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We played:

• Bigaglia, Sonata in A minor
• Boismortier, Cello duet
• Métoyen, Serpent duets
• Weelkes group
• Ravenscroft, Let us drink and be merry

Schedule

We will be having our usual dropin meetings on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place for the next 4 weeks.

On September 16, there's a state primary election, and I'll be serving as Warden in Ward 10, Precinct 3. So we won't have a meeting unless someone else wants to organize.

It's likely that the Bonnie Rogers Memorial Party will be on Saturday, September 27, so the September 23 meeting may be limited to the people who want to play at that event.

Remember that we're going to be working on a concert for March 1. I'm thinking fairly hard about what to put on the program, so if you want to play with us, you should let me know soon.

Other events

I haven't been pushing the Wakefield Summer Band concerts (with Laura Conrad on tuba), but they're starting to get fairly good, as people get used to playing together and the people who haven't touched their instruments since last summer (or even longer than that) get their chops in shape. Last year, the fourth concert consisted almost entirely of the things that had sounded good on the first three concerts, so it was by far the best. The third concert will be Friday, August 15 at 7:00 PM at the Bandstand on the south shore of Lake Quannapowitt. The fourth concert will be Friday, August 31, at 6:30 PM at the bandstand. We rehearse (and would play the concert if it were pouring rain) in the First Congregational Church next to the bandstand, so if you need directions, go to their website.

We played:

• Dowland group
• Mundey, My Time of Youth
• Cavendish, Come, gentle Swains
• Ravenscroft, To Portsmouth
• Eccles, Confusion to the pow'r of Cupid
• Berg, Let us drink and be merry

Schedule

We will be having our usual dropin meetings on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Concert

We have a concert gig. Based on a few people signing up, I have us scheduled to play on Sunday, March 1 at 3 PM at the Loring-Greenough House in Jamaica Plain.

It's a good space for our kind of music, but not a good concert space for a concert with a cast of thousands. So if you'd like to play the concert, talk to me about it. You will need to commit to coming regularly and on time to all Tuesday rehearsals in February, and probably the last half of January. There may be extra rehearsals or tryout performances scheduled. I have four people signed up (me, Anne, Stuart and Ishmael), so I don't think it makes sense to have more than two or at most three other people. Preference will be given to:

• People who sing in a bass or soprano range.
• People who play an instrument in the same range they sing in.
• People who play regularly with us (or at least intend to start coming regularly now, rather than waiting until the required rehearsals) and know our core repertoire.

We played:

• Goldstein, Trios for basses
• Bevan, Cuckoo as I me walked
• Ruffo, Capricci in Musica a tre voci
• Heurteur, Regretz, soucy et peine

Schedule

We will be having our usual dropin meetings on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Other events

The SOHIP concert series this week has the 7 Hills Renaissance Wind Ensemble (including sometime Cantabilists Frank Jones and Rigel Lustwerk) playing music from the Golden Age of Spain. They'll be repeating the concert on Sunday in Nahant.

On June 24, we played:

• Walter, Canons in the Church Modes
• Ruffo, Capricci in Musica a tre voci
• Morley, Canzonets for three voices
• Wilbye, Happy, Oh Happy He
• Dowland, Me, me and none but me

I've been really overwhelmed by the Bonnie house coping, so I didn't get this out last week. For the record, on June 10 we played at least:

• Bigaglia, Sonata in A minor
• Playford tunes
• Ravenscroft, We be three poor Mariners
• Wilbye, I love alas yet am not loved
• Wilbye, As Matchlesse Beauty
• White sand and grey sand

People who can remember other things we played are welcome to contribute. I'm pretty sure there was something instrumental after the Playford and before the Ravenscroft.

Schedule

We will be having our usual dropin meetings on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

At some point we will be scheduling a cookout on a weekend day, where we can eat and drink first and play later.

We played:

• Morley, Canzonets for two voices
• Drinking songs:
  • Quant je boy du vin claret tout tourne
  • Vignon, vignon, vignon, vignette
  • Changeons propos, c'est trop chanté d'amour
• Morley, Canzonets for three voices
• Purcell, Cakes and Ale

Schedule

We will be having our usual dropin meetings on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

At some point we will be scheduling a cookout on a weekend day, where we can eat and drink first and play later.

We played:

• The bonnie, bonnie broom
• Baldwin, Cuckow as I me walked
• Wilbye, When Chloris heard of her Amintas
• Weelkes, Some men desire spouses
• Wilbye, I love alas yet am not loved
• Ravenscroft, As I me walked
• Benji met the bear
• Three wise men of Boston

Schedule

We will be having our usual dropin meetings on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

At some point we will be scheduling a cookout on a weekend day, where we can eat and drink first and play later, and some of the people who like playing with us but have problems with Tuesday can come.

We played:

• Morley, Canzonets for two voices
• Bevan, Browning
• Clemens non papa, Ich stund an einem Morgen
• Weelkes, Strike it up, tabor
• Weelkes, Some men desire spouses
• Smith, Slaves are they that heap up mountains
• Wise, Judith and Holofernes
• Ravenscroft, As I me walked in a May morning

Schedule

We will be having our usual dropin meetings on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

At some point we will be scheduling a cookout on a weekend day, where we can eat and drink first and play later.

Other events

Recital

The John Tyson student recital will take place on Saturday, June 7, from 10 AM until whenever we're through. I'll be playing selections from an 18th century French suite by Delavigne.

It's a lot of amateur recorder playing to listen to. I may know more about when I'm playing by the middle of next week. If you want to see only part of it, but want that part to include me, let me know you want to come.

House cleanout

We're attempting to clean the important things out of Bonnie's house before we sell it or get in someone with a dumpster and a shovel to do it for us. If you want to help, the estate buys you lunch and you get snarfing rights for anything of modest value that you want. There are stacks and stacks of music, some intriguingly modified instruments, a garden with good plants and gardening equipment, the usual amount of kitchen stuff...

If you come either here or there, bring any empty boxes you have lying around. If you want to go help there, I go up a couple of times a week, so let me know and we can arrange a mutually convenient time.

We played:

• Lassus, Sicut Rosa
• Campian, Never weather-beaten Saile
• Dowland Lachrimae Pavannes
• Josquin, Lamentation on the death of Ockegham
• Weelkes, Death hath deprived me of my dearest friend
• Ravenscroft, My dame hath in her hutch at home
• Berg, Let us drink and be merry

Schedule

We will be having our usual dropin meetings on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

At some point we will be scheduling a cookout on a weekend day, where we can eat and drink first and play later.

We played:

• Morley, Canzonets for two voices
• Tasso, Fantasia: Sopra la Bataglia
• Weelkes, Jockey, thine horn pipes dull
• Billings, Africa
• Campian, Never weather-beaten Saile
• Isaac, Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen (two settings)
• Mundey, My prime of youth
• Wise, Judith and Holofernes
• Ravenscroft, To Portsmouth

Schedule

Regular drop-in meetings will continue for the forseeable future, on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

It's been suggested we have a cookout some weekend, with eating and drinking first, and then playing. Because of the situation with Bonnie, I haven't been feeling much like scheduling things, but if there's enthusiasm, we could do it either in an impromptu manner, or with the understanding that it will get cancelled if it conflicts with a Bonnie event.

Archives of these messages

If you're getting this by email, you should be aware that it's also being posted to the cantabile category of the laymusic.org blog.

We played:

• Goldstein, Trios for Basses
• Clemens not papa, Ich stuend an einem Morgen
• Dowland:
  • A shepherd in a shade
  • Clear or cloudy
  • O sweet woods
• Billings, Africa
• Campian, Never weather-beaten Saile
• Farmer, Fair Phyllis, I saw sitting all alone
• Ravenscroft, Well faire the Nightingale
• Ravenscroft, Three blind mice

Schedule

The drop in sessions will continue to meet regularly for the forseeable future. The meetings are on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

If you're free on Sunday, May 4 (or if you're walking the Walk for Hunger), you might want to stop by and listen to us play. We'll be on Greenough Boulevard at the Cambridge-Watertown line. It's on the banks of the Charles River, and across from the Cambridge Cemetary.

Dropin meetings resume on Tuesday, May 6, at 7:45 PM at my place.

Other events

Sunday, May 4, at 3 PM, Judith Conrad, fortepiano, and Mike Shand, baroque flute, will be playing a concert at the Loring-Greenough House. Tea will be served following the concert.

The last meeting of the year for the Boston Recorder Society will be on Sunday, May 18 at 7 PM at Painters' Hall, 20 Colgate Rd., Roslindale. If you've thought about joining the BRS, this would be a good meeting to go to, as all the classes play for each other, and you get a chance to see what people actually do at the meetings that break up into small groups.

We played:

• Delavigne, from suite Les Fleurs
• Morley:
  • Good morrow, fair ladies of the May
  • Whither away so fast
• Billings, An Anthem for Easter
• Josquin, Adieu mes amours
• Mouton, Adieu mes amours
• Ravenscroft, The Nightingale
• Ravenscroft, To Portsmouth

Schedule

Tuesdays in April are rehearsals for the Walk for Hunger. If you’re not performing with us, please come to the next dropin meetings in May. Also consider coming by the Walk for Hunger performance any time between 10:AM and 3 PM on Sunday, May 4, on the Cambridge side of the Charles River at the Cambridge/Watertown line.

We played:

• Gervaise, XII Bransles de Champaigne
• Henry VIII (attr) Pasttime with good company
• Senfl, Wohl kumbt der Mai
• Campian, Never weather-beaten Saile
• Josquin, Adieu mes amours
• Isaac, Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen (2 settings)
• Mundey, My prime of youth
• Ravenscroft, O my fearful dreams

Schedule

Remember that next week, March 25, is the last dropin meeting before we switch to having rehearsals for the Walk for Hunger program which are limited to the performers. The meeting will start at 7:45 and be at my place.

As you may have noticed, all the music on this site is released under the Gnu Public License. This means you are free to use it any way you like, and modify it for your own purposes, with a few not very onerous conditions.

I do this because I don’t expect everybody to want to use it exactly the way I do. Specifically, I often find dead-tree printed music is in the wrong key or has the wrong clefs, or too many bar lines or something that makes it harder for me or the people I play with. And then I wish I had a copy in lilypond or ABC or even MIDI so that I could just change it. So when I publish my transcriptions, I put up not only the PDF file my group plays from, but the ABC and/or lilypond source and the MIDI output.

I got an email last week from Christoph Dalitz, who said:

I am pleased to let you know that some of your music editions
published under the GPL have found an unexpected use in a
use in a research study on automatic staff line removal
(a preprocessing step in OMR). The study has meanwhile
been finished and that the results have just been published
in IEEE TPAMI:

C. Dalitz, M. Droettboom, B. Czerwinski, I. Fujinaga:
A Comparative Study of Staff Removal Algorithms.
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence,
vol. 30, no. 5, pp. 753-766, May 2008

You can read the study here

So when you wonder what use free information is, think of the future generation of automated music scanners which will be better because of the people who put free music up on the web. As well as of the people who can play my music in the clef and key they want it in.

We played:

• Delavigne, movements from Suite: Les Fleurs
• Henry VIII (attributed), Pasttime with good company
• Morley, Good morrow, fair ladies of the May
• Billings, An Anthem for Easter
• Senfl, Wohl kumbt der Mai
• Ravenscroft, To Portsmouth

Schedule

We’ll be having regular dropin meetings for the rest of March, that is, March 18 and 25. These will be at my place and start at 7:45 PM.

For the month of April, meetings will be restricted to people performing at the Walk for Hunger.

We played:

• David Goldstein, Trios for Basses group
• Susato Danserie group
• Willaert, Ricercar X
• Cavendish, Come, gentle Swains

Schedule

We will be continuing our regular dropin meetings on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place through the month of March. In April, all meetings will be restricted to the people who are playing the Walk for Hunger on May 4.

Note that because Easter is early this year, it will happen before we get really started on the Walk for Hunger music. So if there’s Easter music people really love and would like to do with this group, bring it, or let me know and I can try to dig it out of somewhere. I’ll be getting out the Billings Easter Anthem.

Come come, let’s begin by Thomas Weelkes, was one of the first pieces I transcribed for this website. I’ve now updated it to a modern version of lilypond, and put up a version a fourth down. There are also some note fixes.

There’s an important note fix to Fortuna desperata.

And there’s not so much a note fix as a reformating to remove unnecessary clef changes in the version of Gabrielli’s Canzon II a 6 which is transposed down a fourth.

We played:

• Johnson, Full Fathom Five
• Weelkes, Pipe it up Tabor
• Weelkes, Come, come let’s begin
• Willaert, Ricercar X
• Anonymous, Fortuna Desperata
• Ferrabosco, Da Pacem
• Ravenscroft, My dame has in her hutch at home, a little dog

Schedule

Remember that I’d like a list of people who want to play the Walk for Hunger by next week’s meeting (March 4).

We will continue to have dropin meetings at my place on Tuesdays starting at 7:45 PM for the next few weeks. Depending on what we end up doing for the Walk for Hunger, we will switch over to real rehearsals sometime towards the end of March or the beginning of April.

We played:

• Gervaise, XII Bransles de Champaigne
• Gabrielli, Canzon II a 6
• Campian, Never weather-beaten Saile
• Cavendish, Come, gentle swains
• Isaac, Innsbruck, Ich muss dich lassen

Schedule

Remember that I’d like a list of people who want to play the Walk for Hunger by next week’s meeting (March 4). So far, I have one “yes”, one “probably”, and one “maybe the first set”. I’m fine with a trio, but a duo would be pretty hard work, so I’d want to start twisting ringers’ arms.

We will continue to have dropin meetings at my place on Tuesdays starting at 7:45 PM for the next few weeks. Depending on what we end up doing for the Walk for Hunger, we will switch over to real rehearsals sometime towards the end of March or the beginning of April.

The Walk for Hunger is always the first Sunday in May, this year May 4. We are usually scheduled for the slot from 10 AM to 3 PM. We work up a one hour set, and find another group with a one hour set, and we alternate with them. For the first hour, people who want to play solos and duets are welcome to play informally.

Thomas Weelkes, Strike it up, Tabor, and also a version down a third. This is a piece about being a Morris Dance team leader on Mayday, so we may play it at the Walk for Hunger.