Boy, I don't know a lot

So, after my last self-righteous rant on documentation, I thought perhaps I should document my performance of "Yo me soy la morenica," a villancico de navidad from 1556. I plan to perform it this weekend. As far as I know, there is no documentation required or even requested, but I thought I'd Get in the Habit.

What I Did: learned the tune off of a CD, found (and mostly ignored) a free choral score, learned the name and provenance of the book the song came from, and found some decent accompaniment chords on the harp.

The Performance is me singing the melody, with harp accompaniment. Once or twice a measure, I do my strum-strum bit, which is a simple open interval in the bass hand and the melody note (cheating!) in the melody hand. After each (Spanish) verse, I continue with the open intervals while I speak an English translation (taken from the CD liner notes - but I do understand the Spanish and the translation seems reasonable).

What I Didn't Do:

• Learn that the original song was a 4-part harmony piece
  
• Find a reasonable transcription of the original 4-part harmony
  
• Base my harp accompaniment off of the original harmonies
  
• Learn anything at all about performance practice of either 1550s Spain or Venice (the book was published in Venice)
  

The last point, I'll actually forgive myself a bit. In the SCA, I can wave the magic "persona wand" and claim that, so long as I can semi-document my performance practice to the period of my persona, then this is my persona's interpretation of a song that post-dates her by 500-600 years. And, when I get to my library, I can document most of the performance choices in that way. Besides, I can't afford a Gothic bray harp just to "correctly" perform this, nor can I sing in four-part harmony by myself to perform it really correctly (e.g., as written).

I mostly ignored the choral score I'd found, thinking it was a modern setting. I've found another one, off of ChoralWiki, and the notation in the first few bars looks like standard early music stuff - so I'm thinking it is more of a transcription. But you know how I could check? The manuscript fascimile that's in the freakin' UMD Performing Arts Library. *smeck*

Was that too long?

I've had a few posts recently that are longer than "Quotes of the Day" and other short stuff, but aren't hugely long or picture-intensive. But are they long enough that I should be lj-cutting them? They're right on the border, it seems to me, of cut/don't cut... if I'm messing with anyone's Friends page, let me know.

Avenging art

"Even in this visionary context, [modern artist James] Turrell was considered pretty out-there. And he saw opportunities for art everywhere. One night, a local vagrant broke into his studio in Santa Monica. ... The man fell, suffered a concussion, and awoke inside a pure white space Turrell had created while the would-be robber was out cold. In the chamber sat a gold harp; Turrell's then-wife played the instrument professionally. When taken into custody by the police, the intruder was relieved to find he hadn't actually died."

- from CNN Travel