Klarinet Archive - Posting 001194.txt from 2003/04

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] On and off topic
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 00:48:50 -0400

Tony Pay' wrote,
>>The War *is* relevant to music, and vice versa, and
>>it's not impossible that someone might say something
>>interesting about that relevance.

Not sure if this is interesting or not, but as an amateur musician not
involved in any of the memorial services or other public music after Sept.
11, 2001, I fell into such a funk that I didn't touch a clarinet or any
other musical instrument for weeks. At the beginning of the U. S. invasion
of Iraq, one of the informal, in-house competitions among Sibelius Music
composers' forum users provided the stimulus for a response that seemed
more constructive, as a form of communication:

Setting of Wilfred Owen's poem, "Anthem for Doomed Youth," for SATB choir
and organ
http://www.sibeliusmusic.com/cgi-bin/show_score.pl?scoreid=36869

There's some biographical information about Wilfred Owen in a program note
below the score (and the same note prints out at the end of the score). He
died in the trenches of World War I, shortly after writing this poem. His
poetry resonates with me because it's anti-war without being anti-soldier.

Since I'm not a professional composer, I've offered the score free of
charge. It can be printed out and/or heard as audio, in a computerized
simulato performance. A computer's toaster may give some vague idea of how
real people might sound (given that the syntho-choir can't sing the
lyrics--it can only sing "oh" and "ah"--and that the default MIDI organ
sounds like a Hammond, only cheesier) or it might sound weird or just
lousy, depending on someone's sound card and what s/he thinks of my
composing skills or lack thereof.

Lelia Loban
lelialoban@-----.net

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