Rounds

Recently I have become interested in rounds. This is probably due to spending too much time with Larry Polansky, a composer who writes and collects many rounds, some of which can be seen here.

The first round I’d like to share is one that I recovered for Larry’s retirement from Dartmouth College. It was found in a catacomb of cardboard boxes in a dusty archive, and interpreting Jim Tenney’s chicken scratch was a Herculean task. However, it was worth it as we got a chance to surprise Larry and sing it at his party. Another surprise was how difficult it is to get a room full of music professors to agree on one tempo.

Many of the singers spent more years in music graduate school than the number of beats in a measure, but counting to 5 is still hard.

The next round is one that I wrote for my friend and colleague Jess Thompson‘s birthday. This one had MIDI accompaniment (the gold standard of music formats) which helped because none of the guests did their homework and learned the melody before the party. We also ate cookies.

It’s the thought the counts (but it’s the MIDI that really means something)

WordPress won’t let me upload the MIDI so I will have to host it somewhere else. (soon!)

Upon graduating from Dartmouth College and leaving New Hampshire I was inspired to write the following round: