Posts by Alistair

Thanks to one of our members, KingMaximilian (see the Parallel Composers thread), the problems with the Works and the Recordings searches are now over. They work in PHP5! There are just a couple of trivial problems to sort now.

The whole site will still be running under PHP4 until the Forum is updated.

The cost of the forum update will only be 350 US dollars. I am just about to pay for the annual parking fee (270 dollars), so the total cost of keeping the whole show open in the near future will be 620 dollars - not 2,500 dollars as originally thought by me. Not bad -- the cost has shrunk by a factor of 4!

If any you are still willing to chip in, please make a donation through PayPal on the front page. I will wait for a few days and then shut the forum temporarily for this essential update.

Thank you so very much for your support. Your words bowl me over and at the same time give me strength to try to find a solution.

Discover Zelenka
A friend of mine who knows PHP is taking a look at the code on the Discover Zelenka website itself to assess the degree of modernisation required. This amounts to assessing the financial damage involved! Basically, I am talking about the functionality of the Works searches, the Recordings searches, the Outstanding CDs page, the More Quotations page, and the Further Reading page(s). All of these would appear as usual but cease to function entirely in 2 months' time.

Zelenka Forum
The whole forum would appear as an error message in 2 months' time. As the forum software is commercial, it might be possible to give the manufacturer carte blanche to upgrade the software and integrate it with the existing database. There may, however, be incompatibility between the existing database and the hierarchy of tables that the new software expects to find in the database. I will contact them and discuss it.

I will update you from time to time.

Dear Zelenka Forum members,

I regret to inform the forum members that the days of the Discover Zelenka website and the Zelenka Forum appear to be numbered. The website searches and general functionality, and also the whole forum, are strongly based on the PHP programming language version 4. Nowadays, PHP5 is used, and the compatibility between the two is not anywhere near 100%.

The website is being run on a server that has supported PHP4 until now, but the owner of the server has announced that PHP4 will not be run after the end of April at the very latest, and possibly it will stop earlier than this.

If anyone has bags of money and can afford to splash out something like $2500 (US) on a programmer's time to bring everything up to date, then the problem might be solved. I don't have that kind of money, so I can see no alternative but to close the shop when the PHP4 functionality ends. I have looked for a sponsor for ten years without much success, and a few weeks is probably not enough time to make a cry for financial help.

No doubt you will want to comment. No doubt there will be some shock horror. But we have almost two months to talk about it and perhaps find a solution, or at least to exchange e-mail addresses so that we don't lose contact with each other.

Alistair

Good idea! Thanks.

Hello again, Honey B,

Perhaps you should have a good look at your original entry again. The fact that you have put Adam in a box marked "baroque" says more about you than about him!

Personally, in view of another discussion thread on this forum (Parallel Composers), I would like to see him record some Martinu.

Best wishes. /Alistair

I'm not sure what you mean. Is this a joke? Have you heard the recording? Apart from all his other good attributes, Adam Viktora is a clever musicologist in his own right. If he chooses to record twentieth-century music, we should all sit up and listen because he most likely has something to tell us.

Alistair

I'm sorry to say that the possibility of RSS feeds is not going to happen in the foreseeable future, but you never know what is down the road...

Regards /Alistair

You have a good point there.

I only know Martinu's fantastic First Symphony, which was written in the USA during World War II. The first three movements were used for a ballet called "In the Glow of the Night" by Choo-San Goh, a brilliant choreographer who died tragically of AIDS when he was about 40. I saw the ballet in Johannesburg in the mid-eighties and was completely blown away by the whole experience. The music by Martinu is wonderful, and I am ashamed that I have not explored his other symphonies and otherwise huge repertoire. As with Zelenka, the world (including me) will finally realise how great Martinu was.

This is really tragic news. As you say, they did so much together for early music, not least all the beautifully produced Alia Vox issues. She was a remarkable singer and a remarkable person.

If we are really talking about T-shirts or the like (are we?), then I would have thought that skiaouros' suggestion of Zelenka's handwriting would be the best - both words and music. There is a nice rectangular motif for a T-shirt which Zelenka designed especially for you on the first page of his autograph score to Missa Dei Filii ZWV 20 (below the actual title of the mass). You can reach it on the Discover Zelenka website under "Manuscripts".

Yes, the black-and-white part in the middle of film number 4 is apparently from the rehearsals prior to recording. The parts in colour are from the public concert in June that came immediately before the recording sessions. I don't know who "kolektif1" is, but I do know that a documentary on Zelenka's music is being made in Prague and that Ensemble Inegal is involved.

Westbarok will be performing Missa Votiva ZWV 18 in Exmouth, Devon, UK on October 1, 2011.

See http://www.westbarok.org.uk/

For those of you who collect recordings of Zelenka's music, here is an upcoming CD release on the Genuin label.

http://www.disquesoffice.ch/fr/cd/soon/classique/-186497.html

Magnificat D-Dur (ZWV 108), Missa Nativitatis Domini D-Dur (ZWV 8), & Dixit
Dominus D-Dur (ZWV 48). Marburger Bach Choir & L'Arpa Festante on Genuin 11213.

Thanks to Roger Peters for pointing this out.

Nibiru have told me that Janice Stockigt is writing the notes for the booklet of this CD issue. So between the professionalism of the performers and the very informed notes that will come to us from Australia, this issue may be one of the most important Zelenka releases ever.

Hi, l'infastidito,

I pointed out your long entry above to Adam Viktora via his agent on 15 March. I also pointed out the electronic versions by skiaouros and G.Reuss here: http://www.jdzelenka.net/Public/ZWV%2029/

So if ZWV 29 makes it onto the CD with ZWV 21, it's mainly thanks to you!

I don't know how long this link will last, but here is a preview of the new Missa Omnium Sanctorum performance/recording by Ensemble Inégal. The item comes second in the program, after 5 minutes.

http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/iv…911545-kultura-s-dvojkou/

Interesting that Elwro made a comparison with the great Missa Omnium Sanctorum (ZWV 21), when he probably didn't know at the time that that particular mass was next to be recorded by Ensemble Inégal!

I suggested a recording of ZWV 21 to Adam Viktora when I met him in November, 2009. He listened!

There will be an Ensemble Inégal concert on 28th June 2011 in Prague, covering the material for the new CD (see the Recordings post) i.e. ZWV 21 and ZWV 164.

The recording will start on the days following this concert.

Incidentally, Ensemble Inégal will also appear on 20th August at Dalheim Summer (Dalheimmer Sommer) Festival. Works by Brentner, Zelenka (Alma Redemptoris Mater and Salve Regina - as for their London appearance), and Vivaldi.

Here is the link to the Ensemble Inégal Concert in London:

http://www.lufthansafestival.org.uk/index.php?id=18-may-2011

This is just to let the forum members know that as of March 2011, the Discover Zelenka website has topped 3,000 unique visits a month. This has been a steady upward trend in the past 5 years. The corresponding figure for March 2006 was 525. As the site has been prominent on Google etc. during this time, the reason for the upward trend must be something other than internet exposure of the site.

We are only halfway through March 2011, and 27 people have already joined the forum this month.

There is certainly a growing interest in Zelenka's music. The initial question asked on entry to the forum is about the sonatas, so I guess that most people still come to know Zelenka through his instrumental music. Any comments or thoughts about this?