My "12 Composers of Christmas" first debuted online in 2005 as a family Christmas card. (It even got a brief mention on a Boston Globe blog.) It made it to Youtube in 2007 and now I've finally updated it with some vocals. Perhaps someday I'll make a more sophisticated choral arrangement, but for this year, I used my own in-house chorus to do the job - and a charming job they do:
I know Christmas is barely more than a day away, but maybe we can maybe this thing go viral. It's up to you.
For other MMmusing Christmas specials, check out last year's post: Sleigh Ride of the Valkyries, Sleigh Ride in a Fast Machine, the Vertical Christmas Medley, Trippin' with Chestnuts...sure to put you in the Christmas spirit. Or something.
MMerry Christmas!
Monday, December 23, 2013
Friday, December 13, 2013
Canons Away!
I hope this isn't how I got out as a blogger for 2013 (by the way, I'm on sabbatical in the spring, so expect much more blogging), but for lack of a better intro, here's something I thought of and did.
I was thinking about a possible upcoming performance of Pachelbel's Canon, and it occurred to me that, with more than 3 violinists on hand, the canon could easily be more than a 3-parter. After all, in addition to being a very nicely designed strict canon, this overexposed work also features a basso ostinato structure, which basically means any two measures of the violin line can go with any other two measures - more or less - as every cellist knows. In theory, since the basso ostinato line occurs 28 times while the violins are playing, you could have 28 separate violin entries (resulting in a 29-voice texture), which would lead to quite a D Major soup.
I decided, for various reasons, to be reasonable (?) and limit myself to 12 violins. Here's what that sounds like. [If you don't seen an embedded player, try this]
I settled on 12 in part because it's a nice round number, 4x the original, but inevitably, I quickly came to realize that 12 offers one other cool possibility, which is to put each of the 12 violin parts in its own key. And so, here you go:
[Again, if there's no visible player there, try this.] Now, hopefully I'll come up with something more in the holiday spirit before 2013 departs...
I was thinking about a possible upcoming performance of Pachelbel's Canon, and it occurred to me that, with more than 3 violinists on hand, the canon could easily be more than a 3-parter. After all, in addition to being a very nicely designed strict canon, this overexposed work also features a basso ostinato structure, which basically means any two measures of the violin line can go with any other two measures - more or less - as every cellist knows. In theory, since the basso ostinato line occurs 28 times while the violins are playing, you could have 28 separate violin entries (resulting in a 29-voice texture), which would lead to quite a D Major soup.
I decided, for various reasons, to be reasonable (?) and limit myself to 12 violins. Here's what that sounds like. [If you don't seen an embedded player, try this]
I settled on 12 in part because it's a nice round number, 4x the original, but inevitably, I quickly came to realize that 12 offers one other cool possibility, which is to put each of the 12 violin parts in its own key. And so, here you go:
[Again, if there's no visible player there, try this.] Now, hopefully I'll come up with something more in the holiday spirit before 2013 departs...
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