37 posts tagged “music”
since i wrote my last post i have become employed! yes! a real live job! and i'm really enjoying it to. i am a "learning technologist" in the e-learning department of the imperial college business school, working on an assortment of online courses, which is proving very interesting and not too taxing (yet. ask me again when the students return in october...). the people are lovely, the office is nice and the commute a reasonable length. the college is in south kensington, literally just around the corner from the royal college of music, royal college of art, royal albert hall and the v&a museum, just to start with. i really must plan to go to a prom while i'm there because it couldn't be more convenient! but the best bit is that i discovered the library...
now, i should clarify that imperial college is a science and technology university. their students are all engineers and biochemists and doctors and mba-types. not an artist to be found anywhere on campus (they're all round the corner :-) but i came across the campus central library on my second day and figured i might as well find out if i was allowed to borrow books. i figured it never hurts to belong to another library and there was the slim possibility that the computer books section might have some useful webby books (it does. planning on checking out quite a few of them very soon). so i joined up, checked the list of floors and discovered that 'computing' was on the top floor. and that, unexpectedly, so were 'cds'. well, i didn't really hold out much hope. it's not unusual, after all, for libraries to keep a few random cds for the students and given student preferences, they'd probably mostly be pop music. but it was worth checking.
HOW WRONG COULD I BE?
honestly, it's like there's some weird terry-pratchettesque L-space thing happening on the 5th floor of that library. yes, there are computing books; yes, there's a bunch of studious sciencey bods scattered around the tables with their books on dna strands and how to build a bridge and whatnot, BUT there's also a whole freakin' arts library up there!
ok, to backtrack. i sauntered over to the cd section, seeing, as i approached that it looked a pretty decent size for one in such an unexpected place. then when i got there, discovered that 2 of the 3 large double-sided racks contained exclusively classical cds. and a quick glance led to an estimate of about 40% of that being music written after 1900, which is just unheard of in any cd library and like heaven on earth for me. next i decided to check out the books and see if i could find the css tomes. and the first thing that caught my eye was a book on segovia (famous spanish classical guitarist for those who don't know) and i thought "huh?" so i toddled over... only to find three racks of music scores of all types - including scores for (relatively) modern operas such as britten's peter grimes and tippett's child of our time. next discovery was row after row of music texts - from the standard norton scores to biographies, harmony texts (even one written by the university of western australia's david tunley). then art books. philosophy. poetry. history. just an amazing collection! and all for meeeeeee!
so my lunchtimes have been spent working away at library books. at the moment i'm focusing on research for my article on erik satie and dada. i've had such a hard time getting hold of decent scholarly books on dada up till now - i've had to buy every book that's been of any use at all because normal libraries just haven't provided anything that was helpful. and this brings me to another of the joys of this job. i have done research at lunchtimes at other jobs, but always ended up feeling a bit like an unsociable freak. now i can just plonk myself down and beaver away at what i want to do without a care in the world - because all the tables around me are filled with people doing exactly the same thing! HUZZAH!
so extremely happy in the new job and for once hoping that it goes on for the full three months. i'll barely touch the tip of the iceberg of books and cds in the library in that time, but at least i should be able to get through a fair few!
one of my projects at work at the moment has also seen me dipping my toe into the murky waters of open source development. and i must say, it's been quite a challenge. it seems to be an unwritten law that anybody who's even thinking of getting involved in an open source project must be an uber-geek who lives and breathes the unix command line and has an intimate knowledge of arcane programmes that run only from that command line. woe betide the newbie who, while she has a certain amount of programming experience, hasn't touched a command line since dos and has never so much as shaken the paw of unix or subversion or python or any of the other behind-the-scenes wonders that seem to be required. it would seem that the easy part of the whole thing is the actual coding. getting the source code took far longer than identifying the file i would need to tweak to do what i wanted. and the project, of course, has nothing so simple as a "how to get involved" page. you just know, apparently. and unfortunately i didn't, so i've been flailing about for the past day and a half trying to work things out. fortunately, around 1.30 this afternoon, things started to click into place a bit and now my key concern is why won't the source code (which i haven't touched since i checked it out) build without errors. i wrestled with that for a few hours, then come 6pm gave up and posted it to the project forum. too hard. need expert advice. the frustrating thing though is that i can see pretty much exactly what needs to be done to the particular file to achieve my goals, but i need to get through all this setup dross first. honestly, the uber-geek who takes pity on us less experienced souls and writes an introduction to open source dev and its tools will win bucketloads of undying gratitude and will no doubt be responsible for a ton of eager new helpers, so very keen to do the dull jobs, on open source projects all over the web...
wow, i hear you gasp - you did what??? well, yes. i bought a book. i didn't go out intending to buy a book - i went out intending to have lunch with a friend (which i did) and buy some fat wool for a hat (which i didn't). i almost bought a pair of shoes, which i may go through with later in the week if the tube strike doesn't get in the way. but i did buy a book. so by now you're probably thoroughly bored of this post (and only 4 lines in - wow!) and just wishing i would tell you which book was actually bought, so here you go:
... and now you're probably sorry you asked. i do love mark rothko. i didn't get abstract art at all until i stumbled into the seagram murals room in the tate modern a couple of years ago and those paintings just sat and pulsed off the walls at me until i was ready to cry. it's still one of my very favourite places in london. and now he's one of my favourite-ever artists. i think it takes a lot of courage to put a couple of rectangles of colour onto a canvas and not be either taking the piss or totally up yourself but have it really mean something. i sometimes feel like that about music. it can seem so pretentious to be putting notes together, to be making something new for forces that truly great composers like stravinsky or debussy or britten wrote for. it can seem somehow redundant, and all the more so before you've worked out what it is you're trying to say. stravinsky once wrote (in relation to "programme music") that music, by its very nature, is powerless to express anything at all, but i suspect it might be more accurate to say that it is powerless to express anything other than itself. it's a piece of abstract art, but - as i believe rothko felt very strongly about - "abstract" doesn't mean that it's a void, that nothing was *intended* in its creation.
as you can see, the mere act of picking up this book and flipping through it was enough to make me start thinking profound and likely unreadable thoughts about art and life and the feeling was so strong and good that i just had to give that book a home. so i bought it (as you know). and some more knitting needles :-)
the past few days have been freakin' aMAzing. i can't quite believe it. from the restless mess i was 4 days ago - couldn't settle to anything, brain malfunctioning, grumpy and pretty over everything, all has finally come good. i've now written actual music for each of the past three days and today. real live notes, i tell you! (well, today was real live note (singular) but hey, it's a weekend!) i'm not sure yet whether any of it is worth making a real fuss about, but there were actual ideas begging me to write them down. and then more ideas! and i didn't have to force any of them at all - they just lined up for me. i can't even remember the last time that happened. certainly i haven't produced anything of even the tiniest compositional interest since last year and not a single note has flowed from my pencil since february, so i'm pretty gosh-darned happy with this.
the knitting has been going well too - the scarf i am knitting for my mama (who is languishing in a chillier-than-usual sydney winter) is 3/4 done and should be finished entirely in the next couple of days. i'm pretty pleased with it too. my friend lis has lent me the pattern and humungous (15mm) needles to make a chunky-wool beanie too. she knitted hers up in 1/2 hour so looking forward to some instant gratification knitting there soon. i have been contemplating returning to the yarn shop at much wenlock to see if they have any of the yummy yummy hand-dyed welsh merino yarn in a fat enough weight to use on this project, but i think if i don't get there in a couple of weeks, i might just pick up some more usual chunky wool and have a go. one can never have too many winter hats, in my opinion...
i just had an insight descend upon me as if from on high. i am obsessed with publication. and along with the insight came the realisation of the starting point. it began way back in primary school at the age of about 8, when my class was set a project to produce our own newspaper. being about 8 it was a frog newspaper, called the slippery slimy times and two of my friends and i were assigned the fashion column (this will amaze anyone who's ever met me. fashion is *not* my forte!)
and now this manifests itself in oh so many different ways:
- 4 regularly updated blogs
- publication of my own scores
- plans for publishing other peoples scores
- ongoing writing of articles intended for publication
- constant development and planning of new websites
- a website publishing my honours thesis and other articles
- a bizarre desire to make full use of the services offered by sites like lulu.com and issuu.com even when i don't have a specific project in mind - i keep coming back to what i *could* do...
- binding up random documents (bank statements, printed-off articles from the web, recipe cards) to create neat and organised books
- a book i edited, published jointly by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australian Music Centre
- my music recorded on a commercially published CD (even if a hard-to-find one)
- articles published in music magazines
- a piece published a long, long time ago (and littered with typographical errors by a careless copyist) in The Flute magazine
- editing, copy editing, proof reading, writing, music copying, design and layout for sounds australian journal and other AMC publications, including CDs
- copy editing for independent film magazine
- a brief stint working on the website for australian arts publisher currency press.
i don't mean to brag about *being* published, just to say that this realisation has made me think, and now i wonder a bit about where i am and should be heading. yes, i want to write music, but i also have about as strong a desire to lay the stuff out as i do to write it. i suspect that over the next few weeks, i will start to think a little more clearly about this and maybe it'll show me a new way to organise myself. maybe i've been confusing myself by relating score layout with composing. maybe in the many many pigeonholes in my head, i need to make a new label for one and separate out the publication component from the creation component of the various things i do. hmm. that will take a bit of thinking about
well, i had hoped that gramophone magazine would have pulled itself out of the horrible mire of populism it was sinking into when i cut off my subscription, but it seems not. this month's editorial - http://www.gramophone.co.uk/newsletter/060508_newsletter_editorial.htm (as vox seems to have done away with the link button for some obscure reason) - just confirms it. this little gem features:
"Composers today have largely left behind the old credo that audiences are irrelevant to their work. Now they once again write music that catches in the ear, the mind and the heart."
anyone care to tell him that that happened about 20 years ago?
for some reason, this song always comes up at christmas - i sang it a couple of times at school and it turns up regularly on the programme of the fabulous sydney university musical society's annual carolfest (and this recording is from one of their cds - don't miss carolfest if you should ever happen to be in sydney in early december). it's actually a spiritual and doesn't mention anything about christmas at all. but i guess it's about jesus and faith and heaven and maybe that's enough to warrant its inclusion. no matter, it's a beautiful peace of music.
this evening i drew for the first time in... oh... months and months. and gosh it felt good. a real stress-reliever. give me a box of willow charcoal, a big bit of paper and a nice big space to spread charcoal dust around in and i'm a happy happy gal. and i got to thinking about grand gestures, how good just letting rip in whatever way makes us feel - big sweeping strokes of charcoal across paper, really let-loose dancing, going for a good run or whatever. and then it struck me that you can't really do this with composition. even writers can lose the lines and write in
REALLY BIG CAPITAL LETTERS
if the fancy takes them, but the grand gesture in music invariably involves the creator sitting down quietly and writing lots and lots of little notes, each of which has to fit tidily into its allotted space on the stave, or nobody will be able to play it. and if you write music that can't be played then its questionable whether you've actually written music at all. so maybe i need something like drawing to help me let rip so i can be as fastidious and pernickety over my notes as i need to be.
job is coming to an end next week and then i'm back to my scores, and hopefully back posting a bit more often too. and who knows? maybe i'll even get around to finally getting the film i shot in australia processed and scanned...
i'm supposed to be finishing off my website revamp so i can start applying for jobs - i've had three nibbles from agencies in the past day and all it's done is really make me not want to do anything at all about getting another job. gah. very slack. a friend has suggested i go freelance for a bit, and the more i think about it, the better it sounds. i've still got some money in the bank and if i can start getting a little extra coming in nowish, then i'll still be able to spend time on my music, but hopefully without ending up in a critical financial situation.
the last few days have actually turned out pretty well for the composition. i still feel like i'm slowly clawing my way back to sanity, but i've actually been able to get some thoughts down on paper, and have started to slowly expand one of them into a choral piece based on Psalm No. 1:
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.
i particularly liked the bit about the "seat of the scornful" :-) i think it'll be fun. and a good starting point to get back into writing choral music given that, as i said last time, there are so many opps around at the moment for SATB.
my lovely da also sent through the christmas carol words he's been working on for my sydney commission, and i think they're pretty good. maybe just a couple of tweaks to be made, but not much.
and i've finally managed to get facebook to import my vox blog so it'll register when i've put in a new public post. given that most of my RL friends seem to be facebookers and not voxers or twitterers, this might be a good thing. time will tell... must stop procrastinating and go and buy djelibeybi a birthday present for tomorrow...
heh. and just as i get home, vox posts a new sydney cityscape banner :-) so i'm just going to use it for a few days, i think. will replace the now-very-out-of-date easter eggs anyway.
yes, i'm home. as of 5am today, i am safely back in london at last. it feels a bit weird to have cupboards and my own kitchen and stereo and stuff about and to actually not have to go anywhere, and very little i really have to do. very very weird. but hopefully by tomorrow i'll be a little acclimatised.
i'm going to try not to rabbit on too much today, but so much stuff has accumulated in my brain over the last seven weeks or so, and feeling so jetlagged that it may be a hard ask. i humbly beg your forgiveness in advance.
to start with, i feel like the universe is giving me hints. big fat hints. big fat obvious wet-fish-slap-in-the-face hints. when i first quit my job, i had a nibble of a choral commission, which still may come through, but i haven't heard anything yet. while i was in sydney, a good friend of mine asked me to write something for the amateur choir she conducts. i wrote to the old girls' union at my school about their newsletter while in sydney, and got an email back including a suggestion that i might want to consider writing for an anniversary concert they're having next year (choir and/or orchestra). and now, coming home to find a file of spnm newnotes magazines, with their attendant flyers and composition opportunities, i discover that there's a juicy-sounding composition competition coming up, for - yup, that's right - SATB choir. so i think i'm meant to write choral music at the moment. which is fine and dandy by me. i've been feeling vocally inclined for a while now, between the satie song arrangement and the set of little walt whitman songs i've been working on, so might as well go the whole hog and work with SATB. so yay! direction!
which realisation has had me a little hyped up (well, as much as the jetlag will allow) to get back to sorting out my creativity stuff. i've done julia cameron's the artist's way a couple of times now, and it's been fabulous, but i'm still feeling a bit of a need for direction but it's too soon to read the same thing again, so while ordering another book from amazon this afternoon (more on that in the next paragraph, but it's medically related so feel free to skip that one), i made up the gap to get myself free shipping by ordering cameron's walking in this world as well. i've heard mixed things about this - some people saying it's great and a little more advanced than TAW, but others saying that she goes over a lot of the same ground. i think i'm not too concerned about the latter because she has a lot of useful ideas and approaches in TAW, and it's sometimes beneficial to run through ideas in different ways anyway, so i'll see how that goes. hopefully my new books will turn up at the end of the week.
the other book i ordered was because while i was in sydney, my doctor was finally able to diagnose the digestive problems i've been having which has set me off on an investigation of my assorted health issues in a quest to finally sort myself out and make life a little more enjoyable. at first she thought i might have some kind of bug we could kill, and i was most disappointed when she got my tests back and gave me a clean bill of health - no bugs to be found anywhere - grrr! but on the other hand, she was able to put a name to my problem - irritable bowel syndrome - and a bunch of reading has actually given me hope that i can really do something about this. seems it's not uncommon following gall-bladder removals as one's innards have no way of regulating the amount of bile floating about. so i have a couple of strategies for that, and we invested in both books of the csiro total wellbeing diet, which not only has had rave reviews from all sorts of people but came recommended by our doctor as a healthy and sustainable way to lose weight, lower cholesterol, etc. etc. (and the recipes look and sound - and by all reports are - delicious) and the second book i ordered today is about controlling the symptoms of polycystic ovary syndrome (another fun little health issue i have which mostly raises its head in the form of insulin resistance and a tendency to put on weight as soon as i look at anything that has a calorie) by diet. so i've got my reading cut out for me in the weeks ahead! i need to read all this stuff, digest (hah!) it and then come up with a plan based around the csiro diet which will keep the PCOS and IBS under control, allow me to lose a little weight, and keep my meals at least approximately in line with djeli's so that we're not having to cook six (or possibly nine - seems that small meals and lots of them may be the way to go for me) completely different meals every day.
</medical bit>
but it's marvellous to be home. i have no energy whatsoever at the moment, so just messing with some photos, ticking things off, deleting them or adding them to my to-do lists on rememberthemilk.com (which i am absolutely loving, i must say - it came in so very handy in our frantic last few days in sydney), catching up on a little tv and eating chocolate to try to avoid re-napping (i caught four hours earlier today during which djeli went up to the bank, came home, called the AA, changed the battery in the car, then drove to oxford and back to make sure it was ok - really need to not sleep again until it's properly night). tomorrow i think will be the time to clean off and reinstall the old vaio laptop in preparation for hooking up the 100-odd Gb of mp3s i ripped while in sydney. i'm fairly sure that if we counted individual discs, at least, i'd have ripped over 500 of the things. if i never look a ripping programme in the face again, it'll be too soon!
... or why a deadline is good for the soul
today marks the start of music's equivalent of nanowrimo - the opera in a month challenge! i just received the email announcing this year's topic - AESOP - and have now to work out how to write a 10-30 minute opera on the topic, including libretto, by the end of the month. wow. i'm feeling a little intimidated by it, but i'm also really chuffed at the topic, which is nice and broad and allows one to twist it a bit, if one so chooses. i'm not sure how to approach the libretto cos i've never tried to write a libretto before and creative writing (as opposed to essay writing) is really not my thing, but i'll give it a go, because we're supposed to do it ourselves, and if i find i'm having trouble, i'll beg my da for assistance (allowed but just not encouraged)
when i'm going to find time to write the music, i really don't know because we're pretty much fully booked until we leave australia on the 24th, but i felt it was worth trying and i usually do work better to a deadline. not so confident of finishing on time though that i signed up for the competition - it's open challenge only for me this year. maybe i'll think about the competition for next year.
so, aesop. of course the starting point is the fables, which might be good for me, not ever having tried to write a libretto - i'd have a good dramatic framework and no danger of getting bogged down in trying to invent a story, but, as the spec points out, there's a bunch of other potential options available too:
- original fable based on an aesop maxim (usually listed after a fable)
- an anti-fable tied somehow to aesop
- a human reduction of a fable by aesop, staged in the real world etc.
- base libretto on the life or legends surrounding the life of Aesop
- aesop could become a character in period drama
- aesop could become a character in time travel story
- aesop could be used as a stock character as in commedia d'elle arte
- include an aesop-like character (a fable-crafter or fable-teller)
most of these sound a little ambitious for me, but i'll give them a good think about over the next couple of days - it's good to approach things from different angles, even if one ends up taking the easy path of just creating a libretto from a fable.
so off i go - wish me luck!
