June 27, 2017

Some projects I'm trying to finish, in no particular order.

1. Prepare Inverse Canonic Suite in C, with Treatise On Canonic Inversion for publication, and publish it. This is a half-hour suite for string quartet and keyboard written in 1995, with a 70-page treatise. The text was originally written in now-defunct Appleworks on a Mac running OS 9. Salvaging this text meant translating the documents several times, so that at the other end all the embedded graphics are all messed up. Luckily I kept a print copy and I'm in the process of recreating all the charts and tables. It's taking a while.
2. Record 30 Variations on an Aria by Johann Sebastian Bach using MIDI Tapper, and offer it for download. This is about an hour of music. As I use my own software, I sometimes run into bugs that I need to fix which slows down the process, but it's a good thing to make the software work properly.
3. Finish writing The Equal Tempered Keyboard (4-12 pieces left to write), prepare it for publication, record the music, and publish it. This project has been on hold for over a year. In 2015 I wrote 10 new pieces for the collection and decided to include text about each tuning in the book. The project covers all equal divisions of the octave from 5 to 20. I'm considering expanding it to include 21ET - 24ET, but I'm not sure yet. 20ET is a reasonable limit because beyond this number of tones per octave, a normal keyboard becomes extremely difficult to play more than two notes at a time, and the range becomes increasingly limited.

Meanwhile I've started two new projects:

1. A 30-minute Cantata Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied using a libretto written by Picander, for which Bach's music is lost. So far I've written a 10-minute Eingangschor (opening chorus), a short recitative, a 5-minute aria for soprano, and a closing chorale (two verses).
2. A 2-hour passion setting Markuspassion using the libretto written by Picander, for which Bach's music is lost. This is a huge project, and I've started by writing the 16 chorales which solidify the structure of the entire piece.

Back to work. Wish me luck.

Regards,
Aaron