I’m not sure whether my Mother taught “Scarf Dance” to me. If not, I taught it to myself as a child or early-adolescent. I have no memory of having ever performed this piece publicly. I remember that the piano-anthology/volume from which I learned the piece, was one that I never encountered during the time that I was collecting music from my parents’ estate, preparing for its closure/disposal. I only recently sorted through one of the boxes of music-items I preserved. That box of music contained a batch of sacred piano and organ music, a batch of my Mother’s compositions and arrangements that I never knew existed, and a batch of classical music that included a sheet-music version of “Scarf Dance” that was marked-up and was one of the same “Edition Beautiful” sheet-music, similar to many others that my Mother possessed and from which she received instruction while she was a music-student.
The composer’s name on my long-ago copy of “Scarf Dance” was C. Chaminade (1857 – 1944). It was not until I began rehearsing this piece to record it, when doing research for this post, that I learned (after all these years) that “C. Chaminade” was “Cécile,” a female.
When I saw Ms. Chaminade’s Wikipedia portrait, I was hauntingly-reminded of Jane Seymour’s character’s portrait in “Somewhere in Time” and the movie’s meme, “Come Back to Me…”
The sheet-music says that the tempo should be 54 beats-per-minute (b.p.m), where a half-note gets a beat. It is very unusual to specify the tempo of 3/4 meter by naming a half-note as the beat-unit. Rather, 3/4 tempos are more regularly specified as the tempo of a dotted-half, or the tempo of a quarter-note.
If the tempo-specification on the sheet-music was incorrect and it was rather intended that the tempo of a dotted-half should be 54 beats-per-minute (bpm), then the tempo of a quarter-note would be 162 b.p.m. Otherwise, if a half-note is 54 b.p.m. as specified, then a quarter-note’s tempo would be 108 bpm. At three quarter-notes per 3/4 measure, a dotted-half-note’s tempo would be 36.
I played/recorded the piece as I remembered it, without checking the tempo until after I recorded it and discovered that I performed the piece (ignoring some flexibility of tempo for phrasing) with the recording’s average tempo coming very close to the 54 bpm half-note that was specified. Additionally, my recording’s tempo seems very similar to an ancient gramophone recording from the Library of Congress.
I have had my Korg Kronos 2 for several months and have been familiarizing myself with its synthesizer-architecture and exploring its extensive internal sonic contents. This is the first time I have recorded it. My principal keyboards/synthesizers all have weighted, hammer-keyboard-actions that mimic the feel and playing-characteristics of a grand-piano. There are multiple grand-piano-sound-sets built into (the internal-memory of) the Kronos, that provide many adjustable parameters, including amount of sympathetic-string-resonance, lid-position, stereo-spread and damper-pedal-noise, to name a few.
The video was created using ProjectMilkSyphon to generate the video that is synchronized to the music. I recorded the generated video using Syphon Recorder. I then used the terminal-command ffmpeg to trim a little empty video from the beginning of the video, combine the video with the audio, and transcode the video to h264 and audio to aac. I then used Fotomagico to create titles, credits and the ending screen, and finally generate the video for this to be uploaded to YouTube. This workflow is still not automatic for me; but, it is getting easier.
I hope that you enjoy my recording of Scarf Dance.
In celebration of Halloween past — I post my 1:17 minute rendition of the “Addams Family Theme.”
I had intended to perform/record my three-trombone arrangement using three of my four trombones. But, as so often happens with me, I ran myself out of time. So, rather than wait until next Halloween, I performed my written-out trombone parts on keyboard and will wait for a later time to re-debut recording of my currently-being-updated trombone-playing.
My arrangement uses three keyboards: Yamaha Montage for harpsichord, Kurzweil PC3K for low-double-reeds and three trombone parts, and Alesis Ion for finger-snaps. I made this arrangement in recognition of having my very own real-life, too-nearby Uncle Fester and assorted OTHER Addams family members living in the SAME house.
Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart; naught be all else to me, save that thou art. Thou my best thought, by day or by night, waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.
Be thou my wisdom, and thou my true word; I ever with thee and thou with me, Lord; thou and thou only, first in my heart, great God of heaven, my treasure thou art.
Great God of heaven, my victory won, may I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s Sun! Heart of my own heart, whatever befall, still be my vision, O Ruler of all.
Ancient Irish lyrics translated by Mary E. Byrne, 1905; versed by Elanor H. Hull. Traditional Irish melody, harmonized by Carlton R. Young, 1963.
I was saddened by the recent sudden, unexpected death of my near-lifelong friend, Paul Dozier. Several of his friends, who remained close to Paul during the last years, spoke at his Memorial Service. The hymn, “Be Thou My Vision” and its lyrics were featured during the service because of Paul’s reported fondness for the hymn. I have also loved this hymn for years and played it many times for congregational singing while serving as organist of various churches. Since Paul’s funeral, I have been working on this arrangement of the piece. Additionally, I recently was made aware of a very nice history of the piece with commentary on its authorship and underlying textual meaning. The article also publishes an additional verse of the hymn, that is not commonly known or sung.
My arrangement utilizes all three verses of the hymn as presented in an old United Methodist hymnal in my library. The hymn is marked to be sung unison, without vocal harmonization. Harmony during the verses remains faithful to the Carlton Young harmonization from the hymnal. However, I used chromatic harmonies during the intro and interludes between the second and third stanzas. Instrumentation includes recorder melody, a soprano saxophone playing an alternate version of the melody, an oboe playing a duet part (primarily with the recorder), two different string ensembles (one used for the intro and interludes and the other during verses), a dark brass-like synthesizer instrument playing lower-than-the-melody harmony parts and avoiding melody notes, and bass. I used music-paper, pencil and lots of eraser to compose several of the parts. This is contrasted to when I play a part I am concocting over and over before finally settling on what I am going to play, and then recording it without ever committing it to paper. More and more I am finding the tried and true pencil and paper method to be a reliable way of working.
All instruments and sounds except piano are made by my Yamaha Montage8 synthesizer. The piano sound is being made by my Kurzweil PC3K8 and is a piano program I used extensively years ago.
The video was created using ProjectMilkSyphon to generate the video that is synchronized to the music. I recorded the generated video using Syphon Recorder.
I then used the command ffmpeg to trim a little empty video from the beginning of the video, combine the video with the audio, and transcode the video to h264 and audio to aac. I then used Fotomagico to create titles, credits and the ending screen, and finally generate the video for this to be uploaded to YouTube. This workflow is still not automatic for me; but, it is getting easier.
I hope that you enjoy my arrangement of Be Thou My Vision.
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