Etudes
Musical Assumptions
by Elaine Fine
4d ago
I have always loved practicing etudes. I cut my flute teeth on Andersen, Altès, Berbiguier, Bitsch, Bozza, Castérède, Jeanjean, Moyse, and Schade. And I cut my violin and viola teeth on everything I could get my hands on by Dont, Fiorillo, Kayser, Kreutzer, Mazas, Rode, Ševčík, and Wohlfahrt. One early dream I had as a composer who was also building up technique as a performing musician (and helping other people to build up technique by teaching) was to write etudes myself. It seems that I have done quite a bit of etude writing over the past several years, and I have collected posts about th ..read more
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Can I Have a Little More?
Musical Assumptions
by Elaine Fine
1w ago
Shifting on the viola or the violin involves the fingers 1, 2, 3, and 4, so you can appreciate (or groan about) the motivation for the title. This piece is part of Dancing on the Fingerboard, which is available, in versions for both violin and viola, on this page of the IMSLP ..read more
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The Musical Fruit
Musical Assumptions
by Elaine Fine
1w ago
My salad . . . has three states of "bean-ing": sprouted (mung), raw (green), and cooked (garbanzo). And after it has been (!!! if you say that with a British accent) eaten, you get "Beaning and Nothingness." (Thank you, Michael.) The rest of the salad is made of parsley and scallions, and the dressing is white balsamic vinegar and olive oil. The garbanzos were marinated in soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and salt. I should have put some quartered grape tomatoes in, but there wasn't room in the bowl (what you see above is about half of what was there at the start of lunch ..read more
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"The Collar" in Spanish!
Musical Assumptions
by Elaine Fine
2w ago
So far this piece, based on a story in Danish by Hans Christian Andersen, has been performed (as far as I know) in English, Finnish, Italian, and now in Spanish. This video has a transcript of the script in Spanish that you can follow. You can also follow the script in English (original to the music) here. (The transcription tab has the bassoon version.) One thing that I find nifty about "The Collar" as a bassoon piece is that there is a part of a bassoon reed called a "reed collar ..read more
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Italo Calvino, guest blogger
Musical Assumptions
by Elaine Fine
3w ago
A person's life consists of a collection of events, the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole, not because it counts more than the previous ones but because once they are included in a life, events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather, corresponds to an inner architecture. A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, "How could I have lived without having read it," and also, "What a pity I did not read it in my youth!" Well, these statements do not have much meaning, especially the second, because ..read more
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Diane Chaplin Concert Tonight
Musical Assumptions
by Elaine Fine
3w ago
My friend Diane Chaplin will be playing my Sephardic Suite in an online Facebook Live concert tonight at 8:00 p.m. Central Time (6:00 Pacific, 9:00 Eastern). I'm copying the link here which I hope will get you "there," wherever and whenever "there" might be ..read more
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The Clarinet Quintet: A refrence tool for string quartet with clarinet
Musical Assumptions
by Elaine Fine
3w ago
The Clarinet Quintet is an exhaustive catalog of music for clarinet quintet (i.e. clarinet and string quartet), that opens a portal to a world that I have never before explored. Donald L. Oehler, the creator and keeper of the catalog, has over nine hundred meticulously organized entries representing music written between 1750 (a few decades after Johann Christoph Denner reworked the clarinet so it could spring forth from the limitations of its chalumeau days) and the present day. Go forth and explore! Here's the way in ..read more
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Inventions and Creations
Musical Assumptions
by Elaine Fine
1M ago
I made a couple of short videos using music that I wrote in 2004 and things I saw on a walk I took this morning. Invention Subterfuge ..read more
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In Preparation for Women's History Month
Musical Assumptions
by Elaine Fine
1M ago
As February draws to a close, and we are all wondering whether March will come in as a lion or as a lamb, I like to enjoy the fact that March has become a month to celebrate the contributions to culture that women of the past have made. I have gone through the Musical Assumptions archives and "curated" a list of posts that concern women in music. You can access the list through this link, which also appears on the sidebar ..read more
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Schubert's "Nachtviolen," now for Four Violas
Musical Assumptions
by Elaine Fine
1M ago
Somebody had to do it! Imagine my surprise when I noticed that both the vocal and piano parts of Schubert's "Nachtviolen" (D.752) sit perfectly in the viola range. And imagine my surprise when I found how beautifully it can work as a piece for four violas. (I like to think that the idea might have crossed Schubert's mind as well.) The result: You will soon be able to find parts on this page of the IMSLP ..read more
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