No, it’s not published yet. But … there are exciting signs of progress towards that goal.
A Social History of Amateur Music-Making
Meanwhile ….
Amazon has found something I might like. And indeed, I do. I wrote it!
Typewriter image by Markus Winkler from Pixabay
Friends, a word of explanation. An eye problem had to be sorted out. (Some pharmaceutical company somewhere had a sense of humour, calling their eyedrops a compound name beginning with ‘Cyclop’ ….)
So, whilst I convalesce, I have the use of one good eye. I can type a few lines quite comfortably, but I realised yesterday that sitting at my laptop for any longer, only strains the good eye. (I tried to set up a new spreadsheet – but I won’t try that again this month: I just got myself a headache which lasted much of today.)
Frustrating as it is, I can’t do anything research-related for a few weeks. I have new headphones and a new Audible subscription to help pass the time.
I recommend Poor Things, by Alasdair Gray – a great discovery. There’s a film out now, too, but I don’t thinking I’ll be watching anything on the big screen in the immediate future. (Ironically, the title – which reminded me of an early 20th century London charitable organisation that I encountered in my research a year or so ago – has nothing whatsoever to do with that organisation, but I had worked that out before I bought the Audible book.) I loved the fact that much of it is set in Glasgow, and also the way the reader’s expectations are confounded at the end.
I’m on a third book now. After that, maybe I’ll see if I can find Walter Scott or James Hogg …
‘Reading’ a commercial audio book is wholly absorbing, but it makes me realise how hard it must be for a partially-sighted reader to skim a book. A recording is linear – there is no ‘Find’ function as in an e-text, and neither can you flick through, hoping to find something you spotted first time round. If chapter headings are meaningful, at least that gives the reader an indication of the book’s structure.
I wanted to post an explanation as to why there will be less activity on this blog in February, so there it is. I’m taking care of my sight, as an investment for the future. Watch this space!
I spent the day authoring and starting to disseminate the first network Newsletter; actually, it’s both an update and an invitation to particate! After spending some time this evening reading MailChimp’s instructions, I worked out how to get the hyperlink for viewing in your browser. Triumph! Click the link to read it, here.
By way of light relief, I opened my favourite book – Kassler’s Music Entries at Stationers’ Hall* – to see what was registered on this day, over 200 years ago. Two surprises awaited me. In 1784, John Valentine of Leicester registered Thirty Psalm Tunes in Four Parts, and eleven copies are still extant, not only in legal deposit libraries. Plainly psalm tunes were considered worth keeping (or leaving to libraries!); not only that, but Trinity College Dublin has a copy, and they didn’t as a rule show much interest in trivial matter such as legal deposit music.
The second surprise was some piano trios by Pleyel, dedicated to Miss Elizabeth Wynne and registered on 20th September 1790. According to Copac, several copies survive in UK, and the British Library also has copies with a later date posited. And there could still be others not yet catalogued online. But here’s the exciting bit – you can access a German edition on IMSLP. Who wants to be first to play it?!
http://imslp.org/wiki/3_Keyboard_Trios,_B.437-439_(Pleyel,_Ignaz)
* Michael Kassler, author of Music Entries at Stationers’ Hall, 1710-1818 : from lists prepared for William Hawes, D. W. Krummel and Alan Tyson (Ashgate 2004), advises us that ‘since the demise of Ashgate, it is now published in hard copy and as an e-book by Routledge, and the e-book is £30 cheaper. See https://www.routledge.com/Music-Entries-at-Stationers-Hall-17101818-from-lists-prepared-for/Kassler/p/book/9780754634584
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 