IMSLP under attack on bogus legal grounds

Byartsyhonker April 21, 2011 0 Comments
I'm a big fan of the International Music Score Library Project, also known as the Petrucci Music Library.It seems the Music Publishers Association, a UK organisation with industry links to EMI, PRS and many of the other usual suspects, is being quite problematic for them.A short extract from their forums:The MPA, without notifying us, sent to our domain registrar GoDaddy a bogus DMCA takedown...

Ruht wohl

Byartsyhonker April 20, 2011 0 Comments
Last night I went to hear Bach's St John Passion at St Paul's Cathedral. The cathedral is not the best acoustic environment for it, to be honest: there's a very long echo and the sound just gets incredibly muddy. Bach is better, I think, with some clarity.The Passion was sung in English. As a rule I tend to prefer singing in the original language and as an audience member I think I feel the same,...

Words, words!

Byartsyhonker April 19, 2011 3 Comments
When I write music, I struggle with the words. As a child I was a decent poet, I'm told, but at some point I lost the habit of writing poetry in a notebook in spare moments. I think it may have been around the time I took up playing the horn and got a paper route and somehow seemed to always be out at one rehearsal or another! These days, most of the words I write are typed directly onto a screen...

In Commendation of Music

Byartsyhonker April 18, 2011 0 Comments
Somehow, I neglected to blog about this at the time... last year I wanted to make a birthday present for Stella, who keeps everything ticking over smoothly at Quire. So of course I wrote a piece of music. The text is by one William Strode, and I chose it (after the usual laboured searching) because it was a fairly simple metrical poem which I could set in the style of an 18th-century glee. PDF...

Psalm 31 vv 9-16 to Aylesbury

Byartsyhonker April 17, 2011 0 Comments
This is the last of the metrical Psalms for this Lent. On Maundy Thursday we'll be singing Psalm 22, right enough, but it will be a chanted version using the Common Worship text. The plan is to keep that very simple: two notes only, a minor third apart.I wanted to use the opportunity to teach the choir (and expose the congregation) to another good tune that's in the New English Hymnal but which...

The Lord Bless Thee

Byartsyhonker April 16, 2011 2 Comments
I wrote this for the King James Trust 2011 composition competition. I had intended to enter both categories but failed to get my act together in time, so this was thrown together rather hastily. However, I do like it for what it is: short, sweet, simple. It should work well with either organ or piano. If you had a flute or another instrument, it would lend itself to a descant based on the...

London to Oxford on a Pashley

Byartsyhonker April 14, 2011 0 Comments
This year for my birthday I got a very shiny bicycle. This was in no small part due to someone else being positive about cycling in London without turning into a fluorescent Lycra-clad speed demon or getting squished; not only was she enthusiastic about cycling, but she recommended a shop where I might be able to find a bicycle that fit me properly.Now this lovely lady is planning on cycling from...

Organ diagnostic chart

Byartsyhonker April 14, 2011 0 Comments
We had our organ tuned earlier this week, preparing for Lent. Hooray! I have all the notes back on the Tromba stop! I can use the Great Stopped Diapason when playing in flat keys! I approve of this. Some problems are going to wait until there's time for a longer visit, and then there are the bellows which need repairs -- a huge and expensive job which we don't yet have sufficient funding to...

Psalm 130 to Cheshire

Byartsyhonker April 13, 2011 0 Comments
This past Sunday -- Passion Sunday -- was not an All-Age Service, or anything else requiring exceptional liturgy, and so it was back to metrical psalms with a congregational response.I was pleased with this setting of Psalm 130. The tune I chose is one that we'll be using on Palm Sunday and which is not terribly well known in the congregation, so sneaking it in as the psalm is one way of getting...

Here we go…

Byartsyhonker April 8, 2011 0 Comments
There's this Sunday, and then another "normal" week, and then it's Palm Sunday and Holy Week. Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday will see four services in four days -- not excessive, by any means, but bear in mind I am used to just four or five services per month, with the occasional funeral thrown in. Suddenly there doesn't seem to be nearly enough time, both in terms of learning to play the music...