Odds and Ends

Are the other fourteen symphonies by Gloria Coates available on CD?
If so, that would also be a first.
IMHO, Fanny Mendelssohn was a more innovative composer than her brother. There is a theory out there (and some say it is truly "out there") that she in fact wrote most of the Lieder ohne Worte, but both she and her brother felt that they would never be published under her name.
I also love Clara Schuman's chamber music.
As for pre-Beethoven: the second of those Bonn Sonata's bears a striking similarity to the Pathetique Sonata. I truth, there are six Bonn Sonatas, always called Sonatinas, and the bane (unfortunately) of piano students. But they are great music. It's time somebody reissued the Jorg Demus (or was it Badura-Skoda? eek. I forgot!) recordings of these works. Even Wilhelm Kempff played the more-substantial ones.

KG replies: Gloria's symphonies nos. 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, and 14 are already recorded on Naxos, New World, and CPO - an impressive record (so to speak). How many Americans have seven symphonies available on disc? Of course, saying so elevates the symphony itself, perhaps, to a rather specious supremacy of genre.

Kyle, I agree about the Stenhammar First Concerto. I actually sat through a live performance of the piece at the New Jersey Symphony under Neeme Järvi's direction, and, although it held my attention, I can't join Järvi in acclaiming it as a neglected masterpiece. However, I think the Second Concerto is rather fabulous. Give it a second chance!

KG replies: They do hold the attention, but they're so formally awkward. What's sad is that there are no Berwald scores yet at IMSLP, but that's one ill someone else will have to remedy.

As for point 4, in German they call that "Vereidigung auf den Führer."

I've enjoyed Beethoven's Sonatina for Mandolin, WoO 43, which I found on IMSLP. Simple harmony, and the themes have a pleasing lyrical sweetness. As a bonus, it has the rhyming title of Sonatine fur die Mandoline.

Agreed about Stenhammer's Second (the first is a bore). I included the scherzo of the second in one of my compilation cassettes, and people would ask "What *is* that?!"

Your comment about the Encore musical notation program having gone obsolete raises some uncomfortable questions.

Right now we've got tons of composers banging away at Sibelius and Finale to produce their scores... What happens when these two programs also go obsolete? Suppose you've only got a digital score file of your score but you can't run the notation program any longer -- how do you print it out?

Everyone likes to believe that computer programs are graved in stone, but truth to tell, the rate of change in computer technology exponentiates apace. Larry Polansky over at Frog Peak has remarked on this at length. His solution is to sell xeroxes of the original scores, but what happens when the original score wears out or gets torn and you can't print another one because the program and OS that created it has become obsolete?

Windows won't be around forver. A lot of us are in the process of moving to Ubuntu linux and Lilypond from Windows/Max OS X/Sibelius/Finale. At some point all Windows programs will have to be run by an emulator. And I don't have to talk about the Apple operating systems. I'm still running system 6.03 on a Mac Plus so I can run a 1987 version of Professional Composer from Mark of the Unicorn because some of my (very early) microtonal polyrhythmic pieces were done in that notation program. I have six Macs (Plus, SE30, Mac II, two Quadra 650s and a Beige Power Mac Tower G3 266) but none of 'em can run Mac OS X. Apple seems to love leaving its users high and dry every 4 or 5 years.

Is there any sign of a universal notational format? Something similar to the Standard MIDI File format?

I know we have DARMS, but very few notational programs read or write DARMS, AFAIK. The people who are developed Lilypond on linux are talking about turning it into a universal score format reader and I know there's a semi-standard format to save Finale scores in, but we need something better than an ad-hoc translator. We need a universal standard here, of the same kind we got with the Standard MIDI File format and Carter Scholz's standard tuning format. (We still desperately need a multitrack uncompressed audio file format standard, but that's another story.)

Is anyone planning to do anything about this mess? Or will entire scores just get lost when the programs which created them no longer run on future operating systems?

KG replies: Good points. I just assume paper is the only quasi-permanent storage medium.

Kyle,
Great to see you writing about Gloria Coates. I always loved her work and have remained puzzled over how few people in the US know of her.