MDMblah to Hiss and Crackle

This blog has been renamed! The new name is Hiss and Crackle, and it can be found here:

http://hissandcrackle.wordpress.com

All content has been moved over to the new blog, and no new posts will be posted here.

Etsification

Etsy (www.etsy.com) is an online retail outlet for craft and handmade items. I have recently opened a store-front there for selling hard copies of my scores (PDFs can be downloaded from my website, www.midsummersdaymusic.co.uk). Currently available are Pianobox and Modus operandi for piano, and the full score of Design and Build for brass band. More items will be added in the coming weeks.

Find me at www.etsy.com/shop/midsummersdaymusic

400 years of lute lessons

A concert last night in the Lovekyn Chapel, Kingston-upon-Thames (south-west London), featuring William Summers (my brother) on recorder and flute, Jennifer Bennett on violin and viol, and Yair Avidor on lute and theorbo. Avidor played some solo lute music, including extracts from John Dowland’s A Varietie of Lute-lessons, published in 1610 (only a few years after Campion and Rosseter’s Book of Ayres – see previous post). What was remarkable was that the building the concert took place in, the Lovekyn Chapel, was already about 250 years old when Dowland’s Lute-lessons were published.

A plaque on the outside of the Chapel provides some historical detail:

“The Lovekyn Chantry Chapel founded 1309 by Edward Lovekyn bailiff and member of the Butchers’ Company of Kingston. Rebuilt and Re-endowed 1352 by John Lovekyn stock-fishmonger and alderman and four times Lord Mayor of London. Confiscated to the Crown 1535, granted to the Kingston Grammar School 1561 by Queen Elizabeth”

This plaque was mounted before 1952, as up until that point there had only ever been one Queen Elizabeth in English history: the First, reigning 1558–1603. As you probably know, Elizabeth 1st presided over a golden age of literature and music, to which Dowland made a significant contribution (despite spending much time abroad).

Avidor coaxed Dowland’s snaking melodies out of his lute, in a chapel that still belongs to the school to which Elizabeth gave it. We listened, enchanted, while traffic roared down the A308, just outside the chapel walls.

‘When Laura Smiles’ published

When Laura Smiles, for mezzo-soprano and piano, was written in 2009, but has only just been published on my website, the delay being entirely due to my own sloth (I uploaded a promotional recording, featuring Katy Cooper and the pianist Marcus Andrews, earlier this year). The text of When Laura Smiles is taken from a song that appeared in Thomas Campion and Philip Rosseter’s Book of Ayres, which was published in London in 1601. The words used to be attributed to Campion, but it is now thought that Rosseter is the author.

‘The Uses of Not’

Working on some sketches for unaccompanied alto flute, I did a bit of internet research, with the aim of finding material that would enhance my idea of what the alto flute sounds like. After trawling through around twenty not-very-useful videos, I struck lucky, and found this footage of a performance of The Uses of Not by Greg Caffrey, for alto flute and guitar, played here by Aisling Agnew and Matthew McAllister. Not only is this a showcase for the instrument, it’s a beautiful, mysterious piece of music, too. What I like most about it is that Agnew doesn’t fall into the trap of making a stereotypically smoky alto flute sound: it’s fresher than what you normally hear – like the flute in C (the standard orchestral flute) but with more depth and mellowness.

Beka

MDMblah has been lucky enough to get his hands on ‘Assagai’, a record by the band of the same name, recorded in 1971. This features the work of one of my favourite musicians, South African saxophonist, pianist and composer Dudu Pukwana. His contribution to the record, Beka, is possibly the most infectiously joyful on the album, and can be found on YouTube (set, weirdly appropriately, to a sepia-tinted, looped film taken from the driver’s cab of a train). Listen out for Louis Moholo’s cymbal splashes on the 2nd beat of the bar throughout, and the pitchless whoops from about 1’40”. What really makes it for me, though, is the fast, rolling beat (which is perhaps why the train is appropriate), and the way Mongezi Feza’s trumpet leaps above the melody at various points to give it extra momentum.

Some parts of this track must have been over-dubbed, as Dudu Pukwana appears to be playing saxophone and piano at the same time. As ever, his playing is vital and fresh, and reminds me of being outdoors.

I am aware that it might not have been legal to upload this track to YouTube. However, this recording is not commercially available (at least, not in the UK), and without this exposure on YouTube, the work of these wonderful musicians would probably go unnoticed by many.

450 to West Croydon

The 450 is a bus that meanders across south London, from Sydenham to  Croydon. It is a single-decker bus, with a very tuneful engine. If you listen to this clip you will hear gurgles, chugs, and a melodiously-pitched engine (cf ‘Airbus in E’, 21/1/2010), along with beeps, rattles, and a cheerful automated voice announcing the bus’s arrival at every stop.

Refocus

OK, so there’s been a bit of a drought of posts on this blog recently. MDMblah has decided to regain the initiative by focussing on music and sound, and leaving to one side other enticing but collateral subjects such as photography. This new phase of the blog will be launched next week, hopefully, with something on Soweto Kinch.

I have removed a couple of the lamer, off-topic posts.

Peter Wright at Southwark Cathedral

Today: a free lunchtime organ recital by Peter Wright at Southwark Cathedral. Sitting in the north transept, I could see through the south window jets sailing gracefully through the clouds: Heathrow in five minutes. Squealing rails under trains passing over Borough Market to get into or out of London Bridge station were the other main contribution from the transport network. Southwark Cathedral, though, doesn’t fight off the sounds of the city: it absorbs them. It knows it lies at the heart of the city. These sounds mixed comfortably, to my ears, with the sounds of Peter Wright’s wonderful recital. These included silken, melodic flutes, soft beds of strings, 32-foot reeds that barked and growled in the loud bits, and a very low, soft pedal that sounded like the purring of a cathedral-sized cat.

‘Return Again’ for string quartet

Return Again, a one-movement work for string quartet, has just been published on www.midsummersdaymusic.co.uk. The piece lasts about six minutes and is quiet and intense in mood. Score and parts can be downloaded from the website, subject to agreement with a user licence. I hope to have a recording up there soon as well.