Fridays are always so full of excitement
I have my piano lesson in the afternoon and sacred* home tower bell practise in the evening. **
I told you about my Song-my first-ever complete piece of composed music with two hands and everything, even though it’s only twelve bars long-and the Sonatina-ette. I also told you that Oisin, in that tiresome way of teachers who are forever seeking ways to wind and ensnare their students deeper and more inextricably into their subject ***, took a few bars of the Sonatina-ette and noodled with them, saying-in that very careful voice teachers use when they’re playing you like a fish on a hook and don’t want to frighten you into breaking free-that I might want to think about longer phrases.
So, because I am a hopeless wet, I came home full of enthusiasm last week and started pulling the Sonatina-ette to bits, the better to add more bits. What made it worse is that quite a while ago now Oisin had played me some bits of old Johann Sebastian B as illustration of how astonishingly innovative he’d been in his day and astonishingly modern even now. This had rather lodged in my memory-I’ve come round late to Mr JSB, as I have come round late to Mr going-on-forever-and-no-sense-of-humour Wagner†-so I asked Oisin if he could photostat that page for me so I could take it home and drown in the chord progressions of someone who knew what he was doing. Which is essentially what happened. Oisin obliged, I took my page home, fumbled through it at my long-suffering piano, went, Oh, coooooool, and promptly disappeared over my head. Fortunately I kept a copy of the original Sonatina-ette but the bits are proliferating out of control . . . and are showing precious little sign of pulling themselves together again and coming to a conclusion. I wonder if Clementi ever had this problem.
Meanwhile . . . I’ve been so busy burning up [music] manuscript paper that I’m not having enough time to play, especially when you have to factor in that it takes me f . . . o . . . r . . . e . . . v . . . e . . . r to learn anything, as well as a remarkably short time to forget anything I don’t keep playing regularly.†† So I have been determined to get back to working on something to play.
And then, as regular readers know, it’s been a somewhat . . . otherwise-preoccupying week. And the gaps between piano lessons seem to get shorter and shorter too. So about three days ago it occurred to me that I needed to produce something, anything, I could take in to Oisin, so as not to waste his time (and my money). And I bethought me of the three of Peter’s poems he’d printed out as possibly suitable for setting. And I chose the one that is shortest. Not because I only had three days left but because I Haven’t Done This Before-I only wrote my own first wordless Song a few weeks ago-and the prospect of setting a poem is daunting. Very.
As it happens I’ve had a gorgeous time doing it. It’s fun working with words.††† I’ve only written the melody line-with a few hen scratchings in the left hand‡-and even the melody hasn’t, you know, um, well, set yet. But its nature or character or what I’m trying to do is there-and, just by the way, this is a sad poem, and with my predilection for minor keys and edgy chords it’s a little intense. Or maybe only to me. But I’m really trying to make the abyss open for a moment during the last stanza. My Benjamin Britten‡‡ to Peter’s A E Housman.
So Oisin took me through some of the implications of setting words, and how you want the rhythm of speech to work for you rather than against you. This is maybe more important with the sort of thing I’m doing-there are an awful lot of Art Songs out there that seem to hold a grudge against their lyrics-because I’m clearly writing folk songs. Well, Britten did it. So did Haydn, Beethoven, Purcell and Vaughan Williams.‡‡‡ It’s like shooting ducks on the midway sometimes, guessing which ones are arrangements and which ones are (more or less) original.§ And sometimes the arrangements are the most original anyway.
Oisin was waxing rhapsodical about what Britten had done with some of his folk songs, and I said-being a hopeless wet and a glutton for punishment-that if he could lay his hands on the sheet music of any of this I’d be very interested in having a look at it. (And a fumble, at home on my piano, with nobody listening but Peter and hellhounds.) And then the Fiendish Light began to beam out of his eyes and he said, I know! Here’s your homework! Go home and write your own accompaniment to The Foggy Foggy Dew! Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!§§
-Well of course I have a copy of it. I probably have several. Most of which, I hope, have not been eaten by rodents.§§§ But of the two I could actually, you know, find, one of them has been fiddled around with in a manner I deprecate . . . and the other is Britten’s. I can’t effing read the accompaniment, so I don’t have to worry about cheating. It’s also in . . . four flats. Ho hum, never mind, I just wrote a Song in five horrible sharps, key signatures are never going to scare me again.¤
PS: I am somewhat hampered in all future descriptions of piano lessons because Oisin told me today he’s been reading my blog. Aaaaaaugh. He even wanted to take me to task about his name. Eeeep, I said, holding up my book of Easy Sonatas by Beethoven¤¤ as a shield. He was a warrior and a bard!¤¤¤ And you can’t possibly know anyone by that name who is a bounder and a cad! -The life of a dedicated blogger is fraught with unexpected perils.
PPS: And at bell practise I came up with a new definition of how you know you’re not a beginner any more. You may still be the least competent ringer in the tower, but you’re not a beginner any more. ⌂ It’s when you’re not the only person going wrong. You may still be going wrong more than anyone else, but sometimes someone gets there before you.
* I have explained that sacred in the context of bell practise indicates its unmissability aspect? Sacred home tower bell practise means that the floodwater has to be at least six feet deep, the hailstones the size of grapefruit, or the vampires in unusual numbers and in a particularly filthy temper, before I will stay home. And at least the floodwater would roar and the hailstones bang and clatter^. A lot of vampires stalking around and hissing or growling or whatever vampires in a filthy temper do^^ probably would not drown out the sound of the bells.
^ I am freshly clued up about the banging and clattering of hailstones since we had quite a lot of them today, pinging malignly off all the new young growth: arrrrgh. You can see the ten-inch-high delphiniums judder as they hit. And these hailstones were only the size of cake decorators’ dragees.
^^ There is some controversy around this topic
** I need to get out more. I do not have time to get out more.
*** I dunno, though. There’s got to be an easier way to make a living. Pounding sand. Sweeping crossings. Writing novels.
† And Anna Russell still does it better than Bayreuth.
†† I’ve finished memorising Für Elise three times.
††† Stop that laughing.
‡ One of which, um, phrases, caused Oisin to say, Hmm, that’s an interesting thought. I would encourage you to finish it. -Did he say ‘thought’? Help! What do I do now!
‡‡ In my dreams
‡‡‡ Did Mozart write/arrange any folk songs? Surely. He’s The Man: he did everything. Cherubino’s arias could pass as belonging on that continuum, say.
§ And if you guess right, you get a six foot pink plush wolverine!
§§ No, he didn’t say Mwa ha ha ha ha ha. But I heard it.
§§§ While I was looking for Foggy Dews, I discovered that the resident Gnawing Thing has eaten my piano arrangement of Pachelbel’s Canon, and had a go at Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, although there’s enough of the latter left to play. I am not happy.
¤ And if you believe that, allow me to reiterate my offer of this nice bridge I could sell you. . . . And yes, it’s occurred to me to hum the sucker and write it out for myself in a key signature of my choosing, but I have this feeling I’d find myself writing it out in five sharps, so maybe I’ll just stick to Mr Britten’s four flats. Or maybe I’ll just . . . have a little idle try at humming. . . .
¤¤ My current hacking and hewing project is his Opus 49, No. 2
¤¤¤ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ois%C3%ADn But I refuse to accept ‘uh-sheen’ as the final word on pronunciation.
⌂ Aside from the fact that you’ve been ringing for three and a half years. Sigh.