ask for some renumeration, with interest.  ;D

*never knew he had a Wiki page!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 10, 2009, 01:14:27 PM
Quote from: sul G on March 10, 2009, 12:57:46 PM
Not if my experience is anything to go by - I copied some of the parts for Huw Watkins' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huw_Watkins)* CUMS winning piece without any payment! On the other hand, he asked me too as CUMS were being rubbish about getting them done on time, so it was really a favour for a friend and maybe he never told them that I'd done the work for them. Maybe I should phone him up and ask for some renumeration, with interest.  ;D

*never knew he had a Wiki page!
Yes you should! By the way, he's written a cello sonata... just saying...

;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 10, 2009, 01:29:20 PM
Yes, but his brother is a superb cellist. I'm not sure I know any cellists at all.........  >:D >:D ;) ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on March 10, 2009, 01:54:54 PM
How about a piano concerto then? ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 10, 2009, 02:01:24 PM
Piano Concerto? That's so last century....


(though I'm always open to offers  ;D )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on March 10, 2009, 02:21:09 PM
OK, OK, how 'bout an Oil and Economic Meltdown Concerto for prepared piano and Massive Forces of Doom?

(I know, I know, prepared piano is more than a bit last century too... How about synthesizer? No? Meh? Oh, I don't know with you guys! >:()
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 10, 2009, 03:27:59 PM
No, I think you're on to something...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 10, 2009, 03:34:59 PM
Oh. My. God... You MUST write a sonata for prepared piano and cello. I have been wanting one of these in the repertoire for years!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 10, 2009, 03:36:26 PM
(BTW, I am a little apprehensive about being too keen to say I'll play your cello sonata if and when it materialises - your music in general looks very hard to play... :-[ Of course I'll demand a copy and try my damndest though!  :))
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 10, 2009, 03:38:30 PM
Prepared piano and cello is a nice idea, actually! Have you heard Yo-Yo Ma playing that Franghiz Ali-Zadeh piece with the piano prepared by the placement of a bead necklace across the strings? It's really rather beautiful, like all the Ali-Zadeh I've heard.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 10, 2009, 03:41:28 PM
Quote from: Guido on March 10, 2009, 03:36:26 PM
(BTW, I am a little apprehensive about being too keen to say I'll play your cello sonata if and when it materialises - your music in general looks very hard to play... :-[ Of course I'll demand a copy and try my damndest though!  :))

Well, the piano stuff might look hard, but it's written for my fingers and to me it seems really quite easy (most of the time). I'd probably make a cello piece more accessible - I'm just enough of a cellist to know what's playable whilst not being so good that I dare to make it too hard. Whereas not knowing much about (say) clarinet technique I'm not really that sure how hard or easy the Canticle Sonata is - though Karl says it's doable.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 10, 2009, 03:47:01 PM
Yes, the clarinet sonata was making me a little scared. I know that you write expertly for strings of course.

Habil-Sajahy for cello & prepared piano... Yes I have that CD but for some reason haven't copied it onto my computer so will have to wait a week before I can hear it... I can't really remember the piece at all. I was strangely underwhelmed by the Silk Road Project CDs in general, apart from those fantastic Finnish Folk Songs by Mamiya (sentimental though they are). Trying to get the music for them is impossible. I should give those CDs another listen. Habil-Sajahy is the only piece I ever found for cello and prepared piano when I looked a few years ago.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on March 11, 2009, 03:16:29 AM
Quote from: sul G on March 10, 2009, 03:27:59 PM
No, I think you're on to something...

Concerto for prepared piano, two prepared synthesisers eight-hands and electric guitar ensemble...?

I was also thinking of something small scale. Like maybe a miniature for cello and sellotape and tape.

(I wish it was called cellotape... ::) Here is another idea: American Concerto for cello and jello. )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 11, 2009, 03:24:28 AM
Maciek, why did you never become a composer?  ??? ;D  You have all that it takes, on the evidence of the above. The secret is all in the bizarre combination of instruments and the enigmatic title - the notes don't really matter, as I'm sure Karl, Mark etc. will agree*. The above-mentioned Huw Watkins himself started to become more successful when he stopped calling his works 'Three Pieces for....' (as he tended to do when we werre at university together) and began applying randomly selected adjectives to them... (true fact)


* heavily applied  ;D ;) etc to be taken as read here....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 11, 2009, 03:25:24 AM
Quote from: Guido on March 10, 2009, 03:47:01 PM
Yes, the clarinet sonata was making me a little scared. I know that you write expertly for strings of course.

Habil-Sajahy for cello & prepared piano... Yes I have that CD but for some reason haven't copied it onto my computer so will have to wait a week before I can hear it... I can't really remember the piece at all.

I'll try to sort that out for you later...

Quote from: Guido on March 10, 2009, 03:47:01 PM
I was strangely underwhelmed by the Silk Road Project CDs in general, apart from those fantastic Finnish Folk Songs by Mamiya (sentimental though they are). Trying to get the music for them is impossible. I should give those CDs another listen. Habil-Sajahy is the only piece I ever found for cello and prepared piano when I looked a few years ago.

I agree about that CD - nice sounds, but it doesn't add up to much.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 11, 2009, 06:59:20 AM
QuoteI agree about that CD - nice sounds, but it doesn't add up to much.

Yes, this is it exactly.

I can't stand that thing of every piece being called something - usually something Eastern sounding, maybe a couple of adjectives, usually with a 'clever' double meaning etc. etc. It really grates, but I'm not sure why. The only person I forgive it of is Ades because the music is so convincing and good.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 11, 2009, 07:00:40 AM
Write the music well, and it will carry anything else.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 11, 2009, 07:04:06 AM
Quote from: Guido on March 11, 2009, 06:59:20 AM
Yes, this is it exactly.

I can't stand that thing of every piece being called something - usually something Eastern sounding, maybe a couple of adjectives, usually with a 'clever' double meaning etc. etc. It really grates, but I'm not sure why.


Note to self - scrap White Modulations!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 11, 2009, 07:05:41 AM
Hah! Do no such thing!  :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Dr. Dread on March 11, 2009, 07:09:00 AM
"Kitten on the Keys"!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 11, 2009, 07:12:55 AM
Quote from: Mn Dave on March 11, 2009, 07:09:00 AM
"Kitten on the Keys"!

Hello, Modulation!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 11, 2009, 10:47:01 AM
I'm not sure I understand what you're on about....  ???
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 11, 2009, 10:52:15 AM
Dave, help a chap out?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 11, 2009, 03:21:20 PM
Oh, and Karl, the latest version of the Canticle Sonata (I should say, the last version) is the one pasted here a while back. Here it is again, with the part. I'm afraid I never got round to neatening up the part, most particularly in the second movement where some of the sharps are a little squashed in to their respective noteheads. But for now it will do.

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 11, 2009, 03:33:41 PM
That's the second time I've seen echotone in a clarinet sonata - is it an actual timbral effect on the clarinet, rather than just a musical instruction?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 11, 2009, 03:56:56 PM
can't believe you composed this piece two years ago...

just a little note - page 22 - the note at the bottom has been cut off in the PDF. This piece really needs to be played. Karl - playthe thing, already!  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Dr. Dread on March 11, 2009, 03:58:05 PM
Quote from: sul G on March 11, 2009, 10:47:01 AM
I'm not sure I understand what you're on about....  ???

Me neither. That's part of the fun.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on March 11, 2009, 04:19:43 PM
Quote from: Guido on March 11, 2009, 03:33:41 PM
That's the second time I've seen echotone in a clarinet sonata - is it an actual timbral effect on the clarinet, rather than just a musical instruction?
I'm wondering that, too. There was a thread a couple years ago about echotones in Mahler's 3rd, but I can't remember what anyone wrote about it.  :-\
And now I'm left wondering, too...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 11, 2009, 11:37:51 PM
As far as I understand - Karl or Mark can correct this - the echotone functions by restricting the vibration of the reed more than usual and thus by subduing the tone; it's the same thing as subtone I think, but I was aware of the term echotone first, so it's the one I reach for first.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 12, 2009, 12:27:29 AM
Ok cheers. I will bear that in mind for the clarinet transcription that I am playing...

Echotone is more poetic than subtone.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on March 12, 2009, 03:13:56 PM
QuoteEchotone is more poetic than subtone.  Smiley
Hmmmm.... yeah.  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 16, 2009, 11:15:34 AM
The conductor of Elegy and Ascent just sent me a review - not sure what to make of this, but I think it's positive! Operative line:

Quote from: Peter Collett, Leicester MercuryJarring, relaxing, random, with themes of fate, memory and now-ness, the first performance of Luke Ottevanger's Elegy and Ascent could not fail to grab attention. The program description did not endear me to this work, but by the end I was intruiged by its ingenuity and the thoughts it conveyed

Read between the lines for me, fellas - good or bad?  ;D

Meanwhile, the conductor's cousin, FWIW, wrote this to him:

QuoteI am impressed by [the] Mount Kailash image in music. As we climb the mountain everything gets simpler and we leave the differences and commentaries behind. When we reach the peak, we find there all others who have also left the stuff behind.

which is really lovely!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 16, 2009, 11:19:20 AM
Quote from: sul G on March 16, 2009, 11:15:34 AM
Read between the lines for me, fellas - good or bad?  ;D

Quite the tangle isn't it?

I take it for good, though  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on March 16, 2009, 11:30:00 AM
This might be easier to do if we break it up: he liked the piece but didn't like the program notes. So I say it's definitely positive.

I may be wrong, though, since I'm not entirely familiar with the word "now-ness".
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 16, 2009, 12:27:42 PM
I would say positive... bit of a weird one though!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 16, 2009, 02:46:37 PM
The way I read it:

Jarring, relaxing, random - each is accurate (not forgetting that Elegy was written using 'random' methods)

with themes of fate, memory and now-ness - true as far as it goes

the first performance of Luke Ottevanger's Elegy and Ascent could not fail to grab attention. - excellent!

The program description did not endear me to this work - fair enough, but I wonder why - too wordy? just not in tune with his interests/tastes?

but by the end I was intruiged by its ingenuity and the thoughts it conveyed - well, ingenuity and intruiging thought processes are good....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 16, 2009, 03:03:33 PM
. . . and the sonic affections may follow.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 16, 2009, 03:05:23 PM
so... have you decided what to work on yet??
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 16, 2009, 03:06:28 PM
Yes. And I will post an update on it in a little while....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 16, 2009, 03:15:58 PM
The electorate awaits . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on March 17, 2009, 01:10:39 AM
Quote from: sul G on March 16, 2009, 02:46:37 PM
The way I read it:

Jarring, relaxing, random - each is accurate (not forgetting that Elegy was written using 'random' methods)

with themes of fate, memory and now-ness - true as far as it goes

the first performance of Luke Ottevanger's Elegy and Ascent could not fail to grab attention. - excellent!

The program description did not endear me to this work - fair enough, but I wonder why - too wordy? just not in tune with his interests/tastes?

but by the end I was intruiged by its ingenuity and the thoughts it conveyed - well, ingenuity and intruiging thought processes are good....

The review is positive, IMO. The critic obviously didn't like the program description, presumably because of its intellectuality ('too clever by half') or because it pre-empted anything a critic might possibly say... But - he was convinced by the music itself. Perhaps a lesson for the future - let the music speak for itself (in spite of the fact you are a very aware artist), the music is intriguing and eloquent enough. After you have been recognised, Luke, then is the time for providing fascinating insights into the philosophical underpinnings of your music...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: John Copeland on March 17, 2009, 01:15:09 AM
OFF TOPIC

Jezetha, your inbox is full.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 17, 2009, 01:15:23 AM
Thanks, Johan - you are surely right about this. Elegy and Ascent was a big deal for me, not because it was an orchestral piece getting a performance but for all the personal reasons that a reader of this thread will maybe understand. To me, it was a very simple piece, in essence, and maybe I should have left it at that (though the program note for it was, I should mention, not significantly longer than that for either of the Beethoven pieces). But at the same time, there was so much I wanted to say....

And on to other matters...

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on March 16, 2009, 03:15:58 PM
The electorate awaits . . . .

...and the democratic will of the people shall be done! Though in this case the word 'democratic' carries about the same meaning as it does in the phrase 'Democratic Republic of Congo', as you'll see.

So, most of you put your tick in the box marked 'Orchestra piece', meaning either White Modulations or a string orchestra piece if such a thing is asked for. The string orchestra piece is a million miles off happening, however, and though I allowed myself the luxury of thinking a few things through so that if it comes off I won't have to start from scratch, nevertheless I don't feel any burning compulsion to write it yet. As for White Modulations - I love the idea (and I know I haven't gone into that here yet) and I will write the piece, but I know that I'm a 'seasonal' composer, and as White Modulations is very much a cold-weather piece I think I will leave it until later in the year. That might seem a ridiculous reason to you - reading it back, even I think it is - but it's how I feel: White Modulations (or the image I have of it) is still, magical, crystalline and cold. I can't write it when the sun is just coming out again and everything's starting to spring up...

Rather surprisingly even to me the work which I keep coming back to is the cello sonata, and again, I think that's a seasonal thing. A few weeks ago on the 'emotions/keys' thread I expressed my feeling that:

Quoteit's precisely these mysterious early stages of the composing process, when we are closest to the composer's subconscious, in which I, personally, am most interested

Well, I've only just got beyond this early stage with the cello sonata in the last couple of days so I thought I'd fill you in on precisely these mysterious early stages, the point at which a composition really begins.

The idea of a cello sonata has been in my head for only one reason, and that's because of a couple of very simple images that stuck in my head sometime last year, summer or spring - prompted by the drive home from work through the forest, where the roads are bordered by scrubby bushes and undergrowth. The images are simple, as I say - warmth, drowsiness, a bee buzzing lazily from flower to flower, and superimposed on this a shadowy bar or two of score, a muted cello drifting, trilling, nestling in and over soft piano chords, the tonal centre somewhere in the region of B major (though the music modal, of course) - B major not because of some crass apian symbolism (B = Bee!  ;D ::) :o ) but, I suppose, because B, to me, is hedonistic, lazy, warm.

That's as far as I'd got until Sunday, though it was enough to keep the idea of a cello sonata in my mind (that should be obvious, as it was one of my proposed options a few posts back). Then on Sunday, as I drove the same home-work route I had another little flash which suggested a second movement to follow the 'drowsy' one. This time I was looking up at the trees, and the sun beating through them, and I was listening to one of my favourite pieces of non-classical music, a stunning jam session by Boban Markovic's band and guest violinist Felix Lajko. This time I felt rawness, raggedness, unbuttoned earthy joy, spontaneity; again the sun warms the music through, gives it life. I saw ways in which my music as it has been (e.g. in Ascent) could be brought close to some of the things that happen in Markovic and music of that type without relinquishing its own 'personality'. By the end of the drive I'd determined quite a lot of how the piece would work:

First movement - Drowsy, B major-ish feeling (I've determined the main mode for this movement, actually, as well, and some basic types of harmonic and melodic motion - rather pleased with this). A lazy rondo feeling, as different modal areas and textures alternate with this basic sound (the bee flitting to different flowers!  ;D ).

Second movement - Earthy, raw, G-centred. Additive metres rather as in 7/8 of Ascent, but gradually expanding rather than contracting, so that by the later stages each bar becomes its own world full of a variety of incident. Each area of new metre/new mode or modal relation is separated by an extravert (and maybe only sketchily notated) cello cadenza which breaks down the modal barriers.

Both movements seem to be united by this feeling of warmth, of the sun making one sleepy and sweet, and the other drunk and  hairy-chested. Again, I think of spring, of the Canticle Sonata (prompted by the Canticle to the Sun, full of imagery of sun, earth, water and sky, and also composed in spring), of Quiverings, the little piano piece I wrote about this time last year which again was prompted by these first stirrings outside. At the point of 'inspiration' all this happens quite unconsciously. Then looking back at it I see the similarities, year on year.

Anyway, I'm very excited about getting going on this one, so I'll keep you posted.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on March 17, 2009, 01:23:28 AM
Quote from: John on March 17, 2009, 01:15:09 AM
OFF TOPIC

Jezetha, your inbox is full.

Hm. Can't be. Something must have gone awry since I renewed my subscription, John. I'll inform Rob. Why not send your mail to jezetha*xs4all.nl (and the * is an @)?

And now I have to get on with my mail round...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 17, 2009, 01:27:33 AM
By the way, for those who want to hear Markovic/Lajko's Crni Voz (http://www.mediafire.com/?gv4lzyzqmif), the piece which got me started on the second movement of this hoped-for cello sonata. I've added in Turceasca, a track by Kronos/Taraf de Haidouks, too - a little less 'authentic', perhaps, but if it's OK by the Taraf it's OK by me. And I think it's a hell of a lot of fun. What the pieces share, apart from the obvious, is the additive rhythms and the blazing tutti-wildly out of control solo juxtapositions which I love. Well, maybe that's obvious too, actually.  ::) Play them loud.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 17, 2009, 01:41:50 AM
If you liked the Felix Lajko, btw, there's loads of him youtube, including the whole of a concert given with the Boban Markovic guys. Needless to say, I downloaded all of that one long ago.

However, this one, where he's simply playing under a tree, I particularly like:

http://www.youtube.com/v/lPzcTXN6Ayg
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 17, 2009, 01:58:21 AM
OK last one (http://lpzctxn6ayg), and this is pure cheese, and also not really the same thing, being more 'gypsy' music (cafe gypsies, a la Liszt) than the previous ones. But spectacular exuberant playing anyway, I think.

I'll stop now.  ::)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 17, 2009, 04:08:52 AM
As far as I'm concerned, it's posts like this (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.msg287308.html#msg287308) which justify the forum  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 17, 2009, 04:53:24 AM
Thank you, Karl. And in turn, I value both this space, in which I can put down these outpourings, and the group who gather here and are kind enough to read them.   :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 17, 2009, 05:11:14 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on March 17, 2009, 04:08:52 AM
As far as I'm concerned, it's posts like this (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.msg287308.html#msg287308) which justify the forum  :)

Absolutely! This is really very exciting news indeed Luke...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Mark G. Simon on March 17, 2009, 05:27:01 PM
Quote from: sul G on March 11, 2009, 11:37:51 PM
As far as I understand - Karl or Mark can correct this - the echotone functions by restricting the vibration of the reed more than usual and thus by subduing the tone; it's the same thing as subtone I think, but I was aware of the term echotone first, so it's the one I reach for first.

http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/~ahugill/manual/clarinet/movies/subtone.mov
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 17, 2009, 06:18:29 PM
Cheers!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 18, 2009, 03:41:26 PM
Well, I did say that I find these early stages of composition fascinating and revealing, so I might as well describe a minor moment of revelation I had during one of my rehearsals today.

Earlier, I described the 'image' I have of my hoped-for cello sonata's finale like this:

Quote from: me...Additive metres rather as in 7/8 of Ascent, but gradually expanding rather than contracting, so that by the later stages each bar becomes its own world full of a variety of incident...

but actually this idea of each bar being 'its own world' didn't come at exactly the same time as the rest of the 'image', but a few hours later. (The idea, though, is one that's always attracted me.) When the initial 'image' came to me I was driving to my school to rehearse the girls in a little Shakespeare confection they are putting on next week. To cover scene changes etc I began to plunder the wonders of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and today, doing the same, I realised that one of my choices on Sunday contained precisely the sort of each-bar-is-a-world that, later that evening, I felt needed to be a part of my sonata's finale. The piece, btw, is an In Nomine by John Bull - first two incredible pages below - which the ancient edition I have puts into a notional 11/4 - which is, in fact, the only logical choice (8+3). These are precisely the kind of long, incident-packed, contrapuntal bars that I love.

It's totally insignificant, of course, but interests me because of the light it sheds on the strange workings of the mind - if my piece turns out the way I currently envisage, will it be due to my copy of the FVB falling open at that particular page on Sunday, when my mind was obviously more receptive than normal?

Today, btw, I did a little work on the 'Drowsy' movement. As yet, I'm just throwing notes onto paper without much plan; later I will work through the resulting splurge to pick through the ideas which seem most fruitful for the sonata itself.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 18, 2009, 04:36:45 PM
Quote from: sul G on March 18, 2009, 03:41:26 PM
Well, I did say that I find these early stages of composition fascinating and revealing, so I might as well describe a minor moment of revelation I had during one of my rehearsals today.

Earlier, I described the 'image' I have of my hoped-for cello sonata's finale like this:

but actually this idea of each bar being 'its own world' didn't come at exactly the same time as the rest of the 'image', but a few hours later. (The idea, though, is one that's always attracted me.) When the initial 'image' came to me I was driving to my school to rehearse the girls in a little Shakespeare confection they are putting on next week. To cover scene changes etc I began to plunder the wonders of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and today, doing the same, I realised that one of my choices on Sunday contained precisely the sort of each-bar-is-a-world that, later that evening, I felt needed to be a part of my sonata's finale. The piece, btw, is an In Nomine by John Bull - first two incredible pages below - which the ancient edition I have puts into a notional 11/4 - which is, in fact, the only logical choice (8+3). These are precisely the kind of long, incident-packed, contrapuntal bars that I love.

It's totally insignificant, of course, but interests me because of the light it sheds on the strange workings of the mind - if my piece turns out the way I currently envisage, will it be due to my copy of the FVB falling open at that particular page on Sunday, when my mind was obviously more receptive than normal?

Today, btw, I did a little work on the 'Drowsy' movement. As yet, I'm just throwing notes onto paper without much plan; later I will work through the resulting splurge to pick through the ideas which seem most fruitful for the sonata itself.


This is all very interesting.

Would it be a crime to admit that I didn't know nor had heard of before the Fitzwilliam Virginal book?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 18, 2009, 07:06:17 PM
Quote from: sul G on March 18, 2009, 03:41:26 PM
. . . As yet, I'm just throwing notes onto paper without much plan . . . .

That can be made to work, and very nicely, too.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on March 19, 2009, 01:58:55 AM
Quote from: sul G on March 18, 2009, 03:41:26 PM
Well, I did say that I find these early stages of composition fascinating and revealing, so I might as well describe a minor moment of revelation I had during one of my rehearsals today.
(...)

It's totally insignificant, of course, but interests me because of the light it sheds on the strange workings of the mind - if my piece turns out the way I currently envisage, will it be due to my copy of the FVB falling open at that particular page on Sunday, when my mind was obviously more receptive than normal?

I share your fascination with the creative process, so I am following your own with keen interest, Luke. And that fortuitous falling open of the FVB, it's all part and parcel of the process itself. I know it from my own experience.

Addition: Colin Wilson calls this Faculty X. Your mind is sharp and concentrated and all kinds of coincidences occur which help you along.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 19, 2009, 02:07:05 AM
Absolutely, Johan - I'm very used to these odd occurences, and also, though it's a different thing, to peculiar coincidences, which I tend to take as confirmation that I'm doing something right. Gavin Bryars is a composer who has always thrived on coincidences to push his work along. A piece by him springs to mind - The English Mailcoach, IIRC (the disc is at home and I can't check) which quotes Busoni and Holst, picking up on the fact that German H = English B, that Busoni was published by Breitkopf und Hartel, and that Holst was published by Boosey and Hawkes. There's more to it than that, of course...

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on March 18, 2009, 07:06:17 PM
That can be made to work, and very nicely, too.

Well, as you know, it's something I often do, and am happy to leave it at that. But in this case, I want to cherrypick from the results! A sonata requires more rigour, more neatness, less discursiveness and less going-with-the-flow, of course. This is also how I composed the Canticle Sonata.

And yes, Guido, that is a crime. Remedy it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on March 19, 2009, 03:00:09 AM
mmm... spotify!

If you havent got it yet, you definitely should - its free music, at listenable quality, that instantly streams to your computer and its completely legal - loads of labels have joined it... I've just discovered it. It is the future.

So yes it turns out this FVB is really rather special. I really need to hear more renaissance music. I've always loved it when I've heard it in concert, but have never properly explored it. Spotify means that I wont need to bankrupt myself when learning about it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 19, 2009, 07:50:59 AM
Quote from: Guido on March 19, 2009, 03:00:09 AM
So yes it turns out this FVB is really rather special.

It is, isn't it? Even though I've been playing and listening to this sort of thing for ages, I'm still routinely amazed by the degree of complexity - harmonic and especially rhythmic - these pieces often work up to. Witness the '11/4' in the one I posted, and the pungent false relations in it; witness the extreme chromaticism of some of the pieces, pieces traversing all keys in those pre-ET days; witness the leaping, prancing triplets and metric modulations a la Carter (OK, Carter at his simplest, but still!) that occur throughout. It's so refreshing and fingertwisting in an entirely different way

This is the sort of music which lies behind the rhythmical spring and independent part writing of Tippett, and I feel there is some similarity to some of my own pieces too (e.g. the Unfinished Study from 2005, but elsewhere too) though it's really the ars subtilior connection which has been in my mind more frequently.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on March 21, 2009, 04:56:12 PM
Quote from: sul G on March 17, 2009, 01:27:33 AM
By the way, for those who want to hear Markovic/Lajko's Crni Voz (http://www.mediafire.com/?gv4lzyzqmif), the piece which got me started on the second movement of this hoped-for cello sonata. I've added in Turceasca, a track by Kronos/Taraf de Haidouks, too - a little less 'authentic', perhaps, but if it's OK by the Taraf it's OK by me. And I think it's a hell of a lot of fun. What the pieces share, apart from the obvious, is the additive rhythms and the blazing tutti-wildly out of control solo juxtapositions which I love. Well, maybe that's obvious too, actually.  ::) Play them loud.

Thanks for this! :D I have a few Boban Markovic recordings (pieces/tracks, not whole albums) but I don't think this is one of them (haven't listened in a while).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on March 21, 2009, 06:06:21 PM
It's a real belter, isn't it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 01, 2009, 02:50:21 AM
In contrast to Karl's enviably controlled, planned and professional compositional exploits with stars and guitars, as detailed at Henning HQ, sul G is currently conforming to type - sitting at the piano and splurging lots of notes onto paper. Pretty much the same sort of thing as with Quiverings last year - I'm very happy with that piece, even though I haven't talked about it much here. The main difference, technically, is that there are two modes here, not one, though they are almost interchangeable as each is a full 8 notes large. But the more important difference is in the tone - this new piece is a good deal more regressively, passionately romantic, deliberately so - replete with Tristan chords, even! - because I want to inject a bit of Tchaikovskian adolescence into my music: the beauty of passion experienced rather than the beauty of passion recalled. (Seems to me this could be the underlying difference between a Tchaikovsky and a Brahms, in fact, and a reason the former detested the latter to such a degree, but I think this is what is known as going OT. Or maybe not.). Let's see where this one goes. Could be the work of a single day, I suspect...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 01, 2009, 02:56:07 AM
Hey, I'm a great believer in note-splurging!  Splurge on, lad!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 01, 2009, 03:01:13 AM
Yes, I'm off to splurge some more once I've posted this clarification  :) :

Tchaikovsky as adolescent is not meant pejoratively. I'm borrowing the description from Wilfrid Mellers, a musicologist who, as we all know, used language very carefully and precisely. The term 'adolescent', usually meant as an insult, is itself used by Mellers neutrally, non-judgementally - and he thinks Tchaikovsky is the composer of genius working in this adolescent mode. I take him to mean what I said above - that in Tchaikovsky the passion, pain and pleasure is right up front: he lives it, we live it with him, in the moment. It's not sublimated, it isn't recalled in cathartic retrospect. This is one entirely valid mode of composing - and it's probably the reason why Tchaikovsky, often sneered at or ignored by the 'elite', is so loved by the 'masses' (ugh!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 01, 2009, 03:04:48 AM
The cello sonata is not forgotten, btw, though I haven't posted about it. On the contrary, it's at the front of my mind (the part that deals with music, anyway). But I'm in that phase, post-inspiration, pre-perspiration, which I seem to have to go through with every large-scale piece. I've learnt to accept this and not force things before they're ready, so in the meantime, I's a-splurgin'!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 01, 2009, 03:06:19 AM
I knew you weren't speaking any ill of Tchaikovsky.  Either of us would love to write something both as good and as loveable as a dozen Tchaikovsky works.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 01, 2009, 03:07:46 AM
I'd be happy with just one of them, Karl!

But my clarification needs some clarification too, I think:

Quote from: sul G on April 01, 2009, 03:01:13 AM
This is one entirely valid mode of composing - and it's probably the reason why Tchaikovsky, often sneered at or ignored by the 'elite', is so loved by the 'masses' (ugh!)

Bit of a Seanian cliche, that, sorry. But you know what I mean....!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 01, 2009, 08:08:02 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 01, 2009, 02:50:21 AM
Could be the work of a single day, I suspect...

No, it won't be, but I got about 5 or 6 minutes done. That's a lot, for me! I hope to finish it tomorrow.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 01, 2009, 08:32:09 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 01, 2009, 08:08:02 AM
No, it won't be, but I got about 5 or 6 minutes done. That's a lot, for me! I hope to finish it tomorrow.

That's a lot for any of us!  Well done!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on April 01, 2009, 08:49:22 AM
I was getting all excited as I thought you were talking about the cello sonata, but alas, you weren't. Still this piece sounds exciting!

I can't remember if Mellers calls all of Barber's work adolescent or just certain works - (First Symphony for example?) - I could certainly see it applying to Barber, but then there's that aching nostalgia too which is about trying to recapture youth (Knoxville for example), which would fall more into the Brahms category I would guess... I must buy that book - I've never before read such intellgient and insightful musical criticism.

I once saw an interview with John Williams where he said that he wrote about 15 minutes of film music a day when doing the star wars films which he said was about average for film composing! Pretty terrifying!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 01, 2009, 09:03:10 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 01, 2009, 08:32:09 AM
That's a lot for any of us!  Well done!

Yes, but there's the old quantity v quality dilemma to think about! Did I do too much? I can't be sure yet.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 01, 2009, 09:05:11 AM
But I do love writing like this, for better or worse. It's a kind of wild, free-form letting-go which balances out the more formally considered pieces - though of course the piece creates its own form and, being me, there's always something of a sonata dialectic going on, as there is in this new one.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 01, 2009, 09:08:24 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 01, 2009, 09:05:11 AM
But I do love writing like this, for better or worse. It's a kind of wild, free-form letting-go which balances out the more formally considered pieces - though of course the piece creates its own form and, being me, there's always something of a sonata dialectic going on, as there is in this new one.

I am relieved to hear this . . . the various elements have a familiarish ring.

Keep it going, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 02, 2009, 04:45:55 AM
Struggling on. Onwards and sideways....  ::)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 02, 2009, 05:49:14 AM
My bass flute 'overlay' to the tidy harp cross-staff chords has been rather an extended splurge, too.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 02, 2009, 11:27:54 AM
Is that good or bad?

So, today's work not really as satisfying as yesterday's, though I may have got some good stuff out of it. We'll see how I feel in the morning. But actually, I also value days like today as in their own way they confirm the quality of what I wrote yesterday. When the splurging flows well, I always doubt the quality of what's coming out - it shouldn't be so easy, should it? - so a little difficulty the next day is reassuring. The same thing happened with the composition of my Improvisations in 2003, and I actually turned it into a guiding compositional principle: when it comes, let it come and trust it, when it doesn't, don't force it and don't worry. This simple principle was quite a discovery for me actually, and taught me to trust and have confidence in myself. That's one reason why those pieces are special to me.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 02, 2009, 11:52:29 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 02, 2009, 11:27:54 AM
Is that good or bad?

Oh, good, I think. (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,92.msg294372.html#msg294372)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 02, 2009, 12:02:04 PM
Quote from: sul G on April 02, 2009, 11:27:54 AM
So, today's work not really as satisfying as yesterday's, though I may have got some good stuff out of it. We'll see how I feel in the morning. But actually, I also value days like today as in their own way they confirm the quality of what I wrote yesterday. When the splurging flows well, I always doubt the quality of what's coming out - it shouldn't be so easy, should it? - so a little difficulty the next day is reassuring. The same thing happened with the composition of my Improvisations in 2003, and I actually turned it into a guiding compositional principle: when it comes, let it come and trust it, when it doesn't, don't force it and don't worry. This simple principle was quite a discovery for me actually, and taught me to trust and have confidence in myself. That's one reason why those pieces are special to me.

Your trust and your confidence in yourself are well placed.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 06, 2009, 12:19:31 PM
Well, after a few days in which I didn't get a chance to work on the above-mentioned piano piece, I finished it today. Given my working methods on pieces of this type, it's no surprise that the music has a diary-like quality - IOW, today's music takes the material invented and developed a few days ago into places I didn't expect it to go. For some reason, the last page and a bit of this piece suddenly steps out into territory which to my ears sounds very lonely and desolate. Sean diagnosed some kind of neurosis - 'I fear for all of us and the whole world...who are you? What loss and sadness possesses us?' - with my last sonata, in 2007 (though he liked the piece itself very much IIRC) (http://www.good-music-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,9746.msg402097.html#msg402097). I wasn't sure about that, but if he said the same listening to this piece, I'd agree with him. It's really quite disconcerting; I've rarely been so affected by something I've written.

Technically, though, there is no difference between today's music and that which preceded it; it may be that I'm alone in sensing this desolate side to the end of the piece. Maybe I'm simply losing it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 06, 2009, 01:31:55 PM
(* lurks & reads *)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 07, 2009, 12:21:43 AM
Still don't know what to make of this new piece. I think there's some work required at more than a couple of points. But - still, and this is so odd - the essence of it frightens me somewhat, like Scriabin and his 6th Sonata! And like that work, which doesn't seem to affect anyone else as it affected its own composer, I doubt anyone else will hear much disturbing in this new piece of mine when I am finished with it and present it here.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on April 07, 2009, 02:58:24 AM
Well, I like to be frightened by music (in a good way). Bring it on, Luke!  $:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 07, 2009, 03:08:02 AM
To be clear, it isn't frightening in any way due to dissonance or violence of any sort. No, it's just so...desolate. To my ears!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on April 07, 2009, 03:18:04 AM
Bring on the desolation! I can handle it.  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 07, 2009, 03:34:31 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 07, 2009, 03:08:02 AM
To be clear, it isn't frightening in any way due to dissonance or violence of any sort. No, it's just so...desolate. To my ears!

Could be resonating with Holy Week.

Or not, of course!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 07, 2009, 03:37:10 AM
Well, as it probably represents some drastic problem in my psyche, I'm not sure I want to probe too much!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on April 07, 2009, 05:07:26 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 06, 2009, 12:19:31 PM
Sean diagnosed some kind of neurosis - 'I fear for all of us and the whole world...who are you? What loss and sadness possesses us?' - with my last sonata, in 2007 (though he liked the piece itself very much IIRC) (http://www.good-music-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,9746.msg402097.html#msg402097)

Ha! A place where Sean cannot deregister! >:D

I'm sure I'm speaking for many when I say your recent comments are making us very curious, Luke. 0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 07, 2009, 05:12:15 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 07, 2009, 03:37:10 AM
Well, as it probably represents some drastic problem in my psyche, I'm not sure I want to probe too much!

Offhand, I should say your psyche is just dandy.  But in all events, I am apt to agree;  write the music, and leave the psyche be  0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 07, 2009, 05:50:26 AM
Quote from: Maciek on April 07, 2009, 05:07:26 AM
Ha! A place where Sean cannot deregister! >:D

;D Of course, the same goes for me - that's one place where lukeottevanger is still alive and kicking!

Quote from: Maciek on April 07, 2009, 05:07:26 AMI'm sure I'm speaking for many when I say your recent comments are making us very curious, Luke. 0:)

Let me move to dampen expectations very quickly, then. Consider them well and truly dowsed. As I said, the whole thing is curious only to my ears; I'm not even sure if this piece is any good at all yet...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 07, 2009, 05:52:15 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 07, 2009, 05:12:15 AM
Offhand, I should say your psyche is just dandy.  But in all events, I am apt to agree;  write the music, and leave the psyche be  0:)

Well, as you know only too well from the general omphaloskeptic tone of the Outpost and its predecessor, I find it hard not to indulge in a little dabbling in this area. But in this case I won't, I think!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on April 07, 2009, 09:17:01 AM
Also very curious here... recording needed!  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on April 07, 2009, 09:17:09 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 07, 2009, 12:21:43 AM
Still don't know what to make of this new piece. I think there's some work required at more than a couple of points. But - still, and this is so odd - the essence of it frightens me somewhat, like Scriabin and his 6th Sonata! And like that work, which doesn't seem to affect anyone else as it affected its own composer, I doubt anyone else will hear much disturbing in this new piece of mine when I am finished with it and present it here.

Hi Luke! The experience of being frightened by your own work is quite familiar to me. Don't worry. It's a good thing when a piece of your own disconcerts you - it means your mind and sensibility are larger than you can (as yet) consciously comprehend. Be brave, and get used to more surprises! Creativity's ways are unfathomable...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 07, 2009, 09:35:38 AM
A Johan sighting!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on April 07, 2009, 12:37:55 PM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 07, 2009, 09:35:38 AM
A Johan sighting!  :)

Thank you, Karl...  :-[ I am very busy at the moment, looking for a room, writing, delivering mail (my new 'job'). My literary career has started in earnest, with new contacts almost every week. Top priority (apart from sorting out my life...) is finishing my novel. I listen to a lot of music. But GMG is suffering. It can't be helped. All will be more stable (and radically different) in a few months' time...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 07, 2009, 01:48:47 PM
Good luck in your new job, and (of course!) with your writing (&c.), Johan! Here's hoping that in that new job, you don't have to deliver too many CDs . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on April 07, 2009, 03:38:00 PM
Quote from: Jezetha on April 07, 2009, 12:37:55 PM
Thank you, Karl...  :-[ I am very busy at the moment, looking for a room, writing, delivering mail (my new 'job'). My literary career has started in earnest, with new contacts almost every week. Top priority (apart from sorting out my life...) is finishing my novel. I listen to a lot of music. But GMG is suffering. It can't be helped. All will be more stable (and radically different) in a few months' time...

Good to hear from you. Glad that you seem to be getting on well. Just know that your contributions are missed!  :) (though I fully understand of course).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 08, 2009, 07:38:49 AM
Remind me a bit, and tell more, of White Modulations, please, Luke.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 08, 2009, 09:21:29 AM
[Good to hear from you too, Johan  :) :) ]

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 08, 2009, 07:38:49 AM
Remind me a bit, and tell more, of White Modulations, please, Luke.

I'm not sure 'remind' is the right word, as as far as I remember I haven't said anything about this piece yet, beyond the title! But I'm more than happy to do so. I haven't tried to put this into words before, so indulge if it's a little incoherent.

I'm always very moved and fascinated by the poetry of everyday events, for want of a better phrase - the beauty of humble items and humble events when seen with quiet attention and care. It's one reason why the Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi appeals to me so much. And I'm always excited to discover unexpected repositories of this sort of poetry. One such is the journal of the 18th century naturalist Gilbert White (famous for his pioneering The Natural History of Selbourne). White kept this journal almost every day from 1768 until not long before his death in 1793, and it is the most wonderfully humble, unassuming set of observations on everything from the weather to his gardening, from political events to the diseases afflicting the local sheep, from family details to the habits of his pet tortoise Timothy. There's poetry everywhere here, but frequently the language takes an especially potent turn. I could take a week or two's entries from anywhere in the book and not fail to turn up startlingly touching passages - let's see:

how about

1790
Feb 21st - Frost, ice, bright, red even, prodigious white dew.
Feb 24th - Dr Chandler came.
Feb 25th - Cabbage sprouts come in. Both the pullets of last summer lay.
Feb 27th - Daffodils begin to open. Dr Chandler left us.
Feb 28th - Violets abound.
Mar 2nd - Sowed the meadow with ashes; of my own 22 bushels, bought 39: total 61.
Mar 3rd - Sheep turned into the wheat.
Mar 4th - Timothy the tortoise comes forth: he does not usually appear 'till the middle of April.
Mar 5th - The tortoise does not appear. The trufleman still follows his occupation: when the season is over, I know not.

or

1793
Jan 28th - Bees come out, & gather on the snowdrops.
Feb 1st - The Republic of France declares war against England & Holland.
Feb 3rd - A strong gust in the night blew down the rain-gage, which, by the appearance in the tubs, must have contained a considerable quantity of water.
Feb 4th - Venus is very bright, & shadows.
Feb 5th - Mrs. J. White setout for Kingston on Thames
Feb 8th - War declared & letters of Marque granted against the french Republic.
Feb 10th - Grey, sun, severe wind, with flights of snow, sleet, & hail.
Feb 11th - Paths get dry. Sowed a bed of radishes, &carrots under the fruit-wall.
Feb 12th - Mrs J. White returns.
Feb 15th - Rain & hail in the night. Made a seedling-cucumber bed: mended the frame, & put it on.

and one for you, Karl - Dr White is a man after your own heart:

1792
Feb 23rd - Began to drink tea by day light.  ;)

Well, the whole 400 page book is made up of entries such as these, with the odd longer entry every now and then. I wonder if I'm alone in sensing its peculiar poetry.  ??? In any case, White's careful, gentle recording of the differing moods of his days reminded me of the gently differing moods of my own modal techniques, especially as many of the pieces I write using this technique (like the piece I've been talking about this week) are really almost like diary entries - indeed, almost like automatic writing in which my own fluctuating moods are reflected. And White's entry for Christmas Day 1779 seems to me one of the most beautiful in the whole book:

Dev 25th - Vast rime, strong frost, bright, & still, fog. The hanging woods when covered with a copious rime appear most beautiful & grotesque.

What I love here is the variety of images, providing me with potential to use a variety of modes in my piece. Just as the fog and the frost seem to intertwine amongst the hanging woods, so the individual images here grow into one bigger, more complex image. I like the idea that I can create various little musical images, each with its own mode, and then let them bleed into each other; let the 'frost' freeze the 'trees', let the 'fog' creep through the woods...

So, both the 'White' and the 'Modulations' of the title take on double meanings - the man and the colour; the transforming landscape and the modal technique. Maybe this whole idea will seem a little strange to those reading this - but it fascinates me, and I can almost feel the music that I hope to write.

Just found White's journal online, as it happens! (http://naturalhistoryofselborne.com/2009/02/) And here, from that site, is the frost behind White's house that he may have been describing:

(http://sydneypadua.com/selborne/images/frostgreatmead.jpg)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 08, 2009, 09:22:56 AM
...more frost in Selbourne...

(http://imagecache.allposters.com/images/pic/RHPOD/667-2141~Line-of-Trees-in-Winter-Snow-Selbourne-Hampshire-England-United-Kingdom-Posters.jpg)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 08, 2009, 09:26:14 AM
But of course there's an earthy, sun-filled cello sonata to write first.  ;)  White Modulations, if it is to be done, will be done this coming winter, I hope.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 08, 2009, 09:38:32 AM
Beauty!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 08, 2009, 09:39:56 AM
Indeed!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on April 08, 2009, 10:49:48 AM
Luke, you're a very good reader, if I may say so. :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on April 08, 2009, 10:52:23 AM
Quote1787: February 27, 1787 – On this day my niece Edmd White was delivered of a daughter, who encreases my Nephews, & nieces to the number of 48.

Clearly a man of keen memory.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 08, 2009, 10:52:53 AM
Thank you, Maciek.  :) This book was such a wonderful find! What do you make of it? Can you see what attracts me to it?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 08, 2009, 10:53:32 AM
Quote from: Maciek on April 08, 2009, 10:52:23 AM
Clearly a man of keen memory.

Yes, I noted that one too, as I was flicking through!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on April 08, 2009, 12:42:53 PM
Quote from: Jezetha on April 07, 2009, 09:17:09 AM
Hi Luke! The experience of being frightened by your own work is quite familiar to me. Don't worry. It's a good thing when a piece of your own disconcerts you - it means your mind and sensibility are larger than you can (as yet) consciously comprehend. Be brave, and get used to more surprises! Creativity's ways are unfathomable...

A long time ago I wrote a topic here called "Why I Am NOT A Composer."  (No, the answer was NOT lack of talent!   ;D   )

In essence, I wrote that if I was not becoming frightened of my own music, I increasingly felt exposed pychologically, and the exposure was unpleasant, as if my id, sub-id, and super-sub-id (You maybe have not heard about those, but...!  ) were all on display for people to kick around.

Perhaps I was not "brave" enough at the time, in the words of Jezetha.  But after the composition of a quarter-tone Tuba Concerto for a fairly famous professor over at Indiana University, a composition which was never performed, but which he played through partially during one of our meetings, I began to waver.  I tend to be secretive about some things.  A few years later, after another similar experience, I gave it up.

I really have no regrets, since my other talents have kept me satisfied, and my musical ability is usefully sublimated in them.   8)




Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on April 08, 2009, 12:46:04 PM
Quote from: sul G on April 08, 2009, 10:52:53 AM
Thank you, Maciek.  :) This book was such a wonderful find! What do you make of it? Can you see what attracts me to it?

Well, first of all, it certainly isn't a text with easy appeal. And you found a wonderful key to it: to read it as if it were poetry. After all, that's what a journal (and particularly this one) may be: someone trying to grasp the essence of his or her day in just so many words. So yes, I can see what attracts you to it and how your way of reading it makes the book far more interesting and beautiful than it would seem to be at first, down-to-earth blush. I guess you could say that while I appreciate the journal itself, what really touches me is your way of reading it, seeing how it speaks to you, what it tells you. (God, I hope this doesn't sound patronizing, because it's meant to be the exact opposite!)

Incidentally, one may try to capture the essence of one's days in just so many words and come across as slightly less humble. Here is the famous opening of Gombrowicz's Diary (has it been translated to English??):

Quote
Monday
Me.

Tuesday
Me.

Wednesday
Me.

Thursday
Me.

How or why exactly White's tone triggered this memory is one of the great mysteries of my mind. (It is an often quoted passage, that may explain it, at least partly.)

[EDIT: The "Me" could have also been translated as "I" or "Myself". I'm not all that sure if my choice is the right one.]
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on April 08, 2009, 12:48:46 PM
Quote from: Maciek on April 08, 2009, 12:46:04 PM
Gombrowicz's Diary (has it been translated to English??)

Yes, it has. By a Lillian Vallee. 1st volume is pretty cheap used on amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Diary-1-Witold-Gombrowicz/dp/0810107155/ (http://www.amazon.com/Diary-1-Witold-Gombrowicz/dp/0810107155/)
(even bookfinder.com couldn't find a better price!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 08, 2009, 12:56:16 PM
Quote from: Cato on April 08, 2009, 12:42:53 PM
. . . id, sub-id, and super-sub-id

The last also known as the mezzanine id, I think . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 08, 2009, 12:59:41 PM
Quote from: Cato on April 08, 2009, 12:42:53 PM
A long time ago I wrote a topic here called "Why I Am NOT A Composer."  (No, the answer was NOT lack of talent!   ;D   )

Yes, I remember it - it was a fascinating opening post, I remember, and one which I relate[d] to very much. The exposure - your well-chosen word - can terrify me, and with good reason. Watching a piece over which one has poured everything is being scrutinised by players whose only experience of it is a brief, appallingly incomplete and dreadfully inaccurate sightread is such a painful, destructive thing. But as I gain more confidence in my music, I find it easier to bear this. When it happened to The Chant of Carnus in 2002 I was deeply shaken; when it happened to Elegy and Ascent a couple of months ago my faith in the piece meant I was relatively unaffected.

But there is a reason I am my own favourite interpreter.....!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 08, 2009, 01:09:12 PM
Quote from: sul G on April 08, 2009, 12:59:41 PM

Quote from: Cato on April 08, 2009, 12:42:53 PM
A long time ago I wrote a topic here called "Why I Am NOT A Composer."  (No, the answer was NOT lack of talent!   ;D   )

Yes, I remember it - it was a fascinating opening post, I remember, and one which I relate[d] to very much. The exposure - your well-chosen word - can terrify me, and with good reason.

It's long enough ago that I scarcely remember it . . . but I was a withdrawn, introspective child.  This continued (did not immediately switch) through my early musical studies.  But now, I am five separate gorillas . . . wrestle poodles and win!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on April 08, 2009, 01:13:24 PM
For those who would like to refresh their memories. (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,4143.0.html)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on April 08, 2009, 01:16:17 PM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 08, 2009, 01:09:12 PM
Yes, I remember it - it was a fascinating opening post, I remember, and one which I relate[d] to very much. The exposure - your well-chosen word - can terrify me, and with good reason.

It's long enough ago that I scarcely remember it . . . but I was a withdrawn, introspective child.  This continued (did not immediately switch) through my early musical studies.  But now, I am five separate gorillas . . . wrestle poodles and win!

Part of the problem for me might have been my quarter-tone experimentation: a comment from an ex-friend, after hearing a computer version of a Toccata and Fugue a la Bach (meticulously programmed note by note by a student of mine) was: "Okay, don't ever play that again, because that piece can easily be evidence against you at your sanity hearing!"

And I could not disagree!

Anyway, I am sure "the boys in white jackets" have not been standing around the concert halls, when your works are presented!   $:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on April 08, 2009, 01:18:03 PM
Quote from: Maciek on April 08, 2009, 01:13:24 PM
For those who would like to refresh their memories. (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,4143.0.html)

Thank you, Maciek!   0:)

I did not realize the topic had been "hit" over 2,000 times!   :o
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 08, 2009, 01:21:32 PM
It was a good 'un!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on April 08, 2009, 02:05:49 PM
Quote from: Maciek on April 08, 2009, 12:46:04 PM


Incidentally, one may try to capture the essence of one's days in just so many words and come across as slightly less humble. Here is the famous opening of Gombrowicz's Diary (has it been translated to English??):

[EDIT: The "Me" could have also been translated as "I" or "Myself". I'm not all that sure if my choice is the right one.]

You are quite right to use the word "me" for your translation.

But any further comment belongs under http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,10977.480.html (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,10977.480.html)!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on April 08, 2009, 02:07:54 PM
Quote from: sul G on April 08, 2009, 10:52:53 AM
Thank you, Maciek.  :) This book was such a wonderful find! What do you make of it? Can you see what attracts me to it?

Although you address the question to Maciek... It's quite easy to see what is attractive about the diary - it's constantly surprising because of the juxtapositions, it's pithy, very visual and sharp. There is a lot of information there and a lot of mystery at the same time, which appeals to the imagination.

I, for one, love that description of Timothy - beautiful.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 08, 2009, 02:23:04 PM
Quote from: Maciek on April 08, 2009, 12:46:04 PM
Well, first of all, it certainly isn't a text with easy appeal. And you found a wonderful key to it: to read it as if it were poetry. After all, that's what a journal (and particularly this one) may be: someone trying to grasp the essence of his or her day in just so many words. So yes, I can see what attracts you to it and how your way of reading it makes the book far more interesting and beautiful than it would seem to be at first, down-to-earth blush. I guess you could say that while I appreciate the journal itself, what really touches me is your way of reading it, seeing how it speaks to you, what it tells you. (God, I hope this doesn't sound patronizing, because it's meant to be the exact opposite!)

Not patronising in the slightest! Very kind words. It is a strange text to fall in love with, but, as you say, if you read it as poetry, and as Johan says, if you read it with an appreciation of the juxtapositions - it gives up endless beauty. Whereas White's more formal writings, his more celebrated works, whilst wonderful in themselves, don't contain this ineffable poetry. A poetry where it is the gaps, the words unsaid, which speak so much.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 08, 2009, 02:25:20 PM
Quote from: Jezetha on April 08, 2009, 02:07:54 PM
Although you address the question to Maciek... It's quite easy to see what is attractive about the diary - it's constantly surprising because of the juxtapositions, it's pithy, very visual and sharp. There is a lot of information there and a lot of mystery at the same time, which appeals to the imagination.

Yes, that's it, exactly. And the slow day-to-day pace, the lack of drama, the big cyclical repetitions. It is a beautiful, calm mixture of large and small, seasonal change and tiny events.

Quote from: Jezetha on April 08, 2009, 02:07:54 PM
I, for one, love that description of Timothy - beautiful.

He's a recurrent character, especially at the beginning and end of hibernation!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on April 08, 2009, 03:02:26 PM
What a find this book is!! *ordered*
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 08, 2009, 03:09:33 PM
Really?  8) You will love it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on April 08, 2009, 03:24:41 PM
Woops!  :-[

I just realised that I ordered The Natural History of Selborne instead of the diaries!  :-[ :-[

Is there a edition of the diaries on Amazon? - I can only find expensive second hand ones and partial editions...

Once again, I reveal myself to be a numpty...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on April 08, 2009, 03:25:39 PM
I read two entries on the blog that you linked to and immediately knew that I had to have it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 08, 2009, 03:32:43 PM
This is the edition I have, I think. (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gilbert-journals-paperbacks-history-technology/dp/B0006C0J7Q/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239233461&sr=1-6) Only £5 something at the moment (I got mine for £3 in Oxfam!)

edit - even cheaper, and hardback. (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/0800832639/ref=ed_oe_h_olp) But at this point I start worrying if it's really the book it says it is. Often a problem at Amazon, I find.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 08, 2009, 03:40:14 PM
Guido, your inbox has just reached capacity. Ironically, so has mine!

So, this is what I just tried to send you (not relevant in the least to this thread, mind you):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pimlico-Dictionary-Composers-Twentieth-composers/dp/0712665684/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239233847&sr=1-2

this is the one. It isn't a perfect book, but I think you'll find lots to like in it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on April 08, 2009, 03:43:36 PM
Quote from: sul G on April 08, 2009, 03:32:43 PM
This is the edition I have, I think. (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gilbert-journals-paperbacks-history-technology/dp/B0006C0J7Q/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239233461&sr=1-6) Only £5 something at the moment (I got mine for £3 in Oxfam!)

edit - even cheaper, and hardback. (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/0800832639/ref=ed_oe_h_olp) But at this point I start worrying if it's really the book it says it is. Often a problem at Amazon, I find.

Cheers.

I just ordered the dictionary of 20th century composers too!

Inbox has been slightly cleaned out.

Here's the book I was talking about:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/ART-no-nonsense-guide-art-artists/dp/1841590444/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239234573&sr=8-4

its available for 1p at the moment!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 08, 2009, 04:14:08 PM
Quote from: Guido on April 08, 2009, 03:43:36 PM
Here's the book I was talking about:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/ART-no-nonsense-guide-art-artists/dp/1841590444/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239234573&sr=8-4

its available for 1p at the moment!

Not any more, it isn't!  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 09, 2009, 02:08:29 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 08, 2009, 02:25:20 PM
Yes, that's it, exactly. And the slow day-to-day pace, the lack of drama, the big cyclical repetitions. It is a beautiful, calm mixture of large and small, seasonal change and tiny events.

....what strikes me, but what I perhaps didn't emphasize last night (the wine was flowing freely!) is that texts like this remind me that mundane, day-to-day 'boring' life is Good, even though we tend to forget about it when we recall our own lives, in favour of the few-and-far-between Big Events which punctuate it. Romantic and post-Romantic music especially tends to emphasize the extremes of ecstasy and despair, and of course that's the music that gets most discussion round here, I'd have thought. But you know, in general, for 99% of the time life potters along. Maybe we hardly even notice it doing so, but if one knows how to look one can find the simplest but also, IMO, the most profound beauty in this moderato, comodo aspect of life. It's this that I love in White's journals above all.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 14, 2009, 04:25:15 AM
Well, for better or worse, here's the diary-like, surprisingly desolate-ending-to-my-ears Sonata (no 2) written in the last couple of weeks, as detailed above. Recording has its too-evident flaws, but it captures some of the piece's fragile on-the-edge-of-psychosis state, I think!  ;D

Sonata II - recording (http://www.esnips.com/doc/6c922497-1739-4e72-b6a9-208a9655e18b/Sonata-II)
Sonata II - score (http://www.esnips.com/doc/25f2bf8e-d062-4745-87bc-502709830e07/Sonata-II)

I wonder how it will strike you lot? The more I listen to it, the more I think it is good. But who knows?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 14, 2009, 04:39:12 AM
I can't mash those links from the office . . . can you attach a pdf of the score? (That, I could download . . . .)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 14, 2009, 04:41:29 AM
No problem.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 14, 2009, 04:51:58 AM
Already spotted one (small) misprint!  ::) ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 14, 2009, 04:52:25 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 14, 2009, 04:41:29 AM
No problem.

Got it! And I like it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 14, 2009, 04:53:24 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 14, 2009, 04:51:58 AM
Already spotted one (small) misprint!  ::) ;D

Sure . . . I nabbed a stinker in stars & guitars while proofing on the bus yesterday.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 14, 2009, 04:55:30 AM
I'm sure there will be plenty more - I had a good go at the piece this morning, in the sense of sprucing up the dynamic markings etc. That's why I've posted it today. But maybe I should have waited until I'd proof-read a little more!

As for you liking it - well, if your internal ear is a good as I suppose it must be, then I'm very pleased!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on April 14, 2009, 04:57:40 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 14, 2009, 04:25:15 AM
Well, for better or worse, here's the diary-like, surprisingly desolate-ending-to-my-ears Sonata (no 2) written in the last couple of weeks, as detailed above. Recording has its too-evident flaws, but it captures some of the piece's fragile on-the-edge-of-psychosis state, I think!  ;D

Sonata II - recording (http://www.esnips.com/doc/6c922497-1739-4e72-b6a9-208a9655e18b/Sonata-II)
Sonata II - score (http://www.esnips.com/doc/25f2bf8e-d062-4745-87bc-502709830e07/Sonata-II)

I wonder how it will strike you lot? The more I listen to it, the more I think it is good. But who knows?

Will listen to it asap, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 14, 2009, 05:02:05 AM
Thanks, Johan

(aware of the dangers of building up expectation too much, I post this piece before the waiting gets too long!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 14, 2009, 05:05:59 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 14, 2009, 04:55:30 AM
I'm sure there will be plenty more - I had a good go at the piece this morning, in the sense of sprucing up the dynamic markings etc. That's why I've posted it today. But maybe I should have waited until I'd proof-read a little more!

Not a bit of it, I appreciate being able to have a look at it even before all the sprucing is up!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on April 14, 2009, 05:30:11 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 14, 2009, 05:02:05 AM
Thanks, Johan

(aware of the dangers of building up expectation too much, I post this piece before the waiting gets too long!)

After my first listen - wonderful! The piece has a brooding quality, with things stirring in the depths or leaping up into the sky. That 'Scotch snap' is very striking. It's a very 'mature' piece and it keeps your attention. One thing - I do think the 'psychosis' is held back, is held in check, there is a latent wildness (anger?) there that doesn't really become flesh, so to speak. I get a sense that the brooding protagonist of the piece is a bit frightened of the lurking monsters. But you do catch the odd yellow eye through the chinks...

Oh - I really love the semplice passages!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 14, 2009, 05:39:54 AM
Very perceptive, Johan. You are such a subtle, attentive listener! (This thread is blessed with a good few of them, in fact.) I think you are probably right - there is something held back, and it's held back in quite a lot of my music. That's my nature, I suppose - my music doesn't 'let rip' that often, but there's often something stirring underneath. With the most recent of these more diary-like, confessional pieces - that is, really, the first Sonata and Quiverings - I feel that the music has reached a further degree of faithfulness to me, more so than, for instance, in 2003 when I began on this deliberate course of semi-improvised splurging. IOW, what I write in these pieces is really what I feel and can't be otherwise. Because of that I'm able to look back at a piece a few days later, as now, and in a real sense get to know myself through it. And so can everyone else, too, should they be fool enough! (In recent years it's been quite common for those who know me in person to say of these pieces 'they really sound like your personality'). An odd sensation.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on April 14, 2009, 05:56:18 AM
Nice comments Johan - far better than I could have articulated them. I think Sean's comments might be even more apt for this piece - very bleak and sad, though there is hope when it stops hovering and begins to soar instead. Actually some of it sounds amongst the most 'English' music that I have heard from you, and not just in the sense that I feel there is some commonality with some early 20th century Brits (though I do feel this); it also seems to evoke something very English in terms of nature and the English countryside - maybe a darker, bleaker side that the same English composers tended to avoid. Might be barking up the wrong tree here entirely!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 14, 2009, 06:13:20 AM
Quote from: Guido on April 14, 2009, 05:56:18 AMit also seems to evoke something very English in terms of nature and the English countryside - maybe a darker, bleaker side that the same English composers tended to avoid. Might be barking up the wrong tree here entirely!

No, I don't think so - though your guess is as good as mine. It should be fairly evident looking at the score and at the piece's subtitle that there is a landscape element here. The picture is of a fenland nature reserve about a mile from my house, a place I go for a walk fairly often. It was walking there on 1st April that I began to sense this piece coming (unfortunately I didn't take this picture then, it's lifted from somewhere online). One striking thing in the fens is the way landscape can be reduced to big, simple planes - water, sky, sun on that day (on another it might be cloud, reeds....). So the first image in the piece, the marking 'fluido' above it, and the general (almost) ever-flowing ever-twining nature of the music spring from the water, definitely. But after that there was no conscious attempt to relate the music to the landscape. To me it feels a much more intimate, personal piece than that, but I'm pretty sure that the landscape invaded it more than I was/am aware of.

As for Englishness - yes, I feel this more and more. The first of my pieces in which I am aware of it are the children's pieces, Through the Year, and the Christmas pieces. Essentially it's just a mistiness, a gentle tenderness, a certain innocence and a lack of going right to the extremes. I never imagined this would happen to my music, but I don't mind it in the least.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on April 14, 2009, 07:27:16 AM
Check your personal messages: my first impression finds it wondrously meditative, blurrily longing for that faraway memory which can never be recovered. 

Mr. Scriabin is in that memory, and a fine presence to have in such a work!   0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 14, 2009, 07:28:45 AM
(* pounds the table *)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 14, 2009, 07:38:02 AM
Quote from: Cato on April 14, 2009, 07:27:16 AM
Check your personal messages: my first impression finds it wondrously meditative, blurrily longing for that faraway memory which can never be recovered. 

Mr. Scriabin is in that memory, and a fine presence to have in such a work!   0:)

And check yours right back!  ;) And as there, many thanks to you for these kind comments!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Dr. Dread on April 15, 2009, 05:33:27 AM
(http://www.kmrental.biz/images/stories/thumbs-up.png)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 15, 2009, 01:44:45 PM
(http://th04.deviantart.com/fs19/300W/i/2007/246/7/1/smile_by_dottydotcom.jpg)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 16, 2009, 12:42:38 PM
Happy to report that Maciek has heard my new piece now, too. So it is slowly spreading its miasma of despair around the world, as planned.....  >:D >:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 16, 2009, 01:35:10 PM
Quote from: sul G on April 14, 2009, 04:25:15 AM
Sonata II - score (http://www.esnips.com/doc/25f2bf8e-d062-4745-87bc-502709830e07/Sonata-II)

I wonder how it will strike you lot? The more I listen to it, the more I think it is good. But who knows?

Just been plunking through this (wofully, oh, utterly wofully . . . but that's another matter) at the piano.  Liking it better and better (my woful plunking notwithstanding).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 16, 2009, 01:35:52 PM
(Just what Poland needs: a fresh infusion of Miasma of Despair)  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 16, 2009, 01:37:58 PM
I can't quite believe that I have succeeded in setting Karl a-plunking! That may be the most significant success of my composing life so far.  :o Glad you're liking it, Karl!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 16, 2009, 01:40:30 PM
Well, it's all a matter of opportunity.  I don't have a piano at home; and here I'm visiting a friend who has a piano (and you know that whenever I travel, one of the scores I take with me is an Ottevanger!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 16, 2009, 01:42:59 PM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 16, 2009, 01:40:30 PM
Well, it's all a matter of opportunity.  I don't have a piano at home; and here I'm visiting a friend who has a piano (and you know that whenever I travel, one of the scores I take with me is an Ottevanger!)

Well, it is always best to be prepared if one gets caught short out in the wilds....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 16, 2009, 01:53:21 PM
En route to the airport we passed a church (not at all ecclesiastical of architecture, but let that pass for the moment) named Eagle Heights Church.  It is situated in quite a fenny patch, and (begging pardon) rather amusingly is in the lowest ground in the immediate environs.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Mark G. Simon on April 17, 2009, 11:05:13 AM
But the eagles get a splendid view of it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 17, 2009, 11:37:15 AM
No doubt, though none of them have remarked on it . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 23, 2009, 05:52:51 AM
Good due diligence (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,12198.msg301333.html#msg301333), BTW

What are you up to, laddie?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 23, 2009, 06:02:20 AM
I'm rather getting over the fact that my new sonata seems to be rather successful!! And I must say that I'm loving it more and more myself too; I find it really affecting and rather beautiful. So I'm wondering what it is about it that makes it so. My conclusion - whereas my first sonata (2007) was pretty poised, in a classical sense, with the form clear and the modal operations serving to delineate it equally clearly, this new one is a much more subjective piece. Unlike in the first sonata, the modes used here are deliberately very similar to each other; I alternate from one to the other with no real formal plan. The whole thing is fluid and emotionally erruptive, and it's the first time I've been able to apply my semi-improvisation technique (as in the non-modal Improvisations of 2003) to a larger scale, dramatic modal work. Though both sonatas come from a deep place, and I love both equally, this one reveals more. I find this to be a new aspect to my music - almost like the last piece of the jigsaw which has been missing - and I'm very excited about it.

So - what's happening? Answer - I'm taking stock, wondering whether to write another one (I think I might; they don't take very long!) or whether to jump back on the cello sonata bandwagon, which is waiting for me patiently.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 23, 2009, 06:15:21 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 23, 2009, 06:02:20 AM
I'm rather getting over the fact that my new sonata seems to be rather successful!!

But, you shouldn't get over that, should you? : )

Quote from: LukeAnd I must say that I'm loving it more and more myself too; I find it really affecting and rather beautiful. [. . .] Though both sonatas come from a deep place, and I love both equally, this one reveals more. I find this to be a new aspect to my music - almost like the last piece of the jigsaw which has been missing - and I'm very excited about it.

Good!  It is a fine piece, and you should like it better and better.  I am delighted both for you, and in the piece, myself.

I well understand the steps . . . you get to the end of the piece . . . you turn it over and over, 'stress-testing' it to make sure it's all comme il faut . . . and you still like it, and you also wonder if it's quite all right, to continue to like it so well  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on April 23, 2009, 06:40:57 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 23, 2009, 06:15:21 AM
I well understand the steps . . . you get to the end of the piece . . . you turn it over and over, 'stress-testing' it to make sure it's all comme il faut . . . and you still like it, and you also wonder if it's quite all right, to continue to like it so well  8)

Exactly!  :) And the pleasing thing is that where in the past the period of still-liking-it hasn't lasted too long, in most cases, with the majority of the music I've written in the last few years it is of much longer duration.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on April 23, 2009, 07:17:47 AM
Quote from: sul G on April 23, 2009, 06:40:57 AM
Exactly!  :) And the pleasing thing is that where in the past the period of still-liking-it hasn't lasted too long, in most cases, with the majority of the music I've written in the last few years it is of much longer duration.

Don't be concerned in either case. 

Satisfied people can never push the wheel of progress.   0:)

As the body-builders say: "Stay Hungry!"   :o
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 23, 2009, 07:58:30 AM
Quote from: Andrew Lloyd-WebberWhat do you mean, "Lose the complacency"?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on April 23, 2009, 02:06:51 PM
Quote from: Cato on April 23, 2009, 07:17:47 AM
Don't be concerned in either case. 

Satisfied people can never push the wheel of progress.   0:)

As the body-builders say: "Stay Hungry!"   :o
Love it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on April 23, 2009, 03:12:28 PM
Quote from: sul G on April 23, 2009, 06:02:20 AM
So - what's happening? Answer - I'm taking stock, wondering whether to write another one (I think I might; they don't take very long!) or whether to jump back on the cello sonata bandwagon, which is waiting for me patiently.

Another piano sonata, please! You might have hit a vein, so - continue digging... What unknown riches you might unearth!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 01, 2009, 10:58:03 AM
What news sirrah?

This thread almost slipped onto the second page...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on June 01, 2009, 11:20:49 AM
Well, you might have noticed I haven't been at GMG much at all in the last month or so! My mind is elsewhere at the moment, and so there simply hasn't been anything to say on this thread. I'm working on a piece for flute and piano (don't ask why), and it's going nicely, though it's rather stalled right now. Otherwise, no, nothing to report!  :) :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 01, 2009, 01:08:29 PM
Ok. Hope whatever it is heals itself soon - this place is soooooo boring at the moment - not at all condusive to efficient procrastinating.

Flute and Piano, aye? Never forget Feldman's warning:
QuoteAny professional knows that the flute and the piano is a boring combination. All you've got to arrive at is a kind of typical gestural crap, right? You might agree, though you wouldn't call it gestural crap.

Does this mean the cello piece has stalled too? I might just need to compose my own!

Finally, apologies for the word sirrah - apparently its a disrespectful term - I just remember it from Shakespeare (Richard III), but then remembered that he was mocking someone with it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 01, 2009, 03:32:06 PM
Quote from: sul G on June 01, 2009, 11:20:49 AM
. . . I'm working on a piece for flute and piano (don't ask why) . . . .

(I claim a colleague's prerogative to fly in the face of direct request.)

Why?

8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: DavidRoss on June 01, 2009, 03:59:03 PM
Quote from: sul G on June 01, 2009, 11:20:49 AM
I'm working on a piece for flute and piano (don't ask why), and it's going nicely, though it's rather stalled right now.
Perhaps the missing guitar part is the reason it's stalled...?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: sul G on June 02, 2009, 02:51:37 PM
Guido, no the cello sonata hasn't stalled. It's just as I said, as is my usual way of working - first the exciting moment when the shape of the piece arrives, then a long period where the thing gestates. I fully expected this gap between inspiration and perspiration to happen!

But in the meantime less pondered-upon pieces appear, such as the sonata I wrote in April (which I still think is one of the very best things I've done) and this flute piece (of which the little that is written pleases me quite a bit).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 02, 2009, 02:52:31 PM
Bene, bene.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 03, 2009, 06:30:47 AM
Excellent news. Well I look forward to hearing/seeing as and when!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Lethevich on June 08, 2009, 01:16:10 AM
I stumbled in and just gave Sonata II a listen. I can't really say anything helpful, but it was great and I was very thankful that it wasn't just a miniature - it would've left me wanting more after the moody start. Beyond that it is beguiling in how much ground it covers its modest duration, with deceptively economical means.

Have you thought about uploading your stuff to last.fm (http://www.last.fm)? It might take a while, but eventually some of its massive userbase will stumble across it (they like free music), and hopefully spread it around. Also, as so many people use the site, the chances of distribution are more likely than filehost style sites - assuming that this is a priority rather than just private sharing.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 11, 2009, 12:23:47 PM
Should I ttt this? Seems little reason to when there is little or nothing to report. But still, it saddens me to see the little fella languishing down at the foot of the page!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: DavidW on September 11, 2009, 12:38:42 PM
Yo Luke hello!  Hello!  Hello! :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 11, 2009, 12:46:17 PM
Hello!  :) Nice to be back....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: DavidW on September 11, 2009, 01:14:30 PM
Nice to have you back, it's been a few years, for me at least... :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 11, 2009, 01:17:27 PM
That long? really? Blimey!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: DavidW on September 11, 2009, 02:43:37 PM
Well when you were active, I wasn't and vica versa. ;D

Actually I wasn't active on this forum that much until oh July.  And it's been like that since summer of '06. :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 12, 2009, 08:14:48 AM
I hope that before soon you will have something to report, Luke.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 28, 2009, 03:31:47 AM
Enforced writing.....nothing too exciting, nothing in the least challenging, just the annual something-sweet-and-full-of-parallel-thirds-for-the-girls-to-sing-at-Christmas. But at least it's making me put pencil to paper for the first time since April.

(maybe here's the place to say a general - I've been in a such a nasty place, guys, beyond imagining or description, and I still am, a lot of the time - apologies to those of you who I should have contacted, or who contacted me with no reply (as yet). It's just more than I can bear, most of the time. Please indulge me a little longer. Being back at GMG is a good sign; being able to simply talk music, even if only in a few posts as yet, feels just wonderful, like coming home. But I'm not there yet.)

:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 28, 2009, 03:50:56 AM
Sounds like you need a little parallel-thirdage, right this very minute . . . .

Hang in there, mon cher!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 28, 2009, 03:58:48 AM
I's a-hanging, Karl...

(http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/art/photo/hinex/empire/hanging.jpeg)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 28, 2009, 04:09:13 AM
"Enforced parallel thirds" . . . and haven't we all been there?  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 28, 2009, 04:12:17 AM
...pays the bills, Karl, pays the bills...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 28, 2009, 11:44:55 AM
Quote from: Luke on October 28, 2009, 03:31:47 AM
(maybe here's the place to say a general - I've been in a such a nasty place, guys, beyond imagining or description, and I still am, a lot of the time - apologies to those of you who I should have contacted, or who contacted me with no reply (as yet). It's just more than I can bear, most of the time. Please indulge me a little longer. Being back at GMG is a good sign; being able to simply talk music, even if only in a few posts as yet, feels just wonderful, like coming home. But I'm not there yet.)

:)

I haven't been here a lot either. I hope you'll get your spirit back soon, Luke.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 28, 2009, 12:54:45 PM
Quote from: Luke on October 28, 2009, 03:31:47 AM
Enforced writing.....nothing too exciting, nothing in the least challenging, just the annual something-sweet-and-full-of-parallel-thirds-for-the-girls-to-sing-at-Christmas. But at least it's making me put pencil to paper for the first time since April.

(maybe here's the place to say a general - I've been in a such a nasty place, guys, beyond imagining or description, and I still am, a lot of the time - apologies to those of you who I should have contacted, or who contacted me with no reply (as yet). It's just more than I can bear, most of the time. Please indulge me a little longer. Being back at GMG is a good sign; being able to simply talk music, even if only in a few posts as yet, feels just wonderful, like coming home. But I'm not there yet.)

:)

Glad to see that the OUTPOST is back in action!   0:)

Bruckner was once quoted as saying how refreshing playing a few simple triads can be!

I just posted this elsewhere, Luke, but maybe this can be your cathartic theme song for a few minutes at least!   8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH1P1UO7Oqs
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on October 28, 2009, 05:04:19 PM
Quote from: Cato on October 28, 2009, 12:54:45 PM
Glad to see that the OUTPOST is back in action!   0:)

Bruckner was once quoted as saying how refreshing playing a few simple triads can be!

I just posted this elsewhere, Luke, but maybe this can be your cathartic theme song for a few minutes at least!   8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH1P1UO7Oqs
Reading the comments on that video was extremely odd... couldn't understand anything. I guess the first few comments helped- some website redirected them to that video. It sounded like teams of hackers were arguing against each other using crazy jargon I've never heard..... (almost like gang speech)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 29, 2009, 02:57:00 AM
Quote from: Greg on October 28, 2009, 05:04:19 PM
Reading the comments on that video was extremely odd... couldn't understand anything. I guess the first few comments helped- some website redirected them to that video. It sounded like teams of hackers were arguing against each other using crazy jargon I've never heard..... (almost like gang speech)

ubloobideega!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 29, 2009, 06:35:03 AM
Quote from: Greg on October 28, 2009, 05:04:19 PM
Reading the comments on that video was extremely odd... couldn't understand anything. I guess the first few comments helped- some website redirected them to that video. It sounded like teams of hackers were arguing against each other using crazy jargon I've never heard..... (almost like gang speech)

YouTube commenters are another breed all right!   :o

Often it is "TwitterTxtngSpeak" or maybe we should use "TwitSpeak" for short!   8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 03, 2009, 12:16:48 AM
Well, I wrote the thing, at least. It's OK, nothing wildly exciting, but it's quite a big deal for me to have got it done, nevertheless. And the girls sang through it yesterday, and it sounds pretty good, I think.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on November 03, 2009, 02:23:57 AM
Splendid.  And your characteristic modesty notwithstanding, don't underestimate the value of completing even a small, parallel-thirdly project . . . .

I am delighted to see smoke out the chimney of the Outpost  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on November 03, 2009, 03:16:10 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on November 03, 2009, 02:23:57 AM
I am delighted to see smoke out the chimney of the Outpost  :)

So am I.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on November 03, 2009, 06:53:42 AM
Quote from: Luke on November 03, 2009, 12:16:48 AM
Well, I wrote the thing, at least. It's OK, nothing wildly exciting, but it's quite a big deal for me to have got it done, nevertheless. And the girls sang through it yesterday, and it sounds pretty good, I think.

Yay Team!

Did you have the capability to record their rehearsal?  Many ears would like to hear the result!   8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 05, 2009, 01:25:04 AM
Not yet, but we will get round to it when they're more familiar with it. They're only 9-12 year olds, we're still note-bashing!

Separately, I'm pondering picking up the flute sonata of which I had done a few pages back in May, the piece I was working on before 'stuff' happened. I was quite pleased with it.... Might be interesting to see what happens if I do - will the join between then and now be obvious? does it matter if it is? how do I reconcile the purely musical considerations and requirements of the piece itself with the fact that I, the composer, am not the same person now that I was then, especially when it's a fundamental tenet of my composing that my music is honest and doesn't hide behind anything?

OTOH, it may be that what I'd already written needs a rehaul, in which case continuing to build on it in a congruous manner will be easier.

I will continue to ponder, omphaloskeptically.... in any case I'm not quite sure where the score is   ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: CD on November 05, 2009, 05:09:44 AM
By the way How now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry?

Marry, I wanted it.

Take thou this noble.

Do you intend to pay it back?

O, yes.

When? Now?

Well... no.

When, then?

Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got pound.

But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under ever changing forms.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on November 05, 2009, 08:36:19 AM
Ulysses.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: CD on November 05, 2009, 09:17:56 AM
Verily. :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on November 09, 2009, 03:45:08 AM
Quote from: Luke on November 05, 2009, 01:25:04 AM
Separately, I'm pondering picking up the flute sonata of which I had done a few pages back in May, the piece I was working on before 'stuff' happened. I was quite pleased with it.... Might be interesting to see what happens if I do - will the join between then and now be obvious? does it matter if it is? how do I reconcile the purely musical considerations and requirements of the piece itself with the fact that I, the composer, am not the same person now that I was then, especially when it's a fundamental tenet of my composing that my music is honest and doesn't hide behind anything?

OTOH, it may be that what I'd already written needs a rehaul, in which case continuing to build on it in a congruous manner will be easier.

I will continue to ponder, omphaloskeptically.... in any case I'm not quite sure where the score is   ;D

Is this a sonata for solo flute, or with a piano accompaniment?

Some composers (Schoenberg comes to mind) rip through everything as quickly as possible, as if afraid of either losing connections or perhaps becoming different during the process, in which case the opus will not be the same as the original "inspiration" indicated.

The brain chemically produces about 20 watts of electricity: an article I read recently compared human brains against computers in the proportions of power needed.  To be equal to a brain, a computer would need megawatts of electricity.

"What hath God wrought" indeed!  (Or blind evolution, for all of you skeptics out there!)   0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 10, 2009, 11:11:25 AM
Quote from: Cato on November 09, 2009, 03:45:08 AM
Is this a sonata for solo flute, or with a piano accompaniment?

The latter..

Quote from: Cato on November 09, 2009, 03:45:08 AM
Some composers (Schoenberg comes to mind) rip through everything as quickly as possible, as if afraid of either losing connections or perhaps becoming different during the process, in which case the opus will not be the same as the original "inspiration" indicated.

Exactly - if the music comes from deep down, as I think it really ought to, how can it cohere if it comes from two different 'deep down' places. It's odd that you mention Schoenberg, too, because he is an excellent example of what we are talking about, as you suggest, but also because, paradoxically, he composed one of the most remarkable exceptions to this rule in Gurrelieder - the piece was completed in short score in one go, but the orchestration of the last portions dates from about a decade later than that of the rest of the work IIRC. And this is perfect, in this case - one might almost imagine that Schoenberg planned it this way, though I suppose deeper processes were at work. It's perfect because it is in those late sections of the score - the fool's song, the summer wind music - that we find, almost, a sweeping-away of romanticism, a disillusionment with Waldemar's night-time obsessions, a breath of fresh air sweeping in as the sun rises. Schoenberg's new, glittering, complex orchestral style, so different from the sumptuous Wagernisms of the rest of the piece, suits this change in tone wonderfully. 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 01, 2010, 01:22:24 PM
Hi everyone

Haven't been here for ages again - I'm sorry, and I'm really sorry to those of you who contacted me to wish me happy birthday and so on (Maciek - especially you  :-* :-* ). Was going through a really tough patch again, especially on my birthday, as it happens. But it's a new year, so I'm going to try to be here more often again...

What to report? Not much - my little piece for the girls at my school, The Dove, was sung at the school's advent service; I recorded it the next day too - here it is (http://www.mediafire.com/?gdjjz20jkhi) - though the girls were fresh in from a cross country race and it shows at times!!

Also, I'm writing another of those sonatas - like the one I wrote in April, very like it in many ways. Ought to be finished in the next day or two....will keep you posted.


The church below is my school's church, all set for the service....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 01, 2010, 01:37:07 PM
....forgot to attach the score (I'm out of practise!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on January 01, 2010, 01:42:48 PM
Great to see you here again, Luke! As unconvincing as it may sound under the circumstances, I wish you a wonderful new year - both in your private life, and professional endeavors!

And I find the piece absolutely lovely (haven't seen the score yet, you added it while I was replying).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 01, 2010, 04:25:17 PM
Happy new year, Luke! Great to 'see' you back!  I'm sending your score to my buddy Paul . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 02, 2010, 02:29:57 AM
Really good to see you here posting again.

The score is a distillation of lovelyness -  so so touching and I know you were dismissive of it, but I really really like it! And the girls did incredibly well with it - lots of complexities to tackle, but they manages superbly (with expert teaching I'm sure  ;))
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 02, 2010, 02:48:12 AM
Thanks guys - yes, I'm quite proud of the girls, though I can't really take much credit (or balme, come to that!) for their singing. They are very good kids, that chamber choir, it's such fun to write for them every year - and they get so excited about singing something that Mr O wrote! (especially the new intake each year, the 9 year olds). It's really lovely.

Going to try to finish that sonata today too, maybe record it as well (on the same badly-tempered clavier that I recorded the last one on, alas)....hope to have something to post here later.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 02, 2010, 03:12:15 AM
Looking forward to it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on January 02, 2010, 05:15:21 AM
Yes, yes, so am I!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 02, 2010, 05:29:00 AM
Gosh, aren't we quite the fan club?  But then, of course, Luke deserves it!  Let us be shameless, then.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 02, 2010, 07:13:33 AM
OK, it's done, I think - true to form, at the last minute I decided to finish it in a way I really hadn't been expecting to do! I won't put it here yet though, for a couple of reasons - 1) I want to live with it a little longer, partly to be sure about it, partly just to get a few more details into the score; and 2) before I record it, I'm going to have to practise....there's a fairly hard page in there somewhere! But it shouldn't take me too long to do both of these things, I hope.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on January 02, 2010, 07:19:09 AM
Looking forward to it, Luke!  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on January 02, 2010, 11:13:52 AM
Hi Luke. Hope you're okay...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 02, 2010, 01:50:06 PM
Hi Sean, thanks. I'm doing a bit better than I have been doing, anyway! How about you?

Just recorded and edited the whole piece; it clocks in at just over 10 minutes. Now to listen to it through a few times.....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 02, 2010, 02:50:25 PM
Don't tantalise me like this! Should I stay up and wait for it? Or will it be posted tomorrow?  0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 02, 2010, 02:56:52 PM
No, don't stay up - the score needs editing, and I'm too tired to do it tonight!

It's very much in the same vein as that sonata I wrote in April - you remember, the psychotic one  ;D ;D and in fact it's a pair for that piece in many ways. So you know what to expect. Steer clear if you are of a nervous disposition  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 02, 2010, 03:04:53 PM
Ok! (to all)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 02, 2010, 04:19:11 PM
OK, I think I am officially pleased with it. Just listened to it on proper speakers for the first time, lights off, focusing on it entirely....it held me to the end, including the deliberately painfully slow 'development' section, and I found I was holding my breath as it finished  ::)    like its companion sonata, this one is affecting its composer in ways he didn't expect...which is something I relish. Or maybe it's a sign of a composer who doesn't know what he's doing!!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 03, 2010, 06:30:31 AM
Here we are, score and recording to my new piece. Click here (http://www.mediafire.com/?mniud5nyznd) for recording. As I said, this sonata belongs with the previous one (written last April) in every way, and as both are 'about' absence of various sorts, I've given them both a related name, to emphasize the connection.  Which is why I've uploaded the scores to both sonatas here, not just the new one. Hope you like them/it....well, maybe 'like' isn't the word...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 03, 2010, 01:41:39 PM
...clearly not!  ;D ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 03, 2010, 02:15:03 PM
I've downloaded each of the files 2 times, but my computer's being a retard so I haven't been able to hear it yet. The score looks lovely! I'll keep trying.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 03, 2010, 02:53:48 PM
That's OK, I was only kidding (though I can't imagine the piece will be to all tastes...)! Not a problem with the file itself, is it?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 04, 2010, 12:58:47 AM
no I don't think so - my computer's sound has just given up. It's been on the blink for a while. I hope the others are able to comment on it for me!

(I'm getting a new computer in a few days anyway, so hopefully then I'll be able to hear it!)

Annoying!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on January 04, 2010, 03:32:30 AM
A healthy, happy and productive 2010, Luke! I am looking forward to listening to your new pieces (and re-listening to some of your classics, perhaps)!


Okay. I have listened to 'The Dove' and to the new Sonata. 'The Dove' is, as Guido already said, lovely. It's quite deep for all its apparent simplicity, though, and there is darkness there. You must have been in a 'Sonata' frame of mind already... Speaking of which - you really plumb the depths, there. A very affecting piece. I was reminded of Hopkins's 'terrible sonnets', especially 'where (...) thoughts against thoughts in groans grind'. I now should listen to your first 'psychotic' piece, too. I think that what was held back in the earlier Sonata, really explodes here.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 04, 2010, 04:37:50 AM
Bravo, Luke! I've at last had a look (won't be able to listen for a bit). Lovely work!

(You've probably got your own backlog of pieces to write as it is, but I must ask:  Might you be game to write a piece for harpsichord?  I know a chap who will gladly take a look at such a piece.)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 04, 2010, 04:50:54 AM
Thanks, guys  :)

Johan, perceptive listening, I'd say. The Dove was the only piece I wrote all year, apart from those two sonatas, and, yes, there is something a little dark in it. I was surprised myself, at the effect of the way the 'semplice' opening grows more complex and ambivalent in tone at its unliteral repeats...

Re the sonata - Hopkins is a very apt comparison to draw, for the odd reason that the one other piece I did make some headway with last year was that flute sonata I've mentioned....which took as its starting point some lines from Hopkins' The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe. And yes, now I remember how you talked about there being something ready to burst out in the first Sonata...and burst out it certainly did, in the intervening months. If the piece is true to its composer, you are very right to perceive it in the new sonata.

And Karl - thank you, I hope the piece doesn't disappoint when you get a chance to listen! I don't really feel a backlog of pieces at the moment, - the long list of want-to-writes I had before last year doesn't press on me the way it did - it seems so long ago. A harpsichord piece might be just the way to refresh the palate...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 04, 2010, 04:53:10 AM
Excellent!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 04, 2010, 08:09:16 AM
As threatened, I did send The Dove to Paul;  all I've heard back from him so far is, Why are you sending me Christmas music?  I shall get him to change his (but not Luke's) tune . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on January 04, 2010, 09:41:46 AM
I listened to the sonata. I can say I'm one of the ones that like it.  :D
It's interesting to observe your style here- with all the odd rhythms that end up sounding natural and all. I like how in the middle it gets pretty much at a standstill, with almost no motion, but deep in thought.
The only thing I feel uncomfortable with is how long some notes may sustain during phrases- though it has more to do with the piano (if it were string writing with that much sustain, I think I'd be more comfortable with it).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 04, 2010, 10:42:49 AM
YHM, Luke.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 04, 2010, 01:18:19 PM
Oh yes, so I do! Well, that sounds equally interesting....  ;)

Greg - thanks for listening, I'm glad you enjoyed the piece. That ultra-slow central section, yes, I'm pleased with that, it does what I wanted it to do... What you say about note sustain, yes, I understand that, it's an interesting issue...in this case, I'm using it deliberately, really, I like the fragility and humanity of the way these long chords just decay and break down before our ears. In fact, in this case I'd actively dislike a sound that sustained them all the way to the end... That's always been one of my stupid fears, as a composer, funnily enough, the risk that that kind of long uninflected sound has of inflicting fatigue on the ear. Which isn't to say I haven't taken that risk plenty of times (there are quite a few examples in Elegy and Ascent, actually)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on January 04, 2010, 01:56:34 PM
Interesting, Luke!
Now here's an evil question: if you were to hear this as just a listener (not as a composer) and say two composers who it sounded influenced by, which two would you choose?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 04, 2010, 02:01:20 PM
Blimey, that is an evil one. Apart from the obvious - Dittersdorf and Luchesi - you mean...? I couldn't narrow it down to two, but I suspect that most people, including me, would discern some Scriabin in there somewhere... What do you think?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on January 05, 2010, 07:17:19 AM
Quote from: Luke on January 04, 2010, 02:01:20 PM
Blimey, that is an evil one. Apart from the obvious - Dittersdorf and Luchesi - you mean...? I couldn't narrow it down to two, but I suspect that most people, including me, would discern some Scriabin in there somewhere... What do you think?

The ghost of Scriabin does indeed hover in the atmosphere: and there is hardly a better spirit to have haunting your pen and piano!   0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Norbeone on January 08, 2010, 06:45:22 PM
Luke, I have to say, your new sonata is very beautiful indeed. I was hypnotically transfixed from start to finish. Thanks for composing it! Oh, and the performance is great too - is it you playing?

Colin
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 08, 2010, 11:22:23 PM
Thanks very much - I'm so pleased the piece has been getting such a good reception! Yes, it's me playing (I need to find a chance to make a better-sounding recording, but there are so many pieces of mine which need that...). There are one or two tricky places in this piece - I think it's clear where they are! - but generally, especially in personal pieces like these two recent sonatas, I write for what my own fingers like to reach for, so I'm better at my own music than I am with others'!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 09, 2010, 04:36:37 AM
Big thumbs-up, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 09, 2010, 04:51:26 AM
Oh, did you manage to listen, Karl? Great!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 11, 2010, 04:10:14 AM
Managed to get my computer to work. I think the piece is very powerful in a quiet way, and just incredibly sad. As you say 'like' seems a curious word to use, but I do find it a moving piece and quite stirring in an unsettling way, those modal dissonances floating and drifting weightlessly in a bleak and nebulous landscape.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 11, 2010, 06:43:29 AM
Thanks, Guido - sounds like you've got the measure of this piece too! It seems to have worked some kind of exorcism on me...maybe I shouldn't speak too soon, but writing that piece already seems like a while ago. I'm pleased with it, though, I'm pleased with both of those paired sonatas, they really welled up from somwhere rather deep. Specifically - I hope I'm forgiven - I'm actually quite proud of the way in which the various personal musical techniques I've been developing for the past few years (as documented in tortuous and meandering detail on this thread and its forbear!) enables me to write music which, I think, emerges about as raw, true, honest and unfiltered as I could have hoped for. That doesn't make it good, it just makes it what-it-should-be, at present. If that makes sense...

No more concrete plans at present, but Karl's little harpsichordly idea is niggling away at the back of my mind...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on January 11, 2010, 06:57:05 AM
I intend to listen to the two sonatas tonight, Luke, just to see how they compare. Btw, I think the best things always 'well up', force themselves out. And then you apply all your conscious artistry.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 11, 2010, 08:42:12 AM
Quote from: Luke on January 11, 2010, 06:43:29 AM
Thanks, Guido - sounds like you've got the measure of this piece too! It seems to have worked some kind of exorcism on me...maybe I shouldn't speak too soon, but writing that piece already seems like a while ago. I'm pleased with it, though, I'm pleased with both of those paired sonatas, they really welled up from somwhere rather deep. Specifically - I hope I'm forgiven - I'm actually quite proud of the way in which the various personal musical techniques I've been developing for the past few years (as documented in tortuous and meandering detail on this thread and its forbear!) enables me to write music which, I think, emerges about as raw, true, honest and unfiltered as I could have hoped for. That doesn't make it good, it just makes it what-it-should-be, at present. If that makes sense...

I will adjust that slightly.  All that is not what is making it good;  for that, we rely on your talent and ear.  Excellent work, Luke!

Quote from: LukeNo more concrete plans at present, but Karl's little harpsichordly idea is niggling away at the back of my mind...

Very good!  My own ideas for a companion are going under the working title Lunar Glare.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 12, 2010, 12:31:38 AM
I haven't got beyond the merest glimmerings of a hint of a feeling of a suggestion of an essence of a possible piece yet.... I have a 'working title', however, even though no work has yet been done! Hopefully I will get a chance to sit at a piano and splurge a little soon, and see if anything crystalises around that.

Feels wonderful, btw, that this new piece, should it come off, will be entirely untainted by any of 'that stuff' - fresh, new, clean... I'm looking forward to getting to work
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 12, 2010, 12:58:49 AM
....either I didn't clock Karl's own working title, or else I did, but subconsciously, and it's been influencing me without my knowing it - whatever, now I see that we may well be working around a similar theme. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but as my idea is at the most inchoate stage, I don't mind searching out another if necessary!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 12, 2010, 05:48:07 AM
No difficulty, I don't think, to our being loosely oriented around the same theme.  In fact, it may just be a programming boon.

(BTW, it hasn't yet been possible for me to use the computer from which I can get to MediaFire.  So my thumbs-up was for the positive reviews elsewhence!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 12, 2010, 06:23:21 AM
Would it be better for you if I uploaded it somewhere else?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 12, 2010, 06:33:03 AM
Thanks for the thought. The Man here has thorough cyber-nannies.  Let me mull . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 14, 2010, 08:33:38 AM
Quote from: Luke on January 03, 2010, 06:30:31 AM
Here we are, score and recording to my new piece. Click here (http://www.mediafire.com/?mniud5nyznd) for recording.

At last, we have download!  Listening now.  More presently . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 14, 2010, 09:18:45 AM
Just listened to the Sonata in absentia II twice.  Beautiful piece, Luke, well done!  Speaking to the piece itself (or rather, my impressions thereof) and not to actual non-musical events (for the rose is unlike the mulch from which it emerges), the piece has a sweet melancholy (not sweet to any unbecoming excess, and the melancholy is well tempered), it possesses an admirable balance between an entirely engaging rubato narrative (now she sighs, now she sobs, must be some jazz number or other) with a firm sense of the ground it is covering.  I love the pace, I love how capably it commands the timespan.  I love this piece, Luke; I applaud you.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on January 14, 2010, 02:34:04 PM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on January 14, 2010, 09:18:45 AM
Just listened to the Sonata in absentia II twice.  Beautiful piece, Luke, well done!  Speaking to the piece itself (or rather, my impressions thereof) and not to actual non-musical events (for the rose is unlike the mulch from which it emerges), the piece has a sweet melancholy (not sweet to any unbecoming excess, and the melancholy is well tempered), it possesses an admirable balance between an entirely engaging rubato narrative (now she sighs, now she sobs, must be some jazz number or other) with a firm sense of the ground it is covering.  I love the pace, I love how capably it commands the timespan.  I love this piece, Luke; I applaud you.

Amen!   0:)

If you listen carefully to Sonata in absentia II you will hear Luke's favorite Christmas carol!   8)

Luke Ottevanger and Karl Henning need an impresario to push their works ahead of these little plinkety-plunk punks getting all the attention, like Turnage and Ferneyhough!   :o
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 15, 2010, 03:57:36 AM
Karl, I'm very touched by your response to my sonata, very touched indeed. Thank you very much. Cato is right, btw (we chatted about this via PM) - my favourite Christmas carol is hidden inside the sonata, sometimes very close to the surface, for all sorts of reasons. I'm not sure if this is so obvious that it goes without saying, or so hidden-away that it needs pointing out! Actually, both sonatas feature little secrets and not-so-secrets of this sort, not that they are worth discovering...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on January 16, 2010, 03:46:09 PM
OK, so today I've finally found myself in circumstances appropriate for downloading and listening to Sonata in absentia no. 2. Not much I can add to what has already been said. First impressions:

Many beauties in this composition and I was glad to note that while this piece was... hm, "sad", it was not as overbearing in its depressive qualities as the previous one. I'm not sure if I could take another dose of that. ;D The second Sonata seems calmer in that respect. So maybe, if you ever write a third one, it will go even further in that direction, forming a sort of consoling cycle - from the dark depths to (moderate) light (I'm not suggesting, I'm fantasizing)... Even if you don't, I think it's wonderful how the two consiliently converge when brought together.

Scriabin? Yes, but especially so in the 1st Sonata. Here I think I detect a pleasing whiff of Debussy...? Perhaps more than a whiff - though it's all been moulded in a very personal (intimate even) cast.

Not sure why, but page 5 seemed (to me) especially touching. It's probably how the previous, slow page builds it all up.

What is N12??

[I know consiliently is not a word. Or at least wasn't.]
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on January 17, 2010, 05:03:01 AM
Quote from: Maciek on January 16, 2010, 03:46:09 PM
Scriabin? Yes, but especially so in the 1st Sonata. Here I think I detect a pleasing whiff of Debussy...? Perhaps more than a whiff - though it's all been moulded in a very personal (intimate even) cast.
Those were the two I was thinking of.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 18, 2010, 06:11:47 AM
Wha interests me is that both Debussy and Scriabin - and some of Scriabin's Russian futurist followers from what I can tell, e.g. Roslavetz, Protopopov and indeed Wyschnegradsky (Cato prompted that last comparison in a PM)- at times use techniques not a million miles from my modal ones. Debussy, of course, in something like Voiles, which is the locus classicus of form being determined by mode - whole tone throughout, except for the entirely black-note pentatonic central section.  Scriabin, of course, has his synthetic chords, out of which he builds whole edifices, and I suppose these take on something of the character of the modes as I use them, although he transposes them freely; in Roslavetz and Protopopov the scores are annotated so as to show the chordal derivation according to the rather Scriabinian personal techniques each composer derived; IIRC Wyschnegradsky worked similarly...

Maciek - that's a great post, and thank you....it's one I've found hard to respond to because I have been so bound up in these pieces, and because they more than anything else I have written reflect my state of mind at the moment they were wriiten. So, I can't say that your response is 'wrong' of course, but what I can say is that to me, the first sonata is numbed, shocked, bowled-over, its world has been turned upside down....but not necessarily in an unpleasant way - it is a piece shot through with the odd stupefied burst of passion, to my mind. The second sonata, though, to me, is black through and through, except from that 'N12' you asked about, which is where things become ever so slightly more hopeful...

The N12 is just a modal thing, btw - the negation of the two modes used so far - IOW, the three notes not used in the piece until this point. Which is why it is a turning point, I suppose.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on January 18, 2010, 11:44:18 AM
I guess I've mixed what I heard with how I interpreted its meaning - which I'd never have realized, if not for your post. What I hear is that the second sonata is much calmer than the first. I understood the calm as a sign of consolation, but of course it can also mean quite the opposite: the depths of despondency, a sort of total surrender. So don't worry, the music and its moods come across just the way you wrote them. I just shouldn't have tried to ascribe "meaning" to it all. (Well, I guess there's nothing wrong with that anyway, but just wanted to reassure you about the essentials.)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 18, 2010, 02:27:28 PM
Thanks - I wasn't worried, not at all! Ascribe away! In fact, I was rather pleased that my sonata took on a slightly different emphasis or slant for you than it has for me. Shows that is can work in more than one way. Which fact reminds me of some points made on that very thoughtful thread about musical program which is ongoing. In any case, you are right - there is a kind of stillness to this piece, and lots of implied major mode, especially in that very slow development section; the last page, certainly, has a more positive tinge, too. To me, that slow central section is the process of 'waiting', of trying to hold focus together - that's why I like the effect of the decaying notes that Greg noted, notes that barely manage to make it to the next chord, the music just holding together. But it can certainly be heard in a somewhat rosier light, especially with that Christmas carol floating around there!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 18, 2010, 02:38:14 PM
I owe you some more listens and a subsequently better answer, Luke . . . but your use of the carol is certainly subtle.  Even with Cato's head's-up, my attention was drawn to other aspects, and although I know the carol well, I find myself thinking, Is it in there, really? Of course, it must be.  At any rate, you needn't fear that there is any carol-bludgeoning in operation . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 18, 2010, 02:42:12 PM
Carol-bludgeoning.......now there's a title!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 18, 2010, 03:12:19 PM
The quintuplets in the second system of p. 4, of course (I see that now).  Probably there are earlier allusions that I cannot [hear] for the trees . . . .

; )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 18, 2010, 05:04:05 PM
Well, the shape of that 'snow on snow' line is everywhere, from the first notes on, but the longest allusion to the carol is on page 3, second-to-last line, tenor voice, all the original rhythmic differentiation erased. The carol is clearest in those quintuplets on pages 4 and 5, though, as you point out. And then with that 'N12' turning point at the bottom of page 6 the 'snow on snow' line is alluded to a few more times, either inverted or, finally, in retrograde (almost the same thing)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 18, 2010, 05:49:06 PM
Very nicely done.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 20, 2010, 07:26:45 AM
....where to register this thought? - there ought to be a thread, 'pieces which, as you are listening to them, you think are the finest things in the world'...

If there was such a thread, my entry right now would be Debussy, cello sonata. I'm listening, awestruck; this piece never fails to blow me away.  :o :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: MN Dave on January 20, 2010, 07:28:15 AM
Quote from: Luke on January 20, 2010, 07:26:45 AM
....where to register this thought? - there ought to be a thread, 'pieces which, as you are listening to them, you think are the finest things in the world'...

If there was such a thread, my entry right now would be Debussy, cello sonata. I'm listening, awestruck; this piece never fails to blow me away.  :o :D

The "What Are You Listening To" thread would work. :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 20, 2010, 07:43:24 AM
Nah, that's for any old thing! This is special  :D Though the violin sonata's on now, and that's not bad either...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: MN Dave on January 20, 2010, 07:44:52 AM
Quote from: Luke on January 20, 2010, 07:43:24 AM
Nah, that's for any old thing! This is special  :D Though the violin sonata's on now, and that's not bad either...

Here is as good as any place then. Especially if your fans want to know what you like.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 20, 2010, 08:12:45 AM
And we do.

I sure do like all those late Debussy sonates, aussi.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on January 20, 2010, 09:06:48 AM
Was the Violin Sonata the last piece he completed or am I confusing it with something else? I think it's quite wonderful too (listened to it quite recently when I was checking for any direct link between Szymanowski's violin writing and the impressionists). Hm, I'm not sure if I even know the Cello Sonata...? :-\
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on January 20, 2010, 12:17:24 PM
Quote from: Maciek on January 20, 2010, 09:06:48 AM
Was the Violin Sonata the last piece he completed

According to Wikipedia - yes.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 20, 2010, 02:56:53 PM
Quote from: Maciek on January 20, 2010, 09:06:48 AM
Hm, I'm not sure if I even know the Cello Sonata...? :-\

Then you really need to rectify that. In three little downloads.
1 (http://www.mediafire.com/?1duij2mii3i)
2 (http://www.mediafire.com/?o2uwtianj2m)
3 (http://www.mediafire.com/?2gzfhnayzzm)

see? What a piece - that opening movement, so plangent yet dignified, ancient and modern, wise yet sensitive, serious but playful... I don't really know anything else like it...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 20, 2010, 03:38:04 PM
We've communicated about it before, but I'm glad it came up again - about time I had another listen - It's all the things you said (and you say it beautifully) and so compact and punchy too - its all over in 12 minutes but its as cathartic, satisfying and evocative of a world as any of the late romantics' behemoths! Perfection.

I couldn't name a better cello sonata.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on January 20, 2010, 04:30:54 PM
Why, thank you, Luke! :D Downloading now but listening will probably have to wait till tomorrow. 0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 20, 2010, 07:36:54 PM
Was just listening to this piece on my mp3 player, really.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 21, 2010, 06:30:59 AM
Quote from: Guido on January 20, 2010, 03:38:04 PM
I couldn't name a better cello sonata.

The answer I'm dying to write is 'I'd better try to compose one then....'  ;D 

The cello sonata that sprang so strongly into my mind last spring - I can still reconstruct what it 'felt like' in my mind, it would have been fun, but I'm not capable of really going back there. But perhaps something else will spring up in its place, I can vaguely feel the cogs grinding away at something. But you know me well enough by now, Guido, not to get your hopes up just yet...

Just had a free lesson, jotted a few niggardly ideas down for something harpsichord/clarinetish...maybe they will lead somewhere. Working title - 'dreamslender'
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on January 21, 2010, 08:19:29 AM
Quote from: Luke on January 21, 2010, 06:30:59 AM

Just had a free lesson, jotted a few niggardly ideas down for something harpsichord/clarinetish...maybe they will lead somewhere. Working title - 'dreamslender'

So is that "Dream Slender" or "Dreams Lender" ?

Or both simultaneously?   :o
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on January 21, 2010, 08:55:03 AM
Maybe it's Dr Eamslender? ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 21, 2010, 09:14:32 AM
Quote from: Cato on January 21, 2010, 08:19:29 AM
So is that "Dream Slender" or "Dreams Lender" ?

Or both simultaneously?   :o

a little of both, I think.... it's from e.e. cummings, describing the crescent moon:

luminous tendril of celestial wish

(whying diminutive bright deathlessness
to these my not themselves believing eyes
adventuring, enormous nowhere from)

querying affirmation; virginal

immediacy of precision:more
and perfectly more most ethereal
silence through twilight's mystery made flesh-

dreamslender exquisite white firstful flame

-new moon!as(by the miracle of your
sweet innocence refuted)clumsy some
dull cowardice called a world vanishes,

teach disappearing also me the keen
illimitable secret of begin
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 21, 2010, 09:16:35 AM
...which I've always rather liked...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 21, 2010, 09:28:23 AM
Splendid!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 21, 2010, 10:48:15 AM
Quote from: Luke on January 21, 2010, 09:14:32 AM
a little of both, I think.... it's from e.e. cummings, describing the crescent moon:

luminous tendril of celestial wish

(whying diminutive bright deathlessness
to these my not themselves believing eyes
adventuring, enormous nowhere from)

querying affirmation; virginal

immediacy of precision:more
and perfectly more most ethereal
silence through twilight's mystery made flesh-

dreamslender exquisite white firstful flame

-new moon!as(by the miracle of your
sweet innocence refuted)clumsy some
dull cowardice called a world vanishes,

teach disappearing also me the keen
illimitable secret of begin

e.e. cummings - beautiful as always.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 27, 2010, 11:08:33 AM
Well, all quiet on the sensible front, but I've been having great fun messing around with my kids making a 'movie' using my laptop's webcam and the Windows Movie Maker!! And I'm using the subtle, refined delights of Sibelius+MIDI to score it....

Hope it's not too sacreligious (take it in a Life of Brian sense) but my little 5 year old boy Felix wanted to make a film about the young Jesus, to which my little girl Mila declared 'in that case I'll have to be his big sister.....Gina' - Gina, of course, is a little put out by her younger brother's status as Son of God, especially as he tends to annoy her more than the Godhead Incarnate really should. God, meanwhile agrees that Jesus needs to learn to behave better before he can be granted full miracle-working privileges. 20 minutes of filming have been completed, and the following sections of score dashed off -

Opening titles, Biblical-Epic style (though with a nod to Life of Brian, again....)
Dream sequence, featuring Gina ascending to heaven on a unicorn
Montage-a-la-Rocky, in which Jesus trains at being good. The Rocky score combined with fragments of 'that' Bach D minor toccata for added sublimity and holiness...

:D :D :D :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 27, 2010, 11:20:13 AM
The Rocky montage (http://www.mediafire.com/?dyfyokmawjy), only for those not afraid of sacrilege on any number of levels....  :D Blame my children....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 27, 2010, 12:01:52 PM
I do wonder how the Sermon on the Mount might have differed, if Jesus had had an older sister . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on January 27, 2010, 12:07:31 PM
Hahaha! hilarious!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 30, 2010, 11:57:46 AM
How we doing?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 30, 2010, 10:24:31 PM
We doing good, thanks, a bit snowed under by real life, at least to the extent that I've had no time to sit down with pencil and manuscript paper...but it's all ticking away up there. Plans, plans, plans....plus ca change  ::)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 31, 2010, 06:11:41 AM
Bene, bene.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 03, 2010, 06:13:10 AM
...actually wrote some notes just now....  :o :o
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 03, 2010, 06:54:25 AM
Va benissima!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Ugh on February 05, 2010, 09:43:30 PM
Listened to your sonata in absentia II, Luke. My immediate association was actually Messiaen, Vingt regards to be specific (perhaps the hidden christ-mas carol did the trick  ;)) - a piece that I first heard ten or so years ago coming home late from the studio at four in the morning and listening to the radio while eating some bread or whatever, sitting silently listening intensely to the entire piece in awe.

Again what I like about your piece is that it communicates a certain state of mind, a concentration, a focus, perhaps in the spirit of what is discussed in the zen thread elsewhere on the forum. Entering into a sort of communitas with the composer, I found myself becoming aware of the interplay between your sonata and the other sounds emanating from my house: croaking wooden floors, cracking fireplace, and most wonderfully: a violin sonata in an unrelated key and tempo barely audible from a radio in another room. I wish I had recorded it for you!  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 08, 2010, 03:49:24 AM
Thanks for listening, Eugene - I'm glad you liked the piece, and I'm absolutely sure you are right when you say that it 'communicates a certain state of mind, a concentration, a focus, perhaps in the spirit of what is discussed in the zen thread elsewhere on the forum'. In general that sort of thing is of great importance to me (I have held back from contributing on that thread because I'm no good at putting into words something that is very important to me, finding an everything-goes-right, delicately poised state-of-mind without which I find I composing impossible). In this piece, certainly, it was present; I managed to sustain or recreate that state sucessfully over the period of days during which I wrote the music. It's very hard for me to do that, which is why I have what is for me a depressingly low 'strike rate' compared to e.g. our Karl, who seems much better at summoning up that particular state of concentration which works for him!

Which is another way of saying, I guess, that I haven't written a huge amount recently, just a couple of pages of a new piece.  ...dreamslender is also making very slow progress. Daunted now, probably, by the magnificence of Henning's op 98, Lunar Glare, for whose forces it is destined!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 08, 2010, 03:55:28 AM
Just keep hold onto that poise!  I have every confidence in you, Luke!  And many thanks for your warm words on Lunar Glare . . . I should remark more, but I must biff along to the office.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 24, 2010, 06:07:08 AM
Ye Outpost has been quiet; what news, Luke?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 25, 2010, 03:18:17 AM
Really not much, Karl, just the usual life-is-too-full stuff getting in the way. How I long for a few empty days, at my piano, a bit of spring sunshine outside and a stack of fresh ms paper on the music stand! I'm slowly, slowly, grinding out a few bars on this and that, but nothing to get excited by just yet.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 25, 2010, 03:19:20 AM
Spring will be along presently!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 25, 2010, 03:46:40 AM
22000 posts, Karl...............!  :o Mr Prolific.....

(and to think that number 1 was on this thread....I feel honoured!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 25, 2010, 03:48:37 AM
btw, in the interim between those two last posts I managed to churn out a couple more bars. Will wonders never cease!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 25, 2010, 04:00:11 AM
Splendid!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 09, 2010, 08:53:30 AM
(* flips the lights on, dusts off the counter *)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on April 14, 2010, 05:53:39 PM
(*places a stack of Janacek CDs on that counter*)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: DavidW on April 14, 2010, 07:06:49 PM
Accidentally spills tea on cds... looks around... whistles, and walks away (I'm sure Karl will clean it up before Luke gets back) ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on April 14, 2010, 07:19:35 PM
(*makes Karl clean up everything and buy new Janacek CDs to put on the counter again. High fives David. *)

"Karl, what in the world are you doing? No, BAD, Karl! You DO NOT put mouse traps under Mr.Luke's new Janacek CDs."  ::)




Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 15, 2010, 12:00:49 AM
Janacek? Did someone say Janacek? Why, what are these tantalising CDs doing here........OW! Who put the mouse traps down? That's not funny.....

Yes, guys, I know the Outpost - purveyor of substandard semi-musical ramblings to the world - has been getting a little dusty of late. Closed for refitting, you could say. I look forward to reopening it soon, all bright and spangly.

Now I'll go and run my fingers under a cold tap...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on April 15, 2010, 07:58:45 AM
Luke, is there a recording of the piano sonatas a few pages back you can direct me to, or was it just the scores?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 18, 2010, 01:17:17 AM
Hi Sean! There's a link to a recording of the second sonata in this post: http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.msg382291.html#msg382291

And the first sonata....let me see.... yes, a link from this post: http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.msg298504.html#msg298504 (the piece was called Sonata II back then, confusingly!)

But it's a while since I thought about either - I hope they still work!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on April 18, 2010, 03:46:15 AM
Luke, sorry pal but at present I'm on a university computer which blocks downloads. You can browse all the porn you like but not art music- it figures.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 18, 2010, 04:21:34 AM
Quote from: Sean on April 18, 2010, 03:46:15 AM
You can browse all the porn you like but not art music- it figures.

I'm not asking how you know that.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 18, 2010, 09:37:57 AM
It's only for research, Karl....  ;D

That's fine, Sean - thanks for trying. Look forward to hearing what you think when you get a chance.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 18, 2010, 01:58:31 PM
Luke: Paul & I are going to give Lunar Glare a couple of outings in May & June.  The two of us are likely to do a lot of rehearsing/playing this summer, so (not to rush you!) if you've got something in shape (or shape-ish) then, we can give it a test-drive.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on April 18, 2010, 02:15:13 PM
Karl, I was wondering if you know anything of M forever, since the forum binned him again?- didn't you meet him?

Luke, I thought I'd mention I've been listening to the Fifth SQ of Tishchenko, which is a third Shostakovich but two thirds Janacek, the Janacek SQs otherwise being in a world of their own...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 18, 2010, 04:42:51 PM
I've met with him a few times, Sean, but it's a while since last we crossed paths.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on April 18, 2010, 04:50:59 PM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 18, 2010, 04:42:51 PM
I've met with him a few times, Sean, but it's a while since last we crossed paths the last time I jumped him and stole his lunch money.
Karl, how dare you! Give his money back to him this instant!  >:(
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on April 19, 2010, 12:13:02 AM
Quote from: Sean on April 18, 2010, 02:15:13 PM
Luke, I thought I'd mention I've been listening to the Fifth SQ of Tishchenko, which is a third Shostakovich but two thirds Janacek, the Janacek SQs otherwise being in a world of their own...

Is it really up to that quality though?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 19, 2010, 02:21:51 AM
Sounds interesting, though - any time something is compared to Janacek I tend to rush towards it! Though in the end, I've almost never found anything else truly comparable. The connection Sean makes above reminds me of one I've read made between Shostakovich's 14th quartet and Janacek - but I've never really sensed that myself. Likewise, when I was studying Das Lied von der Erde with Sandy Goehr, I remember him saying that he could never really put his finger on how the 'Drunkard in Spring' movement worked until he had a conversation with Robin Holloway in which the later compared the orchestration to Janacek's - and again, I can't see that, I really can't. doesn't make either of them anything less than spectacularly wonderful pieces, of course...

The closest thing I've ever heard to Janacek, stylistically, is Pavel Haas's Wind Quintet (and of course Haas was a Janacek pupil, probably the best one), and maybe a few little odds and ends by other Czechs - a piano piece or two by Jarmil Burghauser or Miloslav Kabelac spring to mind. But really he's pretty much sui generis, stylistically, IMO. Nevertheless, I'll try to track down the pieces Sean mentions!  8)

Karl - right then, I'd better try to get cracking!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 19, 2010, 02:30:44 AM
BTW, status report for those interested after my very dismal last year.....all exceedingly good right now, at last  8)   8)   8)  So perhaps the composing juices will start flowing properly again soon...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on April 19, 2010, 06:34:46 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 19, 2010, 02:21:51 AM
Sounds interesting, though - any time something is compared to Janacek I tend to rush towards it! Though in the end, I've almost never found anything else truly comparable. The connection Sean makes above reminds me of one I've read made between Shostakovich's 14th quartet and Janacek - but I've never really sensed that myself. Likewise, when I was studying Das Lied von der Erde with Sandy Goehr, I remember him saying that he could never really put his finger on how the 'Drunkard in Spring' movement worked until he had a conversation with Robin Holloway in which the later compared the orchestration to Janacek's - and again, I can't see that, I really can't. doesn't make either of them anything less than spectacularly wonderful pieces, of course...

The closest thing I've ever heard to Janacek, stylistically, is Pavel Haas's Wind Quintet (and of course Haas was a Janacek pupil, probably the best one), and maybe a few little odds and ends by other Czechs - a piano piece or two by Jarmil Burghauser or Miloslav Kabelac spring to mind. But really he's pretty much sui generis, stylistically, IMO. Nevertheless, I'll try to track down the pieces Sean mentions!  8)

Karl - right then, I'd better try to get cracking!

Luke & Guido, I wasn't expecting all that! Guido, no this Tischenko is in the amiable Russian school and I don't expect to return to him for a long long time if ever. It's elegantly written though and the parallels with the Janacek are rather clear especially in the opening movement.

The library here has the classic Fitzwilliam Shos SQs survey, which I've been meaning to borrow, and I'll have to check out the supposed parallels with the 14th quarte- I know it from the Borodin; as for Das Lied, it remains Mahler's most misshapen major work. I've tried an orchestral piece by Kabelac and a couple of Haas works including an Oboe and piano suite, but Janacek's similarities with other great Czechs only extend little beyond the uniqueness of each.

You wouldn't expect a regular landlocked country in central-east Europe to be such a source of artistic peculiarity and achievement. My favourite moment in Czech music, epitomizing its wide-eyed luminous quality would be a few moments into the Dvorak Sixth (eg Kertesz) and those transcendent four note decending comments. As Brahms said, 'If only I could invent a main them as glorious as Dvorak's passing thoughts'.

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 19, 2010, 06:50:29 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 19, 2010, 02:30:44 AM
BTW, status report for those interested after my very dismal last year.....all exceedingly good right now, at last  8)   8)   8)  So perhaps the composing juices will start flowing properly again soon...

Huzzah x2!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 19, 2010, 07:29:34 AM
Quote from: Sean on April 19, 2010, 06:34:46 AM
As Brahms said, 'If only I could invent a main them as glorious as Dvorak's passing thoughts'.

But he did (I'm thinking of course of the third movement of his B flat piano concerto, whose main theme is so similar to the second subject in Dvorak's Seventh Symphony)!

Have you heard that Haas quintet, Sean? It's a gorgeous little piece, my favourite Haas by quite a distance (his quartets seem to be growing ever more popular, but this is the piece which works best for me)

Karl - exactly!!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on April 19, 2010, 07:42:20 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 19, 2010, 07:29:34 AM
But he did (I'm thinking of course of the third movement of his B flat piano concerto, whose main theme is so similar to the second subject in Dvorak's Seventh Symphony)!

Have you heard that Haas quintet, Sean? It's a gorgeous little piece, my favourite Haas by quite a distance (his quartets seem to be growing ever more popular, but this is the piece which works best for me)

Karl - exactly!!

Nope, will look out for it though- always love a recommendation.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 11, 2010, 06:07:12 AM
So...............something is being written! Try not to faint....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 11, 2010, 06:08:47 AM
Fire it up!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on May 11, 2010, 07:30:42 AM
I expect it to be done by today.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on May 12, 2010, 06:56:28 AM
Quote from: Luke on May 11, 2010, 06:07:12 AM
So...............something is being written! Try not to faint....
YAY!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 19, 2010, 04:26:25 AM
Dear Deidre,

I have just written a triplet within a triplet within a triplet within a triplet, and I think it works. Should I be concerned and seek medical advice?

yours

A confused composer
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 19, 2010, 04:39:55 AM
Maybe I'm stupid but I'd never considered before that, like dotted and double dotted and triple dotted and dotted to the nth degree series of notes, nested tuplets are perfect examples of Zeno's paradox (http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/prime/articles/zeno_tort/index.asp) in operation!

Am I dumb, had everyone else noticed that years ago? I suppose it's obvious, I'd just never had reason to consider it, that's all. This is what I mean - in theory we could go on forever retripleting and never get to the second beat of the bar....except that Sibelius will only add so many layers of nesting before it gives up! Makes for a nice smooth written-out accelerando, anyway, which is how I've just used it, though it is also consistent with things that have already been happening in the piece. So hopefully it is justified!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 19, 2010, 04:51:20 AM
Too many layers and (probably) there is some simpler way to notate it . . . but I have luxuriated in a triplet-within-a-triplet or two over the years . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on June 19, 2010, 04:52:06 AM
I think you just made Ferneyhough's head explode!  :o

I never thought of it... I don't think I've even seen "a triplet within a triplet within a triplet within a triplet". Seems like it'd only work if you started out large enough (a quarter note value, for example).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 19, 2010, 04:56:33 AM
One example from the coming concert . . . don't ask me if I'm playing it right, though ; )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 19, 2010, 05:06:01 AM
Yes, I've done a spot of nesting before, but I've never gone beyond a couple of layers. And Karl, yes, there is certainly at least one simpler way to notate it....but it's rather beautiful, mathematically speaking, the whole Zeno thing!

Here's what I've just written, in context (this is only sketch, and the last couple of bars are not how I envisage the music remaining). See if it makes sense, musically speaking (I mean the word in its traditional, non-Teresa-esque meaning). This section is 'recapitulation', and in the earlier rendering, there are no nested triplets at all - in other words, they are an accretion derived from bits and pieces in the development section. The final one, the one I am 'concerned' about, also serves to shoot the music up the octave from what would have been the case had this been literal repetition; personally I would have no worries about it, as it works well to my mind and ears, if it wasn't so notationally unusual! Enough chat, here's the music:

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 19, 2010, 05:09:37 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 19, 2010, 05:06:01 AM
Yes, I've done a spot of nesting before, but I've never gone beyond a couple of layers.


All sounds a bit deviant, doesn't it.......?  :-[
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 19, 2010, 05:12:45 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 19, 2010, 05:09:37 AM
Yes, I've done a spot of nesting before, but I've never gone beyond a couple of layers.

Said the actress to the dodo . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 19, 2010, 05:15:02 AM
 :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 19, 2010, 01:20:37 PM
Subtle change to my profile, to mark this momentous day.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on June 19, 2010, 02:32:55 PM
I think there are some little birds out there in the trees who wish you were their father...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 19, 2010, 03:51:13 PM
I think so too. Explains why the little buggers always wake me up first thing in the morning with their so-called 'singing', if my real-life human kids haven't done the job already.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on June 19, 2010, 04:37:21 PM
They're just singing the "Father Luke, Please Bring Us A Breakfast of Regurgitated Worms" song, composed by Ubloobideega, of course.  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 19, 2010, 05:04:26 PM
Quote from: Luke on June 19, 2010, 01:20:37 PM
Subtle change to my profile, to mark this momentous day.
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 20, 2010, 02:49:09 AM
Struggling a bit with the last page, and then I might actually have a finished piece to show you. Though this is just me tidying up some loose ends, providing some sort of a conclusion to the flute piece I began last year. You can even see it in the score - diamond note heads = new additions tacked on to provide the last few pages, as if an editorially-supplied completion to enable the piece to be played.

Got dozens of pieces on the go to some degree or other, but have never been in the right 'place' long enough to quite see them all through just yet. But I will, in the end. And in amongst them is a harpsichord/clarinet piece, Karl.....and possibly, just possibly, you know not to hold your breath, a solo cello one, Guido. And there's a piano piece which is 5/6ths done, and a song for voice and violin which is half done, and this flute piece which is on the final page, I think... So you see, it's all been boiling away, but my year of violent ups-and-downs has still had a few uber-painful kicks in the teeth for me recently which have affected my composing heavily.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 20, 2010, 03:29:55 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 20, 2010, 02:49:09 AM
Struggling a bit with the last page, and then I might actually have a finished piece to show you. Though this is just me tidying up some loose ends, providing some sort of a conclusion to the flute piece I began last year. You can even see it in the score - diamond note heads = new additions tacked on to provide the last few pages, as if an editorially-supplied completion to enable the piece to be played.

Got dozens of pieces on the go to some degree or other, but have never been in the right 'place' long enough to quite see them all through just yet. But I will, in the end. And in amongst them is a harpsichord/clarinet piece, Karl.....and possibly, just possibly, you know not to hold your breath, a solo cello one, Guido. And there's a piano piece which is 5/6ths done, and a song for voice and violin which is half done, and this flute piece which is on the final page, I think... So you see, it's all been boiling away, but my year of violent ups-and-downs has still had a few uber-painful kicks in the teeth for me recently which have affected my composing heavily.

Good to know you're back in business. I will wait as patiently as I can! Has this solo cello piece evolved from the cello/piano sonata that you described?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 20, 2010, 06:48:42 AM
Quote from: Guido on June 20, 2010, 03:29:55 AM
Good to know you're back in business. I will wait as patiently as I can! Has this solo cello piece evolved from the cello/piano sonata that you described?

No, if it happens it will be a completely different piece. And the other one....well, the idea is still there, and I like it as much as ever, even though it's over a year old now!

I forgot to mention my fugues.....having a great deal of fun with them! A couple of summers ago, I think, I came back from holiday in France and wrote something here about some silly little fugues I'd been writing based on, shall we say, 'unusual' subjects. Long wine-fuelled late night discussions with my brother and brother-in-law had prompted them, a way of keeping my composing hand in whilst abroad, as well as a stupid little in-joke. Well, I wrote or began a few of them whilst in France, but then once I got home I left them for a long time - after all, they were only silly, they served no real function and didn't really have a home anywhere, once the initial joke had been made. But I returned to them in the last couple of months, I'm not sure why, and have now done 10 of the 12 (one for each degree of the chromatic scale). They seemed, somehow, a more serious enterprise this time - if a 5 part fugue in C sharp major sounds good and even beautiful, even perhaps moving, then what does it matter that the subject chosen is from Black Lace's Agadoo. And what does it mean? It left me thinking all sorts of odd things! I'm a little stalled on numbers 10 and 11, but I can't wait to have them done. Hopefully they will bring a few smiles to a few faces....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 20, 2010, 03:29:45 PM
Quote from: Luke on June 20, 2010, 02:49:09 AM
Got dozens of pieces on the go to some degree or other, but have never been in the right 'place' long enough to quite see them all through just yet. But I will, in the end. And in amongst them is a harpsichord/clarinet piece, Karl....

Molto bene!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 21, 2010, 06:18:35 PM
Quote from: Luke on June 20, 2010, 06:48:42 AM
No, if it happens it will be a completely different piece. And the other one....well, the idea is still there, and I like it as much as ever, even though it's over a year old now!

I forgot to mention my fugues.....having a great deal of fun with them! A couple of summers ago, I think, I came back from holiday in France and wrote something here about some silly little fugues I'd been writing based on, shall we say, 'unusual' subjects. Long wine-fuelled late night discussions with my brother and brother-in-law had prompted them, a way of keeping my composing hand in whilst abroad, as well as a stupid little in-joke. Well, I wrote or began a few of them whilst in France, but then once I got home I left them for a long time - after all, they were only silly, they served no real function and didn't really have a home anywhere, once the initial joke had been made. But I returned to them in the last couple of months, I'm not sure why, and have now done 10 of the 12 (one for each degree of the chromatic scale). They seemed, somehow, a more serious enterprise this time - if a 5 part fugue in C sharp major sounds good and even beautiful, even perhaps moving, then what does it matter that the subject chosen is from Black Lace's Agadoo. And what does it mean? It left me thinking all sorts of odd things! I'm a little stalled on numbers 10 and 11, but I can't wait to have them done. Hopefully they will bring a few smiles to a few faces....

That. Sounds. Awesome. !.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 03:40:56 AM
A taster. Fugue on two frog-related subjects. You get the idea....

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 03:42:52 AM
another....

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 03:43:31 AM
and another....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 03:44:37 AM
another, this one enacting exactly the kind of mechanical procedures the subject suggests....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 03:46:48 AM
this is the 12th and last one, again appropriately enough, given the subject. Quite like the chromatically meandering last page, over that descending bass....the countersubject is, of course, a nod to Bach...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 03:47:30 AM
What the hell, have the Agadoo one too!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 22, 2010, 08:04:08 AM
Midis!!?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 08:13:21 AM
Oh no, you can't hear them......! That would spoil all the fun.

Joke. I will try to sort something out.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 11:00:57 AM
OK - tongue placed firmly in cheek, here are some MIDIs of the fugues I posted earlier. Numbers 1, 3, 5 are written but missing from the ones I've posted (no particular reaosn), numbers 10 and 11 are not composed yet.

The sport is spot the subject, I suppose (not difficult, and there are visual clues at the top of each score), and then, in some cases, spot the connections between the subject and my treatment of it.

Tongue in cheek, remember...

Edit - listening to the MIDIs for the first time - number 6 needs to be a fair bit faster, for the tumultuous storm that overtakes Paul McCartney's Frog Chorus ('...sink or swim, one thing is certain we'll never give in...') to work as intended.  :D

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 11:02:24 AM
...oh, and if it isn't obvious, these are not meant to be academically 'correct' fugues, and I'm aware of their many failings in that respect.  Three more...

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 11:03:12 AM
I recommend using these MIDIS in conjunction with the scores - more fun
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Scarpia on June 22, 2010, 11:23:33 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 22, 2010, 11:03:12 AM
I recommend using these MIDIS in conjunction with the scores - more fun

How come the scores are have no author listed?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 11:28:18 AM
Do you mean of the subjects? I suppose I could/should. Just wrote these as a bit of fun, remember, not for any other purpose. Initially I did put the source songs on the score, but then I took them off because I prefered the slight obfuscation. But they're all more than obvious, I think.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Scarpia on June 22, 2010, 11:32:06 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 22, 2010, 11:28:18 AM
Do you mean of the subjects? I suppose I could/should. Just wrote these as a bit of fun, remember, not for any other purpose. Initially I did put the source songs on the score, but then I took them off because I prefered the slight obfuscation. But they're all more than obvious, I think.

No, I mean how come your name isn't on them?  Centuries from now when music scholars are going through the attachment list for this web site they will find these fuges with no authorship indicated and assume they were written by Saul.   ::)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 11:33:35 AM
Oh, I see!

Well, I'm not sure they are worth owning up to, actually! But my name is at the beginning of the full score - I've broken it up into individual numbers to post here, and I haven't posted number one, so you can't see it, that's all.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 11:36:06 AM
Quote from: Scarpia on June 22, 2010, 11:32:06 AM
No, I mean how come your name isn't on them?  Centuries from now when music scholars are going through the attachment list for this web site they will find these fuges with no authorship indicated and assume they were written by Saul.   ::)

Are they that bad?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Scarpia on June 22, 2010, 11:37:49 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 22, 2010, 11:36:06 AM

Are they that bad?


No, they're quite delightful, but I'm fear they end up being attributed to the poster who seems the most pleased with himself.  Well, maybe Karl will get credit.   ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 11:41:28 AM
Karl wouldn't do anything so down-market! He'd go hunting for subjects in Zappa B sides and lost Bonzo's numbers, not kids' cartoons....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 22, 2010, 01:27:59 PM
Hah!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 22, 2010, 01:28:52 PM
Two performances last night and today, so I haven't had a proper look at all the fuguing, Luke. But I will!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 01:30:25 PM
I hope I didn't make a false assumption about your own fuguing habits, Karl...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 01:31:11 PM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on June 22, 2010, 01:28:52 PM
Two performances last night and today, so I haven't had a proper look at all the fuguing, Luke. But I will!

You missed nothing, Karl, I only posted them a couple of hours ago.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 22, 2010, 01:32:16 PM
Quote from: Luke on June 22, 2010, 01:30:25 PM
I hope I didn't make a false assumption about your own fuguing habits, Karl...

I partake too seldom to think of it as a habit! : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 01:33:38 PM
I fought shy of it for as long time, but the idea seemed such fun! Had me hooked, for a while, but I'm OK now, I could quit any time, I can handle it....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 22, 2010, 03:58:42 PM
I love em! I don't recognise the theme of no.9 but I really like it!!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 22, 2010, 09:51:49 PM
Before your time, I guess. Robots in disguise...

http://www.youtube.com/v/ZhCtVq5iIa0

...hence the unfolding and 'transformation' of the subject into something scarily unrecognisable, and then the precise retrograde back into the form whence it came. A perfect confluence of form and content, style and idea, macro- and micro-structure, abstraction and programmatic reference..... alternatively, it's just me acting like a big kid.

I never watched Transformers, btw. But I had friends in the playground who did...honest.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 23, 2010, 03:50:14 AM
I"m going to take the plunge and post my just-this-minute-finished tuplet-ridden sonata movement for flute and piano up here. It might be awful, I haven't decided myself yet, but I stopped being coy about this stuff long ago. This is the piece I started last year, and stopped halfway through; over the last few days I've provided it with an ending, lots of cut and paste so that the joins don't show too much (though they do in the score - all the new stuff is written with diamond-shaped noteheads). Hope it makes for a satisfying whole. I have my doubts, but never mind.

Also, seeing as I'm in the mood, a shoddy little MIDI file - usual MIDI listening rules apply i.e. use it as a guide, but you will need to listen past it!

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on June 23, 2010, 05:32:05 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 22, 2010, 09:51:49 PM
I never watched Transformers, btw. But I had friends in the playground who did...honest.
I used to watch the 3D CG version... it was one of those shows, like Batman, that seemed to last forever for only being a half an hour long. They said the animation was 90 FPS.
It was mainly something to watch to occupy my time before the other shows I really liked came on, instead of being something I actually looked forward to.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 23, 2010, 05:46:57 AM
Quote from: Greg on June 23, 2010, 05:32:05 AM
I used to watch the 3D CG version... it was one of those shows, like Batman, that seemed to last forever for only being a half an hour long. They said the animation was 90 FPS.

Yeah, if we're going to get technical, I composed my Transformers fugue in 100% BS....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 23, 2010, 05:49:49 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 23, 2010, 03:50:14 AM
I"m going to take the plunge and post my just-this-minute-finished tuplet-ridden sonata movement for flute and piano up here. It might be awful, I haven't decided myself yet, but I stopped being coy about this stuff long ago. This is the piece I started last year, and stopped halfway through; over the last few days I've provided it with an ending, lots of cut and paste so that the joins don't show too much (though they do in the score - all the new stuff is written with diamond-shaped noteheads). Hope it makes for a satisfying whole. I have my doubts, but never mind.

Also, seeing as I'm in the mood, a shoddy little MIDI file - usual MIDI listening rules apply i.e. use it as a guide, but you will need to listen past it!

Splendid, Luke! I'm a bit short of time for a couple of days, but come the weekend I'm downloading these and checking them out!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on June 23, 2010, 06:22:10 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 23, 2010, 03:50:14 AM
I"m going to take the plunge and post my just-this-minute-finished tuplet-ridden sonata movement for flute and piano up here. It might be awful, I haven't decided myself yet, but I stopped being coy about this stuff long ago. This is the piece I started last year, and stopped halfway through; over the last few days I've provided it with an ending, lots of cut and paste so that the joins don't show too much (though they do in the score - all the new stuff is written with diamond-shaped noteheads). Hope it makes for a satisfying whole. I have my doubts, but never mind.

Also, seeing as I'm in the mood, a shoddy little MIDI file - usual MIDI listening rules apply i.e. use it as a guide, but you will need to listen past it!
Awesome, Luke! Probably the most enjoyable aspect of this piece is your sense of rhythm here.

I would love to hear a live recording if you can manage one eventually.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 23, 2010, 06:25:16 AM
Quote from: Greg on June 23, 2010, 06:22:10 AM
Awesome, Luke! Probably the most enjoyable aspect of this piece is your sense of rhythm here.

I would love to hear a live recording if you can manage one eventually.

Cheers, Greg. I certainly plan on approaching a flautist or two with the piece...but who knows, they'll probably blanch at those dratted tuplets!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 23, 2010, 06:32:18 AM
I know a couple of flutists who will not be [over-]daunted by them.  Let me know when you're satisfied that the score is done!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 23, 2010, 06:39:06 AM
Now there's a thought!

And I guess, down a fifth or so (though that would change the character rather) it comes within easy range of a well-primed clarinet.....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 23, 2010, 06:55:41 AM
Allow me to remind you that an Ottevanger piece for clarinet and harpsichord will be most welcome!  The way Paul & I have taped it out, if you score it for B-flat clarinet, it works just as well if the harpsichord is tuned to A=415 (the clarinetist plays it on the A instrument instead).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 23, 2010, 07:00:50 AM
It's in the works, Karl, but might take some time. Here's the proof:

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 23, 2010, 07:06:45 AM
Also, I need to check to make sure I have the latest version of the Canticle Sonata, Luke.  The pianist who played this past Monday is mighty good, and I've fooled him into thinking highly of my own playing . . . so I believe we'll play together going forward.  We'll start by 'reprising' the Brahms sonatas for studio recording sometime in July;  and I'd like to start reading your Canticle Sonata with him then.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 23, 2010, 07:07:59 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 23, 2010, 07:00:50 AM
It's in the works, Karl, but might take some time. Here's the proof:

Beauty!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 23, 2010, 07:10:39 AM
I get a bit confused myself, but here are what I think are the last versions of the Canticle Sonata, score and part

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 23, 2010, 07:25:49 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 23, 2010, 07:10:39 AM
I get a bit confused myself, but here are what I think are the last versions of the Canticle Sonata, score and part

Okay, I think I may have an even later 'take' of the clarinet part . . . a quick comparison doesn't reveal any apparent alterations in content, but I've got a part in which you've already "de-crowded" accidentals, for instance.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 27, 2010, 07:10:48 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 27, 2010, 05:11:53 AM
[Of the Große Fuge] Yeah, but that's a bit too modern and dissonant, dontcha think?

At the risk of repeating (and the initial report I might have made while you were on hiatus, Luke) . . .

In one of many great programs during the two years that Levine was doing his Beethoven & Schoenberg series, the BSO opened with the string orchestra arrangement of the Große Fuge, then Christian Tetzlaff played the Beethoven Violin Concerto.  After the interval, Tetzlaff then played the Schoenberg Violin Concerto (I'd call that evening a tour-de-force), and the program closed with a reprise of the Große Fuge.

In November 2004, Alex Ross blogged:

Quote[Levine] had figured out how to present Beethoven's thorny "Grosse Fuge," which rivals anything by Schoenberg in its capacity to make audiences fidget. With a grin, he said that he would play the "Grosse Fuge" twice in the same program, with the violin concertos of Beethoven and Schoenberg in between. He was hoping to create a time-warp effect in which Beethoven would be heard as both past and present.

It was a wonderful instance of contextual listening. Starting the concert cold, the fugue felt monumental and unyielding (and one could find it likeable on those terms, to be sure).  After the Schoenberg concerto (which, if it isn't Transfigured Night, is still towards the composer's Romantic range), the fugue felt in some sense positively cozy.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 27, 2010, 12:01:18 PM
Sounds like fabulous programming! I can imagine it working out just the way you described. Illuminating.

Need to get down to some composing, but everything is so busy, bitty, end-of-termy, hot-and-bothered! Oh for a day with nothing to do and a piano to do it at....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Franco on June 27, 2010, 01:20:28 PM
Quote from: Luke on June 23, 2010, 03:50:14 AM
I"m going to take the plunge and post my just-this-minute-finished tuplet-ridden sonata movement for flute and piano up here. It might be awful, I haven't decided myself yet, but I stopped being coy about this stuff long ago. This is the piece I started last year, and stopped halfway through; over the last few days I've provided it with an ending, lots of cut and paste so that the joins don't show too much (though they do in the score - all the new stuff is written with diamond-shaped noteheads). Hope it makes for a satisfying whole. I have my doubts, but never mind.

Also, seeing as I'm in the mood, a shoddy little MIDI file - usual MIDI listening rules apply i.e. use it as a guide, but you will need to listen past it!

Very interesting piece.  I especially liked the bit around 6'-6:30 where the piano is answering the flute in the low register.  Overall, the piece struck me as somewhat "French" - don't know why.   I hope you can arrange a reading or performance and can update us with the new audio.

Thanks.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 27, 2010, 01:43:08 PM
Thanks for listening! I'm very pleased you liked it. There is something French about it, I agree - it might be, partly, just the use of the flute, such a French instrument in many ways. But also, maybe there;s something in the harmony, lots of major sevenths and ninths, which may recall e.g. Ravel distantly. Which is no surprise to me - Ravel is one of the composers closest to my heart, and I wouldn't be shocked if something of him has seeped in somewhere here.

Thanks once again - I will certainly try to convince a flautist to have a go at this before the school term is out (I'm thinking of one of the flute teachers I work with)....but I'm not surewhat her attitude to trying this sort of thing out will be!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 27, 2010, 05:33:19 PM
Quote from: Luke on June 23, 2010, 03:50:14 AM
I"m going to take the plunge and post my just-this-minute-finished tuplet-ridden sonata movement for flute and piano up here. It might be awful, I haven't decided myself yet, but I stopped being coy about this stuff long ago. This is the piece I started last year, and stopped halfway through; over the last few days I've provided it with an ending, lots of cut and paste so that the joins don't show too much (though they do in the score - all the new stuff is written with diamond-shaped noteheads). Hope it makes for a satisfying whole. I have my doubts, but never mind.

Also, seeing as I'm in the mood, a shoddy little MIDI file - usual MIDI listening rules apply i.e. use it as a guide, but you will need to listen past it!



Love it! More comment later . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 28, 2010, 05:44:31 AM
All that talk to Saul, and I've just spotted a nasty parallel in one of my fugues! (I'm sure there are more). Surgical excision later on - they were never meant to be entirely by the book, but this is just lax! Bad Luke....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 28, 2010, 01:01:25 PM
Fixed, far too easily, as was the one I just spotted in number 2. But, you know what, it does sound better, that fleeting moment, now. One derides such rules at one's peril (actually, I don't deride it, it seems very sensible to me!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 02, 2010, 11:54:46 AM
Whilst I was upstairs for a while earlier my little girl Mila (9) sat at the dining table and wrote this little masterpiece. (I put it into Sibelius for her, though). Nice to see that at least one Ottevanger can write pleasant music... I pointed out a couple of notational errors to her - the notes made complete sense, but there were two empty bars which only had two beats of rest each. Apparently the little dyads on the last line are meant to be there, played by an instrument or something. Anyway, she took on board my advice very happily and made sure we changed the score straight away, changing those two bars of two beat rests to one of four. And tomorrow we need to have serious words about textual accentuation  ;)  ;)   ;)    But if she keeps on listening willingly and wanting to get things right like this, she'll be getting all these basics right in no time....


:D  :D   :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Scarpia on July 03, 2010, 09:13:29 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 02, 2010, 11:54:46 AM
Whilst I was upstairs for a while earlier my little girl Mila (9) sat at the dining table and wrote this little masterpiece. (I put it into Sibelius for her, though). Nice to see that at least one Ottevanger can write pleasant music... I pointed out a couple of notational errors to her - the notes made complete sense, but there were two empty bars which only had two beats of rest each. Apparently the little dyads on the last line are meant to be there, played by an instrument or something. Anyway, she took on board my advice very happily and made sure we changed the score straight away, changing those two bars of two beat rests to one of four. And tomorrow we need to have serious words about textual accentuation  ;)  ;)   ;)    But if she keeps on listening willingly and wanting to get things right like this, she'll be getting all these basics right in no time....


:D  :D   :D

Well, it is nice as far as it goes, but I am accustomed to Saul masterpieces.  The first phrase is rather awkward due to the clumsy notation, it is more intuitive as c## f-flat f a-flat-flat.  And how can seriously I take a piece with no 64th notes arpeggios, preferably on tenor tuba in dramatic high tessitura? 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Joe_Campbell on July 03, 2010, 10:27:35 AM
Plus, this piece clearly is written in 7/16.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 03, 2010, 02:34:50 PM
Mila is a cool name. I should post some of my little brother's works he threw together messing around on Guitar Pro. That stuff is quite a bit more demented!  >:D :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 04, 2010, 12:33:20 PM
Quote from: Luke on July 02, 2010, 11:54:46 AM
Whilst I was upstairs for a while earlier my little girl Mila (9) sat at the dining table and wrote this little masterpiece. (I put it into Sibelius for her, though). Nice to see that at least one Ottevanger can write pleasant music... I pointed out a couple of notational errors to her - the notes made complete sense, but there were two empty bars which only had two beats of rest each. Apparently the little dyads on the last line are meant to be there, played by an instrument or something. Anyway, she took on board my advice very happily and made sure we changed the score straight away, changing those two bars of two beat rests to one of four. And tomorrow we need to have serious words about textual accentuation  ;)  ;)   ;)    But if she keeps on listening willingly and wanting to get things right like this, she'll be getting all these basics right in no time....


:D  :D   :D

Great fun!  Brava, Mila!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on July 04, 2010, 12:44:05 PM
Quote from: Luke on July 02, 2010, 11:54:46 AM
Whilst I was upstairs for a while earlier my little girl Mila (9) sat at the dining table and wrote this little masterpiece. (I put it into Sibelius for her, though). Nice to see that at least one Ottevanger can write pleasant music... I pointed out a couple of notational errors to her - the notes made complete sense, but there were two empty bars which only had two beats of rest each. Apparently the little dyads on the last line are meant to be there, played by an instrument or something. Anyway, she took on board my advice very happily and made sure we changed the score straight away, changing those two bars of two beat rests to one of four. And tomorrow we need to have serious words about textual accentuation  ;)  ;)   ;)    But if she keeps on listening willingly and wanting to get things right like this, she'll be getting all these basics right in no time....


:D  :D   :D

It took me a while to get all the fingering rite, but now I have mastered this most challenging piano piece.
Very cool.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Joe_Campbell on July 04, 2010, 06:15:43 PM
Look who's moping around your outpost, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 05, 2010, 02:50:23 AM
Love it! And all modal like her father!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 05, 2010, 03:52:02 AM
Yeah, I'm modal, but she's supermodal...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 05, 2010, 09:51:58 AM
I assume the words are by her too - they're so good!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 05, 2010, 11:43:27 AM
She follows TS Eliot's advice to Tippett to write his own libretti, yes.

We talked through a few things about accentuation today, and we penned a couple of lines of a piece about flying through the sky and getting fluffy clouds stuck in your hair or something as an exercise in fitting verbal stress to the music. Progress is being made.   :D

Which is as well, because her dad hasn't written a note since finishing that flute sonata thinga few days back. And he's starting to feel twitchy...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 05, 2010, 12:21:37 PM
Now is the very twitching time . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 06, 2010, 07:09:09 AM
Not one of the pieces I have 'on the go' (because they seem to be a bit stalled), but I have just spent a happy hour or so feeling my way into a new piece, an orchestral one, just on the whim of the moment. No idea where it will go, why it will go there or how it will get there. If it even does! Might be yet another non-starter. Only a couple of pages written out, and really only these so that I have something semi-polished from which to grab material and make it run. We'll see..
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 06, 2010, 07:44:05 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 05, 2010, 03:52:02 AM
Yeah, I'm modal, but she's supermodal...

Supermodals are big in the fashion world, so maybe she will become rich and famous for wearing clothes and looking slightly annoyed and vacant!   8)

But if you are lucky, that will not be her choice!   0:)

She shows talent, and it is nice to see that she has the desire to develop it!

I have not yet heard from the local music professors about your music: the summer is not the best time, of course, but I will push them again.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 06, 2010, 10:10:03 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 05, 2010, 11:43:27 AM
She follows TS Eliot's advice to Tippett to write his own libretti, yes.

Gosh, did TS Eliot really open that can of worms? ; )

There's a lovely little letter that Groucho Marx wrote to TS Eliot . . . have you read it, Luke? (I mean, it's been published and all — I know better than to accuse you of reading other people's mail . . . .)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 06, 2010, 10:23:00 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 06, 2010, 10:10:03 AM
Gosh, did TS Eliot really open that can of worms? ; )

Watch it, Henning, I'll have no slurs cast upon Tippett on this thread, thank you ;-) Not even the much-maligned libretti: they do the job they are meant to do, they make for fine singing, and I can't imagine how they could be changed for the better, even if they are sometimes rather squirm-inducing!

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 06, 2010, 10:10:03 AMThere's a lovely little letter that Groucho Marx wrote to TS Eliot . . . have you read it, Luke? (I mean, it's been published and all — I know better than to accuse you of reading other people's mail . . . .)

No, never read it...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 06, 2010, 10:25:40 AM
Quote from: Cato on July 06, 2010, 07:44:05 AM
Supermodals are big in the fashion world, so maybe she will become rich and famous for wearing clothes and looking slightly annoyed and vacant!   8)

Fantastic! She does all that already!! Bring on the big bucks....


Quote from: Cato on July 06, 2010, 07:44:05 AM
I have not yet heard from the local music professors about your music: the summer is not the best time, of course, but I will push them again.

Thank you - I appreciate it very much, and am curious to hear their response! It's really flattering that you thought enough of the pieces to put them in these fellas' direction - thank you  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 06, 2010, 10:33:43 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 06, 2010, 10:23:00 AM
Watch it, Henning, I'll have no slurs cast upon Tippett on this thread, thank you ;-)

Well, it's only the libretti and their tendency to squirm-induction that I should strew the occasional slur at.  Sometime this year I must seek out King Priam.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Scarpia on July 06, 2010, 10:35:32 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 05, 2010, 03:52:02 AM
Yeah, I'm modal, but she's supermodal...

Hm, I typed "Mila" and "supermodal" into google, but it told me that what I meant was "Milla" and "Supermodel."  Is this her?

(http://secretsocietynyc.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/ultraviolet01250610.jpg?w=332&h=500)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 06, 2010, 10:37:01 AM
Did you try übermodal ? : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 06, 2010, 10:53:04 AM
Quote from: Scarpia on July 06, 2010, 10:35:32 AM
Hm, I typed "Mila" and "supermodal" into google, but it told me that what I meant was "Milla" and "Supermodel."  Is this her?

(http://secretsocietynyc.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/ultraviolet01250610.jpg?w=332&h=500)


Close. The real Mila is much more terrifying a shades-wearing red-clad devil, though, even here, nearly 2 years ago:

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 06, 2010, 10:57:55 AM
A piano-sprite!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Scarpia on July 06, 2010, 10:58:15 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 06, 2010, 10:53:04 AM

Close. The real Mila is much more terrifying a shades-wearing red-clad devil, though, even here, nearly 2 years ago:

Only two years difference.  My, they grow up fast.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 06, 2010, 11:01:26 AM
 :D :D :D

She will be so embarrassed!!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 06, 2010, 11:55:11 AM
In the light of recent threads, perhaps I ought to admit to the fact that my son is called Felix.... but that is nothing to do with the existence of a certain composer, honest.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 06, 2010, 11:56:00 AM
It was the right time for the disclosure ; )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 06, 2010, 02:15:58 PM
I prefer Luke's Mila over the leathery movie-star Milla.  Cute beats leathery every time!   0:)

Yes, Luke, your works have great value, and people need to hear them!  Whenever I have an opportunity to further them, I mention your works and Karl's.  Eventually something will happen for both of you!

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on July 06, 2010, 02:16:43 PM
Quote from: Luke on July 06, 2010, 11:55:11 AM
In the light of recent threads, perhaps I ought to admit to the fact that my son is called Felix.... but that is nothing to do with the existence of a certain composer, honest.

What kind of a composer names his Son Felix without thinking about Mendelssohn.

Imagine is a composer will name his son Ludwig without thinking of Beethoven....

:D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 06, 2010, 02:58:03 PM
Quote from: Cato on July 06, 2010, 02:15:58 PM
I prefer Luke's Mila over the leathery movie-star Milla.  Cute beats leathery every time!   0:)

Yes, Luke, your works have great value, and people need to hear them!  Whenever I have an opportunity to further them, I mention your works and Karl's.  Eventually something will happen for both of you!



Many thanks, Cato! It is an honor to share company with Luke.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 06, 2010, 10:15:00 PM
Quote from: Saul on July 06, 2010, 02:16:43 PM
What kind of a composer names his Son Felix without thinking about Mendelssohn.

Well, I also called my daughter Mila without even thinking about the character in a Janacek opera with that name - and Janacek is my favourite composer, where Mendelssohn isn't! Go figure.  :D

In seriousness, there are better reasons for giving a child a name than that a composer was called the same thing, and that was true in both cases for my kids.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 07, 2010, 01:14:46 AM
Quote from: Saul on July 06, 2010, 02:16:43 PM
What kind of a composer names his Son Felix without thinking about Mendelssohn.

It's no good trying to generalize here.

In this case, a very fine, talented, intelligent and quick-witted composer.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on July 07, 2010, 01:56:53 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 06, 2010, 10:15:00 PM
Well, I also called my daughter Mila without even thinking about the character in a Janacek opera with that name - and Janacek is my favourite composer, where Mendelssohn isn't! Go figure.  :D

In seriousness, there are better reasons for giving a child a name than that a composer was called the same thing, and that was true in both cases for my kids.

Ok...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on July 07, 2010, 01:57:13 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 07, 2010, 01:14:46 AM
It's no good trying to generalize here.

In this case, a very fine, talented, intelligent and quick-witted composer.


Ok to you too...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 07, 2010, 02:01:59 AM
OK

:D

(and thanks, Karl, you made me blush)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 07, 2010, 02:19:25 AM
I'm feeling a little reckless, so I think I will post a piece here that really doesn't look like the sort of thing I do at all, and which is really a very personal thing to me that I am a little dubious about sharing. But there's a reason for both of those things...

I wrote it a couple of months ago, and it was not intended for public viewing for a couple of reasons - 1) it's really a private piece, as might be clear from the score (though for the purposes of posting it here I've erased various things...); 2) it's a plain and simple out-and-out tonal Romantic pastiche of the sort Saul was asking for a week or two back. In terms of my main compositional output, it doesn't figure at all, like my fugues (only more unambiguously serious), but I wrote it with the idea that it became source material for something more 'me'. In point of fact the formal (not stylistic) model is Liszt, specifically his Petrarch Sonnets, initially written as songs which he then paraphrased into rather gorgeous piano pieces. Well, my piece is a Petrarch setting too, but it imagines that the song is already written, and goes straight to the paraphrase! The idea was that I paraphrase this paraphrase of an imaginary song in my own style at a later date - and eagle-eyed readers will spot that that is exactly what the Karl-destined clarinet+harpsichord piece of whose first lines I posted an image a few pages ago is. Only that piece, if it comes to fruition (I'm finding it hard to do) will not be a paraphrase, it will be a 'deconstruction', as you can see from the title on the image.

Well, here's the score....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on July 07, 2010, 02:23:52 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 07, 2010, 02:19:25 AM
I'm feeling a little reckless, so I think I will post a piece here that really doesn't look like the sort of thing I do at all, and which is really a very personal thing to me that I am a little dubious about sharing. But there's a reason for both of those things...

I wrote it a couple of months ago, and it was not intended for public viewing for a couple of reasons - 1) it's really a private piece, as might be clear from the score (though for the purposes of posting it here I've erased various things...); 2) it's a plain and simple out-and-out tonal Romantic pastiche of the sort Saul was asking for a week or two back. In terms of my main compositional output, it doesn't figure at all, like my fugues (only more unambiguously serious), but I wrote it with the idea that it became source material for something more 'me'. In point of fact the formal (not stylistic) model is Liszt, specifically his Petrarch Sonnets, initially written as songs which he then paraphrased into rather gorgeous piano pieces. Well, my piece is a Petrarch setting too, but it imagines that the song is already written, and goes straight to the paraphrase! The idea was that I paraphrase this paraphrase of an imaginary song in my own style at a later date - and eagle-eyed readers will spot that that is exactly what the Karl-destined clarinet+harpsichord piece of whose first lines I posted an image a few pages ago is. Only that piece, if it comes to fruition (I'm finding it hard to do) will not be a paraphrase, it will be a 'deconstruction', as you can see from the title on the image.

Well, here's the score....
Looks intriguing, but I need a midi, or a recording in order to comment.

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 07, 2010, 02:31:39 AM
Knew you'd say that! I'm really reluctant to post one, this is such a personal piece that I'm not really happy with the idea of a sound file of it being available to all - posting the score is hard enough, but at least with the score people have to do a little work to hear it! Also my recording, as is the case with most of them, is a little shoddy - the piano out of tune, my playing hardly flawless, the sound quality not great.... But I'm uploading it to mediafire as we speak, so if I have a change of heart....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 07, 2010, 03:27:32 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 07, 2010, 02:31:39 AM
Knew you'd say that! I'm really reluctant to post one, this is such a personal piece that I'm not really happy with the idea of a sound file of it being available to all - posting the score is hard enough, but at least with the score people have to do a little work to hear it! Also my recording, as is the case with most of them, is a little shoddy - the piano out of tune, my playing hardly flawless, the sound quality not great.... But I'm uploading it to mediafire as we speak, so if I have a change of heart....

As with every Ottevanger piece I have read through, this one is brilliant! 

Note e.g. how simple octaves in the later staves in the treble on page 6 (when will you add bar numbers?  :D  ) become variations on the opening 8th-note figure.  Note the presaging of the return of that opening in the bass on pages 8 and 9.

This is the art of using simple ideas in creatively complex ways.  I am reminded of the Water of the Hills novels of Marcel Pagnol.

I have only read-listened through it twice, and rather quickly: I can imagine the dynamics and the pedaling.  If Luke wanted to expand the work for some reason, my only thought would be perhaps to consider a further variation on the octave-idea mentioned earlier by adding fourths and/or fifths to see what happens.

But I should probably compose my own work instead!   0:)

I am intrigued by your reticence, Luke Ottevanger! It reminds me of ... me, when I was composing!   0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 07, 2010, 04:18:10 AM
Thank you, Cato, for looking, and so closely too! Yes, I tried to weave things together motivically a little, I'm glad it comes out in the reading...

As for the reticence - well, I always used to be hyper-reticent, but this thread, and a few successful public performances, commissions etc. cured me of that to a large extent. I still usually think long and hard before putting a work out there for any anonymous person to do with as they will, however. All of my pieces are is very personal, especially recently, as you know, so I have to treat them with care!

But this one is more personal and sensitive than most, and it is also me speaking through a temporary mask, as it were - it's both very deeply felt and at the same time not representative at all, except maybe in some deeper-than-the-notes way. Neither of those things make me wildly happy about showing it to the world, hence the particular reticence with it. At the same time, however, I think it's quite a nice piece, and it has to serve some purpose other than filling up a little space on my hard drive...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 07, 2010, 06:48:41 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 07, 2010, 02:19:25 AM
I'm feeling a little reckless, so I think I will post a piece here that really doesn't look like the sort of thing I do at all, and which is really a very personal thing to me that I am a little dubious about sharing. But there's a reason for both of those things...

I wrote it a couple of months ago, and it was not intended for public viewing for a couple of reasons - 1) it's really a private piece, as might be clear from the score (though for the purposes of posting it here I've erased various things...); 2) it's a plain and simple out-and-out tonal Romantic pastiche of the sort Saul was asking for a week or two back. In terms of my main compositional output, it doesn't figure at all, like my fugues (only more unambiguously serious), but I wrote it with the idea that it became source material for something more 'me'. In point of fact the formal (not stylistic) model is Liszt, specifically his Petrarch Sonnets, initially written as songs which he then paraphrased into rather gorgeous piano pieces. Well, my piece is a Petrarch setting too, but it imagines that the song is already written, and goes straight to the paraphrase! The idea was that I paraphrase this paraphrase of an imaginary song in my own style at a later date - and eagle-eyed readers will spot that that is exactly what the Karl-destined clarinet+harpsichord piece of whose first lines I posted an image a few pages ago is. Only that piece, if it comes to fruition (I'm finding it hard to do) will not be a paraphrase, it will be a 'deconstruction', as you can see from the title on the image.

Well, here's the score....


Lovely, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 07, 2010, 07:57:45 AM
OK, look, here's the audio file. But I feel really odd about putting it up here, I think I will take it down in a day or two after you've had a chance to download it:

http://www.mediafire.com/?mxd1niydhmz
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on July 07, 2010, 09:01:18 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 07, 2010, 04:18:10 AM
Thank you, Cato, for looking, and so closely too! Yes, I tried to weave things together motivically a little, I'm glad it comes out in the reading...

As for the reticence - well, I always used to be hyper-reticent, but this thread, and a few successful public performances, commissions etc. cured me of that to a large extent. I still usually think long and hard before putting a work out there for any anonymous person to do with as they will, however. All of my pieces are is very personal, especially recently, as you know, so I have to treat them with care!

But this one is more personal and sensitive than most, and it is also me speaking through a temporary mask, as it were - it's both very deeply felt and at the same time not representative at all, except maybe in some deeper-than-the-notes way. Neither of those things make me wildly happy about showing it to the world, hence the particular reticence with it. At the same time, however, I think it's quite a nice piece, and it has to serve some purpose other than filling up a little space on my hard drive...

I believe that this piece would be much better, if you said less.
Meaning, there's way too many notes here, and the overall 'message' of what you want to convey to some extend is getting lost in all the commotion.

I believe that more directness is necessary.

Good playing though.

Thanks
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 07, 2010, 09:16:39 AM
The compositional model for the piece was this sort of thing, though, Saul (in fact, this image is taken from the first version of Liszt's Petrach Sonnets, which is what I found first at IMSLP but which I have never really looked at till now - and texturally there's quite a lot of this particular page in my piece, coincidentally!). The whole point is the variation-like dressing-up of the melody in various garbs, surrounded by flourishes and figurations of various sorts. Reams of notes are part of the style, IOW - Romantic excess and all that:

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on July 07, 2010, 11:03:39 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 07, 2010, 09:16:39 AM
The compositional model for the piece was this sort of thing, though, Saul (in fact, this image is taken from the first version of Liszt's Petrach Sonnets, which is what I found first at IMSLP but which I have never really looked at till now - and texturally there's quite a lot of this particular page in my piece, coincidentally!). The whole point is the variation-like dressing-up of the melody in various garbs, surrounded by flourishes and figurations of various sorts. Reams of notes are part of the style, IOW - Romantic excess and all that:

I know but I'm also not excited with the way liszt did it.

He was all show and little content. A good piano composition is when you say what you want clearly without saying too much. When you're saying too much, the piece is lost.
Here's an example of saying too much when its not needed:
http://www.youtube.com/v/qYGlfp6NG-I
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 07, 2010, 11:13:03 AM
Saul, we have only your assertion that things are not needed.  Nor do we have much confidence in your ability to discern what is needed.

I don't find anything unnecessary in either content or presentation in Luke's piece.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 07, 2010, 11:16:07 AM
Quote from: Saul on July 07, 2010, 11:03:39 AM
I know but I'm also not excited with the way liszt did it.

He was all show and little content. A good piano composition is when you say what you want clearly without saying too much. When you're saying too much, the piece is lost.

Well, you know, as I set Liszt as my stylistic model, I'm content with what I've done - you don't like too many notes in either of us, that's fine!

In my case, although I'm not going to say any more about the more personal side of the piece, I will say that the floods of notes and the bubbling-over activity of much of the piece are precisely what I did want to 'say' in any case - it's a piece 'about' abundance, in a sense.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 07, 2010, 11:18:15 AM
In music, the medium is part of the message.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 07, 2010, 12:20:45 PM
Quote from: Saul on July 07, 2010, 11:03:39 AM
I know but I'm also not excited with the way liszt did it.

He was all show and little content. A good piano composition is when you say what you want clearly without saying too much. When you're saying too much, the piece is lost.

This the kind of thing you mean?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 07, 2010, 12:23:34 PM
Maybe Saul is thinking "So many notes, hence, I couldn't play that, hence, too many notes."
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on July 07, 2010, 12:26:28 PM
Quote from: Luke on July 07, 2010, 12:20:45 PM
This the kind of thing you mean?

If I'm not mistaken that's Mendelssohn's fantasia in F sharp minor, and no thats not what I meant
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 07, 2010, 12:43:51 PM
But it fits your description of bad piano music perfectly - I quote 'all show and little content... [fails to] say what [it] wants clearly without saying too much'

I mean, actually, I think it's a perfectly OK piece that, and fun to play, but the Liszt you posted is a much better piece even in the terms you put forward - the figuration is all thematic and functional and pushes the thing on, there is thematic and motivic content in every bar. In this Mendelssohn, OTOH, it really is a case of all show and no content  - honestly, that page is doing nothing much thematically, there are just figurations imposed on a few chords. I've got no problem with a bit of show, which is why personally I have no problem with this page. But you do - so why does it escape your negative judgement? I think I know the answer...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on July 07, 2010, 12:51:28 PM
Quote from: Luke on July 07, 2010, 12:43:51 PM
But it fits your description of bad piano music perfectly - I quote 'all show and little content... [fails to] say what [it] wants clearly without saying too much'

I mean, actually, I think it's a perfectly OK piece that, and fun to play, but the Liszt you posted is a much better piece even in the terms you put forward - the figuration is all thematic and functional and pushes the thing on, there is thematic and motivic content in every bar. In this Mendelssohn, OTOH, it really is a case of all show and no content  - honestly, that page is doing nothing much thematically, there are just figurations imposed on a few chords. I've got no problem with a bit of show, which is why personally I have no problem with this page. But you do - so why does it escape your negative judgement? I think I know the answer...

The difference is that Mendelssohn wrote it in very classical mode, if you look to some Beethoven fantasia and sonatas he also has similar music writing, but in that case its all in the context of the music, and every note has to be there, not so with Liszt where he overstretched the theme .

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 07, 2010, 12:58:41 PM
Quote from: Saul on July 07, 2010, 12:51:28 PM
The difference is that Mendelssohn wrote it in very classical mode, if you look to some Beethoven fantasia and sonatas he also has similar music writing, but in that case its all in the context of the music, and every note has to be there, not so with Liszt where he overstretched the theme .

No, the first part of what you say it dead right - the Beethoven Fantasia is similar, and there are Mozart pieces like this, and many others too - it's not a bad mode to write in per se. But (in the case of this page of Mendelssohn) it emphatically is not 'all in the context of the theme' and 'every note' is not there. This page of Mendelssohn is simply show, it has no relation at all to the thematic substance of the piece; even when a fragment of melody does surface, it's actually unrelated to anything else in the piece - it's absolutely fine to do that, this is a fantasia after all, but it is the opposite of what you said good piano music does. That's my point really.

Whereas in the Liszt, ironically, the theme and the figurations are much more tightly integrated with each other.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 07, 2010, 01:13:45 PM
Quote from: Saul on July 07, 2010, 12:51:28 PM
The difference is that Mendelssohn wrote it in very classical mode, if you look to some Beethoven fantasia and sonatas he also has similar music writing, but in that case its all in the context of the music, and every note has to be there, not so with Liszt where he overstretched the theme .

Saul: trust me.   0:)

Luke Ottevanger's works are in fact in a "very classical mode" by which I mean that there is a cohesive logic unifying the work, based on themes/motifs: in the work at hand there is even a cyclical return as a sort of Q.E.D.

IF you look/hear more analytically at what you are considering to be "too many notes" (like the criticism of Mozart by the Emperor Joseph in Amadeus), you will see/hear that the figurations have both a harmonic and motivic logic, and are not just there to show off the pianist's agility.

Re-read what I wrote earlier please.

Q.E.D.

0:)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 07, 2010, 01:14:44 PM
(* munches popcorn *)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on July 07, 2010, 01:18:50 PM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 07, 2010, 01:14:44 PM
(* munches popcorn *)

That's way better then those "2 sweet mangos"...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 07, 2010, 01:22:14 PM
Cato, thanks again - glad the motivic writing comes across so clearly, I was at pains to have the piece be more than just a splurge of notes!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on July 07, 2010, 01:31:00 PM
Luke, just listen to Dante Sonata by Liszt...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 07, 2010, 01:34:20 PM
Yep. Bagfulls of notes, sure, but the whole thing is thematic/motivic, very formally clear, and the various textures Liszt devises are structurally important too. It's an extremely lucid piece, for all its difficulty.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on July 07, 2010, 01:42:17 PM
Quote from: Luke on July 07, 2010, 01:34:20 PM
Yep. Bagfulls of notes, sure, but the whole thing is thematic/motivic, very formally clear, and the various textures Liszt devises are structurally important too. It's an extremely lucid piece, for all its difficulty.

Oh those extra bandwagon of chords that go up and down needlessly for no reason, and its not even musical.

I can't stand it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 07, 2010, 01:46:30 PM
Yes but - and we've been here before - you not liking it does not = it is bad/badly-composed music.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 07, 2010, 02:21:05 PM
Quote from: Saul on July 07, 2010, 01:42:17 PM
Oh those extra bandwagon of chords that go up and down needlessly for no reason, and its not even musical.

I can't stand it.

"For No Reason"???

Mr. Saul: show me exactly - quote the page and staff - what you mean, and I will show you how you are wrong.

I just happened to see your Scherzo piece with all the nice notes marching in order up and down a scale.

Compare it with Luke's "extra bandwagon" of chords and ask yourself: which piece has more interest and unity?

And Luke's criticism of your piece is on target: again, trust us.  I at least am probably twice your age and have much more experience with musical analysis and technique, as well as producing juvenilia which merited a response from Alexander Tcherepnin.  We know what we are talking about.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 08, 2010, 03:23:09 AM
Really very moving Luke - that last couple of pages... One guesses the meaning without knowing the words to the poem.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 08, 2010, 03:43:32 AM
Quote from: Guido on July 08, 2010, 03:23:09 AM
Really very moving Luke - that last couple of pages... One guesses the meaning without knowing the words to the poem.

Which is why I find the ignorant comment that there is an "extra bandwagon of chords that go up and down needlessly for no reason, and it's not even musical" so appalling, insulting, and even enraging, especially when made by somebody whose own work does indeed include passages "needlessly" going up and down a scale!   :o 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 08, 2010, 03:53:40 AM
Thank you both. I think Saul was referring to Liszt's Dante Sonata when he made that comment - in the context of the discussion, he used it as an example of poor piano writing, I praised it in that respect (even if you hate the piece, you can't fault it as effective piano writing, surely, and as a great example of technique/texture used in a formal dimension), he then made the 'bandwagon of chords' comment.

Guido - I wonder if you do guess the meaning, would be interesting to know! To my mind there's no difference in the last pages, it's all of a piece - it was written in good times!  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 08, 2010, 05:10:12 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 08, 2010, 03:53:40 AM
Thank you both. I think Saul was referring to Liszt's Dante Sonata when he made that comment - in the context of the discussion, he used it as an example of poor piano writing, I praised it in that respect (even if you hate the piece, you can't fault it as effective piano writing, surely, and as a great example of technique/texture used in a formal dimension), he then made the 'bandwagon of chords' comment.

Emphasis mine.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 08, 2010, 05:15:48 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 07, 2010, 02:19:25 AM
I'm feeling a little reckless, so I think I will post a piece here that really doesn't look like the sort of thing I do at all, and which is really a very personal thing to me that I am a little dubious about sharing. But there's a reason for both of those things...

I wrote it a couple of months ago, and it was not intended for public viewing for a couple of reasons - 1) it's really a private piece, as might be clear from the score (though for the purposes of posting it here I've erased various things...); 2) it's a plain and simple out-and-out tonal Romantic pastiche of the sort Saul was asking for a week or two back. In terms of my main compositional output, it doesn't figure at all, like my fugues (only more unambiguously serious), but I wrote it with the idea that it became source material for something more 'me'. In point of fact the formal (not stylistic) model is Liszt, specifically his Petrarch Sonnets, initially written as songs which he then paraphrased into rather gorgeous piano pieces. Well, my piece is a Petrarch setting too, but it imagines that the song is already written, and goes straight to the paraphrase! The idea was that I paraphrase this paraphrase of an imaginary song in my own style at a later date - and eagle-eyed readers will spot that that is exactly what the Karl-destined clarinet+harpsichord piece of whose first lines I posted an image a few pages ago is. Only that piece, if it comes to fruition (I'm finding it hard to do) will not be a paraphrase, it will be a 'deconstruction', as you can see from the title on the image.

Well, here's the score....


I haven't yet had occasion to listen to the performance, Luke.  But I took pleasure in viewing the score again.  I see in the writing such pleasure in the sound of the piano, and artful exploitation of the ways in which one makes such a non-sustaining instrument sing, and ring.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Franco on July 08, 2010, 10:02:59 AM
Quote from: Cato on July 08, 2010, 09:48:08 AM

3. One's ego should never exceed one's talents.


You're somewhat of an idealist. ;)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 08, 2010, 02:21:49 PM
Quote from: Sforzando on July 08, 2010, 02:16:50 PM
Here we go again. More quarrelsome talk from Mr. "I always tried to separate the topic from the member, and not go into personal attacks." And as soon as I saw Joe write his message (which I completely agree with), I knew we'd yet another variation on the snide back talk. Are you so unwilling to learn from anybody that you have to answer every single comment directed your way with a belligerent wisecrack?

I asked you a simple question the other day as to why the trill you wrote for trombone in one of your pieces is impossible to play. You don't have to be a trombonist (I am not) to realize why. You could find the answer in a 5-minute Google search. But no. You didn't want to. And when someone tells you your piano writing is either awkward or unplayable, rather than accepting that possibility and doing something about it, your first impulse is always to attack the messenger - as I'm sure you will do with whatever response you come up with to my comment here.

Amen!   0:)

Allow me to reiterate my idealistic statement: One's ego should never exceed one's talents.

Luke needs his site back! 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 08, 2010, 02:42:47 PM
Quote from: Saul on July 08, 2010, 01:31:39 PM
We are talking about piano here, and I studied piano.
Joe as well.
They're just tips to keep in mind for when you write future music.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on July 08, 2010, 02:43:48 PM
Quote from: Greg on July 08, 2010, 02:42:47 PM
Joe as well.
They're just tips to keep in mind for when you write future music.

Luke,

Am I allowed to comment on your music?

If you don't want me to say a word, I wont.

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Joe_Campbell on July 08, 2010, 03:17:48 PM
Quote from: Saul on July 08, 2010, 02:43:48 PM
Luke,

Am I allowed to comment on your music?

If you don't want me to say a word, I wont
It's not that you're not allowed to comment on music, it's that every one of your comments rings false for a number of reasons, two of which I stated above. How can anyone take your musical criticisms seriously when your own compositional efforts are riddled with the very problems you find in others' - even more so when you refuse to recognize them in your own music.

On a good day, your response is "I'll take it into consideration," as if you must carefully parse the suggestion with respect to your pure and perfect musical ideas, and on a bad day, you'll just dismiss or ignore the problem as you have done with nearly every one mentioned thus far.

You just continue to play the victim and assume that we are all somehow ignorant to your towering intellect and compositional genius, enjoyed by 11 year olds the world over. Even now, due to the lack of traffic on your own works' thread, you've somehow managed to drag another one of your masterpieces over here.

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 08, 2010, 04:13:48 PM
The curse of relativism: all opinions are created equal, even if they are not.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 09, 2010, 12:24:11 AM
Wow....I go away for a few hours....!

Saul can comment on my pieces, of course he can. They're public domain now. As far as I know all he said about this one was that he thought there were too many notes in it. I can live with that. I disagree, of course - and one thing you probably know about me if you've been following this thread all this time is that this issue, of note density or whatever we should call it, is something I would have thought about whilst composing, as indeed I did. I tend to think alot when I'm composing!  ;D  It's the way it is for good reason.

To address Saul's point directly (though I've done this a little already) - if Saul knows much of my other music he will know that in general I use a lot of silence and thinner textures as well as thicker more complex ones. This piece, however, is deliberately following a Lisztian format (one which Saul also rejects) in which variation and figuration is of the essence. Moreover, its 'subject' in a certain sense is abundance, overflowing, welling-up emotion; those throbbing waves of semiquavers are 'emotionally precise'. Finally, the piece is a paraphrase of an [imaginary] setting of poem whose texts includes river/water imagery, from whence the undulating and waving semiquavers derive. (I ought to point out, too, for those who haven't listened or looked, that the piece is actually hardly unfree of moments of rest and respose.)

But Saul, if you are allowed to comment on my piece, others are also free to comment on those comments. To put them into some sort of critical context. And if you post pieces of your own on my thread as examples of 'how it should be done', ditto - their comments are equally welcome.

This thread has always been a welcoming gathering of friends, even in the days of the Artificially Ignited Flame War (remember that one!?) - and I'd rather it stayed that way.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost/2 Simple Examples
Post by: Cato on July 09, 2010, 04:09:58 AM
For those worried about the figurations in the Canzone, allow me to point out 2 simple examples near the beginning and the end.

First one should see, however, that part of the marvelous character in Luke's work comes from a major/minor tension.  Note that the work begins with a key signature in F major (D minor? Or is it maybe A minor with a Bb?  The A at the top tells us nothing so far.), but that things immediately become ambiguous with the C#, i.e. Db, in the theme, creating the possibility of F minor, and then the F# arrives (which to my ear has always created a kind of "double minor" sound,i.e. F, Gb, Ab, Bb, C, Db, Eb, F).

In bar 9 on page 1, observe the 16th-note figuration: it is not there merely to drive the piece, nor to show off the pianist's fancy fingerwork.  The notes are D/C#=Db, and then change to Eb and Db, showing specifically the major/minor tension.  Also see the bass line, which no longer has the A at the beginning, but goes from E (from F major) to Eb (F minor).

On the last page, page 10, look at the 16th-note figurations again and observe how they harmonically make sense with the theme: note especially the Db in the figurations, producing the major/minor tension heard in the C#(Db) in the theme.  Note how again the F#(Gb) ambiguity is chased away at the end, resolving definitely to F major.

What might seem like "too many notes" to the untrained eye or ear is in fact quite necessary.  Given the nature of the piano, simply to have solid unarpeggiated chords would make the piece resemble an exercise in a chromatic harmony book, albeit the best one there!   0:)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 09, 2010, 04:42:40 AM
You know, I think that might be the first time I've had an analysis of that sort done on any piece of mine (well, except that you've done similar things on a smaller scale before, now I think of it)! It feels so odd, to have my music subjected to such knowledgeable scrutiny - and wonderful, too, that you find that the piece holds together at this level. You have picked out some of the moments which I would have wished you to notice, the ambiguities inherent in some of the harmony from the outset. and the way in which they resolve, in the end.

I really want to thank you, very sincerely.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 09, 2010, 04:44:21 AM
Yes, Cato's musical perspicacity is both a great resource and a delight.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: (poco) Sforzando on July 09, 2010, 05:35:21 AM
Since I don't visit this thread as often as I should, I do apologize to Luke for intruding solely with a comment on the ubiquitous presence of our friend Saul. Let me first say that I too very much like the Canzone, which is beautifully pianistic and a delightful reminiscence of its Lisztian model. I hear it also a slightly tongue-in-cheek (those climaxes on the subdominant!), as if it's saying that while it's fun to write in this way, it's an older style that composers can use only with the knowledge that it's no longer a language of their time.

Edited by Knight
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 09, 2010, 05:44:40 AM
Quote from: Sforzando on July 09, 2010, 05:35:21 AM
Since I don't visit this thread as often as I should, I do apologize to Luke for intruding solely with a comment on the ubiquitous presence of our friend Saul. Let me first say that I too very much like the Canzone, which is beautifully pianistic and a delightful reminiscence of its Lisztian model. I hear it also a slightly tongue-in-cheek (those climaxes on the subdominant!), as if it's saying that while it's fun to write in this way, it's an older style that composers can use only with the knowledge that it's no longer a language of their time.

Thanks, Sfz - you got it in one, of course: it was fun, writing in that style, and I enjoyed indulging in a little splashiness, but it's nothing I would want to do again. As I said when I initially posted the piece, it was designed as a sort of pre-compositional resource, and actually not as something I was going to share with anyone else (well, hardly anyone else). It was really intended to be something that existed not in its own right but as a musical object to be drawn upon in the writing of another piece, a piece written in my own accents. That fact is also why the score is set in that 'handwritten' font, btw - that was just something I found useful as a constant reminder of the status of the music I was writing.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 09, 2010, 05:51:01 AM
Yes, the "Jazz font" is a fun typography . . . it does put me in mind of high school stage band : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 09, 2010, 06:13:21 AM
Can''t stop listening to this piece!! It's so beautiful... I think I need to check out what you are pastiching ASAP!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: knight66 on July 09, 2010, 06:19:20 AM
Right, unless I have a misconceived idea of what this thread is about.....I want to try to help its focus I.E. Luke's music. I am now going back over the last few pages and I am going to eliminate what I see as an off-topic series of posts.

Saul and Saul's music, behaviour, how he sees himself, how he sees the way other people treat him, how others see his behaviour generally.....have no place in this thread.

Knight

Edit: I have purged the thread, though traces may remain. Sorry if folk think I have been scissor happy, but as someone pointed out, 'Luke needs his site back', and I agree.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 09, 2010, 06:33:04 AM
Just listened to the Canzone.
Put me down as another fan!  :o ;D
I think it was brilliant... as for the score, you do intend to put dynamic markings, right?  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 09, 2010, 06:39:34 AM
Quote from: Greg on July 09, 2010, 06:33:04 AM
Just listened to the Canzone.
Put me down as another fan!  :o ;D
I think it was brilliant... as for the score, you do intend to put dynamic markings, right?  ;)

Ha! Greg, well spotted! They're only absent because of the private nature of the piece - I was just about the only one ever meant to play it, and I know how it should go, dynamically-speaking! You're probably right, I should put them in, if I want anyone else to play it....only I'm far from sure I do!

Really glad you like it, and Guido too, thanks for your generous words.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 09, 2010, 06:40:06 AM
Quote from: Greg on July 09, 2010, 06:33:04 AM
Just listened to the Canzone.
Put me down as another fan!  :o ;D
I think it was brilliant... as for the score, you do intend to put dynamic markings, right?  ;)

Well, but again, Luke doesn't intend the score for broad publication . . . so he may not consider the game worth the candle, so to speak, and it may not be worth the time to inscribe dynamics.  It's a piece for his use, and he knows what he wants to do with it, dynamics-wise.

[ Edit :: Of course, the composer's own explanation takes precedence ] ; )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 09, 2010, 06:41:55 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 09, 2010, 06:40:06 AM
Well, but again, Luke doesn't intend the score for broad publication . . . so he may not consider the game worth the candle, so to speak, and it may not be worth the time to inscribe dynamics.  It's a piece for his use, and he knows what he wants to do with it, dynamics-wise.

[ Edit :: Of course, the composer's own explanation takes precedence ] ; )

Bingo, though! Your explanation = mine, too - see above!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 09, 2010, 06:54:24 AM
Quote from: Guido on July 09, 2010, 06:13:21 AM
Can''t stop listening to this piece!! It's so beautiful... I think I need to check out what you are pastiching ASAP!

Don't expect a really close resemblance. It goes without saying that the Liszt is filled with 100x more fantasy, more daring, more flair, more invention, more bravery, more theatre, more skill. These are some of Liszt's most polished, accomplished works, I think. I played the last of them at my Cambridge interview to John Deathridge, so it brings back memories:

http://www.podcastdirectory.com/podcasts/archive.php?iid=16350
there's a free download, nicely played by Roberto Plano a short distance down this page (don't confuse it with his recording of Liszt's Venezia e Napoli, found further down the page, and also well worth a listen (and, also, equally note-heavy paraphrases of Italian songs and arias)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 09, 2010, 07:02:18 AM
Note-heavy was part of the message, as I needn't tell you, dear fellow. By God, let Liszt be Liszt! ; )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 09, 2010, 07:09:41 AM
Well, exactly. Liszt without all the notes is like Mendelssohn without the....what does Charles Rosen call it in the title of the excellent chapter on Mendelssohn in The Romantic Generation....oh yeah, the Religious Kitsch. (Rosen means this in all seriousness and as a genuine musical type with its own virtues, but it's such a great phrase, too!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 09, 2010, 07:20:00 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 09, 2010, 07:09:41 AM
Well, exactly. Liszt without all the notes is like Mendelssohn without the....what does Charles Rosen call it in the title of the excellent chapter on Mendelssohn in The Romantic Generation....oh yeah, the Religious Kitsch. (Rosen means this in all seriousness and as a genuine musical type with its own virtues, but it's such a great phrase, too!)

It really is!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on July 09, 2010, 08:07:19 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 09, 2010, 12:24:11 AM
Wow....I go away for a few hours....!

Saul can comment on my pieces, of course he can. They're public domain now!!!!!!!

Yea Yahoooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 09, 2010, 08:12:09 AM
The rest of what I said too, though, Saul, that you deleted from that quote - i.e. that your comments are open to comment too, of course.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Saul on July 09, 2010, 08:12:42 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 09, 2010, 08:12:09 AM
The rest of what I said too, though, Saul, that you deleted from that quote - i.e. that your comments are open to comment too, of course.
Double Yes Yahooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: knight66 on July 09, 2010, 08:37:39 AM
OK Saul, that's it for now. This thread is about Luke's work. You have been told you can comment on it, no one tried to stop you. Now, back to the topic.

I am gonna get nasty soon.

Knight
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 10, 2010, 12:15:42 AM
New avatar  8) 8)   Paul Klee's Ad Marginem, a painting which inspired a minor little piece of mine for solo flute a few years ago (attached - nothing spectacular, just an experiment in various things.)

Here it is a little larger:

(http://img133.exs.cx/img133/1707/admarginem2hz.jpg)

On that rather flame-grilled 'Hot Topics' thread that was burning away a few days ago, I was lamenting the fact that, in a world run by Teresa, I'd have to take 'degenerate' art such as Klee's off my walls, and I posted another Klee picture by way of illustration, this one:

(http://patatapatati.weblog.com.pt/paul-klee-versunkene-landschaft-1918.jpg)

about which I was going to post more when fireman Mike extinguished the thread. Specificially, what I was going to say was that these wonderful pictures of Klee's (and I how I love Klee's work of this period!) are the most beautifully simple expression of a major concept in approaching modern art - flexibility in viewpoint and perspective. It occured to me that a modern art hater - and in this context, a Teresa, or a Saul - could well complain about these pictures of Klee's: 'The flower is upside-down; so is the bird. Bah, these moderns, it's all for shock, it's all to look clever, it's all a con'. Whereas in fact, all that you need to do to understand these pictures is to allow yourself to shift perspective: not all pictures are meant to be viewed as if standing in front of the object. Klee loved to paint as if lying down, his vision filled with the sky, and with plants and trees and animals all around him, on every side. Ad Marginem is an imagined view from the bottom of the Nile up to the blazing sun! Versukene Landschaft is a mixture of persepctives, fittingly.

Metaphorically, this seems such a simple, gentle way of illustrating things - be prepared to alter your viewpoint; the classic approach is not the only one, nor the only valid one. It goes without saying that this applies to music as well. Tonality works, in its own way; atonality is equally valid, in its many varying different ways. It simply requires the ability to hear from various listening 'viewpoints' to appreciate this.

Well, anyway, that's why I changed my avatar!!! Looks rather fine, I think!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 10, 2010, 04:49:31 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 10, 2010, 12:15:42 AM
New avatar  8) 8)   Paul Klee's Ad Marginem, a painting which inspired a minor little piece of mine for solo flute a few years ago (attached - nothing spectacular, just an experiment in various things.)

Here it is a little larger:

(http://img133.exs.cx/img133/1707/admarginem2hz.jpg)

On that rather flame-grilled 'Hot Topics' thread that was burning away a few days ago, I was lamenting the fact that, in a world run by Teresa, I'd have to take 'degenerate' art such as Klee's off my walls, and I posted another Klee picture by way of illustration, this one:

(http://patatapatati.weblog.com.pt/paul-klee-versunkene-landschaft-1918.jpg)

about which I was going to post more when fireman Mike extinguished the thread. Specificially, what I was going to say was that these wonderful pictures of Klee's (and I how I love Klee's work of this period!) are the most beautifully simple expression of a major concept in approaching modern art - flexibility in viewpoint and perspective. It occured to me that a modern art hater - and in this context, a Teresa, or a Saul - could well complain about these pictures of Klee's: 'The flower is upside-down; so is the bird. Bah, these moderns, it's all for shock, it's all to look clever, it's all a con'. Whereas in fact, all that you need to do to understand these pictures is to allow yourself to shift perspective: not all pictures are meant to be viewed as if standing in front of the object. Klee loved to paint as if lying down, his vision filled with the sky, and with plants and trees and animals all around him, on every side. Ad Marginem is an imagined view from the bottom of the Nile up to the blazing sun! Versukene Landschaft is a mixture of persepctives, fittingly.

Metaphorically, this seems such a simple, gentle way of illustrating things - be prepared to alter your viewpoint; the classic approach is not the only one, nor the only valid one. It goes without saying that this applies to music as well. Tonality works, in its own way; atonality is equally valid, in its many varying different ways. It simply requires the ability to hear from various listening 'viewpoints' to appreciate this.

Well, anyway, that's why I changed my avatar!!! Looks rather fine, I think!

I love so much of Klee's work... I even know someone who has one (a painting of a reclining figure). That second one in particular is gorgeous. I already can't remember what your previous avatar was!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 10, 2010, 04:50:07 AM
Love Klee.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 10, 2010, 05:10:59 AM
The musician's painter. The musician-painter, in fact. No artist understood rhythm, form, directed motion and harmony as he did, I think, and this understanding stems from his experiences as a musician, I'm sure. Something like Pastorale (whose subtitle is Rhythms), resembles a musical score as much as it resembles fields of harvested wheat. It even looks like it is in 'pastoral' 6/8, with those swaying arch-forms:

(http://www.thorstenwollmann.com/klee2.jpg)

Guido, this is my first avatar since coming back. Couldn't decide on one till now.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 10, 2010, 06:36:17 AM
Didn't know about the musical connection at all, but it makes so much sense.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: The new erato on July 10, 2010, 07:04:51 AM
I've always felt that an appreciation of pictures by the likes of Klee, Kandinsky and Miro is closely connected to an appreciation of music by eg. (Post-Rite) Stravinsky (though other examples could dobtless be found).

The rhytms, the humor, the featherlight instrumentation, the endlessly inventive use of basically simple ideas - I find strong similarities.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 10, 2010, 11:55:56 AM
Speaking of Klee, et al. and Music:

(http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/schoenberg/painting/exteriorjpgs/ritter198b.jpg)

The Burial of Gustav Mahler

by

Arnold Schoenberg
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 11, 2010, 03:22:00 AM
Fabulous picture, suprised that it isn't more iconic (as some of Schoenberg's self portraits are, for example). To be viewed alongside op 19/6 (http://server3.pianosociety.com/protected/schoenberg-19-6-lee.mp3), of course (that's just a public domain recording on pianosociety.com, you're allowed to click but don't expect Pollini!). Two impressions of Mahler's funeral from the same artist, one visual, one musical...

(btw Eduard Steuermann's complete Schoenberg was delivered to me a couple of days ago - Schoenberg's 'own' pianist, as it were. Haven't listened yet, though, I'm saving that one up)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 11, 2010, 04:27:13 AM
Stunning - such a beautiful image, I am like Luke surprised that it isn't more famous. That tree is so expressive.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 11, 2010, 05:14:03 AM
I think everything about the painting looks great except for the people- even for an Expressionist painting, they just look sloppy.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 11, 2010, 06:16:21 AM
Quote from: Greg on July 11, 2010, 05:14:03 AM
I think everything about the painting looks great except for the people- even for an Expressionist painting, they just look sloppy.

I cannot believe Schoenberg did anything "sloppily."

You might consider that the people are blended into the landscape as a reminder of that famous line: "Thou are dust and into dust thou shalt return."

Of interest is the large figure on the left, seemingly female, yet apparently wearing a black suit with pants, impossible for a woman at that time.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 11, 2010, 06:39:00 AM
Why do you think the figure is female?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 11, 2010, 06:44:16 AM
Struck me as female, too, I must say.

Yes, one could look at that painting for quite a long time. The way the grave seems both to sink into the ground and to rise from it; the way it seems like the pupil of an eye. Most odd, and disturbing. As I said before, this could/should be an iconic image, it's the sort of thing one would expect to see reprinted in volumes of music history - the new burying the old, the Freudian undertones, expressionism in its purest form.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 12, 2010, 05:27:34 AM
What's shaking here at ye Outpost? (And YHM, Luke.)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 12, 2010, 05:48:18 AM
Well, as you can see, we've temporarily turned into an Art Appreciation Society! And I'm listening to a podcast of the Boston Chamber Music Society playing the Brahms Horn Trio, which has improved markedly since a very odd opening page....

YHM also, BTW
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 12, 2010, 06:25:29 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 12, 2010, 05:48:18 AM
Well, as you can see, we've temporarily turned into an Art Appreciation Society! [. . .]

Yes, I've enjoyed lurking a bit while I was off in La Pomme Grande.  That is really a lovely painting!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 12, 2010, 06:43:18 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 12, 2010, 06:25:29 AM
Yes, I've enjoyed lurking a bit while I was off in La Pomme Grande.  That is really a lovely painting!

We shan't know for sure if it is or it ain't, until we've received word from the GMG Degenerate Art Committee, though
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 12, 2010, 06:44:05 AM
If only Schoenberg had done illustrations for The Lord of the Rings . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 12, 2010, 06:46:21 AM
If only! Now there's an idea.... In which Gollum becomes the central European Jewish Golem, for starters.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 12, 2010, 06:47:52 AM
I see Webern as a portrait of Elrond, somehow.

Berg, perhaps as Bilbo Baggins.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 12, 2010, 06:56:58 AM
Schoenberg's drawings for the scenery of Erwartung....

(http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/schoenberg/painting/stagesetjpgs/ritt216b.jpg)
(http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/schoenberg/painting/stagesetjpgs/ritt210b.jpg)

or this:

(http://images.elfwood.com/art/k/n/knash/lotr1.jpg)
(http://www.popartuk.com/g/l/lg3679+peter-pracownik-lord-of-the-rings-the-hobbit-poster.jpg)
you decide!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 12, 2010, 06:58:48 AM
Pretty clear choice for me . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 12, 2010, 07:01:18 AM
Even now I've got one of the LOTR actually showing (they're very protective of their wonderful creations, these LOTR guys...)?

Surely Bilbo, the precursor, is a kind of Hauer figure, anyway.... Gandalf is Schoenberg, oh-so-sensitive Frodo is Berg, which leaves Webern as Sam, somehow. Yeah, not sure, might need some work, this...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: greg on July 12, 2010, 07:13:04 AM
I can't remember which one Sam is, but shouldn't Webern be the dwarf?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 12, 2010, 07:17:15 AM
Webern as Gimli . . . maybe you're right at that!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 12, 2010, 07:31:04 AM
Yes...as Stravinsky (Saruman?) said, Webern was always a-chiselling away in his diamond mines, or words to that effect...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 12, 2010, 07:39:51 AM
Combination of too much time on my hands + foolish whimsy:

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 12, 2010, 07:43:39 AM
: )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 12, 2010, 07:53:09 AM
See, it would work...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 12, 2010, 12:03:04 PM
Thought it would make a nice moody desktop - what do you think?   8) 8)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 12, 2010, 12:29:23 PM
I like it . . . but I can already hear what certain officemates would remark on seeing it as a desktop!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 12, 2010, 01:35:53 PM
Not to get too off topic here, but I just found this on page four of this very thread: http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.60.html

Apparently I listened to Tosca before and am just as allergic now as I was then! (cf. Tosca thread in the Opera forum).

Also from the early pages (page 5 this time) - do you like Broucek more than Osud say? I find the former quite hard going compared to the other operas which are generally in the "love" category for me.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 12, 2010, 01:51:11 PM
Quote from: Guido on July 12, 2010, 01:35:53 PM
Not to get too off topic here...

how dare you! Off topic? In this thread?! The very thought of it. Now, let's get straight back to the real reason we're all here - discussing how using an expressionist painting as a desktop might draw adverse comments form workmates....

Quote from: Guido on July 12, 2010, 01:35:53 PMbut I just found this on page four of this very thread: http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.60.html

Apparently I listened to Tosca before and am just as allergic now as I was then! (cf. Tosca thread in the Opera forum).

Also from the early pages (page 5 this time) - do you like Broucek more than Osud say? I find the former quite hard going compared to the other operas which are generally in the "love" category for me.

I love Broucek - it's such a big, expansive, warm-hearted piece. Osud is dense and intense, it packs a huge punch into a relatively short time, but - I suppose this is the crux of it, for me, as a lover of Janacek's music even more than Janacek's sense of drama - I think the music of Broucek is finer, more varied, some of the most fantastical stuff Janacek wrote, and it's more typically Janacekian in voice too, which is always going to hook me.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 12, 2010, 02:45:35 PM
Quote from: Luke on July 12, 2010, 01:51:11 PM
how dare you! Off topic? In this thread?! The very thought of it. Now, let's get straight back to the real reason we're all here - discussing how using an expressionist painting as a desktop might draw adverse comments form workmates....

I love Broucek - it's such a big, expansive, warm-hearted piece. Osud is dense and intense, it packs a huge punch into a relatively short time, but - I suppose this is the crux of it, for me, as a lover of Janacek's music even more than Janacek's sense of drama - I think the music of Broucek is finer, more varied, some of the most fantastical stuff Janacek wrote, and it's more typically Janacekian in voice too, which is always going to hook me.

Ok I'll give it another go then! Looking at itunes it has been a year since I last heard it, so maybe it's time for a rerun since this for me is "The summer of opera".
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on July 13, 2010, 03:18:03 PM
My, weren't we a jolly lot back then!

For a minute there I thought this thread was going to loop. You know, with people starting to say the same things over again, the same things they said back then. Until we reach this point here, and then it would start over.

(Or at least the same things being said, though not necessarily by the same people.)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on July 13, 2010, 03:18:56 PM
BTW, Guido, I thought I'd share my very own thoughts on Broucek with you.

I adore Broucek, but it is in some respects the hardest of the late five to click with, which is to do, I think, with the plot and the comic pace, and the way these impact upon the kaleidoscopic music. Give it a little time if it doesn't take hold at once.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 14, 2010, 04:08:55 AM
Mucking around in a free half hour, decided I really ought to put something up for Guido, who's been so patient waiting for something cello-ey, and been promised something so often! Here's a piece for cello duet that I wrote in 1999 - a lifetime ago, it seems. My original notes:

QuoteTwo was commissioned for a wedding anniversary and, as the title suggests, is concerned with appropriate notions of doubleness. The two cellos play a variation o (18th century = 'Double') of a bipartite piece from Couperin's Seizieme Ordre, L'Hymen-Amour; both parts of the piece are in two halves; and the whole is written almost entirely in two voices. In my version the original piece slips in and out of focus like a dream.

The PDF of the score is taken from my handwritten manuscript, so it's too large to upload here - I can email it if anyone wants to see it, because the two images I've posted below are just from screenshots, and even the slightest magnification will make the things illegible! But they give an idea. I played this piece a few times back then, and I remember it sounding rather beautiful. But it's been a long time....

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 14, 2010, 05:25:55 AM
Looks lovely, Luke! Would you please send, whenever convenient?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 15, 2010, 04:12:32 AM
Yes please! Do you have an mp3 of this one? I'll have to try and play it with a friend.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 15, 2010, 06:01:40 AM
No, last time these got played was before the advent of recorded sound hit Norfolk  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 20, 2010, 11:19:57 AM
Continuing my theme of unearthing old pieces - here's something I found a while back (along with all those other old scores I wrote about at the time). One of the less prehistoric of my old, juvenile pieces, I suppose - I think I was 18 when I wrote this, possibly in my first term at Cambridge (because later in the manuscript book are counterpoint exercises I did for Stephen Cleobury that term, all my painful faults patiently marked by the great man himself, and first sketches towards a piece which in the end I wrote around October of that term IIRC). I remember enjoying writing this but stopping because it seemed to be going nowhere - it was too easy, I think I felt, I couldn't trust that it was any good! There's a Gavin Bryars influence here, certainly - I was deeply into his grainy soundworld, his throbbing lower-string textures, his poignant harmonies (most typically of fifth superimposed upon fifth, a semitone between the middle two notes* - there are one or two of those here, but not too many). I was obviously at a bit of a loss, but it's nice enough. Cello harmonics at the beginning, Guido - supposed to be both notes (perfectly possible, and in the score I notated how), but Sibelius will only allow one harmonic circle at a time and I couldn't be bothered to find a work-round!

*I suppose that's a minor triad with an added minor sixth, but it's not really - in Bryars the open spacing with the two fifths is an important feature of the sound; I don't use it much in this piece though, as far as I can see, thankfully!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 20, 2010, 11:23:47 AM
This is the one I was sticking into Sibelius last night, Karl!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 20, 2010, 11:25:33 AM
Fascinating!

And we cross-posted:

Quote from: Luke on July 20, 2010, 11:23:47 AM
This is the one I was sticking into Sibelius last night, Karl!

Aye, so I guessed!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 20, 2010, 11:27:07 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 20, 2010, 11:25:33 AM
Fascinating!

A word into which many meanings can be read!!!  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 20, 2010, 11:32:27 AM
Hah!  Well, what I was immediately thinking was, that there are aspects to it which might appear in my compositions nowadays (when I've been writing for quite some little while), and which had never occurred to me back in the days when I was studying composition . . . and here they are in this early morceau of your own.  So it's this sort of ghost dialogue between the two of us at different eras which inspired the response fascinating : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 20, 2010, 11:33:52 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 20, 2010, 11:32:27 AM
Hah!  Well, what I was immediately thinking was, that there are aspects to it which might appear in my compositions nowadays (when I've been writing for quite some little while), and which had never occurred to me back in the days when I was studying composition . . . and here they are in this early morceau of your own.  So it's this sort of ghost dialogue between the two of us at different eras which inspired the response fascinating : )

That is fascinating - what sort of thing leaped out at you like that?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 20, 2010, 11:39:14 AM
The rhythmic shimmer of the pulsing accompaniment beginning in m.32, and the melodic interruption of that background (suited to the individual voices) in m.44.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 20, 2010, 11:50:38 AM
That is interesting, indeed. Have you heard Bryars' music, Karl? It's nothing like yours, or mine, but he does have a way with this sort of thing, too - long, long melodic lines over pulsing, living, breathing harmony, which frequently splinters off itself to contribute to the linear flow....and he's written some rather beautiful clarinet pieces, amongst many others!

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 20, 2010, 11:56:05 AM
I don't think I have heard aught of his music, Luke.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 20, 2010, 05:08:55 PM
Quote from: Luke on July 20, 2010, 11:19:57 AM
(most typically of fifth superimposed upon fifth, a semitone between the middle two notes* - there are one or two of those here, but not too many).

Add a fifth above and one below and then roll it and you've got one of my favourite chords from Ives - It's in the Song Tom Sails Away to the words "Scenes from my childhood are with me" - one of his most potent and beautiful songs.

Bryars is indeed an extraordinary composer - I'd all but dismissed his cello concerto until Luke told me to reconsider it - and now I recognise its extraordinary and subtle beauty. It's probably still my favourite piece of his, but there's so much that's marvellous. Definitely Czech him out!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 20, 2010, 10:07:28 PM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 20, 2010, 11:56:05 AM
I don't think I have heard aught of his music, Luke.

Try this (http://www.mediafire.com/?njmytjnh3tm) - the first piece of his that I ever heard, way back when, and though I've got maybe 20 more discs of his music since, and never been disappointed, this is still a standout piece, I think. The watery, fractured sound of the guitar here, above Bryars trademark grainy group of lower strings, is something special.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 21, 2010, 12:35:11 AM
Stretching back a year or two earlier - here's a Largo for orchestra I wrote aged 16-17. Awful balance (or lack thereof) in the orchestration, at times. And guess who had just been playing Shostakovich 5 with his youth orchestra.....? But it's fun to look at all this old old stuff again, and to hope I've progressed from this stage as much as I feel I have....

edit - oh, and bars 43-48....I wanted to cut them even at the time, they are utter rubbish, but I never got round to it and couldn't remember what I had intended to replace them with when I came to type this score up 16 years later!  ::)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 21, 2010, 01:48:24 AM
I'm starting to doubt my mind....did I already post that one, months ago?  :-\
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 21, 2010, 04:17:44 AM
The Largo shows how beautiful dissonances can be when handled correctly, e.g. bar 8, which becomes the very last bar, both played at ppp.

Was the work an official exercise or an opus ex nihilo?   0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 21, 2010, 04:20:51 AM
Quote from: Cato on July 21, 2010, 04:17:44 AM
The Largo shows how beautiful dissonances can be when handled correctly, e.g. bar 8, which becomes the very last bar, both played at ppp.

Was the work an official exercise or an opus ex nihilo?   0:)

As far as I recall, I wrote it whilst under the spell of the slow movement of Shostakovich 5, as I said (you can see echoes of it here, I think - the rising incipit, the mostly strings-and-winds orchestration, and also the use of the second flute, low in its register, which I remember stunned me in the Shostakovich - so simple, so spine-tingling). But in the end I think I used it as part of my composition portfolio for my music A level a year or so later.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 21, 2010, 04:22:54 AM
...so - sorry - to answer your question, the latter: just something that happened!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 28, 2010, 05:50:46 AM
Similarly here, it was Shostakovich which reminded me how beautiful simplicity can be.  In all the flurry of my compositional studies, it was Dmitri Dmitriyevich who "re-legitimized" (not to say rehabilitated) simplicity for me.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 28, 2010, 05:51:07 AM
Luke: I have finally heard from my former student, Ryan Behan, now a professor of piano:

"I forwarded the Ottevanger to my friend David Tomasacci, who is very interested in Scriabin and anyone pushing that style into new areas.   I think they are very interesting and can't wait to program them. Unfortunately, I will have to wait another year because I am having to capitalize on the bicentennial celebrations of Chopin/Schumann, then next year in Liszt. I have an all-Liszt program picked out, and his three Petrarch Sonnets are on there! Maybe I could program Luke Ottevanger's Lisztian work as an encore? It sounds like it might fit very well!"

So we will see what happens! 

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 28, 2010, 05:51:44 AM
Splendid!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 28, 2010, 06:01:48 AM
Quote from: Cato on July 28, 2010, 05:51:07 AM
Luke: I have finally heard from my former student, Ryan Behan, now a professor of piano:

"I forwarded the Ottevanger to my friend David Tomasacci, who is very interested in Scriabin and anyone pushing that style into new areas.   I think they are very interesting and can't wait to program them. Unfortunately, I will have to wait another year because I am having to capitalize on the bicentennial celebrations of Chopin/Schumann, then next year in Liszt. I have an all-Liszt program picked out, and his three Petrarch Sonnets are on there! Maybe I could program Luke Ottevanger's Lisztian work as an encore? It sounds like it might fit very well!"

So we will see what happens!

Well, Cato, that sounds fantastic! Many, many thanks, as always. for all you've said about my music on this thread and elsewhere, for your always-attentive listening - and now, also, my grateful thanks for having set this little train in motion too! I'm very excited about this....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 28, 2010, 06:12:47 AM
Very excited, too!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 28, 2010, 02:53:59 PM
Luke: your inbox is full of Personal Messages and will not accept anything!   $:)



Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on July 28, 2010, 03:02:46 PM
Cato, check PM. (Luke, I took a liberty : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 10, 2010, 03:41:02 PM
Luke, your inbox is reported to be full (I tried sending a PM earlier today).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 22, 2010, 12:34:20 AM
Hello chaps!

Back from France, where the internet connection was sporadic and didn't really let me contribute fully - I've been back a few days, actually, but putting things in order and not really posting here. There's a little room in my PM box now btw, should anyone need it.

I've described how two years ago, on holiday in the same place in France with my extended family, my brother, brother-in-law and I spent a somewhat drunken evening making a list of 80s pop songs which could provide suitable subjects for fugal treatment. The result was the silly little fugues I posted a few pages ago (because, for some reason, I took up that project anew this spring for a little entertainment). That gives some sort of an idea of the type of irreverent musical projects we dream up whilst in la France profonde....and explains this - http://www.mediafire.com/?b0bv4obt5cwdu7o - my first foray into musique concrete. Perhaps the sound source can be guessed (there's only one). But because, to my surprise, I actually find the result rather potent (images of wordless desolation, of an alien landscape, almost-human cries and answers, hints of Ornette....) I thought I'd share it with you  ;)  ;)  ;) Enjoy!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 22, 2010, 12:37:19 AM
Since being back, btw, I've also written my usual Christmas number for the girls at my school (only I have two schools now, so I wonder which one it'll be...perhaps both). I thought it would take ages to get into the mood, what with it still being August, but actually the thing came incredibly quickly, and was all done in about 20 minutes. I'm still to give it the finishing touches, but I'll post it up here when they're done. You know the sort of thing to expect, though....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 22, 2010, 05:42:10 AM
Welcome back!

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on August 10, 2010, 03:41:02 PM
Luke, your inbox is reported to be full (I tried sending a PM earlier today).

Not that it's of any importance . . . but I've re-sent.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on August 22, 2010, 07:46:18 AM
Quote from: Luke on August 22, 2010, 12:37:19 AM
Since being back, btw, I've also written my usual Christmas number for the girls at my school (only I have two schools now, so I wonder which one it'll be...perhaps both). I thought it would take ages to get into the mood, what with it still being August, but actually the thing came incredibly quickly, and was all done in about 20 minutes. I'm still to give it the finishing touches, but I'll post it up here when they're done. You know the sort of thing to expect, though....

Slowly this will build up into a nice little album. This is the third by my count?

Really like the Music concrete piece too - no idea what the sound is, but it's quite arresting.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 22, 2010, 08:37:09 AM
Quote from: Guido on August 22, 2010, 07:46:18 AM
Slowly this will build up into a nice little album. This is the third by my count?

Fourth, actually (fifth, really, I wrote two one year, but only selected one for performance) - Eternal Peace, Christmas Morn, The Dove, and now this new one, which is called The Bells of Christmas

Quote from: Guido on August 22, 2010, 07:46:18 AMReally like the Music concrete piece too - no idea what the sound is, but it's quite arresting.

Great - I'm glad! I don't trust things when they are so easy - this piece took me all of 10 minutes to cobble together, so how can it possibly be any good, especially when it as not meant with any serious intent. But I was surprised at how something so rough and jokey turned out to be quite affecting. I'll let people guess at the sound source before I pull away the curtain  ;D 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 22, 2010, 08:46:01 AM
Sometimes . . . you've got to Trust the Ease.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 22, 2010, 08:47:16 AM
I'm looking forward to listening to the concrète . . . I just need to crank out some viola sonata first! : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 23, 2010, 05:00:51 AM
Keep fiddling with this thing more than perhaps it deserves, but here's the Christmas piece for this year. Much as expected, I'm sure.... The lower part can be omitted (partially or completely) as required, if necessary, not that it is very hard - but the youngest children singing are only 9.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 23, 2010, 05:02:56 AM
Charmingly done!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 23, 2010, 05:19:48 AM
Another Sibelius question . . . mm. 2 & 4 look spaced horizontally by note-heads. To my eye (maybe the fault is in my eye!) the sixteenth-note beams after the LH F, E, D are a bit too short. How would we fix that, do you know?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: rappy on August 23, 2010, 05:55:43 AM
Luke, excellent piece. I especially like the measures 69ff.

This gives me the idea of starting a christmas music thread, I hope you'll post your piece there another time.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 23, 2010, 08:07:33 AM
Thank you both! Rappy, I'll pop over to your new thread once I've posted this and perhaps put this piece there too - there are some others, also, from the last three years, which are to be found on this thread but which I could post there too.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on August 23, 2010, 05:19:48 AM
Another Sibelius question . . . mm. 2 & 4 look spaced horizontally by note-heads. To my eye (maybe the fault is in my eye!) the sixteenth-note beams after the LH F, E, D are a bit too short. How would we fix that, do you know?

I'm loathe to change the default settings because in general they work, but I suppose there could be a fix there. However, in this case what I'd do - and I might, because you're right, they could look a little better - is to CTRL-select the three left hand notes and move them as a group slightly leftwards in the 'X' positional box in the General dropdown of the Properties window. As in the screenshot below, which doesn't capture my cursor clicking away! And then I suppose one could copy the altered bar and paste it/change it as necessary elsewhere - I think the movement applied to the noteheads would hold good.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 23, 2010, 08:09:40 AM
Nice! I'll putter with that when I get home.  Thank you!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on August 23, 2010, 09:00:43 AM
The piece looks great! Can't wait to hear it. Only 4 months now!

Why the instruction in bar 66?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on August 23, 2010, 09:13:15 AM
Also I like the way that the answer to the question posed at the beginning is it inversion! (Look, I'm doing musicology! I'm literally a musicologist now! yessssssssssss!!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 23, 2010, 09:37:02 AM
Yay, you spotted it! Also the two central verses start in a quasi inversion of each other....

The instruction in bar 66 - well, it's dependent on the previous word, 'Christ', and how it is decided to sing it (as per my note there): because even though F# isn't exactly a very high note, they're small kids, and a small choir, and this is an important word, and a big moment in the piece, so I want it to ring out loudly. Taking half of the children away to sing the lower note might lessen this. So I indicate that if necessary one should sacrifice the harmony here, to acheive this, and - to answer your question! - if 'Christ' is left bare, then the following consequent words ought to be left bare too, I think, else one risks taking away from the impact of the most important word by the decorations of the following ones.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 23, 2010, 09:38:28 AM
Any guesses on the sound source of my musique concrete doodle, anyone?  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 23, 2010, 10:39:54 AM
Oh, I've got to download that when I get home this evening.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on August 30, 2010, 06:44:16 AM
Quote from: Luke on August 23, 2010, 09:38:28 AM
Any guesses on the sound source of my musique concrete doodle, anyone?  ;D

Unfortunately my computer here at school has no speakers of any kind!

So I will try to decipher it at home this afternoon!

Did I read correctly that you are now employed at 2 schools?

We really need to find a Maecenas for you and for our 21st-century "Charles Ives" eking out a pittance by doing the Bob Cratchit thing in Boston.    0:)


Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 30, 2010, 07:20:50 AM
Now THAT is an exceedingly fine idea! Any ideas, anyone?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 30, 2010, 08:17:59 AM
Bob Cratchit! Hah!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 31, 2010, 04:47:30 AM
Quote from: Luke on August 22, 2010, 12:34:20 AM
Hello chaps!

Back from France, where the internet connection was sporadic and didn't really let me contribute fully - I've been back a few days, actually, but putting things in order and not really posting here. There's a little room in my PM box now btw, should anyone need it.

I've described how two years ago, on holiday in the same place in France with my extended family, my brother, brother-in-law and I spent a somewhat drunken evening making a list of 80s pop songs which could provide suitable subjects for fugal treatment. The result was the silly little fugues I posted a few pages ago (because, for some reason, I took up that project anew this spring for a little entertainment). That gives some sort of an idea of the type of irreverent musical projects we dream up whilst in la France profonde....and explains this - http://www.mediafire.com/?b0bv4obt5cwdu7o (http://www.mediafire.com/?b0bv4obt5cwdu7o) - my first foray into musique concrete. Perhaps the sound source can be guessed (there's only one). But because, to my surprise, I actually find the result rather potent (images of wordless desolation, of an alien landscape, almost-human cries and answers, hints of Ornette....) I thought I'd share it with you  ;)  ;)  ;) Enjoy!

"Hints of Ornette" : )

Downloaded and listened to it at last! Man, was I ready for some sonic irreverence after this sprint to finish the va sta (itself no stranger to the occasional musical outrage).

This is fun, and among other things I like the triadic bits which emerge . . . bicycle pump?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 31, 2010, 08:47:37 AM
Funny, I was playing this piece to some people this morning....found it plaintive and desolate in a Clangers-like way once again  0:) 0:)   Not bicycle pump, no....I can see the logic behind that guess though.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on September 02, 2010, 02:44:30 AM
Quote from: Luke on August 31, 2010, 08:47:37 AM
Funny, I was playing this piece to some people this morning....found it plaintive and desolate in a Clangers-like way once again  0:) 0:)   Not bicycle pump, no....I can see the logic behind that guess though.

Various tubes being manipulated on a vacuum cleaner?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 02, 2010, 02:56:58 AM
No....pipework is involved, though...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on September 03, 2010, 03:29:40 AM
Quote from: Luke on September 02, 2010, 02:56:58 AM
No....pipework is involved, though...

Hmmm!

Okay, how about a variable speed hair dryer blowing through various pipes? 

Wait a minute!!!  (Homer Simpson's epiphanic voice!)

You weren't doing something...unnatural...to the bagpipes, were you???   :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 03, 2010, 04:20:31 AM
Organ bellows?

(Horrified at the possibility at which Cato hints . . . that one may be able to find bagpipes in France!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 03, 2010, 06:32:30 AM
Quel horreur!!

Not bagpipes, not a hair dryer. It's actually....


the sound of the cistern refilling after flushing.... one take, no cuts or splicings, layered against itself at various speeds and pitches and with various starting points, and also backwards. It struck me that, once one forgot what the source of this plaintive little moaning was, it was actually quite affecting. Hence, this piece!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 03, 2010, 06:36:50 AM
Hah!  You see, none of us would have cast aspersions on your work by imagining any such source, mon cher! ; )

But your having made such fine use of that material! . . . do you suppose you'll go back to the well (as it were) at all? : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 03, 2010, 06:43:06 AM
I think I've rather drained it dry, don't you? Back to good old notes on paper for me now.

Speaking of which.....just some getting-into-the-groove splurgings, signifying nothing, I'm sure Guido knows not to get excited by now....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 03, 2010, 06:50:38 AM
Oh! Somehow those pages are on their side . . . makes me want to take the laptop and rotate it so that I can read properly . . . .

My 'reading disability' aside, glad to see you back in the saddle!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 03, 2010, 06:52:25 AM
So they are! - must be some mistake in the PDF-making process (though I've done the score in landscape, it fills up the lines more meaningfully that way). You can rotate PDFs though, to view them the right way...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 03, 2010, 06:53:20 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on September 03, 2010, 06:50:38 AM
My reading disability' aside, glad to see you back in the saddle![/font]

Just tentatively approaching it at the moment, but it's fun!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 03, 2010, 06:56:49 AM
Quote from: Luke on September 03, 2010, 06:52:25 AM
You can rotate PDFs though, to view them the right way...

Thanks, got it!

Such a sweet opening! I like it, we want more!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on September 04, 2010, 04:59:56 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on September 03, 2010, 06:56:49 AM
Thanks, got it!

Such a sweet opening! I like it, we want more!


Amen!  0:)

Concerning your previous composition with the "cistern," did you use a tape recorder or one of these newfangled digital doohickeys?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 04, 2010, 07:52:31 AM
Yay! Looks delicious. Some lovely cello writing already...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 05, 2010, 01:28:45 AM
Quote from: Cato on September 04, 2010, 04:59:56 AM
Amen!  0:)

Concerning your previous composition with the "cistern," did you use a tape recorder or one of these newfangled digital doohickeys?

It was a doohickey.

Well, actually, not exactly, I do have a doohickey, but I didn't take it on holiday with me. For this I just used the built-in microphone on my laptop. It did an OK job, I think.  :)

Guido - you'll be pleased to hear that more notes are accumulating in the cello piece but I"m going to be very busy for the next few days so I won't be able to do much for a bit...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 05, 2010, 06:07:37 AM
Gradual parallel accumulation, that's the ticket.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 21, 2010, 09:34:22 AM
YHM (of the e-mail variety, too) : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on September 26, 2010, 04:44:05 AM
Don't know where else to post this, but as Luke likes Barry Guy, and to keep things ticking over in the Outpost:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UVgO4hhSmw&feature=related
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 30, 2010, 10:53:09 AM
Well, chaps, not much happening round these parts, of course, as I've been stupidly busy the last few weeks, and it's going to stay that way for the foreseeable future and beyond. The composing has taken a knock because of that, which is of course hard to take, because however rubbish what I write might be, creating it keeps me (relatively) sane, and without it I go a little doolally. The following are the only things of slight note:

1) That cello piece I posted the first page of a few weeks ago was never really a go-er, I think I knew that from the start, but it has a few ideas in it which might resurface elsewhere at some point.

2) At present I have a silly little project in mind whose nature is apparent from the title of the piece, at which I made a first essay today, the first page of which you can see below if you want. I also wrote some of the next page, and I've planned the whole thing; as plans go it's a good one, I think, but we'll see if it makes it into realisation.

3) There's also another folky-ish-esque-like setting for voice and violin of Yeats' ubiquitous Down by the Salley Gardens, which is complete, I think, but for dynamics etc, which I started in the spring but left incomplete; I finished it off recently (apart from said details). But it's a damn depressing piece (that's why I couldn't finish it back then) and I'm not sure of its quality. It's too simple, maybe...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 30, 2010, 11:10:38 AM
Coraggio!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 07, 2010, 07:20:48 AM
Just checking in . . . I know times have been trying.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 07, 2010, 09:27:54 AM
Luke Ottevanger wrote:

QuoteWell, chaps, not much happening round these parts, of course, as I've been stupidly busy the last few weeks, and it's going to stay that way for the foreseeable future and beyond. The composing has taken a knock because of that, which is of course hard to take, because however rubbish what I write might be, creating it keeps me (relatively) sane, and without it I go a little doolally.

So, do little composing and go doolally!  Is that how it works?

We assume your work at the school(s) has caused problems?

No matter!  5 A.M. up and at 'em!  "Total organization: every day 50 push-ups, 50 pull-ups," and then compose compose compose until you jog to school at 7!  $:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 07, 2010, 01:57:26 PM
Ha! One of the schools is 35 miles away if I do the shortest, bumpiest, narrow-scrape-with-tractor-iest cross-countriest route! the other a mere 20 miles - no chance of jogging it!

However, work continues on that little piano piece (which is now about 11 pages long and no longer so little); an odd one, very sweet and consonant, unsurprisingly, given the source material (English folksongs, but specifically in Cecil Sharp's edition, with his piano accompaniments - in fact, sometimes I use the accompaniment and ignore the song entirely). I'm loathe to treat these delicate little pieces too heavily, and really what I'm doing is adding little flourishes, touches of heterophony, pointing up motivic links between the songs, superimposing lines, extending patterns to hint at other harmonic areas, building an overall structure out of the metric, motivic, textural and harmonic correspondences between the songs....that sort of thing. I've composed the first 2 or three minutes, and the last 2 or 3 too; I think, despite its oddness, that I'm going to end up pleased with it, when all the gaps are joined up.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 08, 2010, 03:22:51 AM
Quote from: Luke on October 07, 2010, 01:57:26 PM
Ha! One of the schools is 35 miles away if I do the shortest, bumpiest, narrow-scrape-with-tractor-iest cross-countriest route! the other a mere 20 miles - no chance of jogging it!



35 miles!  Too bad the local school in the shire has nothing for you!

Your description of the piano piece sounds like a "Variations on an Old English Folk Tune." 

We are expecting something old, something new, something unexpected, and nothing to rue!  :o
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 19, 2010, 06:54:36 AM
Quote from: Luke on October 07, 2010, 01:57:26 PM
Ha! One of the schools is 35 miles away if I do the shortest, bumpiest, narrow-scrape-with-tractor-iest cross-countriest route! the other a mere 20 miles - no chance of jogging it!

However, work continues on that little piano piece (which is now about 11 pages long and no longer so little); an odd one, very sweet and consonant, unsurprisingly, given the source material (English folksongs, but specifically in Cecil Sharp's edition, with his piano accompaniments - in fact, sometimes I use the accompaniment and ignore the song entirely). I'm loathe to treat these delicate little pieces too heavily, and really what I'm doing is adding little flourishes, touches of heterophony, pointing up motivic links between the songs, superimposing lines, extending patterns to hint at other harmonic areas, building an overall structure out of the metric, motivic, textural and harmonic correspondences between the songs....that sort of thing. I've composed the first 2 or three minutes, and the last 2 or 3 too; I think, despite its oddness, that I'm going to end up pleased with it, when all the gaps are joined up.

Despite the oddness . . . reminds me of a project . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: DavidRoss on October 19, 2010, 07:23:22 AM
Quote from: Luke on October 07, 2010, 01:57:26 PM
Ha! One of the schools is 35 miles away if I do the shortest, bumpiest, narrow-scrape-with-tractor-iest cross-countriest route! the other a mere 20 miles - no chance of jogging it!
Sounds lovely!  BTW, WTF is "doolally?"

Quote from: Luke on October 07, 2010, 01:57:26 PM
However, work continues on that little piano piece (which is now about 11 pages long and no longer so little); an odd one, very sweet and consonant....
Sounds delightful! When can we hear it?  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 22, 2010, 02:11:02 PM
I should mention that I had a little play through of the cello/piano piece sketches (only the cello part) and thought they were absolutely beautiful... I'm not holding my breath, but look forward to some time when more are produced!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 23, 2010, 04:39:02 AM
Quote from: Guido on October 22, 2010, 02:11:02 PM
I should mention that I had a little play through of the cello/piano piece sketches (only the cello part) and thought they were absolutely beautiful...

Hear, hear.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 23, 2010, 08:50:54 AM
Quote from: Guido on October 22, 2010, 02:11:02 PM
I should mention that I had a little play through of the cello/piano piece sketches (only the cello part) and thought they were absolutely beautiful... I'm not holding my breath, but look forward to some time when more are produced!

Ha! Thanks! I thought that my ears were burning recently...

As I said at the time, I think that little sketch would have to be a resource to be drawn on for another piece, not an integral part of a larger piece itself. But thank you for the words of encouragement!

Meanwhile, the piano piece mentioned earlier draws closer to being finished - just a section in the centre of the piece remains intractable. Bigger problem, to my ears, in the aftershock of the Viola Sonata of K Henning, is that my piece seems so spineless and naive (deliberately so, but still...). It lacks something, still...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 25, 2010, 10:51:07 AM
A stonking great cello line is what!

jk jk.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 11, 2010, 04:24:25 PM
Finished, I think. Still very soft-centred, and something of a partner to my Nightingale Sonata of 2006 in its folk music basis and its unabashed use of tonality. An odd one, I think, but I like it and find it very touching, personally....

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on November 13, 2010, 04:57:36 AM
Splendid! Will look this over soon . . . somehow I've been scheduled for the shop both Saturday & Sunday this week and next . . . ah, well, I can rest on Thanksgiving Day ; )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on November 16, 2010, 09:44:29 AM
Oh but it just looks so beautiful!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on November 16, 2010, 10:38:42 AM
Quote from: Guido on November 16, 2010, 09:44:29 AM
Oh but it just looks so beautiful!

Great to read that Luke Ottevanger has fathered new progeny!

0:)

I will need to be home to download the work, and first need to write something - long overdue - about Karl's Viola Sonata!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 18, 2010, 04:33:36 AM
Quote from: Guido on November 16, 2010, 09:44:29 AM
Oh but it just looks so beautiful!

Well, thank you! It is actually beautiful, objectively speaking - the sounds and textures and harmonies are attractive, the melodic lines and the figurations are strong, as they should be seeing as I took many of them from elsewhere! But all that doesn't necessarily a good piece make - whether the thing hangs together, whether it is well-made and satisfying is another issue, and I'm not so certain of that.

Currently burning to write but working long long hours, up and out early, home and to bed late, and not much time or energy to create. It's all quite frustrating!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on November 18, 2010, 04:56:44 AM
Hang in there!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 24, 2010, 07:31:36 AM
OK, the annual piece I do for the girls at my school (that I wrote and posted a score to here in August) has been rehearsed a few times, and I recorded it today in the church at school where it's going to be sung in the Advent service on Sunday. I'm pleased with it, and with the girls' singing too, this time. Here's an mp3 of it:

http://www.mediafire.com/?h4xi73t4gmucsxs

and the score, with some revisions to what I posted in August, is attached.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on November 25, 2010, 06:15:08 AM
Will delight to check this out Saturday!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 25, 2010, 06:31:25 AM
Thanks, that's great! I think it works well, in its simple little way...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on November 25, 2010, 07:07:43 AM
I'm sure it do, as I recall the score you posted.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 27, 2010, 06:24:32 AM
The Advent service is tomorrow (which is also my birthday - halfway to my three score and ten...) but the pre-service rehearsal will be over in a rush and doubtless a little stressful for reasons I shouldn't go into here! So I popped over to school just now and unlocked the church just to refresh my memory of the organ there and so on. Every year it's the same as this service approaches, though it's earlier than usual this year - it's an idyll: an English country church set in beautiful grounds, the air bright and clear and cold, but sunny. Today there is snow covering the churchyard, too. It all feels....right! A vision of Olde England, or something. And I sat there at the organ in the chold church, shivering as I tried to remember how to use the pedals (no chance!) and felt rather peaceful for the first time in who knows how long. Certainly my favourite event of the year, this one, and the girls are singing so nicely that I'm not nervous about my own piece (previous page for mp3, anyone?) this time round, though perhaps that's a bad sign  ??? . Plus, now that my kids are at the school too, my daughter is in the choir/chamber choir, which makes tomorrow extra special.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on November 27, 2010, 03:05:47 PM
Lovely!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 28, 2010, 11:49:52 AM
Very glad I got a chance to go over things in peace and at leisure yesterday, because today was a bit of a stressful one. Scratch the 'a bit of' actually. Had to pick my daughter up from a camp and take her back for the rehearsal at 2, but the car broke down on our way there. In the freezing cold, 2 hours before I got picked up, we ended up an hour late for the rehearsal and chilled to the bones. And with the car left at the garage in who knows what state. What a way to spend my 35th birthday!

But then the service itself was beautiful, as it always is, and the girls were just beautiful in my piece, which, as my ex-wife said, was clearly written by someone who knew exactly what the girls could do and what they couldn't. It went down really well, I felt - I had some lovely comments from people who ought to know. Proud of this one - wish someone would download it!  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on November 28, 2010, 02:32:28 PM
Oh, what a nuisance, the car breaking down! Of course that was a lot of added stress.  Glad the service was such a beauty, that makes up for a great deal!

Quote from: Luke on November 28, 2010, 11:49:52 AM
. . . Proud of this one - wish someone would download it!  ;D

Oh, my ears are burning.  I meant to, yesterday; but then, it turned out that I did not get to spend any time at the home desktop, which is the only station where I can execute such downloads.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on November 28, 2010, 02:34:40 PM
A happy correction: I've just downloaded it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on November 28, 2010, 03:51:13 PM
I also have downloaded the score and performance!

Yay Team!   0:)

Luke: your PM Inbox is full!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: DavidW on November 28, 2010, 04:04:36 PM
Hey that was really nice! :)  And I thought you were an avant garde atonal honker Luke! :D  I avoided this thread because I thought y'all would be just discussing technicalities of harmony or something equally entertaining for composers and dull for laymen. >:D  But thanks to Karl's post in the listening thread...

well done Luke, I'll share this with my family and it include in the mix for a Christmas cd. :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on November 28, 2010, 05:21:48 PM
Splendid, Davey!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on November 28, 2010, 11:48:06 PM
Happy Birthday, Luke! 8) (Sorry, wasn't online yesterday. 0:))
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on November 29, 2010, 08:37:57 AM
Quote from: Cato on November 28, 2010, 03:51:13 PM
Luke: your PM Inbox is full!

Yeah. What're you gonna do about it, buster!? ; )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 29, 2010, 11:48:17 PM
 :-[

So sorry! There's some space there now.

Thanks for all your kind birthday wishes, btw (here, via email and on facebook-where-I-never-go-anymore-hence-lack-of-reply-there). The less said about the last couple of days the better, maybe, because EVERYTHING has been going wrong... but the piece went right, and I'm full of pride because it fitted the girls' voices so well, showed them off at their best. They loved singing it (I hear it sung as I walk around school, wafting up the stairwells and down the corridors!) and the audience were really, visibly taken with it - it feels very good, that. Thanks to you guys for listening, too - it helps at what is a difficult time for me (again, the less said the better about that too) to have this little part of my life partitioned headed 'The Bells of Christmas - at least that bit is going OK!'   ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on November 30, 2010, 04:54:59 AM
Hang on to that charming execution of The Bells!  Utterly enchanting, and it's those moments of enchantment which make it all worthwhile.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on December 28, 2010, 05:08:01 AM
The Bells is very beautiful indeed. Congrats!

The outpost's post box is full. I have had to send an electronic email instead...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on December 28, 2010, 05:11:40 AM
Are Eternal Peace and Christmas Morn available as recordings still (if they ever were?)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on December 28, 2010, 05:13:43 AM
lol, I just sent you one back! I saw you were PM-ing, thought, 'I wonder if that is to me, I bet my box is full as usual', and emptied it slightly, but clearly a second or two too late.

Glad you liked the piece. It's proving quite a hit!

Spent a few happy hours the last few days making little films to go alongside some of my pieces, slideshow sort of things just to point them up slightly, to give a hint of the sort of images that run through my head when I listen and when i was composing, anyway. Maybe I'll upload them at some point - but none of the music itself is new, I should add.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on December 28, 2010, 05:15:01 AM
They are, and they were, but they don't stand up very well. Eternal Peace is not very well sung, i must say, though it was recorded at a fairly early stage in rehearsal.. Christmas Morn is better performed, but the minidisc recorder I was using seems to have been grinding away somewhat that day, and the sound is no fun!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on December 28, 2010, 05:16:07 AM
Quote from: Guido on December 28, 2010, 05:08:01 AM
The Bells is very beautiful indeed. Congrats!

And here I just want to repeat the same. Well done, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on December 28, 2010, 05:19:12 AM
Thank you too, Karl!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 03, 2011, 06:39:51 AM
So, what's shaking? : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 04, 2011, 09:54:21 AM
Well, apparently the Yorkshire city of Ripon - where my father grew up and where I spent lots of time as a boy - reeled a little from the earthquake it had last night, but that's about as close as I get to any shaking at the moment I'm afraid! I'd wanted to get writing over the Christmas break, but I don't really feel like I had one, and nothing got done!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 04, 2011, 10:00:11 AM
Oh!

Incidentally, earthquakes (well, a symbol for earthquake, really) featured in my Will Cuppy reading this morning . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on January 04, 2011, 10:01:40 AM
Breaks that don't feel like breaks . . . are a nuisance.  [All the time off from the day job last year, felt that way.]  Which is why I am looking forward to a genuine week off (much of it Out of Town) later this month!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 10, 2011, 06:45:37 AM
TTT
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on February 15, 2011, 05:43:11 AM
why the name change? Are you in composing mode again?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 15, 2011, 05:52:04 AM
Hi Guido (and btw, I owe you a PM, I know...)

1) name change just for the reason that others are doing it - because of the logging in hassle and to improve security on my account

2) Composing mode? I wish. Lots of things that tickle my fancy, no time to do them. I really don't know when the time will come again, either. But it's not just a matter of time, it's also that, although I have a general wish to write a few things, my cylinders aren't really sparking at the moment. Which I try to view in a positive light - it means that when composing is flowing easily, then it isn't just me letting any old trash through, it's actually supposed to be coming at that point!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 18, 2011, 03:52:25 PM
Psst! I've sent e-mail : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 19, 2011, 12:46:23 PM
Replied, after typical Ottevangarian time-lag
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on February 19, 2011, 01:04:45 PM
Ho capito : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on March 15, 2011, 10:24:39 AM
Quote from: Apollon on February 10, 2011, 06:45:37 AM
TTT

Because I want to ; )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 24, 2011, 03:10:10 PM
Quote from: Apollon on March 15, 2011, 10:24:39 AM
Because I want to ; )
(http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2009/7/26/128930808674765763.jpg)

Me, over on the Guitar thread:

Quote from: Luke on April 24, 2011, 03:05:34 PM
This thread got me a little fired up today, and seeing as I am having a fairly-happily fallow time compositionally at the moment, I thought I'd try my hand at a little arranging. I've had a very first attempt at guitar writing, and I've gone in at the deep end, with one of my quite complex piano pieces, but one which I think could make a nice guitar piece both stylistically and technically. Which is not to say that my arrangement will work, at all, but that I think an arrangement that worked could be made by someone who knew their way around a guitar.

The piece I've chosen is my sonata movement for piano written in 2007 - links to score and recordings are somewhere or other on my thread, and I'd upload them here if I could. But I'd like to get a guitarist's eye on what I've done so far, before I commit to doing more. I'm aware that some stretches may be tricky, and that some notes won't sustain as I've written them, but it would be good to know which are the worst areas in this respect (and any other respects too). Any other advice also gratefully accepted. Now, where can I post the thing!? I wish attachments were still working, they made life so easy.....!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on April 24, 2011, 03:40:13 PM
Hooray, Luke is back in action!

Which Sonata movement are you referring to?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 24, 2011, 03:49:03 PM
This one

http://www.esnips.com/doc/f34c8a56-324e-4363-856b-6dcfaffd0c5f/Sonata

Was doing OK with the standard tuning, but have just decided that tuning the low E down to D will help enormously. It's not used much, but the basses are important when they happen in this piece. Who knows what the experts will say, however!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on April 24, 2011, 04:56:22 PM
Quote from: Luke on April 24, 2011, 03:49:03 PM
This one

http://www.esnips.com/doc/f34c8a56-324e-4363-856b-6dcfaffd0c5f/Sonata

Was doing OK with the standard tuning, but have just decided that tuning the low E down to D will help enormously. It's not used much, but the basses are important when they happen in this piece. Who knows what the experts will say, however!

Scordatura tuning on the guitar is quite possible, so be not afraid of the low D!   0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 24, 2011, 10:53:55 PM
Quote from: Cato on April 24, 2011, 04:56:22 PM
Scordatura tuning on the guitar is quite possible, so be not afraid of the low D!   0:)

Oh, I know that, I just thought..... for my first attempt?  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on April 25, 2011, 03:49:49 AM
Quote from: Cato on April 24, 2011, 03:40:13 PM
Hooray, Luke is back in action!

Double hooray!

Quote from: Luke on April 24, 2011, 10:53:55 PM
Oh, I know that, I just thought..... for my first attempt?  ;D

Damn the torpedos!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on April 25, 2011, 04:31:35 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 24, 2011, 10:53:55 PM
Oh, I know that, I just thought..... for my first attempt?  ;D

Karl is quite right! Full Speed Ahead!

Modesty at times can be a negative attribute in creative personalities!   ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on April 26, 2011, 12:40:16 AM
Quote from: Cato on April 25, 2011, 04:31:35 AM
Modesty at times can be a negative attribute in creative personalities!


Completely true. Hubris helps.  ;)


Write on!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: ibanezmonster on April 27, 2011, 02:44:48 PM
Quote from: Cato on April 24, 2011, 04:56:22 PM
Scordatura tuning on the guitar is quite possible, so be not afraid of the low D!   0:)
My friend actually used some type of small device which tuned the low E down to D when we were playing a few months ago. I never figured out what it was, though.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 05, 2011, 04:54:51 AM
Hey, I PM'ed you, and it seems to have gone through, Luke! ; )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 05, 2011, 05:17:41 AM
You sound surprised  ;)  ;)  ;) (heavy irony)

It did, and I even read it and replied all in one go! Will wonders never cease!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 05, 2011, 05:23:15 AM
You are on it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 05, 2011, 06:06:59 AM
Quote from: Greg on April 27, 2011, 02:44:48 PM
My friend actually used some type of small device which tuned the low E down to D when we were playing a few months ago. I never figured out what it was, though.

Not a whammy bar? : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: ibanezmonster on May 05, 2011, 06:36:17 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on May 05, 2011, 06:06:59 AM
Not a whammy bar? : )
Oh, no. It would be too hard to keep that thing down while playing normal (and holding it steady enough to play in tune).

I think it's this (that metal attachment):
(http://www.premierguitar.com/education/images/200810_shiftinggear_1.jpg)
It's called a Hipshot Guitar Extender.


One of my favorite guitar tools to use is an eBow. It sustains a note as long as you want, even on an unplugged acoustic guitar. Just hold it over the string and it makes it vibrate. There is a harmonic switch on it that makes sustain notes sound very heavenly/beautiful. My friends say it is pretty much useless live (they have a point for many cases), but it's still awesome. Just a tricky tool to use.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 10, 2011, 10:01:13 AM
YHM, Luke. (Your PM box is full again ; )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 17, 2011, 07:14:57 AM
Luke, any time you may feel inclined to write up a duet (or three) for flute & clarinet (with Only Judicious Demands upon the latter ; ) Peter & I are readily at your service.

Wish I knew a good (and volunteerist) pianist so that we could assay your clarinet sonata. Some day!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 17, 2011, 07:23:51 AM
That's a great offer Karl - might well take you up on that, thank you!

I hear the words 'flute and clarinet duet' and I instantly think of the tenor-accompanying example of the latter from the Britten Nocturne. Spellbinding writing, as in all of that piece... do you know it? It's a quick-fire succession of musical images, only a few bars each, perfectly chosen and honed, and my first thought is... I wonder if I could take some of those musical images and expand upon them, turn them from snapshots into wider landscapes. I doubt it, but I'll register it here as my first instinctual thought...

Meanwhile, poor Il Furioso is struggling away at my piano-turned-guitar sonata. Unsurprisingly, it's proving to be a very taxing piece - I leapt at the urge to get arranging without really worrying about the fact that, although it is full of guitar-ish textures, as the piece goes on and more and more layers and complexities are piled-up, it becomes ever less guitar-friendly. I realised that as I arranged - there were some bars which I really struggled with! But, with lots of wishful thinking, I kept in as much as I could semi-reasonably get away with. I awai il Furioso's report on what I should strip away (he's worked through quite a chunk of the piece already, and I'm incredibly grateful to him).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on May 17, 2011, 07:27:31 AM
When I know that I've heard a piece, but cannot recall a particular (and particularly noteworthy) passage, I know I haven't listened to it enough!

This disc of the WTC is just finishing up, so I'll dig up the Nocturne (which I know I've got here . . . .)

Do by all means write something for Peter & me!  Entirely at your convenience, of course
: )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on May 17, 2011, 09:34:15 AM
Quote from: Leon on May 17, 2011, 07:30:11 AM
Maybe you should ask Il Furioso if he has a friend who also plays guitar and re-arrange it for guitar duo. 

I was approached by a friend who regularly plays with another guitarist and asked for something, so I'll be going down that road in the next few months.  I play some guitar, so have a good idea of what will be "handy".

:)

Decades ago I was asked to compose a piece for a few guitarists.

It was returned with the comment: "Where are the tabs?"   :o

They could not read music, only chord charts!  I naively thought they were budding Julian Breams and actually played the guitar, rather than strumming 4 chords up and down.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 19, 2011, 01:37:44 PM
Almost nothing going on round here recently. But last night was fun, and moving in a way which surprised me

A parent at my school is in charge of Art History Abroad - this is him http://www.arthistoryabroad.com/Tutors.html - and now and then he organises little cultural evenings in the school. This time for the first time he ventured into music, and asked me to accompany a friend of his, a fine soprano called Megan Peel. So that was last night, to a small and appreciative audience, in my music room at school - this is the room, looking into the little quasi-stage in which I suggested we play:

(http://www.riddlesworthhall.com/uploads/1/Sarah_Mountford_-_Prospectus_CD_247_1.jpg)

(the picture is from before my time as Head of Music)

It was a beautiful thing for me, to be playing proper music properly with someone proper after a long time in which I've been virtually confined to playing for choirs and children. The setting was extremely familiar to me and yet transfromed from classroom into intimate, marble-columned, softly lit, sunset-filled haven - absolutely gorgeous. To be there as a performer and not a teacher felt so odd, and so 'right'. Apparently the soprano loved working with me - it certainly felt very good for me too. And the audience were possibly the most thrilled audience I've ever played for. I knew many of them through the school, and they were all particularly struck, I think, by seeing me in that new context, and many of them commented on how at home and happy I seemed to be. That meant a lot to me. The man himself, the boss of AHA, was stunned by how it all turned out and is eagerly talking of doing more such things with me. There was even tentative talk of him and I working together on some kind of Art+Music presentation (Picasso and Stravinsky, was his thought...). A great evening.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on June 19, 2011, 02:08:56 PM
Very happy for you here! Luke in his element!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on June 19, 2011, 04:11:52 PM
: )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on June 28, 2011, 04:06:15 AM
You might find at some point in the future that your present musically cloistered existence will have had at least a somewhat hermetic effect on your creativity.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on August 21, 2011, 06:47:22 AM
Any music a-cooking while you were en vacances, Luke? We wants an update!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on August 24, 2011, 01:07:23 PM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on August 21, 2011, 06:47:22 AM
Any music a-cooking while you were en vacances, Luke? We wants an update!

Amen!   0:)

We want more piano sonatas!

Heck, why not just go whole hog!  We want Ottevanger's Piano Concerto #1 !
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on August 24, 2011, 01:08:17 PM
Quote from: Cato on August 24, 2011, 01:07:23 PM

Heck, why not just go whole hog!  We want Ottevanger's Piano Concerto #1 !


Seconded!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 24, 2011, 01:19:37 PM
Yes, It'd be nice, wouldn't it. I like that idea. If anyone wants to commission it...

But in the real world, nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's not fun. But there are reasons! However, I have to write my annual Christmas piece soon, so expect something at some point. (Though that's a self-imposed 'have')
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 07, 2011, 01:21:33 AM
Hi all!

Here's something to take your time while we're waiting for Luke's new Christmas piece (and the Piano Concerto too, of course, though that is perhaps bound to be slightly more time consuming, I suppose).

Quote from: Maciek on April 08, 2009, 12:46:04 PM
Here is the famous opening of Gombrowicz's Diary (has it been translated to English??):

Quote
Monday
Me.

Tuesday
Me.

Wednesday
Me.

Thursday
Me.

[EDIT: The "Me" could have also been translated as "I" or "Myself". I'm not all that sure if my choice is the right one.]

Quote from: Maciek on April 08, 2009, 12:48:46 PM
Quote from: Maciek on April 08, 2009, 12:46:04 PM
Gombrowicz's Diary (has it been translated to English??)
Yes, it has. By a Lillian Vallee. 1st volume is pretty cheap used on amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Diary-1-Witold-Gombrowicz/dp/0810107155/ (http://www.amazon.com/Diary-1-Witold-Gombrowicz/dp/0810107155/)
(even bookfinder.com couldn't find a better price!)

Quote from: Cato on April 08, 2009, 02:05:49 PM
Quote from: Maciek on April 08, 2009, 12:46:04 PM
Incidentally, one may try to capture the essence of one's days in just so many words and come across as slightly less humble. Here is the famous opening of Gombrowicz's Diary (has it been translated to English??):

[EDIT: The "Me" could have also been translated as "I" or "Myself". I'm not all that sure if my choice is the right one.]
You are quite right to use the word "me" for your translation.


Why am I even quoting all that? I have no idea. I doubt any of you have been holding your breath since April 2009. But, anyway, today while browsing google books I remembered wondering how that bit went in the official English translation, and decided to check if I could find it. Well, this link should take you to the right page, isn't that nice?:
http://books.google.com/books?id=vGh-DkvdVCoC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false (http://books.google.com/books?id=vGh-DkvdVCoC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 07, 2011, 01:42:37 AM
Well, your contribution has this use for me that I now know I have to read Gombrowicz' Diary! 'Ferdydurke' was a seminal reading experience for me in my teens.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 07, 2011, 01:55:45 AM
Many consider the Diary to be his greatest masterpiece. Frankly, I've never read all of it, from cover to cover, though I've been meaning to for many years now.

Anyway, while trying to find it on google books, I also came across a volume of Stanislaw Baranczak essays in English. This one, which starts with an attempt at translating recent Polish history into American terms, seems quite amusing (I've only read a bit from the beginning right now and have never read the whole thing in Polish either):
http://books.google.com/books?id=hIg3wyeQuYYC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA77#v=onepage&q&f=false (http://books.google.com/books?id=hIg3wyeQuYYC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA77#v=onepage&q&f=false)

OK, enough thread-derailing from me. (For the time being.)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 07, 2011, 02:52:04 AM
Luke will be clement, I trust.  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 07, 2011, 03:02:04 AM
Quote from: Maciek on September 07, 2011, 01:55:45 AM
OK, enough thread-derailing from me. (For the time being.)

Well, I am delighted both to "see" you, Maciek, and to see some (* Jeevesian cough *) activity here at the Outpost : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 07, 2011, 03:38:29 AM
And very delighted to "see" you too, gents, as always. :D

And on account of Luke's purported clemency (as well as Johan's acknowledgemet of my earlier post's usefulness, and Karl's declared delight), let me point out that there's more Gombrowicz available in preview via Google books.

There's Pornografia
http://books.google.com/books?id=KqtSzYTcR18C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false (http://books.google.com/books?id=KqtSzYTcR18C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false)
(a passage I like, near the beginning: "He was served tea, which he drank, but a piece of sugar remained on his little plate - so he reached for it to bring it to his mouth - but perhaps deeming this action not sufficiently justified, he withdrew his hand - yet withdrawing his hand was something even less justified - so he reached for the sugar again and ate it - but he probably ate it not so much for pleasure as merely for the sake of behaving properly... towards the sugar or towards us? ...and wishing to erase this impression he coughed and, to justify the cough, he pulled out his handkerchief, but by now he didn't dare wipe his nose - so he just moved his leg. Moving his leg presented him, it seemed, with new complications, so he fell silent and sat stock-still.")

There's Cosmos
http://books.google.com/books?id=1NaHGQE-vh8C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA9#v=onepage&q&f=false (http://books.google.com/books?id=1NaHGQE-vh8C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA9#v=onepage&q&f=false)

And even - A Guide to Philosophy in Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes:
http://books.google.com/books?id=697B99O_ieIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false (http://books.google.com/books?id=697B99O_ieIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false)

There's much more available in Italian (Lunedi, Io. Martedi, Io. Mercoledi, Io. Giovedi, Io.). Including the short stories (http://books.google.com/books?id=naMcR9DD2y4C&lpg=PP1&dq=inauthor%3Agombrowicz&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q&f=false) and Trans-Atlantyk (http://books.google.com/books?id=Ufh-ZQfZ63kC&lpg=PA30&dq=inauthor%3Agombrowicz&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q&f=false).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on September 07, 2011, 04:23:08 AM
Quote from: J. Z. Herrenberg on September 07, 2011, 01:42:37 AM
'Ferdydurke'was a seminal reading experience for me in my teens.

Many moons ago, when I attended a Polish Catholic seminary for a short time (   :o    ),  'Ferdydurke' was touted by the Polish teacher as a great book.  The man was an emaciated, sunken-chested disaster of a teacher, who nervously sucked on cancer sticks ("Unlucky Strokes" was my slang name for them) before, during, and after classes.

Eventually I found a translation of Ferdydurke, but 'twas not my cup of hot chocolate.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 07, 2011, 04:39:09 AM
Quote from: Cato on September 07, 2011, 04:23:08 AM
Many moons ago, when I attended a Polish Catholic seminary for a short time (   :o    ),  'Ferdydurke' was touted by the Polish teacher as a great book.  The man was an emaciated, sunken-chested disaster of a teacher, who nervously sucked on cancer sticks ("Unlucky Strokes" was my slang name for them) before, during, and after classes.

Eventually I found a translation of Ferdydurke, but 'twas not my cup of hot chocolate.


I think I was 15 when I read it. What I would think of it now, at 50?


Glad my story led to yours, though!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on September 07, 2011, 06:52:56 AM
Quote from: J. Z. Herrenberg on September 07, 2011, 04:39:09 AM

I think I was 15 when I read it. What I would think of it now, at 50?


Glad my story led to yours, though!

Apparently the English translation I used was an "indirect" one from French and German translations of the original Polish.  Wikipedia mentions a new translation from the year 2000 as the one to read, so maybe I will look into that one.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 07, 2011, 10:06:00 AM
Erm... OK

Firstly - Maciek, how fabulous to see you, PLEASE stay around, and please accept my apologies for being so appaling at answering your very kind emails. The same goes to Cato too.

Secondly - there should be a Christmas piece, of course. Not a tradition I want to drop yet.  I have tried a couple, but neither has taken wing yet. There is still time.

Thirdly - a piano concerto! The idea keeps coming back. If you all keep saying it maybe it will happen. I wouldn't object...

Fourthly - believe it or not, today I began to roughly outline a new piece. If it happens it will be a big work for piano. I'm going at it slowly and thoughtfully, it is still at the globabl outline stage, and will end up being a complex, ambitious work which might entail lots of compositional juggling, but I hope I get this one done. It is about time I did, and I like the idea I've had very much. But no more word on it until more progress has been made, otherwise I will jinx it.

Maciek - you've made my day turning up here  :) Resume discussion of whatever it is you are talking about, guys....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 07, 2011, 11:31:31 AM
Luke, the pleasure is all mine! 0:) And nice to read the various good creative news. We'll keep on pressing about the concerto then, shan't we?

As for resuming discussion... uhm, gues we'll have to move on to Schulz now, I can't think of anything to say about Gombrowicz at the moment. ;D

Can you believe it, there seems to be no Bruno Schulz available in preview on Google Books! :o

And no Boleslaw Prus either. Argh!

They do have Potocki in the original French (http://books.google.com/books?id=k7SRsjvtf7YC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA29#v=onepage&q&f=false) (as well as in German translation (http://books.google.com/books?id=nIDQz8bWc04C&lpg=PP1&dq=inauthor%3Apotocki&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q&f=false)), and not just any old edition. Nice. 8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 07, 2011, 11:54:05 AM
This is rather nice:


http://www.schulzian.net/ (http://www.schulzian.net/)


:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on September 07, 2011, 06:45:06 PM
Quote from: Maciek on September 07, 2011, 11:31:31 AM
Luke, the pleasure is all mine! 0:) And nice to read the various good creative news. We'll keep on pressing about the concerto then, shan't we?

As for resuming discussion... uhm, gues we'll have to move on to Schulz now, I can't think of anything to say about Gombrowicz at the moment. ;D

Can you believe it, there seems to be no Bruno Schulz available in preview on Google Books! :o

And no Boleslaw Prus either. Argh!

They do have Potocki in the original French (http://books.google.com/books?id=k7SRsjvtf7YC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA29#v=onepage&q&f=false) (as well as in German translation (http://books.google.com/books?id=nIDQz8bWc04C&lpg=PP1&dq=inauthor%3Apotocki&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q&f=false)), and not just any old edition. Nice. 8)

One of the greatest books ever written in any language, a claim I do not often make:

The Manuscript Found At Saragossa by Jan Potocki.

A certain Karl Henning read the book recently, and will verify my claim!

Luke and Maciek!  We are patient here at GMG, and are always happy when the prodigal or even the prodigy returns!   8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 08, 2011, 01:06:52 AM
Quote from: Cato on September 07, 2011, 06:45:06 PM
One of the greatest books ever written in any language, a claim I do not often make:

The Manuscript Found At Saragossa by Jan Potocki.

A certain Karl Henning read the book recently, and will verify my claim.


Duly noted.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 08, 2011, 01:16:59 AM
It's certainly the best Polish novel.

Of course, it wasn't written in Polish.

And it's not a novel either.

But other than that... ;D


But that's OK, as it leaves us a slot for Prus and his Doll. :D




Johan, very interesting site you linked to. I started wondering about its legality, and can't really figure it out. I understand the translator himself put the texts up, so the translator's rights are not an issue. But what about Schulz (or rather, his estate)? According to at least one source, his work still isn't in the public domain - see here: http://www.wolnelektury.pl/katalog/autor/bruno-schulz/ (http://www.wolnelektury.pl/katalog/autor/bruno-schulz/). Just a bit left, we have to wait till 2013, but we're not there yet.

On the other hand, Project Gutenberg states that Sklepy cynamonowe are public domain in the US - see here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8119 (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8119) (go to the "Bibrec" tab). So maybe the situation varies from country to country? This is odd, since the US usually has life + 70 years as copyright term? But then there's the catch about "compliance with US formalities", ie. a copyright notice... etc. etc.

Sklepy cynamonowe can also be found in the (Polish) VIRTUAL LIBRARY OF POLISH LITERATURE (http://literat.ug.edu.pl/books.htm). The site was created "in co-operation" with the "Polish National Commission for UNESCO". So I would assume they are "clean" - and, indeed, the text of Sklepy cynamonowe is preceded by a note thanking the copyright holders for their permission. Whether this was given for free, I don't know. But, clearly, someone does still hold copyright.

The site you linked to also includes material which wasn't published until after Schulz died - that complicates matters a bit, I don't even want to go there. ::)

A very interesting question, BTW: who owns the copyright to the works of Bruno Schulz?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 08, 2011, 03:32:36 AM
Oh, Bruno Schulz! Why was I thinking Charles? . . .

The MS. Found at Saragossa was delicious, I'll start re-reading that one soon.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 08, 2011, 09:07:52 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on September 08, 2011, 03:32:36 AM
Oh, Bruno Schulz! Why was I thinking Charles? . . .

Indeed - a true literary genius

(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lPXZNSOeIiU/TiEfClLvILI/AAAAAAAABJM/AyyGBmglP-s/s1600/snoopy-typing--large-msg-11526220357.jpg)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on September 16, 2011, 02:00:24 PM
Clearly the image of Snoopy at the typewriter is so peremptorily imposing that nobody will ever dare to post anything more on the thread... ;D




Shush! Quiet! You should never disturb him when he's writing! $:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 28, 2011, 09:10:16 AM
Nearly, Maciek, but not quite!

So little activity on my thread! I feel ashamed - I only had to go back four or five pages to find this, from almost a year ago, re my folk-song based piano Fantasy:

Quote from: Luke on November 11, 2010, 04:24:25 PM
Finished, I think. Still very soft-centred, and something of a partner to my Nightingale Sonata of 2006 in its folk music basis and its unabashed use of tonality. An odd one, I think, but I like it and find it very touching, personally....

I recorded it back then, but didn't put it up because the recording was really shoddy, the piano out of tune and my playing its usual scrappy self. But as I haven't had a chance to redo it, I've decided to put it up anyway

http://www.mediafire.com/?3n2xc93l1a510no

there is a gap in the middle of the piece in which a brief minute-long cadenza/improvisation is to be inserted, and that's how I play it usually, but it isn't on the recording.

The score is attached to that previous post, so just click on the above quotation to be taken to it, if you wish to download that too.

The piece itself, as you'll see, is a ruminative fantasy on a few folksongs as written down by Cecil Sharp. Quotation marks in the score outline the sections taken from Sharp wholesale. Two of the sections are based not on the song but on Sharp's simple arpeggiated accompaniment. You'll see that the first part makes a fairly simple arch and that the second part moves futher afield but closes with another, more summatory, rounding off of the arch. I am quite pleased with the way the little folksong motives infect the whole piece and provide a hopefully coherent narrative. As I said before, after I'd finished this piece it seemed to me to be very much a partner to the Nightingale Sonata I wrote in 2007 - both gentle, essentially tonal reflections upon folk sources or folk culture, for want of a better word. Both, too, share an oddity about their appearance, a clunkiness in the score (despite the rather involved notations I enjoyed dabbling with) which marks them out as brothers. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this, if you decide to listen.

I ashamed, BTW, that I have to be presenting an old piece here in lieu of having something newer to offer up! I am working on that piano piece I mentioned a few posts up; I'm quite excited about it but there is a long long way to go!

:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 28, 2011, 09:37:00 AM
Thanks for the update, Luke!


Must dash (meeting at my daughter's school)!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 29, 2011, 12:20:34 PM
In the spirit of completeness...

I really don't want to harp on about the pretty awful time I've been having personally for the last couple of years+  (indescribably so, really). But it's not really avoidable here, as it was at one of my lowest points that I wrote this little piece for voice and violin, which I haven't shown anyone until now. Every note was wrung out of me with a real effort, I found it hard to commit even the slightest sign to paper that day...though the whole thing, being tiny, was still done in a matter of minutes. I find this an unbearably painful piece to look at, which is why I couldn't bring myself to add dynamics and suchlike until - well, until today, actually.

That's quite a positive build-up, isn't it?  ;D It's not much this piece, and I really can't tell if is it utter rubbish or actually has some qualities. But it means something important to me...

http://www.mediafire.com/?vl9o1gt2d7tygat

(that is only the score, clearly there is no recording. Though it is tiny I had to stick it on mediafire because I can't upload here)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on September 29, 2011, 12:49:56 PM
I just listened to the Fantasy - quite a personal piece, I think. Sometimes the music sounds schizophrenic, literally, with each hand representing its own half of the brain. The ending hints at renewal. I should listen again to your other piano pieces to 'place' this one correctly...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on September 29, 2011, 05:54:44 PM
Quote from: Luke on September 29, 2011, 12:20:34 PM
In the spirit of completeness...

I really don't want to harp on about the pretty awful time I've been having personally for the last couple of years+  (indescribably so, really). But it's not really avoidable here, as it was at one of my lowest points that I wrote this little piece for voice and violin, which I haven't shown anyone until now. Every note was wrung out of me with a real effort, I found it hard to commit even the slightest sign to paper that day...though the whole thing, being tiny, was still done in a matter of minutes. I find this an unbearably painful piece to look at, which is why I couldn't bring myself to add dynamics and suchlike until - well, until today, actually.

That's quite a positive build-up, isn't it?  ;D It's not much this piece, and I really can't tell if is it utter rubbish or actually has some qualities. But it means something important to me...

http://www.mediafire.com/?vl9o1gt2d7tygat

(that is only the score, clearly there is no recording. Though it is tiny I had to stick it on mediafire because I can't upload here)

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.

Stay with us here on GMG: you are one of a few wounded wrens whom we hope to aid in healing!   0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 30, 2011, 05:07:11 AM
Party at Luke's! . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 30, 2011, 08:57:55 AM
Wild, isn't it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on September 30, 2011, 09:04:35 AM
I need one of Jeeves's pick-me-ups . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: chasmaniac on September 30, 2011, 09:10:22 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on September 30, 2011, 09:04:35 AM
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..."
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: ibanezmonster on September 30, 2011, 09:11:14 AM
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.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 03, 2011, 09:04:48 AM
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.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: springrite on October 03, 2011, 09:07:35 AM
Quote from: Greg on September 30, 2011, 09:11:14 AM
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!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: ibanezmonster on October 03, 2011, 01:42:40 PM
Quote from: springrite on October 03, 2011, 09:07:35 AM
Oh, come on! Your playing is presentable! Do it!
Lol, well, I can't sing, and the guitar sounds an octave lower.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 04, 2011, 07:01:50 AM
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 . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 05, 2011, 05:31:17 PM
Quote from: Cato on September 29, 2011, 05:54:44 PM
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!"   ;D

I still intend to write that analysis!   8)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 06, 2011, 09:07:14 AM
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...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 07, 2011, 10:43:01 PM
Quote from: Luke on October 06, 2011, 09:07:14 AM
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!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 08, 2011, 06:40:13 AM
Quote from: Luke on October 07, 2011, 10:43:01 PM
Finished, and a recording is ready... I like it, but it's another odd one!

Cool. Bring it forth!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 08, 2011, 08:30:35 AM
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
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 08, 2011, 08:33:38 AM
Frabjous day! Luke, I'm a-whirl with housework for a few days yet, so do not mistake my slowness for disinterest!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 08, 2011, 08:37:55 AM
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!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on October 08, 2011, 09:56:09 AM
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.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 14, 2011, 08:31:06 AM
Quote(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!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 14, 2011, 09:26:05 AM
I'm not properly up for air, yet.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 14, 2011, 07:07:19 PM
Quote from: Cato on October 05, 2011, 05:31:17 PM
"Delays!  Delays!"   ;D

I still intend to write that analysis!   8)

Version 2.0

"Delays!  Delays!"   ;D

I still intend to write that analysis!   8)

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

Oy!   :o   Somebody help me!   0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 17, 2011, 07:05:35 AM
Has Cato been returned from . . . The Wedding of Doom? . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 19, 2011, 05:03:01 AM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on October 17, 2011, 07:05:35 AM
Has Cato been returned from . . . The Wedding of Doom? . . .

Oh yes, and what an event it was: complete with a dagger through a cake shaped like a skull!   :o

Luke!  Bar 7 of your song Down By The Salley Gardens: is the "F" supposed to be natural or sharp?  It is sharp in bar 3.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 19, 2011, 06:58:14 AM
It's an F natural, as written...perhaps I should add a warning accidental, then. That mized mode with both F sharp and F natural appears in the first (violin only) bar and also in the bar it closes the first stanza with, too. The aim, I suppose, is a mixture of Phrygian oppression/depression (E minor with F naturals - this is the end point of a few phrases here, however much they start out with more positive intentions) with something slightly brighter, a kind of Mixolydian G (with F naturals) or D (with F sharps and C naturals) or solid A minor or even a hint of Lydian C (with F sharps)

Thanks for looking! (Still not sure about that piece, it feels too close for comfort, and it may well be utter dross!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 19, 2011, 07:05:42 AM
Quote from: Luke on October 19, 2011, 06:58:14 AM
It's an F natural, as written...perhaps I should add a warning accidental, then. That mized mode with both F sharp and F natural appears in the first (violin only) bar and also in the bar it closes the first stanza with, too. The aim, I suppose, is a mixture of Phrygian oppression/depression (E minor with F naturals - this is the end point of a few phrases here, however much they start out with more positive intentions) with something slightly brighter, a kind of Mixolydian G (with F naturals) or D (with F sharps and C naturals) or solid A minor or even a hint of Lydian C (with F sharps)

Thanks for looking! (Still not sure about that piece, it feels too close for comfort, and it may well be utter dross!)

Thanks for the clarification!

By no means is it dross: I will send you my analysis later today for inspection.  So check your mail!   0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 19, 2011, 07:07:10 AM
I look forward to it! Many thanks!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 19, 2011, 08:43:25 AM
Quote from: Luke on October 19, 2011, 07:07:10 AM
I look forward to it! Many thanks!

Check your e-mail account!  You should have it by now!

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 19, 2011, 10:41:26 AM
Cool! Just back from MGH, will have a read a bit later.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 19, 2011, 10:54:04 AM
Here is my little analysis of Luke Ottevanger's setting of the Yeats poem Down By The Salley Garden: the score you can find here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?vl9o1gt2d7tygat (http://www.mediafire.com/?vl9o1gt2d7tygat)


Down By The Salley Garden


Luke Ottevanger's setting of the poem by W.B. Yeats is subtle from the start: the violin starts off with a major ninth on D-E, telling the ear that a bittersweet conflict is on the way.  In the very first bar an F# on the first triplet vies with an F natural: D minor or E minor, or both?  A polymodal style (e.g. Phrygian and Lydian) runs through the work.


E minor seems to win temporarily, and the opening melody is accompanied by a drone E.  Triplets however are heard everywhere in the violin, using both 8th notes and 16th notes.  Bars 8 and 9 show this D minor/E minor duality very cleverly: for a split second, on the word "feet," the violin and voice agree on the note E, but then a rising scale takes us into a D minor chord (D-A-F) in bar 9, where a Bb appears in a triplet.  And yet E is reasserted in the violin, with another drone E to parallel the opening, but this time an octave higher.  The voice has a B-A#-B sequence to continue the tension on the words "she bid me".  And this is a subtle piece of melody making!  For the violin's first Bb (=A#) was heard in an A-Bb-A triplet in the bar before, a fleeting mirror image of the voice's future, and the song's!  A variation on the A-Bb-A pattern is heard in the violin in bar 12.


The word "easy" is ironically sung from E to F# in bar 11, while the violin comments in D minor triplets, and also predicts the melody's future with 2 descending 8th notes on C-Bb leading to a quarter-note D.  The vocal line will echo this twice (but not exactly) on the words "as the leaves grow on the tree."


The song's intensity is reflected now in a D-E drone, while the voice now sings its first triplet, but not quite, and here one realizes the differences between good and great: marked "bitterly," the word "foolish" is sung on 2 notes of an 8th-note triplet, Ab-G, with the third part a rest.  A mediocre composer would probably have drawn out the second syllable, or even both.  Another idea great because of its simplicity!  The Ab does two things: it strikes the ear with special force, because this its first appearance, and then leads us into a kind of doubled G minor for (most of) the rest of the song.  A triplet at the end of bar 16 sends us back to the beginning and to the conclusion with a that major ninth D-E from bar 1 now developed to G-D-E in bar 17, which in fact is a variation on all of bar 1.


Now remember that A-Bb-A triplet, running past the ear in bar 9.  This minor second pattern is now heard under sussurant triplets, but on a half-note D with an eighth-note Eb and then returning to D.  In bars 21 and 22 the vocal line offers an Eb-D-Eb (bar 21) and then a D-Eb-D pattern (bar 22) using three 8th notes (but not a 3-for-2 triplet).  These two notes will be heard again on the words "easy" (bar 24) and "foolish" (bar 28), thereby unifying the music and the text.


The notes Bb, Ab, G on the words "full of tears" were hinted at earlier in the violin (bars 16 and 24).  The voice now repeats tears 3 times on G below middle C.  The ending in the violin part takes us back to the beginning somewhat, but this time we hear D major/G major with the arrival of C# and F# and offers a contrast with the voice...until a Bb appears in the final 3 bars, announcing No, this is minor territory.  An open fifth on G-D followed by Bb-D-Bb in slowing 8th notes chases away any hope of hope, as the song ends with the voice intoning "tears" on that same G.

And so a word on all those triplets found throughout the work: I have avoided so far providing any sort of interpretation of what a certain chord or interval or scale might mean.  Certainly the triplets of various kinds act as a unifying factor throughout the song, and one can say that they "paint" the image of the flowing river mentioned near the end of the poem.

But I suspect they mean more than that: 3-note figures in a poem about Love, rather than 2-note figures. 

Aye!  That could be a topic for mulling and stewing on a cold dark October day.




Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 19, 2011, 11:56:34 AM
Thanks again, Cato!

The last paragraph was new! An interesting idea - not wrong, of course (how could it be?) but for the sake of those looking for biography in the work I should say that in my mind as I wrote this piece and those triplets was only the river, not the number three - and, without getting too solipsitic or self-indulgent about it all, I should add, in fact, that the river was very relevant, and the number three not. But no more on that, this isn't the place for it! I tax your various patiences too much as it is!
Title: Re: Luke Ottevanger's Song
Post by: Cato on October 19, 2011, 12:06:21 PM
P.S.

I should mention one more thing.

The final note of the violin is an E, following an arpeggio on G-D-Bb, (G minor) with the voice holding that G below middle C.

Consider what that could imply!

Many thanks to Luke!

We need a concert now!   0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 19, 2011, 12:14:55 PM
Now, that would be nice! I wonder if there are any strings I can pull... [edit - pun not intended!  :o ]

In the meantime, I have current projects (and old ones) pulling at me eagerly, and I am still loving the feeling! It has been such a quiet year on that front. 'The Lamb' is stalled, half-done, I love it and hate it at the same time. The piano piece, if it is done, may well end up so bulky that composing will take a long time. White Modulations (in more-or-less its original conception, but the piano more prominent in the orchestral texture) is pulling at me just as strongly. And - Guido, please don't get your hopes up - but that old idea for a cello sonata is still nagging away, unchanged and just as addictive now its in my system again. Almost too much to think about! I don't know where to turn first. A pleasant problem, that.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 19, 2011, 02:18:51 PM
Bene.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 20, 2011, 02:10:47 AM
Concerning the violin part in Luke's Down By The Salley Garden, one can hear that it is really not an accompaniment to the voice.

Similar to works by Schoenberg especially, the polyphony acts as a musical unconscious, offering layers of gnosis to the initiated.

If you followed my earlier analysis on Karl Henning's Viola Sonata, you saw how this idea applied to that work as well.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 20, 2011, 08:03:13 AM
Quote from: Cato on October 20, 2011, 02:10:47 AM
Concerning the violin part in Luke's Down By The Salley Garden, one can hear that it is really not an accompaniment to the voice.

Similar to works by Schoenberg especially, the polyphony acts as a musical unconscious, offering layers of gnosis to the initiated.

If you followed my earlier analysis on Karl Henning's Viola Sonata, you saw how this idea applied to that work as well.

That is of course how I saw the violin in the piece too. Even when its part looks like an accompaniment - e.g. the murmuring ripples of the river in bars 19-22 - it is more than just a rippling, word-painting accompaniment, I think, because it pushes and prods and shadows the voice...but of course that is true in many other pieces too.

Voice and violin is a lovely pairing to write for, of course. There are those wonderful Holst songs (is this restrained exercise in twentieth century medievalism really the work of the composer of The Planets?). And there's a raw, vital Suite for Voice and Violin by Villa Lobos which just breathes the air of the rough and ready outdoors. (listen to clips here - http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/tw.asp?w=W9179 ) Like the Holst, it's one of my favourite pieces by a composer better known for grander, bigger statements.

EDIT - did I really forget Kurtag's Kafka Fragments? Not any more! Utterly masterly, words can't describe it. A great combination, this voice-violin thing - point made?  ;)  ::)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 20, 2011, 08:20:37 AM
That's one of the best Villa Lobos discs I know, btw (the whole thing can be explored here http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/al.asp?al=CDH55316 ) It's worth getting - it's on Helios, so not expensive. I'm lucky that it was my introduction to the composer, on LP, decades ago, so that I was predisposed to think kindly of him when I came across some of his less glorious works later!

Re the voice and violin, I meant to say also - the voice and violin setting was always going to be the case, but once it was decided upon I think another piece was in the back of my mind when I wrote this piece. That's a piece whose name I cannot remember by the composer Alan Bullard (best known to many for his countless educational works for children, but a well-known 'real' composer of distinction too - here's his website http://alan.bullard.tripod.com/ )

I had a piece for string trio and horn played at the BMIC in 1997, and also on the programme was a beautiful song by Bullard for voice and violin. I met him afterwards - he was a very nice man, complimentary about my piece which was, though, I fear, utter tosh. The score was lost after that performance and I'm quite glad of it... Anyway, maybe Bullard's song was about a wandering fiddler or something; in any case, it breathed the feel of the open air and the open road, the beauty of simplicity, the honesty and potency of this exposed medium. I loved it and it affected me more deeply than I would have suspected. I think beyond the specifics of this piece of music itself, the open-air, open-hearted English rusticity of this sort of writing in this medium became something of an archetype for me (I didn't know the Holst songs at that time, and in any case, they are not quite the same thing...)

I'm looking at his site as I write this; it has a worklist, so perhaps I can find the piece I am thinking of...

yep, here it is

QuoteThe Solitary Reaper (1995) for soprano and violin (or treble recorder, or oboe)     
5 mins          Adv.
A setting of the Wordsworth poem, dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth Maconchy;  first performed by Lindsay Gowers (soprano) and Lesley Larkum (violin), Colchester 8 March 1995, and recorded on the CD New British Music Vol. 1 (same performers) FMR CD35-0996
`The revelation, when listening to this admirable CD, was the music of Alan Bullard. The Solitary Reaper is such a fascinating composition I found myself returning to it time and time again' Steve Ford, Avant magazine

Those were the performers at my concert too...I was nearly included on that CD too, and now I can't remember why it didn't happen. I think it was just organising the recording sessions; IIRC I was doing my finals at the time and didn't want the distraction. But given the piece that would have been recorded, I am not at all sorry! I'm not sure I didn't secretly feel the same way at the time...         
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 20, 2011, 05:13:10 PM
Lovely, Luke, well done!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 21, 2011, 05:25:11 AM
While I am no string player myself (once in high school I spent perhaps a month in summer music "camp" starting to learn the cello), I love reading string parts written like this . . . mentally, I imagine the negotiation of the strings, even as I should have no hope of playing it. Well done, indeed, Luke!

(I shall say a bit more ere long, really . . . .)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 21, 2011, 12:25:43 PM
Thanks Karl! That's good to read.

Has any listened to any of the other pieces yet? As with this, I'm uncertain about them to a greater or lesser extent, and I'd be intrigued to know how they go down with the discerning gents who hang around the Outpost! (I know Johan had a first listen to the Fantasy, but otherwise...)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 21, 2011, 12:40:37 PM
Oh! I knew I was being sloppy with my attempt at catch-up . . . link us, would you, lad?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 21, 2011, 12:51:28 PM
Delighted -

http://www.mediafire.com/?hycr77dymz2665f - Around Fern Hill (mp3)
http://www.mediafire.com/?no6zykq6464c2z2 - Around Fern Hill (score)

I wrote a post or two about that one on the previous page of this thread

http://www.mediafire.com/?3n2xc93l1a510no - Fantasy (mp3)
http://www.mediafire.com/?nhy4kh2x3yxyi9c - Fantasy (score)

That one is also discussed a little on the previous page or two, and earlier on also, about 5 or 6 pages back, when I orginally finished the piece.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: karlhenning on October 21, 2011, 12:52:54 PM
Thanks! I'm at the museum tonight, but I'll tuck into these in the morning.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 26, 2011, 05:29:17 AM
I was about to post some mundane news of the usual sort but - Karl gone guest? What is happening with the world? Anyone know?

[the mundane news was only that I've been working on The Lamb and it's nearly finished, though maybe it shows too much meddling, I don't know. And it may well be too hard for the girls to sing.]
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 26, 2011, 07:39:34 AM
Will get round to listening soon. This violin/voice piece. Is the voice meant to be a man's voice? Surely significant as in one case, the violin will be wrapping around the voice, the other, soaring above it... Trying to play it on the cello both at pitch and an octave down!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 26, 2011, 08:00:03 AM
Quote from: Guido on October 26, 2011, 07:39:34 AM
Will get round to listening soon. This violin/voice piece. Is the voice meant to be a man's voice? Surely significant as in one case, the violin will be wrapping around the voice, the other, soaring above it... Trying to play it on the cello both at pitch and an octave down!

Very impressive!

The text implies a male voice, but I suppose a woman could still sing the song.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 26, 2011, 09:18:40 AM
As Cato says, it implies a man, and a man is what I imagine, but I suppose a woman could sing it too. You're right of course about the issue this raises of where the violin sits in relation to the voice, but it's only the same issue e.g. with most piano-voice lieder.

Playing it at pitch on the cello! Wow! You are a glutton for punishment! I wonder how it sits...awkwardly, I am guessing!

Will post Tha Lamb as soon as I feel  it is done - there are still a few stubborn bars. BTW the Fantasy and About Fern Hill still remain almost un-downloaded, if anyone is looking for a laugh...  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 27, 2011, 09:47:58 AM
I've downloaded both. Give me time, give me time! I want to hear the violin/voice piece too! Interesting about those three pieces you mention - I like them all too. That Villa-Lobos CD is indeed a treat - the two Bachianas Brasileiras are great of course, but I absolutely adore the cello ensemble arrangements of the 48. Makes you realise how lush and sensual Bach is if presented in the right way!

The Holst is lovely. Lots of his songs are actually very fine - despite being so famous he remains very little explored.

I know it's meant to be his principal achievement, but I have so far found solo vocal music hard going, though I do recognise the quality. Though I do enjoy an occasional listen, I'm not sure why the Kafka fragments are so esteemed - I don't find the word setting or accompaniment particularly distinguished, and of course so much is very grating to listen to (clearly by design). I love his choral and instrumental music.

What about cello and voice? There is a small repertoire. Not sure it's of the same calibre. One song by Shostakovich. A few by Tavener. La Voce by Andriessen for solo cellist who simultaneously sings.  What else is there? Surely there's more given how much more adaptable the cello is, and how every bangs on about the cello being the closest to the voice (I never want to hear it again!).

I started composing something for cello and voice once, but didn't get far (as always), but one of my favourite of my youthful scribbles. The poem was Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths by Yeats.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 27, 2011, 09:52:34 AM
And so good that there's this new found burst of activity! And encouragement from me obviously on the new projects front - on the piano concerto, on white modulations, on the others you mention, and any cello piece of course. I can wait!

We need to get these things performed though...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 27, 2011, 10:11:43 AM
Quote from: Guido on October 27, 2011, 09:47:58 AM

What about cello and voice? There is a small repertoire. Not sure it's of the same calibre. One song by Shostakovich. A few by Tavener. La Voce by Andriessen for solo cellist who simultaneously sings.  What else is there? Surely there's more given how much more adaptable the cello is, and how every bangs on about the cello being the closest to the voice (I never want to hear it again!).

Aren't there some Birtwistle songs? Niedecker Songs I think. They are on Black Box - Paul Watkins and um.... maybe Valdine Anderson (I only remember the cellist!). I have the disc, but can't put my hands on it right now.

Thanks for your thoughts, as always!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 27, 2011, 10:13:08 AM
No, it's Claron McFadden, Lovely disc, though, The Woman and the Hare is stunning.

[asin]B0000666AK[/asin]
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 27, 2011, 12:49:36 PM
Couldn't tell you in your inbox, so will tell you here: Il Prigionero is being performed at the Royal Festival Hall!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 01, 2011, 11:29:40 AM
If I had two pennies to rub together I'd be able to consider it! Thanks. Though I think I will go to Robin's farewell concert at West Road next weekend. Especially as it's the Gilded Goldbergs, which I love, and even more because Huw Watkins is one of the pianists. I haven't seen him for ages!

Hoerrendous to even talk of it in this context, but The Lamb is probably finished though I may well keep tinkering. It's a piece of saccharine nonsense of course, though it works on its own terms maybe (I hope).

The score: http://www.mediafire.com/?gxg4hpcbu2gvapi

Tell me what you think. Though it's only short I've spent too much time with it and really can't tell. And it's left me desperate to write something truly me (i.e. not softened for the children to sing) and with more bite. Can't wait...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on November 01, 2011, 11:33:19 AM
Quote from: Luke on November 01, 2011, 11:29:40 AM
If I had two pennies to rub together I'd be able to consider it! Thanks. Though I think I will go to Robin's farewell concert at West Road next weekend. Especially as it's the Gilded Goldbergs, which I love, and even more because Huw Watkins is one of the pianists. I haven't seen him for ages!

Hoerrendous to even talk of it in this context, but The Lamb is probably finished though I may well keep tinkering. It's a piece of saccharine nonsense of course, though it works on its own terms maybe (I hope).

The score: http://www.mediafire.com/?gxg4hpcbu2gvapi (http://www.mediafire.com/?gxg4hpcbu2gvapi)

Tell me what you think. Though it's only short I've spent too much time with it and really can't tell. And it's left me desperate to write something truly me (i.e. not softened for the children to sing) and with more bite. Can't wait...

Printing it out now; will look it o'er on the bus ride later this afternoon.

OT, but . . . I've been meaning to ask you about the recording(s) of the Bryars Jesus' Blood . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 01, 2011, 11:35:13 AM
Please do. You know nothing is OT at the Outpost! Especially not the music I love, and I love Jesus' Blood (though - is this pre-emtping your question? - I see no need for extended or Tom-Waitsified versions)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on November 01, 2011, 11:41:57 AM
Ah! Then . . . which recording is your preference?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 01, 2011, 11:48:02 AM
I like the Obscure recording, which is coupled with The Sinking of the Titanic. Both works can theoretically last forever, but I think 30 mins or so is ample for both (!), and this disc furnishes us with that. I'm sure you know, of course, that these are the two most famous and appealing of Bryars' early, experimental pieces, but that they have nothing technical in common with his post-Medea music (from the early-to-mid 80s, I suppose). That music is fully notated and stylistically uniform (too uniform, some might say, but at leadt the style is strong and deeply personal). Though I have two or three discs of early Bryars, I have maybe 20 or more of the later stuff, and that is where most of the exploration is to be done. Though I recognise that I am an extremist and that those sort of quantities of Bryars would try most people's patience.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on November 01, 2011, 11:50:41 AM
Thanks! I wish-listed a few discs back when you were responding to a query from (IIRC) Guido . . . but then I found myself uncertain as to a specific version (if version is le mot juste) of Jesus' Blood.

I had to re-boot my computer (odd printing issues lately) . . . will try The Lamb again right away.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 01, 2011, 11:57:04 AM
It's this one.

[asin]B0000269VM[/asin]

I like the story that a Winnipeg radio station playing Jesus' Blood was raided by police in full riot gear, because a listener had assumed that the disc jockey was being held hostage and had put on the disc as a furtive plea for help  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 01, 2011, 11:58:50 AM
Just checking the details of that story, found this

http://www.aventa.ca/reviews/Concert%20preview%20-%20Jesus'%20Blood%20Never%20Failed%20Me%20Yet.pdf

which is a sweet little program note on the piece.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 01, 2011, 12:23:50 PM
And whilst the place is vaguely active - one in an occasional series of pieces-that-Luke-is-fscinated-by-at-present. Just an excuse to talk about a piece on my mind:

Ravel's Frontispice (1918)

Ravel, of course, is right at the very pinnacle of any list of 'my favourite composers' (top two, usually); I treausre every note he wrote, but this little fragment always falls through the cracks and gets forgotten, by me too. It's only 15 bars long, it lasts less than two minutes, but it is, perhaps, the strangest thing this master of the perfectly-finished ever wrote. And also, probably, the most complex and experimental, in purely technical ways at least. The cross rhythms in this work are simply phenomenal (I think of Bernstein's Harvard lecture on the Rite of Spring, and the passage in which he illustrates the cross rhythms at their most complex in that piece; they have nothing at all on the cross-rhythms in Frontispice!)

This is a work for piano five hands, starting with hands 2 and 3, written in a nominal 15/8 - which is of course 3x5, but Ravel's notes are in 3 groups of 5. Then hands 4 and 5 join, in 5/4, the beats therefore coresponding to 3/5ths of 2 and 3s 'beats'. And that is just the first two bars....thereafter quintuplets and triplets and skirling demisemiquavers and multiple layers of ostinati create the most extraordinary texture imaginable, and I only stop describing it because it just becomes too complex to do so. And above it all, hand number one plays crsip little figures which are like nothing else except the birdsong Ravel writes in Oiseaux tristes and Petit Poucet...but which, more even than those more famous examples, anticpate Messiaen's birdsongs very clearly. And then the end....mysterious, gnomic... OK, just plain odd. Do try it, you can download it for pennies from Amazon (and Karl, it's on that marvellous Ravel-Debussy two piano/duet twofer)

http://www.maurice-ravel.net/frontisp.htm

http://imslp.eu/linkhandler.php?path=/imglnks/euimg/9/95/IMSLP98687-PMLP202713-Ravel_-_Frontispice__2_pianos_.pdf (score - IMSLPs EU filter will apply)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on November 01, 2011, 12:48:46 PM
I know! Knew the piece you meant straight away. On the bus now, but that two-fer is loaded onto the player, hang on ...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on November 02, 2011, 05:43:11 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on November 01, 2011, 11:50:41 AM
. . . I had to re-boot my computer (odd printing issues lately) . . . will try The Lamb again right away.

Have just now succeeded at last in printing The Lamb.  Will take a yet closer look later, but immediate comment:

If the work was at all labored, the result is charming and apparently efortless — so it was labor well invested. I know exactly what you mean, about feeling ready to be about something edgier
: ) Still, this is a lovely occasional piece, and I like it much better than another setting of the Blake which I read in a choir a few years back.

Well done!  Will dig into it some more later.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on November 17, 2011, 11:15:06 AM
After this breathing space, how do you feel about The Lamb, Luke?  I like it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: J.Z. Herrenberg on November 27, 2011, 02:43:11 PM
28 November - many happy reurns, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on November 27, 2011, 04:01:26 PM
Yo, happy birthday, dude!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on November 28, 2011, 03:38:18 AM
Let the birthday cake begin . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: rappy on November 28, 2011, 04:54:07 AM
Happy birthday also from me, Luke!!

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on November 30, 2011, 05:08:21 AM
Let's refresh the tablecloth and serve some of the leftover cake . . . with some nice hot Oolong, of course.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on December 19, 2011, 10:42:40 AM
TTT
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on December 20, 2011, 06:41:11 AM
Hello Luke!

Your fans would like a Christmas update!   0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on December 20, 2011, 06:43:37 AM
Hear, hear!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on December 21, 2011, 12:23:18 AM
 :) Sorry, guys, it's simply that there isn't much to say. I've hardly had any time for GMG recently - only two or three posts in the last couple of weeks, I guess. It's been my busiest time of the year, with two schools both doing dozens of Christmas shows and rehearsals and services (beautiful services in fabulous churches, but still hard work), and the endless driving between both... Still it's done now, thankfully.

So, no time for GMG, and certainly no time to compose! Nothing to report, except that

1) There wasn't enough time to rehearse The Lamb with my Chamber Choir, so instead I have been rehearsing it with a smaller group of girls in snatched 20 minute sessions which have made for slow going. The poem is equally suitable for Easter, I reasoned, so perhaps then....!

2) My big piano piece, which I am very excited about, is the one which has been haunting my thoughts when I go to bed at night. But it is still at a gestatory phase.

3) I am considering setting a group of ancient Egyptian poems for my chamber choir too. Maybe not with piano accompaniment - harp, flute, prepared piano are all possible, performable options. We'll see.

Other than that - well, continue to be patient!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on December 21, 2011, 02:15:05 AM
Good to see that there's background work. Hang in there!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on December 29, 2011, 06:29:47 AM
Quote from: Luke on December 21, 2011, 12:23:18 AM


2) My big piano piece, which I am very excited about, is the one which has been haunting my thoughts when I go to bed at night. But it is still at a gestatory phase.

3) I am considering setting a group of ancient Egyptian poems for my chamber choir too. Maybe not with piano accompaniment - harp, flute, prepared piano are all possible, performable options. We'll see.


Other than that - well, continue to be patient!  :)

"Big piano piece" and Carmina Aegyptica!  I am very excited now too!   ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on December 29, 2011, 06:30:43 AM
Harp, flute, prepared piano . . . nice!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on December 29, 2011, 01:59:31 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on December 29, 2011, 06:30:43 AM
Harp, flute, prepared piano . . . nice!

Prepared how?  Tuned to certain quarter-tones, or maybe third-tones?   :o
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on December 30, 2011, 02:17:49 AM
Surely in ther Cageian manner... The Sonatas and Interludes are often mentioned by Luke, and quarter tones haven't really featured in his work as far as I can remember...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 11, 2012, 06:54:48 AM
Pssst, happy new year!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 17, 2012, 10:47:03 AM
TTT
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on February 06, 2012, 06:37:04 AM
TTT, again.

And, discreetly done here (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,19881.msg599175.html#msg599175), BTW.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 06, 2012, 06:46:05 AM
Hi Karl, and anyone else!

Phew, that must be the busiest eight or nine weeks of my life, just gone past. Rarely a moment free, and certainly not enough to concentrate on penning coherent posts on GMG. I'm still not there, quite - witness the incoherence of my two posts on the Bartok/Janacek thread (I know what I mean but I'm not saying it right!). But things are relaxing now, and a timely snow day today has helped.

Literally nothing to report on the composing front, unfortunately. Maybe with the spring...(faint hopes, but it has happened before). The urge is there, just not the time.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 06, 2012, 10:36:57 AM
Quote from: Luke on February 06, 2012, 06:46:05 AM
Hi Karl, and anyone else!

Phew, that must be the busiest eight or nine weeks of my life, just gone past. Rarely a moment free, and certainly not enough to concentrate on penning coherent posts on GMG. I'm still not there, quite - witness the incoherence of my two posts on the Bartok/Janacek thread (I know what I mean but I'm not saying it right!). But things are relaxing now, and a timely snow day today has helped.

Literally nothing to report on the composing front, unfortunately. Maybe with the spring...(faint hopes, but it has happened before). The urge is there, just not the time.


Any "incoherent" writings from you would still be more interesting than many coherent ones on that "other" music website!   :o    0:)

So let us know what the kidnappers did to you!   :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 02, 2012, 11:00:10 AM
TTT
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on March 12, 2012, 02:18:52 PM
Quote from: Cato on February 06, 2012, 10:36:57 AM

Any "incoherent" writings from you would still be more interesting than many coherent ones on that "other" music website!   :o    0:)

So let us know what the kidnappers did to you!
   :D

Hmm, perhaps they glued your fingers together?   :o   

Or clipped away   :o    some part of    :o    your fingertips?  ???    ???   

Or maybe they have done something really scary!

(http://photos.posh24.com/p/983267/z/adam_sandler/adam_sandler_drag.jpg)


Forcing you to watch  :o     :P    Adam    :P    Sandler   :P   movies!!!  :o
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on April 10, 2012, 07:38:58 AM
TTT, encore une fois
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on April 11, 2012, 02:00:24 PM
Quote from: Cato on March 12, 2012, 02:18:52 PM
Hmm, perhaps they glued your fingers together?   :o   

Or clipped away   :o    some part of    :o    your fingertips?  ???    ???   

Or maybe they have done something really scary!

(http://photos.posh24.com/p/983267/z/adam_sandler/adam_sandler_drag.jpg)


Forcing you to watch  :o     :P    Adam    :P    Sandler   :P   movies!!!  :o

I am beginning to fear that my above prediction might be true!!!   :o
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 30, 2012, 02:27:07 AM
Well, well, life gets pretty complicated and hectic at times, doesn't it!? And I'm not done with that, so I can't promise to be back here as much as I used to be at any time in the near future. But this board is still my 'home' on the internet, and this thread above all, and I will keep it informed of anything even remotely interesting that happens.

So, here's one:

The Lamb was performed a couple of Saturday's ago, by a depleted and sore-throat-ridden bunch of 10/11 year olds, in the church by school. Despite said sore throats and tuning issues (which I can't in all conscience blame on the throats though I wish I could), it came off nicely, I think, because they are sweet kids trying very hard, and because, in the end, it's quite a pretty piece. I will upload something soon.

Following the concert the organiser asked me to play again at the next concert, and to include another of my pieces. I am thinking of writing something for it, and in fact already have the piece planned in my mind. But we know what happens on this thread - I promise much and deliver little, so I won't say any more about it yet.

Did anyone ever listen to the pieces I posted two or three pages and many, many months ago? The Fantasy, and a piece called 'Around Fern Hill' - they are there with recordings and scores, and were downloaded a few times, but I got no feedback. It isn't obligatory, of course,  ;D but I was starting to worry if the music was really that bad! Personally, I find 'Around Fern Hill' quite a touching piece, though I'm sure that's less to do with my notes than the recording they are a backing to. Would be very interested to hear thoughts about this.

:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 30, 2012, 02:29:25 AM
Links to those files, should anyone want....

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.msg570096.html#msg570096
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 30, 2012, 02:48:42 AM
Good to hear from you, lad! And thanks for the reminder and link. Will check these out Thursday evening, Chowder Time. (Working at the shop this evening.)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: North Star on May 30, 2012, 03:03:31 AM
Listened to Around Fern Hill, the music suits the poem, and its mood, wonderfully well. I hadn't listened to your pieces before, Luke, but I certainly like a lot of the same music as you (some of which I've discovered through your wonderful posts).


Karlo
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on May 30, 2012, 04:34:42 PM
Quote from: Luke on May 30, 2012, 02:27:07 AM


Did anyone ever listen to the pieces I posted two or three pages and many, many months ago? The Fantasy, and a piece called 'Around Fern Hill' - they are there with recordings and scores, and were downloaded a few times, but I got no feedback.
It isn't obligatory, of course,  ;D but I was starting to worry if the music was really that bad! Personally, I find 'Around Fern Hill' quite a touching piece, though I'm sure that's less to do with my notes than the recording they are a backing to. Would be very interested to hear thoughts about this.

:)

Ouch!  Did I miss those?   ???    I will need to listen to them this weekend! 

Feedback on the way! 

For North Star and others who may have missed this a few years ago:

Back on pages 85-86 -  much earlier here - I wrote a little (partial) analysis of one of Luke Ottevanger's piano works, a Canzone.  The analysis was in response to an ignorant comment by a former member who, a wannabe composer who idolized Mendelssohn.   0:)

Here is the music:  http://www.mediafire.com/?mxd1niydhmz (http://www.mediafire.com/?mxd1niydhmz) 

Page 84 has the score: scroll down somewhat to one of Luke's sections.

Quote from: Cato on July 09, 2010, 04:09:58 AM
For those worried about the figurations in the Canzone, allow me to point out 2 simple examples near the beginning and the end.

First one should see, however, that part of the marvelous character in Luke's work comes from a major/minor tension.  Note that the work begins with a key signature in F major (D minor? Or is it maybe A minor with a Bb?  The A at the top tells us nothing so far.), but that things immediately become ambiguous with the C#, i.e. Db, in the theme, creating the possibility of F minor, and then the F# arrives (which to my ear has always created a kind of "double minor" sound,i.e. F, Gb, Ab, Bb, C, Db, Eb, F).

In bar 9 on page 1, observe the 16th-note figuration: it is not there merely to drive the piece, nor to show off the pianist's fancy fingerwork.  The notes are D/C#=Db, and then change to Eb and Db, showing specifically the major/minor tension.  Also see the bass line, which no longer has the A at the beginning, but goes from E (from F major) to Eb (F minor).

On the last page, page 10, look at the 16th-note figurations again and observe how they harmonically make sense with the theme: note especially the Db in the figurations, producing the major/minor tension heard in the C#(Db) in the theme.  Note how again the F#(Gb) ambiguity is chased away at the end, resolving definitely to F major.

What might seem like "too many notes" to the untrained eye or ear is in fact quite necessary.  Given the nature of the piano, simply to have solid unarpeggiated chords would make the piece resemble an exercise in a chromatic harmony book, albeit the best one there!   0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Mirror Image on May 30, 2012, 08:12:22 PM
Quote from: Cato on May 30, 2012, 04:34:42 PMThe analysis was in response to an ignorant comment by a former member who, a wannabe composer who idolized Mendelssohn.   0:)

I wonder what Saul has been up to? I wonder if he's achieved worldwide fame as "The Most Viewed Composer On YouTube" yet? I know he really thought YouTube marked some kind of importance and milestone for composers. What a laugh riot he was! :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: North Star on May 30, 2012, 09:50:39 PM
Quote from: Cato on May 30, 2012, 04:34:42 PM
For North Star and others who may have missed this a few years ago:

Back on pages 85-86 -  much earlier here - I wrote a little (partial) analysis of one of Luke Ottevanger's piano works, a Canzone.  The analysis was in response to an ignorant comment by a former member who, a wannabe composer who idolized Mendelssohn.   0:)

Here is the music:  http://www.mediafire.com/?mxd1niydhmz (http://www.mediafire.com/?mxd1niydhmz) 

Page 84 has the score: scroll down somewhat to one of Luke's sections.

Thanks, that's a very nice piece, too. After what's written about it already, I can't really post anything useful, but there's obviously that Liszt influence, but it's more like a parody.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: North Star on May 31, 2012, 02:59:14 PM
Quote from: North Star on May 30, 2012, 03:03:31 AM
Listened to Around Fern Hill, the music suits the poem, and its mood, wonderfully well. I hadn't listened to your pieces before, Luke, but I certainly like a lot of the same music as you (some of which I've discovered through your wonderful posts).


Karlo

Listening to this again.
The increasing dissonance works very well, a wonderful piece all in all.

(the sudden changes in the background noise are a little annoying, though)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 01, 2012, 02:23:04 AM
Quote from: Luke on May 30, 2012, 02:29:25 AM
Links to those files, should anyone want....

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,44.msg570096.html#msg570096

Bah, I need to use t'other machine.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 01, 2012, 02:24:23 AM
Karlo, thank you very much for listening, I am glad you are enjoying it! The increasing dissonance level is very much the idea of the piece (perhaps you read about that in the notes I wrote, or maybe it's just a case of sharp ears), and it has to do with the passage of time, the accumulation of experience, memory etc. The same musical ideas (= places that the poem refers too, and = motivic use of words in the poem itself) repeating under new layers of accretion, losing lustre and innocence, gaining memories, associations and complexity and richness. Initially I also felt that it was a shame that the Dylan Thomas reading was not available without the background noise. But then after a time living with it I began to feel that the repeated intrusion of that layer of noise was appropriate to this idea of time passing, a reminder that there are layers of experience and memory within the piece too, that the poem is old, the recording is old, that dust collects on everything.... So now I actually rather relish those moments when the noise seeps in...

But it's very possible that this is nonsense!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: North Star on June 01, 2012, 03:09:16 AM
I did notice it before reading your notes, but, I believe, I commented on it after reading about it.

Regarding the noise, I was thinking more about how abruptly it enters and leaves, but, listening again, it doesn't sound so abrupt now. I absolutely agree (and did all the time) that the noise fits there.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 01, 2012, 11:34:11 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on June 01, 2012, 02:23:04 AM
Bah, I need to use t'other machine.

Actually, now I am thinking that this is something I can do with my Archos tablet at home . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 02, 2012, 03:25:35 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on June 01, 2012, 11:34:11 AM
Actually, now I am thinking that this is something I can do with my Archos tablet at home . . . .

Success! How lovely to hear you in action again!  Which is how it feels, though of course your post is half a year old . . . .

Just finished a first listen to Around Fern Hill, which is enchanting, firstly I mean that your piece is of itself enchanting, and sufficient, and secondly that the recording of the poetry, which (sonically, though not at all content-wise, of course) is a reliably static, periodic partner, works together with the piece marvelously well.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on June 03, 2012, 04:44:32 AM
Watch this space, and download the score and performance of Mr. Ottevanger's piano opus Around Fern Hill to prepare.

I hope by the end of the week to have a little analytical commentary published here.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 03, 2012, 06:35:52 AM
Party in the Outpost!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: springrite on June 03, 2012, 06:39:36 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on June 03, 2012, 06:35:52 AM
Party in the Outpost!

Tea Party? I will provide the Pu'er and Oolong.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 03, 2012, 09:38:08 AM
 :D  :D

Really looking forward to reading Cato's thoughts on Around Fern Hill. Doubtless they will be the usual model of insight, and will show the composer things about his piece which he only half-knew were there in the first place. I can't wait! (And Cato, I will get a reply off to your email as soon as I can find the opportunity to write something worthy of it).

It's great to have some activity round here, so by all means, party on. I remember the days, many years ago it seems now, when this thread was the forum for some memorable debate and faux-flaming. *Sigh* Any such partying at the moment is a little retrospective, what with my sluggish/non-existent production at the moment, but I'd still love to see it!

Am trying to upload The Lamb - have been trying for days - but mediafire is not....erm...firing on my computer t present. Not sure why. Will keep on trying. May well not be worth the wait anyway. The piece is uber-sweet, and the performance very imperfect.

:)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 03, 2012, 12:46:39 PM
Even the flame-wars here are good fun.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on June 03, 2012, 05:04:42 PM
Quote from: Luke on June 03, 2012, 09:38:08 AM

Really looking forward to reading Cato's thoughts on Around Fern Hill. Doubtless they will be the usual model of insight,

Well, I hope so!  The pressure is on!   ;D   

This is my last week at school before the vacation, and so grades and other silly things (Kafkaesque "paperwork") - along with packing my materials so the room can be remodeled - are waiting for me.

Quote from: Luke on June 03, 2012, 09:38:08 AM
(And Cato, I will get a reply off to your email as soon as I can find the opportunity to write something worthy of it).

Some people are just too modest!   0:)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Jo re mi on June 04, 2012, 03:12:50 AM
Well I'm disappointed that my last attempt to post to this thread never made it through the mystery moderator but very pleased that since then Luke has posted again. This is now where I will come for updates on my brother's activities!
I can't contribute anything insightful but I do love Around Fern Hill. Aren't there couple of other pieces you're still hiding under that large bushell of yours, Luke? (hi by the way ;) )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 04, 2012, 04:35:26 AM
Quote from: springrite on June 03, 2012, 06:39:36 AM
Tea Party? I will provide the Pu'er and Oolong.

Excellent!

Back to the music . . . my Archos tablet can be something of a mystery.  I downloaded all the files successfully;  then, I wanted to move them from the Download folder, to a, well, less apparently temporary folder.  And I thought I was managing to do that "on screen" (as opposed to a drag-&-drop via the USB tether, which is my normal MO. And now . . . I've "lost" them!

Well, just now trying to download afresh.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 04, 2012, 04:49:44 AM
Success anew!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 04, 2012, 07:10:41 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 03, 2012, 09:38:08 AM
:D  :D

Really looking forward to reading Cato's thoughts on Around Fern Hill. Doubtless they will be the usual model of insight, and will show the composer things about his piece which he only half-knew were there in the first place. I can't wait! (And Cato, I will get a reply off to your email as soon as I can find the opportunity to write something worthy of it).

It's great to have some activity round here, so by all means, party on. I remember the days, many years ago it seems now, when this thread was the forum for some memorable debate and faux-flaming. *Sigh* Any such partying at the moment is a little retrospective, what with my sluggish/non-existent production at the moment, but I'd still love to see it!

Am trying to upload The Lamb - have been trying for days - but mediafire is not....erm...firing on my computer t present. Not sure why. Will keep on trying. May well not be worth the wait anyway. The piece is uber-sweet, and the performance very imperfect.

:)

This here Archos tablet . . . chances are, if I had bought it with the intention of using at as a tablet, this is one of the oddities which would annoy me . . . but as I fetched it in essentially as an mp3 player, it turns out that I am actually yet better pleased that at times it does more . . .

. . . the point being, that at Media Fire, I've generally needed to try a second time in order to download the files, but (both days) I succeeded all right at last.

The tune that breaks out in the Fantasy at around the five-minute mark has (not all that rare, I suppose) striking family resemblance to the tune "Danby," which fixed me with its glittering eye some years ago.

Probably not a genuinely helpful comment, but . . . I've enjoyed listening to both performances, both for the pieces themselves, and for the sense of being vicariously present at an Ottevangeriad.  Bring on some more!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 05, 2012, 08:16:16 AM
Thanks for your persistence, Karl! You are absolutely right about the family resemblance between these folksongs - even amongst the few that I used for the Fantasy, how many begin with a rising fourth and a further ascent up the scale (The Seeds of Love; O Waly Waly; Searching for Lambs; Arise arise (sort of)...) This was one of the factors I used to help 'hang' the piece, in fact, with two of the G major numbers framing it and using the same techinique of motive derivation, and the third G major number coming at the end of the first half, before the optional cadenza, all three songs sharing not just key but motivic shapes. It's an odd piece, the Fantasy - in an approximation of RVW's words, I don't know if I like it, but it's what I meant. As I said before, in my mind it is a sister piece to my Nightingale Sonata, in many ways (use of folksong being only the most obvious and to me not necessarily the most important)

Quote from: Jo re mi on June 04, 2012, 03:12:50 AM
Well I'm disappointed that my last attempt to post to this thread never made it through the mystery moderator but very pleased that since then Luke has posted again. This is now where I will come for updates on my brother's activities!
I can't contribute anything insightful but I do love Around Fern Hill. Aren't there couple of other pieces you're still hiding under that large bushell of yours, Luke? (hi by the way ;) )

I have no idea who this person is



















;D   ;D   ;D

Wotcha, brother mine. What desperation brings you here? What a dubious pleasant surprise! Everything under my capacious bushel that can be uploaded is uploaded, somewhere on this thread, but you're right, perhaps I should relink/reupload some stuff at some point. Some of it was put up years ago. What would you recommend? As you only listen to the music of Luke Ottevanger, apparently, you must know my oeuvre better than I do myself! I think I should perhaps post a worklist or something...

BTW, will try to call you tonight/tomorrow. Meant to do so a couple of nights ago but you know how it is...especially with me.  Also BTW, if you have texted me recently - my mobile has been untrustworthy and highly selective in what it thinks I should see ever since (true story) I dove into a raging torrent to rescue a drowning child a couple of weekends ago, phone still in pocket (well, the bit about it raging may be pushing it - swirling sluggishly may be more accurate).

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Gurn Blanston on June 05, 2012, 08:24:48 AM
Luke,
Just an ease of use sort of suggestion; put everything that you want to share on mediafire into one folder there, and then share the single link for that folder. It stays the same, so in future, anytime you upload something new into that folder, you can simply announce it, with perhaps another copy of the link for stragglers... easy is good. :)

8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 05, 2012, 08:30:30 AM
Quote from: Gurnatron5500 on June 05, 2012, 08:24:48 AM
Luke,
Just an ease of use sort of suggestion; put everything that you want to share on mediafire into one folder there, and then share the single link for that folder. It stays the same, so in future, anytime you upload something new into that folder, you can simply announce it, with perhaps another copy of the link for stragglers... easy is good. :)

8)

Thanks Gurn. That's sort of what I did in the past IIRC, then just adding new hyperlinks as the folder grew. Over the years though, for whatever reason, the number of folders I was uploading to grew too, and no doubt some of them are now obsolete. I imagine that if you tried to follow the links on the first page of this thread, for instance, few of them would work. So it would be a good idea to start again, and perhaps I will do that. I'm having big trouble getting Mediafire to work at the moment, however - can't upload a single thing, not even a piddlingly small PDF. Maybe I will try 4shared or somewhere like that...

:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Jo re mi on June 05, 2012, 09:29:16 AM
Well I do only listen to the music of Luke Ottevanger but I turn the volume right down  :D

From what I remember, though, and indeed have on tape & CD, there may be other treasures you've not yet shared. I'm just steeling myself to wade through 100+ pages of this thread to see what you've uploaded over the last 6 years... Did you put up all the lovely things you did for the squids? And your various Christmas pieces?

Perhaps we should do a Kickstarter thing, though, and see if this select and illustrious crew will stump up for my wedding piece to be performed, perhaps for its 20th anniversary in a few years' time. I know I won't, though I'd chuck in a fiver for a laugh  ;)

By the way, I keep meaning to give you some of yer actual folk choons to listen to but fail. You could do worse than checking out the live set referred to in the comments here http://weirdbrother.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/28-power-of-true-love-knot-shirley.html (and of course the main LP). Needless to say I've not listened to it myself.

Call me, I want to hear more about your acts of heroism and snort in derision at your excuses, as per  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 05, 2012, 09:39:21 AM
Ah, the snorts of derisive siblings ... quite brings me back....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Jo re mi on June 05, 2012, 09:57:24 AM
well Luke can tell you, they've always been in vogue in the Ottevanger family

Please to meet you by the way, Karl  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 05, 2012, 10:06:25 AM
Pleased, likewise!

My suggestion was unfair to my numerous siblings, BTW: none of them have ever treated me with derision : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 05, 2012, 10:23:26 AM
Well, this is most surreal. When worlds collide....

Mr Mi (or is it Mr Re Mi?), the Christmas things are up somewhere, yes. Guido particularly liked them. A man of discernment, our Guido. But the kids' lullabies aren't up though - they don't 'count'! Though IIRC I mentioned them as I composed them. They spurred me on to writing another Lullaby (A Lullaby to Silence) which is up, I think. But it's a long time ago now, back in 2006 as far as I remember....

A GMG-sponsored performance of Ophruoeis, you say? Well, as you know, it nearly happened back in 97. If only it hadn't been so irresponsibly-scored... But I have to say (and though I wrote it for you and the missus) I've done better. A link to the score of Ophruoeis is somewhere hidden on this thread too, I think.  And the equally-ridiculous Processional (which is the one I wrote a couple of years later for the nuptials of Arsey Ottevanger, our beloved sister) - score up here too.

Karl. I always imagined gentle derision was the very essence of fraternity. You mean it can be otherwise?  :o
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Jo re mi on June 05, 2012, 11:45:40 AM
Well mate I'm just dropping in since you're so damned hard to get hold of, and since you showed me where to find you... On the whole I won't have an awful lot to contribute, my general MO might be lurking.

Did you put up anything from your Kings days? Four Paz Songs? Your string quartet? Or the pieces performed at the SNM or whatever it was called way back when? I can't recall if that was recorded, I think it was complicated.

Incidentally, these folks look interesting: http://musikfabrik.eu/en/homepage.html For some reason they started following me on Twitter and I reciprocated, they seem to have a healthy programme of new commissions. Just sayin'. Oh, and they're in Cologne, like Irish Jan
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 05, 2012, 01:36:38 PM
The Paz Songs are up, always were - as I said, everything that can be up is. The Quartet was never recorded, which might be for the best (I have the parts somewhere but not the score, it would be some work to reconstruct the piece and not really worth it, I think). The performances of that Horn/String Trio piece which you are probably thinking of with 'SNM' (do you mean SPNM? I don't think it was an SPNM thing, though it was a BMIC one, but hey, they're all acronyms) were not recorded either.  I don't even have the score to that piece, it disappeared with the conductor after the second performance (which I couldn't get to). But again I'm a bit relieved - as far as I remember, that piece was not too hot. The composer Alan Bullard was at the first performance in the Purcell Rooms and was complimentary about it...but I'm not sure why!

Anyway, it's nice to have you around my thread! You should start your own one so that everyone else could hear all about Irish Jan....  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 11, 2012, 10:43:23 AM
Cool! Cato's in the Outpost!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 11, 2012, 11:05:23 AM
Uh-oh! Did my post queer his toggle?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 12, 2012, 11:09:34 AM
Dude, soon, really, I am going to get your PDF and mp3 in the same place, at the same time . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on June 12, 2012, 06:02:51 PM
Stay tuned!  The analytical essay on Around Fern Hill is in progress, and the composer, after reading the first pages, has encouraged me to continue.  0:)

My life has become much more hectic recently.  So I am behind schedule on this, but I hope everyone here will become acquainted with the work during the delay.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 13, 2012, 02:12:42 AM
Splendid! And it turns out that I can download the files at this machine, it was just Media Fire being a bit dodgy . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 13, 2012, 04:34:47 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on June 12, 2012, 11:09:34 AM
Dude, soon, really, I am going to get your PDF and mp3 in the same place, at the same time . . . .

To-day is the day! Just printed them out.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 13, 2012, 10:11:12 AM
Luke, I'm fresh from (finally) an initial listen while following along with the score.  I want (and need) to listen and absorb a good deal more, but at the least, again: lovely work!  And beautiful playing.  Love the development and re-contextualization of the octave flourish-lets in Around Fern Hill. An especially nice touch (gosh, I hope I am not mis-remembering) is how you managed to co-ordinate (I think it was) the return of that gesture in the first measure of p.2 with the conclusion of the recording of the first stanza. (In the third system, third measure, the first semiquaver of the septuplet, did you mean the F#? – or maybe I misheard.  Might have just been a slip, and of course, I've made so many mistakes in my own music, of which you have been so charitable, that I hate for you to think that I'm rapping your knuckles . . . .)

The Fantasy, too, waxes yet lovelier with improved acquaintance.

That has got to do for the moment. I will go back to both pieces soon!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on June 17, 2012, 09:01:31 AM
The "little" analytical essay on Around Fern Hill is finished in a first draft, but not yet approved by the composer, so in a short time, depending on Luke Ottevanger's busy schedule, it will appear here.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 17, 2012, 12:04:33 PM
Cato - have downloaded and read it all. Some really penetrating listening, uncovering lots of pertinent points, including (as I expected) ways of understanding the piece which I hadn't thought of myself (all of which please me!). But it's not for me to go into them here, they are all in your essay. Please go right ahead and copy it here - you have, as you known, my deepest thanks!

Karl - firstly, thank you for your own deep-listening; you too say things there which chime with me. I like the way the 1st stanza concludes w.r.t the music too; to my mind there are other such happy moments in the text-music relationship later in the piece too. And you are right - that's a fingerslip you hear. Not the worst one I could have made (at least the wrong note is also to be found in the mode which is being used at that point!) but nothing to be proud of either. There will be hundreds more later in the piece, especially in the second half, as the music of the opening three stanzas is repeated in a more dissonant harmonic environment, with new encrustations, more layers of musical 'stuff' and generally much busier fingerwork (= memories, experiences etc...)

Thanks, both.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on June 17, 2012, 01:24:47 PM
With Luke Ottevanger's approval: you will need to have a copy of the music and the performance for the full effect:

http://www.mediafire.com/?no6zykq6464c2z2 (http://www.mediafire.com/?no6zykq6464c2z2) - Score

http://www.mediafire.com/?hycr77dymz2665f  (http://www.mediafire.com/?hycr77dymz2665f) - Performance

A Walk Around the Music of Around Fern Hill


If you ever had any doubts about the major-minor system's ability to retain its emotional power, then you must listen to Luke Ottevanger's Around Fern Hill.  While the work is not written with a specific key, its opening bars dance in a major-key field toying with the ear in various major scales.  One hears the note G ascending over 4 octaves at the start of the work, which begins with a triplet, a rhythmical figure of great importance throughout the composition.  With the exception of a constant C# in the opening bars, we are in white-key land, with whiffs of G major and, thanks to that C#, A and E major.  In bar 3 the triplet descends (G6 – A5 – A4 (the numbers refer to the octaves)) to give us one of those fleeting hints of a major scale (A-E-C#-A).  But these are only whiffs, as the composer has no intention of allowing us to linger for long in such a deluding land.

I should mention at this point that I first "listened" mentally to the work from the score alone, and had no idea that the title came from a poem.  Deducing that the markings ("Stanza I") meant that the composer obviously had a poem in mind as the background for a particular section, I simply concentrated on the story which the music told by itself, and discovered the composer's source of inspiration only at the end, where the poem appears in full at the bottom of the last page.  Certainly the music alone provides a powerful experience of emotional mystery.

And that mystery begins to arrive in various ways: with our ears accustomed to a tentative brightness in the ambiguity of these major keys, the composer also grants us music of a slow contemplative nature with the chiming, ticking rhythms of bells and clocks (which will persist, with increasing difficulty and dissonance, as the piece tells its tale).  Yet our contemplation is disturbed by the nature of the meter (7/8) and by the music insisting on assorted arrhythmic arpeggios (bars 3-5).  Finally in bars 6-19 we hear in 3/8 the tolling of bells in the distance (the chord E-B-E followed by an A and D-G) in the left hand, while the right hand "dances" merrily in the churchyard with triplets of various kinds.

But in bar 20 things become ominous: the rhythmic complexity in the dance increases, with dissonant major 2nds appearing.  The leaping G's from the opening 2 bars reappear, as does that descending triplet (G6 – A5 – A4) in bar 22, which ends with another ascending triplet (G3 – A4 – B5).  Bar 23 gives us a quick B-minor hint of a severe change in mood, as an F# appears for the first time with the C#: and then the shock of bar 24!  That single F#, a simple semitone lower than G, heard alone at first, becomes the root of a minor-ninth chord (F#-D-B-F), whose sudden emotional impact is Gesualdoan, similar to the famous chord used by Arnold Schoenberg in Pelleas und Melisande (at Cue 8, p. 16 of the study score) where an F natural underlies a first inversion D minor triad with a G# spread over several octaves.

The appearance of the F# has added a melancholy, if not ominous, atmosphere to the music (bars 25-30), which attempts to keep dancing up and down a quasi-G scale (with that augmented 4th C# ).  But the F# is now in the bass, at times with the C#, and prevents a major mood from taking over.  As proof that dissonance can be very poignant, listen to the tolling continue (bars 30-38) with a syncopated and divided G major 7th chord against a C#-E# in the bass: and is that dance on the quasi G-scale now more of a C# minor experience?  A 3-note motif (F#-D-F) provides more tonal and emotional ambiguity, and leads back to the dueling dance of scales (G vs. C#).

At bar 39, the music attempts to "play" in 5/8 time, but with ever more pain or bewilderment, and leads into a variation of bars 30-38.  The divided and syncopated G-major 7th chord now rings against an F-B-D in the bass, and that 3-note motif now descends directly (Gb-F-E, bar 45) rather relentlessly.  The opening octave leaping triplet returns at the end of bar 50, but now descends down 3 C naturals to announce a transition to a new tension between C and the C#. 

For above the triplet-dominated, wandering-the-hill music on modes of E and C#, a melismatic theme on C arises in the treble, a theme masked and hinted at in the previous sections (e.g. the theme in bars 25-26, in the middle voice in bars 32-38, and then in the treble in bars 39-43).  Now unadorned, the theme emphasizes C, with Bb at first the only point of interference, and with the time expanding by a single 16th note over bars 51-54, the theme rises to G, only to be joined unexpectedly in a cluster with E#/F#.   It is as if the tolling sounds in the background have now chosen to speak directly: at times a ding-dong-ding pattern of three is heard, as in those earlier 3-note motifs of F#-D-F and Gb-F-E.  Grace notes echoing the opening triplet are heard throughout the bass in this section (bars 50-62).  Diminished 5th sounds in the bass (C-F#, E-Bb) prevent any rest, and provide a point of comparison, as the opening G modality is now changing to octaves of C# in bars 55-56.   Conflicting with the C# is the melismatic C/Bb theme in the middle voice, ending on D in bars 59-60, despite the tremolos on C# echoing around, and a punctuating E/F high in the treble. 

And then a pause, and again the leaping triplet appears, now on C natural, and the time has changed from 7/16 to 7/8.  But by bars 64-65, the triplet now intones the C/C# (now spelled Db because of an Ab tonality in the left hand) tension, and the melismatic theme attempts a return in a variation in the treble.  A flourish on Eb minor ambles by, and then the tolling of diminished fifths with the Ab-Eb accompanies a long melisma on a C scale, a sort of double minor with a Db and Gb.  The melisma often uses triplets in keeping with the rhythmic motif established in the first bar, and hearkens backward to the "dancing" heard in bars 9-22: and so bars 63-77 can be heard as a shorter, more dissonant version of the opening 24 bars, where the shock of the single F# in bar 24 is now replaced by an Ab pentad (Ab-Bb-Db-Eb-G) with a high C echoing away.   

In bar 78 the triplet figure descends to announce a sort of B mode, and we now hear a variation of the earlier part of the work (bars 25 ff.), but with more stumbling around the hill (compare bar 26 with bar 80), and more anguish: compare that earlier, insistent 3-note motif of F#-D-F with its variation in bars 86-87 as F#-D-Eb/F, and listen to the tolling transform into clusters, with minor seconds sprinkled about (e.g. bars 81, 93-95).  The 5/8 section (bars 93-97) is very similar to its earlier appearance (bars 39-43) In bar 99 ff., the 3-note motif, now changed to Gb-F-E in the middle voice, struggles against an Eb ninth in the bass and a painfully chiming G major 7th chord with an added C above it.

The 3-note motif is also emphasized in subtle, almost unconscious ways in the middle voice: listen e.g. to bars 104-105, where the middle voice begins its triplets with E-Gb-F, while bars 106-107 begin with Gb-F-E and E-F-Gb respectively.

And as clusters of notes reach upward in the treble (bar 109), perhaps as symbols of desperate, useless clutching at the surface of the water of memory, the gravity in the bass reveals a swallowing sea, using that diminished 5th  of G-C# from the opening as a tremolo leading to a deep G/A finale, while the last manifestation of our poor 3-note motif is heard in the middle voice.  Seven notes ring out in the final bars, from that G/A in the bass to an E/F in the treble, not unlike the finale of Schoenberg's Erwartung,  where the music both descends and rises to "swallow" the character at the end.

I mentioned to the composer that the use of the "scratchy" recording of the poem reminded me of the unusual novels of W.G. Sebald, who often included fuzzy, "faraway" photos to accompany his themes of lost memories.  The result is that the work is successful on various levels: the music could stand alone without the poem, in the same way that the poem has stood alone.  Yet together one experiences a quite different third dimension of meaning, as if the music were the poem's deepest unconscious. 

Finally, the title of the music is Around Fern Hill, and may explain many of the circling figurations in the music, as if these and the other motifs and themes are the sounds when one walks around Fern Hill.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 18, 2012, 05:05:31 AM
Oh - good to see you here! I emailed you a few weeks ago, but not sure if its your email address. Getting into the Janacek choral works The least explored corner of his output surely, and so much wonderful stuff (no surprises there!) Hadn't even heard of the 1908 Mass!!

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 18, 2012, 05:53:22 AM
You did, and I got it, and it got deluged, and I had forgotten it! Mea culpa!!

The best of the choral stuff is certainly amongst Janacek's finest music, and none of it finer than the Petr Bezruc choruses. which one could make a case are amongst his very best works. What you asked me, IIRC, is how one can most easily get all the essential stuff in one or two places. The answer is:

[asin]B000024WC2[/asin]
This utterly delightful old Supraphon disc, which contains the Bezruc choruses, the crazy Tagore setting 'The Wandering Madman' (one of Janacek's most experimental pieces), and much more. It's a hidden gem, this one.

[asin]B0072A4FJI[/asin]
There are a number of discs with tracklistings approximately the same as this one, but none I like more, of those I've heard. Though for Riklada my favourite by a mile is:

[asin]B000000AXP[/asin]
which is a but unexpected and usually slips under the radar, but which I simply adore - the whole disc is perfect Janacek playing, to my mind, a radiantly lovely Mladi, and the two 'concerti' done fabulously well.

This is pretty good, too, with repertoire hard to find elsewhere, and well worth hearing (for example, the 'Virgin of Frydek' movement from Overgrown Path in its choral setting - and sublime it is, too). It contains the two best of Janacek's very, very early organ works (they aren't great, don't get your hopes up, but they are interesting in the light of what followed):

[asin]B0000030V9[/asin]

That's a start. There are many others, of course.

Sorry for the delay! Hope you're keeping well.  :)  :)  :)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 18, 2012, 06:12:34 AM
Thanks! I got the first one you listed, with its twin supraphon recording too, and then also the hyperion Mass in E flat, and the eternal gospel with Volkov. Will definitely czech those others out though, they didn't even come up in my amazon searches!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on June 18, 2012, 06:17:35 AM
Woops, just ordered them all.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on June 18, 2012, 01:48:24 PM
Quote from: Cato on June 17, 2012, 01:24:47 PM
With Luke Ottevanger's approval: you will need to have a copy of the music and the performance for the full effect:

http://www.mediafire.com/?no6zykq6464c2z2 (http://www.mediafire.com/?no6zykq6464c2z2) - Score

http://www.mediafire.com/?hycr77dymz2665f  (http://www.mediafire.com/?hycr77dymz2665f) - Performance

A Walk Around the Music of Around Fern Hill


If you ever had any doubts about the major-minor system's ability to retain its emotional power, then you must listen to Luke Ottevanger's Around Fern Hill.  While the work is not written with a specific key, its opening bars dance in a major-key field toying with the ear in various major scales.  One hears the note G ascending over 4 octaves at the start of the work, which begins with a triplet, a rhythmical figure of great importance throughout the composition.  With the exception of a constant C# in the opening bars, we are in white-key land, with whiffs of G major and, thanks to that C#, A and E major.  In bar 3 the triplet descends (G6 – A5 – A4 (the numbers refer to the octaves)) to give us one of those fleeting hints of a major scale (A-E-C#-A).  But these are only whiffs, as the composer has no intention of allowing us to linger for long in such a deluding land.

I should mention at this point that I first "listened" mentally to the work from the score alone, and had no idea that the title came from a poem.  Deducing that the markings ("Stanza I") meant that the composer obviously had a poem in mind as the background for a particular section, I simply concentrated on the story which the music told by itself, and discovered the composer's source of inspiration only at the end, where the poem appears in full at the bottom of the last page.  Certainly the music alone provides a powerful experience of emotional mystery.

And that mystery begins to arrive in various ways: with our ears accustomed to a tentative brightness in the ambiguity of these major keys, the composer also grants us music of a slow contemplative nature with the chiming, ticking rhythms of bells and clocks (which will persist, with increasing difficulty and dissonance, as the piece tells its tale).  Yet our contemplation is disturbed by the nature of the meter (7/8) and by the music insisting on assorted arrhythmic arpeggios (bars 3-5).  Finally in bars 6-19 we hear in 3/8 the tolling of bells in the distance (the chord E-B-E followed by an A and D-G) in the left hand, while the right hand "dances" merrily in the churchyard with triplets of various kinds.

But in bar 20 things become ominous: the rhythmic complexity in the dance increases, with dissonant major 2nds appearing.  The leaping G's from the opening 2 bars reappear, as does that descending triplet (G6 – A5 – A4) in bar 22, which ends with another ascending triplet (G3 – A4 – B5).  Bar 23 gives us a quick B-minor hint of a severe change in mood, as an F# appears for the first time with the C#: and then the shock of bar 24!  That single F#, a simple semitone lower than G, heard alone at first, becomes the root of a minor-ninth chord (F#-D-B-F), whose sudden emotional impact is Gesualdoan, similar to the famous chord used by Arnold Schoenberg in Pelleas und Melisande (at Cue 8, p. 16 of the study score) where an F natural underlies a first inversion D minor triad with a G# spread over several octaves.

The appearance of the F# has added a melancholy, if not ominous, atmosphere to the music (bars 25-30), which attempts to keep dancing up and down a quasi-G scale (with that augmented 4th C# ).  But the F# is now in the bass, at times with the C#, and prevents a major mood from taking over.  As proof that dissonance can be very poignant, listen to the tolling continue (bars 30-38) with a syncopated and divided G major 7th chord against a C#-E# in the bass: and is that dance on the quasi G-scale now more of a C# minor experience?  A 3-note motif (F#-D-F) provides more tonal and emotional ambiguity, and leads back to the dueling dance of scales (G vs. C#).

At bar 39, the music attempts to "play" in 5/8 time, but with ever more pain or bewilderment, and leads into a variation of bars 30-38.  The divided and syncopated G-major 7th chord now rings against an F-B-D in the bass, and that 3-note motif now descends directly (Gb-F-E, bar 45) rather relentlessly.  The opening octave leaping triplet returns at the end of bar 50, but now descends down 3 C naturals to announce a transition to a new tension between C and the C#. 

For above the triplet-dominated, wandering-the-hill music on modes of E and C#, a melismatic theme on C arises in the treble, a theme masked and hinted at in the previous sections (e.g. the theme in bars 25-26, in the middle voice in bars 32-38, and then in the treble in bars 39-43).  Now unadorned, the theme emphasizes C, with Bb at first the only point of interference, and with the time expanding by a single 16th note over bars 51-54, the theme rises to G, only to be joined unexpectedly in a cluster with E#/F#.   It is as if the tolling sounds in the background have now chosen to speak directly: at times a ding-dong-ding pattern of three is heard, as in those earlier 3-note motifs of F#-D-F and Gb-F-E.  Grace notes echoing the opening triplet are heard throughout the bass in this section (bars 50-62).  Diminished 5th sounds in the bass (C-F#, E-Bb) prevent any rest, and provide a point of comparison, as the opening G modality is now changing to octaves of C# in bars 55-56.   Conflicting with the C# is the melismatic C/Bb theme in the middle voice, ending on D in bars 59-60, despite the tremolos on C# echoing around, and a punctuating E/F high in the treble. 

And then a pause, and again the leaping triplet appears, now on C natural, and the time has changed from 7/16 to 7/8.  But by bars 64-65, the triplet now intones the C/C# (now spelled Db because of an Ab tonality in the left hand) tension, and the melismatic theme attempts a return in a variation in the treble.  A flourish on Eb minor ambles by, and then the tolling of diminished fifths with the Ab-Eb accompanies a long melisma on a C scale, a sort of double minor with a Db and Gb.  The melisma often uses triplets in keeping with the rhythmic motif established in the first bar, and hearkens backward to the "dancing" heard in bars 9-22: and so bars 63-77 can be heard as a shorter, more dissonant version of the opening 24 bars, where the shock of the single F# in bar 24 is now replaced by an Ab pentad (Ab-Bb-Db-Eb-G) with a high C echoing away.   

In bar 78 the triplet figure descends to announce a sort of B mode, and we now hear a variation of the earlier part of the work (bars 25 ff.), but with more stumbling around the hill (compare bar 26 with bar 80), and more anguish: compare that earlier, insistent 3-note motif of F#-D-F with its variation in bars 86-87 as F#-D-Eb/F, and listen to the tolling transform into clusters, with minor seconds sprinkled about (e.g. bars 81, 93-95).  The 5/8 section (bars 93-97) is very similar to its earlier appearance (bars 39-43) In bar 99 ff., the 3-note motif, now changed to Gb-F-E in the middle voice, struggles against an Eb ninth in the bass and a painfully chiming G major 7th chord with an added C above it.

The 3-note motif is also emphasized in subtle, almost unconscious ways in the middle voice: listen e.g. to bars 104-105, where the middle voice begins its triplets with E-Gb-F, while bars 106-107 begin with Gb-F-E and E-F-Gb respectively.

And as clusters of notes reach upward in the treble (bar 109), perhaps as symbols of desperate, useless clutching at the surface of the water of memory, the gravity in the bass reveals a swallowing sea, using that diminished 5th  of G-C# from the opening as a tremolo leading to a deep G/A finale, while the last manifestation of our poor 3-note motif is heard in the middle voice.  Seven notes ring out in the final bars, from that G/A in the bass to an E/F in the treble, not unlike the finale of Schoenberg's Erwartung,  where the music both descends and rises to "swallow" the character at the end.

I mentioned to the composer that the use of the "scratchy" recording of the poem reminded me of the unusual novels of W.G. Sebald, who often included fuzzy, "faraway" photos to accompany his themes of lost memories.  The result is that the work is successful on various levels: the music could stand alone without the poem, in the same way that the poem has stood alone.  Yet together one experiences a quite different third dimension of meaning, as if the music were the poem's deepest unconscious. 

Finally, the title of the music is Around Fern Hill, and may explain many of the circling figurations in the music, as if these and the other motifs and themes are the sounds when one walks around Fern Hill.

Addendum: Google Books has a preview of The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald, an example to illuminate my comment above.

http://books.google.com/books?id=m5Kgh-3OVBYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=W.G.+Sebald&hl=en#v=onepage&q=W.G.%20Sebald&f=false (http://books.google.com/books?id=m5Kgh-3OVBYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=W.G.+Sebald&hl=en#v=onepage&q=W.G.%20Sebald&f=false)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 20, 2012, 12:35:59 AM
Cato, sorry not to have had time to get back to you publicly about your essay on Around Fern Hill (you know from my emails how much I appreciate it, and value it). My work on the Wizard score is now done, though still another highly frenetic couple of weeks of term remain before I can sleep easy - the production itself, for a start! And the 350+ reports I must write in the next few days. And the endless days of rehearsing. Oh, and the teaching, nearly forgot that!

I loved your Sebald/Rings of Saturn comparison. Exactly the sort of thing I mean. I have read a number of books by Sebald, yes, and in fact the East Anglian places he describes in Rings of Saturn are relatively local to me. The poetry of the images - the 'fuzzy, "faraway" photos' - is the type of thing I've always been very conscious of, the layers of meaning and memory etc. It's something that runs in various ways through many of my pieces, but never as explicitly as in Around Fern Hill. As you imply, the most obvious musical analogy to those fuzzy old photos (or perhaps extra-musical analogy - it depends maybe upon whether the sound is intended to be heard as part of the music or is there coincidentally) is the crackly surface of an old slab of vinyl. That's what is powerfully evocative about the Dylan Thomas recording, I think. And in general it's probably one of the things that makes old recordings seem even more precious to me, a reminder of the delicacy of these objects that captured a fleeting moment of sound decades ago and held it, fighting inevitable slow decay - to hear (to cite one example form the many that spring to mind) Louis Krasner playing the second performance of the Berg Concerto which was written for him, with Webern conducting, shortly after the composer's death, on the scratchiest set of old acetates one can imagine, rescued from his loft by the aging Krasner 50-odd years later, nearly lost, but still just about audible through the hiss...well, that hiss is almost as potent as the music itself, in some meta-musical way, I think. A composer like Max Richter uses this sort of sound, and others similar to it, a lot: on top of his softly Glassian string writing and his use of other evocative lost sounds - typwriters tapping, murmuring voices etc - it can work well, though its an easy way of making an effect, I think.  And it's a sound which has been used for its evocative qualities, but divorced from any actual context, by all manner of electronica and ambient musics in recent years, I think - the clanking, breathy all-enveloping, seemingly 'lo-fi' sound we hear on all sorts of actually very hi-tech recordings.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 20, 2012, 02:08:27 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 20, 2012, 12:35:59 AM
Cato, sorry not to have had time to get back to you publicly about your essay on Around Fern Hill (you know from my emails how much I appreciate it, and value it). My work on the Wizard score is now done[....]

Comme on dit en Amérique: Sacrée vache!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 20, 2012, 02:13:19 AM
Without wanting to say too much, was a mammoth task - ending up with a tiny-typed score, two systems, landscape, 100 pages long. It's been a brutal thing to work on, and without the ameliorating factor of it being a labour of love - it certainly wasn't that!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 20, 2012, 02:17:58 AM
Aye, Cato gave me a glimpse. It was a vision, and not of sugarplums dancing . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 20, 2012, 02:19:43 AM
You remind me that I need to revisit that iconic Krasner recording . . . anyway, I want to listen some more to your two pieces to-day.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 20, 2012, 02:21:11 AM
And all these projects I am so desperate to begin, too...! The list is growing - probably 8 or 9 potential pieces I want to work on, and scarcely a note written.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 20, 2012, 02:29:42 AM
Crossed posts.

I can't listen to the Berg any other way. No, perhaps not strictly true, but I find I return to the Krasner over and over, despite the appalling sonics and the hardly faultless playing. It just burns with intensity. Nothing else seems to match this, to my mind. Perhaps, though, it's the potency of its age/its iconic status that affects me so. I can't really divorce the two from each other dispassionately.

Thanks for bearing with these two pieces! Cato's essay on Around Fern Hill is a really fascinating little guide to it. What interests me is the different slant he puts on things - to me, for example, its ABCABC structure, where italics are revisitings of old ground in the light of experience, is of central importance. Cato's essay certainly mentions this, but it doesn't emphasize it, instead focusing on harmonic and motivic themes in a way that fascinates me, as the composer, as much as anyone else. Again, he talks about modes in their traditional sense - major, minor, phrygian, lydian and so on - whereas I think of them as aggregates of pitches, which in this piece happen to increase in number (one out, two in) with each stanza of the poem, leading to the increasing harmonic complexity. So he finds things there which I both knew and didn't know were there (I'm sure that you, Karl, understand what I mean by that seemingly nonsensical sentence!).

Must dash. Exam to invigilate!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 20, 2012, 02:48:11 AM
As Dogberry would enjoin: Be invigitant, I pray thee! : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on June 20, 2012, 03:42:47 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 20, 2012, 02:29:42 AM

Cato's essay on Around Fern Hill is a really fascinating little guide to it. What interests me is the different slant he puts on things - to me, for example, its ABCABC structure, where italics are revisitings of old ground in the light of experience, is of central importance. Cato's essay certainly mentions this, but it doesn't emphasize it, instead focusing on harmonic and motivic themes in a way that fascinates me, as the composer, as much as anyone else. Again, he talks about modes in their traditional sense - major, minor, phrygian, lydian and so on - whereas I think of them as aggregates of pitches, which in this piece happen to increase in number (one out, two in) with each stanza of the poem...

As I mentioned in the essay, part of that focus probably came from imagining the score without realizing that the poem's reading by Dylan Thomas was part of the work. 

It would be interesting - perhaps - to have a concert where the music is played 3 times - first without the recording, then with it, and then without it again.

Quote from: Luke on June 20, 2012, 02:29:42 AM
So he finds things there which I both knew and didn't know were there...

In the 1930's a young professor at Harvard University wrote a small book on Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain).  Mann, after reading the monograph, wrote to the professor and said that the analysis had revealed many things to him which he had not realized. 

As a former composer and as a novelist of no repute, I can attest that if one tried to be conscious of every meaning in a work, the creative act would be impossible.  And if one were conscious of everything, I think the work itself would be ruined, something cold and artificial.


Quote from: Luke on June 20, 2012, 02:29:42 AM

Must dash. Exam to invigilate!

Such is the life of a modern-day composer!   ;D    Billions for rude, crude dudes who cannot spit C major in tune, while the true artist hungers for an audience.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 20, 2012, 04:36:18 AM
Hungers, but does not slaver! Death before slavery!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 20, 2012, 04:56:34 AM
Looking at this waistline, I'm not sure I hunger half enough...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on June 23, 2012, 06:25:49 AM
Quote from: Cato on June 17, 2012, 01:24:47 PM
With Luke Ottevanger's approval: you will need to have a copy of the music and the performance for the full effect:

http://www.mediafire.com/?no6zykq6464c2z2 (http://www.mediafire.com/?no6zykq6464c2z2) - Score

http://www.mediafire.com/?hycr77dymz2665f  (http://www.mediafire.com/?hycr77dymz2665f) - Performance

A Walk Around the Music of Around Fern Hill


If you ever had any doubts about the major-minor system's ability to retain its emotional power, then you must listen to Luke Ottevanger's Around Fern Hill.  While the work is not written with a specific key, its opening bars dance in a major-key field toying with the ear in various major scales.  One hears the note G ascending over 4 octaves at the start of the work, which begins with a triplet, a rhythmical figure of great importance throughout the composition.  With the exception of a constant C# in the opening bars, we are in white-key land, with whiffs of G major and, thanks to that C#, A and E major.  In bar 3 the triplet descends (G6 – A5 – A4 (the numbers refer to the octaves)) to give us one of those fleeting hints of a major scale (A-E-C#-A).  But these are only whiffs, as the composer has no intention of allowing us to linger for long in such a deluding land.

I should mention at this point that I first "listened" mentally to the work from the score alone, and had no idea that the title came from a poem.  Deducing that the markings ("Stanza I") meant that the composer obviously had a poem in mind as the background for a particular section, I simply concentrated on the story which the music told by itself, and discovered the composer's source of inspiration only at the end, where the poem appears in full at the bottom of the last page.  Certainly the music alone provides a powerful experience of emotional mystery.

And that mystery begins to arrive in various ways: with our ears accustomed to a tentative brightness in the ambiguity of these major keys, the composer also grants us music of a slow contemplative nature with the chiming, ticking rhythms of bells and clocks (which will persist, with increasing difficulty and dissonance, as the piece tells its tale).  Yet our contemplation is disturbed by the nature of the meter (7/8) and by the music insisting on assorted arrhythmic arpeggios (bars 3-5).  Finally in bars 6-19 we hear in 3/8 the tolling of bells in the distance (the chord E-B-E followed by an A and D-G) in the left hand, while the right hand "dances" merrily in the churchyard with triplets of various kinds.

But in bar 20 things become ominous: the rhythmic complexity in the dance increases, with dissonant major 2nds appearing.  The leaping G's from the opening 2 bars reappear, as does that descending triplet (G6 – A5 – A4) in bar 22, which ends with another ascending triplet (G3 – A4 – B5).  Bar 23 gives us a quick B-minor hint of a severe change in mood, as an F# appears for the first time with the C#: and then the shock of bar 24!  That single F#, a simple semitone lower than G, heard alone at first, becomes the root of a minor-ninth chord (F#-D-B-F), whose sudden emotional impact is Gesualdoan, similar to the famous chord used by Arnold Schoenberg in Pelleas und Melisande (at Cue 8, p. 16 of the study score) where an F natural underlies a first inversion D minor triad with a G# spread over several octaves.

The appearance of the F# has added a melancholy, if not ominous, atmosphere to the music (bars 25-30), which attempts to keep dancing up and down a quasi-G scale (with that augmented 4th C# ).  But the F# is now in the bass, at times with the C#, and prevents a major mood from taking over.  As proof that dissonance can be very poignant, listen to the tolling continue (bars 30-38) with a syncopated and divided G major 7th chord against a C#-E# in the bass: and is that dance on the quasi G-scale now more of a C# minor experience?  A 3-note motif (F#-D-F) provides more tonal and emotional ambiguity, and leads back to the dueling dance of scales (G vs. C#).

At bar 39, the music attempts to "play" in 5/8 time, but with ever more pain or bewilderment, and leads into a variation of bars 30-38.  The divided and syncopated G-major 7th chord now rings against an F-B-D in the bass, and that 3-note motif now descends directly (Gb-F-E, bar 45) rather relentlessly.  The opening octave leaping triplet returns at the end of bar 50, but now descends down 3 C naturals to announce a transition to a new tension between C and the C#. 

For above the triplet-dominated, wandering-the-hill music on modes of E and C#, a melismatic theme on C arises in the treble, a theme masked and hinted at in the previous sections (e.g. the theme in bars 25-26, in the middle voice in bars 32-38, and then in the treble in bars 39-43).  Now unadorned, the theme emphasizes C, with Bb at first the only point of interference, and with the time expanding by a single 16th note over bars 51-54, the theme rises to G, only to be joined unexpectedly in a cluster with E#/F#.   It is as if the tolling sounds in the background have now chosen to speak directly: at times a ding-dong-ding pattern of three is heard, as in those earlier 3-note motifs of F#-D-F and Gb-F-E.  Grace notes echoing the opening triplet are heard throughout the bass in this section (bars 50-62).  Diminished 5th sounds in the bass (C-F#, E-Bb) prevent any rest, and provide a point of comparison, as the opening G modality is now changing to octaves of C# in bars 55-56.   Conflicting with the C# is the melismatic C/Bb theme in the middle voice, ending on D in bars 59-60, despite the tremolos on C# echoing around, and a punctuating E/F high in the treble. 

And then a pause, and again the leaping triplet appears, now on C natural, and the time has changed from 7/16 to 7/8.  But by bars 64-65, the triplet now intones the C/C# (now spelled Db because of an Ab tonality in the left hand) tension, and the melismatic theme attempts a return in a variation in the treble.  A flourish on Eb minor ambles by, and then the tolling of diminished fifths with the Ab-Eb accompanies a long melisma on a C scale, a sort of double minor with a Db and Gb.  The melisma often uses triplets in keeping with the rhythmic motif established in the first bar, and hearkens backward to the "dancing" heard in bars 9-22: and so bars 63-77 can be heard as a shorter, more dissonant version of the opening 24 bars, where the shock of the single F# in bar 24 is now replaced by an Ab pentad (Ab-Bb-Db-Eb-G) with a high C echoing away.   

In bar 78 the triplet figure descends to announce a sort of B mode, and we now hear a variation of the earlier part of the work (bars 25 ff.), but with more stumbling around the hill (compare bar 26 with bar 80), and more anguish: compare that earlier, insistent 3-note motif of F#-D-F with its variation in bars 86-87 as F#-D-Eb/F, and listen to the tolling transform into clusters, with minor seconds sprinkled about (e.g. bars 81, 93-95).  The 5/8 section (bars 93-97) is very similar to its earlier appearance (bars 39-43) In bar 99 ff., the 3-note motif, now changed to Gb-F-E in the middle voice, struggles against an Eb ninth in the bass and a painfully chiming G major 7th chord with an added C above it.

The 3-note motif is also emphasized in subtle, almost unconscious ways in the middle voice: listen e.g. to bars 104-105, where the middle voice begins its triplets with E-Gb-F, while bars 106-107 begin with Gb-F-E and E-F-Gb respectively.

And as clusters of notes reach upward in the treble (bar 109), perhaps as symbols of desperate, useless clutching at the surface of the water of memory, the gravity in the bass reveals a swallowing sea, using that diminished 5th  of G-C# from the opening as a tremolo leading to a deep G/A finale, while the last manifestation of our poor 3-note motif is heard in the middle voice.  Seven notes ring out in the final bars, from that G/A in the bass to an E/F in the treble, not unlike the finale of Schoenberg's Erwartung,  where the music both descends and rises to "swallow" the character at the end.

I mentioned to the composer that the use of the "scratchy" recording of the poem reminded me of the unusual novels of W.G. Sebald, who often included fuzzy, "faraway" photos to accompany his themes of lost memories.  The result is that the work is successful on various levels: the music could stand alone without the poem, in the same way that the poem has stood alone.  Yet together one experiences a quite different third dimension of meaning, as if the music were the poem's deepest unconscious. 

Finally, the title of the music is Around Fern Hill, and may explain many of the circling figurations in the music, as if these and the other motifs and themes are the sounds when one walks around Fern Hill.

In case anyone missed it, here is a reminder to take a musical walk Around Fern Hill by Luke Ottevanger
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 23, 2012, 03:17:03 PM
Whew, first free stretch of non-sleep time since . . . Tuesday evening.  Will head back to Luke's Hill to-morrow!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 09, 2012, 08:33:16 AM
'Busy' barely begins to describe my last few weeks, but I am now offcially on holiday, and maybe, just maybe, some composing might get done. There are ideas aplenty - maybe too many of them, because I'm finding it hard to settle on just one. Everything I have sketched in the last few weeks, however (and there have been a few bars, which I didn't write about here) has at best failed to please me, and at worst actively displeased me (and that's why I didn't write about any of it). Part of me worries that I am losing my touch, if I ever had one...but I've been here before, more than once, and always came out of it better-equipped than I went in, so I won't worry too much.

One idea I have been mulling over, though...recently I've been approached with the sketchy idea of possilby writing something along the lines that were once called 'Third Stream music.' IOW, something that has a foot in both classical and jazz camps. Though I don't talk about it much here, I am quite a jazz nut, and in general keen on music that can be open to other ways of working. At first I had no idea how to start, but I realised yesterday that in fact I'm already there, in a way: the modal system I use in pieces like Around Fern Hill, Elegy and Ascent, my various piano sonatas and the Canticle Sonata is very different in many ways to 'modal jazz' in its various types, but the root idea is the same: different areas of the music use only particular scales; chords are not really the point here, only the totality of the mode. So, just as 'So What' (the most famous piece of modal jazz of all?) switches between D dorian and Eb dorian, so e.g. the opening phrases of my Canticle Sonata switcc between various exclusive modal groupings. In a piece like the Canticle Sonata, (and indeed in Ascent and in Around Fern Hill) the whole argument of the piece is carried and reinforced by the modal structure; the music wouldn't work without it. In fact I can envisage taking one of these pieces and reinventing it in a Third Stream kind of way. Possibly. E.g the basic motives of the Canticle sonata and its metric and modal structure being the framework for an improvisation of some sort, the clarinet+piano turning into sax, piano, bass and perhaps a few other instruments... Food for thought.

Thoughts and advice on the above would be grealty appreciated, because this would be a wholly new direction for me!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on July 09, 2012, 08:42:40 AM
Roll with it! And great to "see" you about, Luke!

Advice, not sure I have any . . . now and again I'll set to writing something with, I shouldn't say any specific musical goal of fusion (or infusion), but with the ghost of Monk not far off.  It still turns into Henning, though I expect there is still value added from the jazz spirit world.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 09, 2012, 11:59:01 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 09, 2012, 08:33:16 AM
Part of me worries that I am losing my touch, if I ever had one...but I've been here before, more than once, and always came out of it better-equipped than I went in, so I won't worry too much.

Trust me: you have the golden touch!  And it needs more exercise!   ;D


Quote from: Luke on July 09, 2012, 08:33:16 AM
One idea I have been mulling over, though... the modal system

Polymodality, or even a technique like Modus Lascivus, will still offer many possibilities. 


Quote from: Luke on July 09, 2012, 08:33:16 AM
... in pieces like Around Fern Hill, Elegy and Ascent, my various piano sonatas and the Canticle Sonata is very different in many ways to 'modal jazz' in its various types, but the root idea is the same: different areas of the music use only particular scales; chords are not really the point here, only the totality of the mode.

Despite Wagner and Gesualdo (although I hate writing that!), chords should (usually) never be the point!  Yes, "only the totality of the mode" should be the point.  Mahler once opined that harmony should not matter as such, as long as the counterpoint generates it.

Yet, exceptions (GesualdoSchoenbergArt Tatum?) can be made.

Quote from: Luke on July 09, 2012, 08:33:16 AM
In fact I can envisage taking one of these pieces and reinventing it in a Third Stream kind of way. Possibly. E.g the basic motives of the Canticle Sonata and its metric and modal structure being the framework for an improvisation of some sort, the clarinet+piano turning into sax, piano, bass and perhaps a few other instruments... Food for thought.

Thoughts and advice on the above would be greatly appreciated, because this would be a wholly new direction for me!

Alfred Hitchcock once said that one of his driving points of creativity was to avoid cliches.  You might consider - especially for the Canticle Sonata -  not the usual saxophone one would expect, but an English horn, perhaps with an oboe d'amore and/or bass clarinet.

Or if the saxophone is what is in your head, then follow that: the trick then will be to find your own sound with it.

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Jo re mi on July 11, 2012, 01:34:47 AM
Just as another example of busting the bounds of categories, I refer the honourable gentleman to the new Can "Lost Tapes" box set. Never one camp or another, as you know their music is as urgent, organic, complex (and simple) & beautiful as any.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on July 11, 2012, 02:05:29 AM
QuoteCurrently Listening to:
I listen only to the music of Luke Ottevanger

I like the way you roll.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on July 11, 2012, 05:15:16 AM
Quote from: Jo re mi on July 11, 2012, 01:34:47 AM
Just as another example of busting the bounds of categories [....]

Zappa famously (and Monk, rather obscurely, I should think) disregarded musical borders.  That was Value In.  Much of Zappa's (and probably all of Monk's) oeuvre, though, fits with reasonable ease into broad categories.  Not that there's anything wrong with that . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: North Star on July 11, 2012, 05:22:51 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on July 11, 2012, 05:15:16 AM
Zappa famously (and Monk, rather obscurely, I should think) disregarded musical borders.  That was Value In.  Much of Zappa's (and probably all of Monk's) oeuvre, though, fits with reasonable ease into broad categories.  Not that there's anything wrong with that . . . .

Another jazz guy, Miles could probably be included, too - jazz (cool, hard bop, modal, post bop), classical, rock, funk... Miles didn't give a hoot about the labeling of music.
And perhaps Ellington and Mingus, too, in their more thorough composing than most other jazz composers, approaching classical composers.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 11, 2012, 08:22:24 AM
Quote from: Jo re mi on July 11, 2012, 01:34:47 AM
Just as another example of busting the bounds of categories, I refer the honourable gentleman to the new Can "Lost Tapes" box set. Never one camp or another, as you know their music is as urgent, organic, complex (and simple) & beautiful as any.

Ah, Mr Mi, how nice to hear from you again! Do I have that one? I think I might. But if so it went straight to my portable hard drive thing, which fell on the floor a few weeks ago and is now a goner, with all the files on it now inaccesible (about 17000 music files/scores included  >:(  >:( )

But, yes, I've touted Can hereabouts a few times, you know how I highly I think of them, and they have such intriguing links to the classical world in any case, what with the Stockhausen thing. Your description of them is spot on - the urgency is the thing, there is never the slightest hint of noodling or pretentiousness, just this unique mixture of hard intensity, virtuosity (Leibezeit/Karoli) put solely at the service of art, limitations (Damo/Mooney's voices...) turned to shockingly expressive advantage,  Stockhausen-trained musical sophistication (Schmidt/Czukay) used to explore the extremes of what rock can do. All this done with complete and utter ineffable cool.

And of course the other guys are right too (and I know you know all the stuff they mentioned). Been in my annual summertime Ornette Coleman mood recently (Lonely Woman is the one which always hangs around in my mind), a bit of Sun Ra too, and just read David Schiff's fascinating The Ellington Century, which is written from a very interesting perspective - various facets of twentieth century music of all sorts seen through the prism of Ellington's music (Schiff is primiarily a classical scholar, with a book on the music of his composition tutor Elliott Carter, for instance, but he certainly knows his jazz and his Ellington inside out). Some fascinating insights. So my mind is in the right state at the moment for this potential project...

Anyway, looking forward to seeing you this weekend....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on July 18, 2012, 06:38:15 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 11, 2012, 08:22:24 AM
Ah, Mr Mi, how nice to hear from you again! Do I have that one? I think I might. But if so it went straight to my portable hard drive thing, which fell on the floor a few weeks ago and is now a goner, with all the files on it now inaccesible (about 17000 music files/scores included  >:(  >:( )

Yowch!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 26, 2012, 03:51:53 PM
first post in a few weeks to say....


I COMPOSED SOMETHING!!!!!

(http://www.coolmumhunting.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/party-dog-303x365.jpg)

It's only very short, but it is notes on paper, and they are the first for a while.

A couple of my pieces have been played by amateur orchestras, as some of you will know. The performances left much to be desired, but nevertheless I remain very grateful indeed to the conductor Michael Sackin who commissioned, rehearsed and performed both pieces. It was his 70th birthday bash today, and I wrote him a tiny thing for string quartet, in the vein of the little pieces (often canons and musical jokes) that composers so often used to dash off to send each other greetings.

This little piece enshrines the dedicatee's name in the usual way of these things; it is called Le Siffleur - the whistler - in reference to Michael's legendary ability to whistle in two parts at once (maybe more)....

I'd attach the score if I could - I'll upload it somewhere else soon...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on August 26, 2012, 03:53:14 PM
Splendid!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Jo re mi on August 27, 2012, 06:07:58 AM
That is splendid indeed! I hope Michael's birthday bash was enjoyable, so good you could make it.

By the way, Vince looks somehow different. Has he done something with his hair?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: ibanezmonster on August 27, 2012, 01:24:15 PM
Quote from: Cato on June 17, 2012, 01:24:47 PM
http://www.mediafire.com/?no6zykq6464c2z2 (http://www.mediafire.com/?no6zykq6464c2z2) - Score
http://www.mediafire.com/?hycr77dymz2665f  (http://www.mediafire.com/?hycr77dymz2665f) - Performance
Wow, what atmosphere!  :o For some reason it brought to mind when I was playing Bioshock, traveling through certain environments that were somewhat sophisticated, yet with a touch of darkness, all the while listening to old voice recordings. I guess that's the closest description I can come up with.

One thing I've noticed about your style is that rhythmically you can kinda tell it's complex, but in the score it's even more complex than it sounds. Actually, it's pretty interesting studying your rhythmic style.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 27, 2012, 02:19:51 PM
Quote from: Greg on August 27, 2012, 01:24:15 PM
Wow, what atmosphere!  :o For some reason it brought to mind when I was playing Bioshock, traveling through certain environments that were somewhat sophisticated, yet with a touch of darkness, all the while listening to old voice recordings. I guess that's the closest description I can come up with.

One thing I've noticed about your style is that rhythmically you can kinda tell it's complex, but in the score it's even more complex than it sounds. Actually, it's pretty interesting studying your rhythmic style.

Thanks for this, Greg! Glad you found the piece atmospheric - that can't be bad. The potency of old recordings - yes! They can be so powerful, and I do feel that this is a force which can be harnessed to good effect in one's composing. OTOH, I sometimes worry that it's quite an easy effect - which is why I've never followed through on this fascination I have, apart from in this one piece where, yes, I feel it works well.

OK, I've been having big problems uploading anything anywhere recently, but maybe this works - it's only the score to the little birthday piece I mentioned above, but if someone could download it and just check that the link works then perhaps some of my problems will be solved

http://www.4shared.com/office/jyWo_JsL/Le_Siffleur.html

Mr Mi - nice to hear from you again! Vince likes to try various styles, and also, as you can see, has been experimenting with more than one gender. But at the moment he is sporting his traditional black, and, all unawares, merrily sweeping the kitten off the furniture with reckless waves of his enormous, muscular and violently wagging tail... 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on August 30, 2012, 08:52:49 AM
Dunno if the link works . . . it cues me to sign up, and I've not troubled to . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on August 30, 2012, 09:02:40 AM
It does work, but you do need to sign up. And it looks charming!  What's wrong with good old mediafire?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 30, 2012, 10:07:58 AM
There's a question! - only that for some reason it won't upload a thing on my computer. It's been that way for months. A problem at my end, certainly, but I can't figure out what.

Thanks for looking!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 30, 2012, 10:16:12 AM
....but thanks for the prompt to relook at the issue, which I haven't even bothered doing for a while. And this time, first time round - I try a different browser, and everything is fine:

http://www.mediafire.com/?qgznij53ne9qp4n

There's your link to Le Siffleur!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Kastchei on August 31, 2012, 06:45:14 AM
I've just listened to Around Fern Hill a couple of times and I really like it! Very good piano writing, expressive and always interesting.
Congratulations!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 01, 2012, 09:35:16 AM
OK, now that I have Mediafire working for me again, I've just started from scratch. Here is the link to a folder with my stuff in it. Far from everything there yet, but help yourself to what there is. It's all been put up here before, I think, or most of it anyway.

http://www.mediafire.com/?csk09rcncctsj

I will repost this link from time to time, and will keep on putting things in there - there is much more to go

:)

BTW, everyone check out Rappy's compositions. They are really something else!  :o I mention it only because he doesn't have as much comment on his thread as he deserves. I feel quite shamed by the things he has been putting on there recently.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 01, 2012, 09:36:59 AM
Quote from: Kastchei on August 31, 2012, 06:45:14 AM
I've just listened to Around Fern Hill a couple of times and I really like it! Very good piano writing, expressive and always interesting.
Congratulations!

Thank you very much for listening! I appreciate it, and your kind words. Very glad you enjoyed it - it seems to be going down surprisingly well for such an odd little piece.  :)  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Jo re mi on October 30, 2012, 03:27:04 PM
Got any news, Luke? ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on October 30, 2012, 03:28:48 PM
(* clinks the glass *)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 06, 2012, 05:47:07 AM
Quote from: Jo re mi on October 30, 2012, 03:27:04 PM
Got any news, Luke? ;)

1. Yes, you know I have! And glass-chinking was indeed required, Karl.  :)  :)
2. My laptop is broken, and my internet access at work is limited, so I can't post here easily at the moment. Hence my protracted silence. But I still love you all and will return asap!  :-*  :-*
3. I am writing a piece at the moment. It ought to be finished in the next few days. It will appear here then. It's the usual Ottevanger fare, but I like it.  ::)  ::)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on November 06, 2012, 05:48:33 AM
Huzzah!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on November 06, 2012, 05:56:02 AM
'tis only a piano scribbling of my normal sort, and who knows if it will be any good. I'm too close to it to tell at the moment. It has my usual moments of increasing complexity, tuplets building up into ever-bigger nests, the whole shebang-charade  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: North Star on November 06, 2012, 06:27:38 AM
Excellent news, Luke! (apart from the laptop - but then again, you'll get more work done now :))
Listening to Around Fern Hill again, beautiful stuff, I especially like the increasing dissonance.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on November 06, 2012, 06:33:55 AM
Our very own unreconstructed tuplet-nester!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 29, 2013, 12:07:18 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on May 08, 2007, 11:50:15 AM
You realize, this originated as a tool for editing Wagner scores and libretti.

Blast from the past . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on January 29, 2013, 03:00:03 PM
"Use the force, Luke!"

"Pumpkin seeds of the soul
Sailor drifting toward the land
Locked doors beckon to the air
Or err to humidify
The authorities in the dank blank
Slates of the soul's highest fears."

There!  Now get to work!   0:) ;D


Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on January 30, 2013, 03:34:31 AM
Quote from: Cato on January 29, 2013, 03:00:03 PM
"Use the force, Luke!"

"Pumpkin seeds of the soul
Sailor drifting toward the land
Locked doors beckon to the air
Or err to humidify
The authorities in the dank blank
Slates of the soul's highest fears."

There!  Now get to work!   0:) ;D

Well, perhaps I scared The Good Luke into 6 more weeks of hibernation!   8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 30, 2013, 03:52:53 AM
I've got to snaffle up a phone card and leave him some vx-mail : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Jo re mi on January 30, 2013, 07:04:29 AM
Phone? Pah! You may as well try to ring John the Baptist in the wilderness. I'll give him a kick up the arts this weekend when hopefully he'll prove that he's not trans-substantiated into pure myth and show up at the ancestral home.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 30, 2013, 07:10:13 AM
Quote from: Jo re mi on January 30, 2013, 07:04:29 AM
. . . Pah! You may as well try to ring John the Baptist in the wilderness.

Yes, that complexion of the matter has not escaped me : )

Quote from: Jo re mi on January 30, 2013, 07:04:29 AM
I'll give him a kick up the arts this weekend when hopefully he'll prove that he's not trans-substantiated into pure myth and show up at the ancestral home.

Excellent! Spare no vim in the kick (as it were)!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 31, 2013, 02:33:33 AM
Ah, gents.....

That piece I wrote about higher up this page, nigh on three months ago, the one about which I said

Quote from: the elusive Ottevanger''tis only a piano scribbling of my normal sort, and who knows if it will be any good. I'm too close to it to tell at the moment. It has my usual moments of increasing complexity, tuplets building up into ever-bigger nests, the whole shebang-charade

...was, when I wrote that, very close to completion. It remains so. I haven't been able to write a single note of it since. I could plead lack of time, but though I'm ultra-busy in the final analysis I suppose there has been time. But even though there are free minutes and hours, my life is so full of concerns at the moment, and for the foreseeable future, that even when I find myself with an opportunity - such as now, I have ten minutes at the moment - I just can't do it. It's a matter of getting my mind into the right zone, and I simply can't do it. That's also why I haven't posted here in recent weeks - not through lack of desire to, not through lack of looking (I check out the board every time I am able to). Just through lack of intellectual energy, general life-fatigue that means I am only coasting musically, at the moment, and to be honest not feeling as if I am much of a real musician at all, fingers clumsy at the piano, ideas stodgy and same-old, brain clumsy in thinking with any acuteness...is acuteness even a word? There was a time that I would get hugely energised about discussions on the board, but at the moment that hardly seems to happen, and even subjects which once motivated me to write long screeds I can't summon up the power for. I don't think it's forever I know it's not forever - I am as in love with music and composing as I ever was, of course I am, and I yearn for a time where I can sit, think, stop worrying about everything else and simply write. But I can't see a time in the near future when I will be able to do so. Maybe at Easter, there may be a few days...but I doubt it

I am writing that half in the hope that in doing so I will be proved wrong, and have to eat humble pie when I come back in a few days having jotted down half a symphony. But it seems unlikely...!


Ho hum, I don't mean to be depressing! That's why I was keeping quiet.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 31, 2013, 02:50:16 AM
Understand completely about needing, not simply the time, but to be in the right space mentally/spiritually. Good to hear from you, lad! Hang tough! : )
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on January 31, 2013, 06:40:32 AM
Quote from: Luke on January 31, 2013, 02:33:33 AM

.... Just through lack of intellectual energy, general life-fatigue that means I am only coasting musically, at the moment, and to be honest not feeling as if I am much of a real musician at all, fingers clumsy at the piano, ideas stodgy and same-old, brain clumsy in thinking with any acuteness...is acuteness even a word?

Okay, Pilgrim!  You are too young for "life-fatigue"  :o  and so what you should try to do is listen to your own works, (take your pick) and say: "That is a great accomplishment!"  0:)

Everything I have heard of yours is in fact a great accomplishment, whether the world knows it or not!

Because...Cato is writing this and telling you the truth:you have creative genius, and after over 6 decades on the planet and possessing some degree of talent myself in all sorts of areas, I can tell you that my observation is the truth.

Yes, acuteness is a word, and might be preferred in certain cases over "acuity" because it generates things like "Her acuteness is a cuteness!"   :o ;D


Quote. I don't think it's forever I know it's not forever - I am as in love with music and composing as I ever was, of course I am, and I yearn for a time where I can sit, think, stop worrying about everything else and simply write. But I can't see a time in the near future when I will be able to do so....

It is time to sublimate and send the sublimations into those neurons for transformation: the dissatisfaction, the discomfort, the repressed anger, the yearning for happiness, the joyful memories, the promise of Easter, all these things can be swirled and baked in a pied pie of wonderment!

Quote
I am writing that half in the hope that in doing so I will be proved wrong, and have to eat humble pie when I come back in a few days having jotted down half a symphony....

Well, at least a page or two,   ;D  so  check back with us in a few days!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 31, 2013, 07:15:43 AM
We could always start another flame-war here, if that would bemuse our Luke . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Jo re mi on February 25, 2013, 01:35:21 AM
If you need inspiration, Luke, check this out:

http://youtu.be/5PiXRAkIhNY

What's more they're in Great Yarmouth, which is only an hour from you (or a million miles, depending how you look at it)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 04, 2013, 07:18:07 AM
Luke is in the building . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on September 10, 2013, 01:20:01 PM
Luke is in the building again . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on November 20, 2013, 07:06:10 AM
Luke is in the building again . . . . !!!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on November 25, 2013, 01:15:59 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on November 20, 2013, 07:06:10 AM
Luke is in the building again . . . . !!!

Rats and Raskolnikov!  I missed him!

Luke Ottevanger  Come down from the mountaintops and proclaim the good news of Musiksetzung!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 04, 2014, 02:56:18 PM
"Use The Force, Luke!"

Has anyone heard from Mr. Ottevanger?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on February 04, 2014, 04:37:28 PM
Not in a while; now and again I try ringing him. I shall try again tomorrow!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 05, 2014, 07:45:50 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on February 04, 2014, 04:37:28 PM
Not in a while; now and again I try ringing him. I shall try again tomorrow!

I hope things have not gone badly for him somehow: perhaps he is immersed in that symphony mentioned last year!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on February 05, 2014, 08:17:31 AM
I know there is/was a pending move.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Jo re mi on March 03, 2014, 06:14:35 AM
I did wonder myself if he had entered a purely mythical state but let me reassure you he's fine and still real. Like a rainbow unicorn dressed as a tramp he showed up on our doorstep the other day - very reassuring ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 03, 2014, 06:15:17 AM
Excellent!  Next you see him, tell him I try ringing now and again . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on March 03, 2014, 06:24:24 AM
Quote from: Jo re mi on March 03, 2014, 06:14:35 AM
I did wonder myself if he had entered a purely mythical state but let me reassure you he's fine and still real. Like a rainbow unicorn dressed as a tramp he showed up on our doorstep the other day - very reassuring ;)

The American Association of Rainbow Unicorns Dressed as Tramps highly approves of your hospitality!

Tell Mr. Ottevanger that he needs to be soiling some music paper with ink!   0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 05, 2014, 10:03:51 AM
I have spoken with Luke!  0:)


Still mad busy, still in the throes of pre-move activities, but he's been working on a "sort of novel," and he has begun setting a poem for voice and piano.  He is, on the one hand, keen to return to GMG, but on the other, wants to be able to return as a stable presence, so he stands by, waiting on the signs.  He will come back to us!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on March 05, 2014, 10:34:31 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on March 05, 2014, 10:03:51 AM
I have spoken with Luke!  0:)


Still made busy, still in the throes of pre-move activities, but he's been working on a "sort of novel," and he has begun setting a poem for voice and piano.  He is, on the one hand, keen to return to GMG, but on the other, wants to be able to return as a stable presence, so he stands by, waiting on the signs.  He will come back to us!

Such a talented young man!  We all hope he returns even intermittently!  His long absences have starved us!

For those who do not know, Mr. Ottevanger has composed several very impressive piano works in what might be called a post-Scriabinian style.  He teaches at a British school for his daily bread.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Jo re mi on March 07, 2014, 01:02:46 AM
Yay, glad you spoke to him Karl and could get an update from the equine orifice.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 07, 2014, 01:54:25 AM
Aye, Jo . . . he was in transit through some sparsely-towered terrain, so the call broke off at a couple of points;  but knowing that he was available on the other end, I persisted.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on July 10, 2014, 03:53:33 AM
Does anyone know Luke's current email address? Is it still his name at hotmail dot com? I want to ask him about a potentially fabulous teaching opportunity for him.

Hope all are well.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on July 10, 2014, 04:03:39 AM
So far as I know, that hotmail address is current.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on September 02, 2014, 08:56:07 AM
Huzzah!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 02, 2014, 09:01:18 AM
Howdy  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on September 02, 2014, 09:03:03 AM
My heart hath risen, seeing you back here, dear fellow!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 02, 2014, 09:08:01 AM
Mine too, to be here. Though as always, as of late, I fear I have too little of interest to share...

Trying to write a little something at the moment, but after months and years of virtual dryness it is blood-from-a-stone stuff. We'll see - but I've said that before, haven't I? Over-promise and under-deliver, that's me!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on September 02, 2014, 06:10:52 PM
Quote from: Luke on September 02, 2014, 09:08:01 AM
Mine too, to be here. Though as always, as of late, I fear I have too little of interest to share...

Trying to write a little something at the moment, but after months and years of virtual dryness it is blood-from-a-stone stuff. We'll see - but I've said that before, haven't I? Over-promise and under-deliver, that's me!

Hardly! 

We have a good number of newcomers: they should know that Luke Ottevanger is a major talent! He is a 21st-century Scriabin.

To prove that, Luke, please update links to some of your works!  And blood from a stone sounds echt wunderbar!  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 04, 2014, 10:00:13 AM
Cato makes me blush as usual, and of course he speaks nonsense except in that Scriabin is a composer I admire hugely, and there is indeed something of his style to be found in some of my music, fully-digested, I hope. For the last few years I have written using a technique of my own, or rather, a set of limits and relationships I work out in my music which can tangentially recall Scriabin's use of synthetic harmonies.

Anyway, if anyone is interested, try this (https://www.mediafire.com/folder/pimkqohlo31u0/Luke_Ottevanger_-_various_compositions_2005-2011) - I have put some of my scores/recordings from 2005-11 in a folder. Obviously there is more, both from that period and earlier. (If this link doesn't work, post it here - it has been years since I uploaded anything, I may have made a mistake!)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on September 04, 2014, 10:15:58 AM
Splendid, will visit that folder when not in the office!

Tonight is back-to-choir night!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on September 04, 2014, 01:30:09 PM
Quote from: Luke on September 04, 2014, 10:00:13 AM
Cato makes me blush as usual, and of course he speaks nonsense except in that Scriabin is a composer I admire hugely, and there is indeed something of his style to be found in some of my music, fully-digested, I hope. For the last few years I have written using a technique of my own, or rather, a set of limits and relationships I work out in my music which can tangentially recall Scriabin's use of synthetic harmonies.

Heh-heh!  See below!  Luke is too modest!

Quote from: Luke on September 04, 2014, 10:00:13 AM
Anyway, if anyone is interested, try this (https://www.mediafire.com/folder/pimkqohlo31u0/Luke_Ottevanger_-_various_compositions_2005-2011) - I have put some of my scores/recordings from 2005-11 in a folder. Obviously there is more, both from that period and earlier. (If this link doesn't work, post it here - it has been years since I uploaded anything, I may have made a mistake!)

GREAT!  Yes, this adventure is highly recommended to all!  Luke's folder of compositions will prove my claim!  0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 24, 2014, 09:14:31 AM
Over the last couple of days, when I've had a free moment, I've been lightly tinkering with some of the pieces I started but didn't complete during my last few years of producing-nothing-at-all. I like all of them, and the ideas seem sound to me - it's just a question of being able to carry them through. Whatever their qualities, however, they certainly aren't worth the wait, so if they do appear, don't expect anything awe-inspiring!

My creative energies recently have been more taken up with trying to write a novel (in which music figures very heavily, naturally). But that, too, is a slow process. Months and months in, and about 64000 words so far - it will end up at least three times that long if all goes to plan. I always write ten words where one will do, though, as we all know...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on September 24, 2014, 09:32:19 AM
Quote from: Luke on September 24, 2014, 09:14:31 AM
Over the last couple of days, when I've had a free moment, I've been lightly tinkering with some of the pieces I started but didn't complete during my last few years of producing-nothing-at-all. I like all of them, and the ideas seem sound to me - it's just a question of being able to carry them through. Whatever their qualities, however, they certainly aren't worth the wait, so if they do appear, don't expect anything awe-inspiring!

Number 1: Let us judge that!  8)

Number 2: On the contrary, given your past accomplishments, they must be worth the wait and awe-inspiring!


Quote from: Luke on September 24, 2014, 09:14:31 AM
My creative energies recently have been more taken up with trying to write a novel (in which music figures very heavily, naturally). But that, too, is a slow process. Months and months in, and about 64000 words so far - it will end up at least three times that long if all goes to plan. I always write ten words where one will do, though, as we all know...

Dude!  You are in the club!   0:)  Would you like to see the opening chapters of From the Caves of the Cloud, which is at c. 70,000 words?

Nice reviews from my crew of literary experts...so far!  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on September 24, 2014, 09:37:24 AM
Quote from: Cato on September 24, 2014, 09:32:19 AM
Dude!  You are in the club!   0:)  Would you like to see the opening chapters of From the Caves of the Cloud, which is at c. 70,000 words?

Nice reviews from my crew of literary experts...so far!  ;)

Thrills! Mystery! Women not to be trifled with!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 24, 2014, 09:38:34 AM
Quote from: Cato on September 24, 2014, 09:32:19 AM
Number 1: Let us judge that!  8)

Number 2: On the contrary, given your past accomplishments, they must be worth wait and awe-inspiring!


Dude!  You are in the club!   0:)  Would you like to see the opening chapters of From the Caves of the Cloud, which is at c. 70,000 words?

Nice reviews from my crew of literary experts...so far!  ;)

I would love to! I'm sure the reviews are well-deserved - I have a copy of Why Begins With W, which is a seriously impressive piece of work. I should read it again...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on September 24, 2014, 09:40:04 AM
Quote from: Luke on September 24, 2014, 09:38:34 AM
I would love to! I'm sure the reviews are well-deserved - I have a copy of Why Begins With W, which is a seriously impressive piece of work. I should read it again...

And you should finish out the trilogy!  Dial Emma for Murder and Hex High School!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 24, 2014, 09:45:21 AM
Definitely! I will get on it!

Dial M for Murder, however, always has uncomfortable associations with a certain Mr Forever...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on September 24, 2014, 09:56:58 AM
Murder was one of more merciful things for which one might have dialed him ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on September 24, 2014, 10:30:32 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on September 24, 2014, 09:37:24 AM
Thrills! Mystery! Women not to be trifled with!

Ain't it the truth!  Especially that last part!  ;)

Quote from: karlhenning on September 24, 2014, 09:40:04 AM
And you should finish out the trilogy!  Dial Emma for Murder and Hex High School!

Yes, and many thanks for the advertising!

Luke: check your e-mail!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 24, 2014, 11:03:33 AM
Great - thank you!  :)  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 25, 2014, 09:05:48 AM
Cato,

Thanks for emailing the first chapters! I have had trouble opening the second one (different format, I think, won't open on my laptop), so have only read up to the end of number one, which I did over my lunchtime today. Do you want my thoughts (all extremely positive)? Here or via email? Let me know!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on September 25, 2014, 09:11:27 AM
Here! Bring it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 13, 2014, 03:04:47 PM
Quote from: Luke on September 25, 2014, 09:05:48 AM
Cato,

Thanks for emailing the first chapters! I have had trouble opening the second one (different format, I think, won't open on my laptop), so have only read up to the end of number one, which I did over my lunchtime today. Do you want my thoughts (all extremely positive)? Here or via email? Let me know!

Sure!  Let me know what you think!   Many thanks for spending time to read through it!  I have re-sent Chapter II, so I hope it is not unformatted by the e-mail process.


Best Wishes!

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 13, 2014, 03:18:37 PM
OK, great! Will read it absolutely a.s.a.p!

The following are my thoughts on your first chapter, unedited and exactly as I wrote them down whilst devouring it, nearly three weeks ago:




OK - these are first thoughts whilst reading your opening chapter, based especially on the opening pages, in which your tone is laid out most clearly, as in an exposition, before development makes things more complex:

I really loved it, Cato:

I love the delicate way it hangs poised between darkly serious and wryly spryly dry - which has lots to do with your lovely, effortlessly compact turn of phrase which makes me very jealous;

I love the way that, despite hardly describing the initial setting at all, it is all there by insinuation, in the name Knutsen, in the 'dark B flat minor' and so on - it is very real and present in the reader's mind long before you mention the 'green-gray forest' - I hope I am right in assuming this to be a northern, Nordic land at some point early last century or earlier, because that is the assumption on which some of the following is based.

I love how the two main characters fall straight into philosophical and moral speculation in a way which is both unrealistic and true at a deeper level - how life should be, as it were - in the way you would find in a stylised Norwegian novel where dialogue, setting, plot, character all settle into a simple and profound unity (Hamsun, perhaps, but then maybe I am only thinking that because you have placed my mind in a old world Nordic twilight with a character whose name includes the syllable Knut - but then, that is part of your craft, the writer exercising the power of suggestion over the helpless reader!)

I love the clarity of the dialogue. It is not wordy, it is concise, it walks the tightrope between believable speech and finely-honed prose expertly: sometimes there is a slightly stylised, formal air about it which I found gave just the right tone, partly setting us back in a more formal, deferential time, but also imparting a certain lightly-worn tautness, a tension which played its part in setting the atmosphere so adroitly.

I loved, above all, the accomplished, virtuosic stylistic control and subtletly in the writing, though! For instance, at first read, 'contemporary' words like 'protoplasm,' phrases such as 'like I said' (instead of 'as I said'), the non-traditional use of multiple !!! and mixed !? and CAPS and BOLDED CAPS all jarred slightly, because they didn't (for me) seem to fit with the diction of the time period the piece seems to inhabit. But they kept coming, scattered through the text every now and then, and by force of a very subtle attrition they gradually seemed actually to enrich that unusual and very characteristic slightly distanced tone which made the chapter such an intriguing pleasure to read: as if twenty-first century emotions were fighting their way through nineteenth century minds....And then, when the woman suddenly jumps through the window on page 20 - such a bizarre, utterly unexpected action, so very 'modern' - those emotions are suddenly unleashed, all springs into place, all becomes a cohesive whole: those very small stylistic disjunctions are now really revealed to be stylistic contributors to the slightly surreal, off-kilter parallel world the text is leading us into.

That world is somewhat Kafaesque. That's a word I hate, as it is so often mis-used, but I mean it stylistically, not as a quick-fix adjective to stand for terms such as labyrinthine, angsty, hellish, expresisonist, or whatever it usually means. I mean quite precisely - the simple way in which The Woman jumps out of the window, and the captain's reaction, is precisely detailed in a calm, neutral series of nouns and verbs...

Quote from: Cato...with preternatural swiftness The Woman snatched her case, opened the window, and jumped outside!  So stupefied by her speed and so overwhelmed by the entire action itself, the old man felt his head tremble, as his eyes and mind tried to focus on The Woman and on any possible reason why she would have wanted to jump outside through the window!  After standing up and leaning on the sill, Captain Knutsen quizzically, and then with great trepidation, began to gaze into the black field next to the little hotel. Barely visible from the glow of his lamps was The Woman, several steps away, and crouched with her left ear tilted upward and apparently perceiving a distant emanation...

...reminds me precisely of Kafka, from whom the most obvious example is:

Quote from: Kafka's MetamorphosisAs Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes
.

And this in turn gives the surrealism of the writing a somewhat fabulistic/metaphorical feeling, which in fact is there from the start, not just from this point, although this is where I began to recognise where I had felt it before. And it is from after this point that The Woman's language, already bizarre, extreme and mystifying, becomes truly outrageous...

Quote from: Cato'...mere words cannot contain the complexity of my thoughts!  I would need infinity itself to hold my ideas, and to describe them, spectra visible only in another universe, and sounds audible only to the dead...'

...and the blackly comic tone of the book becomes more overt and extreme...

Quote from: Cato....he also had to decide whether to head toward the door or the window.  Since buildings are usually entered by means of doors, he chose that method of entrance, and hoped that their guest would imitate such normalcy.

It is this sort of very clever verbal and stylistic pacing which makes this work as brilliantly as it does, taking one from a dock on some Northern island, unspecified decades ago, to a kind of philosophical and metaphysical parallel world seamlessly. I am seriously in awe!

As I said, I LOVED it!!! <- ;) 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 13, 2014, 06:22:24 PM
Many thanks again, Luke, for taking the time to share your enthusiasm and for the comparisons with novelists of the caliber of Hamsun and Kafka!

After my previous two novels used broadly ironic - and sometimes vaudevillian - humor in episodes of "microdrama" both epic in effect and childlike, I wanted to try a story with "disquieting humor" and which would be more of a contemplation on the idea of mystery than a mystery.  In a similar fashion, Beowulf for example is more of a meditation on the nature of a hero's life than a story of all the deeds, or even of the greatest deeds, of a hero.

Have I revealed that this novel - now approaching 100,000 words - began life c. 20 years ago as a short story of 14 pages?  0:)

It has plagued me for two decades: "You should really turn that into a novel!"   8)

And so the wheel has turned: I hope that the succeeding chapters do not disappoint you!  My other readers (e.g. the excellent Karl Henning who has spent a good chunk of his life reading my words   ;)   ) agree that - so far - the story increases their curiosity from chapter to chapter, and has made them wonder about ideas temporal and eternal.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on October 31, 2014, 09:28:49 AM
How nest the tuplets, lad?  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on October 31, 2014, 09:29:41 AM
Quote from: Cato on October 13, 2014, 06:22:24 PM
[...] Have I revealed that this novel - now approaching 100,000 words - began life c. 20 years ago as a short story of 14 pages?  0:)

It has plagued me for two decades: "You should really turn that into a novel!"   8)

And so the wheel has turned: I hope that the succeeding chapters do not disappoint you!  My other readers (e.g. the excellent Karl Henning who has spent a good chunk of his life reading my words   ;)   ) agree that - so far - the story increases their curiosity from chapter to chapter, and has made them wonder about ideas temporal and eternal.

And the latest chapter is dynamite!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 31, 2014, 09:42:34 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on October 31, 2014, 09:28:49 AM
How nest the tuplets, lad?  :)

A very good question! "Tip-toe, Through The Tuplets, La de da-da..."

Quote from: karlhenning on October 31, 2014, 09:29:41 AM
And the latest chapter is dynamite!

Not responsible for accidents!  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 31, 2014, 10:18:53 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on October 31, 2014, 09:28:49 AM
How nest the tuplets, lad?  :)

Still feeling a bit like this....
(http://cache3.asset-cache.net/gc/153419748-baby-bird-fallen-from-nest-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=EZFPou%2bbFPV6SfMMtn1T%2b%2fqJ8hua%2bjrE5s5SgLruE7rk%2f3%2fxjODsRlogDdU96kmA)

:(
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on November 06, 2014, 03:14:41 PM
Quote from: Luke on October 31, 2014, 10:18:53 AM

:(

Luke!  It is high time to feel like this bird:  :laugh:

(http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/comicsalliance.com/files/2011/05/america05.jpg)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 05, 2015, 12:30:08 PM
"Use The Force,LUKE!"
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 09, 2015, 01:54:51 PM
Luke!  We would  like to hear from you and your music paper!

Or just you would be fine also!   :D

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on February 27, 2015, 07:36:17 AM
I had a nice (albeit necessarily brief) chat with Luke yesterday!  Life has taken a busy turn, so he's unable even to look in much, nor does he see just when that will change.  But his novel-in-progress has an ancillary function as memoranda for various pieces he's fixin' to write at that future time when he has time for writing &c.  Keep those votives lit!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on April 09, 2015, 10:38:44 AM
Had a quick word with Luke this afternoon.  Busy, Easter holiday week.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on April 09, 2015, 10:42:08 AM
Good man, Luke.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on April 30, 2015, 11:37:23 AM
A nice chat with Luke today;  he has a concert he is preparing for, and assisting with a school production of Back to the Woods.  So, his hands are full!  But he will be back.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on May 02, 2015, 12:59:21 PM
Quote from: karlhenning on April 30, 2015, 11:37:23 AM
A nice chat with Luke today;  he has a concert he is preparing for, and assisting with a school production of Back to the Woods.  So, his hands are full!  But he will be back.

Is that a school concert or a concert for his own works?  Glad to hear he intends to return!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 02, 2015, 01:52:29 PM
And here I am!  :) :) :)

It was a piano recital at lunchtime today, and, yes, it included a little something I wrote especially for it. I used the deadline of the performance as an incentive to actually write something for the first time in months/years. Even so it was quite an agonising process, and I got really down about it over the course of the last few days as I tried unsuccessfully to compose. As has been the case for a very, very long time, everything I wrote just seemed to be so awful. I cringed at it, and got very angry with myself, very despondent. It has seemed for all this time that maybe I will never write anything again, and that has been something very hard to contemplate, because it would mean reassessing who I am - I've always thought of myself as a composer, or at least someone who composes, in however minor a degree, and if I'm not that, who am I? This week that feeling has been worse than ever.

But then finally, at almost the last minute, on Thursday, something seemed to go right. I quite liked it a couple of bars I'd written. I wrote a few more. Then I looked back at what I'd written and, lo and behold if, completely unplanned, it wasn't identical in style to pieces I had been writing back in c.2010. The same use of modes, the same use of mostly four-part heterophonic textures, the same initial flourishes opening up the harmonic space, the same slow tempo and predominant 3/8 metre. That was a style I had originally arrived at through a lot of soul-searching (all documented on this thread) as representing 'me' most accurately in musical terms, but nevertheless I suppose I've been trying to broaden it in all my abortive attempts at composing in the last few years. So what happened on Thursday taught me a simple lesson - that the style I had arrived at might be very narrow and limited, but I had been right in the first place: it is the one for me. I simply stayed up for a couple of hours that night and finished the piece in the early hours of Friday morning, and gave its world premiere ( ;D ;D ) today. Simple as that. It feels good to have written something again, something simple and something not-at-all different to what I was doing before, but something I am pleased with nevertheless. The score is attached.

The concert itself was quite successful, and people were very nice about it, and particularly about the way I constructed the program, which was as follows:

-Debussy – La fille aux cheveux de lin
-Brahms – Ballades op 10
-Eric Chisholm – Craobh nam Teud (Lament for the Harp Tree , from Piobaireachd)
-Debussy - Bruyères
-Schubert arr. Heller – Der Leiermann
-Gluck arr. Sgambati – Mélodie de Gluck (from Orphée et Eurydice)
-Luke Ottevanger – Padma
-John Foulds – 'Exotic' - Essays in the Modes op 78 no 1
-Fauré – Romance sans paroles op 17 no 3

and it was all built around the things which have been concerning me recently, namely the places and concepts and connections which have been running around in my brain through the writing of my nearly-finished 200000+ word novel, the project which has taken the place of composing for the last couple of years. I'm writing the book for fun, nothing more, but it has been the most wonderful experience writing it. My program note for today's concert explains a little of why I chose the pieces I did, but it also illustrates some of the things my book is concerned with, so I'll copy it here to give an idea of the sort of things I've been thinking about....

Quote from: Luke's program noteA few words about the pieces I'm going to play today, and also a little bit about why I chose them, because they're an odd little selection! For the last year and a half I've been amusing myself by writing a novel, set on the Isle of Skye and also, in part, in Kashmir. Writing and researching has left all sorts of ideas and connections buzzing round in my head, and the pieces I'm going to play today are a result of that.

The first few pieces, then, have Scottish connections, starting with  Debussy's famous Girl with the Flaxen Hair,  which is a short, simple and sweet depiction of a Scottish girl sitting out on the moors inspired by a poem by de Lisle.

In contrast Brahms's Four Ballades are the longest and maybe the heaviest work on this programme. Brahms wrote them when he was young, and they were composed under the influence of what you could call the 'bardic' style, which was inspired by ancient Scottish stories and songs. The first one, in particular, is based upon the dark and disturbing old Scottish song 'Edward' - in fact in the first notes you can hear that name calling through the music: 'Edward, Edward.' This piece is part of the reason I called the main protagonist of my book  Edward..

As a palate cleanser after the Brahms comes a short, fresh piece by a little known composer called Eric Chisholm. Chisholm actually wrote some compositions under the influence of Indian music but he is probably best understood as being something like the Scottish version of his friend Bartok. That impenetrable word beginning with 'P' at the front of this programme is actually simply pronounced 'pibroch,' which is the most high-minded, refined and private form of bagpipe music. On the front of this programme you can see part of a transcription of the original pibroch on which Chisholm based this particular piece. It is clear how complex and involved it is!

Finally in this Scottish section of the programme, there's another Debussy piece to round things off. The title Bruyères means 'heather,' and I think what Debussy might have been doing here in this piece from his second set of Preludes in 1913, was trying to recapture the Scottish flavour of the very popular Girl with the Flaxen Hair from the first set in 1910! I've played this piece for years and years, but only recently have I noticed all the hidden allusions to bagpipe music in it – the little skirls of notes filling in the gaps between the main melody notes, and at the end the deep rumbling bass drone.

Now the music leaves Skye and it begins its journey to Kashmir. First of all, though, we stop off in Germany with Stephen Heller's transciption of the  iconic, bleak last song of Schubert's song cycle Winterreise, which also plays an important role in my book. What you hear first in this piece might sound like the bagpipes which ended the Debussy but it's actually Schubert's depiction of a hurdy-gurdy, being played by an old blind man in a desolate, snow-bound village.

The old hurdy-gurdy player is a symbol of death, and in the next piece we journey down into the underworld itself. Gluck's opera Orpheus and Euridice tells the famous story of Orpheus rescuing his dead wife Euridice from the clutches of Hades, only to lose her at the last moment. All that is important in my book, too, but what I really loved was learning that Gluck wrote this opera on a piano which had been carried out into he fields, with a bottle of champagne at each side. The coincidence that there is an open-air piano in my book just makes that fact more appealing to me!

We emerge from the underworld somewhere very far away, and the next piece is one of my own. In fact I wrote it this week, specifically for today. Padma is the Tibetan word for the sacred lotus, but it is also the name of a Kashmiri character in my book. The piece depicts both. The lotus is a hallowed image in various eastern cultures because its flower represents a divine purity whose roots are nevertheless in the mud. If you listen carefully you might hear the mud in the low notes which run quietly all the way through my piece, a bit like a bagpipe drone or even a hurdy-gurdy, or in fact an Indian tanpura I only play these notes once, the rest is done by a bit of trickery with three pencils!

My piece is followed by a piece by a fascinating and eccentric composer called John Foulds who, like Eric Chisholm, was deeply influenced by both Scottish music and Indian music. In his Essays in the Modes he uses only a fixed group of notes for each piece, which is coincidentally something I do in my music too. This one, called 'Exotic', is certainly full of the mystery of the East!

Finally we step out of these mysterious regions for a short, simple piece by Fauré. I'm playing this simply because I love it, and it doesn't have much connection to my book, except, I suppose, if I'm really forcing the issue, that the mystery at the centre of my book is also concerned with a romance which is conducted without words.

Good to be here! I miss you guys all a lot. It is lovely to have Karl call me up every so often, makes me feel in touch with you all. I check the board pretty often, and as time and life and music allows I will return as much as I can.

:) :)


[EDIT - score removed because of a misprint, and reattached to a post on the next page]
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on May 05, 2015, 05:42:40 AM
Hey Luke

...and if I'm not that, who am I? Have faith! Same situation for all...

Padma of course is a name for the lotus in Hindu gods' iconography...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 05, 2015, 05:47:50 AM
Sibelius q. viz. Padma . . . how did you do that with the third staff?  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 05, 2015, 06:29:12 AM
Quote from: Sean on May 05, 2015, 05:42:40 AM
Hey Luke

...and if I'm not that, who am I? Have faith! Same situation for all...

Padma of course is a name for the lotus in Hindu gods' iconography...

Hi Sean - nice to see you here  :)

Yes, and, actually, that's a little slip which got through my notes, because the Tibetan for lotus is generally transliterated as pema, though obviously it is the same root, more a difference of pronunciation. But in my book the character, who is Ladahki, not Tibetan, but they are of course closely related, is nevertheless called Padma.

Of course, lotus is one one meaning of the word generally transliterated as 'padme' in 'Om mani padme hum...'


@ Karl - yes, it is a bit easier to do in e.g. Sib 3 or 4, where you just click 'staff type change > hidden.' But it is easy in Sib 7 too, once you know how - just select the bars to be hidden and then perform an instrument change on them (by clicking the 'change' icon which is next to 'add or remove' on the Home bar). Select the 'no instrument (hidden)' option.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 05, 2015, 06:33:23 AM
Also . . . did this April have 31 days?  (I mean, it may have felt like it . . . .)

:)

Delicious score, this Padma!  I know they all add up, but the dotted notes in the RH of m. 8 (and 39) do have my brain squirming just a little.

Quote from: Luke on May 05, 2015, 06:29:12 AM
@ Karl - yes, it is a bit easier to do in e.g. Sib 3 or 4, where you just click 'staff type change > hidden.' But it is easy in Sib 7 too, once you know how - just select the bars to be hidden and then perform an instrument change on them (by clicking the 'change' icon which is next to 'add or remove' on the Home bar). Select the 'no instrument (hidden)' option.

Terrific!  And the timing is wonderful, because I need to do this both for the clarinet (and now, a viola adaptation) of my Canzona, and for both parts of The Mousetrap.  Thank you!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 05, 2015, 06:50:05 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on May 05, 2015, 06:33:23 AM
Also . . . did this April have 31 days?  (I mean, it may have felt like it . . . .)

:)
Oops, did I let that slip through too!! It was very late, that's my excuse. Thanks for spotting it, will clean that up!

Quote from: karlhenning on May 05, 2015, 06:33:23 AM
Delicious score, this Padma!  I know they all add up, but the dotted notes in the RH of m. 8 (and 39) do have my brain squirming just a little.

That's the kind of rhythmical feature that used to flourish in my music, and I've just let it back in again. I love the fecundity of this kind of rhythmic writing, the way a small uneven feature like these dotted notes can flourish into something else, like a plant growing up against an obstacle, and growing round it and changing its course, natural and flowing and yet unpredictable.... technically it tends to instigate a kind of metric modulation as here. Of course in this case the  four-dotted-notes subdivision of the previous bars (7 and 38) continues into the new bar, and is finally effectively 'tripletised' on the last subdivision of that bar.

Quote from: karlhenning on May 05, 2015, 06:33:23 AM
Terrific!  And the timing is wonderful, because I need to do this both for the clarinet (and now, a viola adaptation) of my Canzona, and for both parts of The Mousetrap.  Thank you!

You're welcome!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 05, 2015, 06:54:38 AM
Quote from: Luke on May 05, 2015, 06:50:05 AM
That's the kind of rhythmical feature that used to flourish in my music, and I've just let it back in again. I love the fecundity of this kind of rhythmic writing, the way a small uneven feature like these dotted notes can flourish into something else, like a plant growing up against an obstacle, and growing round it and changing its course, natural and flowing and yet unpredictable.... technically it tends to instigate a kind of metric modulation as here. Of course in this case the  four-dotted-notes subdivision of the previous bars (7 and 38) continues into the new bar, and is finally effectively 'tripletised' on the last subdivision of that bar.

Yes, of course!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Sean on May 05, 2015, 07:18:01 AM
Good stuff Luke; very off topic but the princess character in the recent Star Wars films was called Padme, I think after the South Indian myth of Padmavati and Venkateswara, Lukas using a set of Hindu terms including Veda/ Vader, Yoga/ Yoda, the force/ dharma or the Self. Etc.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 05, 2015, 08:28:34 AM
Oh!  And the pianist I mentioned and I will get together to read in June;  so sometime this month, make sure I have your freshest edition of the Canticle Sonata!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on May 05, 2015, 01:48:46 PM
For those who can read music and have the score:

Padma continues Luke's line of brilliant piano pieces: the D major/minor aspect with the triplets certainly does evoke a mysterious atmosphere!  And his work with the pedal is excellent for keeping a Himalayan fog drifting through the piece.  The Bb/B and F/F# notes take the ear into ambiguous happy-sad territory.  And the five-note chords in bars 14 and 18 are as mysteriously delicious and deliciously mysterious as can be.

Note how in general the right hand has music which curls upward in a half circle, while in the left it curls downward in a half circle, the two of them forming therefore a complete circle: e.g.  bars 6-7, 11-12, 15-16, 20-21, 33-34, 45-48 etc. In keeping with the mystical nature of the piece, the idea of an audible circle is most appropriate.

Listen also to the marvelous chord in bar 14 and its variation in bar 49, both based on D#, giving a kind of "double minor" sound to the D scales used throughout.

And if you listen carefully, triplets are everywhere, even when they seemingly are not!  8)   Check for example bars 50 ff. where the triplet phrasing in the left hand is obvious, but follow the notes in the right hand!  The "Gangs of 3" are obvious in bars 50-51, but then watch the 2 32nd-notes blend into the C 8th note, then the E-D-A phrase, then the A-G-F, and then ending with A-G-D, with an echo of 3's in the middle voice in the same hand.

Marvelous music!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 05, 2015, 11:35:56 PM
Quote from: Cato on May 05, 2015, 01:48:46 PM
For those who can read music and have the score:

Padma continues Luke's line of brilliant piano pieces: the D major/minor aspect with the triplets certainly does evoke a mysterious atmosphere!  And his work with the pedal is excellent for keeping a Himalayan fog drifting through the piece.  The Bb/B and F/F# notes take the ear into ambiguous happy-sad territory.  And the five-note chords in bars 14 and 18 are as mysteriously delicious and deliciously mysterious as can be.

Note how in general the right hand has music which curls upward in a half circle, while in the left it curls downward in a half circle, the two of them forming therefore a complete circle: e.g.  bars 6-7, 11-12, 15-16, 20-21, 33-34, 45-48 etc. In keeping with the mystical nature of the piece, the idea of an audible circle is most appropriate.

Listen also to the marvelous chord in bar 14 and its variation in bar 49, both based on D#, giving a kind of "double minor" sound to the D scales used throughout.

And if you listen carefully, triplets are everywhere, even when they seemingly are not!  8)   Check for example bars 50 ff. where the triplet phrasing in the left hand is obvious, but follow the notes in the right hand!  The "Gangs of 3" are obvious in bars 50-51, but then watch the 2 32nd-notes blend into the C 8th note, then the E-D-A phrase, then the A-G-F, and then ending with A-G-D, with an echo of 3's in the middle voice in the same hand.

Marvelous music!

Thank you so much - to get out of trying to find different words to say the same thing twice, it's probably easiest, here, to quote from the relevant part of the email I just sent you!

QuoteSecondly - thanks, once more, for your analysis of my little piece, which as usual both confirms that the things I wanted to be heard are heard, and also delightfully shows me things I didn't know were there. I'm thinking particularly of the 'circles' comment, which connects so strongly to an ever-abiding interest of mine, evident both in things I've said on this thread in the past about my music, and also in my book. I didn't consciously draw these circles into my music but I am delighted they are there!

@Karl - I will get on it, then! Very exciting!

@Sean - that's fascinating, I think I must have known at least some of that on some level (and smuggling the ideas in secretly like that is clever on Lukas's part!) but if so I'd certainly never brought any of it up into my conscious mind!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 05, 2015, 11:42:28 PM
Not that it matters much, but I've altered the score in the light of the little error in the date that Karl spotted (thanks Karl!) so I'll attach it again here and remove it from the previous post.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 06, 2015, 01:26:54 AM
Woot!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on May 06, 2015, 03:07:56 AM
Quote from: Luke on May 05, 2015, 11:42:28 PM
Not that it matters much, but I've altered the score in the light of the little error in the date that Karl spotted (thanks Karl!) so I'll attach it again here and remove it from the previous post.

My students occasionally want to know my birthday, so I tell them February 31st.   ??? ??? ???

Sadly, some of them find nothing odd about that date!   $:)

Luke: if you have the opportunity to offer a performance of Padma here, it would be highly appreciated!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 06, 2015, 03:09:36 AM
Quote from: Cato on May 05, 2015, 01:48:46 PM
For those who can read music and have the score:

Padma continues Luke's line of brilliant piano pieces: the D major/minor aspect with the triplets certainly does evoke a mysterious atmosphere!  And his work with the pedal is excellent for keeping a Himalayan fog drifting through the piece.  The Bb/B and F/F# notes take the ear into ambiguous happy-sad territory.  And the five-note chords in bars 14 and 18 are as mysteriously delicious and deliciously mysterious as can be.

Note how in general the right hand has music which curls upward in a half circle, while in the left it curls downward in a half circle, the two of them forming therefore a complete circle: e.g.  bars 6-7, 11-12, 15-16, 20-21, 33-34, 45-48 etc. In keeping with the mystical nature of the piece, the idea of an audible circle is most appropriate.

Listen also to the marvelous chord in bar 14 and its variation in bar 49, both based on D#, giving a kind of "double minor" sound to the D scales used throughout.

And if you listen carefully, triplets are everywhere, even when they seemingly are not!  8)   Check for example bars 50 ff. where the triplet phrasing in the left hand is obvious, but follow the notes in the right hand!  The "Gangs of 3" are obvious in bars 50-51, but then watch the 2 32nd-notes blend into the C 8th note, then the E-D-A phrase, then the A-G-F, and then ending with A-G-D, with an echo of 3's in the middle voice in the same hand.

Marvelous music!

Just want to add my appreciation of both the piece, and the analysis.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 06, 2015, 03:36:18 AM
Thanks to both - Cato, I do have a recording that I made of the concert, it is pretty rough because I simply made it through my laptop, so among other problems the harmonic drone/mist/mud is not as audible as IRL. Also, the file size is too big to attach here, but I'm happy to email it to you or anyone else.

Karl, re Woot!!  ;) I have a lot of different versions of the score of the Canticle Sonata, in both PDF and Sib files, and I can't quite remember what my final thoughts about it were, beyond that I wasn't happy with how I had left the development section of the first movement. What I need to do is live with the piece again until I'm inside it once more, so that I can sense where and why the changes are/were necessary.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 06, 2015, 03:41:58 AM
Very good;  marshal your thoughts, dear fellow!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on May 06, 2015, 03:54:36 AM
Quote from: Luke on May 06, 2015, 03:36:18 AM
I can't quite remember what my final thoughts about it were, beyond that I wasn't happy with how I had left the development section of the first movement. What I need to do is live with the piece again until I'm inside it once more, so that I can sense where and why the changes are/were necessary.

An unhappy composer is a creative composer!   0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 06, 2015, 04:05:54 AM
Hah!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on May 06, 2015, 06:36:14 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on May 06, 2015, 04:05:54 AM
Hah!

Heh-heh!   ;)

Our composers here at GMG have all kinds of talent: they do not need a mood to switch on the electricity!  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 10, 2015, 08:06:31 AM
Quote from: Luke on May 05, 2015, 06:29:12 AM
@ Karl - yes, it is a bit easier to do in e.g. Sib 3 or 4, where you just click 'staff type change > hidden.' But it is easy in Sib 7 too, once you know how - just select the bars to be hidden and then perform an instrument change on them (by clicking the 'change' icon which is next to 'add or remove' on the Home bar). Select the 'no instrument (hidden)' option.

Is there a way to show a staff only in a part?—I need cue staves for the parts . . . and I shy away from using the ossia function, since that seems to create new staves which clutter the panorama view.  Ideally, I want one cue staff, visible only on the part;  and to hide away the empty measures.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 10, 2015, 08:19:23 AM
I'm not quite sure I understand, but if I do, then what I would do is this: extract your parts from the score as usual and then add an ossia stave above each of them, throughout (i.e. in the parts, not the score), into which you can cut and past your cues from the score. Then hide the portions you don't need, as described previously. That's what I did for the orchestral parts to Elegy ad Ascent, I think. It's annoying that the hidden ossia staves can get in the way, I agree, but this way it doesn't affect the full score, at least.

That's a bit labour-intensive, and maybe there's a better way to do it, but I'm not sure what it would be OTTOMH.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 10, 2015, 08:22:19 AM
Thank you!  Will give it a go.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on May 12, 2015, 01:56:34 PM
Quote from: Luke on November 01, 2011, 11:29:40 AM
If I had two pennies to rub together I'd be able to consider it! Thanks. Though I think I will go to Robin's farewell concert at West Road next weekend. Especially as it's the Gilded Goldbergs, which I love, and even more because Huw Watkins is one of the pianists. I haven't seen him for ages!

Hoerrendous to even talk of it in this context, but The Lamb is probably finished though I may well keep tinkering. It's a piece of saccharine nonsense of course, though it works on its own terms maybe (I hope).

The score: http://www.mediafire.com/?gxg4hpcbu2gvapi

Tell me what you think. Though it's only short I've spent too much time with it and really can't tell. And it's left me desperate to write something truly me (i.e. not softened for the children to sing) and with more bite. Can't wait...

For the newcomers, I have dug into the archives here with examples of Luke's works:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/inyninnzgci/Elegy+and+Ascent+-+almost+listenable+version.mp3 (http://www.mediafire.com/download/inyninnzgci/Elegy+and+Ascent+-+almost+listenable+version.mp3)

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 12, 2015, 11:10:23 PM
Are those still up? It's a long time since I used mediafire for anything.

Those two recordings, like most recordings of my stuff, are ropey in the extreme. But rather than expunge them, I might dilute their ropishness by uploading, or re-uploading, a few other old pieces of mine. Give me a while to do it, though, I need a few dedicated hours and those are in short supply.

Meanwhile, I'm tinkering with the idea of a mini-songcycle for a soprano friend of mine. Or just because... I've done a couple of bars, maybe three, but, you know, that's pretty good going for me atm!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 13, 2015, 01:38:21 AM
Hey, things start back up from two or three bars.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on May 13, 2015, 07:16:37 AM
Quote from: Luke on May 12, 2015, 11:10:23 PM
Are those still up? It's a long time since I used mediafire for anything.

In some cases, the Internet is like Eternity!

Quote from: Luke on May 12, 2015, 11:10:23 PM

Meanwhile, I'm tinkering with the idea of a mini-songcycle for a soprano friend of mine. Or just because... I've done a couple of bars, maybe three, but, you know, that's pretty good going for me atm!

I assume you already have texts?  ;)

Let me know if you want anything...unusual!  0:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 13, 2015, 07:21:26 AM
Quote from: Cato on May 13, 2015, 07:16:37 AM
I assume you already have texts?  ;)

Let me know if you want anything...unusual!  0:)

My name is Karl Henning, and I approve this message.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 13, 2015, 08:54:55 AM
unusual is good, and for future reference, put me down as a YES, but this time I have something in mind...something which, after years of deciding that though I loved it it wasn't quite right for song-setting, suddenly seems perfect for my brand of minimally-differentiated (in the Satie sense) short, lyrical 'moments.' 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 13, 2015, 09:00:25 AM
Carry on!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 16, 2015, 04:45:44 PM
Luke, I know your schedule hasn't permitted you the time to write which you would like, but I shall ask on the odd chance of favorable planetary alignment:  would you be game to write a one-minute organ piece in time to submit it for a 1 June deadline?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 17, 2015, 05:49:37 AM
Yes, absolutely! And thanks for asking! Any more information you can give me?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 17, 2015, 05:54:05 AM
Either PM here or email, as you wish!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 17, 2015, 05:55:36 AM
Actually, no reason not to post it right here!

Hi folks.

Next November I'll be performing a concert on the 1885 William Schuelke organ at St. Francis Catholic Church in Milwaukee. As a part of the concert, I have set out a call for organ works as part of the Vox Novus organization's "Fifteen Minutes of Fame" series.  I hope that some of you might contribute, or at least pass word of this around to your students and colleagues.


Opportunity Type: 15 Minutes of Fame
Entry Fee: None
Open To: All
Deadline: Jun 1, 2015
Receipt Type: Digital Submission: Must be completed online by deadline
Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame: David Bohn, organ
Deadline: June 1, 2015
Vox Novus is calling for one-minute pieces composed for Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame: David Bohn, organ to be premiered 3:00PM, November 1, 2015 for the St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, 1927 N. 4th Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Guidelines:
-Works for solo organ only. See organ specs below
-Works should be composed specifically for this call and performers.
-All pieces must be premieres and not previously written or published.
-No works over a minute will be reviewed.
-Multiple submissions are not accepted. Send your best work!
-Works need to be submitted online at www.MusicAvatar.org (http://www.musicavatar.org)
-You will need to register with Music Avatar for free to submit your work online.
-When registering make sure to upload a profile picture.
-After logging in to Music Avatar, select the opportunity named "Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame: David Bohn, organ" and press the "submit" button to start the submission process.
-You will need to provide a maximum 50-word biography and 50-word program notes.
-You will be able to upload a score as a PDF file (You may also upload an audio file; however it is not required.)
-Score must include the dedication to David Bohn on the score.
-Performance notes should be included in the score.
-Composers who have been awarded to the Hall of Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame are not eligible

Results will be announced via the Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame website and the New-music newsletter: NM421 www.NM421.com (http://www.nm421.com)

More can be found be found at:
www.Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame.com (http://www.fifteen-minutes-of-fame.com)

A native of Wisconsin, David Bohn received degrees in composition from the University of Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the University of Illinois. His primary composition teachers were Joel Naumann, Yehuda Yannay, and William Brooks. He has taught theory at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, University of Wisconsin - Parkside and the University of Illinois. In his career as an organist, he has given Wworld or American premieres of over fifty organ works. He currently resides in West Allis, Wisconsin, and is the organist and choir director St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church in West Milwaukee. He is President of the Wisconsin Alliance for Composers, Vice President of the Wisconsin Chapter of the Organ Historical Society, and edits the newsletters of both organizations.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 17, 2015, 05:56:20 AM
Very interesting, thanks Karl!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 17, 2015, 05:56:31 AM
Ottevanger in Milwaukee: Living the dream!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 18, 2015, 03:35:51 AM
Just copying a post of mine from the 'Conceptual music' thread as it seems relevant on this one, too:

Quote from: Luke on May 16, 2015, 10:52:42 AM
As anyone who has read my thread, and especially the last few pages of it (which chart months and years of failed hopes and dreams  :(  ;D ) I've got a whole catalogue of these uncomposed works. I hesitate to describe them because in many cases I still intend to compose them. Titles include White Modulations and Man In His Cosmic Loneliness (Brianites, prick up your ears!). I can safely mention one which was to be called Attis - it was to be a kind of virtual flute concerto, written as if for 'real' instruments but without regard for what is physically possible, and played back through the dubious magic of MIDI - because I have no wish to finish that one.

In case I never get to write it IRL I have 'used' one of them - called ...green hills, far away... - in the book I'm currently writing, whose main character is a composer called Edward Arundel. 'Arundel' has a whole back catalogue of compositions which I specifically invented for the book, though, among which are a couple I might try my hand at myself, too, including one which would be called A Catalogue of Bird's. The magnum opus he is writing when the book starts, though, is not one I have any plans to attempt myself, and is in a way the most conceptual of them all. He keeps the piano he was given by his ex-wife in the forest outside his house, and he improvises/composes on it every day as a kind of diary (the improvisations then worked up into symphonic form). The instrument gradually decomposes until it rots into nothingness, and therefore the music he composes becomes a kind of record of the death of the love which haunts him... (I'm aware of Ross Bolleter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Bolleter) and WARPS (http://corms30.wix.com/warpsmusic), but I don't think the idea in my book comes directly from there - I've always loved the idea of a piano in decay...)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 18, 2015, 03:37:34 AM
:)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on May 21, 2015, 05:16:27 AM
Forget about Stockhausen; you've got Ottevanger now.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on May 31, 2015, 06:11:10 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on May 21, 2015, 05:16:27 AM
Forget about Stockhausen; you've got Ottevanger now.

That's a big AMEN!  We need to hear more from your soul's pen!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 15, 2015, 09:38:46 AM
Luke!  Anything choral which a Boston group might consider programming?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 28, 2015, 08:50:32 AM
And, whenever you have the Canticle Sonata in the shape you want, Carolyn Ray (she who accompanied our Dana in my Viola Sonata) is game to work your piece up with yrs truly.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on August 16, 2015, 02:53:10 AM
Long time since I checked this place out! Can't wait to read this book! Hope you are all very well, especially you Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 16, 2015, 10:13:11 AM
Oh my goodness, Guido, how lovely to see you here, what a nice surprise! How are you??

And Karl phoned me earlier, and we had a good chat, and Cato has sent me another of his wonderful emails which I am so bad at replying to.... I promised Karl I'd come over to GMG and post something here just to explain where I have been recently, because no sooner had I made a tentative return to GMG after months and years away then I was gone again: barring something re the Rach 3 I haven't posted here for weeks.
...

Ironically, I had intended to finish my ridiculously wordy novel this summer, and to start the piece which I'd been planning for a while. As it turns out, I've scarcely written a word of the book, and not a note of music has eked its way out of my pen for months, in fact years. In my darker hours I contemplate shutting the Outpost - but I won't, I'm sure. There is always hope!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on August 16, 2015, 10:25:22 AM
Quote from: Luke on August 16, 2015, 10:13:11 AM
Oh my goodness, Guido, how lovely to see you here, what a nice surprise! How are you??

And Karl phoned me earlier, and we had a good chat, and Cato has sent me another of his wonderful emails which I am so bad at replying to.... I promised Karl I'd come over to GMG and post something here just to explain where I have been recently, because no sooner had I made a tentative return to GMG after months and years away then I was gone again: barring something re the Rach 3 I haven't posted here for weeks.

Unfortunately at the end of June my wife Philippa was diagnosed with breast cancer, and we've been spending the last very difficult few weeks together, with little time to do much other than the necessary. It has been a frightening time indeed. Chemotherapy started two days ago, so we're out of the agony of waiting and worrying and into the lengthy next phase.

Ironically, I had intended to finish my ridiculously wordy novel this summer, and to start the piece which I'd been planning for a while. As it turns out, I've scarcely written a word of the book, and not a note of music has eked its way out of my pen for months, in fact years. In my darker hours I contemplate shutting the Outpost - but I won't, I'm sure. There is always hope!

:o :o :o  No, do NOT leave us!  :laugh:   I can always keep it going for you!  Just say the paragraph!   0:)

Again, best wishes to you and your family!  We have not forgotten you!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on August 16, 2015, 10:29:13 AM
The Outpost is still In!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: North Star on August 16, 2015, 10:36:48 AM
The Outpost oughtn't be ousted.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on August 16, 2015, 12:29:47 PM
Oh, that came out more melodramatic than I intended! I don't want to shut the Outpost down at all, and in fact I couldn't anyway, as it was started by some long-deregistered chump called lukeottevanger way back when, and only he or a mod could put it out of its misery, I assume. But last night as I lay waiting for sleep I was musing on the fact that it has been a long, long time since I composed anything at all, and at the moment I feel as dry as a dust bowl where that is concerned. And what is the point in having a thread whose central thread is my composing if I don't/can't compose again? But that was quite a dark moment, and I refuse to give up that easily!

Leo - 'Just say the paragraph!' - you know me and my verbosity too, too well!  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on August 16, 2015, 02:21:54 PM
. . . it begins with a single syllable . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on August 16, 2015, 03:26:30 PM
Quote from: Luke on August 16, 2015, 12:29:47 PM

- 'Just say the paragraph!' - you know me and my verbosity too, too well!  ;D

Well, as you may recall, I have two novels which, together, come in at  1,400 pages and c. 600,000 words.   0:)

So in some opinions I show symptoms of graphomania!   :laugh: 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Maciek on November 12, 2015, 03:02:18 PM
Luke, having read some of your recent comments on the Rach 3 thread ("recent" comments, rather, but I'm not a regular here any more either), I felt like gushing, but realized this was the appropriate location. So indulge me.

Your writing on music is always so clear, enjoyable, lively, evocative, persuasive, fair - oh, I could go on. I know you're now writing fiction but I hope that when you're done you also write a book on music (it doesn't have to be an anthology of your GMG posts - but it could be).

I hope Philippa is doing better?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on November 16, 2015, 01:00:32 PM
Quote from: Maciek on November 12, 2015, 03:02:18 PM
Luke, having read some of your recent comments on the Rach 3 thread ("recent" comments, rather, but I'm not a regular here any more either), I felt like gushing, but realized this was the appropriate location. So indulge me.

Your writing on music is always so clear, enjoyable, lively, evocative, persuasive, fair - oh, I could go on. I know you're now writing fiction but I hope that when you're done you also write a book on music (it doesn't have to be an anthology of your GMG posts - but it could be).

I hope Philippa is doing better?

We need more Luke Ottevanger music, fiction, non-fiction, and anything else.   8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on November 16, 2015, 02:17:54 PM
And so say all of us!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on December 31, 2015, 01:28:02 PM
 I've been lousy at keeping in touch, and in fact, apart from things related to work and to the writing of my quasi-novel I have hardly been online in the last few months. Karl has been wonderful, though, phoning me regularly, keeping me in touch. Thank you for that, Karl. It has meant a lot.

I have continually professed my intention to get cracking on a new composition once the book is finished - and have dozens of ideas for it floating around. Well, the novel is now finished, though I'm about to start editing it, which will be a lengthy process. So maybe some music will come next. Although I have to say - already ideas for another book are taking shape!

BTW there is a 'musical note' appendix to my book which I might post here in some form or other....

Finally, to celebrate New Year, I think I will post some New Scores in one of the board's Oldest Threads... (I found a couple of beauties the other day....)

Happy New Year, everyone  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on December 31, 2015, 02:03:42 PM
Luke is back!!!

Many wishes of happiness for the new year!  And best wishes to your dear wife on her recovery!

Yes, your latest literary and musical efforts will be much appreciated!

Title: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on December 31, 2015, 03:19:53 PM
Let 2015 be rung entirely out, and may 2016 bring you and yours all good things!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 01, 2016, 07:53:32 AM
And huzzah for the novel's completion!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 01, 2016, 02:01:49 PM
Well, the following is a little appendix I wrote to the novel itself - I thought it might be pertinent on this board. To give a small bit of background - my novel features a composer called Edward Arundel who lives alone on the Isle of Skye. He is divorced from his wife, Natalie. In the chapter in which Edward is introduced, we see him at work, and pondering his life. He sinks into quite a low state, and for a brief moment a couple of lines from Brahms' Alto Rhapsody flit through his mind. In the novel this sort of thing happens to him fairly frequently, and to other characters too, though in their cases not necessarily in this musical way - I'm trying to portray the way in which our minds are constantly ransacking our storehouse of memories with or without our willing it; the way things connect up in this way - the novel is full of things-connecting-to-things, associations leading ever onwards... Specifically, and I think obviously, Edward's musical memories are mine - IOW I know he would think this way because it is how I would think. I wrote this appendix because I wanted to analyse in more depth than I could in the novel itself how these associations work - in this case, quite how this line of the Brahms conjures up the sensations it does....

My apologies for stating the obvious in the following - I think this stuff bears saying, but I may be wrong.  :)


Quote
appendix – a musical note

Within a few pages of meeting Edward we find him in his studio, lost in melancholy reminiscence. As his thoughts spiral downwards a particular piece springs unavoidable into his mind:

Quote...The world swallowing him up.

The deep, numb, hellish void. Brahms, the Alto Rhapsody, the vulnerable, open O poised above the infinite, infernal tritonal pit: Die Öde verschlingt ihn...

Written in 1869, the op 53 Alto Rhapsody by Brahms is a setting of verses from Goethe's Harzreise im Winter (and therefore another musical Winterreise) for solo alto voice and orchestra, with a male chorus providing some heaven-sent heart's-ease in the final section. Goethe's words seem to be in some sense an allegory for depression, and for the search for spiritual (and musical) sources of relief from depression; Brahms wrote this intense and psychologically-scarred work as a wedding present for Julie Schumann, for whom he may have had romantic feelings himself. The piece is a probing study of misanthropy, then, and would seem to make for an inappropriate wedding gift. Presumably it may speak of Brahms' own emotions around Julie's marriage, and his hopes for release from them. In Darkness Visible, an account of the crippling depression which afflicted periods of his later years, William Styron movingly describes a moment when, on the very verge of suicide, the sound of the Alto Rhapsody provided exactly the 'ein Ton/seinem Ohre vernehmlich' – the 'one note his ear could hear' of which the male choir sings in its last section – which was necessary to bring him back from the brink.

Why have I decided to pursue this musical memory-image of Edward's to a deeper degree than the fleeting reference I give it in the novel itself? Because I want to try to investigate, in more musical detail than the book allows, the sort of processes, the imagined sounds, the multitude of en-cultured associations that are going on in the head of Edward, and presumably anyone else who recalls a focal moment of a piece like this (or by extension any other). The memories of music long-known and long-loved are constantly striking Edward – sometimes they help him come to terms with his issues, or (as here) to encapsulate them in a single aural image; sometimes they simply trap him in a cycle of regrets. And sometimes the odd slants of light they shed on a problem reveal its secrets to him. Surely the same sort of deeply personal musical images haunt most musicians and music-lovers, cropping up in their minds unbidden, as if written there in the foreign fonts I've used in this book, of which they are one of the themes.

When, as I wrote that passage, the first line appeared on the page – 'the world swallowing him up' – I was not yet thinking about the Brahms, only about Edward and Natalie. But the second I wrote it the haunting line from the Alto Rhapsody flooded into my mind, and I knew it would have done the same to Edward (in fact I'm sure I only wrote what I did because the Goethe/Brahms line was already there in my head, providing me with that striking image subconsciously). The subsequent quotation from and reference to the piece was therefore inevitable. But what is it about this piece, and specifically this line from it – and in fact all that follows is really only discussing three or four notes – that brought it so forcefully to my mind, and therefore to Edward's?

Here, extracted from Brahms' full score, is the passage in question – the vocal line at the top and, beneath it, the (ppp) string parts from the closing bars of the first, wandering, section of the piece:

[I've put the image at the bottom of this post, however...]

The following thoughts on a few of the extraordinary things that are happening in this brief passage contain references to associations the music may call to mind for those who are able to read it and who are acquainted with its en-cultured features. To those who are aware of them, these associations are as much a part of the experience of the music as the raw sound itself – an unfashionable thing to say in this quick-fix world where sensation is all and anything below this surface is treated as suspect, but one that is powerfully true. I stress them here because Edward experiences them in the book, but I have Edward experience them because I do, too, and because this web of associations is something that I think is hugely important in all our lives – it is not unique to music and musicians, though perhaps they are more aware of it:

1) The highlighted 'Ö,' the highest note of the passage, frail and exposed like a wound; an utterly human sound but also somehow dead in tone due to the quality of the vowel sound, a quality emphasised by its being held on a long note – as hollow and empty as the desert it depicts. The point is reinforced by the literal, visual hollowness of the letter O as printed on the page and as required of the singer's mouth (as opposed to its sound, though of course perhaps the hollow sound of 'O' and of the mouth-shape needed to produce it played a role in determining the shape of its letter-sign, somewhere way back in history – see Kipling's How The Alphabet Was Made!). The  equally empty circle of the musical semibreve note plays a similar rôle. Such visual associations may not be experienced by the general listener, but they are there for those, such as Edward, who are familiar with the music by sight as well as by sound, so they shouldn't be dismissed.

2) The void formed by the distance from the high vocal 'Ö' to the deep string cellos and basses playing at the same time, far below, is a huge nineteen-step  gap unfilled by any intervening sound – hollowness and emptiness once more, suggestive of echoing heights and depths, of vast empty distances, of an isolation that is both physical and mental. Again, this high-low dichotomy is visually present in the notes-on-paper, of course – that empty space on the page between voice and cellos, hung only with its nimbus of silent rests – and perhaps this plays a small part too.

3) A more specific analysis of the void described in 2) determines the precise size of the interval – that is, the distance in note-steps from top to bottom – formed between these two notes, high C and low F#. Technically this interval is called a diminished nineteenth, but as with all such wide-spanning intervals it can be reduced for simplicity to a smaller but analytically-equivalent interval whose dissonance type and harmonic function is exactly the same. In this case that interval is the diminished fifth, an interval which has a unique place in music theory and music history. It is also called the tritone – it is exactly half an octave (in other words halfway, say, from the C to the next C higher or lower), and in and of itself it is a most peculiar, dissonant interval. In medieval theory it was supposedly known as the diabolus in musica and it had negative, not to say infernal connotations. Naturally, its use in musical harmony was heavily proscribed. In later music it became much more common, useful, and eventually ubiquitous, though always potentially retaining its trickster character. When it is heard in such a pure, exposed form as Brahms presents here – simply the two notes, but very distant from each other, and held for a long time so that we are saturated with the harmony and the sonority – we can clearly hear its chilling quality. I would go further still, however. The traditionally hellish associations of the tritone are pervasive enough that a musician who is aware of them, as Edward would be, would very possibly, perhaps probably, on some level experience the great gulf between the high human C and the low, mysterious, inhuman F# as representing not simply an empty wilderness, or a great depth, but more specifically Man poised above the abyss of Hell. The note C itself carries its own associations, being a kind of 'zero' note (a hollow 0 sigil once again...), the note of whiteness, plainness, the note on which technical illustrations and children's elementary lesson are usually based. In this context F#, its tritonal, polar opposite, becomes opaque and alien, Other...

4) The small downwards step taken by the bass at the same time as the voice rises to its high 'Ö' – a semitone from a G (harmonising purely with its octave) to an F# (harmonising mysteriously with its tritone) – seems to expand the musical universe immeasurably. It is like taking a single step from security into a void. Because of the features already described this minimal shift seems to imply vast, inscrutable depths and this paradox itself becomes a striking feature of the passage

5) The huge leap in the vocal part from Ö- to -de again takes us into otherworldly musical realms. Like the giant gap between voices and basses, the gap between the singer's notes here is shocking, reminding us ineluctably of the vastness of this wilderness. More than that, Brahms pushes the interval here just past that natural, expected limit of the octave, a questioning, uneasy ninth, a little like stepping into the unknown, beyond the borders of the world...

Brahms could have avoided both the vocal leap of a ninth, and the giant dissonant gap of a nineteenth between voice and bass, if he had changed his harmonies slightly. Something more conventional would have resulted; it would have sounded effective. But the empty numbness of this passage would have been lost as a result. And perhaps the phrase would not have seared itself on Edward's memory to such an extent...

I stress again that harmonic analysis explains the effect here; that psychoacoustical analysis would go further in explaining the physics behind the force of the harmony; that understanding the cultural context explains the music's associative power – but that in the final analysis one does not need to know any of this to feel the force of this unearthly passage.



Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 01, 2016, 02:46:50 PM
Most interesting, thank you.  And welcome back!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 02, 2016, 11:08:36 AM
Reading it back - painfully badly written  :-[  But then I did say the whole thing is still to be edited!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 04, 2016, 03:25:21 AM
Sending pianissimo to my Kindle . . . as I casually leafed through before setting to a proper read (and if I talk like a printer's son, so be it) right away my eye enjoys the loving care with the play of typography.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 04, 2016, 12:02:13 PM
Well, I do love taking care of that sort of thing, hoping the words themselves justify it! Having said that, the typography is quite important in other ways which might reveal themselves as you read on.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 07, 2016, 05:00:30 AM
Lo! What do I find in my Luke folder, but a setting of Blake's "The Lamb" for solo voice, two-part treble choir & piano.  I think this may nicely suit the May Triad concerts . . . will pass this on to the Repertory Committee.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 07, 2016, 05:26:48 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on January 04, 2016, 03:25:21 AM
Sending pianissimo to my Kindle . . . as I casually leafed through before setting to a proper read (and if I talk like a printer's son, so be it) right away my eye enjoys the loving care with the play of typography.

Edition refreshed on my Kindle!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 07, 2016, 06:01:09 AM
Re The Lamb - feel free to pass it on, I'm glad you think it suitable. I wrote it for children, however, so it's a very simple, naive and cossettingly-harmonised sort of thing, not very rigorous at all in any respect. And re your email - as I wrote it for 'private' performance by the children to their parents it's probably simply the case that I forgot to add a metronome mark, knowing that I'd be playing the piano myself. However, being by me, it is of course fairly slow and not at all bound to the metronome. Lyrical, intimate... see what sounds right. One more thing - my fault in score layout but I intended it for three single voices, with the two lower ones supporting the solo one on top. But I am sure a well-balanced choral reading would work just as well, or more so. You could even put more voices on the top line, too, except perhaps where it seems best to retain its solo character.

Re the other... you are a brave man...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 07, 2016, 06:26:26 AM
The "mission" of Triad is primarily to present the music of living composers, music written in the past 25 years;  secondarily to bring new music into the community.  Along those lines, we like not only to sing challenging music which requires dandy singers  ;)  but also music which may be suited to groups of younger voices, to break down any age barrier to new music.  Another aspect is . . . one of the "problems" which the Rep Committee faces is how to craft a program with flow and variety, and we wind up reading a great many scores which, good though they may be, trend to slow, sustained, sweet choral sound.  Now, on the one hand, those descriptors are no great distance from The Lamb  8) . . . but on the other, there is the characteristic fluid Ottevanger piano accompaniment which is distinct from anything else we've read; and too, we like to find a couple of pieces for either women only or men.

I'm not saying this is the most representative Ottevanger score to float by the Rep Committee, but I think it lovely, and I think that others on the Committee will take a liking to it (and at the least, it will get the name Ottevanger before their eyes, and lodged in their musical consciousness).

I still encourage you to cook up something new!  And knowing your Bartok & Chisholm affinities, I'd especially invite something lively and rhythmic, which (per the Committee's perennial challenge, as detailed above) the group would be especially likely to seize upon.  Witness our recent concert opener:

http://www.youtube.com/v/31b5Ur3pimQ

As to my alleged bravery, I knew that BEWARE OF THE SHEEP was a sign, and the payoff was gratifying.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on January 07, 2016, 06:32:40 AM
Hooray for a new Ottevanger work!  The Lamb will undoubtedly be an all-around fave.   8)

That it was intended for children can only be to its credit!  At such moments I am always reminded of the ending of Magister Ludi (Das Glasperlenspiel) by Hermann Hesse, where at the end the main character, the greatest intellectual of his era, decides to tutor a small child as his vocation.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 07, 2016, 06:47:29 AM
And I apologize if I have made myself tedious with sharing the Pseudo Yoik video!  It's just that it was such great fun to sing . . . .
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on January 07, 2016, 08:40:33 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on January 07, 2016, 06:47:29 AM
And I apologize if I have made myself tedious with sharing the Pseudo Yoik video!  It's just that it was such great fun to sing . . . .

Speaking of "Yoik!"

https://www.youtube.com/v/nXXpqMSNevE
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 07, 2016, 10:21:34 AM
Quote from: Cato on January 07, 2016, 08:40:33 AM
Speaking of "Yoik!"

https://www.youtube.com/v/nXXpqMSNevE

Irresponsible forestry!
Title: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 08, 2016, 07:57:57 PM
As with our Cato's MSS., the content is both rich and agile enough (only part of why I find the reading readily engaging) that, given my less-than-ideal practice of fleetingly episodic dips into the (virtual) pages, I often doubt my grasp of certain mechanical detail ... but is the first item of classical music mentioned--lingered over in detail, I had better say--in pianissimo the Mendelssohn? A wonderful combination of geographically apt (of course) and, because of my present Sonata-dom, an incidental chuckle thinking of Saul ....

Oh!--and let me ask afresh for an Authorized Version of the  Canticle Sonata! For there will be more than one pianist I can play together with, and I am keen to present your piece, and fold it into my repertory.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 09, 2016, 08:48:50 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on January 08, 2016, 07:57:57 PM
...but is the first item of classical music mentioned--lingered over in detail, I had better say--in pianissimo the Mendelssohn? A wonderful combination of geographically apt (of course) and, because of my present Sonata-dom, an incidental chuckle thinking of Saul ....

On page 65 or thereabouts? Yes, it is. It's not a piece with any more significance than that it begins to open Vicky's eyes a little, as later in the paragraph. And yes, as I wrote it I was aware of the spirit of Saul watching, misunderstanding, and nodding in approval.

That sonata - yes, it will be done, I find it tricky to pin down the last few bars, that's all!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 09, 2016, 08:50:12 AM
Quote from: Luke on January 09, 2016, 08:48:50 AM
On page 65 or thereabouts? Yes, it is.

Whew!

And thank you, viz. the Canticle Sonata!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 09, 2016, 08:55:23 AM
Quote from: karlhenning on January 09, 2016, 08:50:12 AM
Whew!


Was it not clear? I can rewrite...

And re the sonata - no, thank you!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 09, 2016, 08:58:45 AM
Quote from: Luke on January 09, 2016, 08:55:23 AM
Was it not clear? I can rewrite...

Perfectly clear, fret not!
Title: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 09, 2016, 02:12:53 AM
Now on p.437 ... will Finn make one trip to the well too many?...  8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 17, 2016, 09:25:24 AM
"I've just come down from the Isle of Skye . . . ."

http://www.youtube.com/v/q2fizeoT22g
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on August 09, 2018, 01:04:38 AM
Just had a nice chat with Luke (yesterday), all is well, just on the busy side.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 18, 2023, 07:36:58 AM
For those who remember Luke Ottevanger and his wonderful music, his wife reports that he has been writing a book on "composers and place."

It could be published later this year (?).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 18, 2023, 10:25:36 AM
For an example to new(er) people of Luke Ottevanger's abilities:

 http://www.mediafire.com/download/inyninnzgci/Elegy+and+Ascent+-+almost+listenable+version.mp3 (http://www.mediafire.com/download/inyninnzgci/Elegy+and+Ascent+-+almost+listenable+version.mp3)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 18, 2023, 10:46:03 AM
From 2012:

   
Quote"With Luke Ottevanger's approval: you will need to have a copy of the music and the performance for the full effect:

Around Fern Hill Score (http://www.mediafire.com/?no6zykq6464c2z2)

    - Score

    Performance of Around Fern Hill (http://www.mediafire.com/?hycr77dymz2665f)

    - Performance

    Cato's Analysis of Around Fern Hill

     
 
QuoteA Walk Around the Music of Around Fern Hill


    If you ever had any doubts about the major-minor system's ability to retain its emotional power, then you must listen to Luke Ottevanger's Around Fern Hill

    While the work is not written with a specific key, its opening bars dance in a major-key field toying with the ear in various major scales.  One hears the note G ascending over 4 octaves at the start of the work, which begins with a triplet, a rhythmical figure of great importance throughout the composition.  With the exception of a constant C# in the opening bars, we are in white-key land, with whiffs of G major and, thanks to that C#, A and E major.  In bar 3 the triplet descends (G6 – A5 – A4 (the numbers refer to the octaves)) to give us one of those fleeting hints of a major scale (A-E-C#-A).  But these are only whiffs, as the composer has no intention of allowing us to linger for long in such a deluding land.

    I should mention at this point that I first "listened" mentally to the work from the score alone, and had no idea that the title came from a poem.  Deducing that the markings ("Stanza I") meant that the composer obviously had a poem in mind as the background for a particular section, I simply concentrated on the story which the music told by itself, and discovered the composer's source of inspiration only at the end, where the poem appears in full at the bottom of the last page.  Certainly the music alone provides a powerful experience of emotional mystery.

    And that mystery begins to arrive in various ways: with our ears accustomed to a tentative brightness in the ambiguity of these major keys, the composer also grants us music of a slow contemplative nature with the chiming, ticking rhythms of bells and clocks (which will persist, with increasing difficulty and dissonance, as the piece tells its tale).  Yet our contemplation is disturbed by the nature of the meter (7/8) and by the music insisting on assorted arrhythmic arpeggios (bars 3-5).  Finally in bars 6-19 we hear in 3/8 the tolling of bells in the distance (the chord E-B-E followed by an A and D-G) in the left hand, while the right hand "dances" merrily in the churchyard with triplets of various kinds.

    But in bar 20 things become ominous: the rhythmic complexity in the dance increases, with dissonant major 2nds appearing.  The leaping G's from the opening 2 bars reappear, as does that descending triplet (G6 – A5 – A4) in bar 22, which ends with another ascending triplet (G3 – A4 – B5).  Bar 23 gives us a quick B-minor hint of a severe change in mood, as an F# appears for the first time with the C#: and then the shock of bar 24!  That single F#, a simple semitone lower than G, heard alone at first, becomes the root of a minor-ninth chord (F#-D-B-F), whose sudden emotional impact is Gesualdoan, similar to the famous chord used by Arnold Schoenberg in Pelleas und Melisande (at Cue 8, p. 16 of the study score) where an F natural underlies a first inversion D minor triad with a G# spread over several octaves.

    The appearance of the F# has added a melancholy, if not ominous, atmosphere to the music (bars 25-30), which attempts to keep dancing up and down a quasi-G scale (with that augmented 4th C# ).  But the F# is now in the bass, at times with the C#, and prevents a major mood from taking over.  As proof that dissonance can be very poignant, listen to the tolling continue (bars 30-38) with a syncopated and divided G major 7th chord against a C#-E# in the bass: and is that dance on the quasi G-scale now more of a C# minor experience?  A 3-note motif (F#-D-F) provides more tonal and emotional ambiguity, and leads back to the dueling dance of scales (G vs. C#).

    At bar 39, the music attempts to "play" in 5/8 time, but with ever more pain or bewilderment, and leads into a variation of bars 30-38.  The divided and syncopated G-major 7th chord now rings against an F-B-D in the bass, and that 3-note motif now descends directly (Gb-F-E, bar 45) rather relentlessly.  The opening octave leaping triplet returns at the end of bar 50, but now descends down 3 C naturals to announce a transition to a new tension between C and the C#.

    For above the triplet-dominated, wandering-the-hill music on modes of E and C#, a melismatic theme on C arises in the treble, a theme masked and hinted at in the previous sections (e.g. the theme in bars 25-26, in the middle voice in bars 32-38, and then in the treble in bars 39-43).  Now unadorned, the theme emphasizes C, with Bb at first the only point of interference, and with the time expanding by a single 16th note over bars 51-54, the theme rises to G, only to be joined unexpectedly in a cluster with E#/F#.  It is as if the tolling sounds in the background have now chosen to speak directly: at times a ding-dong-ding pattern of three is heard, as in those earlier 3-note motifs of F#-D-F and Gb-F-E.  Grace notes echoing the opening triplet are heard throughout the bass in this section (bars 50-62).  Diminished 5th sounds in the bass (C-F#, E-Bb) prevent any rest, and provide a point of comparison, as the opening G modality is now changing to octaves of C# in bars 55-56.  Conflicting with the C# is the melismatic C/Bb theme in the middle voice, ending on D in bars 59-60, despite the tremolos on C# echoing around, and a punctuating E/F high in the treble.

    And then a pause, and again the leaping triplet appears, now on C natural, and the time has changed from 7/16 to 7/8.  But by bars 64-65, the triplet now intones the C/C# (now spelled Db because of an Ab tonality in the left hand) tension, and the melismatic theme attempts a return in a variation in the treble.  A flourish on Eb minor ambles by, and then the tolling of diminished fifths with the Ab-Eb accompanies a long melisma on a C scale, a sort of double minor with a Db and Gb.  The melisma often uses triplets in keeping with the rhythmic motif established in the first bar, and hearkens backward to the "dancing" heard in bars 9-22: and so bars 63-77 can be heard as a shorter, more dissonant version of the opening 24 bars, where the shock of the single F# in bar 24 is now replaced by an Ab pentad (Ab-Bb-Db-Eb-G) with a high C echoing away. 

    In bar 78 the triplet figure descends to announce a sort of B mode, and we now hear a variation of the earlier part of the work (bars 25 ff.), but with more stumbling around the hill (compare bar 26 with bar 80), and more anguish: compare that earlier, insistent 3-note motif of F#-D-F with its variation in bars 86-87 as F#-D-Eb/F, and listen to the tolling transform into clusters, with minor seconds sprinkled about (e.g. bars 81, 93-95).  The 5/8 section (bars 93-97) is very similar to its earlier appearance (bars 39-43) In bar 99 ff., the 3-note motif, now changed to Gb-F-E in the middle voice, struggles against an Eb ninth in the bass and a painfully chiming G major 7th chord with an added C above it.

    The 3-note motif is also emphasized in subtle, almost unconscious ways in the middle voice: listen e.g. to bars 104-105, where the middle voice begins its triplets with E-Gb-F, while bars 106-107 begin with Gb-F-E and E-F-Gb respectively.

    And as clusters of notes reach upward in the treble (bar 109), perhaps as symbols of desperate, useless clutching at the surface of the water of memory, the gravity in the bass reveals a swallowing sea, using that diminished 5th  of G-C# from the opening as a tremolo leading to a deep G/A finale, while the last manifestation of our poor 3-note motif is heard in the middle voice.  Seven notes ring out in the final bars, from that G/A in the bass to an E/F in the treble, not unlike the finale of Schoenberg's Erwartung,  where the music both descends and rises to "swallow" the character at the end.

    I mentioned to the composer that the use of the "scratchy" recording of the poem reminded me of the unusual novels of W.G. Sebald, who often included fuzzy, "faraway" photos to accompany his themes of lost memories.  The result is that the work is successful on various levels: the music could stand alone without the poem, in the same way that the poem has stood alone.  Yet together one experiences a quite different third dimension of meaning, as if the music were the poem's deepest unconscious.

    Finally, the title of the music is Around Fern Hill, and may explain many of the circling figurations in the music, as if these and the other motifs and themes are the sounds when one walks around Fern Hill.


Addendum: Google Books has a preview of The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald, an example to illuminate my comment above.


http://books.google.com/books?id=m5Kgh-3OVBYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=W.G.+Sebald&hl=en#v=onepage&q=W.G.%20Sebald&f=false (http://books.google.com/books?id=m5Kgh-3OVBYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=W.G.+Sebald&hl=en#v=onepage&q=W.G.%20Sebald&f=false)



Addendum from 2023: one can ask not only where Fern Hill might be...

...one might also ask who Fern Hill might be!    :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 19, 2023, 06:33:27 AM
Quote from: Cato on February 18, 2023, 07:36:58 AMFor those who remember Luke Ottevanger and his wonderful music, his wife reports that he has been writing a book on "composers and place."

It could be published later this year (?).

Next year, but otherwise, yes. Of the book, more later. I think its subject matter will interest some people on this board. But as far as explanation for my six (?) year absence from GMG go (and Leo, you are responsible for luring me back in) the operative paragraphs are these. Please pay particular attention to the words in bold:

QuoteSometime in 2011 I wrote a piece of music for what turned out to be the last time. Stopping composing was not a choice but simply a fact: the flow of fantasy and invention that composition requires had been dried up by the exigencies and stresses of everyday life. 

...

Not being able to compose began as a sorrow, a kind of grieving, but it developed into something of a physical pain. The mental blockage had no outlet; the pent-up creative urge had nowhere to go. A vicious circle was created, one in which stress and anxiety were both the cause and the result of my composer's block. I began to feel a sense of deep shame in myself for having lost my creative abilities. I retreated and retired from online musical discussion groups in which I had taken so much joy and stimulation over the years. Slowly, awfully, disgracefully, I cut off contact with kind and generous musical friends because I felt too much shame in having to repeatedly report on nothing but a constant lack of compositional success. Wounded by my own failure, I isolated myself—and failed worse than ever. 

All requiring editing, but you get the gist.

Good to see you all  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on February 19, 2023, 12:39:58 PM
Quote from: Luke on February 19, 2023, 06:33:27 AMNext year, but otherwise, yes. Of the book, more later. I think its subject matter will interest some people on this board. But as far as explanation for my six (?) year absence from GMG go (and Leo, you are responsible for luring me back in) the operative paragraphs are these. Please pay particular attention to the words in bold:

All requiring editing, but you get the gist.

Good to see you all  :)

Warmly reciprocated.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on February 19, 2023, 12:41:58 PM
Quote from: Luke on February 19, 2023, 06:33:27 AMStopping composing was not a choice but simply a fact: the flow of fantasy and invention that composition requires had been dried up by the exigencies and stresses of everyday life. 
I get it. I have not felt much motivation to compose for some little while. 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: DavidW on February 19, 2023, 02:21:59 PM
While I don't know anything about composing I do know about distancing myself from others due to the shame and pain of failure.  What I have learned is that shame is sadly largely internal, and cutting ourselves off from people that care about us can cause us even more pain.

It is good to see you back on the forum Luke.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 19, 2023, 02:52:35 PM
Thank you, David - and thank you Karl, too, and Leo for prompting this return to a place I always loved.

You are totally correct, David. I felt such shame in never being able to bring anything to the table; I felt that any successes that I had had as a composer, such as they were, must have been some kind of fluke, and they stubbornly were not coming any more. Composing was a big part of who I was - if I wasn't composing, I shouldn't really be clogging up this place.

But in the years that I have been hiding away, I have found that perhaps I can express myself better in a different form. I think one thing I can do is talk about music with passion and a bit of insight; I think I'm also able to map my own experiences and feelings onto that. A year ago I began a writing project, an exploration of music with a close connection to particular places, connections which go beyond the pictorial to deeper regions (in a huge variety of different ways). I have confined myself to British music, as that is the closest to hand (and as the British seem to have a particular love for this sort of thing) and I have been visiting sites all over the country (I just got back from my final trip, all over Scotland and with a last little dip into Wales, a couple of days ago). The book alternates my discussion of these pieces of music, their backgrounds and their history with a present day discussion of my visits, an autobiographical account of my own struggles - the ones that have been keeping me away from here. So a blend of musical history, confessional and travel writing.

Amazingly, the first publisher I contacted loved the book - if all goes to plan it will come out next year.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on February 19, 2023, 03:48:11 PM
Quote from: Luke on February 19, 2023, 02:52:35 PMAmazingly, the first publisher I contacted loved the book - if all goes to plan it will come out next year.
This is fabulous! And both knowing your musical acumen and having read with much pleasure another MS. of yours, I am sure it will prove an excellent read, and will find an audience.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on February 19, 2023, 03:53:24 PM
Quote from: DavidW on February 19, 2023, 02:21:59 PMWhile I don't know anything about composing I do know about distancing myself from others due to the shame and pain of failure.
Apparent failure as a composer has really weighed upon me, after an initial burst of post-stroke composing activity. I say apparent, mostly because it would misbecome me to slight so many instances of encouragement and support from family, friends and colleagues. But I'll shut up since it would be poorest form, esp. on Luke's reappearance, for me to jaw on about myself.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Spotted Horses on February 19, 2023, 09:29:12 PM
Quote from: Luke on February 19, 2023, 02:52:35 PMThank you, David - and thank you Karl, too, and Leo for prompting this return to a place I always loved.

You are totally correct, David. I felt such shame in never being able to bring anything to the table; I felt that any successes that I had had as a composer, such as they were, must have been some kind of fluke, and they stubbornly were not coming any more. Composing was a big part of who I was - if I wasn't composing, I shouldn't really be clogging up this place.

But in the years that I have been hiding away, I have found that perhaps I can express myself better in a different form. I think one thing I can do is talk about music with passion and a bit of insight; I think I'm also able to map my own experiences and feelings onto that. A year ago I began a writing project, an exploration of music with a close connection to particular places, connections which go beyond the pictorial to deeper regions (in a huge variety of different ways). I have confined myself to British music, as that is the closest to hand (and as the British seem to have a particular love for this sort of thing) and I have been visiting sites all over the country (I just got back from my final trip, all over Scotland and with a last little dip into Wales, a couple of days ago). The book alternates my discussion of these pieces of music, their backgrounds and their history with a present day discussion of my visits, an autobiographical account of my own struggles - the ones that have been keeping me away from here. So a blend of musical history, confessional and travel writing.

Amazingly, the first publisher I contacted loved the book - if all goes to plan it will come out next year.

It I no surprise to me (or I suspect anyone here who has paid attention) that you have deep insight into music and have an enormous talent for talking/writing about music. I have always though your contribution to this board was among the most valuable here and your absence cause me genuine grief. I hope you will renew your participation.

Quote from: Karl Tirebiter Henning on February 19, 2023, 03:53:24 PMApparent failure as a composer has really weighed upon me, after an initial burst of post-stroke composing activity. I say apparent, mostly because it would misbecome me to slight so many instances of encouragement and support from family, friends and colleagues. But I'll shut up since it would be poorest form, esp. on Luke's reappearance, for me to jaw on about myself.

It pains me to read this. It is easy to conflate recognition with success, and although you may feel that the former is thin on the ground the latter, which is based on the quality of your output, you have in abundance, in my estimation.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 19, 2023, 11:24:37 PM
Thank you very much - that is really touching to read.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 26, 2023, 12:46:32 PM
Been working hard on the book this weekend, continuing to write up my Scottish tour. The end is in sight, although that will only be the first draft. There remains a huge amount of editing and trimming to be done. Nevertheless, it feels like a real achievement.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 26, 2023, 01:08:51 PM
Quote from: Luke on February 26, 2023, 12:46:32 PMBeen working hard on the book this weekend, continuing to write up my Scottish tour. The end is in sight, although that will only be the first draft. There remains a huge amount of editing and trimming to be done. Nevertheless, it feels like a real achievement.

Excellent news!

Keep us updated, please!

Check your e-mail from last week or so!   8)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on February 26, 2023, 01:09:55 PM
Splendid!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: (poco) Sforzando on February 27, 2023, 08:18:51 AM
Well, welcome back, Luke! I've wondered often what happened to you. Whether you compose still or not, you have friends here who have missed you!

- Larry
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 27, 2023, 01:57:32 PM
That's very kind, and undeserved, sfz. You people are a lot better than I deserve.

And Cato - I have now checked (I don't really use that email address much these, days, mostly I just use my work one now, which tells you something!) Amazing - can't wait to give it the time it deserves. But what I have seen/heard is.... intriguing. Intense. Dense - scarily so. The Exaudi is really something extraordinary, very powerful. Haven't been able to download the attachments in the other email so far.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: brewski on February 27, 2023, 02:00:46 PM
Hello, Luke! Just adding my "welcome back" to all the others. Saw your mention of the new book—good luck with that! Also, have to say, my ears perk up whenever I see Exaudi mentioned.

Anyway, cheers and look forward to whatever you want to contribute here.

-Bruce
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 27, 2023, 02:01:21 PM
In 2021, before I started this project, I wrote an enormous book (not quite finished) which is essentially a collection of extended essays, very whimsical, on musical questions I find fascinating. Nothing heavy or intricate, I talk about what I want to talk about and then move on. Lots of score samples, images etc, to keep it bright and breezy. If anyone would like to see parts of it, I'm happy to post them here. Well, I think I am... I haven't looked at it for a while!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 27, 2023, 02:01:41 PM
Quote from: brewski on February 27, 2023, 02:00:46 PMHello, Luke! Just adding my "welcome back" to all the others. Saw your mention of the new book—good luck with that! Also, have to say, my ears perk up whenever I see Exaudi mentioned.

Anyway, cheers and look forward to whatever you want to contribute here.

-Bruce

Thanks, Bruce! Great to see you too!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on February 27, 2023, 02:17:05 PM
Quote from: Luke on February 27, 2023, 02:01:21 PMIn 2021, before I started this project, I wrote an enormous book (not quite finished) which is essentially a collection of extended essays, very whimsical, on musical questions I find fascinating. Nothing heavy or intricate, I talk about what I want to talk about and then move on. Lots of score samples, images etc, to keep it bright and breezy. If anyone would like to see parts of it, I'm happy to post them here. Well, I think I am... I haven't looked at it for a while!
I'm game! 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 27, 2023, 03:03:18 PM
Quote from: Luke on February 27, 2023, 01:57:32 PMThat's very kind, and undeserved, sfz. You people are a lot better than I deserve.

And Cato - I have now checked (I don't really use that email address much these, days, mostly I just use my work one now, which tells you something!) Amazing - can't wait to give it the time it deserves. But what I have seen/heard is.... intriguing. Intense. Dense - scarily so. The Exaudi is really something extraordinary, very powerful. Haven't been able to download the attachments in the other email so far.


Many thanks, Luke!  Your praise is most appreciated, as your opinion comes from one of the finest musical minds around!

For those who do not know, Luke is referring to a cantata I composed decades ago and resurrected from memory and sketches.  I restored it 5 or 6 years ago: here is a MIDI realization.

Cantata for 9 Voices - Exaudi me (https://www.dropbox.com/s/i9mlhnvdn88z7gv/Schulte%20Exaudi%20Me%20voix%20-%202nd%20mix%20-%2030%20Dec%2016.mp3?dl=0)

I have described the work as a catharsis of the deadliest despair.  "Scary" (spiritually so) is a very accurate description of the last minutes.

Here is the score:

Score for the Exaudi me (https://www.dropbox.com/s/i9mlhnvdn88z7gv/Schulte%20Exaudi%20Me%20voix%20-%202nd%20mix%20-%2030%20Dec%2016.mp3?dl=0)

Karl Henning was able to check the score and create a 2-piano score for rehearsal purposes.  Let me thank him again!  He is also enthusiastic about the work.

For the original discussion here at GMG:

https://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,26569.0.html (https://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,26569.0.html)

Page 4 has the links, even though page 1 says that I deleted them.   ;)

Anyway, I will find another way to send you the other attachments!  ;)



Quote from: Luke on February 27, 2023, 02:01:21 PMIn 2021, before I started this project, I wrote an enormous book (not quite finished) which is essentially a collection of extended essays, very whimsical, on musical questions I find fascinating. Nothing heavy or intricate, I talk about what I want to talk about and then move on. Lots of score samples, images etc, to keep it bright and breezy. If anyone would like to see parts of it, I'm happy to post them here. Well, I think I am... I haven't looked at it for a while!


Yes, I would be happy to read it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 28, 2023, 05:10:02 AM
Just reading back bits of that previous book wondering whether to post any here and, if so, which chapter to choose first... I'm looking at a chapter about how the physical sensation of playing a piece - the stretch in the fingers, the stress in the body - is connected to the expressive sense of the music. Lo and behold, I find I've referred to Larry in it - something he said many, many years ago which I've never forgotten. Here's the passagein question...

QuotePlaying music produces... a physical feeling, more 'real,' in fact, than any sound – and thus it speaks its own language of touch: of pleasure, pain and of pattern; of obstacle and danger, of agility, of rest and relaxation; of delicacy and care, of abandonment, of passion and of nonchalance; of studied evenness and deeply expressive gesture. An online friend of mine, responding to the sort of endless and ubiquitous questions that are the meat and drink of message boards – discussions about favourite recordings of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier or Beethoven's Piano Sonatas – would respond, simply: mine. Not out of pride in his own performance skills, but because only when he was playing them himself could he feel all the wonders of this music, not just hear them. Only then could he feel the counterpoints passing between fingers and hand, or the voice-leading from one chord to the next, or sense the play of registers and extremes, and infinite other tactile, sensuous manifestations.

Thanks, Larry!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: (poco) Sforzando on February 28, 2023, 07:05:10 AM
Quote from: Luke on February 28, 2023, 05:10:02 AMJust reading back bits of that previous book wondering whether to post any here and, if so, which chapter to choose first... I'm looking at a chapter about how the physical sensation of playing a piece - the stretch in the fingers, the stress in the body - is connected to the expressive sense of the music. Lo and behold, I find I've referred to Larry in it - something he said many, many years ago which I've never forgotten. Here's the passagein question...

Thanks, Larry!

Wow, Luke. I wrote that? I completely forgot. Must have been at a time when I was still in possession of all my faculties. Having no recollection of having written it, I must say it's a pretty nice little paragraph.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 28, 2023, 07:44:50 AM
No, I wrote that! But you inspired it, and I've always remembered the general drift of what you said way back when. 20 years ago, probably more!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: (poco) Sforzando on February 28, 2023, 07:50:22 AM
Quote from: Luke on February 28, 2023, 07:44:50 AMNo, I wrote that! But you inspired it, and I've always remembered the general drift of what you said way back when. 20 years ago, probably more!

Ah! no wonder. It sounds far better written than anything I could have created.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 28, 2023, 08:52:55 AM
Quote... Beethoven's Piano Sonatas – would respond, simply: mine. Not out of pride in his own performance skills, but because only when he was playing them himself could he feel all the wonders of this music, not just hear them. Only then could he feel the counterpoints passing between fingers and hand, or the voice-leading from one chord to the next, or sense the play of registers and extremes, and infinite other tactile, sensuous manifestations.


I am reminded of stories about the nearly deaf Beethoven and his attempts to pick up sound through the vibrations of the piano. One story has him holding sticks in his mouth to transfer the vibrations into his skull.

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 28, 2023, 09:21:09 AM
Quote from: Cato on February 28, 2023, 08:52:55 AMI am reminded of stories about the nearly deaf Beethoven and his attempts to pick up sound through the vibrations of the piano. One story has him holding sticks in his mouth to transfer the vibrations into his skull.



Funny, that's more or less what the next paragraph goes on to mention
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on February 28, 2023, 09:29:44 AM
@Luke, the new layout of the site may have disoriented you. You have a PM.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 28, 2023, 10:46:11 AM
Ooh yes. I keep not looking that far up, it doesn't feel natural. Thanks.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 02, 2023, 06:19:03 AM
I wanted to upload a sample chapter from the rambling book I was writing before the current one began, but it's too big to attach. If anyone wants a copy, PM me with your email address and I'll send it on that way.

A few things to say about it, so you can decide if you'd like to read it or not.

1) It is written with an informed, intelligent and engaged readership in mind but not necessarily one with a deep knowledge of music. Some/much of the stuff I've written about will be well-known to most people on this site. However, even when I am engaged on describing something you probably already have a good understanding of - e.g. the differences between equal temperament and just intonation - I'm probably doing so for a weird reason, so stick with it!

2) Those weird reasons are generally to do with the idea of the metaphors that music can carry, which is the loose bracket under which all the chapters fall. In this chapter, for instance, I investigate some rare early examples of music which mixes equal temperament and just intonation at the same time, and the consequences this has for the metaphorical message the music may convey. Here, as in the rest of the book, I cover quite a lot of ground, some of it unexpected. This chapter, for instance, starts with an introduction to the issues, then jumps over Leopold Mozart, Brahms and Wagner before more lengthy sections on Ravel, Vaughan Williams and Britten. And then, for some reason, there's a long section which seems at first to only be tangentially connected to any of these, on the First World War. There are lots of footnotes to try to keep a few other loosely-connected ideas from flying off disregarded. In other words, there's nothing academic here, just the ramblings of someone who is very engaged with these subjects.

I hope it reads OK and is interesting and not too obvious!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 04, 2023, 02:20:42 PM
New avatar - the path leading to the sea, a few metres from Havergal Brian's penultimate home (I visited a number of his homes - six, I think; the last one, where he died, is half a mile from this one). It currently rejoices under the name The Dog's Danglies. Just one little juicy morsel from my discoveries...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 04, 2023, 02:49:11 PM
Quote from: Luke on March 04, 2023, 02:20:42 PMNew avatar - the path leading to the sea, a few metres from Havergal Brian's penultimate home (I visited a number of his homes - six, I think; the last one, where he died, is half a mile from this one). It currently rejoices under the name The Dog's Danglies. Just one little juicy morsel from my discoveries...
Hah!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on March 05, 2023, 06:01:57 AM
Quote from: Luke on March 02, 2023, 06:19:03 AMI wanted to upload a sample chapter from the rambling book I was writing before the current one began, but it's too big to attach. If anyone wants a copy, PM me with your email address and I'll send it on that way.

A few things to say about it, so you can decide if you'd like to read it or not.

1) It is written with an informed, intelligent and engaged readership in mind but not necessarily one with a deep knowledge of music. Some/much of the stuff I've written about will be well-known to most people on this site. However, even when I am engaged on describing something you probably already have a good understanding of - e.g. the differences between equal temperament and just intonation - I'm probably doing so for a weird reason, so stick with it!

2) Those weird reasons are generally to do with the idea of the metaphors that music can carry, which is the loose bracket under which all the chapters fall. In this chapter, for instance, I investigate some rare early examples of music which mixes equal temperament and just intonation at the same time, and the consequences this has for the metaphorical message the music may convey. Here, as in the rest of the book, I cover quite a lot of ground, some of it unexpected. This chapter, for instance, starts with an introduction to the issues, then jumps over Leopold Mozart, Brahms and Wagner before more lengthy sections on Ravel, Vaughan Williams and Britten. And then, for some reason, there's a long section which seems at first to only be tangentially connected to any of these, on the First World War. There are lots of footnotes to try to keep a few other loosely-connected ideas from flying off disregarded. In other words, there's nothing academic here, just the ramblings of someone who is very engaged with these subjects.

I hope it reads OK and is interesting and not too obvious!

Hi Luke!  Please include me! 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 08, 2023, 08:53:44 AM
...I think have finished the first draft of my book. Feels quite epic - it's been my all-consuming passion for over a year. Much work to do, but for now, I'm satisfied!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 08, 2023, 08:56:01 AM
Quote from: Luke on March 08, 2023, 08:53:44 AM...I think have finished the first draft of my book. Feels quite epic - it's been my all-consuming passion for over a year. Much work to do, but for now, I'm satisfied!
That's huge! Bravo!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on March 09, 2023, 05:20:13 AM
Quote from: Karl Tirebiter Henning on March 08, 2023, 08:56:01 AMThat's huge! Bravo!


Amen!  (And our Angel emoticon is still M.I.A.!)

Luke sent me an excerpt, which contains an excellent section on Ravel's orchestration and harmony!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 09, 2023, 06:55:25 AM
Quote from: Cato on March 09, 2023, 05:20:13 AMAmen!  (And our Angel emoticon is still M.I.A.!)

Luke sent me an excerpt, which contains an excellent section on Ravel's orchestration and harmony!

Ah, that's from the collection of about twenty such essays I was writing before, from 2021 to early 2022. This new book, the one for which I actually have a publishing contract, is the one about (British*) composers and place.


*and Mendelssohn
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on March 09, 2023, 07:24:15 AM
Quote from: Luke on March 09, 2023, 06:55:25 AMAh, that's from the collection of about twenty such essays I was writing before, from 2021 to early 2022. This new book, the one for which I actually have a publishing contract, is the one about (British*) composers and place.


*and Mendelssohn


Assuming that what you sent me is typical of the others, you have another possible book to offer your publisher!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 09, 2023, 12:05:24 PM
Hath the fair musick that all creatures made to their great Lord been broke? Rejoice, theefore!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 09, 2023, 12:13:54 PM
I smile to read of the musical bestiary, as it's only relatively recently that I've gotten around to listening to Hovhaness' And God Created Great Whales, which, back when I was a punky graduate student, I expected not to like. 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 09, 2023, 12:25:13 PM
"Ravel, the intermediate figure in the story of Stravinsky's little larceny." Sweet!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: VonStupp on March 09, 2023, 12:41:00 PM
Quote from: Karl Tirebiter Henning on March 09, 2023, 12:13:54 PMI smile to read of the musical bestiary, as it's only relatively recently that I've gotten around to listening to Hovhaness' And God Created Great Whales, which, back when I was a punky graduate student, I expected not to like.

At a University orchestra concert, I was put in charge of running the reel-to-reel of the whale sounds. The tape was very brittle, and it worried me every time I had to flip that big switch to play.
VS
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 09, 2023, 01:01:52 PM
Quote from: VonStupp on March 09, 2023, 12:41:00 PMAt a University orchestra concert, I was put in charge of running the reel-to-reel of the whale sounds. The tape was very brittle, and it worried me every time I had to flip that big switch to play.
VS

And, the wry contrast between the great powerful beasts and the frail magnetic tape!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: VonStupp on March 09, 2023, 01:04:54 PM
Quote from: Karl Tirebiter Henning on March 09, 2023, 01:01:52 PMAnd, the wry contrast between the great mighty beasts and the frail magnetic tape!

(https://em-content.zobj.net/source/noto-emoji-animations/344/face-with-tears-of-joy_1f602.gif)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on March 09, 2023, 04:09:18 PM
Quote from: VonStupp on March 09, 2023, 12:41:00 PMAt a University orchestra concert, I was put in charge of running the reel-to-reel of the whale sounds. The tape was very brittle, and it worried me every time I had to flip that big switch to play.
VS


Luke mentions in his essay how people seem to like instruments imitating sounds of Nature, rather than recordings of e.g. actual birds (rf. Respighi) or, in this case, whales.

Bowing a tam-tam with (perhaps) a cello or double-bass bow, might give you a kind of whale song!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: VonStupp on March 09, 2023, 04:50:51 PM
Quote from: Cato on March 09, 2023, 04:09:18 PMLuke mentions in his essay how people seem to like instruments imitating sounds of Nature, rather than recordings of e.g. actual birds (rf. Respighi) or, in this case, whales.

Bowing a tam-tam with (perhaps) a cello or double-bass bow, might give you a kind of whale song!
Could have worked, although I would have to check the score on what Hovhaness requires. I may give a quick try on a tam-tam next week to see if I can make it work, as my curiosity is piqued.

I had imagined that the reel-to-reel came with the score, but (and since it was long ago) now I am not so sure. The conductor was rather persnickety about such things, so I doubt an instrument would have sufficed for that performance.
VS
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 09, 2023, 05:09:45 PM
Quote from: VonStupp on March 09, 2023, 04:50:51 PMCould have worked, although I would have to check the score on what Hovhaness requires. I may give a quick try next week to see if I can make it work, as my curiosity is piqued.

I had imagined that the reel-to-reel came with the score, but (and since it was long ago) now I am not so sure. The conductor was rather persnickety about such things, so I doubt an instrument would have sufficed.
VS

My understanding is that it is prerecorded whale song. I am sure, though, that Hovhaness would have been game to score a "mock whale song." IIRC, André Kostelanetz commissioned the piece, and the incorporation of genuine whale song was a stipulation. 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 09, 2023, 10:14:28 PM
Am I very slow, or did I miss something? How did we get onto whales?  ???  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on March 10, 2023, 04:31:33 AM
Quote from: Luke on March 09, 2023, 10:14:28 PMAm I very slow, or did I miss something? How did we get onto whales?  ???  ;D


See Karl's comment on a "Musical Bestiary" on the previous page!  ;)


Quote from: VonStupp on March 09, 2023, 04:50:51 PMCould have worked, although I would have to check the score on what Hovhaness requires. I may give a quick try on a tam-tam next week to see if I can make it work, as my curiosity is piqued.



I think it will work, but you never know!  Yes, please let us know what happens!  You might need to tap the tam-tam to get it going, before stroking it with the bow.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 10, 2023, 05:14:37 AM
Quote from: Cato on March 10, 2023, 04:31:33 AMSee Karl's comment on a "Musical Bestiary" on the previous page!  ;)

Yes, that's what I was confused by! Where did that come from? I was thinking, is it something I wrote and have forgotten about? More than likely!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 10, 2023, 06:42:22 AM
Quote from: Luke on March 09, 2023, 10:14:28 PMAm I very slow, or did I miss something? How did we get onto whales?  ???  ;D
I doubt you're slow, but I was (perhaps characteristically) elliptical. I glided from your chapter's Music & Nature musings, Respighi's provocative expectation of disapproval of his prerecorded nightingale to the whale song in the Hovhaness piece.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 10, 2023, 06:43:32 AM
Quote from: Luke on March 10, 2023, 05:14:37 AMYes, that's what I was confused by! Where did that come from? I was thinking, is it something I wrote and have forgotten about? More than likely!
I should have allowed for that, knowing how little familiar I have been with things written long since ....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 10, 2023, 06:54:36 AM
That may well mean that my PM, too was annoyingly elliptical. Sorry!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 10, 2023, 07:06:20 AM
No problem on any of it!

Yes, it was just a passing observation (though tangentially linked to the nature/artifice element of the subject of that chapter), that Respighi's (and indeed Hovhaness') use of the sounds of real animals in their music has proved more controversial than Beethoven and Wagner and etc's use of imitation ones. Somewhat reminiscent of the old wind machine debate of yore (does anyone still remember that one?).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on March 10, 2023, 07:13:58 AM
Quote from: Luke on March 10, 2023, 07:06:20 AMNo problem on any of it!

Yes, it was just a passing observation (though tangentially linked to the nature/artifice element of the subject of that chapter), that Respighi's (and indeed Hovhaness') use of the sounds of real animals in their music has proved more controversial than Beethoven and Wagner and etc's use of imitation ones. Somewhat reminiscent of the old wind machine debate of yore (does anyone still remember that one?).

Oh yes!  I remember Leonard Bernstein talking about it in one of his concert talks.

We await Von Stupp's results with a tam-tam and bow to imitate whale songs!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 10, 2023, 07:24:00 AM
There's always George Crumb's attempt, in Vox Balaenae...


It's not totally convincing, but I'm not sure it's meant to be...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 10, 2023, 08:06:45 AM
Quote from: Karl Tirebiter Henning on March 10, 2023, 06:42:22 AMI doubt you're slow, but I was (perhaps characteristically) elliptical. I glided from your chapter's Music & Nature musings, Respighi's provocative expectation of disapproval of his prerecorded nightingale to the whale song in the Hovhaness piece.

BTW this has now filled my head with visions of a humpback perched in the pines of the Janiculum...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 10, 2023, 08:59:16 AM
Quote from: Luke on March 10, 2023, 08:06:45 AMBTW this has now filled my head with visions of a humpback perched in the pines of the Janiculum...
Mash-up!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 10, 2023, 10:48:50 AM
Cross-post:

Even when I was composing more, and a voice at my elbow hints, Yes, composing at all would be more, it has been rare for me to dream of composing. The final of my dream episodes saw me setting to work (I even saw MS. paper as I orchestrated the first two chords) on a sarcastic piece which was to consist entirely of authentic cadences. I was even, for some mysterious reason, going to title it As I Was Walking Down the Street ... which at least @Cato will know for the opening line of "Buffalo Gals." The real random head-scratcher bit though is that I told someone that I got the idea for the piece from the essay/chapter which @Luke recently sent me.  I'm just home from PT, and therefore about to take my post-therapy nap, but when my brain is ready, of course the question I shall consider is, Could one really carry such a piece off?...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on March 10, 2023, 11:48:21 AM
Quote from: Luke on March 10, 2023, 08:06:45 AMBTW this has now filled my head with visions of a humpback perched in the pines of the Janiculum...
 

Dude!  The Whales of Rome!    8)    Sounds to me like an all-around fave!  Do it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 10, 2023, 12:02:00 PM
The Minke of the Appian Way....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 10, 2023, 12:05:01 PM
Quote from: Karl Tirebiter Henning on March 10, 2023, 10:48:50 AM...a sarcastic piece which was to consist entirely of authentic cadences...

Not as odd as you think...

Quote from: Gavin Bryars...an unrealised project involved making an orchestral piece entirely of chords of F Major in shifting voicings and orchestrations taken from the endings of a wide range of orchestral music

Note, though - unrealised.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 10, 2023, 12:06:10 PM
Quote from: Karl Tirebiter Henning on March 10, 2023, 10:48:50 AMThe real random head-scratcher bit though is that I told someone that I got the idea for the piece from the essay/chapter which @Luke recently sent me.

That is really bizarre!!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on March 10, 2023, 12:51:07 PM
Quote from: Karl Tirebiter Henning on March 10, 2023, 10:48:50 AMCross-post:

Even when I was composing more, and a voice at my elbow hints, Yes, composing at all would be more, it has been rare for me to dream of composing. The final of my dream episodes saw me setting to work (I even saw MS. paper as I orchestrated the first two chords) on a sarcastic piece which was to consist entirely of authentic cadences. I was even, for some mysterious reason, going to title it As I Was Walking Down the Street ... which at least @Cato will know for the opening line of "Buffalo Gals." The real random head-scratcher bit though is that I told someone that I got the idea for the piece from the essay/chapter which @Luke recently sent me.  I'm just home from PT, and therefore about to take my post-therapy nap, but when my brain is ready, of course the question I shall consider is, Could one really carry such a piece off?...


The answer to the question at the end is: YES!


Some years ago, perhaps through some here at GMG, I came across a work based upon cadences.

Many Many Cadences in fact!   ;)


Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 10, 2023, 01:00:20 PM
Fascinating stuff! Listening now...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 10, 2023, 02:48:53 PM
Quote from: Luke on March 02, 2023, 06:19:03 AMI wanted to upload a sample chapter from the rambling book I was writing before the current one began, but it's too big to attach. If anyone wants a copy, PM me with your email address and I'll send it on that way.

A few things to say about it, so you can decide if you'd like to read it or not.

1) It is written with an informed, intelligent and engaged readership in mind but not necessarily one with a deep knowledge of music. Some/much of the stuff I've written about will be well-known to most people on this site. However, even when I am engaged on describing something you probably already have a good understanding of - e.g. the differences between equal temperament and just intonation - I'm probably doing so for a weird reason, so stick with it!

2) Those weird reasons are generally to do with the idea of the metaphors that music can carry, which is the loose bracket under which all the chapters fall. In this chapter, for instance, I investigate some rare early examples of music which mixes equal temperament and just intonation at the same time, and the consequences this has for the metaphorical message the music may convey. Here, as in the rest of the book, I cover quite a lot of ground, some of it unexpected. This chapter, for instance, starts with an introduction to the issues, then jumps over Leopold Mozart, Brahms and Wagner before more lengthy sections on Ravel, Vaughan Williams and Britten. And then, for some reason, there's a long section which seems at first to only be tangentially connected to any of these, on the First World War. There are lots of footnotes to try to keep a few other loosely-connected ideas from flying off disregarded. In other words, there's nothing academic here, just the ramblings of someone who is very engaged with these subjects.

I hope it reads OK and is interesting and not too obvious!
It all reads splendidly all through. Engaging even where you are "covering old ground," so to speak. I need to go back and pick it back up at RVW (which delay is all about my reading pace these days, and no reflection on your writing.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 10, 2023, 02:50:52 PM
Quote from: VonStupp on March 09, 2023, 01:04:54 PM(https://em-content.zobj.net/source/noto-emoji-animations/344/face-with-tears-of-joy_1f602.gif)
Hey! I see that emoticon!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 10, 2023, 02:54:36 PM
Quote from: Luke on March 10, 2023, 07:06:20 AMSomewhat reminiscent of the old wind machine debate of yore (does anyone still remember that one?).
Remember it? Why. its grandson has emerged in the RVW thread (in a way) viz. a recent recording which employs, not the wind machine, but a recording of wind.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 10, 2023, 02:57:43 PM
Quote from: Cato on March 10, 2023, 11:48:21 AMDude!  The Whales of Rome!    8)    Sounds to me like an all-around fave!  Do it!
Le Balene di Roma. We wants 'em!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: VonStupp on March 10, 2023, 05:34:42 PM
Quote from: Karl Tirebiter Henning on March 10, 2023, 02:50:52 PMHey! I see that emoticon!
I was looking for a laugh and couldn't find one, so I copied and pasted from the www.

(https://media.tenor.com/oUhSuqyoPSAAAAAC/emoji-melting-face.gif)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 21, 2023, 02:22:19 PM
Though I didn't really compose anything of note in all the time I was away* I spent a bit of time collecting some of my music into neat little PDF packages. Here, for instance, is a file with the scores of the three one movement piano sonatas I wrote between 2007-10. There are other collections in the same 'format,' of various groups of pieces.



*I have written a lot of bespoke music for the school orchestra of my school, and as it gets played in various concerts, events and music festivals, it's been performed far more than anything else I've ever written! Its weird to hear the kids singing my tunes as I walk around the school and feeling both proud and depressed about it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 21, 2023, 02:27:01 PM
Here in one file the 20 'Improvisations' I wrote in a short burst in 2003. Each one composed under very specific conditions in just a few minutes. Some are a little gauche but the impetus was strong behind them all. Seemed so easy at the time, but I can't do it now!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 21, 2023, 02:34:20 PM
Here are various otherwise disparate pieces for piano, from 1990-2008. Some are completed and quite complex, some are little more than tiny sketches of simple ideas. It should be pretty clear which are which. The 1990 is my first proper composition, in that I still quite like it. The Interlude is extracted from the Four Paz Songs, thus its briefly interpolated vocal line.

Oh, there's a misprint at the beginning of Sunlight and Stillness. Imagine the first rest and barline aren't there...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 21, 2023, 02:37:36 PM
Night Music, three tiny clavichord pieces
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on March 24, 2023, 02:22:54 PM
Hi Luke!

Great to hear from you again!

I have downloaded your scores and intend to send them to a former student, who is now a Professor of Piano at a university in the state of Indiana (next door (west) to Ohio).

He is a specialist in Chopin and Liszt, but I think he could be open to your works.

We shall see!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 26, 2023, 01:44:45 PM
Very interested to hear....!

Here's another little collection: Christmas music written for the girls at one of my schools a few years ago. Soft-centred stuff but essentially in the same style and using the same techniques as my music for adults.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on March 26, 2023, 01:56:27 PM
Quote from: Luke on March 26, 2023, 01:44:45 PMVery interested to hear....!

Here's another little collection: Christmas music written for the girls at one of my schools a few years ago. Soft-centred stuff but essentially in the same style and using the same techniques as my music for adults.
Oh, I'll have a look on behalf of my church choir. 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on March 27, 2023, 12:23:26 AM
Typos.....arggggh! Bar 3 of the second system. Where did that come from? Bar 8, too. A glitch somewhere. Annoying. I'll get the fine-tooth comb out....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 04, 2023, 08:34:11 AM
I have sent my book for a read-through by Daniel Grimley, author of Delius and the Sense of Place and also a leading expert on Elgar, RVW and the big Scandi guys. He's professor of music at Oxford, but also a friend from my own university days. Also, today, emailed Judith Weir and Gavin Bryars, who are important in it, so we'll see if that leads to anything.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 05, 2023, 05:15:00 AM
Gavin Bryars replied with a charming email, so I have just sent him the relevant pages of my book. Hope he approves!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on April 05, 2023, 07:10:52 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 05, 2023, 05:15:00 AMGavin Bryars replied with a charming email, so I have just sent him the relevant pages of my book. Hope he approves!
Brilliant!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 05, 2023, 09:42:45 AM
He's read it and replied. Forgive me quoting his first paragraph. It's left me a bit overwhelmed:

Quote from: Gavin BryarsThank you very much for sending the extract about Goole (and me) from your forthcoming book. If the rest of the book is as good as this it will be a masterpiece. You write very beautifully and evocatively. Perhaps I am predisposed to feel that way as the subject matter is so familiar, but I think it's more than that.

A really lovely email that I will treasure.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on April 05, 2023, 09:51:00 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 05, 2023, 09:42:45 AMHe's read it and replied. Forgive me quoting his first paragraph. It's left me a bit overwhelmed:

A really lovely email that I will treasure.
Beautifully and evocatively, indeed!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Papy Oli on April 05, 2023, 09:56:30 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 05, 2023, 09:42:45 AMHe's read it and replied. Forgive me quoting his first paragraph. It's left me a bit overwhelmed:

A really lovely email that I will treasure.

Great response to receive, Luke!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 05, 2023, 10:05:03 AM
Certainly is. I didn't want to get this bit wrong, so I am delighted he approves.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on April 05, 2023, 10:26:53 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 05, 2023, 10:05:03 AMCertainly is. I didn't want to get this bit wrong, so I am delighted he approves.
And not only confirmation of the material, but points for style!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 12, 2023, 01:30:51 AM
This is probably better on a General board, but I'd rather keep it here for now -

I wonder if I could pool the group's knowledge to see if anyone can suggest things I might not have covered for (you guessed it) my book about landscape and place in British music. I should stress, I'm talking not about any piece with a topographical name but music which was specifically inspired by or connected to the composer's presence in a particular landscape or location. E.g Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony, (whose opening was inspired by an evening in the Abbey of Holyrood Palace), but not Haydn's Oxford Symphony (named thusly because it was performed at the composer's Doctorate ceremony).

The specific area I'm interested in right now is early examples of this sort of thing – anything pre-1830. British or not. Any ideas?

 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on April 12, 2023, 06:03:38 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 12, 2023, 01:30:51 AMThis is probably better on a General board, but I'd rather keep it here for now -
I wonder if I could pool the group's knowledge to see if anyone can suggest things I might not have covered for (you guessed it) my book about landscape and place in British music. I should stress, I'm talking not about any piece with a topographical name but music which was specifically inspired by or connected to the composer's presence in a particular landscape or location. E.g Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony, (whose opening was inspired by an evening in the Abbey of Holyrood Palace), but not Haydn's Oxford Symphony (named thusly because it was performed at the composer's Doctorate ceremony).
The specific area I'm interested in right now is early examples of this sort of thing – anything pre-1830. British or not. Any ideas?

 
A piece which Cesar put me onto, Ernst Toch's Big Ben: Fantasy-Variations on the Westminster Chimes, Op. 62 he wrote in exile, in 1934, I wonder if in fact he was in London at the time.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 12, 2023, 07:08:24 AM
Thanks, Karl. That looks like a fun piece! What I'm looking for is older though - any examples from before 1830? (The Mendelssohn excluded)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Florestan on April 12, 2023, 07:46:01 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 12, 2023, 07:08:24 AMThanks, Karl. That looks like a fun piece! What I'm looking for is older though - any examples from before 1830? (The Mendelssohn excluded)

I performed a quick Google search and alas! it retrieved nothing at all. Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure there must have been some English or expat composers active in England at the time who wrote songs and ballads inspired by the places they lived in or visited. Have you digged this mine or are you interested in orchestral music only?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 12, 2023, 07:57:32 AM
Quote from: Florestan on April 12, 2023, 07:46:01 AMI performed a quick Google search and alas! it retrieved nothing at all. Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure there must have been some English or expat composers active in England at the time who wrote songs and ballads inspired by the places they lived in or visited. Have you digged this mine or are you interested in orchestral music only?

Thank you! I'm interested in everything, although textless pieces keep it 'purer' because the line is simpler: place-leads-to-music as opposed to place-leads-to-poem (which-then-has-music-attached). The truth is, I suspect there is nothing, as it's a very 'Romantic' way to write. But nevertheless it's surprising that there's so little before 1829 (I've possibly found some scraps but nothing more)

(There are of course examples of composers who went for walks in the countryside around their homes and came back bursting with music, Beethoven being the most obvious example, or Gluck, who supposedly composed his Orpheus at a piano he had had brought outside, but that's not quite the same thing)

Finding nothing would not be a failure, it would in fact help clarify my argument, but I don't want to miss something obvious, or even not-so-obvious.  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Florestan on April 12, 2023, 08:04:43 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 12, 2023, 07:57:32 AMThank you! I'm interested in everything, although textless pieces keep it 'purer' because the line is simpler: place-leads-to-music as opposed to place-leads-to-poem (which-then-has-music-attached). The truth is, I suspect there is nothing, as it's a very 'Romantic' way to write. But nevertheless it's surprising that there's so little before 1829 (I've possibly found some scraps but nothing more)

(There are of course examples of composers who went for walks in the countryside around their homes and came back bursting with music, Beethoven being the most obvious example, or Gluck, who supposedly composed his Orpheus at a piano he had had brought outside, but that's not quite the same thing)

Finding nothing would not be a failure, it would in fact help clarify my argument, but I don't want to miss something obvious, or even not-so-obvious.  :)

To the bolded phrase: that is my impression too. Still, I would check the solo piano music written at that time, I'd be surprised if there wasn't anything of interest. After all, 1800-1830 is within the timeframe of Early Romanticism, so something should pop up, methinks.

Anyway, good luck with your book, it certainly looks like something I would greatly enjoy reading.

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 12, 2023, 08:14:40 AM
Again, thanks. That's how my thoughts tend, too. But I've been investigating in every nook and cranny I can think of (solo piano is actually where I go first, because it tends to be where composers do their initial experimenting - the sketch before the oil painting) but can't find anything. In fact, there probably were such pieces, or such inspirational moments, I should say, but then the composers seem to have gone home, tidied them up and called them sonatas (or whatever) or generic things like 'The River' making the original moment, if there was one, hard to trace! It surprises me that I've found nothing, though - I've been working on the book for a long time, and I'm convinced I've missed something obvious, but it doesn't seem so. I'm getting to the very end, which is why I'm trying to make sure by asking you guys to flick through your own pooled knowledge. It's much appreciated.

But if 1829 is the earliest example, it makes Mendelssohn a more revolutionary composer than his mild manner suggests!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Florestan on April 12, 2023, 08:22:08 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 12, 2023, 08:14:40 AMAgain, thanks. That's how my thoughts tend, too. But I've been investigating in every book and cranny I can think of (solo piano is actually where I go first) but can't find anything. In fact, there probably were such pieces, or such inspirational moments, I should say, but then the composers seem to have gone home, tidied them up and called them sonatas (or whatever) making them hard to find! It surprises me that I've found nothing - I've been working on the book for a long time, and im convinced I've missed something obvious, but it doesn't seem so.

Which makes Mendelssohn a more significant composer than his mild manner suggests!

Indeed. His Scottish Piano Fantasies are inspired by any particular places, or are they just generic?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 12, 2023, 08:31:00 AM
The Scottish piano pieces don't seem to have any specific sources - but the Welsh ones do (the Caprices, op 16). Everyone forgets them - I did, too - but they're actually the first such pieces he completed. The Scottish Symphony and The Hebrides were inspired a few days earlier, but written later. Much later, in the case of the Symphony, whose opening is, however, prefigured in the first of the Caprices - compare the first seconds of

....
...

and...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on April 12, 2023, 08:59:04 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 12, 2023, 08:31:00 AMThe Scottish piano pieces don't seem to have any specific sources - but the Welsh ones do (the Caprices, op 16). Everyone forgets them - I did, too - but they're actually the first such pieces he completed. The Scottish Symphony and The Hebrides were inspired a few days earlier, but written later. Much later, in the case of the Symphony, whose opening is, however, prefigured in the first of the Caprices - compare the first seconds of

....
...

and...
Most interesting.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 12, 2023, 09:13:18 AM
Yes, it's interesting, because the idea for the opening of the Symphony was the first such idea we know of - springing up on him in that ruined cloister on a dusky evening in late August. But its echoes are still there a few weeks later, in Wales - and that's where we first hear them. That Welsh piece had its own 'inspirational source' - all three of them did, connected to the house he was staying at in Flintshire (and to the daughters of the house) - but the Scottish thing seems to be mixed up in it too.

The picture is from my visit to Holyrood abbey in February, the spot where the beginning of the Scottish Symphony came to Mendelssohn...   

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 12, 2023, 09:16:34 AM
...and this, taken a few days later, is the rivulet in the Welsh village of Rhydymwyn which is (most likely) the inspiration for the third Caprice, op 16/3
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 13, 2023, 08:01:43 AM
Having received a positive reply, the complete book has now been sent to Daniel Jaffe, too (critic/author, previously of this parish, which is where we 'met'). 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 13, 2023, 08:07:07 AM
On a related note, the original purpose of the book was some kind of therapy, working on the conceit that, by being in those places where music came to great figures, I might be able to get my own stalled compositional engine going too. And it (sort of, kind of, ish) worked, in that I was finally able to write over a couple of lines without screwing it up and throwing it away. That hadn't happened for years. This week, including this morning, I've been able to do a bit more - just a page or so, but I don't hate it, and that is progress. Perhaps it's coming back, in dribs and drabs.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on April 13, 2023, 08:08:41 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 13, 2023, 08:07:07 AMOn a related note, the original purpose of the book was some kind of therapy, working on the conceit that, by being in those places where music came to great figures, I might be able to get my own stalled compositional engine going too. And it (sort of, kind of, ish) worked, in that I was finally able to write over a couple of lines without screwing it up and throwing it away. That hadn't happened for years. This week, including this morning, I've been able to do a bit more - just a page or so, but I don't hate it, and that is progress. Perhaps it's coming back, in dribs and drabs.
That's the ticket! Accept the incremental progress!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 13, 2023, 08:14:10 AM
No! I want a Gothic-shaming megasymphony NOW!  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on April 13, 2023, 08:24:45 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 13, 2023, 08:14:10 AMNo! I want a Gothic-shaming megasymphony NOW!  ;D
Nothing wrong with wild ambitions, I reckon....
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on April 13, 2023, 09:20:12 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 13, 2023, 08:14:10 AMNo! I want a Gothic-shaming megasymphony NOW!  ;D


YES!  It is about time!  :D

Something BIG and DRAMATIC!

How about: The Tragedy of Satan in Las Vegas    >:D  >:D  >:D


If you don't like Las Vegas, you could pick another place whose EVIL is even worse, like Poughkeepsie!   :o

Quote from: Luke on April 13, 2023, 08:07:07 AM...I was finally able to write over a couple of lines without screwing it up and throwing it away. That hadn't happened for years. This week, including this morning, I've been able to do a bit more - just a page or so, but I don't hate it, and that is progress. Perhaps it's coming back, in dribs and drabs.


Excellent news, Luke!!!

I will repeat: I have considered your works proof that you are one of England's finest composers right now!

Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on April 13, 2023, 09:32:44 AM
Quote from: Cato on April 13, 2023, 09:20:12 AMHow about: The Tragedy of Satan in Las Vegas 
With the interpolated ballet, Dance of the Chips! We wants it!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on April 13, 2023, 10:05:43 AM
Quote from: Karl Henning on April 13, 2023, 09:32:44 AMWith the interpolated ballet, Dance of the Chips! We wants it!


That would be AWESOME!  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on April 13, 2023, 10:07:22 AM
It seems to be the day for getting replies to emails - Gavin Bryars and Daniel Grimley replied last week, but today I've heard first from Daniel Jaffe and, just now, a really touching email from Judith Weir.  :)  :)  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on April 13, 2023, 10:09:15 AM
Quote from: Luke on April 13, 2023, 10:07:22 AMIt seems to be the day for getting replies to emails - Gavin Bryars and Daniel Grimley replied last week, but today I've heard first from Daniel Jaffe and, just now, a really touching email from Judith Weir.  :)  :)  :)
Splendid!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on April 21, 2023, 04:29:04 PM
In case this may be of interest:

Greetings, composers!

I wanted to let everyone know that my project for next year is launching today. In conjunction with Composer's Voice and their "15 Minutes of Fame" project, I am opening a call entitled "Fifteen Minutes of Meditation and Contemplation", looking for one-minute compositions for the taishogoto, an instrument invented in Japan in the early 20th century. The full details of the call can be found here:

http://www.musicavatar.org/categories/Fifteen-Minutes-of-Meditation-and-Contemplation-Featuring-David-Bohn/index.html

In conjunction with this, I have made a video describing and demonstrating the taishogoto, which can be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVeCEKGN9KU

~ David Bohn
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 23, 2023, 02:18:11 AM
Slowly trying to work my way through acquiring permission to quote all sorts of things for the book, and also to reproduce some pictures. It's a HUGE job, and forcing me to rewrite certain bits, when the cost of quoting 20 words seems extortionate and avoidable. But find other ways of saying things isn't necessarily a bad thing.

More to the point, the process has seen me get in an email exchange with Lewis Foreman, the writer of all sorts of cool things including the great Bax biography.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on May 27, 2023, 05:02:31 AM
Great, very helpful and very encouraging response to my book from Daniel Grimley today. Really touched to receive it.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on June 04, 2023, 09:05:28 PM
Still in the stressful process of applying for permissions to use quotations in my book, I wrote to the conductor Christoph Schlüren, who had written some words on Foulds' April-England i want to quote. He replied not only with permission but also with digital copies of the scores to the piece in both piano and orchestral versions (I had the former but not the latter) and with an offer to read the whole manuscript through for me.

People are so kind!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on June 05, 2023, 06:49:51 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 04, 2023, 09:05:28 PMStill in the stressful process of applying for permissions to use quotations in my book, I wrote to the conductor Christoph Schlüren, who had written some words on Foulds' April-England i want to quote. He replied not only with permission but also with digital copies of the scores to the piece in both piano and orchestral versions (I had the former but not the latter) and with an offer to read the whole manuscript through for me.

People are so kind!
Superb!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on June 05, 2023, 07:17:15 AM
Quote from: Luke on June 04, 2023, 09:05:28 PMStill in the stressful process of applying for permissions to use quotations in my book, I wrote to the conductor Christoph Schlüren, who had written some words on Foulds' April-England i want to quote. He replied not only with permission but also with digital copies of the scores to the piece in both piano and orchestral versions (I had the former but not the latter) and with an offer to read the whole manuscript through for me.

People are so kind!


Excellent News!

Here is the work:



Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 13, 2023, 01:24:21 PM
Quote from: Luke on June 04, 2023, 09:05:28 PMStill in the stressful process of applying for permissions to use quotations in my book, I wrote to the conductor Christoph Schlüren, who had written some words on Foulds' April-England i want to quote. He replied not only with permission but also with digital copies of the scores to the piece in both piano and orchestral versions (I had the former but not the latter) and with an offer to read the whole manuscript through for me.

People are so kind!


Greetings LUKE!

I am simply hoping for an update on your activities!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on July 13, 2023, 01:29:45 PM
As am I!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on July 22, 2023, 08:50:39 AM
Quote from: Cato on July 13, 2023, 01:24:21 PMGreetings LUKE!

I am simply hoping for an update on your activities!

Oh, same as before. Deadline to get the completed manuscript to him, all permissions granted, is September. Sorry I've been away for a bit. The end of term was ridiculously hectic.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on July 22, 2023, 11:19:53 AM
Quote from: Luke on July 22, 2023, 08:50:39 AMOh, same as before. Deadline to get the completed manuscript to him, all permissions granted, is September. Sorry I've been away for a bit. The end of term was ridiculously hectic.


Many thanks for the news! 

I remember the ends of school years: I usually needed a a day or two of the vacation to take care of my classroom, especially if my (schmuck of a) principal scheduled meetings for us right after the kids were gone on their vacations!

Best Wishes on the book!  If you have any composition news, that would be very welcome!  😇
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on August 26, 2023, 02:16:26 PM
LUKE!

I see that you have visited today!

Please give us an update of some sort!   :D

Best Wishes!

"Cato"
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on September 12, 2023, 04:32:44 PM
Quote from: Cato on August 26, 2023, 02:16:26 PMPlease give us an update of some sort!  :D


Yes, I'm sorry, I've been rather absent for a while. My wife has not been well and looking after has taken me away from my usual online time.

Yesterday I was, however, finally  able to get the final draft of my book off to my editor, who hasn't seen anything of the revisions I have been making to it in the last months; tonight he replied with an email beginning:

QuoteAbsolutely beautiful, Luke:

What a stunning piece of work. It was so before, when I saw it in the rough; it's even more so now.

Getting down to technicalities, you have taken such pains over the text that I don't think it needs copy editing and so I have immediately laid it out on the page and started the typesetting—really as an exercise for myself, but also to give to you as an early gift.

What I am especially delighted by is that what I thought would be a problem—your insistence on Roman and italic for the two narratives—turns out not to be a problem at all. Normally, I simply refuse to oscillate between fonts; young writers love it and I find it modish and juvenile when the job of different voices is given to the typeface instead of the writing—but in your case I completely see the logic...

[some technical issues]

Anyway, I think it's looking terrific and can't wait to typeset the rest of it. Well done. I think we'll try for April publication—but don't hold me to it.

...which is all very pleasing and confidence-boosting.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on September 12, 2023, 04:42:06 PM
Best wishes to you and ta femme! Good to hear the publisher news!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on September 13, 2023, 01:25:33 PM
Quote from: Luke on September 12, 2023, 04:32:44 PMYes, I'm sorry, I've been rather absent for a while. My wife has not been well and looking after has taken me away from my usual online time.

Yesterday I was, however, finally  able to get the final draft of my book off to my editor, who hasn't seen anything of the revisions I have been making to it in the last months; tonight he replied with an email beginning:

...which is all very pleasing and confidence-boosting.

Thank you for responding!

And the above - except for your wife not being in the best health - is excellent news!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 01, 2023, 09:15:25 AM
Spotted on the Guardian's minute-by-minute updates on the ongoing Women's Super League match between Chelsea and Spurs:

QuoteCarter is robbed by Bizet, who moves into the area but can't decide whether to shoot or try to find Thomas.

Elliott, Georges and Ambroise, I assume.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Guido on October 22, 2023, 03:47:56 PM
I rarely visit GMG these days - maybe once a year, chiefly to check if Luke is back! And oh boy was I rewarded this year. Was so delighted to read of the last 8 months of progress on this book of yours (and very intrigued by your "Essays and diversions" style book too! ;) )

I can't wait to read both!

I'm just over the moon that you have done something so significant, and even managed to put together a few notes on the page too.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on October 24, 2023, 03:13:38 PM
Wow, wonderful to see you Guido! That's made my day (checks clock and sees that we're only ten minutes into the day, but you know what I mean!).

I've not been here much myself for the last few months, things have been bad with Philippa's health and with the care she needs I've not really had time for much online activity. But she'll get better, which is the main thing, and then I will be about more again. I hope you return.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on October 28, 2023, 12:52:34 PM
Quote from: Luke on October 24, 2023, 03:13:38 PMWow, wonderful to see you Guido! That's made my day (checks clock and sees that we're only ten minutes into the day, but you know what I mean!).

I've not been here much myself for the last few months, things have been bad with Philippa's health and with the care she needs I've not really had time for much online activity. But she'll get better, which is the main thing, and then I will be about more again. I hope you return.



Greetings Luke!

Thanks for visiting GMG!  We all hope that your wife becomes healthy again very soon!

April for the publication of your book!  Excellent!

I have finished Book I of my new novel about characters surviving in the Danube frontier of the Roman Empire c. A.D. 430-460.  And I believe I told you about the completion of my trilogy about the curious Professor Admee (From the Caves of the Cloud, From the Temples of the Cloud, From the Deserts of the Cloud).

Health issues of a family member (my sister, dying slowly of three kinds of cancer) have also affected how much time I have for things outside of traveling to her and dealing with her estate.  You see, her husband cannot do much, for he is also dying slowly, but from five kinds of cancer! 

So, I think of Music quite often, but the time and opportunities for concentrating on something are not yet available.

I still consider you to be one of England's top composers alive today!

Best Wishes!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on October 28, 2023, 01:29:34 PM
Quote from: Cato on October 28, 2023, 12:52:34 PMAnd I believe I told you about the completion of my trilogy about the curious Professor Admee
I'm a fan of the irascible Professor!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on January 02, 2024, 06:10:00 AM
Hello LUKE!!! 




Could you hear that?!   ;D

Let us know how things are going with your book and music!

Happy New Year and we hope you had a Merry Christmas!

😇
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 23, 2024, 02:27:26 PM
Hi Leo - and everyone else! I'm sorry not to have been around much - the reason is as it was before i.e. my wife's condition, which has not improved and which requires most of my time and which makes me rather unpindownable. I didn't even see this message until this evening.

The book is all go ahead - a little miscommunication between my editor and me has put it back to June (and maybe later) but it is at least listed on Amazon now...

https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Place-Personal-Britains-Inspiring/dp/1915023181

...albeit with my name misspelt and a horrible subtitle which doesn't represent the book at all. Both have now been corrected, but apparently it takes a little time for 'the bots' to sort it all out. We'll see.

Nothing composed for far too many years (although at least I got a book out of my compositional block  ;)  ;D  ) but I think maybe I should try for an Extremely Long Piano Composition. There was one I had in my plans all those years ago, maybe I should dust it down...  ;D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on January 23, 2024, 02:58:13 PM
Quote from: Luke on January 23, 2024, 02:27:26 PMbut I think maybe I should try for an Extremely Long Piano Composition. There was one I had in my plans all those years ago, maybe I should dust it down.
Cool! Maybe 'tis time.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on January 23, 2024, 03:29:27 PM
Quote from: Luke on January 23, 2024, 02:27:26 PMHi Leo - and everyone else! I'm sorry not to have been around much - the reason is as it was before i.e. my wife's condition, which has not improved and which requires most of my time and which makes me rather unpindownable. I didn't even see this message until this evening.

The book is all go ahead - a little miscommunication between my editor and me has put it back to June (and maybe later) but it is at least listed on Amazon now...

https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Place-Personal-Britains-Inspiring/dp/1915023181

...albeit with my name misspelt and a horrible subtitle which doesn't represent the book at all. Both have now been corrected, but apparently it takes a little time for 'the bots' to sort it all out. We'll see.

Nothing composed for far too many years (although at least I got a book out of my compositional block  ;)  ;D  ) but I think maybe I should try for an Extremely Long Piano Composition. There was one I had in my plans all those years ago, maybe I should dust it down...  ;D


Best Wishes to you and your wife, and we will remember both of you in our prayers!

And another YES to Luke Ottevanger's latest opus, The Extremely Long Piano Composition
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on January 29, 2024, 11:25:42 AM
Quote from: Luke on January 29, 2024, 11:21:07 AMI'm enjoying musing on those questions, mind you. I don't think a locking is necessary, though I'd love to discuss examples of these monster works in musical detail some more. As a composer (which once upon a time I thought I was) miniatures came relatively easily to me, but I never managed a convincing piece that was more than about 10 minutes.* This thread has got me thinking about trying to attempt something much larger, and I was even writing down some tentative (verbal) ideas today. So I've enjoyed it so far.


*I had a plan for one but it never came to anything - it's still sitting on my piano, yellow with age and pencil faded...

This - which I just posted on the Extremely Long Thread About Extremely Long Piano Pieces - What Is The Point? thread - is relevant here too, I suppose.

But will it come to anything? Doubt it...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Florestan on February 01, 2024, 12:59:04 AM
Quote from: Luke on January 29, 2024, 11:25:42 AMwill it come to anything? Doubt it...

When you start composing, do you usually have in mind an approximate duration of the piece or is it something that comes along writing it? (I don't mean this particular piece you envisage, but in general).
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 01, 2024, 01:48:40 AM
Quote from: Florestan on February 01, 2024, 12:59:04 AMWhen you start composing, do you usually have in mind an approximate duration of the piece or is it something that comes along writing it? (I don't mean this particular piece you envisage, but in general).

That's a really interesting question. I cannot recall ever writing something where I was unsure of its endpoint both in terms of how it would end and when. I always knew the miniatures would end up that way - and they're a large part of what I've written. And with larger works - e.g. orchestral ones - they've been planned from the start with an overall duration and the duration of the various subsections in mind - not to the second or even the minute, of course, but in general. It's almost more about 'weighing the music in my mind, though, seeing how it feels, how it balances, which is not quite the same thing as counting bars but to which duration is certainly connected.

But then, I suppose, I have fallen into a trap that has been briefly mentioned on your Extremely Long Piano Piece thread - that is the trap of writing pieces of a kind of 'stock' duration. My largest orchestral pieces have been 18-20 minutes; others fall into the 12/14 minute range. These are rather standard limits for single movement works, the sort we see over and over, sometimes stretching towards 30 minutes but not often beyond that. As accustomed listeners to classical music it seems that we 'think' in 30 minute blocks, both as listeners and composers. It's a way of listening that Feldman noted and was experimenting with in his late longer form pieces - that's what someone pointed out on your thread. Writing those longer pieces requires a totally different discipline from the composer and from the listener (I'm not necessarily talking about Sorabji-scale, but even just for a piece that is e.g. an hour long).

Sorry, a bit rushed, I should be working!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Florestan on February 01, 2024, 07:28:17 AM
Very interesting, thanks.

Quote from: Luke on February 01, 2024, 01:48:40 AMI cannot recall ever writing something where I was unsure of its endpoint both in terms of how it would end and when. I always knew the miniatures would end up that way - and they're a large part of what I've written. And with larger works - e.g. orchestral ones - they've been planned from the start with an overall duration and the duration of the various subsections in mind - not to the second or even the minute, of course, but in general. It's almost more about 'weighing the music in my mind, though, seeing how it feels, how it balances, which is not quite the same thing as counting bars but to which duration is certainly connected.

Has it ever happened to you that the final piece be shorter / longer than initially planned? I mean, not by a minute or two, but by, say, ten?

Generally, is there a strict logic contained in the building blocks of a piece (like, themes, melodies, motifs and such) which dictates its approximate duration, or can it be shortened or lengthened ad libitum as you see fit on the spot, irrespective of what you planned initially?

Quote from: Luke on February 01, 2024, 01:48:40 AMAs accustomed listeners to classical music it seems that we 'think' in 30 minute blocks, both as listeners and composers.

Indeed and it's probably derived from the days when the public concert in the typical format overture-concerto-symphony was the only way to hear such works.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 01, 2024, 09:37:04 AM
Quote from: Florestan on February 01, 2024, 07:28:17 AMVery interesting, thanks.

Has it ever happened to you that the final piece be shorter / longer than initially planned? I mean, not by a minute or two, but by, say, ten?

I'm sure it happens to other people but it hasn't happened to me. I think the length of the piece probably depends on how I am feeling wrt my composing, and in general as I am quite a tentative person, I tend not to want to force anything.* I often just want to bring an idea into the open, let it live for a while and then quietly put it away, and so the way I treat the material ensures that happens. Composing larger works requires a completely different mindset, as well as a strong and predetermined formal scheme and an intent to push material around in a more master-slave relationship (as it were) - to develop it, to take it on a long journey. I have done that, and I like to think I have done it well (I don't tend to follow formal models but to develop my own for each piece) but that requires a degree of separation between me and the music that I can't always manage, and it also requires more time and space for the development of the ideas than I find I can easily give. The longest pieces require the most control, craft and steely logic if they are hold together and make any musical sense, and that's tough. All of this is why, on the other thread, I said that for me composing miniatures comes more easily.  And that's why the challenge of doing something very long for the piano interests me - to see if I can (so thanks for the prompt!) (I am not imagining Sorabjian lengths, but something a bit outlandish nevertheless.)

Quote from: Florestan on February 01, 2024, 07:28:17 AMGenerally, is there a strict logic contained in the building blocks of a piece (like, themes, melodies, motifs and such) which dictates its approximate duration, or can it be shortened or lengthened ad libitum as you see fit on the spot, irrespective of what you planned initially?

As I say, I think I already have in mind/my own mood the sense of whether I going short or long, and then without too much thought I treat the musical material in way that seems appropriate to that mental image. I am sure that more (durationally) could be made of the same material if I decided to treat it differently. Maybe I should try expanding one of my smaller pieces into something larger!

QuoteIndeed and it's probably derived from the days when the public concert in the typical format overture-concerto-symphony was the only way to hear such works.

Yes - and, perhaps reinforced later, especially wrt contemporary works, when 30 minutes was the maximum you could fit on an LP side! (Same theory as concentration spans beginning to shrink with the introduction of the 3 minute pop song = one side of a 78!)

* this is all a bit academic anyway as I haven't written anything for far too long!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 01, 2024, 09:40:38 AM
Quote from: Luke on February 01, 2024, 09:37:04 AM...it also requires more time and space for the development of the ideas than I find I can easily give....

To expand on this - a bit of self-critique! - I am (or was) often like a kid with a bag of sweets when a new idea comes to me, and I can't resist working on it perhaps too soon. I'm not good at letting ideas grow and mature, I want to feel them out straight away.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Florestan on February 01, 2024, 09:49:58 AM
Most interesting presentation of your compositional process, Luke, thanks. I'm sure that doing something much longer than usual is a challenge you will successfully meet. Good luck with it and let us know how it progress (if you are so inclined, of course).

Btw, is there any possibility to hear your music? A website or something?
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Florestan on February 01, 2024, 09:53:11 AM
Quote from: Luke on February 01, 2024, 09:40:38 AMTo expand on this - a bit of self-critique! - I am (or was) often like a kid with a bag of sweets when a new idea comes to me, and I can't resist working on it perhaps too soon. I'm not good at letting ideas grow and mature, I want to feel them out straight away.

But you can always revise and tweak the final product if you're not quite satisfied, isn't it? Or are you of the principle that revision tends to make things worse, not better? Both types of philosophy are widely spread among composers.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 01, 2024, 09:57:30 AM
No, I tweak. But it will be details, not fundamentals.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 01, 2024, 09:58:41 AM
Quote from: Florestan on February 01, 2024, 09:49:58 AMBtw, is there any possibility to hear your music? A website or something?

I'll see if I can get some links up later on. Thanks for the interest!  :)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 01, 2024, 05:52:26 PM
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/z853mpz2e3oce/Luke+Ottevanger+selected+compositions

I hope this link works. I'm not a great uploader and I'm not sure how permanent the link will be!

I've made a small selection of my pieces - those that have decent* enough recordings to be able to hear what's going on throughout. Though some of the orchestral pieces have been played, the recordings are not good enough all the way through, in my opinion, to put here again, even though parts of them are OK. So most of what is here is for solo piano, with me at the keyboard. Though the language varies from children's pieces to more experimental stuff, I hope they're all of a piece, too - different places on the same sliding scale.

Then there are a few for the girls at one of my schools, plus me at the piano again. They're not highly tutored singers, but they do their best! These ones can be found in the Christmas Music folder.

You'll see that the oldest piece, a tiny fragile thing, is from 1990, when I was 14, but mostly they're from the first decade of the century. Nothing since 2011 - and therein lies a tale of compositional block which I partly tell in the book.

*They're not decent. None of them are. I've never had access to good enough equipment or recording venues - these are all done in echoey classrooms or churches and on pianos of varying dubiousness! Sorry!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 02, 2024, 01:49:32 AM
Forgot to say - for those interested, the scores to the pieces are all contained in the folder too. If not separately within the relevant subfolders then in the 'compilation' PDFs that contain whole groups of works - collected piano miniatures; sonatas; various Christmassy things for my pupils to sing in church
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Florestan on February 02, 2024, 02:05:48 AM
Quote from: Luke on February 01, 2024, 05:52:26 PMhttps://www.mediafire.com/folder/z853mpz2e3oce/Luke+Ottevanger+selected+compositions

Thanks a lot!

Been listening to the three piano sonatas so far. I love their mysterious, meditative and haunting atmosphere, which reminded me of Debussy and Scriabin. The sound might not be great but the music certainly is.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 02, 2024, 02:10:52 AM
Thank you very much - that's very kind.  I'm really glad that they have appeal for other listeners. The first sonata was written a couple of days after the death of my much beloved grandmother. Although there's no way to tell from the music, she loved Schubert, and for me at least, this piece connects with him too, believe it or not! The other two sonatas came out of a dark time for me personally, a time when I was feeling very lost and alone, and like I myself was missing somewhere, hence their subtitles - sonatas in absentia.

There are easier-going, less fraught works in there - such as the children's pieces, and the Christmas ones, and some of the others too - but looking back it worries me how much of this music comes out of difficult times, at least compositionally speaking - for instance both the Unfinished Study and the tiny piece mi ritrovai are related to a period of composer's block around 2005 which only lasted a few months but which I thought at the time was permanent. (It wasn't, but the current one is over a decade and very likely is!). And Around Fern Hill, which looks like the last of these pieces, only has the completion dates of 2011 because I took a break during the writing of it. It's more in the quite complex, heterophonic style of the piece Quiverings. Both of those are amongst my favourites, as it happens.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Florestan on February 02, 2024, 02:31:38 AM
Quote from: Luke on February 02, 2024, 02:10:52 AMThank you very much - that's very kind.  I'm really glad that they have appeal for other listeners. The first sonata was written a couple of days after the death of my much beloved grandmother. Although there's no way to tell from the music, she loved Schubert, and for me at least, this piece connects with him too, believe it or not! The other two sonatas came out of a dark time for me personally, a time when I was feeling very lost and alone, and like I myself was missing somewhere, hence their subtitles - sonatas in absentia.

Well, I sensed some melancholy in the music, though rather gentle than gloomy --- so I guess that's the connection with Schubert.

Will certainly listen to all other pieces.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 02, 2024, 02:36:58 AM
Quote from: Florestan on February 02, 2024, 02:31:38 AMWell, I sensed some melancholy in the music, though rather gentle than gloomy --- so I guess that's the connection with Schubert.


Well, she was a very gentle, sweet person and my overriding feeling was not gloom - she was very old and so it was all sadly expected - but a soft kind of sorrow. To me (and probably only to me) there's a certain childish freshness to this piece, a simplicity under the surface complexity. Also a G majorish-ness which for some reason (I don't really understand it myself) feels quite Schubertian in this context! It doesn't really make any sense, but that doesn't matter!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Florestan on February 02, 2024, 03:06:12 AM
Quote from: Luke on February 02, 2024, 02:36:58 AMWell, she was a very gentle, sweet person and my overriding feeling was not gloom - she was very old and so it was all sadly expected - but a soft kind of sorrow.

Precisely what I mean: the Schubertian kind.

QuoteTo me (and probably only to me) there's a certain childish freshness to this piece, a simplicity under the surface complexity. Also a G majorish-ness which for some reason (I don't really understand it myself) feels quite Schubertian in this context! It doesn't really make any sense, but that doesn't matter!

The mysterious power of music, then: it works in ways that not even the composer fully understands.  :D
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 02, 2024, 03:10:55 AM
Quote from: Florestan on February 02, 2024, 03:06:12 AMPrecisely what I mean: the Schubertian kind.

Yes, exactly right.

Quote from: Florestan on February 02, 2024, 03:06:12 AMThe mysterious power of music, then: it works in ways that not even the composer fully understands.  :D

Absolutely! All the time! The best of these pieces do things to me that are powerful but at times quite unexpected. Like the slow music in the middle of the third sonata, which is very simple but which hit me with a wallop when I first wrote it and in which I still catch myself holding my breath. I don't quite know how they do it, but I think this quality is actually part of why they seem the best to me.

(Part of it, though, is clearly that often the pieces come out of a personal experience, and so I wouldn't expect the reaction to be replicated in anyone else.)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Florestan on February 02, 2024, 03:33:54 AM
Quote from: Luke on February 02, 2024, 03:10:55 AMoften the pieces come out of a personal experience, and so I wouldn't expect the reaction to be replicated in anyone else

Sure, but a general, non-specific communicability of mood and feeling do exist, though, as witnessed by my own reaction to the music. Speaking of Schubert, I don't think anyone listening to the Molto moderato from D960 could perceive in it joy instead of sorrow or gaiety instead of melancholy. Otoh, one may experience a state of intense pleasure while listening to it (at least I do) but that's related to the mysterious power of music, of which Schubert was acutely aware, to turn sorrow into joy or viceversa.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 02, 2024, 03:48:20 AM
Luke!

Excellent comments!

Florestan's invocation of Scriabin, after hearing your selected works, is on target!

Do you have the analysis I wrote of one of your works, was it perhaps Around Fern Hill ?

It might interest our readers here at GMG!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 02, 2024, 03:50:24 AM
Yes, in fact I think it's further back on this thread too. You also did one of a voice/violin work, Down by the Salley Gardens. Both highly appreciated! I'll bring them up to the top...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 02, 2024, 03:53:33 AM
Quote from: Florestan on February 02, 2024, 03:33:54 AMSure, but a general, non-specific communicability of mood and feeling do exist, though, as witnessed by my own reaction to the music. Speaking of Schubert, I don't think anyone listening to the Molto moderato from D960 could perceive in it joy instead of sorrow or gaiety instead of melancholy. Otoh, one may experience a state of intense pleasure while listening to it (at least I do) but that's related to the mysterious power of music, of which Schubert was acutely aware, to turn sorrow into joy or viceversa.

Completely agree. I'm certainly not saying 'there's something in this music which no one can understand except me,' and I know it's quite communicative stuff - I remember Sean's response to that sonata was very strong, in fact. But it interests me that I (or anyone else) can so strongly sense Schubert in the music even though there's little Schubert to point at in it except, perhaps, the species of its melancholy tone. Music is a wonderful thing!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 02, 2024, 04:26:10 AM
Quote from: Luke on February 02, 2024, 03:50:24 AMYes, in fact I think it's further back on this thread too. You also did one of a voice/violin work, Down by the Salley Gardens. Both highly appreciated! I'll bring them up to the top...



The second one I had almost forgotten!


Quote from: Luke on February 02, 2024, 03:53:33 AMCompletely agree. I'm certainly not saying 'there's something in this music which no one can understand except me,' and I know it's quite communicative stuff - I remember Sean's response to that sonata was very strong, in fact. But it interests me that I (or anyone else) can so strongly sense Schubert in the music even though there's little Schubert to point at in it except, perhaps, the species of its melancholy tone. Music is a wonderful thing!



When I am writing my stories, I never make an outline of what will happen*, and never analyze anything, while I am in the process of discovering what my characters want to do.

The same is true of my compositions: "Where does the Music want to go?" was always the primary question.  And if one listens carefully, the Music, like characters in a story, will decide what happens next.

Thomas Mann once read an analysis of his great novel Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), an analysis written by a young professor of German at Harvard.

The author wrote to the young professor in appreciation and made what might seem a strange comment:

"You have revealed to me many things which I did not realize were in the book."

i.e. The writer's unconscious ** mind was at work during the creation, and so a good number of things were being connected which the author himself did not consciously realize.






*Certainly there is a vague, foggy framework: e.g. with my most recent novel, I knew that the main character would be roaming through Ethiopia in the 1920's.

To my amazement, as I intended to start page 1, it struck me that a strange young man up in Sweden talking to a Lutheran minister would be the beginning.  :o    8)


**I agree with some translators that Freud's Unterbewusstsein is mistranslated with "subconscious" and that "unconscious" in fact gets his ideas across better.  Of course, these days "unconscious" is separated from "subconscious."
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Florestan on February 02, 2024, 08:15:46 AM
Quote from: Luke on February 02, 2024, 02:36:58 AMAlso a G majorish-ness which for some reason (I don't really understand it myself) feels quite Schubertian in this context!

If the sonata is in G major then yet another connection to Schubert becomes apparent: he was a specialist in making major keys sound minor-ish.  ;)
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 02, 2024, 08:42:58 AM
And G in particular - see: the great last quartet. There is actually something in that. G is a tonal centre I get drawn back to over and over. Indeed, one of my past iterations here was sul G...
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 02, 2024, 03:50:21 PM
Quote from: Luke on February 02, 2024, 03:50:24 AMYes, in fact I think it's further back on this thread too. You also did one of a voice/violin work, Down by the Salley Gardens. Both highly appreciated! I'll bring them up to the top...

Link to Leo's wonderfully perceptive analytical essay on Around Fern Hill

https://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php?msg=637641
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on February 02, 2024, 04:07:21 PM
Quote from: Luke on February 01, 2024, 05:52:26 PMhttps://www.mediafire.com/folder/z853mpz2e3oce/Luke+Ottevanger+selected+compositions

I hope this link works. I'm not a great uploader and I'm not sure how permanent the link will be!

I've made a small selection of my pieces - those that have decent* enough recordings to be able to hear what's going on throughout. Though some of the orchestral pieces have been played, the recordings are not good enough all the way through, in my opinion, to put here again, even though parts of them are OK. So most of what is here is for solo piano, with me at the keyboard. Though the language varies from children's pieces to more experimental stuff, I hope they're all of a piece, too - different places on the same sliding scale.

Then there are a few for the girls at one of my schools, plus me at the piano again. They're not highly tutored singers, but they do their best! These ones can be found in the Christmas Music folder.

You'll see that the oldest piece, a tiny fragile thing, is from 1990, when I was 14, but mostly they're from the first decade of the century. Nothing since 2011 - and therein lies a tale of compositional block which I partly tell in the book.

*They're not decent. None of them are. I've never had access to good enough equipment or recording venues - these are all done in echoey classrooms or churches and on pianos of varying dubiousness! Sorry!
@Luke you have a PM.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Luke on February 02, 2024, 04:12:57 PM
Quote from: Karl Henning on February 02, 2024, 04:07:21 PM@Luke you have a PM.

Yes, use the link from yesterday, a page or two back from here. 
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 02, 2024, 04:23:37 PM
Quote from: Luke on February 02, 2024, 03:50:21 PMLink to Leo's wonderfully perceptive analytical essay on Around Fern Hill

https://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php?msg=637641



You found it!  Excellent!

And has it been TWELVE years?!  Oy!   :o    ;D


Allow me again to recommend your work to our members here!  Luke Ottevanger remains, even in his silence, one of our best contemporary composers!
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Karl Henning on February 02, 2024, 04:54:46 PM
Quote from: Cato on February 02, 2024, 04:23:37 PMLuke Ottevanger remains, even in his silence, one of our best contemporary composers!
Warmly agreed.
Title: Re: Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost
Post by: Cato on February 19, 2024, 07:56:07 AM
Quote from: Cato on June 17, 2012, 01:24:47 PMWith Luke Ottevanger's approval: you will need to have a copy of the music and the performance for the full effect:

http://www.mediafire.com/?no6zykq6464c2z2 (http://www.mediafire.com/?no6zykq6464c2z2) - Score


http://www.mediafire.com/?hycr77dymz2665f  (http://www.mediafire.com/?hycr77dymz2665f) - Performance



A Walk Around the Music of Around Fern Hill


If you ever had any doubts about the major-minor system's ability to retain its emotional power, then you must listen to Luke Ottevanger's Around Fern Hill.  While the work is not written with a specific key, its opening bars dance in a major-key field toying with the ear in various major scales.  One hears the note G ascending over 4 octaves at the start of the work, which begins with a triplet, a rhythmical figure of great importance throughout the composition.  With the exception of a constant C# in the opening bars, we are in white-key land, with whiffs of G major and, thanks to that C#, A and E major.  In bar 3 the triplet descends (G6 – A5 – A4 (the numbers refer to the octaves)) to give us one of those fleeting hints of a major scale (A-E-C#-A).  But these are only whiffs, as the composer has no intention of allowing us to linger for long in such a deluding land.

I should mention at this point that I first "listened" mentally to the work from the score alone, and had no idea that the title came from a poem.  Deducing that the markings ("Stanza I") meant that the composer obviously had a poem in mind as the background for a particular section, I simply concentrated on the story which the music told by itself, and discovered the composer's source of inspiration only at the end, where the poem appears in full at the bottom of the last page.  Certainly the music alone provides a powerful experience of emotional mystery.

And that mystery begins to arrive in various ways: with our ears accustomed to a tentative brightness in the ambiguity of these major keys, the composer also grants us music of a slow contemplative nature with the chiming, ticking rhythms of bells and clocks (which will persist, with increasing difficulty and dissonance, as the piece tells its tale).  Yet our contemplation is disturbed by the nature of the meter (7/8) and by the music insisting on assorted arrhythmic arpeggios (bars 3-5).  Finally in bars 6-19 we hear in 3/8 the tolling of bells in the distance (the chord E-B-E followed by an A and D-G) in the left hand, while the right hand "dances" merrily in the churchyard with triplets of various kinds.

But in bar 20 things become ominous: the rhythmic complexity in the dance increases, with dissonant major 2nds appearing.  The leaping G's from the opening 2 bars reappear, as does that descending triplet (G6 – A5 – A4) in bar 22, which ends with another ascending triplet (G3 – A4 – B5).  Bar 23 gives us a quick B-minor hint of a severe change in mood, as an F# appears for the first time with the C#: and then the shock of bar 24!  That single F#, a simple semitone lower than G, heard alone at first, becomes the root of a minor-ninth chord (F#-D-B-F), whose sudden emotional impact is Gesualdoan, similar to the famous chord used by Arnold Schoenberg in Pelleas und Melisande (at Cue 8, p. 16 of the study score) where an F natural underlies a first inversion D minor triad with a G# spread over several octaves.

The appearance of the F# has added a melancholy, if not ominous, atmosphere to the music (bars 25-30), which attempts to keep dancing up and down a quasi-G scale (with that augmented 4th C# ).  But the F# is now in the bass, at times with the C#, and prevents a major mood from taking over.  As proof that dissonance can be very poignant, listen to the tolling continue (bars 30-38) with a syncopated and divided G major 7th chord against a C#-E# in the bass: and is that dance on the quasi G-scale now more of a C# minor experience?  A 3-note motif (F#-D-F) provides more tonal and emotional ambiguity, and leads back to the dueling dance of scales (G vs. C#).

At bar 39, the music attempts to "play" in 5/8 time, but with ever more pain or bewilderment, and leads into a variation of bars 30-38.  The divided and syncopated G-major 7th chord now rings against an F-B-D in the bass, and that 3-note motif now descends directly (Gb-F-E, bar 45) rather relentlessly.  The opening octave leaping triplet returns at the end of bar 50, but now descends down 3 C naturals to announce a transition to a new tension between C and the C#. 

For above the triplet-dominated, wandering-the-hill music on modes of E and C#, a melismatic theme on C arises in the treble, a theme masked and hinted at in the previous sections (e.g. the theme in bars 25-26, in the middle voice in bars 32-38, and then in the treble in bars 39-43).  Now unadorned, the theme emphasizes C, with Bb at first the only point of interference, and with the time expanding by a single 16th note over bars 51-54, the theme rises to G, only to be joined unexpectedly in a cluster with E#/F#.   It is as if the tolling sounds in the background have now chosen to speak directly: at times a ding-dong-ding pattern of three is heard, as in those earlier 3-note motifs of F#-D-F and Gb-F-E.  Grace notes echoing the opening triplet are heard throughout the bass in this section (bars 50-62).  Diminished 5th sounds in the bass (C-F#, E-Bb) prevent any rest, and provide a point of comparison, as the opening G modality is now changing to octaves of C# in bars 55-56.   Conflicting with the C# is the melismatic C/Bb theme in the middle voice, ending on D in bars 59-60, despite the tremolos on C# echoing around, and a punctuating E/F high in the treble. 

And then a pause, and again the leaping triplet appears, now on C natural, and the time has changed from 7/16 to 7/8.  But by bars 64-65, the triplet now intones the C/C# (now spelled Db because of an Ab tonality in the left hand) tension, and the melismatic theme attempts a return in a variation in the treble.  A flourish on Eb minor ambles by, and then the tolling of diminished fifths with the Ab-Eb accompanies a long melisma on a C scale, a sort of double minor with a Db and Gb.  The melisma often uses triplets in keeping with the rhythmic motif established in the first bar, and hearkens backward to the "dancing" heard in bars 9-22: and so bars 63-77 can be heard as a shorter, more dissonant version of the opening 24 bars, where the shock of the single F# in bar 24 is now replaced by an Ab pentad (Ab-Bb-Db-Eb-G) with a high C echoing away.   

In bar 78 the triplet figure descends to announce a sort of B mode, and we now hear a variation of the earlier part of the work (bars 25 ff.), but with more stumbling around the hill (compare bar 26 with bar 80), and more anguish: compare that earlier, insistent 3-note motif of F#-D-F with its variation in bars 86-87 as F#-D-Eb/F, and listen to the tolling transform into clusters, with minor seconds sprinkled about (e.g. bars 81, 93-95).  The 5/8 section (bars 93-97) is very similar to its earlier appearance (bars 39-43) In bar 99 ff., the 3-note motif, now changed to Gb-F-E in the middle voice, struggles against an Eb ninth in the bass and a painfully chiming G major 7th chord with an added C above it.

The 3-note motif is also emphasized in subtle, almost unconscious ways in the middle voice: listen e.g. to bars 104-105, where the middle voice begins its triplets with E-Gb-F, while bars 106-107 begin with Gb-F-E and E-F-Gb respectively.

And as clusters of notes reach upward in the treble (bar 109), perhaps as symbols of desperate, useless clutching at the surface of the water of memory, the gravity in the bass reveals a swallowing sea, using that diminished 5th  of G-C# from the opening as a tremolo leading to a deep G/A finale, while the last manifestation of our poor 3-note motif is heard in the middle voice.  Seven notes ring out in the final bars, from that G/A in the bass to an E/F in the treble, not unlike the finale of Schoenberg's Erwartung,  where the music both descends and rises to "swallow" the character at the end.

I mentioned to the composer that the use of the "scratchy" recording of the poem reminded me of the unusual novels of W.G. Sebald, who often included fuzzy, "faraway" photos to accompany his themes of lost memories.  The result is that the work is successful on various levels: the music could stand alone without the poem, in the same way that the poem has stood alone.  Yet together one experiences a quite different third dimension of meaning, as if the music were the poem's deepest unconscious. 

Finally, the title of the music is Around Fern Hill, and may explain many of the circling figurations in the music, as if these and the other motifs and themes are the sounds when one walks around Fern Hill.



I thought it was high time to quote this again and offer access to Luke Ottevanger's Around Fern Hill