this one is for erik satie (apparently).
horsemouth has tried learning various saties - gnossienne no.1 for example, he attempted in his early days. gnossienne no.1 uses that zorba the greek type rhythm (at least in horsemouth's version of it). horsemouth did try stealing it for a song of his own for volume four but it didn't survive the initial weeding out phase.
he had also earlier attempted je te veux a commercial waltz that satie wrote with lyricist henry pacory (as sung by pauline darty - the queen of the slow waltz). horsemouth sang it in french (but he didn't have anyone around to check his pronunciation at the time so he doesn't know if it is saveable or if he will have to rerecord it).
he started work on some of the other gnossienne but got discouraged.
of course in some ways erik satie is the father of claude debussy (and in other ways, at other times, the other way round). horsemouth has attempted a version of debussy's la fille au cheveux de lin on musicians of bremen volume three (under the title her hair like some glistening gold) as a slide guitar piece in open G (it has a 'scottish' pentatonic sort of tune).
similarly on volume four he attempted some fragments of pagodes under the title pagodas. (he regrets not renaming it something more adventurous - cuban pyramids was one of his better titles, it has a slight habanera rhythm).
he also attempted (in his early days) a version of la cathédrale engloutie (the drowned cathedral). now this was too long to learn to play so horsemouth played various parts and then, with the aid of the sheet music (god bless the works library and photocopier), went through copy and pasting the parts he had played to where they fitted and retuned them where they didn't. the result was reasonably successful but is lost in the deserted mall that is my_space.
both satie and debussy liked lifting earlier tunes - both incorporate the french folk song nous n'irons plus au bois into their work (and horsemouth has some music for it round here somewhere).
the main tune people know by gabriel fauré is his pavane (op.50) which has a great spaghetti western sound to it (at least in horsemouth's imagination). horsemouth has got the first part of it learned (but then gets lost) and so never progressed to recording it. fauré wrote lots of songs, and set lots of poems by french poets of the time - at one point horsemouth had chant d'automne (song of autumn - baudelaire and fauré) worked up and was making progress with après un rêve (after a dream) from an anonymous italian lyric translated into french by romain bussine.
horsemouth also had a theme by georges bizet learnt - bizet wrote it as incidental music for a play by alphonse daudet called l'arlésienne (the girl from arlés) but the fragment ended up being more famous from its use in a setting of the mass as an agnus dei (lamb of god). this would have annoyed bizet who was an atheist. horsemouth recorded it roughly one time (again he presumes it is lost on my_space).
partie de campagne was a film by jean renoir from a guy de maupassant short story, which, after a disastrous production that was nearly rained off was saved in the cutting room by the music of joseph kosma (the author of les feuilles mortes (autumn leaves) - horsemouth has looked at this, he's interested in doing a version in both french and english). horsemouth recorded partie de campagne as a slide guitar piece (but it could probably do with more singing on it).
now almost all of these horsemouth only learnt sufficiently well that he could bluff his way through them. he has an impatience with detail.
last night horsemouth spent an evening with the don campau radio show and his incredible string band compilation show followed up by the discovery of a mix called the devotional music of popul vuh online.
horsemouth then read more of bulgakov's a country doctor's notebook. like carlo levi (or indeed chekhov) he is a city doctor thrown up against rural poverty and superstition, at times bulgakov even starts to sound like levi (or is it the other way round),
'many years have passed since then. fate and the turbulent years have put a long distance between me and... '
this evening a meeting of the communal endeavour. looks like a decent day out of the window.
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