Baroque music has/had much to be desired

In my previous post from Quantz “On playing the Flute” I quoted:

Blogging in 2005

2005 has been quite a good year for blogging. This blog has been its regular mess of different stuff that intrests me, but it has spawned some interesting projects. My photoblog, for instance, got a kick start with my photoblog entries that I used to have in this blog. Also, as I started teaching, my work related posts turned into a blog with lecture notes that my students could visit to get all the material I had to offer them. And quite recently the early music section, with quite a bit of help from some friends, is made into the early music blog. The server and familly blog that I set up for my father has been mostly left untouched, but all in all I'm quite content with the stuff that is being served. I'm a bit surprised by how little comments come in as my feeds have a steady amount of subscribers. Many people actually send me emails rather than leave comments, so it's not that I don't get feedback, but you don't get to read it. Oh well, I'm sure I'll understand more of why this is in the following year.

Musicians benefit from academic studies

I’ve studied computer science and then gone on to study the recorder and I’m currently busying myself with making the recorder able to control the computer. I love the combination, but wondered a bit about if I’ve chosen a favourable tradeoff. I’m happy so I guess I’m not doing to bad. But, when I started reading “On playing the Flute” by Johann Joachim Quantz (the book I’m referring to is the 2nd edition of the English translation by Edward R. Reilly published through Faber & Faber) I found that he had something to say on the issue. In chapter 1 (page 24) he writes:

Philidor

Quantz on the troubles of buying good instruments

When Quantz writes “On playing the flute”, the flute is just emerging from a time of much change, and we know that the flute changed much until it became the flute we know today. The recorder is in a similar situation today where the recorders that are made are often very different from what they were only fifteen year ago, and through my correspondence with inventors and recorder builders I have no reason to believe that the recorder is done developing now.

Oscar

How to make a lightbox

In his blog Joseph Holst has a great tutorial on how to build a light box. I expect to be building one of these when I get back to Esbjerg after the christmas holidays

Felix

Philidor ornaments

In this first post I'd like to talk about Pierre Philidor's notation of ornaments and what this might mean. The ornament in question is the grace note leading up to the second quarternote in the third bar:

Early Music Blog launched

Welcome to the Early Music Blog. This project was started by Niklas Saers after discussing it with a couple of friends and will hopefully be a place where people interested in early music will post their thoughts and stories and link up other early music blogs. I hope that you will find this site interesting and participate throught commenting and posting your thoughts and ideas.