Re: [MMM] Digest Number 363

Hi Judy,

> There was an audience of about 35, which is a very full house in
> this particular venue. A nice mix opf people from various sorts of
> backgrounds, including both a member of this list with a doctorate
> in composition and an 80-year-old lady who worked in textile mills
> her whole working life, who is now making bobbin lace for a hobby
> and was ecstatic at sight of the portrait of Holy Roman Emperor
> Ferdinand III, with his lace collar. "You know how much that stuff
> costs per inch?" she asked. It was a rhetorical question, I still
> don't. But it was a good mix of people, who seemed quite attentive
> and interested. There was even a photographer from teh Fall River
> Herald News, who is middle aged and black and goes by the name
> 'Omar Bradley', who showed up on his day off (having photographed
> on orders of his boss a number of my concerts before and found
> them interesting) and smapped roll after roll of film, with a clicking
> noise which in the sonic world of the clavichord sounds rather like a
> gunshot and did not always happen on the downbeat -- but he
> meant it as a compliment. Nothing was in the paper today, but if it
> appears later I shall send the URL.

That sounds a fine occasion great!

Well you nearly always seem to get something in the way of extra sounds in a live
concert :-).

>
> The tuning? Well, bad news here. Yesterday, in the course of the 4
> hours before the concert the temperature rose 30 degrees and the
> humidity rose 40 percentage points or more. So things were not
> perfectly stable (and alas a number of keys on the instrument got
> quite sluggish). Life is like that, and you just have to live wtih it. I
> tuned a half hour before the concert started, and then I did the best
> I could. If I had spent the last 10 minutes before I started to play
> touching up the tuning and easing a few keys, while making the
> audience sit perfectly still, perhaps the absolute sound would have
> been better; but at what cost in creation of discuomfort?

Yes indeed.

>
> It went well. Rollicking good party afterwards too, with Bach violin
> sonatas and some atonal works too!

Great, glad it went well.

Robert