December 2009: Vorsprung durch Technik

Brussels, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne 1 DECEMBER 2009
Musbook.com and musicDNA are very pleased to announce a collaboration that
will lead to the integration of their services and technologies to provide a
new eco-system for musicians and music lovers.
http://www.musicdna.info/574_-_Musbook_Collaboration_Announcement.pdf
http://www.musicdna.info/news.aspx

Peter Tregear, CEO of Musbook.com said "This collaboration helps us become
not just an effective on-line social network for musicians but also a
powerful conceptual, educational, and commercial tool.  MusBook.com has
always been about using the unique power of the web to transform, for the
better, the way the music world works.  musicDNA offers our site a
strikingly original and immensely powerful means towards achieving that
end".

Managing Director of Pensive, Peter Brown said "This is an exciting venture
for us and confirms our vision of helping people find their way clearly in
increasingly busy digital lives.  There is an excellent match in the use of
our core technologies in this collaboration, with its emphasis on social
objects that are managed under user control and networked through such an
important online community".

Antony Pitts of CTU said "musicDNA is about describing the musical universe
in such a way that both people and computers can connect up the information
we have - our knowledge about music - with actual musical resources:
recordings, sheet music, comment and recommendation - from Joe Bloggs's blog
to the most erudite of scholarly articles.  Integrating our model with
MusBook's social networking portal is an important step in making this
joined-up vision a reality for music-lovers and musical organizations around
the globe".

The mission of all parties is to empower and enrich the world's community of
musicians by enabling not just professional relationships, but also
relationships between musicians and music lovers, to develop in ways that
have previously never been possible.  They will support these new
connections with a comprehensive range of services, tools, and information
that will help musicians drive forward the development of musical culture
like never before.  The combination of the respective contributions by each
of the parties will go a long way to achieving this mission.  During this
period of collaboration they will integrate the existing Musbook.com web
portal with the musicDNA service provided by Pensive / CTU - with its
dynamic navigation architecture for mapping the musical domain, using models
and processes for managing related musical concepts (such as musical works,
performances, recordings, artists, venues, etc.).  This integration will
open up the possibility of creating a new social community for people around
the world to share their musical interests, experiences and knowledge.


SATURDAY 5 DECEMBER 7pm *A Special Celebration Concert*
St Andrew's Parish Church, Steyning, West Sussex, UK
TONUS PEREGRINUS in a Thanksgiving Concert celebrating 25 years of
restoration and conservation of historic St Mary's House Bramber and its
Gardens, by Peter Thorogood and Roger Linton, together with family and
volunteers.

Pitts: Adoro Te
Naxos Book of Carols: Verbum Patris umanatur, O, O
Dunstaple: Kyrie
Pitts: O Holy of Holies / Sheppard: Reges Tharsis
Naxos Book of Carols: Alleluya - a new work
Tallis - Sancte Deus
Tomkins: O sing unto the Lord
Pitts: Missa Unitatis / Credo (UK premiere)
--------
Purcell: Hear my prayer, O Lord
Holst: Lullay my liking
Ireland: Ex ore innocentium
L'Estrange: Lutebook Lullaby
Pitts: There is a green hill
Thoroughgood: Two Angels
Naxos Book of Carols: The Holly and the Ivy
Gardner: Tomorrow shall be my dancing day

TONUS PEREGRINUS
Joanna Forbes - soprano
Lisa Beckley - soprano
Kathryn Knight - alto
Alexander L'Estrange - countertenor
Mark Anderson - tenor
Gautam Rangarajan - tenor
Alexander Knight - bass
Nick Flower - bass
Antony Pitts - director
with Edward Dean - organ
and Gwyneth Powell - reader

in aid of: The St. Mary's House & Gardens Charitable Trust
more info: www.stmarysbramber.co.uk/concerts_2009.htm
http://tonusperegrinus.co.uk/TPreviews.pdf


SATURDAY 26 DECEMBER 12.15pm (1215-1300GMT) *Lessons with Mozart*
A Golden Radio production for BBC Radio 3 (90-93FM in the UK)
and on the web at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/radio3/
Jeremy Summerly eavesdrops on Thomas Attwood's composition lessons with
Mozart.  "Study strict counterpoint for a year", said Mozart to the young
Englishman freshly arrived in Vienna in 1785, "and then we'll talk about
fugues..."  Remarkably, the manuscripts from their lessons over the next
year and a half survive, as does the study in Mozart's luxury apartment near
St Stephen's Cathedral in the centre of Vienna; they provide a unique
glimpse of a great composer setting out the tools and techniques of his
trade.  Also listening in to the master and pupil scribbling notes and
wisecracks side by side are the Mozarthaus director Gerhard Vitek, composer
and teacher Antony Pitts, and the British Library's curator of music
manuscripts, Nicolas Bell.  Devised and produced by Jeremy Summerly and
Antony Pitts.

"You are an ass....you are an ass"
So writes the great composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on the manuscript paper
of his favourite student, the young Englishman Thomas Attwood.  What it
would be worth to be able to eavesdrop on one of their lessons! Well, with
the help of a luxury apartment in Vienna, some music students in London, and
a fortepiano or two, these pages of music history literally come to life...

In August 1785 the 19-year-old English composer Thomas Attwood arrived in
Vienna to study with Mozart.  Their encounters over a period of 18 months
are uniquely documented in a set of exercise-books - Attwood's awkward
handwriting and his teacher's elegant scribbles represented, respectively,
in black and red in the modern printed edition.  These lessons reveal not
just how Mozart wrote music himself, but also his understanding of his place
in music history and the importance of the tradition of counterpoint and
voice-leading handed down from the Renaissance - the nuts and bolts of
musical composition.  At the turn of the 21st century these historical
documents have become the inspiration for a course at the Royal Academy of
Music and a new generation of students now form a living link with the young
and undoubtedly apprehensive Attwood sitting at Mozart's own keyboard.

Some time after he'd left in 1787, Attwood wrote: "At the time that I was
with him, Mozart seemed to be of cheerful disposition, but his health was
not very strong.  Rather than hunching over his desk, Mozart was obliged to
compose at an upright stand.  Initially I attempted two string quartets,
which Mozart corrected.  After they were done, he said: 'You clearly like
composition, therefore we will begin from scratch'."
This 45-minute documentary features specially-made premiere recordings that
will gently introduce even the allegedly cloth-eared to the very art of
composition itself.