Laymusic.org

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.

Report on the July 13, 2010 meeting

Laura Conrad — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:33:11 +0000

Report written by Aram Hollman

We played:

Durante, “Danza, danza, fanciulla gentile”
Anon., “The Dark is My Delight”
Le heurteur, “Quant je boy du vin claret”
Gervaise, “Dix Bransle Gays”
Susato, #37-41
Purcell, “The glass was just timed"

Amherst Baroque Soloists

Laura Conrad — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:12:23 +0000

I don't want you to think that all we do here at Amherst is take classes in the daytime and complain about them at night. Every night there's some kind of performance, with opportunities for playing or singing or dancing before and after.

Yesterday it was a concert by the faculty of the Baroque Academy. It was billed as Welcome to the Ball: An Evening of Dance Music from Versailles.

I'm sure everything on the program had come kind of relationship to dance music, but for some things the relationship seemed pretty misty to me. I suspect that when Charpentier called something a sonata he meant that the performers should take the dances in the movement titles as performance instructions, but not that a dancer should necessarily be able to dance the dance to the movement. And certainly a vocal cantata about the parting of the Red Sea isn't intended to be danced to.

The playing was uniformly elegant and professional. There were a few cases where I thought the mood could have been captured better. For instance, three viol players plus continuo seemed quite solemn when playing a movement called "Caprice" from a Marais Suite. The person sitting next to me pointed out that caprice doesn't necessarily mean capricious or playful -- it means "what you feel like" and maybe the viol players were feeling solemn.

Notes on the Continuo

Ever since I heard a baroque wind band perform with a continuo consisting of both Bernard Fourtet on serpent and Marilyn Boenau on baroque bassoon, I've felt that Baroque chamber music should be performed with a louder continuo than the usual harpsichord/cello or viol configuration. The Boston Early Music Festival opera orchestra always uses multiple configurations of bowed and plucked strings, but as a wind player I never find that as interesting as if they used serpents and bassoons too.

The performers last night were doing the right kind of experiments with that, and in the final number with an ensemble consisting of two violins, two oboes, two recorders, two baroque flutes, cello, viol, baroque bassoon, and two harpsichords, they achieved a wonderful variety of very supportive continuo playing.

I suspect with more rehearsal time, they could have carried that over to all the other pieces, too. But for the Cantata about the parting of the Red Sea, they decided to use the cello/bassoon configuration throughout, and I felt it was an obtrusively unblended sound that didn't work well with Julianne Baird's limpid soprano vocal lines.

Of the instrumental pieces, the most remarked on one was the piece for two harpsichords by a later, more obscure Couperin (Armand Louis (1727-1789). A long, drawn-out cadence in the middle seemed to put Peter Sykes to sleep until Arthur Haas leaned over to poke him so that he could wake up and play the bravura fireworks of the ending. I found myself wondering how fast the allegro of that Symphonie must be if that was the Moderato.

Too good to be true

Laura Conrad — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:14:57 +0000

They reorganized all the loud wind classes on Monday night, and threw me (and a number of other people) out of them.

I shouldn't have been surprised -- I know someone who flew from Massachusetts to San Francisco to take a cornetto class and they cancelled it without telling her because not enough people signed up.

This seems to have been the reverse -- they had an unusual number of brass players sign up, so they hired an extra coach, but his mother-in-law was dying in Toronto, so he didn't come. So instead of making the other brass coaches coach more students, or finding someone to fill in at the last moment, they just threw some people out of the classes.

In my case they put me in two recorder classes. One of them was billed as a Camarata class, so I'm going and playing serpent and cornetto there, because I assume the people who signed up for that knew they'd be playing with mixed instruments. It's not the best class for me, both because I would learn more about brass playing from a class with other brass players, coached by a brass player, and also because the coach is my recorder teacher, and it's silly to come to a place full of world-class musicians and work with someone who lives a mile away from you and gives you a recorder lesson every week.

The other was billed as a recorder class, and when they posted the new class assignments, the wrote "Laura Conrad (rec)" with the rec in red lettering. So I decided I could get more out of taking third period off and catching up on this blog, and napping and practicing. I made a point of telling the teacher (also from the Boston area) that it was nothing personal and I was sure it was a fine recorder class, except that I didn't come here for recorder classes. He was quite sympathetic, and said the students in the class had been quite excited about having a serpent, and we agreed I could come try it if I wanted it to, but I've decided not to.

I've usually just put up with decisions I didn't like, and complained about them to the other students, but this time I decided to be a squeaky wheel and see if I got any grease.

The person who used to be in charge of class assignments was sitting at the table when I was explaining my problem to the current class assignment person, and she told me she thought I'd given a very good, clear explanation of the problem, but that it might make sense to also give that kind of explanation directly to the brass faculty, and eliminate the middleperson. So at afternoon coffee break I found the cornetto teacher and explained the problem. He was sympathetic, but not really helpful, but he did agree that he should be putting some ensemble playing into the morning cornetto class. I asked him if he thought it made sense to talk to Wim Becu, and he didn't say no, but he didn't say anything that convinces me the answer is, "Yes", either. But maybe some time Wim won't be surrounded by 10 trombone players and I can ask him if he knows of a workshop where someone like me could get brass ensemble experience.

If this had happened on Monday, I would have been frustrated and disappointed, but not the kind of upset I was with it happening after the Monday classes. A number of people tried really hard to make me feel better. The most successful one was a student who had been in both Monday afternoon classes. He said he thought both classes with me on Monday afternoon had been really good, and the class with Wim is still pretty good, but the class with Steve is much worse without me, and with the new people they moved into it.

Good things are still happening. The Tuesday night lecture was a humorous survey of the history of French music, with illustrations. The viol coach who's coaching the loud winds in the "Mass" (long story that I don't know all of yet, but I may tell you later) was at a loss for what to do for a loud band piece, so I suggested the Estocart Psalm CXXXVII that's on SerpentPublications.org and he printed it out and printed several other things, so we'll probably play some of that.

Classes have met

Laura Conrad — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:20:44 +0000

And they all seem to be pretty good.

Cornetto technique with Stephen Escher

We did a lot of talking and not much playing yesterday, but the talking was to the point. We went around the room and talked about how and why we got into cornetto playing, and each played single notes and talked about them and what to do to improve them. In my case hardware is part of the answer. Steve loaned me his 465 cornetto, which is just enough smaller than a 415 instrument that I can play it, although not easily. And he has a jar full of mouthpieces that we're going to see if we can find something that works better on the cornettino.

He pointed out that once we get a sound we like and are really listening to, there isn't that much difference between us and Bruce Dickey -- he just gets to that sound immediately and keeps it up to the end of the note and we don't.

Mass

That's what they call the mixed choral and instrumental performance at the end of the week that everybody can do. This year it's the polyphonic church music of the French Calvinists, who weren't allowed to play polyphony in Church, so they did it at home.

It's all good music for serpent. There's a bunch of settings of Psalm CXXXVII, and a large Te Deum by Claude LeJeune.

Wim Becu

I think the class is called "Josquin and Goudimel" or something like that, but people signed up for it because they want to work with Wim. There are 8 of us, but mostly trombone and bass curtal players, so they're in need of instruments that can play top lines. I was surprised that anyone would rather listen to me on cornetto than on serpent, but I did in fact end up playing cornetto all class. We're doing two choir music, and I got the lower of the two top lines (the other cornetto player in the class is much better than I am).

The music is wonderful, and two choirs full of people who can sightread it isn't something I get anywhere else, and Wim is a really good coach, who can make a piece sound like you aren't sightreading in a very short time.

Steve Escher again

I forget what this one is called, but there are 5 loud wind players playing what Steve brings. In this case, I'm playing low to middle lines. I started out playing the second from the bottom line (there's a good bass curtal player on the bottom), but I turned out to have more serpent high notes left than the trombone player had trombone high notes, so I switched to middle lines.

People were pretty zonked by then, so some of theh sightreading wasn't as good as the same people had been doing only an hour before, but I'm sure it will but a good class.

I have arrived

Laura Conrad — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 03:43:39 +0000

Budget dorm room at Amherst

At the Amherst Early Music Festival at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut.

The dorm room is a bit spartan -- no mirror on the wall, no hangars in the closet, no wastebasket. There are two power outlets and an ethernet connection, but the ethernet connection is 10 feet from the nearest power outlet. So at the moment, I'm trusting the wireless ethernet, since I know the battery on this machine gets hungry fast.

But for compensation, the acoustics for playing Renaissance instruments are wonderful.

I met the cornetto teacher (Stephen Escher) seems to be pleasant, and not freaked out by having a serpent player.

An improvement on previous years is that they posted the class schedules before the orientation session. The have indeed given me 4 brass classes.

So it looks good so far. I'll tell you more when I've met the classes.

Serpents unpacked

Grape vines in East Cambridge

Laura Conrad — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:34:27 +0000

Yard with grape arbor

One of my favorite gardens in East Cambridge has a grape arbor over the whole yard. They can have a fairly large party there, and when you walk by in the fall the smell of the grapes is wonderful.

Grape leaves with fungus or something

This year, although there are a fair number of green grapes, there seems to be something wrong with a lot of the leaves. I hope it's not serious.

Green grapes

Report on the July 6, 2010, meeting

Laura Conrad — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:21:08 +0000

We played:

Schedule

The meeting next week, Tuesday, July 13, will take place in air-conditioned comfort at Stuart Soloway's, starting at the usual time: 7:45 PM. He will be sending out directions.

After that, we will resume our normal dropin meetings on Tuesdays at my place.

Other Events

The Wakefield Summer Band (with Laura Conrad on tuba) will be playing four concerts this summer, at the bandstand on the Wakefield Common on the shore of Lake Quannapowitt. The first one will be this Friday, July 9, at 7 PM. Others will be:

Friday, July 23, 7 PM
Friday, August 6, 7 PM
Friday, September 3, 6:30 PM

Fireworks

Laura Conrad — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:31:34 +0000

I live in Cambridge, less than a mile from the Charles River. When I first moved here, I figured out that it was fairly easy to walk down to the river on the evening of the Fourth of July and watch the fireworks being set off from a barge near the Esplanade on the other side of the river.

At that time, there weren't giant speakers blaring the music of the concert, but usually people had brought boomboxes and you could hear the end of the concert just before the start of the fireworks.

My schedule was to leave my apartment when they started the 1812 overture. I would see the fireworks at the end of that piece from Kendall Square, and then walk to Memorial Drive (closed to traffic for the event) in front of the MIT East Campus to the strains of "The Stars and Stripes Forever", watch the fireworks with the large crowd, and walk home.

At some point in the 90's they started having large speakers on the median strip playing the concert overamplified. They also changed their schedule, and had the pop star of the year perform after the 1812 Overture and before The Stars and Stripes.

Then in about 1998, they decided to have recorded music "synchronized" to the fireworks display. People who watch it on TV actually seem to like this, but if you're not where the TV cameras and sound recording are, of course the synchronization isn't very good. And fireworks are too loud by definition, but accompanied by music that's too loud, it can be literally painful.

So while I still enjoyed the fireworks, it was an enjoyment increasingly mixed with a "Why are they doing this to me?" feeling.

So there have been several years when I accepted cookout invitations in some other town, and the year before the hip surgery I was in Cambridge, but I just couldn't face walking a mile there and back, standing for an hour or more, and still having to walk the dog when I got back, so I just walked the dog around the block, where we could see a little of the highest rising fireworks.

Yesterday, I was feeling disgruntled and not much like community celebration, so I walked the dog at 9:30 so that we'd be home before the large crowds were walking by our house on their way home. This turned out to be during the 1812 Overture, and we could see those fireworks pretty well from the athletic field we had walked to. So we got home and watched the Pop Star of the year (country singer Toby Keith), and when the fireworks started, I went out to see how much I could see of the fireworks without going anywhere much.

It turns out that the new park across the street affords a pretty good view, and there were several neighbors to watch with. Of course, you didn't see any of the low-lying display, but you often don't see that very well from the river, either. And it's far enough away that the sound and the light of the display are pretty badly out of sync, and of course the sound isn't as exciting as it is closer. But those disadvantages are really worth it to not be bombarded by the overamplified "music".