Another Music Connection

I stumbled on the blog of Danielle Rosaria Cummins through a mutual friend on Facebook yesterday.  I enjoyed reading her posts (and especially liked her rendition of Be Thou My Vision), so I sent her a message and told her about this blog.

Then she asked me if she could subscribe to my blog, and I didn't know what to say, so now with a little research, I have added a Follow By Email link to this blog.  Since I don't post every day (I try to post once a week, but I'm not always successful), if you want to know when I've actually written something, now you can get an email altering you, without having to check at random times.

Robert Elhai

Yesterday I ran into a college friend while walking in downtown Claremont.  Robert Elhai grew up in Claremont, so he and his family return here to visit during Thanksgiving breaks from their home in Minneapolis.

Bob orchestrates music for Hollywood among other musical pursuits.  I remember the first time I saw his name in the credits of a movie - 101 Dalmatians.  That was pretty exciting.  He also orchestrated the music for the Broadway production of The Lion King.

When Bob was a composition student in college, I volunteered to play in a string quartet that he had written, and I remember that it was pretty tough to play, being in some obscure key.

His current project is an opera - Untold Lies! - part of which has been performed at the Minnesota Fringe festival in 2010.  I think he is working on one of the three acts - the other have been written.

The Winning Album Is...

Because I got no recommendations from this blog, or Facebook, I had to ask David Cubek, our orchestra conductor for his recommendation of best recording of Beethoven's 5th.  This is the one he recommended, so today I bought it on iTunes.  And since I could buy this symphony for $7 and the whole album for $10, I went ahead and bought the whole thing which includes Beethoven's 7th.

Beethoven's 5th

In December, the Claremont Concert Orchestra will perform Beethoven's 5th Symphony.  While I can play the music, getting better at the few tricky viola parts, we are working very hard in rehearsals on interpretation.  Beethoven has written some very particular instructions with notation and dynamics and such, and our conductor keeps telling us that this is "not normal music."  We are taking some very exciting tempos, and I now have a different idea in my mind about this symphony, as well-known as it is.

So today I thought I ought, maybe, to buy a good mp3 version of this work (my CD is not so great), and the ones I am finding in the iTunes store buy famous ensembles and famous conductors don't seem to have the fire in them that I am hearing in my head.

Anyone have a good recording they can recommend?

Something Told the Wild Geese

Every year at Vista's Winter Sing, the 3rd grade recorder students are anxious to play, but we only know 4 notes (or 5, if we've gotten to D).  I don't want to play the same songs every year, and sometimes I just get tired of Sleep, Baby Sleep.  Last year we played Who Has Seen the Wind, which I really like, but didn't want to repeat this year.  I particularly like the poem Something Told the Wild Geese by Rachel Field, so I thought I would just throw a little song together with those lyrics.  The simplist of songs is not all that simple to write.

Here are the first two versions that I did not satisfy me.  While riding my bike to school this morning, this final version came to me, and I managed to write it down before I forgot it.  I will try it out this afternoon with my classes to see how it works out.  I haven't tried it yet, but I hope that it can work as a round.  Because it is pentatonic-like, it should theoretically work.

First version 

Second version

Final Version