Brief placeholder post for now...

Over the last 6 months I used the program GNU LilyPond to typeset parts from the published, and scanned-in, score of a string quartet, to make it easier for someone else (well, four other people, usually, but - explanation will follow ...) to play ; I uploaded the parts to IMSLP.org and my acquaintance uploaded a recording to the site too, so it can now be downloaded in score, parts and in sound, all 25-odd minutes of it ; good piece, too. (1884-published string quartet no.3 by Jacob Rosenhain.)

Now working on another such project (which is going much more quickly.)

Eric

Classical music blog gets an actual music post.

My main long-term music project at the moment involves a recipe, several ingredients, and hopefully a medium-end result. The ingredients are:

* a free music typesetting software program called LilyPond, available at www.lilypond.org/web

* a manuscript score of a string quartet written over a few decades in the late 1800s by an Italian composer named Salvatore Pappalardo. (I hadn't heard of him either. A scan of the manuscript is at http://imslp.org/wiki/String_Quartet_in_C_minor,_Op.45_(Pappalardo,_Salvatore) . The link from there to internetculturale.it , the Italian site where I got the material, no longer works, but they do have a new URL one can find... that should be fixed and will be soon I think.

The recipe is to go over the difficult-to-read manuscript score, to learn more about LilyPond (no one's idea of an easy-to-use program, but worth it), and from these make a score and parts that look clean, typeset, and represent as faithfully as I can the composer's original intentions. (In some cases "as I can" may be a trouble spot, for a few reasons. I could go into them.

They include a native Italian composer's fluency - most composers when writing music stick to Allegro, Adagio, forte, ... a medium-length but still limited list of mostly Italian terms, usually, for expressive indications and the like. This composer knew his native language of course- and so instead of just "marcato" (marked or markedly, a standard musical adjective) several times in the first of the four movements of this score a phrase has attached to it the words "marcato e dispetto" ("marked and scornfully"). In other places, "smanioso" (eager). In a difficult to read copy of a copy of a handwritten manuscript... well, still fun anyway, the quartet seems worth doing. (Terrific site, IMSLP, though as an admin there I am biased.)

recent activity...

I've been spending a lot of time lately when not at actual "work work", and when not volunteering at the library and whatnot, editing and helping administer a site called the International Music Score Library Project - where public-domain (or otherwise free for use under conditions) scores, books, recordings of and about music, can be uploaded and downloaded, or information about them edited for correctness - it's based on Wiki software, so anyone not specifically barred for bad behavior can edit, basically. (Hrm, alliteration!) And the social atmosphere and professionalism, and the commitment to preservation and other library values - to getting music out there so that a freak accident doesn't destroy the only copy, as really has happened too often, I am not choosing a random never-happens example... - is strong, likewise other good reasons to be there... of course as with any social site there's some level of, well, ... drama, to misuse a word (nothing in common with Greek drama.)

off to "work work" in a bit. right now working on a few projects indeed -for- imslp , so wanted to post about it - if that's not allowed here, I forgot, and hope a tap on the shoulder will remind me so that I may delete the post :) (It is a nonprofit site though it does accept advertising and has a regular arrangement with amazon, which makes sense since the amount of bandwidth, server space , etc. .. - well - ... ermm... imslp needs quite a drain on computer resources.)

Mostly

using this account to monitor others' blogs, but it seemed a good idea to set one up myself too. The blog subject - overall subject - is one that's always apt for me, though general and not very descriptive. (Maybe I should rephrase- it seemed a good idea but not an obvious one - I have several blogs on other sites, and this could very easily become redundant as the others already maybe are.)

Trying to decide how to write an opening statement for the Bach Cantata Mailing List. This is harder than it should be, though I love Bach's music and what I know of the cantatas. (And the Bach Cantatas site makes knowing them better very easy- free scores and recordings for educational purposes.)

More later. - ES