MIDI: Four-voice piece in meantone

Hello, everyone, and here's a MIDI version of a four-voice piece that
I wrote back in 1980 without any special consideration of the matter
of tuning, although I find 1/4-comma meantone (with pure 5:4 major
thirds) a stylistically likely choice.

The full title is _Carmina Super Cantico Scarabaeorum Anglicanorum:
"Ut Manum Tuam Amplexem Opto"_.

<http://www.calweb.com/~mschulter/carminap.mid>

Anyway, it's fun to be back online, an amusing story but one a bit
tangential to our main musical focus. However, I would like warmly to
thank the members of this group for their technical and moral support
through this curious episode of Internet glitches.

Most appreciatively,

Margo

Hello, there, Robert and everyone.

Thank you for calling my attention to something that I might otherwise
have overlooked in the MIDI output from Scala's EXAMPLE command for my
four-voice piece, since the system I use does not provide for actually
hearing these files: a drone apparently not called for either by my
composition or my coding. As you rightly suggested, this is a bug, not
a feature of the piece.

To request help from anyone who might be interested in order to
confirm that this is indeed a Scala issue rather than a coding error
on my part, I'm posting my Scala .seq files both for this version with
two timbres, and for another version with a single timbre, as well as
a score of the piece in PostScript (conversions to PDF or other
formats warmly invited).

<http://www.calweb.com/~mschulter/carminap.seq> (two-timbre version>
<http://www.calweb.com/~mschulter/carminaf.seq> (one-timbre version>
<http://www.calweb.com/~mschulter/carminap.ps> (PostScript score)

Also, here's a MIDI of the one-timbre version that, when I proofread
the text representation of the output from Scala with midi2txt, seems
to avoid the glitch that you've so helpfully reported, Robert:

<http://www.calweb.com/~mschulter/carminaf.mid> (one-timbre version>

What seems to be happening is that, indeed as you have described, a
"drone" is resulting when a note G3 in the tenor part at 7 seconds
into the piece (the second minim or half note of the fourth measure in
the score, since at this tempo each minim or half note takes a
second), or 3360 Scala units (each quarter note or crotchet is 240,
and each minim 480) gets a note on using MIDI channel 15, without a
note off on this channel. Rather, the channel gets used again for a
another note, which should be in a different timbre -- but without a
note off for G3.

For these examples I used Scala 1.41 for MS-DOS, and I'm not sure if
versions for other platforms, especially more recent ones, might avoid
this glitch.

Whether we're documenting a possible anomaly with Scala 1.41 for DOS,
or simply a glitch in my coding, thanks to you, Robert, and to anyone
else who might assist in this process.

A musical aside: in the 1980's, I once played with a group where we
decided to have me provide a drone on hurdy-gurdy for a 16th-century
French chanson in four parts. My first reaction was that it would
cause dissonances not precisely according to the standard rules of
counterpoint, but in practice it was quite effective.

Here, however, the drone resulted from a glitch of some kind, although
your remarks suggest it might make an interesting "aleatory" effect,
something I'd like to hear.

Most appreciatively,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@...