Not much to report

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It’s been a slow week. I’ve begun the reading part of my research for The Beethoven Blueprint, biographies and such, and I’ve tried to sketch more ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS for the trio for violin, viola, and piano.

(Prediction: When I share with my cello teacher this afternoon that I’ve begun work, she’s going to ask why I’m not including a cello.)

It’s still pretty gormless, but this is how I get it done, just scribbling, plotting, trying to hear it (GESTALT), and adding/fixing as I go along (SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION).

I am still frustrated by my inability to grok either MuseScore or Dorico. Normally when I’m starting a new piece, I’ll sketch something in pencil and once I have it at the stage you can see here, I input it into Finale so I can listen to it. (I’m not a pianist.) From there it shifts and grows and I fix all the idiotic mistakes.

Oh well. Back to scribbling. (There was also an ABORTIVE ATTEMPT at a Little Waltz based on a phrase that didn’t work out for the trio.)

Yesterday I did do a “How to Do Shakespeare” workshop for a group of home schooled students (and some of their moms). It was fun to be back in front of kids! I will brag on one idea that came to me that turned out to be a great way to end the session. We were looking at Prospero’s speech (“Our revels now are ended…”), examining the sentence structure and the use of language to paint a picture in the listener’s mind. I asked them to pick two of those images and find ways to say them that made the picture more vivid.

Then the idea flashed into my head: Get them into three groups, and tell them to create a choral reading of the speech. Start the first sentence in unison, then divide the rest of it amongst themselves. And they did great! I was delighted at the way they worked it out, including punching up several obvious lines by doing them in unison: “and rounded with a sleep.”

(One more pro tip: I gave them 10 seconds to get into three groups of seven, and of course they went into their accustomed cliques — so I let them settle down then told them to redivide into three different groups.)