Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

School’s out for summer!

Friday, Jun. 22, 2007
2:25 p.m.
I knew it was the St-Jean-Baptiste weekend, but I’d forgotten that that meant that today is the last day of classes for public schools as well. I was reminded of this as the school bus dropped off a bunch of screaming francophone kids (an hour earlier than usual), very clearly audible through my window, open just a crack as it was raining earlier, prompting me to write a diary entry before I get on with formatting the Bass Trombone part for the fourth movement. Yes, I am moving on apace.

My UPS, or uninterruptable power supply, which I thought I had configured correctly, as per Dr. Geek’s advice, failed me as the power flickered briefly (by briefly I mean less than a second, but enough for everything to turn off, including my computer). Luckily I had just saved and was looking at something else online when it happened, so nothing was lost, but it made me think that all is not right with the world. (N.B. Where you see the word “configured” above, I had originally wanted to type transfigured, which would not be right at all, and started a whole train of thought about Schönberg and Verklärte Nacht which was really rather annoying, another symptom of having been at this job too long.)

The winds and brass are the worst, because in the score proper the instruments often share a line. For example, two oboes will be on the same line, as will two clarinets, and bassoons, horns, trumpets and trombones (and the bass trombone and tuba, lest we forget). This means that when I extract those parts, I must first make a mini-score of those two players, copy one line onto another, then remove the notes that don’t belong. I’ve been calling this process “unknitting” because it’s similar to when you unknit to correct a mistake like a dropped stitch. It’s not the same as unraveling when you pull the thread and remove everything, because I have to be careful about what I actually get rid of. It is this process which causes my husband to cry out in anguish at the other end of the attic as he finds errors, mostly of wrong accidentals, because of the separation of parts.

Anyway, because we are not yet done (Hubby keeps finding more mistakes), I won’t be able to go to Janice’s mini-folk festival she and her man hold every June in their orchard. No, I shall be here, correcting parts, and the score where applicable.

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