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All the music here is presented in two versions -- MIDI files and Scorch files. Scorch is a plugin from Sibelius Software that lets you follow the score as you listen. I highly recommend it! If you don't already have the Scorch plugin, you can obtain it here. (You'll also be prompted when you try to view any of my Scorch pages.)
Of course, the sound will only be as good as your sound card -- no MP3's yet -- I'm at your mercy!
All the music here is also available for sale at SibeliusMusic.com.
Lithe Spirit
The accompaniment to a dance choreographed and performed by Kompiang Metri Davies. While obviously
paying homage to Balinese music, it contains no actual Indonesian melodies, rhythms, or compositional devices except for the pelog scale it uses -- it is a strictly Western piece.
Original Piano Version
Synthesizer Version (sounds the most like a real gamelan)
Instrumental Quartet Version(Violin, Celesta, Piano, and Percussion)
An Edward Lear Nonsense Alphabet (excerpts)
All the Nonsense Alphabet songs are parodistic.
Since you won't be able to hear the texts on the MIDI versions, I've printed them below. (You'll have to guess which words go with which notes.) On the Scorch
version, you'll be able to follow along!
"H" was a Heron
The heroically Handelian Heron struts and preens,
then takes off in flight, in the style of a French Overture.
"H" was a Heron
Who stood in a stream,
And the length of his neck
And his legs was extreme.
"H" -- long-legged Heron.
"O" was an Oyster
In the style of a sea chanty.
The waves gently rock as the bubbles rise up from the Oyster
-- since of course a nonsense oyster would breathe air!
"O" was an Oyster
Who lived in a shell.
If you left him alone
He felt perfectly well.
"O" -- open-mouthed Oyster.
"T" was a Tortoise
A Baroque canon-by-augmentation.
The Tortoise wanders dissonantly over the rocky counterpoint,
then disappears into harmonic ambiguity.
"T" was a Tortoise,
All yellow and black.
He walked slowly away
And he never came back.
"T" -- Tortoise never came back.
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