Abblasen, At Lasten

For years, I planned to eventually record the trumpet-fanfare theme of the CBS Sunday Morning television series (“CBSSM,” hence) using synthesizer. I believed the fanfare was either a Vivaldi or Bach composition. When CBSSM aired their story about “Abblasen” on January 27, 2019, I learned that the piece was composed by the German trumpeter and composer, Elias Gottfried Reich (1667-1734). Reich was a contemporary of J.S. Bach and performed trumpet parts in Bach performances that are said to have been written specially for Reich by Bach. Abblasen is known today because it is pictured in the oil portrait of Reich, painted by court-painter, Elias Gottlob Haussmann (1695–1774). Haussman also painted Bach and many other courtesans of the day. The musical notation for Abblasen has been transcribed from the included painting. As pictured, the fanfare is written in the key of C major. I originally performed Abblasen in the key of C. Because the prevalence of the D-trumpet during the Baroqué period, the piece is normally performed in D major. I performed it in C major and transposed it to D major using the magic of computers. The included notation is mine and was transcribed from an online source, needing notation for practice, and not currently having a working printer; so, I transcribed the notation by-hand. During practice, I developed keyboard fingering (included) that may seem odd to some players (and, even to me in an occasion or two, in retrospect). Over the years, CBSSM featured three different trumpeter’s versions of the piece. The current CBSSM rendition was performed and recorded by Wynton Marsalis in 2004. Doc Severinsen performed the previous version. My arrangement of Abblasen features my Alesis Ion Synthesizer. In the first iteration of the theme, the 1st trumpet is accompanied by a lower harmony part and a 2nd trumpet playing down an octave from the 1st. In the second iteration of the theme, two additional accompanying parts are added to impart a defined harmony to the originally monophonic line.

The video uses a hodge-podge of audio and video technologies. I used ProjectMilkSyphon to generate the music-visualizer-video that is (approximately) synchronized to the audio. This project provides a way to utilize thousands of existing and author new “presets” for the Milkdrop visualizer that was a component of the Winamp media-player in the past. Milkdrop source code became open-source and the mProject project made this code available to other developers — including the developers who produced ProjectMilkSyphon. The .milk visualizer “preset” I used was one of the thousands that are publicly available. I selected the one that I used for this project by experimentation. I used Syphon Recorder to recorded the video from the visualization generated by ProjectMilkSyphon. Then, I used FotoMagico to generate the final video that I uploaded to YouTube with video titles, credits, and ending and to include the other visualizer video. Whew! I hope that you enjoy my arrangement of Abblasen and the accompanying video.