Then my mother would sit up on Saturday evenings typing them onto the very distinctive Gestetner stencils ready for feeding through the machine to print the sheets for the next day. My father would write the notices for the Sunday service by hand. In the vicarage in Wolvercote, when I was growing up, the Gestetner duplicating machine sat in the corner of the dining room. I get my tools together: a pencil, preferably B, a very good rubber and a ruler – I use my father’s old Gestetner ruler – the best ruler I’ve found yet. A totally different kind of exercise – very practical – a matter of putting down each player’s notes in such a way that they will be able to understand what’s going on in the other parts without cluttering their page. If it’s an ensemble piece, as in the case of White Storks, even when the score is finished there are the parts to write. So sketching out initial ideas will definitely stay analogue. It’s not a part of the process that I want to move onto the computer. Sitting at the piano with a lovely soft pencil in my hand and blank manuscript paper on the music stand, I feel a bit like an artist poised, brush in hand, to make the first marks of a new painting. And, thanks to a bit of emergency COVID19 funding from Arts Council England, I will be able to buy my preferred software and aquaint myself with the joys of digital music writing over a semi-locked down summer. I have been promising myself for years that I will aquire and learn to use a music writing software package. 22 pages of parts for my new White Storks string octet
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