Laymusic.org

No Cantabile meeting tonight

Laura Conrad — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:45:48 +0000

I actually probably feel better than I have either of the last two weeks, but I now have a diagnosis (pneumonia) that justifies feeling crummy. So I'm going to cancel the meeting tonight, to avoid being tempted to clean or transcribe music or cook when I should be napping instead.

Unfortunately, there will also not be dropin meetings on either Tuesday, September 7 or Tuesday, September 14, because some of us will be rehearsing for a concert on September 19.

So the normal dropin meetings will resume on Tuesday, September 21, at 7:45 PM at my place.

I'll attempt to call people who normally come and who might not read email between now and this evening. If you've been coming regularly, if you can let me know that you got this, it will save me trying to dig up your phone number.

Report on the August 17, 2010, meeting

Laura Conrad — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:47:55 +0000

We played:

Métoyen, Serpent duet
Gervaise, Dix Bransles Gays
Morley, V. Hould out my hart, (transposed)
Morley, VII. Whither away so fast, (transposed)
Morley, Deep lamenting
Holborne, 7. Pavan.
Holborne, 8. The Marie-Golde.
Holborne, 1. Bona Speranza,
Holborne, 2. The teares of the Muses.
Morley, Hard by a crystal fountain
Berg, Let us drink and be merry

Schedule

For the month of August, we'll be having dropin meetings as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Report on the August 10, 2010, meeting

Laura Conrad — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 15:55:32 +0000

We played:

pieces from At the sign of the crumhorn
Wilbye, Adieu, sweet Amaryllis
Wilbye, Weep, weep mine eyes
Morley, Hard by a crystal fountain
Wilbye, Draw on sweet Night
Weelkes, Death hath deprived me of my dearest friend, a remembrance of my friend M. Thomas Morley
Three wise men of Boston

Schedule

For the month of August, we'll be having dropin meetings as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

My Hugo award votes

Laura Conrad — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 16:54:28 +0000

The posts were thin for a while there, and one of the things I was doing instead of posting was reading all the Hugo award nominees so that I could vote by the July 31 deadline. Here are my votes, with some comments on why.

Best novel

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. I actually probably enjoyed a couple of the others more than this one, but the writing was so good I decided it was more award-worthy.
Wake by Robert J. Sawyer. If you want to cite a good example of "computer-science fiction", this would be it.
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson
Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. The description I had of this before I read it was that it was a steampunk vampire novel set in 19th century Seattle. Based on that, I wasn't expecting to enjoy it, but I actually did. Partly because it isn't really a vampire novel, but a novel about the kind of communities that can form in the face of danger (which in this case is vampires).
The City & The City by China Miéville. I had heard of China Miéville as an impressive writer, and this was the first thing I'd read of his. The writing is very good, with both characters and images that stick with you, but I downranked it as an award winner because the plot never really made much sense.
No award. I like this part of voting. You can not only vote for the ones you like, but vote against the ones you don't like by rating them after "No award."
Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente. This is the only one I didn't manage to finish, so my apologies if something wonderfully exciting happens after page 150. It wasn't very interesting, but the writing was very dense, so it was taking a lot longer than the typical novel of that length takes, and I wasn't enjoying it, so I stopped reading it and voted against it.

Best Novella

Vishnu at the Cat Circus by Ian McDonald. Another good example of "computer-science fiction". Set in near-future India.
Act One by Nancy Kress
Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow
The God Engines by John Scalzi. Well-written by an author I usually like, but a somewhat unpleasant atmosphere.
No Award
The Women of Nell Gwynne's by Kage Baker. This seemed like steam-punk for its own sake.
Palimpsest by Charles Stross. A time travel story without much I could see to recommend it.

Best Novelette

With these shorter forms, I wouldn't have read them except for the Hugo voting, but they're really pretty good.

The Island by Peter Watts
Overtime by Charles Stross
Eros, Philia, Agape by Rachel Swirsky
One of Our Bastards is Missing by Paul Cornell
Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast by Eugie Foster
No award
It Takes Two by Nicola Griffith. I wasn't at all sure that this was a science fiction story at all, so I voted against it.

Best Short Story

Bridesicle by Will McIntosh
The Bride of Frankenstein by Mike Resnick
Non-Zero Probabilities by N.K. Jemisin
Spar by Kij Johnson
The Moment by Lawrence M. Schoen

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

Luckily, the ones of these that I wouldn't have made a point of seeing anyway were all on Netflix Watch Now, so it didn't cost me anything except the time.

District 9 Screenplay by Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell; Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Moon Screenplay by Nathan Parker; Story by Duncan Jones; Directed by Duncan Jones. This was the most like a real science fiction story, although it wasn't as good a movie as District 9.
Star Trek Screenplay by Robert Orci & Alex Kurtzman; Directed by J.J. Abrams
No award
Avatar Screenplay and Directed by James Cameron. I didn't go to the theater to see it in 3D, but I don't see how even better special effects could have redeemed the banal plot and characters.
UpScreenplay by Bob Peterson and Pete Docter; Story by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter & Thomas McCarthy; Directed by Bob Peterson & Pete Docter. Disney tear-jerker. I don't know why it's science fiction.

Summary

Some day I'll be organized enough to start the reading early enough to vote on some of the other categories. But if you want to know what's happening in science fiction, you can do a lot worse than get an associate membership to the convention of the year (Aussiecon, this year). It cost $50 this year, and they gave me free electronic versions of all the print nominees.

Pictures from Amherst

Laura Conrad — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 15:03:15 +0000

It was a pretty busy week, and I only had the little camera, so I couldn't do the butterflies, and I was usually carrying too much to make it easy to stop and take pictures. But here's what I got.

Marker putti

This statue was how to identify the building a lot of the classes were in:

Putti at Connecticutt College

Plaque identifying Putti

Two serpent players

One of the cornetto players had always wanted to play serpent, so he spent some time with mine, and we took pictures of each other.

Me playing my serpent

Michael Yelland playing my serpent

Report on the August 3, 2010, meeting

Laura Conrad — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 14:45:22 +0000

We played:

Country Dance tunes from Pipers' Fancy
Wilbye, Adieu, sweet Amaryllis
Farmer, Fair Phyllis
Campian, Never weather-beaten saile
Campian, Babylon Streams
Entre vous qui aymés
Mundy, Lightly she whipped o're the dales,
Purcell, The glass was just timed

Schedule

For the month of August, we'll be having dropin meetings as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Excerpt from the Amherst Evaluation Form

Laura Conrad — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 17:21:01 +0000

I didn't wrap up the Amherst experience because I was busy writing the evaluation form. And by the time I was through with that there were other things I wanted to think about.

But I did promise to let you know how it turned out. You'll be glad to know that the Saturday concert was really good, and lots of people (including world class faculty members who didn't even know me) came up to me at the party and told me how good the serpent playing was.

I'm not going to give you the parts from the evaluation about individuals, but here's something I wrote about the workshop in general:

Beginners

This is from the section that asked for comments about the daily schedule and kinds of classes. I wrote:

I was concerned that there didn't seem to be any classes in anything suitable for beginners. I don't mean beginners in the sense that they don't know the fingering of a soprano recorder, but people who haven't previously had the opportunity for the kind of ensemble experience that Amherst offers. I notice a lot of the people who were beginners when I first came 20 years ago are now populating the advanced classes. But we're all going to die sometime, and if you don't do beginner classes now, where will the advanced classes come from 20 years from now?

I would think the faculty should be more aware of this problem, since presumably most of them make a substantial portion of their income from teaching, and if there aren't places where people who want to learn something can meet the teachers, where will they get their students?

Those questions come from someone who doesn't have an association with a university. I'm aware that if you know as a teenager that music is something you want to study, and you go to the right kind of high school (I didn't) and college (I did, but of course nowhere was that good forty years ago for early music), you can get a lot of what I'm talking about from your academic experience. But one of the strengths of Amherst, and the early music movement in general, used to be that people who hadn't had that experience in school could take it up later in life. It's not clear that that's still happening.

And of course if there'd been brass ensemble classes for beginners, there would have been a place for a low-level cornetto player, even if nobody wanted to touch a serpent. My cornetto playing isn't performance quality, but if you had a beginning loud wind ensemble with people who couldn't count, it would have been easier to teach with me in it.

Contribution to Lilypond Report

Laura Conrad — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:45:58 +0000

This month's Lilypond Report includes a brief note which I wrote about how (and why) to automatically double (or quadruple or halve) the note values in a lilypond transcription.

You might also enjoy looking at the code swarm in the last report, which has my name (with many others) swimming in and out of the swarm of contributors.

Report on the July 27, 2010 meeting

Laura Conrad — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:39:30 +0000

We played:

Spanish group from Crumhorns 3
Holborne: 9. Pavan and 10. Galliard
Entre vous qui aymés
Cavendish, Come, Gentle Swains
Morley, Arise, awake, you silly shepherds sleeping
Sermisy, Martin menait son pourceau au marché
Crequillon, Plaisir n'ay plus
Ravenscroft, To Portsmouth

Schedule

For the rest of August, we will be having our normal dropin meetings on Tuesdays starting at 7:45 PM at my place.

Report on the July 20, 2010, meeting

Laura Conrad — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:29:19 +0000

We played:

English Country Dances from Pipers' Fancy
de l'Estocart, Psaume CXXXVII
Josquin, Faute d'Argent
Arcadelt , Margot labourez les vignes
Lassus, Margot labourez les vignes
Cave ndish, Come, gentle Swains
Ravenscroft, He that will an alehouse keep

Schedule

For the next few weeks, we will be having dropin meetings as usual on Tuesdays at my place starting at 7:45 PM.

Other events

There's another Wakefield Summer Band concert, with me on Tuba, this Friday, July 23, at 7 PM, at the bandstand on the Wakefield town green.