Opening of Workshop "Music, Mind, Invention"

At the evening before the workshop "Music, Mind, Invention" began (held at The College of New Jersey in Ewing), a concert was given in the Center for the Arts, where pianist Joanna Chao performed music by mostly contemporary composers. Here is the program she played:

Joshua Fineberg: "Tremors" (1997)
J.S.Bach: Aria to Goldberg Variations
Fred Lerdahl (2004, 2009): "Three Diatonic Studies", with the movements "Chasing Goldberg", "Cyclic Descent", and "Scalar Rhythms"
Robert Young McMahan: From the "Six Miniatures for Piano" (2011-12) the first two: "Andante" and "Crisp, Strident". This was a world premiere.
Joshua Fineberg: "Veils" (2001)

A very appropriate opening of the workshop, followed by a reception with the opportunity to chat with the participants.

Ravel's "Ma mère l'oye" (Mother Goose) recorded by VPO

Maurice Ravel's orchestral suite "Ma mère l'oye" (Mother Goose) is based on children's stories. It was first written as a piece for piano, but Ravel later created an orchestral version. There is a long orchestral version which was intended as a ballet music, and there is a shorter suite in 5 movements. I have dedicated the past month to work on the latter 5-movement suite and have created a rendition with the Garritan Personal Orchestra samples. Work on this suite was not easy: although the instrumentation is set much lighter than for example a Gustav Mahler symphony, there are several technical difficulties in it: the strings have many parts with fast notes, 1/32 and 1/64. Overall, the instruments need to be played very light-hearted, to keep that airy feel of the music. There are several wind solo instruments which need to be played "with emotion". There is lots of flagolet in the strings, and some of the instruments appear to exceed their natural range (or is this just sloppiness of the editors at Durand, who did not properly assign the right instruments?).

The recordings of all five movements of this suite are now complete, and I have bundled this suite with another suite by Maurice Ravel: "Le Tombeau de Couperin" into the album "Maurice Ravel - Vol.One". My recording of the Le Tombeau suite had already been completed in November 2011, but its 20 minutes duration was too short for a full album.

Since a few days this album has become available on the commercial music outlets. This time Spotify was first, followed by iTunes a few days later. I am now waiting for the album to appear on Amazon.

Happy 137th birthday, Monsieur Joseph-Maurice Ravel!

It is not really a big anniversary - 137 years is kind of an odd number. But there is always a good reason to take the opportunity to celebrate the music of Maurice Ravel. Many people know his "Bolero", which has become a kind of musical icon even in popular culture. Also his orchestration of Modest Mussorgksy's "Pictures at an Exhibition" is well known. But he wrote many other works, which are popular among classic music enthusiasts, but are not so well known in the general public.

I have liked his music since the late 1970s and have learned about many of his other compositions. His special style of instrumentation and orchestration is very recognizable. So it was for me a special challenge to recreate this "sound color" with my synthesizer/sampler instruments. In 1998-1999 I was able to create a rendition of all four movements from his orchestral suite "Le Tombeau de Couperin". Using the Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 samples I then re-recorded this suite a few months ago - the four movements are accessible here on my website. Also in 1998 I recorded the "Pavane for a Dead Princess", and I recently revised that rendition with the Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 as well.

Since quite a while I wanted to record the suite "Ma mère l'oye" (Mother Goose), which is about children's stories. It has a peculiar fine and delicate quality, and one has to be careful not to overpower it. The instrumentation appears quite sparse, but with an array of unusual instruments. The technical abilities required from the instrumentalists in the orchestra appear quite high: several instruments have solo lines which require very precise and expressive playing. The strings have fast 1/32 and several flagolet notes. These challenges are also hard to master with my computer/sampler setup, as the sound must have this special "light and airy" quality. I had planned to complete the whole suite by this birthday on 7.March, but this proved to be too ambitious: so far I only have the first three movements of this suite recorded. I hope to complete this suite in the next few weeks.

A playlist with all my 8 current recording "tracks" of Ravel's music is here on my new site at Indaba.

Another music by Ravel is still waiting for me: the technically very challenging homage to Vienna waltzes: "La Valse".

Let us celebrate the composer of such wonderful music, and let us ignore the scandalous situation related to the royalties of his music.

Redesigned Website

Currently I am working on redesigning the Website of the Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra. Most of the work has now been done, but there are a few more things to complete.

The main change is that the streaming of the audio (MP3 files) which I host on my site, is now done through HTML5 and its <audio> tag, as explained here on my other blog. This allows playing the files on any current browser, without the user having to install a plugin. Also, this method gives me a better control of the access: I can implement access counters which keep track of how often an MP3 file is played, and I can provide authorized access to files which are otherwise protected. One general problem is that the web server where the site is hosted, is not really suitable for large volume streaming; therefore I did have to limit the access of many files, so as not to cause too much bandwidth allocation.

I also cleaned up the layout to make it easier to navigate. The main feature of this layout is that it is also mobile-friendly: all the content adapts to a smaller size (try this out by re-sizing the browser window, and you see what I mean), as it is based on flexible and floating <DIV>s (blocks of HTML parts which have a variable size and can arrange themselves to fit on the screen). The site now includes links to Wikipedia for composers and music pieces on the site. Social networking links are now provided, allowing a more active user feedback and engagement. Music recordings are now called "tracks", in accordance with the usual lingo in the music publishing industry. When available on commercial online music distributors, the direct links to those sites are provided. On Spotify, streaming is for free. iTunes, Amazon, and CDBaby allow download of the tracks and albums for a fee. My music is also on many more online distributors, which would be too many to list.

Still missing in the site re-organisation are pages with the albums, the videos, and my own compositions. These will be done as soon as I find more time. Furthermore, not all of the individual music tracks do yet have their full own page - but this will also be completed soon.

I hope that you enjoy this new site layout with all the new features!

Slow Mahler - Out of Context

The last two years, 2010 and 2011, have seen many performances and new recordings of the Symphonies by Gustav Mahler, due to the fact, that in 2010 his 150th birthday was celebrated, and in 2011 the 100th anniversary of his death was commemorated. Since these symphonies are among the music that I cherish most, I felt compelled to contribute with my own recordings, which, as always, are renditions of the complete orchestral scores by using computer-controlled sampled instruments. My first album release of a complete Mahler Symphony happened on 7.July 2010: his Symphony #1 which I subtitled as "From the Life of a Lonely One" ("Aus dem Leben eines Einsamen"), the original subtitle of Jean Paul's novel "Titan" which was Mahler's inspiration for this Symphony #1. Most often, the Symphony #1 is titled "Titan", but I think that the longer subtitle much better reflects the mood and musical content. The complete symphony is available on iTunes.

But since that release of this symphony in 2010 I had not been able to commit time to complete the rendition of another symphony. These works are just too gigantic. But I did have time to work on a few new individual movements from his symphonies, and I reworked some of the previous recordings which I had created. All of these were slow movements, because of a simple and trivial reason: I can get them done faster, because they contain not so many notes. Even the last movement of Symphony #9 was quite quickly recorded. What took longer was to shape the expression until it sounded acceptable to me. And then in September 2011 I decided to combine these into a new "temporary" album: "SLOW MAHLER - OUT OF CONTEXT". I am fully aware that these movements normally need the context of a whole symphony, and taking them out of this context may not be the most sensible thing to do. But I put them together under the common theme of slowness: they show the development of musical expressiveness, from the "Blumine" in Symphony #1 through the emotional rollercoaster of the 4th movement of Symphony #4, to the final resting in the Finale of Symphony #9. And therefore, this album does show a certain cohesiveness.

I plan of course to complete all symphonies eventually, and work is currently done on creating a rendition of Symphonies #2 and #4 - but this may take a while. In the meantime I invite you to enjoy the album that I have created for you. It is here on iTunes at the address: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/slow-mahler-out-of-context/id476151493
or on Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Slow-Mahler-Out-of-Context/dp/B00608G1B8/ref=sr_shvl_album_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328484020&sr=301-1

Plans for 2012

Almost 1/12 of the new year 2012 has already passed... The Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra (VPO) has big projects for this year: all pre-2005 renditions will be re-recorded, using Garritan Personal Orchestra 4, and all these new recordings will have completely new expression and timing mapping. Also, some of the music excerpts from suites/symphonies which are currently only available in a subset of movements, will be completed, so that these work are no longer there in isolation.

But there are also plans for new renditions, and this weekend I started working on one: although the Mahler year is over, I have begun to record the first movement of Symphony #2. Got already the first minute or so. Now this is a big one, and I am already dreading how to work on the huge final movement (which requires a choir and two orchestras...). Also the first movement requires quite an orchestral setup. In Sonar, I did create 4 sets of ARIA players, with a total of 64 different orchestra instrument samples. This appears to reach the limit of my PC: the audio play is a bit choppy, although only few instruments are playing during this first minute. However, the off-line "bounce-to-track" seemed to work without glitches, so I will carry on. In the 2nd minute there is a large "unisono" which will use most of the instruments simultaneously - if I get this working ok, then the rest should be fine.

You may wonder what this image to the top left is: this is a glimpse into results of my recent work on automatic music visualization. The algorithm takes into account periodicities in music and is based on a 2D Fourier Transform. More will be in a paper which I am currently preparing. This snapshot is a visualization of a moment in Smetana's Moldau.

Mahler 9, final movement: "Adagio"

In recent weeks during August, I have worked on a new rendition: the final movement of Gustav Mahler's 9th Symphony, "Adagio". I got inspired to do this after listening to the BBC Proms concert this summer, where Roger Norrington and the Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart performed this work (a quite positive review is here ). This particular performance created a split response from the audience: some loved the "no-nonsense" approach, based on the mantra of Norrington that in Mahler's time there was "no vibrato", others did not like the dry sound. Initially I was also a bit underwhelmed when listening to it on the radio, but when watching the TV performance and seeing the player and the orchestra, it made more sense, and I enjoyed it.

I also know the legendary recording by Bruno Walter in Vienna, January 1938, which to my ears also is a bit in the "no-nonsense" category, with the tempi not too slow but moderately stringent.

These are the only two recordings I knew, and with these in mind I began working on the iconic slow final movement, which has the connotation of "farewell", "good-bye", "Leb wohl", although none of that is written anywhere in the score or in any notes by Mahler.

Since this is a slow movement, it has not so many notes - just 17 pages of score. There are some technical difficulties, those 1/5 notes need to be properly done. I could have attempted playing them live, but since in these segments there are several layers of different note duration fractions overlaid, I decided to do a brute quantization there. I must say that I admire the real orchestra musicians who are able to play these difficult passages.

The overall mood of this music is to be "light", airy, with a chamber-music-like quality to it, despite all the brass and woodwinds (4 flutes!).

My rendition is here:

https://virtualphilharmonic.bandcamp.com/track/mahler-9-adagio-4th-movement


Apologies for a few issues with clipping - it is actually not audible, but I see it in the wave analysis. Has to do with simultaneous instrumental attacks which I need to spread slightly to avoid that initial peak.

I hope you like this recording, and I hope that it does not spoil for anyone the enjoyment of this wonderful music - if you do not like my version in particular, there are plenty of excellent "real" orchestra recordings out there!

Concert Review: Elisabeth Kulman and Amarcord Wien

Friday afternoon, I walk through the streets of Graz. Then I see a poster with an announcement of a concert for this evening: Songs by Mahler. I HAVE to go. The ticket office is already closed, so I will have to try at the evening box office.

After quickly eating one of those gigantic Wiener Schnitzel (which are usually at least two or three slices of meat) with fried potatoes, I rush to the Congress. And yes, they still have tickets. I take my seat. Then the performance begins.

I have never heard about Amarcord Wien before. Well, this just proves that I am a moron. Now I know what I have missed, and their performance will never leave my mind. The violin plays the melody. The bass gives the low pitch foundation. The cello plays the counterpoint melody. And the accordion provides the harmonic texture. And then Elisabeth Kulman begins to sing. And heaven opens its gate.

Absolutely unusual instruments for a performance of Gustav's music, but absolutely fitting. A wonderful play with the music, full of emotion and inspiration. Makes you forget that there is no full orchestra here. Elisabeth's voice is like a dream come true.

From "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen":
"Ging heut' morgen über's Feld"
"Die zwei blauen Augen"

Then from "Kindertotenlieder":
"In diesem Wetter"

Then the "Scherzo" from Symphony No.1. This performance by Amarcord convinces me that my version of this movement is indeed too slow: they play it like a typical Austrian country folk song in a quite lively tempo, and now I know that this is how it should be played.

Then from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn":
"Ablösung im Sommer"
"Lob des hohen Verstandes"
"Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald"
"Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?"

After the break the program continues with the "Adagietto". The clear instrumentation with these four instruments begs for a more rapid tempo than many of the current lush orchestral recordings, and Amarcord delivers a very appropriately paced performance, lyrical, but keeping up the momentum instead of bathing endlessly in long passages. Well done1

Then from the "Rückert Lieder":
"Ich atmet' einen linden Duft"
"Liebst du um Schönheit"
"Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder"
"Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen"
"Um Mitternacht"


They gave an encore: "Urlicht"
The applause did not stop, Elisabeth said "Wir sind etwas überwältigt", and since they did not have another piece, they played again "Ging heut' morgen über's Feld".

A wonderful evening - I am so glad that I saw that poster and did not miss this concert!

Maazel and Philharmonia: Mahler #5 and Mozart in Hull

On Saturday, 29.May 2011, I once again had the pleasure of attending a concert conducted by Maestro Lorin Maazel. He conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in the Victorian City Hall of Hull. The first part of the concert was Mozart's Piano concerto No.9, KV271. Pianist Lise de la Salle gave a superb performance of this work, with crystal-clear intonation. The acoustics of the concert hall appeared to support the piano sound very well, allowing to hear every nuance of the piano play in bright clarity. The orchestra performed flawlessly well in its complement to the piano.

But of course, the main "attraction" of this evening was Mahler's Symphony No.5, and the Mozart was merely an appetizer. After the break the orchestra took seat in its full configuration, the elevated seats in the back now occupied by an extended brass section. Mahler's original score calls for 6 horns, 4 trumpets, and 3 trombones. Here, however, were 7 horns, 5 trumpets, and 4 trombones! Maazel had chosen to place the strings in the contemporary string setup, which is from left to right: Violins 1, Violins 2, Violas, Celli. Basses were in the right back behind the Celli. It appears that in the past (example: 2001/02 season) the Philharmonia Orchestra had used different possible setups, and it is interesting to note that Lorin Maazel at that time (as seen in the sketches on that web site) appeared to have chosen the traditional string setup with opposing 1st and 2nd violins in the front of the orchestra (which is the seating layout which I would opt for).

The solo trumpet fanfare began with great impact, and then the Mahlerian sound universe unfolded under the conduction of Lorin Maazel. He took the tempi of the first two movements a bit slower than Bernstein in the 1973 recording with the Vienna Philharmonic (which in my view is THE reference recording), similar to the slower tempo of Valerie Gergiev at the 2010 Proms. The overall duration of the whole symphony was 80 minutes, and they were filled with the emotional roller coaster of Mahler's expressive music. The orchestra performed exceptionally well, following Maazel's precise conducting, the instruments were played with excellent intonation, and all the nuances of this music came across in all their glory. There was, however, a slight problem with the overall instrumental balance: maybe it was a flaw of the acoustics of the concert hall, maybe it was the elevated position of the brass players in that amphitheatre-like setting in which they were placed, maybe it was the fact that the number of brass players had been increased from Mahler's already generous setting - but the brass appeared too loud in several instances. I do not mean here the expressive outbursts and glorious triumphant sections - these were just right and had the appropriate impact. But in parts when the brass really did not have much meaningfull to say (yes, such segments do exist, even in Mahler's symphonies), it was too prominent and covered sometimes the main melody by the strings. It might have been a good idea also to strengthen the first and second violin section. Violas, celli and basses appeared to stand up against the brass well, and also the woodwinds were well audible, but the violins seemed sometimes to drown within the sound of the rest of the orchestra.

But overall a grandious and enjoyable performance by a world-class orchestra and one of the best conductors in the world.

18.May: 100th Anniversary of Mahler's Death

On 18.May 1911 one of the greatest composers ever died in Vienna: Gustav Mahler. So much has been written about him and his music, I really have nothing to add. Except maybe a note about why I enjoy his music so much: it is the most "rollercoaster-like" music, expressing emotions ranging from utmost happiness to deepest desperation. I do not know any other composer who was able to capture human emotions to such an extend in music.

Here is my contribution to the commemoration of his death: "Urlicht", the 4th movement of his 2nd Symphony.

CD: Walter conducts Mahler's 9th Symphony

On one of my recent long motorway drives (on the M62) I had the opportunity to listen to another treasure from my CD collection: a recording of Gustav Mahler's 9th Symphony, played by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (the other VPO), conducted by Bruno Walter live in the Musikvereinssaal in Vienna - on 16.January 1938. This is a remarkable recording for several reasons: despite its age the recording sounds quite fresh. Sure, it is in mono, and the frequency spectrum is quite limited, but one can hear the immense musicality. This recording received the "Classic CD" Historical Award in 1997. Walter was the conductor who had led the premiere performance of this work in 1912. And this recording is significant for another reason: it can be seen as the "swan song" of the pre-war Vienna. Not exactly anymore Stefan Zweig's "Welt von gestern" (world of yesterday), but not yet the 1000-year-long future that would begin for Austria two months later... Many of the people in the audience of this concert would be leaving Vienna a few weeks after this concert, and Vienna would never be the same as it was.

A marvellous recording, from many viewpoints. It is available at Amazon.

Event: "The River Aire" in Castleford, Fr.,15.April, 18:30

On Friday, 15.April 2011 at 18:30 a preview event will be held for an exhibition at the Bridge Arts Gallery in Castleford (at the Sagar Street). I will be there to present my music "The River Aire" in the context of other art work which is related to this river. This event will be the opening of 8 weeks filled with various events related to the "Free Uni****** of Castleford on Aire".

New Composition: "The River Aire"

Something different in this post, no Gustav Mahler music; instead this time it is my own. I have just uploaded my composition "The River Aire - A Symphonic Poem in 50 Nouns".

The composition was inspired by the poem by David Wilders "The River Aire - From Source to Castleford". This poem basically consists of a series of nouns, each preceded by "the" and grouped into a few segments. I took the "musification" quite literally and attempted to translate each word into a short musical phrase / theme / motif / segment. In October I had musified the first part ("birth of the river Aire"), by December I had added a further segment, and on 5.January 2011 I had come to the end of the poem - by skipping 11 nouns. That version was then played live to an audience on 10.January in India, as part of the Rivers Movement educational program.

A few days ago I sat down in the evenings and completed the missing part, and now the complete poem with all its 50 nouns has been musified. The rendition and the composition are tightly connected, as I was composing it through live improvisation of each instrumental voice on the keyboard while imagining each of the nouns and trying to capture their musical essence. Therefore, I do not yet have a score, because the recording is not available yet in a metric.

The musical language of this composition has been inspired by many composers. Naturally Smetana's "Moldau" ("Vltava") comes to mind, also Debussy's "La Mer". There are a few hints of Ravel and Frederic Delius as well, and Beethoven's "Pastorale" is apparent in the "Fauna" segment. The "Flora" segment appears actually to be inspired by one of Alexander Courage's side themes in some episodes of the StarTrek series - so a whole bunch of musical influences can be detected. All this is not deliberate, it just turns out that the music that came to my mind while I was trying to find associating themes for each word, originated from my sub-conscience, in which all these influences seem to have been stored. Overall there is of course again our friend Gustav Mahler apparent - I was not able to shake off the occupation with his music in the past months.

Hope that this music still can be classified as original and not as pastiche!

The MP3 and WMA files of this recording are available on the VPO website. I plan to release shortly a video with the music and the nouns of the poem in its current version. In the meantime, you can try to envision the words without aid while listening, or get the list of words directly from the poem by David Wilders.

Mahler plays Mahler

This week I have been on the road a bit: Monday to Hull, Tuesday and Wednesday to Manchester. The hour-long ride on the M62 provides a great opportunity to listen once again to some of the CDs to which I nowadays rarely listen. On Monday I chose the rarity "Mahler plays Mahler" from 1993, which contains recordings of Gustav playing the famous Welte-Mignon Piano, which is a kind of analogue predecessor MIDI file recording. The piano recorded attack and sustain onto a kind of piano roll, and the replay of that role with a special device reproduces exactly (more or less) what the player did play. Fascinating! When listening to Gustav playing piano versions of some of his Symphony movements (recorded in 1905), it becomes evident how he must have conducted his works. Surprisingly the tempo he chose is quite agitated, even though these are some of the slower movements. Not smooth long sweeps as most conductors take it today, but short, somewhat hectic playing, somewhat imprecise, some wrong notes rushed in a hurry, and a kind of unsteady tempo. Quite unexpected. This surely gives an insight into how the music would have to be performed "authentically".

But I think that the other interpretations which disregard this authenticity and chose a more soft, long sweeping tempo do have their justification as well. This is the beauty of "good classical music": it is subject to individual interpretation, and playing it in ways which the composer has not anticipated can also produce excellent results.

Very interesting on this CD is also a 26 minute long recording of interviews with people who knew Mahler. Quite fascinating insights there! One is that Mahler often changed his mind regarding tempo, from one day to another, and he justified that with being in a different mood. Excellent - gives now much more tolerance for a wide range of "authenticity".

The CD can be obtained from Amazon as used versions, or possibly from other venues.

Here is a review of this CD.

Version Numbering of Recordings

As I am creating new versions of my renditions regularly, I have to find a way of distinguishing them. Since in the past 20 years, people have gotten used to updates of software and numbering them, I am adopting this method here to.

So from now on, all my renditions and compositions will have a version number. This will also be applied to actual releases / publications, so that the tracks can be uniquely identified through that number. On my site, the track name actually includes the date in the form YYMMDD, which already provides a unique identifier. But the version number tells more: a number of 0 indicates that this is not yet completed; number 1 is the first complete release; subversions such as 1.1 indicate updates, whereas full increments indicate a complete re-recording, using for example new samples or synthesizers.

In some of the latest renditions I have already embedded the version number in the comments.

So now you will be able to see that a music is not really in its final state before the version 3 is out, in analogy to software products.

New Renditions: Mahler, Symphony No.1, 1st and 2nd movement

In my effort to improve the string sounds of my rendition of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.1, I have now added additional string layers to the 1st and 2nd movement. The first movement only has one new additional layer per string group, providing a more punchy attack, whereas for the 2nd movement I have added two layers per string group: one with more attack, the other with more smooth sustain. The results are now online on the VPO website on the pages for the first movement and the second movement.

There is a slight inaudible (at least I think so) clipping in these renditions, due to the increased overall loudness, which I need to fix in an upcoming version.

Next will be the 3rd movement, then all parts of Symphony No.1 will have improved string sound. I will then go through a final round of checks and edits, to release the album "From the Life of a Lonely One" in time for the 100th anniversary commemoration of Gustav Mahler's death on 18.May 1911.

And for that date I also plan a special rendition of a single movement from his symphonies, which I am not yet revealing - will be a surprise.

New Rendition: Mahler, Symphony #1, 4th movement

In my pursuit of creating good renditions of the orchestral music by Gustav Mahler, I have completed another step: A new rendition of the 4th movement of Symphony No.1 is now online. A few days ago I did release an intermittent version, in which I put more emphasis on the strings, similar to what I had done with the "Blumine" movement, but more consequent: I added two additional layers for each of the string tracks, not only for the violins. This now creates a fuller sound and adds more "punch" to those staccato fp string attacks that are prevalent throughout this movement.

After I had put that intermittent version online, I addressed once again the tempo. Editing the tempo through the currently available methods in sequencer software is quite simple: I can simply edit tempo values at any instance, or can draw tempo curves over the time axis. While this editing is very easy, it is very difficult to achieve a consistent tempo flow which could be considered to be "musical". Because what would be the rule for it? What does it mean "allegro"? 120bpm? or maybe 125 bpm? This is currently all a matter of try and error... I put tempi in the tempo map, then listen to the result until it sounds pleasing enough. There are, however, more problems: leaving the tempo at a constant pace and having quantised music notes makes the rendition sound like a machine gun. Would be ok for Techno music, but is unsuitable for anything else. There are two ways of avoiding this: shifting the notes out of their strict quantisation, or drawing additional tempo values into the tempo map. Neither of these methods allows a natural intuitive musical play, because the process of doing this requires offline try-and-error. There is one "middle" ground which allows a direct entering of such tempo subtleties: during the recording process, play live. This allows a direct tempo interpretation as is done in a real live play of the orchestra resp. the instruments. I did try this method in the 2nd movement, but then I encountered errors when trying to homogenise the overall recording: because the notes were due to tempo fluctiations not exactly on the metronomic beat, it was very difficult to match properly the various tracks or deliberately place consistent tempo chances. Therefore in this 4th movement I have resorted to the method of drawing tempo values into the tempo graphics. This leaves the music notes within each bar quantised to their metric position, but then allows me to introduce tempo changes within bars, e.g. subtle accelerations and slight ritardandi at the end note wherever appropriate. The problem with this: I did it on one day, then a few days later listened, and found all those tempo changes inappropriate. So I had to go again through everything and change the tempo at all the locations where I thought it was not right. It seems that the judgement of how the tempo should be is quite subjective even by the same person, depending on the mood, on the time of the day, etc. So there is no absolute correct tempo map. But it would be nice if there would be some more overarching way of changing those tempo subtleties instead of having to change more than 700 bars of music individually each time the tempo does not seem to be right...

It would be great if there was a tool with which one could add/modify the tempo directly as the music is playing, and then record the result right away. A slider might work, but it does not truly reflect the concept of "energy" in the musical motion... I am working on a software that would enable a different concept, but that software is work in progress only.

In any case, this is my "interpretation" of how I thought this movement should sound on 3.April 2011. Maybe in a few days I would post another version...

Online Music Distribution - "Classical" is still problematic

When I recently released my album "My Music in 2010", I used CD Baby as the distributor. They take care of submitting the music files do the various online sites such as iTunes, Amazon, Zune, Spotify etc. Is in principle a good idea, but there are still problems with Classical Music.

When I entered all the information about the tracks, I naturally indicated the composer of each piece. The instructions stated that the track name should not contain any artist name, so I did not put the composers' names into that field. Since each track had a separate field for the composer, I thought that the composer would appear in an additional information field. However, it turns out that the composer's name is nowhere present: neither on the track list of the album at CD Baby nor at any of the online music sites that I checked (Amazon, iTunes, Zune). This is quite annoying: now these tracks are without the composer information... And once published, this info cannot be added anymore.

This means that from now on I will have to place the composer's name into the track title. This is what is also done with most other classical music tracks that are online.

Another annoying thing: on Microsoft's Zune my music appears under the category "Pop", although I had explicitly given the "Classical" label.

It seems that the digital online music distribution is still not suitable for classical music...

New Version of "Blumine"

A new version of Mahler's "Blumine" (version 1.4) is now online on the VPO website (MP3 and WMA file). This version is based on the most recent rendition with trumpeter Julius Eiweck. The changes only concern the string part. Mahler-expert Jim Zychowicz had commented that the strings would benefit from "more depth", and so I decided to add a few layers. In particular the beginning sounded a bit "tinny", and so I added a total of four layers for the violins: for violin 1 a separate additional tremolo track (the GPO4 violin tremolo is different from the tremolo of the keyswitch violins) and a muted sordino, and the same for violin 2.

These changes give the bright strings a bit more substance and bite, and I find that this has improved the sound, away from the thin chambermusic-like texture to a more Mahlerian orchestra. I am working now on the same effect for all the other movements of Mahler's Symphony No.1.

Amazon is fast - "My Music 2010" online there

In February 2011 I had uploaded my album "My Music 2010" to CD Baby, and it was immediately available there. After that, CD Baby was supposed to distribute it to all major online music distributors (OMDs) such as Amazon, iTunes, Zune, Spotify and others. But I had forgotten co click one last button there... and so the distribution did not happen. I noticed this only last week - and then rectified this immediately.

Since then I have once in a while checking, and today I saw that this album is now available on Amazon. Quite fast!

It is not yet available on iTunes.

The pricing is beyond my control - it is determined by the individual OMDs; I only was able to set the price at CD Baby.

This album in this constellation of tracks is NOT available as such compilation on my web site - only the individual files can be obtained from my site and have to be collected manually to be assembled into this collection. So there is some benefit for the buyers of this album!

New Rendition: Gustav Mahler "Blumine". With Live Trumpet (Julius Eiweck)

I just completed a new version of Gustav Mahler's Blumine, the formerly 2nd movement of his Symphony No.1 which he discarded after three performances and which had been lost since then, until it was rediscovered in 1966.

Last year in July 2010 I was able to create the first version of this rendition in one evening, just in time for the celebration of Gustav's 150th birthday on 7.July 2010. I did one revision a few weeks later, but now I created a substantial revision: my friend and colleague Dr Julius Eiweck plays a live trumpet (in Vienna), being accompanied by my Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra (in Leeds). Julius plays also in the Haydn Orchestra Eisenstadt and since recently in the Orchesterverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien - they give a concert tomorrow, 17.March 2011 at the Musikverein, so if you have a chance to be in Vienna, you can listen to a great concert with Mendelssohn, Elgar and Bruckner - and you can meet Julius Eiweck in person!

This latest rendition of Blumine was created the following way: I prepared a version without trumpet and sent the rendition to Julius. He then listened to this music through headphones and played life his trumpet part with it. He then sent me the recording of this trumpet solo, and I mixed it together with the rest of the orchestration.

The file is available as MP3 and WMA on my website.

Enjoy!

I am also grateful for feedback about this rendition.

New Renditions of Mahler: 2nd and 3rd Movement from Symphony No.1

These past few days (evenings) I have been busy revising my recordings of Mahler's Symphony No.1. I want to finalise that recording and create a separate album for it, as a special edition for the Mahler Year. I have started with the 3rd movement, "Hunter's Funeral". There had been some technical problems with my PC MAESTRO-2: this particular file of the 3rd movement caused some stutter, due to some memory problems. I had to copy track by track into a new Sonar file in order to get rid of the problem. Then I still encountered problems: Sonar would suddenly crash at particular locations in the file - when a lot of instruments were simultaneously playing. I did then upgrade to the latest version of Asio4All, and after a while of tinkering I finally got everything working again properly.

The new version of the 3rd movement has only slight changes: some instrument attacks have been adjusted, to properly differentiate between marcato/staccato/legato, a few tempo changes to correct tiny imbalances within measures, and some new expression curves for selected instruments in a few locations.

The same overhaul was done with the 2nd movement. This movement has the inherent problem that I had recorded in in free-style and only later added the tempo quantisation. This has still the effect that not all instrument tracks appear properly synchronised: some quantisation that I did in some tracks in order to properly adhere to tempo and metric had the effect of slightly disrupting the consistent structure, and I will still have to fix that. I corrected a few errors and added some instruments which I had missed in the earlier rendition.

When I compared now the final audio recordings of the new with the previous versions, I hardly can note the difference - it is very subtle.

Here are the new versions, together with all the previous renditions of these movements:

2nd movement

3rd movement

Maybe you can hear the differences to the previous versions?

My Music now Commercially Available

On 10.February my new artist page on CD Baby went online. I had signed on with them, and have created my first album: My Music in 2010. This album contains 8 tracks with the most recent renditions of music which I had created in 2010.

These music tracks are now for sale, on CD Baby, but soon also on all their online music distributors which they have partnership agreements with. This includes iTunes, Amazon, Zune, Spotify and many others.

Does this mean I will no longer make my music available for free on my website? No, it does not. All the tracks which are available for purchase, are also available on my website. The agreement with CD Baby is not exclusive, I still can do with my music recordings whatever I want. And I have decided to offer them here still for free. Does this make sense? Not from a purely business point of view: In order to ensure that everybody pays for my music, I should remove it from my web page and have it only available through online pay sites. But I want to pursue another business model: I want that as many people as possible have the opportunity to listen to my music, for free, before they would pay; and if they like the music, they can then move to a site where they can then express their appreciation through a purchase of one or more tracks.

This may be a slightly optimistic assumption, that anyone would want to pay for something that they can get for free. But I do have a believe in the good of mankind, and I am sure that there will be a few people who will be clicking the purchase button on some of those online sites. If using iTunes or Zune, then this will also make it easier and straightforward to manage the music on the mobile device, so there is actually some additional value in the purchase rather than only getting the free MP3 files.

So for the time being, there will be the free versions on my site, and there will be the commercial versions of the same renditions online for purchase at various Online Music Distributors. I plan, however, to release a few special recordings only for purchase. One such album is already in the making.

What am I going to do with the little revenue that I might get from the music sales? I plan to use it for keeping my music equipment up to date. Software needs updates, I also need to purchase some more tools, and there are cost related to web hosting. All my music activities are currently running at a loss, and it would be great if I could stop this and at least break even.

The album that I am releasing now is My Music in 2010. I plan to do this now at the end of every year, to document my musical work for each year. I have no physical CD, these albums are all only available online.

Edvard Grieg: "The Death of Ase"

Here is now the post with the proper heading for this announcement of my new music recording: Edvard Grieg's "Peer Gynt Suite No.1, Op.46, II. The Death of Ase".

The MP3 file and the WMA file are available on my website.

A Quickie During Lunchtime

This heading is actually incorrect: it happened not during lunchtime but in the late evening hours, between 22:40 and 00:05, to be precise. I had just finished a meeting with my collaborators on the latest music project, a bit outside of my own comfort zone, something new and exciting - in the coming months I will post more details, but for now I have to keep quiet about this project. We had met in my little studio in Leeds, and Maestro-2 was at its best producing nice sounds, for the accompaniment of the singer. Oops, here I said it - but no more details for now! After everybody had left, I was still in the mood to produce some music, and I thought again of Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite. That second movement of the Suite No.1, "Ase's Death", looked like it could be done within two hours. First I watched the BBC 10 o'clock news, then I began to work. Yes that music is just strings with sordino, very slow, just two pages. And indeed, I had completed the recording within 1 hour 25 minutes. Good - a new quickie rendition completed!

And here it is, your moment of Zen: The MP3 file and the WMA file of Edvard Grieg's "Peer Gynt Suite No.1, Op.46, II. The Death of Ase".

Next will be "Solveig's Song", and then I just have to rework my old rendition of "In the Hall of the Mountain King", and the whole Suite No.1 is completed.

And now it would be the right time to change the heading of this post...

Edvard Grieg: "Morning Mood" (Morgenstimmung)

When I woke up this Saturday morning, I suddenly had the idea to create a completely new rendition of a music I had not really planned for: Edvard Grieg's "Morning Mood", which is the first movement of the Peer Gynt Suite No.1. This is a very popular piece, one of the standard "war horses" of classical concert music. Back in 2000 I had already created a version of the 4th movement of that suite: "In the Hall of the Mountain King". At that time it took me one month to complete the rendition of that 4th movement, and now I was curious to see how long it would take me with improved techniques and technology to create the rendition of the first movement. They have almost an identical number of bars (1st movement: 87, 4th movement: 88), but the score of the 4th movement goes over 16 pages, while the 1st movement only covers 14 pages. Still relatively close.

I began at 10am in the morning, using the standard orchestra template I had created with the Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 samples. Initially I worked only in small segments, creating renditions of complete pages, and I was able to work at a rate of 2 pages per hour. Then I changed the strategy and completed individual instrument tracks to the very end: bassoon and strings were the first to be completed. Since the were several laborious 16th note segments, I could not uphold the original work speed, but the complete movement was finished at 7pm - and that includes lunch and dinner break. One more hour to fix some tempo and volume balance issues, and the movement was ready.

This was a new speed record: I am now able to create a rendition of one complete movement of moderate difficulty within one single day.

The tempo in the Eulenburg No. 1318 score is given as 3/8 = 60 bpm. I personally feel that is is a bit fast and rushed, and I think that most conductors take it slower than this. But the movement is titled "Allegretto", so it is not really intended to be too slow.

The recording is available on my page as MP3 file and as WMA file.

I hope you enjoy this rendition!

100 Years "Rosenkavalier"

Today 100 years ago the opera "Der Rosenkavalier" by Richard Strauss had its premiere. To celebrate this occasion I am re-releasing a recording that I created in July 2000, together with tenor George Everett Swails. Interesting about this recording was the production process: I prepared a MIDI piano transcription which I emailed to George. He then took this transcription, modified some of the tempi, and then sang to it. He mailed me back the audio recording of his voice, and I built the orchestration around this recording. This was one of the first recordings of the "Virtual Opera Company" that we founded around that time.

The result can be heard on this MP3 file: www.virtualphilharmonic.co.uk/music/StraussR_RosenkavalierArieDesTenor_000712.mp3

It is also avaliable on iTunes, if you feel that this is worth spending some money.

The orchestration relies mostly on the sounds of the Yamaha MU-80 synthesizer which I was using at that time. I also incorporated a few additional string sound fonts on the Soundblaster AWE46 card, but I do not recall which sounds these were.

Premier performance of "The River Aire - A Symphonic Poem"

On Monday, 10.January 2011, my composition "The River Aire - A Symphonic Poem", has been "performed" for the very first time in front of an audience. Well, it was not a "real" performance by musicians, but "only" a rendition. Just before the travel to India, I had completed this rendition in quite a hurry: I had the recording ready on 5.January 2011 at 23:00, and afterwards I began to pack my suitcase for the travel which would take place next morning.

This composition has been inspired by the poem by David Wilders: "River Aire - From Source to Castleford". This poem had been presented in a 6-week workshop "Free University of Castleford" in October 2010 in the framework of "The Rivers Movement", and I had begun then to put the words of this poem into music. On 15.October I had the first few lines of the poem "converted" into music, and I had played the rendition at one of the events of this workshop as "Birth of the River Aire". In the meantime I had expanded the music to include more lines of the poem. My goal had been to complete the music before the travel, but I did not have the time for this. Therefore I decided to skip a few lines and to go straight to the end of the poem, to produce a shortened version. This is the one which I completed on 5.January, and which I took with us on the travel to India.

The poem by David Wilders describes the river Aire in simple words, nouns to be precise. The sequence of these nouns evokes images of the river, very concrete images. I took this poem literally and tried to translate each of these words into music. The complete composition is in my view a "Symphonic poem", a musical art form which has been popular during the late Romantic period, late 19th century.

The performance, meaning pressing the play button of the Mediaplayer, took place in Vallabh Vidyanagar in Gujarat, India, at the HM Patel Institute for English of the Sardar Patel University. The lecture was moderated by composer Nishant S Joshi and Brian Lewis, and the audience was a class of 95 English teacher students. The performance was in the context of poetry, rivers, climate change. The students were given the task to listen to the music, without knowing the words, and to write down which words came to their mind.

The duration of the composition in its current abbreviated form is about 10 minutes. After the last sound occured, students gave their impressions. It was astonishing that they were able to capture very closely the words of David Wilders, despite that they are Indian and do have a completely different musical heritage and culture: storm, rage, flow, animals, plants, ... I recorded with video the responses of the students and will post this after the return from my travel.

In the second part of this lecture a piece of music by composer Vishal A Joshi was played in a recording with sitar and flute, evoking musical images of a river. Also here the music quite literally described a flowing river, although in an Indian music tradition.

This event quite convincingly showed the power of music across cultures: music is a language without words, a language that is common to all people, and that is shaped in a kind of dialect by its cultural context. It seems that its appeal is universal across human cultures and traditions.

When I am back from my travel, I will try to extend this composition to include the missing words from the poem. Also I will need to do some more revisions of the existing parts: a few compositional intends need to be worked out better, and the recording / rendition needs to be more poignant.

I prepared a video of this recording, with the words of David Wilders matching their musical translation:

Facebook "Like"-Buttons

The VPO website has now a Facebook "Like"-button on the pages of several of the music recordings. This will enable visitors to express their (positive) attitude. Fortunately Facebook does not have a "Hate"-button which I could put there...

Website Update

The error 500 which appeared yesterday evening is gone now. I was told it could have been an over-utilisation on the server, some open database connections which were not closed. Just to be on the safe side I now closed explicitly all database connections on each page. The page load is still quite slow - this is because of my extensive use of PHP for various purposes: reading the ID3 tags from the music files, sorting them by date, etc. Also the Javascript widgets which load content from other sites (through Feed2JS, Twitter, and Facebook) take their time... but there is unfortunately not much that I can do in order to improve the speed.

I did a few changes across the site to make it "compatible" with being viewed on a mobile screen: ensured that the default scaling is off, auto-aligning the content into one long column when the screen is too small (can be tested when resizing the browser to a small size), and reducing the information shown with some of the audio files. Also I ensured that links to the the MP3 files are shown wherever they exist. I personally prefer WMA files because they are smaller at a comparable sound quality, but WMAs are not in general playable on anything else than a Windows maching.

I checked the site on a Apple iPhone, and it appears to be ok.

Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra on Facebook

VPO is now on Facebook. I have just setup a page there, and it seems to work fine. There is also a "like box" available, which will be included in this blog into the side bar.

Happy New Year!

Three days ago I decided to give the old "Blue Danube Waltz" a refurbishing. It appeared to be straight forward to use the MIDI file which I had created more than 10 years ago, and build a new rendition on it. Just in time for the New Year I was able to finish it and upload it - the files (WMA and MP3) are accessible under this link. This morning I listened to the New Years Concert from Vienna, on BBC Radio 3 listening to the first part, then on TV BBC2 viewing the second "official" part. I did get some "advice" through listening to Welser-Möst's interpretation of the "Blue Danube Waltz", although I personally tend to keep the tempi a bit tighter and faster.

This is my musical New Year greeting to those of you who read this blog - hope you enjoy it!

Happy New Year 2011!

Recent Music Activities

The past two days MAESTRO-2 was not in its usual place - but visited a local professional studio for some new work: a very interesting unusual project, where I could apply my classical music expertise and the sounds on that system into a cross-boundary musical endeavour. Not much more can be said right now, as this is tightly under wraps... but it is quite an exciting project, out of my usual comfort zone. Will keep you updated, once things become more concrete with results.

Happy Holidays!

I wanted to do this already in October, to get a head start, but as usual I was not able to find time, and so I only could start work on this on 18.December. Since many years I wanted to create my own arrangements of some Christmas songs/carols. This dates back to the late 1970s / early 1980s when I did play the piano on Christmas eve with the family, when they would sing those carols, and I would improvise some adhoc accompaniment. I had many ideas at that time for new harmonies and unusual interpretations of the melody, but that did not sit so well with the other family members, who wanted the more traditional way...

Between 1998 and 2003 I did a few interpretations of Christmas Carols and recorded them, but since then the Christmas project has been on hold.

Until now. On 18.December I sat down on my keyboard, fired up Maestro-2, and began to create the arrangement of "Silent Night". I planned to put all original 6 verses in, with the "singing part" being arranged in traditional ways, but framed by a prelude, 5 interludes, and one postlude. Well, time constraints allowed me only to complete three verses. The rest has to wait until 2011.

I posted the MP3 recording on 19.December, and a few days later on 23.December I posted a slight update, in which I had taken off the edge of some of the dissonances, and also had added some more brass, for a fuller sound.

I then looked through my archive of Night/Christmas pictures, and assembled them in this video:





I hope you enjoy this!

Merry Christmas to everyone, and best wishes for the New Year 2011!

New Composition Draft: "The River Aire"

In the Rivers Movement Project, the overall theme of climate change and environmental protection is related to rivers in Yorkshire. Much of the work of the artists who are involved in this project, relates to the River Aire, which flows from Malham to Castleford.

In the past 6 weeks this Rivers Movement has organised a set of exhibitions and workshops in the Bridge Arts Gallery in Castleford under the theme "70 Reasons why I love the Earth" - that is the context in which I held my music composition workshop two weeks ago. Today, Friday. 15.October, is the final evening.

The River Aire has inspired many artists. One of them, David Wilders, has for this occasion (Rivers Movement workshop series) written a poem about the River Aire. This poem describes in a set of nouns the river, from its source to its merging with the river Calder in Castleford. Officially the river Aire continues until it merges into the river Ouse at Airmyn - I will have to talk to David about this.

The poem by David evokes images of the river in its various stages. I thought that it would be very well suitable to "musify" this (can I claim the copyright on the expression "to musify something"? Apparently not...). So I sat down and tried to translate the words of his poem into orchestral sounds, phrases, themes.

So far I cam only up to the line 5: "The birth, the source, the origin", which describes Malham Cove from where the river begins to flow. The music (following the poem word by word) describes Malham Tarn, storm, might, rain, deluge, sodden, saturation, overspill, energy, flow, movement, partially going down into the Gordale Scar, partially seeping through the earth, until in Malham cove the water is collected, and the river begins.

I plan to continue and "musify" the poem until Castleford, maybe with an extension to Airmyn.

For now I have the "draft" of the first part of this music ready. I was wondering if it is a good idea to put it out now in this unfinished state... it really needs a lot of fine tuning and polishing; also it ends abruptly, as the river would from here on continue to flow.

The final event of this "70 reasons..." workshop series tonight provides an opportunity to play this music to an audience, and so I am thinking that I should put it out there now. The cellist and composer Geoff King from Harrogate will also present a composition about this poem, and he will even play it live on his Cello - I am very much looking forward to this. I will only play my piece as a recorded wave file.

Here is the WMA file of my composition "Birth of the River Aire".
And here is the MP3 file of this music.
These files are currently not yet listed on my official web site, but are only available to readers of this blog.

The event tonight, with the premiere performance of this music piece, will begin at 18:30. Venue: Bridge Arts Gallery, Sagar Street, Castleford, WF10 1AF.

Please let the organiser's know that you saw this note on my web page.

--- Why am I posting this so late? Well, the idea to this composition came to me yesterday night, around 23:00, when I decided that this poem is really nice, and I should do something. So I improvised until around 2:00. The resulting 3 minutes of "music" are the result of 3 hours work. I think that the whole composition would then take about another 10 hours of work to complete, plus another 10 hours to create a well-balanced performance-recording.

After the Music Workshop

The workshop at the Bridge Arts Gallery in Castleford on 2.October went well. We had five participants with a varied background: some with professional music experience, others with a general interest in music and arts. The first half of the workshop I presented the general concepts of making music with a computer. After lunch with good fish&chips from a nearby outlet we continued to explore the use of a sequencer for music making. I demonstrated some of the sounds of the Garritan Personal Orchestra sample library. Then I played the first movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.1 through the sequencer. The participants, most of them in general not very fond of classical music, found it very enlightning to see the visual indication of the music structure in the piano roll: each voice had its own color, and one could observe the up and down motion of these voices. A teacher saw the great possibilities of this for introducing children to music. Also the intuitive note editing of sound duration through the length of the note bars on the piano roll view appeared to the participants as a major step forward from the traditional 5-line note staff view.

We did not have time to actually start a joint collaborative composition of our own, as I had originally envisioned - we may do this at another time.

Free Workshop: Composing Music Using Your Computer

2.October 2010, 10:30 – 15:00
Bridge Arts, Sagar Street, Castleford, WF10 1AF

Content

In this workshop the participants will learn about the tools for making music with the help of a computer. Those tools are nowadays available to anybody and allow the creation of music in ways that were previously only available to music professionals. This includes sequencing of music in abstract notation, the sound generation, the inclusion of acoustic effects, and the final recording of the music onto a CD.
The presenter Reinhold Behringer will give an introduction about those computer tools and will demonstrate them on a custom-built computer MAESTRO-2 as an example of a music computer system. The principles of sequencing and the use of samples will be explained and demonstrated with Cakewalk SONAR 8.5 and the Garritan Personal Orchestra 4.
The workshop will then focus on the classical orchestra and its instruments. Through demonstration of the individual orchestral instrument samples the acoustic space of the orchestral sound will be explored. As an example of a classical music sequence, the Symphony No 1 of Gustav Mahler, whose 150th birthday was celebrated this year (2010), will be shown as a computer score, and with this work as an example, the various techniques of electronic digital instrumentation will be demonstrated.
In the second part of this workshop, the participants will collaboratively compose a piece of music, using these computer tools. This will result in a music recording which each participant will take home as a CD.

Prerequisites brought by the participants: none, except an appreciation of music.

Schedule

10:30 – 12:30 Introduction to Orchestral Computer Music
12:30 – 13:00 Lunch Break
13:00 – 15:00 Collaborative Music Composition

About the Presenter

Reinhold Behringer is Professor of Creative Technology at Leeds Metropolitan University. His technical area of expertise is artificial intelligence, computer vision, and automatic driverless cars. His interest in classical music already began at an early age, and he played piano and joined the high school orchestra playing cello. In 1993 he began to use computer technology to create "renditions" of classical music, and in 1998 he founded the "Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra". He has created computer-based renditions of many classical orchestral music works, including Prokofjev's Symphony Classique, Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, several waltzes by Johann Strauss, and most recently Mahler's Symphony No.1. In addition he has collaborated with opera singers to create two duets from Puccini's operas using electronic digital orchestration.

www.virtualphilharmonic.co.uk

Book Your Place

To book a place on this workshop please call Bridge Arts at 01977 556741.
Alternatively you can call Bohemian Books on 01977 517262 or email info@bohemianbooks.co.uk

New version of Mahler 1, 4th movement

Yesterday evening I decided to give my recording of Mahler's 4th movement an overhaul. The initial recording from 6.July had been done in quite a rush, trying to finish it before the anniversary on 7.July. Hence there were a few details that were not perfect. Especially the tempo had its problems: in my opinion now it was too slow.

So I revised the tempo and accelerated in many parts. There could still be some more acceleration, to keep the tempo more consistent in pace.

I also reduced the violin attack in a quiet passage between bars 166 and 220. Now the melody sounds much smoother.

Overall I think that I improved this recording. It is accessible on its web page in two versions: as MP3 and WMA. It also is automatically inserted into the streaming of the complete symphony which is accessible through this page.

Some pages on this web site do not load very quickly, due to the scripts for creating the links to the music files. I will have to switch this eventually to a database-oriented version.

Web site outage

From 6.September, around noon, until today, 8.Sept. around 11:13, the website of VPO has been down. This was a problem at the server side, due to overload of the database engine. The site was not accessible, instead an error 500 was displayed.

This has been fixed now, and the site is up and running.

150th Anniversary of Death of Friedrich Silcher

Today 150 years ago the German composer Friedrich Silcher died. There is not much buzz around him these days, he appears to be out of fashion. But this is really a pity: he composed many of well known songs that are a basic staple of the German folkloristic song repertoire. When I was a child, we did have a record in which a choir sang many of his songs. At that time I did not pay attention to the composer, but I took these songs in: "Aennchen von Tharau", "Ich weiss nicht was soll das bedeuten" (Loreley), and many other songs which capture very well the feeling and attitude of the early romantic period in the first quarter of the 19th century in Germany.

I do not know much about him or his life. There are a few sites that can be found by a Google search. He appeared to have been a quite modest man, somewhat silent, as the images indicate, and I can imagine his demeanor, with his Swabian dialect that is still spoken today around the area where he lived. His music reflects this modesty: no loud temperamental outbursts, just very modest melodies, trying to express the content of the song texts with harmonic turns that can be sung by the average human. And these melodies do have a somewhat evocative power, when they accompany the stories that are told in the songs.

It is a pity that his music is today rarely heard. I plan to create a CD with recordings of a collection of his music, probably with some "musical reflection" by myself.

After the Release of Mahler 1

A month has now passed after my release of the recording of the complete Symphony No.1. For me this was quite a milestone, and I had to take a musical break for a brief time after completing this rendition. In the meantime I have uploaded two revision: one of the first movement, another one of Blumine. I am still not very convinced about these recordings - something is still lacking: an overarching clear implementation of a musical concept. A real orchestra conductor can do that easily, during a life performance. But I have to stitch, to draw controller values, to listen to short segments... and a lot of my musical intention that I have inside does not come through... there must be a better way to get the right tempo and volume balance.
The last movement needs some attention: it is currently too monolithic, too loud in the beginning part, needs more tempo variations, to be faster in some parts, slower in others. When listening to it in one piece, all this is very evident. But it gets lost once I dissect the piece and micro-edit events, note attacks (velocities), controller values, and tempo curves.

The BBC Proms show great concerts - many performances of Mahler's symphonies are scheduled, and they give great inspiration. Since I already have the 3rd movement from Symphony #4 in a MIDI form (from my earlier recordings in summer 2000), I can focus on this symphony. The first two movements should not be a large problem, and the long and intensive 3rd movement needs just a conversion to the GPO4 samples, plus a reworking of the dynamics. Timing appears already more or less ok. Then the 4th movement would need a soprano. I could use a synth voice replacement for this, and in the initial phase this is probably what I will do. However, if there is any soprano out there who wants to collaborate with me on this - please contact me!

Cover Graphics for Mahler's Symphony No.1

I plan to release my rendition of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.1 as an "album" online. For this I need of course a cover graphic. When looking at many of the classical music CD, many of the covers are quite unimaginitive: often a painting by Gustav Klimt, representing the fin-de-siecle in Vienna, or some alpine mountains. But Mahler's Symphony No.1 contains so much more... and I wanted to express this.

Especially I wanted to express the personal background which contributed to Gustav Mahler's emotional state while writing this music. And of strong predominance were the two unhappy love affairs he had in 1884 (Johanna Richter) and 1888 (Marion von Weber) - there is a lot of source material about this in the literature.

First I selected van Gogh's painting "The Harvest" as a main background image. This painting was created in 1888 and therefore fits right into the timely context. It shows a rural countryside in harmony, with sunny fields, and I found this represents well the mood of "Ging heut morgen uebers Feld" (went this morning over the field), which is a theme in the first movement. Also the Laendler movement with its bucolic dances fit in my opinion well to the sunny and optimistic mood of this picture.

Then I used the wood cut by Moritz Schwind "Hunter's Funeral" which was a direct inspiration for the 3rd movement "Stranded".

In order to represent the personal unhappy love stories, I put two faint profiles of women there, and overlaid the whole picture with a pair of blue eyes. This represented the reference to "die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz" (the two blue eyes of my darling) which is part of the lyrical middle section of the 3rd movement.

I basically had a nice graphics representing movement 1-3, but then I worked on the rendition of movement 4, and this overall sunny mood was no longer representative for the symphony as a whole. So I added a dark thunderstorm background with lightning and added some fire flames in the foreground. This seemed to work well now. In addition I added a cuckoo bird, a trumpet and a French horn. Finally, with the inclusion of "Blumine", I added a bunch of blue flowers. And of course, a Gustav from a photo from about 1888 in the foreground.

In my initial draft the two women shapes were facing each other, but then I realised it would be better if they faced away from Gustav, representing the rejection of his affection.

Happy 150th Birthday, Gustav!

Today 150 years ago, Gustav Mahler was born in the small town of Kalitsch (with is today located in Czechia, but at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire). On my VPO website I have tried to give reasons why I like his music so much. So this anniversary today was for me the opportunity to express gratitude for the music he has written and given to the world.

A few years ago I thought about how to commemorate this 150th anniversary of his birth, and I decided that I would create a rendition of one of his symphonies. Time passed by, and suddenly it was March 2010 - the Mahler-year had already begun. In the meantime I had revived the VPO website and had upgraded my music creation setup. So it was time to pick up that thought of creating a rendition of a whole symphony. Since I already had a rough recording of the 3rd movement of Symphony No.1, it would be this one.

Symphony No.1 is - after the "Songs of a Wayfarer" the first large-scale public musical expression by the young composer Gustav. I personally find this music is the very first music of the 20th century. Just compare what kind of music other composers wrote around the same time... and then you can see the radicality of this composition. In my view, Mahler goes further than Wagner in his musical approach and language, going beyond the musical borders of the 19th century. Wagner pointed the way - with his complete filling out of these borders and the Tristan chord as an indication of what to come. But Mahler went beyond, exploring the area behind these borders where musical certainty is suddenly put into question. Where Wagner dominates, Mahler questions. In Mahler's music is irony and sometimes a little "twinkle in the eyes", something that is completely absent in Wagner's music.

Symphony No.1 was a start of all this. Feeding and literally quoting from the earlier work "Songs of a Wayfarer", the emotional event through which Gustav went during 1884 and 1888 have shaped this symphony. It is a very varied work: a homage to nature ("wie ein Naturlaut", the cuckoo motif throughout the symphony), to bucolic simple life, then also irony and sarcasm, and thundering emotions, tearing the soul apart, but finally being resolved in a triumphant Finale.

I have heard this symphony many times, by various conductors and orchestras. For creating my own rendition, I wanted to keep my mind free of any other explicit influences and did not listen to any other recordings of this work for quite a while. In March 2010 I used the rendition of the 3rd movement which I had done in the years 1995/1998/2003 and began adapting it for the Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 samples. This was done in a relatively short time, so I moved on to the 2nd movement. This was straight-forward and took a few weeks to complete. The first movement took about a month: it was relatively complex, and it was not easy to determine the right pace. But the most challenging movement was the last one: a plethora of instruments, 7 horns, 4 trombones, two timpany... I often hesitated to work on it, because of the many difficulties I had to overcome each time I did some work on the rendition. Needed to add more and more tracks, to accommodate all the different instruments. In the end it took about 3 weeks - I had started on 17.June, and completed the rendition just in time for the birthday anniversary - on 5.July.

Now I had a rendition of the symphony as it was usually being performed - with just 4 movements. However, in a forum a musician and Mahler-fan mentioned the movement "Blumine" - about which I did not know anything before. When I did some background research, I uncovered the story of this movement, which originally had been a part of this symphony but was then removed by Gustav, as he received strong criticism about this Symphony 1. Since then this "Blumine" movement which had originally been the 2nd movement of a 5-movement work was not included anymore and was lost, before it was rediscovered in 1966.

Many orchestras and conductors do not include this movement in their performances and recordings of this symphony, out of respect for Mahler's decision to remove it. But I was thinking, why one only should respect "the old Mahler" and not the young Mahler? Gustav had good reasons for setting up this work as a 2-part work in 5 movements; there was a program, based loosely on a novel by Jean-Paul; and there was a strong personal attachment, as "Blumine" was the nickname for a woman Gustav was in live with: Johanna Richter. So I became intrigued to include this movement into the symphony and to recreate the original structure as it had been intended by Gustav during 1884-1888.

But time was short: just on the evening of 5.July I had completed the 4-movement symphony, and I already had given up creating a rendition of Blumine in time for the birthday anniversary. But on the evening of 6.July I thought that I would give it a try. I had never before heard this music, and I resisted the temptation of listening to examples on YouTube where a few recordings of this music are available: I was curious how the result would be if I would only have a music score as a source and would then be required to use only this score as a musical reference, without having any pre-conceived sound image in my head.

I started to work on this at 18:30. Sat straight on it, and the whole movement was completed at 2:30 on 7.7.2010. I had done it - the 5-part Symphony No 1 was completed. Now I still had to spend about 2 hours on uploading, changing the website and the mp3 playlists, finalising the cover graphics, and in addition I uncovered a technical problem with the special site I had prepared for this project - it had worked ok from my local computer, but once the page was on the server, it did not load... so after a while of bug-fixing I was able to locate the problem and get everything sorted, and the site for this special project was ready and online.

Got then only 3 hours of sleep... but the effort was well worth it.

Mahler Symphony No 1 Completed!

Yesterday night I completed the first release of the 4th movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No 1. This movement has been the most challenging rendition I ever did: 731 bars, 70 pages, lots of trills and percussion rolls, many instruments in each group. It took me about 3 weeks to do this. No major technical hurdles were faced, except that the Garritan Personal Orchestra does not include the whole range of instrument notes which are required by Mahler's composition.

This release concludes the recording of the complete Symphony No 1 by Gustav Mahler. All the files are accessible on my VPO website. I have now also created MP3 versions of each of the 4 movements, to be more platform compatible - those MP3 files are longer than the WMA files, at a comparable quality.

I am glad that I managed to complete this symphony in time for Gustav Mahler's 150th birthday tomorrow - I will have a special page dedicated to this event.

A pity that I was not able to complete the "Blumine" movement, the long-lost 2nd movement... I intend to add this one at a later time.

Enjoy Mahler's grandious work!

Embedded Windows Media Player Plugin for Firefox/Chrome

Up to my VPO website only supported streaming for MS Internet Explorer. Users of Firefox and Google Chrome had to either right-click-and-save, or might be able to just click and hope that the audio plays. A few weeks ago this playing seemed actually to work fine for WMA files: there was no GUI, just a black screen with the words "waiting for video", and the music played. In case of an MP3 file there was even a volume control that appeared. When I tried this today, however, I noticed that the screen just remained black, and no audio did show. It might have been that I installed in recent weeks another plugin, or newer versions of existing plugins, which then disabled this functionality of simply playing the music through the web browser. Windows MS Internet Explorer did not have this problem, as the standard Media player plugin embedded as an object into the HTML page worked just fine and allowed streaming of the music. However, this same object did not show up when the page was shown in Google Chrome or Firefox, so these two browsers only had the option to download the music files and play them offline.

This means that the result of clicking on a simple link to an audio file is strongly depending on the installation history and the way the user's browser is configured - quite dissatisfying. After a bit of research I found a plugin which plays audio (WMA and MP3 files) straight through both Firefox and Google browsers. It looks very similar to the plugin in MS Internet Explorer, just the dimensions are slightly different. This plugin for Chrome and Firefox is actually better: it also shows the file info, and therefore has to be a bit larger.

The plugin is at http://port25.technet.com/pages/windows-media-player-firefox-plugin-download.aspx.

I rewrote the Javascript/PHP for embedding this plugin into the HTML code, now working on all three browsers fine. Since Chrome and Firefox do not by default come with this plugin, I had to make provisions for automatically check if the plugin is installed. This was achieved in Javascript by checking the variable array navigator.plugins[].name and comparing if the "Windows Media Player Firefox Plugin" was among those found. A slight complication was that in the name is the symbol
®. Since there appear to be different code pages to be used for encoding this non-standard symbol, I was not able to do a direct comparison and instead had to compare the string piecewise. It works, and now the site is able to see if the user has the plugin installed. If not, then a link is given from where this plugin can be downloaded.

During edits there was a site outage today, as some wrong temporary site configuration had mistakenly been uploaded. Apologies to those who tried to access the site today and got only a garbled text...!

The "Blumine" Sheet Music Arrived Today!

A few weeks ago I had learned from Pat O'Keefe on the Garritan Forum about the "Blumine" movement. This movement was a part of the first few performances of Mahler's Symphony No.1 in 1889 until 1894, when it had five movements. These performances were not very well received, and Mahler decided afterwards to drop the formerly 2nd movement which had the title "Blumine".

I had not been aware of this movement, but I soon learned that there is a lot of information out on the web about it. Apparently it was lost for many decades, until it was rediscovered in 1966. Since then it has been occasionally performed, usually not as part of the symphony, but as a separate piece. The performers and conductors respected Mahler's decision to abandon this movement. Pat had "put a request" for this movement, and so I decided to get the score. I first tried to order it through the Sheet Music Exchange here in the UK. However, after 4 weeks I was told that the score is out of print, and it would take a while until it was available again. I found another supplier, Music 44 in the US. After a week I got the note that the item had been shipped, and today, just a few days later, I received the sheet music in my mail.

Now I am still very busy with the 4th movement of the Symphony 1, which I hope to get ready in time for Mahler's 15th birthday on 7.July. But the score of the "Blumine" movement does look very easy, nothing compared to the complex 4th movement. So I think that I could also prepare the "Blumine", to complete the recording.

After doing some more research on this movement I found the following background: this movement, as the other 4 movements of this symphony, do have titles which correspond to titles from the poet Jean Paul's novel "Titan - From the Life of a Lonely One". "Bluminenkapitel" is one of this titles. Mahler appeared to have linked the internal program of this symphony to this novel - but somehow decided later that showing this explicit link was not appropriate. There is also a very personal aspect: when Mahler was in love with soprano Johanna Richter, he appeared to have a nick name for her: "Blumine". This word actually does not exist in German language. There is the word "Blume" = flower. I would translate "Blumine" with "flowerine", to show the meaning and the equivalence. After reading a few very interesting articles I think that I do have an explanation why Mahler decided to remove this movement: it may be that he was embarrassed of this very close connection of this movement to that living person Johanna, and he wanted to remove this connection and memory of that failed relationship.

Well, one of the authors of a paper actually points out how this movement in fact contributes (with its trumpet motif) to the musical narration in the symphony, because this motif appears in later movements. Therefore, it actually makes sense to include the "Blumine" in the symphony as it was originally intended. So I have decided to include in my final release of Mahler's Symphony No.1 to reconstruct the original 5 movement structure, and to put "Blumine" as the 2nd movement. I will call it "Flowerine", to convey some of the meaning and slight weirdness of this title.

Some may argue that one should respect Mahler's decision to take this movement out of the symphony. I would respond: why only follow the older Mahler, and why not follow the younger Mahler? Is one really getting wiser when getting older? Maybe removing this movement was not done for musical reasons, but for personal ones... and since so much time has passed, and everybody is dead, these personal reasons are no longer valid.

One other aspect which is interesting: All other movements I have heard in various interpretations, and I do have a mental acoustic image of them in my mind, which naturally influences my own interpretation. But I never heard the "Flowerine" before. There are recordings on YouTube, but I deliberately avoid listening to them at this stage - I would like to do an experiment and only use the printed score as guidance, trying to extract a performance and interpretation from just the score, the same way as a conductor would do who gets handed score notes from a composer whose work has never been performed. I am curious how my result will sound, without any guidance from a pre-conceived tempo, volume, balance, sound image.