David Stanhope Archives
Archive for September 2001

News

ABC Classics has released the soundtrack CD of the film The Bank, music by Alan John. I see I am listed as conductor of an ensemble called "Sinfonia Australis". Well, I suppose it had to be called something - it was the usual bunch of faces from whomever-was-available out of the top Sydney players, and a good group it was, too!

Songs Without Words is nearly finished. The first final score will probably be a practice version with the wind band accompaniment reduced to piano. Saxophone quartets that perform the work will no doubt find such an arrangement useful, and I am sure it will be part of the future publication.

Other (grinding) work has been the reformatting of my symphony score and parts for Southern Music. Changing page size from A4 to USletter alone requires a great deal of reworking the various layouts. Southern Music has a preference for rehearsal numbers rather than letters, one change I am ambivalent about. It is certainly an advantage to have bar numbers in some ways (particularly from the publisher's point of view - accuracy is more secure and cross-referencing between score and parts more clearly defined), but I still think from a practical point of view it is quicker for conductor and players to work with rehearsal letters. Is not "go from S" more efficient than "go from one hundred and ninety-five"? Let alone "seven bars before S" rather than "seven before one hundred and ninety-five ….ermm that's… one hundred and eighty-nine…no, um, one hundred and eighty-eight" (from the back of the ensemble - "What he say??").

Another change I will be forced to make is that of music computer software. After some years of using Mosaic (Mark Of The Unicorn), I have become increasingly frustrated with the lack of support from the program's makers. There has not been an update since 1998, and some irritating flaws remain. While I am aware no music program is perfect, I will have to change to Finale. The biggest factor that has swayed me is that I will be able to email material direct to Southern Music if I use Finale, a huge timesaver and improvement in editorial aspects.

My family returned from Europe safe and sound!