It's been a slow start to 2023 here at MMmusing, but I couldn't let my sixteenth blogiversary pass by without acknowledgement. I've had a blog topic in mind for awhile, but haven't gotten around to word conversion, so I'll just offer a slight anniversary-related teaser for today since there is less than an hour to go this February 24. Back in 2022, on my birthday, a Facebook friend offered the cryptic greeting "CCDCFE" on my wall. As I could not comprehend what hidden message these letters might portend, I chose to convert them B-A-C-H-style into a musical theme. Thus was born this tiny little ..read more

[bit of meandering post here...I don't get to my main topic until the tenth paragraph] I've been thinking about music in movies recently on a variety of fronts. I recently re-watched the 2012 film A Late Quartet, which is a pretty rare example of a mainstream movie set almost entirely within the world of classical music.* Although Philip Seymour Hoffman is amazing as the insecure second violinist, Christopher Walken is fun to watch as a soft-spoken aging cellist, and the story explores some interesting themes (not just musical ones), my main issue here is with the music - not with the late Bee ..read more

I was recently researching various musical settings of William Blake's poem The Lamb. One of my favorites is by the great American song composer Lee Hoiby, and I came across this recording of Hoiby himself accompanying the song. It's a fine recording of a song which is successful in part because of its simplicity and directness, but there's something unusual right at the beginning. Having accompanied and coached this song many times, I know well that Hoiby has laid a subtle trap for singer (and pianist) in the one-bar piano introduction. As you can see below in bar 2, the left hand is syncopat ..read more

Once again, Aug 6 has snuck up on me and I didn't get you anything. Well, at least not any new or original, but I'll see if I can reignite the blog with a couple of observations. First of all, it happened to dawn on me that today is August 6 not long after dawn while on a long morning walk. And quite by coincidence, I had already listened to perhaps my favorite-ever Augmented 6th (Aug 6) chord while walking as I'd been revisiting a recording from last summer of the first movement of Brahms' Sextet No. 1 in B-flat. I even re-listened to the marvelous Aug 6 moment a couple of times while unaware ..read more

It's highly likely I'm the only one who's been bothered by this, but my 3/14 post stretching a familiar 3/4 minuet into 3.14 / 4 time has stayed on my mind since the notation system I devised was a bit sneaky. I knew each 3/4 bar needed 0.14 extra beats, and I found a way within Lilypond to multiply note values in a way that achieved that. But I cheated with the time signature. I just made my own time signature sign that showed a 3.14 over a 4 and then used Lilypond's "cadenza" function, which allows the user to place barlines wherever one wants. Essentially, this means the internal calculatio ..read more

Somehow, I only realized mid-day that today is Pi Day (3/14). Soon after, I had the idea of a dance in 3.14/4 time, but not so much time to work on it. However, I didn't want to wait a year! So I did get something roughed out in time to post it here, unvarnished as it is. If you're a clumsy dancer like me, you might find that 3.14 beats per measure is just what you need. That extra 0.14 beats give you time to think about what comes next. I invented a quick notational symbol in which the pi-noteheads indicate notes that are stretched out to extend the third beat of each bar by 0.14 beats. And t ..read more

This post will be brief after a busy weekend, but I did meet my goal of writing eight new fugues for each Sunday of Epiphany. This is the final Sunday when Alleluias are sung until Easter, so I had the tune Lasst uns erfreuen on my radar for a while as it is associated with multiple hymn texts ending in Alleluias. A few weeks back, I’d considered the Old 113th (known to Lutherans as O mensch, bewein) as a fugue subject, and it happens to begin with the same opening phrase as Lasst uns erfreun. Thus, one could theoretically write a fugue which serves equally for each tune, though I decided to a ..read more

What a boring blog post title! Today is indeed the fifteenth anniversary of MMmusing, but I haven't come up with a clever angle on this. I've realized that 15, though roundish, is actually a pretty uninteresting number. I thought of posting a list of Top 15 Posts or Top 15 Videos or whatever, but 15 seems like too many for a well-curated list.  So, here's just a quick "State of the Blog" spiel. Let's see...2007 was a pretty long time ago, so I guess I've been doing this a while. The past year was relatively slow after a strong January/February start to 2021, but I've had another busy sta ..read more

This Sunday, my daughter's youth orchestra will be playing a big program which begins with Ravel's La valse. I've been thinking about my unusual affection for that piece, an orchestral showstopper which I love best as played by....pianist Glenn Gould. This preference is unusual both because this work is known for Ravel's brilliant, colorful orchestration and because Gould is decidedly not known for playing French or Impressionistic music in general. It strikes me that my attraction to his particular recording reveals several levels of distance from the origins of this music - and I like invest ..read more

So, if you're keeping score at home, Epiphany Fugue 5/8 was not in 5/8 time, Epiphany Fugue 6/8 was in 5/8 time, but today's Epiphany Fugue 7/8 is just in boring 3/4 time. One irregular meter out of eight seemed like plenty. I guess I don't have a lot more to say about this week's fugue. Last week I couldn't wait to get started and finished most of the work days ahead of time. This week it took more effort to get myself going, and I'm not sure I feel like this one is really finished, but it got the job done. Unlike a lot of these, I feel this one works better on organ, but I don't have a great ..read more