OK, so today, after a long time, we have another @ATajuddin medley. I called it "Woe in peace" after the repeated line both of the medley and of one of the poems that composes it, the earlier one in fact. The line is "Woe to me!!", but the last repetition turns to "Peace to me!", and the other poem is more peaceful if sad. However, as a medley, I feel like the title should have elements of both poems, so I renamed it "Woe and a dream" on 29/2/24, and then to "Woe in far-away lands" (as in the title) on 16/3/24, because the second poem is mostly about a long long journey so far away.
The earlier poem is from 20/3/20, or at least that's when she sent it to me in this form:
The rest of the medley is from her seventh poem, "A long journey", sent at 5:22 am on 1/5/20.
The medley itself is from a round of medleys about which I wrote, sometime in 2020, «These are the medleys I first set down when trying to work out the ones of the previous part. These were probably put together between 9/10 and 10/10, and at 12:10 on 10/10 they were first sent to the poet, who then sent comments, I replied to them, and I’m still waiting for a re-reply, as I will detail in the intros.». About this medley specifically, I wrote:
«Two distinct topics», she says. Yes, I agree. There is in fact an IMO nice contrast between the peaceful surroundings (the sun, the sparkling mountains, the singing birds) of the foreign land she is in, and her heart tormented by «Woe to me!». And of course, «I set out on a dream» and «A dream has set me on a long journey» fit together quite well. «C1 is all yours (upside-down smiley) as you like because you are the musician (face with hearts)» was the poet’s final word on 30/10/20, so I will set it to music using two different styles to highlight the contrast, and possibly making it so that the parts from each poem, if isolated, still form a convincing tune, meaning I set both the medley and the two poems to music all in one go.
So the fact that the two poems are set to music in different keys, contrasting at every switch, is definitely intentional, and yes, I did end up making them two separate convincing tunes that also intertwine. I will probably record each separately and then the two together. But let's get to the tune's history.
We start on 1/11/2020. At 23:50:06 we have the tune for "Woe to me". Actually this was from a 18:10 1/11/20 message, which is the start of "My kind is mankind" (see the relevant post, when I finally get around to making it and the video :) ). At 23:51:56 we have the next note, and by 23:53:24 we've reached "motherland", aka two lines musicated. At 23:55:38 we have notes up to "betrayed you" and lyrics up to "motherland", and by 23:56:10 the lyrics text on par with the notes. I'm describing the evolution of the score here.
At 23:57:11 the "you" of l. 3, previously confined to the bar of "trayed" from "betrayed", stretches for an extra half bar, and by 23:57:28 we reach "dream", but the tune of "dream" is not the current one:
At 23:59:37, "dream" has turned from a full measure of C to the current one-measure C-Bb-A-G scale, then the tune continues with FF-GG AAAA, then we have the next 5 bars as they are now:
That's what this part looks like now, in the screenshot the lyrics stop at "betrayed you" and the lyrics sto at "made me", and "me" is a C#, not a C. This note differenced is fixed at 0:00:29, where the next "Woe to me" appears. At 0:00:41 the next note appears after the key change. By 0:01:14 we have lyrics up to "embraced me" and even "Gave" where now there is "sky":
At 0:01:30, the "me" bar has current tune but noncurrent lyrics:
At 0:02:17, the lyrics are complete, except they say "sky that you, that you made for me", whereas currently the "for" is gone. By 0:02:57, we have notes and lyrics up to "on a (long long journey)", but maybe more, the SS cuts out the next line of music. At 0:02:59, we see music and lyrics from "loneliness" to "in my cap", as they are now, so I definitely reached that point by the previous SS. At 0:03:35, the note after "cap" appears (the one selected in the image below):
At 0:03:55, we reach the next "woe to me". In other words, the 1/11/2020 part of this medley looks like this, minus the "I feel powerless":
I then pick this up again on 2/11/2020, getting into the file at 13:07:40: picking up where we left off. At 13:08:59 we see this:
At 13:09:07 we seem to have nothing beyond this, then at 13:09:45 a bar of 4 quavers A G A Bb and one filled by a C appear, followed by a "Woe to me" tune. At 13:10:33, lyrics are added:
At 13:12:29, after the previous "Woe to me", an empty bar appears, followed by the "I feel (powerless)" bar, where only "I" has its note. At 13:12:48-13:15:12, the "weaker" bar gets the right tune, apart from the missing last quaver. This is undone at 13:15:17, then redone at 13:16:05, together with the "haunts us" bar (with the notes A A F), which becomes "haunting us" at 13:16:13, the preceding "that" being deleted. At 13:16:25, the A A F becomes A G F.
At 13:16:40, we have the tune for "I feel powerless", and the lyrics at 13:16:51. At 13:18:14, the tune for "In reuniting" appears, followed by a G, and at 13:18:39 the misplaced G has become a D as under "my", and the E of "breth(ren)" has appeared. By 13:18:49, we have the full "breth" syllable (both its E and its G, where the A of "ren" still needs to appear in the semiminim pause before "I am weaker", and does so at 13:18:57. At 13:19:18, the lyrics are complete. After two edits to the score at 13:19:30 and 13:19:38, which seem to be trying to get "plague" to be placed correctly by retyping or switching from "thi-is plague" to "this pla-ague" or viceversa, which Sibelius just won't show, at 13:20:03, the tune is finally up to current up to and excluding "Fragile" (which is two quavers without the dots that are currently there).
I then probably left for lunch, or maybe for more than that, since I seem to have come back only at 15:44:17. At 15:44:36, Fragile has its current tune and lost its lyrics, which are replaced by 15:46:53. Finally, by 15:47:13 the tune is in its current form (except for "(divisive) forces", which as you can see above is F E F G instead of the current A G A Bb. By 15:47:24 so are the lyrics, and at 15:47:38 the tune is finally as it is currently.
At 15:48:45, we're suddenly at "-til tomorrow, it says, Let the moon play your muse tonight", with current lyrics and tune, except it stops at the D of "(Muse to)night" without having the next bar with the C. The gap due to this screenshot skip is shown at 15:48:51, and it's current, lyrics included.
At 15:51:07, the notes from the C that "(to)night" ends on to "Woe to me" are ready to receive lyrics, as they do at 15:51:15.
At which point it's merenda time, I guess. Or something. Anyway, I come back at 17:17:08 and add a bunch of empty bars at 17:17:10 and 17:17:38, for whatever reason. In this sea of empty bars, at 17:19:59 there appears the tune of "If I am weaker, united we are Stronger!! / I", but not the lyrics. At 17:20:12 we see the bars from "Fragile for divisive forces" to "Until to-" in their current form, except the one after "Woe to me" has an extra dotted semiminim with no lyrics under it and the note being the same as "me", which is deleted at 17:20:24, and is the one after the selected (blue) one in this image:
At 17:21:45, from "(Until to)morrow it says" to "united we are Stronger!! I" in current form save for the missing lyrics from "If I am" onwards, which are added at 17:22:05. At 17:22:16, "pray for" gets its tune, and by 17:22:52, the tune is done up to "peace to the world / I pray". At 17:25:10, the tune is done up to "solace to my being", then I add empty bars up to 17:25:38, and at 17:26:45 the tune seems complete up to "Peace to me! / Peace to me". Then I add the lyrics: 17:26:50 up to "Stronger / I", 17:27:23 up to "bring sola(ce to my being)", 17:27:56 complete.
At 17:29:02 the work is complete? Well, the tune reaches the end of the lyrics, but it goes "Let the bright stars above be your guests":
At 17:29:58 we see an alternate ending that I then scrap at 17:30:05:
At 17:30:21 after "birds" we have G A Bb G quavers and then a full bar of F, and by 17:30:34 those bars have "sing the la-ast song":
At 17:30:53 those bars are selected, and at 17:31:21 they are replaced:
At 17:31:31, we get the lyrics, at 17:31:40 the former "the-e last song" becomes "the last so-ong". At 17:32:30, the bars are selected yet again, and at 17:32:41 the current tune from "birds" to "last song of the". At 17:33:01 a key change added before "I see them", which reveals that the E of "last (song of the day)" is an E-natural as seen in the 17:33:06 image, deleted at 17:33:10, and then fixed, so that at 17:34:21 the tune is current and complete up to "Until tomorrow, they". And by 17:35:50, the tune is all complete, and by 17:36:48 the lyrics are too. Well, actually at 17:39:22 we have an extra G filling the first half-bar after "Peace to me" (i.e. "Peace to me" ends on a crowned minim for "me", then the next bar is semiminim G, quaver break, then "I" with its quaver F), which gets deleted at 17:39:28.
So in conclusion there were 4 work sessions: 1-2/11/20 23:46:44-0:03:55, 2/11/20 13:07:40-13:20:03, 2/11/24 15:44:17-15:51:15, and 2/11/20 17:17:08-17:36:48. With all of that, the current tune is:
Or at least, thus it looked at the end of the job in 2020. When I saw the alternate ending in Feb 2024, I decided to keep both. So the alternate ending is:
and the way you keep both is:
Here is my summary of this for the intro of the relevant video:
The earlier poem is from 20/3/20, or at least that's when she sent it to me in this form:
The medley itself is from a round of medleys about which I wrote, sometime in 2020, «These are the medleys I first set down when trying to work out the ones of the previous part. These were probably put together between 9/10 and 10/10, and at 12:10 on 10/10 they were first sent to the poet, who then sent comments, I replied to them, and I’m still waiting for a re-reply, as I will detail in the intros.». About this medley specifically, I wrote:
«Two distinct topics», she says. Yes, I agree. There is in fact an IMO nice contrast between the peaceful surroundings (the sun, the sparkling mountains, the singing birds) of the foreign land she is in, and her heart tormented by «Woe to me!». And of course, «I set out on a dream» and «A dream has set me on a long journey» fit together quite well. «C1 is all yours (upside-down smiley) as you like because you are the musician (face with hearts)» was the poet’s final word on 30/10/20, so I will set it to music using two different styles to highlight the contrast, and possibly making it so that the parts from each poem, if isolated, still form a convincing tune, meaning I set both the medley and the two poems to music all in one go.
So the fact that the two poems are set to music in different keys, contrasting at every switch, is definitely intentional, and yes, I did end up making them two separate convincing tunes that also intertwine. I will probably record each separately and then the two together. But let's get to the tune's history.
We start on 1/11/2020. At 23:50:06 we have the tune for "Woe to me". Actually this was from a 18:10 1/11/20 message, which is the start of "My kind is mankind" (see the relevant post, when I finally get around to making it and the video :) ). At 23:51:56 we have the next note, and by 23:53:24 we've reached "motherland", aka two lines musicated. At 23:55:38 we have notes up to "betrayed you" and lyrics up to "motherland", and by 23:56:10 the lyrics text on par with the notes. I'm describing the evolution of the score here.
At 23:57:11 the "you" of l. 3, previously confined to the bar of "trayed" from "betrayed", stretches for an extra half bar, and by 23:57:28 we reach "dream", but the tune of "dream" is not the current one:
At 13:16:40, we have the tune for "I feel powerless", and the lyrics at 13:16:51. At 13:18:14, the tune for "In reuniting" appears, followed by a G, and at 13:18:39 the misplaced G has become a D as under "my", and the E of "breth(ren)" has appeared. By 13:18:49, we have the full "breth" syllable (both its E and its G, where the A of "ren" still needs to appear in the semiminim pause before "I am weaker", and does so at 13:18:57. At 13:19:18, the lyrics are complete. After two edits to the score at 13:19:30 and 13:19:38, which seem to be trying to get "plague" to be placed correctly by retyping or switching from "thi-is plague" to "this pla-ague" or viceversa, which Sibelius just won't show, at 13:20:03, the tune is finally up to current up to and excluding "Fragile" (which is two quavers without the dots that are currently there).
I then probably left for lunch, or maybe for more than that, since I seem to have come back only at 15:44:17. At 15:44:36, Fragile has its current tune and lost its lyrics, which are replaced by 15:46:53. Finally, by 15:47:13 the tune is in its current form (except for "(divisive) forces", which as you can see above is F E F G instead of the current A G A Bb. By 15:47:24 so are the lyrics, and at 15:47:38 the tune is finally as it is currently.
At 15:48:45, we're suddenly at "-til tomorrow, it says, Let the moon play your muse tonight", with current lyrics and tune, except it stops at the D of "(Muse to)night" without having the next bar with the C. The gap due to this screenshot skip is shown at 15:48:51, and it's current, lyrics included.
At 15:51:07, the notes from the C that "(to)night" ends on to "Woe to me" are ready to receive lyrics, as they do at 15:51:15.
At which point it's merenda time, I guess. Or something. Anyway, I come back at 17:17:08 and add a bunch of empty bars at 17:17:10 and 17:17:38, for whatever reason. In this sea of empty bars, at 17:19:59 there appears the tune of "If I am weaker, united we are Stronger!! / I", but not the lyrics. At 17:20:12 we see the bars from "Fragile for divisive forces" to "Until to-" in their current form, except the one after "Woe to me" has an extra dotted semiminim with no lyrics under it and the note being the same as "me", which is deleted at 17:20:24, and is the one after the selected (blue) one in this image:
At 17:29:02 the work is complete? Well, the tune reaches the end of the lyrics, but it goes "Let the bright stars above be your guests":
So in conclusion there were 4 work sessions: 1-2/11/20 23:46:44-0:03:55, 2/11/20 13:07:40-13:20:03, 2/11/24 15:44:17-15:51:15, and 2/11/20 17:17:08-17:36:48. With all of that, the current tune is:
- Good chunk (up to "feather in my cap. Woe to me") late evening 1/11/20 going into night;
- 2/11 I come back and start with "I am weaker for this plague that haunts us, fragile for divisive forces", later massively changed, reach the next "woe to me", and go for lunch;
- I then come back, and give "forces" its current notes; after that, I reach just before "If I am weaker", then go for merenda;
- I then come back for the last time, and complete the first ending; go full-detail on the endings.
Poem 1: Woe to me Woe to me! I left you, motherland: Never had I betrayed you! I set out on a dream, This land embraced me, Gave me sky for the wings you made me! Woe to me! Woe to me! I feel powerless in reuniting my brethren, Weaker I am for this plague haunting us, Fragile for divisive forces, Woe to me! Woe to me! If I am weaker, united we are Stronger!! I pray for peace to the world, I will bring solace to my being, Peace to you is peace to me!! Peace to me!! Poem 2(7): A long journey A dream has set me on a long journey: Wish I knew that I should go so far, Where loneliness would be the only jewel to adorn me, This solitude would be the only feather in my cap. My thoughts set out every morning When the sun comes to bid me goodbye. «Until tomorrow», it says, «Let the moon play your muse tonight». I see them sparkle as the sun sets, These mountains gazing at my window. Before going to their beds, The little birds sing the last song of the day. «Until tomorrow», they sing, «Let the stars be your guests tonight». Medely: Woe and a dream Woe to me! I left you, motherland: Never had I betrayed you! I set out on a dream, This land embraced me, Gave me sky for the wings that you, That you made for me! Woe to me! A dream has set me On a long long journey: Wish I knew That I should go so far, So far away, Where loneliness would be The only jewel to adorn me, This solitude would be The only feather in my cap. Woe to me! I feel powerless In reuniting my brethren, I am weaker For this plague haunting us, Fragile for divisive forces, Woe to me! My thoughts set out every morning When the sun comes to bid me goodbye. «Until tomorrow», it says, «Let the moon play your muse tonight». Woe to me! If I am weaker, United we are Stronger!! I pray for peace to the world, I pray for peace to the world, I will bring solace to my being, Peace to you is peace to me!! Peace to me!! I see them sparkle as the sun sets, These mountains gazing at my window. Before going to their beds, The little birds sing the last song of the day. «Until tomorrow», they sing, «Let the stars be your guests tonight». Before going to their beds, The little birds sing the last song of the day. «Until tomorrow», they sing, «Let the bright stars above Be your guests tonight». |
Poesia 1: Misera me Misera me! T'ho lasciata, mia patria: Mai t'avevo tradita! Son partita seguendo un sogno, Questa terra m'ha abbracciata, M'ha dato cielo per le ali che tu m'hai fatte! Misera me! Misera me! Mi sento impotente nel riunire i miei fratelli, Più debole sono per questa piaga che ci tormenta, Fragile per forze divisive, Misera me! Misera me! Se io son più debole, insieme siamo più Forti!! Prego per la pace nel mondo, Porterò conforto al mio essere, La tua pace è pace per me!! Pace per me!! Poem 2(7): A long journey Un sogno m'ha fatta partire per un lungo viaggio: Magari avessi saputo che sarei dovuta andar così lontano, Dove la solitudine sarebbe stata l'unico gioiello ad adornarmi, Questa solitudine sarebbe stata il mio unico fiore all'occhiello. I miei pensieri escono ogni mattina Quando il sole viene a dirmi addio. «Fino a domani», dice, «Lascia che la luna ti faccia da musa stanotte». Le vedo brillare mentre tramonta il sole, Queste montagne che osservano la mia finestra. Prima di andare a letto, Gli uccellini cantano l'ultima canzone della giornata. «Fino a domani», cantano, «Lascia che le stelle ti siano ospiti stanotte». Medely: Woe and a dream Misera me! T'ho lasciata, mia patria: Mai t'avevo tradita! Son partita seguendo un sogno, Questa terra m'ha abbracciata, M'ha dato cielo per le ali che tu, Che tu hai fatte per me! Misera me! Un sogno m'ha fatta partire Per un lungo lungo viaggio: Magari avessi saputo Che sarei dovuta andar così lontano, Così lontano, Dove la solitudine sarebbe stata L'unico gioiello ad adornarmi, Questa solitudine sarebbe stata Il mio unico fiore all'occhiello. Misera me! Mi sento impotente Nel riunire i miei fratelli, Più debole sono Per questa piaga che ci tormenta, Fragile per forze divisive, Misera me! My thoughts set out every morning When the sun comes to bid me goodbye. «Until tomorrow», it says, «Let the moon play your muse tonight». Misera me! Se io son più debole, Insieme siamo più Forti!! Prego per la pace nel mondo, Prego per la pace nel mondo, Porterò conforto al mio essere, La tua pace è pace per me!! Pace per me!! Le vedo brillare mentre tramonta il sole, Queste montagne che osservano la mia finestra. Prima di andare a letto, Gli uccellini cantano l'ultima canzone della giornata. «Fino a domani», cantano, «Lascia che le stelle ti siano ospiti stanotte». Prima di andare a letto, Gli uccellini cantano l'ultima canzone della giornata. «Fino a domani», cantano, «Lascia che le splendenti stelle di lassù Ti siano ospiti stanotte». |
