Erato

“Εἰ δ᾽ ἄγε νῦν, Ἐρατώ, παρά θ᾽ ἵστασο, καί μοι ἔνισπε...”

Long already a muse and inspiration to me, as I have mentioned here before, I have written and released this newest piece to acknowledge that she has also inspired me in ways and directions I'd no longer thought open to me.

It's but a little thing, I know, but we work with what gifts we have and this is mine. Thank you, my dear, for everything: my life is better with you in it.

With all my love, then, I present for you, Gabriela, your track “Erato”—the Greek's muse of love for the muse of my own:

Unreliability of Webhosts

Up to the present, I have used the once decent artist hosting service of iMeem to provide my listeners with free, streaming versions of the music I have released and blogged here. Today it was brought to my attention that those links no longer worked but instead were displaying a plethora of unwanted and unintended advertising here. Investigating, I have discovered that at some recent point the blasted behemoth of MySpace has acquired iMeem, and with neither site alerting any of the artists once hosted there about the matter, have removed access, streaming or otherwise, to our works hosted there.

I apologize for this inconvenience, and will investigate as soon as I have the chance, some other means of offering my works for listening here again. In the meantime, some thirty-five tracks of my work are currently available for free listening at the Last.FM site, under the artists Agrypnia and Hexachordum, the latter for bass work.

"Ihn bewegt der Sehnsucht Schmerz, und er schauet himmelwärts..."

A small piece this time round, barely three minutes of playtime. It began as a simple piano melody that came to mind one evening earlier in the week, but shaped by the week's events and some dream-time inspiration it has emerged as a small work for violin with piano accompaniment, primarily in E minor, with small diversions into G major and C minor along the way. The title, I think suitable enough, comes from a line in the Mayrhofer poem "Einsamkeit" which Schubert once set to music.

The work may be heard here at Last.FM.

φοιβιδα μοι παντων τε θεων παντων τ' ανθρωπων υμνει, Μουσα

Last fall I found myself lamenting my lack of a Muse, fumbling around with this or that, doing arrangements or covers—just to keep in practice—of some other artist's work for want of my own inspiration. Those of you who've followed my pre-release blogs may recall the grumbling. Yet with the previous post, I had thought—had hoped—perhaps that phase had passed, as new work began once more to trickle out.

I should have been more wary of optimism, perhaps, but so it goes.

And yet, as fate's mysterious ways are wont to unfurl, it turns out that further inspiration was even then making itself known, entering life from unexpected quarters. In the months since, this muse has proved inspiring in myriad ways, but most significantly for this blog, she has brought me round again to music, having so far inspired several new works.

In gratitude, I here dedicate this latest to her, with all my thanks and all my love, which she has also re-awakened.

You may hear it at Last.FM, here: Su melodía oculta (A Song for Catherine).

A new work for solo piano

The title comes from the reported ancient practice of setting aside a stone for every day of life: white, if a good or fortunate day; black, if not. At the close of day, or of life, the stones are counted, and the day, or the life, considered fortunate or not depending on which color predominates. (See here, for example.) As moods and experiences fluctuate through my own life, I am not certain which color so far describes my course; nor, perhaps, am I even sure which is predominant in my music, as I slip from major to minor modes and round again. The title is inspired by that consideration. And the tabulation of counting stones? What more fitting day for such a name than today, the Election.

For those of you who have followed my work, you may have noticed that for a while now the bulk of my releases have consisted of arrangements—Bach, Mozart, Salieri, Beethoven (or here or here), Grieg, et al. That changes with this post, as here, at last, is a return to original work. The credit, inspiration, and ultimately, the dedication for this goes to Ekaterina, to whom, all my thanks.

You may hear the track here

Trold på Troldhaugen

Edvard Grieg wrote a number of lyrical pieces for solo piano, sixty or more if memory serves. I cannot speak for all of them, having not yet heard the lot, but many are quite good. Interestingly, we actually have a few recordings, from 1903 or so, of the composer himself playing his own works, including, or at least a part of, the piece which has taken my interest most recently, the relatively well-known "Bryllupsdag på Troldhaugen"—"the wedding day at the troll-house", which was the name of the composer's own home. Unfortunately, that recording is rather noisy due to the distortion of age, and since, as above, it's but a fragment, I suggest instead, for comparison here if you are not familiar with the original piece, a recording from 1929 of a performance by Arthur de Greef, who was not only a pupil of the great Liszt through the 1870s and '80s but was an intimate of Grieg for some three decades and the composer's favorite performer and interpreter of Griegs' piano works. I link to de Greef's performance below to reveal what the original sounds like when played as the composer intended.

But comparison to what, you may be asking. Well, to what the piece has become under my own "corrupting" influence, having had my way with it. I finished this arrangement a couple of days ago and have today finished a recording of the same. It's actually still for piano, but if you listen to the two, perhaps you can hear the difference?

Granted, my recording hasn't the grace of de Greef or the Grieg recording, but perhaps it's still not entirely without some merit or interest of its own.

New Old Music

Recently, as an exercise, I made a new arrangement of the allegretto grazioso, third movement, of Mozart's piano sonata in B♭ major, K. 333, in which I chose to change the key but more to the point the modality, shifting the piece to a minor mode, and slowing it somewhat to better accommodate the minor. Getting that to the point that I was at least relatively satisfied with it, I chose to arrange the work for string quintet instead of solo piano. For the curious, the result can be heard here.

By contrast, here is Horowitz interpretation of the original:

For the purpose of this post, however, those are really neither here nor there but as impetus for what came after. Thinking about the situation, reminded by a reference to the play "Amadeus", I thought it a shame and unfair that old Salieri's works remain so widely unknown today, despite that, at least in my opinion, many of them are quite good. So I found myself thinking I ought to give him a little exposure as well to counterbalance the Mozart piece.

My available scores for his works are rather small, and recordings of any even more so, thus my options were few, but I settled on what I thought would be a workable option: I would do the two small movements, the Kyrie and Sanctus, from his Mass no. 1 in D major. The only score I have of it, however, is only that for SATB choir and organ, so that is the source I worked from (I'm aware there is a volume available that includes an orchestra accompaniment for this work, but I do not have access to it, so it does not inform the works which follow below).

As with the Mozart, I chose to change the modality to minor—B♭ minor in this case. Only minor modifications were needed for it, outside of the change of mode, but I reworked the organ for piano, and arranged the vocal lines for strings.

Once finished, I found I kept returning to the idea of the rest of the mass to the point that I began working on another piece, and then another, and so on until I had finished the whole work. I may yet tweak a phrase here or there, but for the nonce, here is a (possibly preliminary) recording of the new Mass in B♭ minor.