The Sousa Variations

The SFCCO commissioned a number of us to write a set of variations on Stars and Stripes Forever, the one that goes as follows (yes, I get them all confused, the tapestry of Sousa marches, each cut from the same cloth, but what a fine cloth it is, akin to the cloth of the Strauss waltzes, so please sing along): be kind to your web footed friends etc. It was due last week but I am late, very very late, but I do have the program notes done, which I suppose is something, so here they are:

DAVID BLAKELY IS DEAD.; Manager of Sousa's Band Stricken with Apoplexy.

NOV 8TH, 1896, WEDNESDAY

David Blakely, manager of Sousa's Band, died suddenly yesterday afternoon in the Carnegie Building, Fifty-seventh Street and Seventh Avenue, from an attack of apoplexy. Mr. Blakely was in the best of health until stricken. At about 4 o'clock his typewriter went out on an errand. When she returned, she found Mr. Blakely lying on his face on the floor of his office.

Loss of my virginity

I had taken to the affectation of a cane lately, a rather lovely golden cobra-headed number which actually did aid my stride, ameliorating a small foot injury I suffered in Barcelona in 'ought-3 at the hands of the green muse and its cousins.  Using the cane of course brought to mind the riddle of the sphinx, asked before she strangled and devoured those who failed to answer correctly, to wit: which creature in the morning goes on four feet, at noon on two, and in the evening upon three?  Greek grammarians tried to make the connection between sphingein (to bind tight) and sphinx, but according to my old Britannica, the etymology is dubious. But drawn into this associational vortex is the recent clamoring of a number of my women friends to serve a fantasy of mine in the leading of a public deflowering, to be bound tight inside my body (ahem, as it were), much like the Vugusu who required the bridegroom to deflower the virgin bride in public, until the poison of modernity left too few virgin brides available for this ritual‡, but Lynne has maintained that this right of possession is hers and hers alone. So this fantasy, like so many of my tired life, has disappeared, as the cane also has gone the way of all things, broken and left under the glaring eyes of the oh-so-watchful Swiss TSA-equivalents.

‡ African Marriage and Social Change, Lucy Philip Mair, p. 50 and Black Hearts, The Development of Black Sexuality in America, Nick J Myers III, p. 3.

Name in Print

Theatre Bay Area Magazine is featuring Mordake on the cover as part of an article about the SF International Arts Festival.  The article quotes me quite a lot, even going so far as to extemporize a bit beyond what I may have actually said. But what the hey.  

Dying in the Saddle

from the wikipedia article on Louis Vierne:

Vierne suffered a heart attack while giving his 1750th organ recital at Notre-Dame de Paris on the evening of June 2, 1937. He had completed the main concert, which members of the audience said showed him at his full powers - "as well as he has ever played." After the main concert, the closing section was to be two improvisations on submitted themes. He read the first theme in Braille, then selected the stops he would use for the improvisation. He suddenly leaned forward, clutching his chest, and fell off the bench as he hit the low "E" pedal of the organ. He lost consciousness as the single note echoed throughout the church. He had thus fulfilled his oft-stated lifelong dream - to die at the console of the great organ of Notre-Dame.

I've fantasized about two modes of death: one rather like the above, but peacefully in my sleep, the completed but not-yet-fully orchestrated manuscript of my own Requiem Mass slowly spilling off my night table; the other more akin to the death of Nelson Rockefeller.  

SFIAF: Discount Tickets

Mordake Visuals, Construction, Music et al

I was informed by electronic post late last night that Lynne has been blogging her work for Mordake. As of yesterday morning I finally finished setting the last of Douglas's text, almost just barely too late as we really are in the middle of rehearsals, and Herr Weiß is here only for another week or so, and M. Duykers is back in Florida performing final excruciations on his students. Several would-be assistants had other projects interfere with their participation, but luckily our friend Diana showed up direct from Amersfoort NL, firmly gripped the handle of our construction problems, caused the Jack in the Box to pop out, and has left us all deeply satisfied with her work. 

Mary Ellen Hunt dropped by to interview Frieder and me for a mention in the Chronicle's article about the SFIAF, but we've been corresponding a bit about those people who, like Mordake are double-faced.  She referenced the young Indian girl who is believed by some to be a reincarnation of Ganesh, I countered with Chang Tzu Ping (with a nod to the recent alleged Lakshmi reincarnation), and then on to various other facial tumors and skin ailments and so on. These photos disturb me a bit even though I wish I could just accept them as part of the continuum of human styles and substances.  Like the murder victim we happened across today draped with a cloth and surrounded by police tape and squad cars, they seem to remind me too much of my own fragile physical nature, one step away from worm dirt.

Tune of the day

Agnus Dei

3½/4

As a milksop, I've been reticent to specify the true nature of some rhythms I use commonly, so I'd like to say here for those of you listening that when the pulse is basically quarters (say) and I write a time signature of 7/8 (say), what I really mean is 3½/4 or 3/4 + 1/8 or 3.5/4.  I've tried to explain this to a number of conductors in the past but they've scowled at me and tossed their hair and brushed me aside and explained that this is simply not possible, that they can't have a dangling ½ a beat andthen  proceed to conduct it as 2 2 3, which really is not the same, now is it? I mean, it's *really* goddang not the same! So why do I allow it? Well, see the definition of namby-pamby in your well-thumbed English-English dictionary.  

Looking back, I was clearly infected with such jumpy skittery rhythms by their common usage in the pop music of my youth, e.g., Led Zeppelin's Ocean, which features an ostinato alternating between 4/4 and 3½/4. My high school was a hotbed of wannabe progressive rock musicians and often featured such at the oral-sex-and-alcohol-fueled parties which I would have attended except for my aforementioned milksopish milquetoastishness, but sometimes, leaving the SQ-encoded recording of Petrushka playing on my quad hifi, I would sneak outside in my bunny footed yellow pajamas to peek in through the window, to hear them playing excerpts from such devil-besotted music, their long locks swaying to the beat, sweat dripping down their bare chests, a slide show of one of them dressed in their SCA finery projected on the walls while their girlfriends (ah, girlfriends!) waited for it all to stop so they could put on their singer-songwriter LPs and make out with their BFs, lost in a romantic fantasy, fingers and lips searching and probing the limits of their young love.

Ode to the Shy Monk

Review of the Missa came out today in the St. Gallen Tagblatt.  Google's automatic translator produces this, which is a bit poetic, viz "Major outbreaks searches in vain."  Listening to the recording from Sunday in the clear but jet-lagged light of day today, which I've put up here, I realize that they did do a beautiful job.  

Worlds in Collision

Was reading my copy of IEEE Spectrum this morning at 5 am and found a description of my friend Frieder's work. Very beautiful.  Looking forward to working with him again in just a few days.