Music: What are you listening to?

[Apollonius]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Colonel Sun]

[Hans Bulvai]

Man I've always thought Bono just looked (and sounded) strange in that video. Great song nonetheless!

[Hans Bulvai]

[Apollonius]

[Apollonius]

Lucie Spickova, soprano; Joel Frederiksen, bass, archlute; performing in Prague:



Al fonte al prato - Giulio Caccini (c.1545-1618)



For love ev'ry creature is born - Henry Purcell (1659-1695)

[Colonel Sun]

[Personal favourite pop. I still recall the first time I heard it in a bar in Baltimore . . . time, time, time]

[Colonel Sun]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Apollonius]

There aren't that many clips of early music performers on YouTube. The overwhelming majority of this music is uploaded from CDs, sans video



You can find some, though (unfortunately, usually not their best work):


Here is Paul O'Dette, one the world's foremost lutenists in an interview on Soundboard, where he demonstrates the instrument a little, and talks with a guitarist about the lute:





The most interesting thing is when he describes how frets on the lute, unlike the guitar, are moveable. To a modern guitarist, this sounds like an invitation to disaster, but remember, early music was written and played before the advent of equal temperment. Equal temperment, as established in particular by J. S. Bach in his Wohltemperierte Klavier, gives us our modern tuning.


When you play the harpsichord, you have to learn to tune it yourself. I tune using thirds and fifths, and to do this, you must always make these chords a little flat, otherwise when you reach the end of the scale, your high note on the octave will be too high.

Before equal temperment, instruments were always tuned *exactly* to the key they were played in, thus avoiding this problem, and producing a pureness of tone which we lost some 300 years ago.

[Apollonius]

[Apollonius]

[Hans Bulvai]

[Colonel Sun]

[Hans Bulvai]

I had to look that one up!

[Hans Bulvai]

[Apollonius]

Somewhere way back in this thread I posted one version of this. This is my favourite interpretation of this.


The score reads: "Noblement et animé - Gracieusement"

Here's Skip Sempé emphasizing "animé".



La Suzanne - Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1724-1799) ; performed by Skip Sempé





Listen to this one at night and hear the stars sparkle:


Les Étoiles - Michel Corrette (1707-1795) ; performed by Skip Sempé

[Apollonius]