ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Composition is ultimately a solo labour, but it doesn’t happen in isolation; it could not have happened
without the influence, assistance, and support of many other people.

For advice on notation and engraving, I am indebted to members of the Music Engraving Tips (MET)
group, in particular Justin Tokke, Vili Robert Ollila, Matthew Karaś, and Jacob Allen. Thanks to Elaine
Gould for preemptively answering hundreds of my notation questions with her book Behind Bars.

Gratitudes to the team responsible for the Lilypond project and the Lilypond mailing list, and in par-
ticular I thank Urs Liska, Simon Albrecht, Krzysztof Gutowski, Dominic Irving, and Abraham Lee for
answering my newb questions about Lilypond. Abraham Lee also designed the beautiful music font
used in the production of these scores.

I owe gratitude to pianist Jason White for advice and editorial tips, and for premiering High Priestess,
Lovers and Hanged Man in concert while the ink was still wet! Thanks to Douglas Haas for organizing
that premiere, to Heather Taves for some well-needed advice near the beginning of the project, and to
Jean Narveson for giving Opus Arcana a full-page space in the Music Times to herald its release.

Thanks to Garreth Broke for bouncing about ideas about self-publishing and the creative perils of being
a contemporary composer, and for giving the scores a round of scrutiny in the final stages. Thanks to
David Young for a very thorough proofreading, finding hundreds of notation and engraving mistakes
in the final draft. I’m also appreciative for miscellaneous notation and harmony coaching from Robin
Nabla, Owen Bloomfield, and Bruce Lazarus; and thanks to Victor Eijkhout and Andy Bulman-Fleming
for helping me with LATEX, and Andy for a very thorough final inspection.

Steve Lehmann taught me some nifty studio tricks and came through with excellent advice during the
composition and recording of this work. I thank my friend F. Tyler Shaw for putting me on a path
toward good audio engineering best practices, and thanks to Christian Lemke and John Bailey for in-
valuable advice when I was mixing and mastering the Opus Arcana album.

I am indebted to Garrett Hope for excellent marketing advice, personalized coaching, helpful conver-
sations, and the incredible resource that is The Portfolio Composer Podcast. Similar thanks are due to
Dennis Tobenski, for our chats about the challenges of self-publishing, and his wonderful and deeply
informative Music Publishing Podcast.

Thanks to my engraving style focus group: Kat Hinrichsen, Ivana Jokic, Dennis Tobenski, and Rob
Preuss. I didn’t end up using the layout from those mockups, but your opinions informed choices that
came later.

Vincent Marcone created the beautiful illustrations you see on the cover and inside this volume. Not
only did Vincent embellish the work with his gorgeous artwork, but he has also been a generous col-
laborator in brainstorming marketing ideas, planning the release, and consulting on the packaging of
the project overall.

I must acknowledge the educators who moulded my pliable mind to think musically; of special influ-
ence were Philip Thomson, David Huron and Carol Ann Weaver at University of Waterloo, Michael
Sinnott at ECI, and Dorion Carmichael from the Beckett School. The composer I am today was sculpted
by my musical collaborations, and for the hundreds—if not thousands—of hours talking about and
making music, I thank Chris Giesbrecht and Derek Hines especially, though there are so many dozens
more I could mention. And of course, I would not be a musician of any sort if not for my generous and
patient parents, who supported me through all those years of education, coaxed me to practice, and
always supported my artistic ambitions.

I owe respect and recognition to Raymond Buckland, who followed this project from its beginning and
had originally agreed to write the foreword. I will always be saddened that Mr. Buckland never got
to hear the final movement, World. Thankfully it was an easy choice to pass that trust to Arthur Lipp-
Bonewits, an eloquent and talented tarot expert who provided his keen insight to this book; for his
contribution I am grateful.

Funding for this project was provided by the Waterloo Region Arts Fund1 .

And finally heaps of love and gratitude to my wife Tracey Sebastian, to whom I dedicate this entire
work, without whom I literally would not be alive to create anything; she not only listens to my inces-
sant blathering about music, but also tolerated my noisy keyboard clicking while I toiled away putting
these notes and rests where they belong.

1
http://www.artsfund.ca/