Wondering if you have a personality disorder? Take the personality disorder test at:
http://www.4degreez.com/misc/personality_disorder_test.mv
Here's how my results shaked out:
Schizoid: Low
Schizotypical: Moderate
Antisocial: Low
Borderline: Low
Histrionic: Moderate
Narcissistic: Moderate
Avoidant: Low
Dependant: Low
Obsessive-Compulsive: Moderate
I should express a debt of gratitude to another blogger that I read, "The Mess in my Head" at http://teengkoh.blogspot.com/,
whose blog listed the link to the test, and her own results.
I have taken an interest lately in the music of Antonio Zacara da Teramo, who died in about 1414. I have written a bio for him at allclassical.com, but it has not appeared as of yet. I like to call him "Zachary the Terminator", as that's what his music will do to any singer who is less than excellent. My voice is not nearly up to the task, but I enjoy studying the scores and playing through this forgotton and mostly unrecorded music. Perhaps I can create some MIDI files of them and post them somewhere on the web.
I went to the library and got a copy of the PMFC* edition of his "Gloria Micinella" and "Credo Cursor". I have had a chance to read and play through the "Micinella". "Micinella" means something that is little or small - don't believe the crap in Grove's that says the work "is possibly associated with the Micinelli family of Rome" - that's an inacccurate guess. Zacara's Gloria is "small" in the same sense that the "Miniature Overture" in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker is small - it is a light work full of snappy rhythms in possesion of a childlike sense of joy and wonder. It is straight-up early 15th century pop music - I cannot imagine that this Gloria was sung in any Roman church of its time or after. I also couldn't imagine hearing it without a drum and a couple of trombetti - it has that "outdoor feast" quality which is found in several of Francesco Landini's more pop-oriented works (or even more commonly in Renaissance music - if so, this late Medieval work is considerably ahead of its time.) Perhaps this Gloria was not written for the church, but as a popular tune that has a sacred text, sort of like the little kids who sing "Gloria in Excelsis" in the movie of "Lord of the Flies", for lack of a better analogy.
I haven't gotten to the "Credo Cursor" just yet. It is incredibly long for any single movement of it's day at 257 measures (!) and the tempo of the piece is obviously very fast - "Cursor" to Zacara was a word meaning "fast". This has got to be one of the earliest tempo indications in music! But I have to get my live show together by Thursday morning, and time is getting extremely short. I will be performing at the SSNova Gallery in Cincinnati on August 30. Instead of going up with my guitar and doing the usual slate of Uncle Dave songs (I'm out of practice on those anyway) I have decided to record only works which I have written in the last year or two. This is a preliminary list:
Triumphal March of the Evil Empire (with CD, drums, keyboard and video projection)
Scribbles (with keyboard/guitar, drums and violin)
Walking Song (with CD & guitar)
Red Alert (with keyboard)
Daumen oben (with CD)
Al Adamson (with guitar)
Dolly the Sheep (with guitar, keyboard and possibly violin)
The Powers that Be (with clarinet & keyboard)
Claudia (with CD & film projection)
My mother has offered to play the clarinet part on "Powers". Ron Orowitz and Keith Larsen have offered to pick up various parts on percussion and keyboards respectively, and it looks like Spencer Yeh will play the violin on "Scribbles". I have to get parts copied out, backing tracks recorded and good, legible lyric sheets together. As I have to go to Cincy on the Greyhound bus this time, I can't carry very many things with me, so I have to find the most condensed and efficient way to go about getting it all together.
I am participating in the Experi-music Symposium at SSNova on the 28th, and my bus will literally get me into Cincinnati only ten minutes before the thing is slated to begin. Ugh!
Uncle Dave Lewis
uncledavelewis@hotmail.com
*PMFC: "Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century" a scholarly series once published by L'Oiseau Lyre press in Paris (and now discontinued). This contains a four-voice version of the "Gloria Micinella." There is also a version for three voices which is considerably different; that is edited by Gerald Reaney in Volume 6 of "Early Fifteenth Century Music," published in the series "Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae" or "CMM". I don't have that yet but am looking forward to comparing it to the four-voice setting. The jury is out as to which version is more "authentic" - my suspicion is that they both are.