Friday, October 31, 2008

Historiography of the douçaine

Well, its time to buckle down on the research papers. The 10-15 page paper for the music research class is in pretty good shape. It will only take some tweaking. It's just an overview of the douçaine and I doubt that it will have any chance of being published. Now I need to get busy on a 30-page historiography. I need to at least do an outline today. It will be interesting working with the etymology, as I have found 31 spellings so far for double reed instruments derived from the Latin word dulcis. Fun.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Jeg har det godt

I think I have my bearings now. Grad school is actually going well. I'm happy with my writing and looking forward to next semester's classes. After a few days of seeimg to not play a single note in tune, I've been scraping on the douçaine reeds, rediscovering my embouchure, and finding that I really can play the thing. My research on it has been going well. I like the tone of the first paper, so I have high hopes for the historiography.
My last couple of rehearsals with Jen have seen me playing douçaine instead of bass clarinet. Things started coming together really nicely today. Our first faculty recital of the season at NNU is coming up in less than two weeks, and for the first time, I am doubling on both instruments. We are doing some medieval dances, 5 Machaut ballades and virelais, some di Lasso ricercari, and the Hert setting of O Rosa Bella. With bass clarinet we are doing a few works from our CDs and some South American music. She asked if we could do some medieval music with me on BC (to help sell some CDs) and I agreed, but I came home and arranged some Bozza to do on douçaine. It will be a really fun program.
I'm looking forward to her getting a vielle, but In the meantime she is refitting a viola with gut strings and some other adjustments.

I had a great time playing some landini with Joe on lute today. It's nice to be able to play the top parts on some of those. I'm usually relegated to tenor or contratenor parts, which is fine.

I also commissioned a douçaine and organ piece from Ray this week. I asked for a piece that we could do in mass, at the AGO convention in 2011 and on my graduate recital.

very fun stuff...

Thursday, October 9, 2008

well, it's been awhile

July was the last time I posted and it seems so long ago. The Sun Valley Summer Symphony went fine in August. I just had to come home on my days off for an emergency root canal. $2000 later, I just got my permanent crown yesterday.
I am actually in grad school, finally! I'm working on an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies: Early Music and History. I'm paying out of pocket when I already live hand to mouth. Time to fill out a damn FAFSA for next year! I'm taking two methodology classes, Historians and Historical Interpretation and Intro to music Research. Of course, I'm in the early music ensemble, where we are mostly playing medieval music.

I've settled on titles for my research papers.

A Historiography of the Douçaine: a Problem of Etymology and Nomenclature

Demystifying the Douçaine: an Overview of the Cylindrical-bored "Still Shawm" of the Middle Ages and Renaissance

Here I go, setting the world on fire. Until I started the history class, I didn't even have the words historiography, etymology and nomenclature in my vocabulary.