#MyUsername| Why I'm @partitura

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A few days ago @contrabourdon proposed a new challenge, called #MyUsername. The idea is that one tells the reason or the story behind ones username one Steem. It is therefore more like 'stories of origin', than a true challenge. See his original post here. He was kind enough to nominate me to tell the story behind my username. So, here it is.

Though I am not a professional organist, I am a fairly highly trained amateur. I studied music theory, harmony, counterpoint, solfege and the like and I passed the exams for those. So for the non-playing side of the trade I am trained professionally. Playing the organ, however, stayed a hobby. Another hobby of mine were computers in general, and more in particular programs to typeset music. And I always had a fascination for old manuscripts. And some five years ago the idea was born to combine these hobbies or interests and start a website dedicated to unknown organ music. I decided to seek out unknown interesting music, typeset it, and publish it on a website where everyone who is interested can download it.

The first thing I had to decide on, was a name for the website. I wanted the web address to reflect the name of the website, so the name had to be first-time-right. I knew from the start this project would take years and years. So I took some time to decide on a suitable name, knowing I would be stuck with it for a large part of my binary life on the internet. The main language of music is Italian. Think for example of all the tempo indications (Adagio, Andante, Allegro), dynamic indications (sforzando, crescendo, attacca) and musical forms (Sonata, Opera buffa). The name of my website therefore had to be something Italian or Latin sounding.

As my publications would be based on old manuscripts, I considered the name "Manuscripta". I would create new engravings of the music, so I considered "Graphica" or something with "Nuova". This led me to a term from musical history, "Ars Nova". Alas, there already existed a music publishing website, called Ars Nova Musica and there is also a music ensemble called Nuova Musica. Those were therefore not an option for my website, but they did lead me to the term "Organum". With that term the first polyphonic music in history is described. I do not intend to publish music from the period of the first polyphonic music (somewhere in the ninth century), the term Organum however had a nice ring to me, as I would be publishing organ music. And though I had rejected the term "Manuscripta", upon reconsidering it, it lead me to the term "Partitura", the Italian, Czech and Catalan word for musical score. And so it became Partitura Organum, and the webadress http://partitura.org nicely reflects this.

A little more than a year ago I began cross posting the publications of my website on Steem. In the years since starting my website, I have become quite attached to the name Partitura Organum, and especially the "Partitura"-part has become sort of my personal brand. There was little doubt what my username would be: partitura. A nice short name, that perfectly encompasses my main activity: creating new musical scores and writing about them.

As a little sidenote: my website is down at the moment. It runs on a small Raspberry Pi 3 computer and something must have happened to it, perhaps a power failure. As I'm on holidays at the moment, there is nothing I can do about it right now. I expect to be home again next weekend, so if you're curious to my website, you'll have to wait a little less than a week to have a peek.

There you have it, the story of the origin of my username. From the community of secretsoforganplaying I'd like the story behind the username of @sapolasa and @iwan2believe.
Another username that quite intruiges me is @mermaidvampire. Perhaps she (he?) want to share it.

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