It is Ed’s birthday today. And for the 32nd time in 32 years I have composed a viola/piano duet for my husband, a tradition that will continue until we reach the morbid part of the generally expressed marriage vow (Although I am reminded by our wedding certificate that Ed and I used the differently worded “as long as they both shall live” when we were betrothed). Ed plays the viola and I the piano, but generally we only perform together only for ourselves or family.

Each one of these duets are called “Evocation”. I shall share the score of “Evocation XXXII” in this post. In previous posts (which may be found here in the archives) I have shared a handful of others, with my music scoring program providing a computer synthesized rendition of viola and piano playing the piece.

This year I can only provide the score, without sound. The company that made the music scoring program I have used for almost 30 years (Finale) has closed shop, and the version on my old desk top computer in our office has suddenly degraded, losing many of its capabilities, including the ability to reproduce the sound of what has been scored. With no company left to give tech support or upgrades or repairs, this will be the last time I can use Finale to write out my music. This old dog has got to learn new tricks.

But as this breakdown of the old trick I knew happened just two weeks before Ed’s birthday, I found it easier for this old dog to write out Evocation XXXII on a handicapped program than test my nerves with learning how to use the new one I will now need to switch over to in the short time I had for this score to be completed.

Not that my nerves weren’t tested anyway. It wasn’t just the sound reproducing capability that was hamstrung. The “Speedy Entry” function would not recognize pitches, only rests, so I had to switch to the far slower and fiddly “Simple Entry” function. The “mass mover” function simply disappeared from the menu option, so there was no way to “copy and paste”, among other functions. All this made what would normally may have taken me an hour at most to write out take a day and a half. (I don’t mean the composition process, simply the writing out of the score itself.)

For example look just at this section in the viola:

In Speedy Entry I would have produced this in 20 seconds. In Simple Entry it took me took several minutes the first time. And note how often this phrase is repeated in the score – 12 times. Copying and pasting it would take a matter of seconds. Instead I had to painstakingly write it out again and again and again … I did get faster with practice though, probably only taking a minute the twelfth time.

Anyway, ultimately it wasn’t too horrible, just an annoyance. And I’m annoyed I have to learn to use a whole new music scoring program after doing just fine thank you very much with the one I had been using all these years.

But mostly I’m sorry I can’t share audio of Evocation XXXII with you today. Those of you who are comfortable sight reading music may note that it is mostly a jaunty, playful piece. There’s a touch a mystery, a smattering of spiky chords, but mostly it’s a playful ditty.

Which may seem unusual, not only because my Evocations tend towards the dark and moody, but also because I came up with the melody during a memorial service. For Ed’s father no less. But Ed says his dad was a jaunty fellow, so maybe this was appropriate. The melody line for the viola just kept developing in my head during the service, and I kept quietly replaying it in my mind until I was sure I had memorized it. Because I would not have a chance to write it down until hours later back in the hotel. I didn’t have music paper with me in Madison, Wisconsin, or any kind of blank paper; so it just made sense to me to write down my notes in the margins of the memorial program:

Here’s what that viola melody segment I excerpted above (plus three more measures) looks like in the margins of the program:

The memorial program and scrap paper with an in-progress version of the piece, pencil markings indicating the working out of the piano parts: