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25th April 2025, 9:18:10 pm |
Easter update: publications added, creator database improvements, CD cross-references greatly expanded
- Published (posthumously) six new works by Martin Read: Before History, Death, be not proud, Mary Rose Songs, The Death of Colonel Boles, Four Interludes from The Death of Colonel Boles and Troper Fragment. These are to coincide with a newly issued CD of music by Martin Read.
- Published Theme and Eight Variations by Gary Higginson.
- Added the new At the Open Door CD to the catalogue.
- Added the new Martin Read – A Celebration CD to the catalogue.
- Published Aspects of Miracle by Peter Thompson.
- A notable improvement is that many music publication pages now have graphical links to CD pages on which recordings of them appear. And conversely, for every piece of music published by Fand in CD listings, the work title now links back to the page about the publication, so it’s easy to just click on a piece title and end up on the page about the piece, to find out more about it and perhaps buy a copy.
- Although this isn’t by any means a very visible change, nevertheless, a lot of previously missing information has been added to the database of composers and writers in terms of their birth and death dates. Both dates are now supplied for all the entries for which they could be discovered, which is the vast majority of them. This is largely for completeness and potential future expansion of the catalogue, but most composer and author pages will now show a date range against the name at the top, with far fewer gaps.
- Also in relation to the database of creators, the site no longer links to blank pages about composers and writers whose works are not pubilshed by Fand. Previously, this applied to a lot of composer names in CD listings in particular: clicking the composer names would go to a page showing that name with dates but nothing else (because there was no further information available and no works published by Fand). Now, following this latest update, all such composer names no longer appear as links, so it’s no longer possible to go to those blank pages by clicking names. The only names that remain clickable are the ones that actually lead to valid pages containing useful information.
- Updated and corrected a few pages: a small error in Friends of Fand (The Happy Forest was not arranged by John Mitchell!); a conflation of two movement names in Autumn Sketchbook (Twilight Leaves + Twirling Winds = Twirling Leaves; should have been Twirling Winds!), and linked to a video; also linked to a video for Burlesque.
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21st February 2025, 4:31:08 pm |
More recordings etc.
- Added a link (in the news announcement) to the page relating to Fand’s latest award, announced at Christmas.
- Added new recordings by Ennio to the following existing publications:
- Added a small Friends of Fand item to link to the new recordings.
- Added new videos from Peter to the following existing publications: Mitchell: Eynsford Days; Bax: Legend; Thompson: May Song; Thompson: Sestina.
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18th January 2025, 5:30:05 pm |
Eynsford Days and more Ennio
- Published John Mitchell’s Eynsford Days, with an accompanying performance by Ennio Caironi.
- Added new recordings by Ennio to the following existing publications:
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24th December 2024, 5:36:28 pm |
Bumper Christmas bundle of sound additions
- Added new piano recordings by Ennio Caironi of all of Peter Thompson’s remaining Piano Suites. Ennio had already recorded numbers 5, 7, 10 and 13; now he has filled in all the blanks. Here is the complete list:
- Ennio has also recorded lots of other Thompson miniatures, with the result that he has now completed recording all of Peter’s solo piano music. The newly added works are: Three November Poems, Three Inventions, Sidlesham Quay, Waltz (from The Fand Left-Hand Piano Album), June Tune, The Player and The Aspirant (from The Fand Grade 5 Piano Album), March Hares, Three Pieces and Two Wildflowers.
- Added a new Meccanico rendition of Antique Dreams, but then had to scrap it and replace it with a last-minute new genuine recording (on the harpsichord) from Ennio. This new recording contained a weird blip at the start of movement 3; I’ve edited it out of the audio files here on this site, but it remains in the original video on Peter’s channel.
- Also added new Meccanico renditions (along with Peter’s YouTube video versions) of Symphonietta Doppio (a slightly enhanced new version replaces the previous rendition), Roundels and String Trio.
- Finally, Ennio Caironi has also recorded John Mitchell’s volume of piano arrangements of songs by E. J. Moeran, Songs Without the Words.
- Wrote a Christmas news story about the new recordings and a new award that Fand has just picked up.
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4th December 2024, 10:35:08 pm |
Winter publications added
- Published Peter Thompson’s October and Antique Dreams, and Julian Farmer’s The Safe Return (arr. Peter Thompson). The Farmer also gets an audio rendition. These were actually made live on the site a week ago (on 25th November), but I didn’t have time to produce a news item announcing them until today.
- Catalogued John Mitchell’s Eynsford Days. This is currently hidden from view, though, awaiting is centenary-anniversary publication date of January 2025.
- Corrected a couple of tiny errors in database entries.
- Lots of work on new recordings from Ennio, to be added to the site very shortly, is ongoing.
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29th October 2024, 5:49:51 pm |
Sound additions
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22nd September 2024, 4:53:04 pm |
Stressful awards
- Revised the entry for Peter Thompson’s Prelude for Orchestra: “Stress” to link to a new audio rendition. Also took the opportunity to add new sample pages: previously we just had the first page, but now the first five are provided.
- Added a news item and related graphics about Fand’s second Music Publisher of the Year award from CorporateLiveWire, and linked to the page making the announcement.
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7th September 2024, 10:38:07 pm |
Arnold ebook, and another award
- Revised the pages relating to The Doggy Tales of Arnold (Carey Blyton). Now there are twice as many sample pages to view, with four pages from each story. Also, having derived a distributable PDF from the hi-res printable version we recently received, an ebook version is now available once again. We don’t have the original epub file for Kindle, but a PDF is a good alternative and more widely compatible.
- Fand has once again won Music Publisher of the Year from CorporateLiveWire, this time for 2024/25! I don’t yet have any details to link to, but I’ve received some graphics, so I’ve amended the heading line and replaced the second copy of the 2023/24 award graphic with the new 2024/25 logo. A news item will follow as soon as proper information is released.
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14th August 2024, 3:54:02 pm |
More Mitchell Music
Added two new works by John Mitchell to the catalogue, one of which includes his own recording of it: Barcarolle Blanche for piano solo and another new song cycle, this time to words by Edward Shanks: Summer’s Hue.
- Internal note: with this update, I changed the Grade field in the site database to be BINary rather than SMALL INTeger format, which is the explicit representation of how the field has always been conceived. It makes no practical difference to the workings of the site, but will make the Grade entries much easier for me to maintain in future, as I can now see and edit the individual bits/flags. The only reason I ever used SMALL INT previously was because of a software bug in Sequel Pro that affected the editing of BIN fields, and it now appears to have been fixed in Sequel Ace.
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31st July 2024, 5:30:15 pm |
Ennio Caironi
- Added a Friends of Fand news item to mark the addition to the Fand site of a remarkable set of new recordings of solo piano music made by Ennio Caironi. The pieces recorded so far are the following by Peter Thompson: Ballad, Bicycle Ride, Burlesque, Piano Sonata, Sestina, Soliloquy, Suite no 7, Suite no 13: ‘Greenwood Tales’, The Renaissance Spirit and Toccata. And also, the following by Sir Arnold Bax: Legend, In the Night, Piano Sonata in B flat, ‘Salzburg Sonata’ (just the second movement for now) and Piano Sonata in E flat.
- A lot of pieces for which we now have a recording by Ennio have had their durations added or slightly amended to reflect his playing.
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