Category Archives: Music

Orchestrated Update

New words today: 2,003
Total word count, Orchestrated: 9,393

Hello, pages and words. I love you.

Two new scenes, and my two protagonists have met and shared info and are now friends. Good. I may even have given a decent sense of who the new character is.

And speaking of orchestra, it’s the first rehearsal of the 2008-2009 chamber orchestra season tonight! I, of course, do not yet have my cello back from the shop, but someone is lending me one for the night. I’m very excited about going back because I miss playing (and not having a cello within reach for the past two weeks has driven me crazy), and also because we’ll meet our first guest conductor and get our music for the concert in late November.

Now I’m going to go get myself a drink, read some more Anathem and enjoy the language, and think about what to make for dinner. (I made sun oven-dried tomatoes with sea salt, herbs, and olive oil yesterday; maybe I’ll do something with them and some chicken. If I don’t eat the tomatoes right out of the container, that is.) Basically I intend to enjoy the fact that I have the next two hours to myself before the boys come home. Maybe I’ll have a nice, warm bath. Hmm; that thought has much merit. I also have a couple of sweaters to mend, as they seem to have developed holes during their summer sojourn in a drawer. I suspect that the bath will win out, though.

Labour Weekend and Orchestra Update

HRH helped move t! and Jan to their new home in Ontario on Saturday, and I miss them dreadfully already. We had a lovely afternoon and dinner with HRH’s parents to celebrate his dad’s birthday on Sunday. Monday saw a last-minute gathering chez the Young-Schmeisser residence, complete with pool and treehouse and swings and lazing about in lawn chairs and grazing upon barbecued summer food. It was incredibly good to see people relaxing together instead of connecting only momentarily at the rare evening gathering. I saw Amanda for the second time this summer, which is a record of some sort for us, and watched Tallis marching around holding on to parental fingertips, so very much older than she was only two months ago. It was a pure summer gathering, the kind we don’t have enough of any more.

We did forget the corn on the cob we’d bought with the intent of bringing it to roast on the BBQ and share with everyone, though. Now we have a ton of corn to eat in the next few days.

We had a general meeting of the orchestra membership last week, something has hasn’t been done in at least eighteen years, possibly the entire life of the group. There have been some changes. They’re growing pangs, really, because for three decades Andres helmed the group, having founded it and maintained it on his own. When we lost him so suddenly the group needed to develop some guidelines and new methods out of thin air, and we’re still working them out as we encounter obstacles. One of the things we’re refining is our method of selecting and reviewing conductors. Our most recent conductor’s term has ended, and we’re now preparing to audition three new conductors over the upcoming season, one per concert session.

This happened some what precipitously, because we didn’t have a clearly defined review system in place. The point is, most of us expected to be somewhat adrift for the first while due to the unexpectedness of the event and the timing, but to my surprise at this general meeting the exec revealed that we not only had a guest conductor in place, but we had a programme and our first concert date scheduled. This is going so well that I can’t help but suspect our decisions in the matter have all been the correct ones. Not only do we have our first guest conductor scheduled, but we’ve had a call from the director of the WIYSO expressing interest in one of the future guest spots, as have a couple of others. There were some suggestions from the membership too, revolving around multiple performances of the same programme in different areas instead of a single concert, raising membership fees to generate more available capital with which to pay conductors (thereby enabling us to attract higher-profile directors), and communication suggestions (especially an interactive website with a members-only section to enable us to share ideas and receive information). The plan is to have a different conductor for each of our three concerts in the upcoming season, to evaluate each, and then vote on one to invite back.

From what I can remember, our first programme will consist of a Mozart divertimento for strings, the Iphigenia in Aulis overture, Haydn’s 104th symphony, and a Vivaldi concerto for four violins with continuo (our prize for the winners of the Lakeshore Chamber Music Society’s concerto competition). Our first rehearsal is on September 17, and our first concert is on November 22. We’ll have to be really focused and on the ball with this new conductor to prepare a concert in that period of time. This will happen naturally of course, as everyone will be hyper-aware and paying very close attention to the new director’s technique. New blood to stir us up will be good. I’m looking forward to exploring music with a new director. One of the things I realised through this summer mini-crisis about the orchestra leadership was that I was focusing on my own satisfaction with my technical performance in a concert and extrapolating that to measure the orchestra’s overall performance, which was wrong of me. I was also shifting my personal focus to technical improvement because I wasn’t getting artistic or interpretive satisfaction from the overall musical experience. The orchestra really needs to grow and develop musically now. We’ll see what happens in the coming weeks.

Apart from that, musically I’ve been kind of on hold. I’ve been playing songs and such, testing my treble clef reading, but the 7/8 search and the mystery cello repair hasn’t moved forward. Why? Because my luthier and I miscommunicated about vacation, and he wasn’t gone the first two weeks of August but the last two weeks. Had I known I would have brought him my cello for its tune-up and the mystery cello as soon as I got home from our trip. Ah well, everything ought to be back to usual now that it’s September; I’ll call him Thursday. With orchestra only beginning two weeks from now, there’s time to take my current cello in for adjustments, new bridge, new strings, and a quick repair to the soundboard crack, and get it back in plenty of time. Otherwise, I can always test another cello out and use that!

I find that my initial ‘no I should upgrade the quality/level of the cello I’m using’ is ebbing to ‘something equivalent in a different shape would be just fine’. Which is a good thing, really, because it’s assuaging a lot of the ‘OMG so expensive where will I find the money now!’ jitters I’m having. I’m interested to hear what the luthier will have to say about the mystery cello, too.

Right. More work. I want to finish this project up so I can really focus on writing this week.

A Farewell

Well, this is it; the last day of a somewhat sane CBC Radio 2.

This past spring, CBC announced a major overhaul of Radio 2 in an effort to find more listeners. They’re broadening their musical scope to include, well, pretty much everything. Radio 2 was developed as a classical music station. Over the past few years they’ve slowly been whittling away at that, adding jazz, fusion shows, a little bit of this, a little bit of that… essentially music in which I have zero interest. Each time I’ve dropped another show I once enjoyed. Gone was Danielle Charbonneau’s lovely, relaxing program Music for Awhile between dinner and eight; gone were the live classical concert recordings of Symphony Hall at eight o’clock that I’d listen to at home before bed or on the way to orchestra. I turn the radio off at six now, because I find Tonic harsh and discordant and it drives me up the wall (although I like Katie Malloch, go figure). I find that I often flip the dial to the CJPX 99.5, the local French all-classical station, although I miss a host’s presence identifying the music and it doesn’t keep a reference list of what played when on its web site. (Although having just visited the site to start an Internet stream, I see that they now have a date/time search function. That’s good.)

I’m grieving for the loss of Tom Allen’s weekday morning show, Music & Company, in particular. Of all the daily hosts, I find he’s the most in tune with my sense of humour, my musical tastes, and my mood at the time. He’s going to be the new morning show host, although the content is going to be very different, and I’m trying to find solace in his continued presence. I’m going to give it the good old college try, but I suspect it’s not going to be what I need in the morning.

I’ve written of my displeasure to CBC and groused about it here and to people in person, but I’m feeling frustrated and useless at a move I sense will lose more listeners than gain new ones. It’s unfocused, a patchwork of scattered musical style, and although they claim they’re maintaining a commitment to classical music the only show with classical as its base is scheduled between 10 and 3, when many people are at work or school and can’t access a radio. I’ll be the first person to stand up and say that the definition of ‘culture’ is not limited to classical music, but in many places across Canada there isn’t an alternative to the classical content found on CBC R2 up till today. I’m not the only frustrated listener, either. Stand On Guard is a website devoted to proving to the CBC that there is a substantial percentage of listeners who do want classical music to remain as the focus of CBC R2. They’re also fighting to restore the CBC Radio Orchestra, the last surviving radio orchestra in North America, which was axed this past spring as well.

I’m listening to Tom Allen’s final minutes as host of Music & Company, and I feel as if saying goodbye to it is like a microcosm of my commitment to Radio 2. Goodbye Studio Sparks; goodbye Disc Drive. Thanks for being the soundtrack to my life for thirty years, Radio 2. I’ve discovered many new artists and composers through you. You’ve been with me through two university degrees, my marriage, my retail and freelance careers, the writing of five books for publication and countless not yet published novels and short stories, and motherhood. You inspired me as a musician. I’m going to miss you very, very much. I will be open-minded and give the new programming a try next week, but I sense I won’t be tuning for long; it’s just not the kind of music I want to be listening to. I’ve sent personal farewells to some of the hosts, and left notes on CBC blogs as well. These people deserve to know what they’ve added to my life.

Now I’m thoroughly depressed. This probably calls for some Invisible. ‘Holiday in Cambodia’, perhaps, or the PPK medley.

It Figures

Someone gets a really good picture of me at the last orchestra concert… and I’m not playing my cello.

Because if I’m not playing, I’m marking up my music in the desperate hope that a new fingering added half an hour before the concert begins will actually help. Sigh.

Thirty-Eight Months Old!

I think the biggest milestone over the past month has been Liam’s first official haircut. I’ve been cutting it myself at home when I could, but it was getting to the point where I couldn’t keep it as even as it should be, so in he went. He was pleasantly distracted by the movie they were showing (CARS!), and ran up to his stylist to thank her twice at the end of it all. He chose a red lollipop, naturally; they seem to be his favourites. The other big thing this past month has been the bike trailer. He has dragged everyone who has stopped by down to the garage to show it off.

His current favourite books are the Henry and Mudge series. Like lots of the other books we read together they’re early reader books, but they’re perfect to read aloud. Henry is a very Liamish boy. Mudge is, well, a huge Great Dane. Liam started calling Gryff Mudge for a while. And let me tell you, when they galumph and chase one another up and down the hall, Gryff certainly sounds like a Great Dane. (HRH told me the vet weighed Gryff when he was taken in with the infected bite, and he’s eleven pounds now. Gah.) I love looking in the rear view mirror while driving and seeing him sitting casually in his booster seat, legs loosely crossed, a book held open on his lap.

In the food division, the recent winners are ice cream bars on sticks, corn on the cob, and any kind of meat on a bone of some sort. Seriously. It gives us both great pleasure to watch him hold a bone in his hands and tear the meat off with his sharp little teeth. His snack of choice is fresh mangetout peas from the garden. (Note to self: plant lots and lots more mangetouts next year.) Last week he ate a banana as if it was a cob of corn — peeled it completely then held it horizontally and ate bites out of it that way. He has also discovered what he calls ‘iced cappuccinos’. I crush some ice cubes in the blender, add some milk and chocolate syrup, blend it all together, and serve it to him with a straw. It’s basically a chocolate milk frappé, but to him it’s a very grown-up drink and he loves it.

Current fave music is the Snacktime album by the Barenaked Ladies. He’ll even dance to it, and encourage other people to dance as well. He still won’t let other people sing it, though. “No,” he’ll say, “that’s my song.” Meaning, of course, that no one else is allowed to sing it. He’s still a big fan of ‘The Mesopotamians’ and ‘Dr. Worm,’ too.

He’s been having trouble with his sleep patterns lately. His naps have been comparatively brief (an hour instead of two), and he’s been fighting bedtime in general. He gets up after the door has closed, cries, and pushes our buttons. It’s hard to keep the frustration under wraps. He wakes up between five and six AM, often with a mid-night waking as well. We’re buying a set of bunk beds from HRH’s officemate next month, and I’m hoping the novelty of a big bed will help him stay in it. We’ll get to choose new sheets and a coverlet, too. We plan to set up the bunkbeds but leave the upper mattress and the ladder off the unit. Voila: instant tent once one has hung fabric off the two open sides.

On the other night-time hand, he’s only wearing a pull-up at night in case of emergency, and he’s dry more often than not. So good for him.

We’ve been having problems in general with whining and encountering resistance to any idea that isn’t his own. We try to remind him or tell him ahead of time about things so as to avoid the sudden change of direction or activity, but the immediate response to any prompt is still resistance. In fact, he’s been resisting things in general, running the gamut from deliberately doing the opposite of what we ask to simply ignoring us, to throwing a fit. I know he’s working things out, testing boundaries and confirming structure, but it’s very wearing. He’s also been very screechy and shouty. Liam is a very strong personality, and it’s hard to grit one’s teeth when he looks at you and does something deliberately to provoke you. Forget the terrible twos; these are the infamous threes. Not to imply that he’s a stress all the time; there are long stretches of fun and cheery Liam, and then suddenly there is a horrid moment of vexation derived from naughty behaviour or something positively Not On, for which he gets a turn in the Time Out chair. (Suddenly turning around and biting Mama for no reason until the teeth meet but the skin isn’t broken qualifies as one of those Not On things. Especially when followed by laughter.)

I figured it was about time he got to play with one of the consoles, so I bought Endless Ocean for him to play, and he’s having a ball. He feels extremely important holding the Wii remote, and once we’ve set the game up he won’t let us touch it. We’d opened it and played it before HRH came home that day, and Liam took great delight in showing HRH how things worked (going so far as to say, “Here, Dada, I’ll show you how it works” in a very officious manner). He’s lost his game a couple of times by hitting a sequence of buttons, but he doesn’t care; he likes being able to move the diver around and switch between first-person and third-person views. And he is very chuffed about having figured out where the A button is. He acquired his dolphin friend over the weekend and now has way too much fun making it do tricks.

When he sees that my computer is on he gathers a bunch of his trains up and patters into my office, eagerly saying, “Hi Mama, can I play in your office? Can I watch Thomas and friends?” He has discovered the joys of YouTube, and the seemingly endless supply of child-directed reenactments of Thomas episodes using the actual episode narration and toy trains moved around in front of a video camera. It’s the main reason I want the laptop up and running properly again, so I can work and he can do his internet-related stuff at the same time. ( “I’m working,” he said importantly the other day when I’d gotten the laptop up and running, albeit temporarily, as he sat there and typed away at the keyboard. “I’m sending you a message.”)

He is very sensitive, and he’s working that out in his own way too. He unintentionally made me cry the other day. He trundled his blanket-covered toy shopping cart up to me. “Mama,” he said in a coaxing singsong way, “I have a surprise for you!” “Really? A surprise?” I said. “Wow! What is it?” Liam whisked the blanket away to reveal the little stuffed black and white cat he now calls Maggie. “Ta-da!” he said. “It’s Maggie-cat!” And I burst into tears, surprising both of us. He looked very unsure as I reached out and picked the toy up and crushed it to my chest. “Thank you,” I said. “Mama?” he said uncertainly. “Are you okay?” “Yes, lovey,” I said through the tears. “It’s just that you surprised me. And I miss my Maggie-cat so very much, more than I thought I did, I guess.” He still looked kind of spooked, so I held out my arms and cuddled him along with the toy. I couldn’t stop the damn sobbing, not for a while. He cuddled me and patted my arm, and finally said, “It’s okay Mama. It’s just a stuffed Maggie.” And I laughed through my tears. I his world, it made sense. And sometimes we need to take a three-year-old’s point of view and say to ourselves yes, it’s just a stuffed Maggie. There’s no need to be upset. She’s something to squeeze and love and play with, and if we can’t have the real Maggie (as he seems to finally understand, or at least he’s stopped saying “We’ll find her again later” at any rate) then a stuffy is just fine.

Liam-themed posts over the past month:

– The new bike trailer
– Mama’s birthday, Liam’s first car wash, and Mama’s new bike

If you missed the 37 month post (and didn’t we all) I did one a couple of weeks ago and back-dated it.

Non-Cello Content

I discovered yesterday, while the boy and I tested the new bike and trailer for the first time, that the trip to the library involves going uphill both ways.

I am serious. I will be using this fact as guilt trip material somewhere down the line.

The good news is that I am not dead today. This is huge, because of the limited energy/chronic fatigue thing. And despite the bike being a one-speed (while reverting to the use of coaster brakes was surprisingly easy, many were the times I forgot I could not simply reverse the pedalling to reset my legs) it generally handles well. Sure, I wish I had at least three speeds when going uphill from a stop (which, as I pointed out above, happens an awful lot), but it’s very good for what it is. The boy decrees the trailer Very Cool. I was somewhat surprised to find that we can carry on a conversation at a regular decibel level and hear one another while cycling.

The boy had his first ever Official Pro Haircut yesterday. I’ve been trimming it when necessary, but I lack the knowhow to do it properly. So off all those lovely curls across his brow came. He was very, very good, and got a certificate and a lollipop.

Saw the doctor this morning (and a medical student, who played the role of main doctor while my doctor oversaw the appointment) and we’re upping the dosage of my meds a wee bit to help with the lack of deep sleep thing that’s creeping up again.

I have just discovered Schumann’s string quartets. Not sure why it took me this long.

I picked up Guitar Hero: On Tour last week for my DS (after wibbling about it since its release, but Ceri finally told me I could do it, so I did). After failing miserably for a few practice songs I suddenly understood what the game was asking me to do and how I could do it. Even though most of the songs are unfamiliar to me I have an advantage in being able to absorb rhythm and therefore hit things at the right time. I flew through two levels on Monday night. The grip is made for someone whose hand is slightly larger than mine, and I have to lie my left forearm on a pillow in my lap to keep my hand relaxed enough to play, though. There’s a decent amount of humour involved in it too, so it’s not as annoying as I feared it might be.

Gryffindor went to the vet last evening for what looked like an abscess that was leaking on his tail. Turns out one of our sweet little hellion girls bit him, and the bite became infected while we were gone. When we came home it was bald from his obsessive licking. He got a huge antibiotic shot and came home in a little Elizabethan collar, which he managed to ditch within the first four minutes at home. Not only did he ditch it, he hid the damn thing. After searching for it allover we found it on the lampshade of my little reading lamp next to the bed.

Monday saw 1300 words added to Orchestrated. They were transcribed from my longhand work. Maybe today there will be new words. Despite having a brief synopsis and expanded outline, I still don’t know exactly what happens where. This is frustrating, because I know how the overall story goes and how it ends (that’s new for me), and still can’t write the thing. Grr. I may choose key scenes that I know happen and write them, then figure out how to link them. Give me a break, I’m trying an entirely new process, here.

The 7/8 Cello And Mystery Cello Adventure (With Bonus Vacation Material)

Apparently I’m not the only one who had an appointment to try out the Jay Haide 7/8 cellos at the Soundpost last Tuesday. This was slightly… I’m not sure what it was. Odd, to say the very least. The Soundpost is a lovely shop, occupying three floors of an old house in downtown Toronto, right next to the Women’s College. As there were no practice rooms available (or 7/8s, as someone else was playing them) I went downstairs to dig through the racks and drawers and piles of sheet music. I scored a copy of the Position Pieces for Cello Vol. 2 and a copy of Beethoven’s third cello sonata. (Technically I own the sheet music to all six Beethoven sonatas, but they’re in a single book which is great for reading along with a CD but lousy for playing, because the music is tiny and two out of three systems are piano, after all.) When I went back upstairs I tested the two 7/8s and as I noted before they were lovely and balanced, smooth, and very easy to play in the higher positions. I would be happy to own either of them. But I didn’t fall in love with them enough to rent one.

Part of this has to do with the cello that I’d already met on this trip. And on the practical side of things, I didn’t know how I’d fit two cellos in our trunk, despite it being a Trunk of Extended Holding. And the cello I’d already met had a wee bit more priority.

Sunday afternoon we went over to my cousin’s house in Dundas. He and his wife and daughter usually come out to my parents’ home when we’re visiting, but they wanted to do dinner for us this time so over we went. They have a lovely little home dating from the early twentieth century, with striking crown moldings and hardwood floors. Anyway, between dinner and dessert I stepped inside to help get the whipped cream on its way, and mentioned to my cousin that I had an appointment with a luthier in Toronto in two days’ time, and if he liked I could bring his grandmother’s cello in with me to get a quick estimate on the necessary repair work. He’d inherited this cello from his grandmother (on his father’s side, not my grandmother) and had crossed the country with it a few times as he went back and forth between the west and east coasts. On the last trip into Ontario a couple of years ago there had been a car accident and the cello had been damaged. I hadn’t asked the extent of the damage; I only knew it needed to be fixed in some way. He agreed that it would be a good idea, all the more so because he really didn’t know where to bring it, and brought me upstairs where he took it out of a closet. The soft case was flopped over: the neck had broken off in the accident. I had no idea seeing a cello without its neck — not even out of the case yet — could make me feel that sick inside. We put it down on the central landing and eased it out of the case.

Gentle readers, it’s beautiful. It’s a burnished light chestnut brown, with a deep grain; no shiny varnish fills these ridges in. The bridge and tailpiece were off so I picked up the body and angled it, peering inside for a label. The only one in it is a handwritten slip of paper that says Réparé par H. Gagnier, 1915 in slightly blurry ink. My cousin found the neck and brought it out too. The scroll is a beautiful glowing honey colour, and three of the four tuning pegs have tiny mother of pearl circles set in them. Around the pegs are little holes, which puzzled me until HRH pointed out that it must have had decorative plates around them. My cousin says that the cello is supposed to be a turn of the (twentieth, obviously) century German-made instrument. The story goes that his grandmother used to be a violinist, until her arthritis got too bad for her to make the minute movements required for violin playing. She was going to quit entirely but her teacher coaxed her into playing the cello, and sold her a cello she had for five hundred dollars. My cousin received the instrument after her death, and took a couple of lessons, but it didn’t go further than that.

I looked closely at the neck, and at the body of the cello, and at its shape. I glanced at HRH, who was watching me oddly (having suspicions of his own), then I asked my cousin for a measuring tape.

“It’s a 7/8, isn’t it,” HRH said as I took measurements.

“Almost. Not exactly,” I said. “I think it would be classified as a small 4/4.”

And so I explained to my cousin that I’d been looking for a 7/8 cello, and we talked about proportion and such. And then he nearly stopped my heart.

“Well, if you can get it fixed, you can use this one. The idea was that if we had a second child one of them would play the piano and the other the cello. But if we have a second child and they want to play the cello, by the time it’s big enough to use a full-sized one we could just recall it from you. Someone might as well be playing it in the meantime.”

I felt like I’d moved into some sort of alternate reality. We talked about the repairs. Apart from the neck that’s come off the body, there a small dent (almost a hole) in the upper rib, a few inches to the right of where the neck joins, and a few minor surface cracks along both sides of the ribs where they begin to curve down. We agreed that if the repairs could be done and result in a playable instrument, we would split the cost. I decided to bring it back home to my luthier, because I trust him and if this needs to be rebuilt then there’s going to be some amount of back and forth, and it would be better to be in the same city for that.

So I have an antique German cello sitting in my office, in two pieces. I measured every inch of it the night we came home and it’s proportionally smaller than my current 4/4 by a few millimetres here and there, almost a centimetre in places (not hard to be smaller, as mine’s an oversized cello!). It’s especially smaller in the upper half, which is where I need the daintier 7/8 proportions. Comparing the two sets of measurements with the standards, it looks like the German cello is a small 4/4 or a large 7/8. To be honest, I think it’s what was called a lady’s cello back then.

My luthier isn’t back in town till mid-August. I’ll call and set up an appointment with him to look at it and evaluate the extent of the damage, and give me an estimate. If it’s the size I need, and he thinks the sound will be decent once it’s patched, then I’m all for using it. My budget for a new 7/8 would more than cover half the repairs, unless they are astronomical. I tried to explain to my cousin how special this was, how I’d rather play something that had been in the family than a newer instrument, but I don’t think I was very coherent.

He brought out an old suitcase of his grandmother’s music for me to take home too, but I forgot it there when we left. I’ll have to e-mail him and tell him to send it back with my parents the next time they go over, and I’ll pick it up when I go down for the Hamilton event in September.

Here’s what it will look like in one piece. I think it’s beautiful. But then, I am biased.

I honestly think these are (relatively!) easy repairs. I’ve read enough about lutherie to know what’s a dangerous crack and what isn’t, and some of the techniques involved for fixing cracks and dents. There are no visible cracks to the belly or back of the instrument, which would be much more dangerous and tricky to repair, because they bear a lot of pressure. As drastic as it looks, the neck is the easiest issue to address; it needs to be glued back on, and a bit of cosmetic touch-up done. The angle may need to be adjusted. To fix the dent and the cracks in the upper ribs the top will have to be taken off, and either thin strips of wood or linen soaked in glue applied to the inside to patch and strengthen the existing wood. There may be things I can’t see that will need attention as well, of course. Apart from those, the soundpost will have to be reset and possibly replaced, and there will almost certainly be a new bridge, and it needs new strings. It will always be delicate and in need of cosseting; any instrument that has cracked does. If the luthier’s estimate is too high, or if the news is bad right off the bat, I’ll contact my cousin and we’ll decide what to do next. And in the meantime, I have my 4/4 to play, and I’ll keep testing 7/8s as they come.