This weekend Dan Laurin is giving a masterclass in Esbjerg, and me and Michael are going to play Belicha, an estampitta from the 14th century Italy. As far as I’ve understood, there was much culture imported from the middle east to Italy at this time, and you weren’t really in style if you didn’t have your clothes imported from Istanbul. Grove lists this piece as a dance, but I think many would agree to this being more improvised music. I sure would like to see someone dance to it. So I’ve been at the library borrowing stacks of music with Taksims (TaqsÄ«m) trying to get to know the contemporary arab classical music more. According to Grove, TaqsÄ«m means dimunition and is a form dating back to the 18th century, but I haven’t been able to find any earlier forms leading up to the taqsÄ«ms until now, so these will have to do. And my imediate reaction is that early music lovers should get some CDs and listen to this! There is so much brilliant music and musicians in this genre! I’ll definetly use their input for improving my Belicha. Perhaps not for this masterclass, but certainly during this semester. Lots of great ornaments to be “borrowed”.

Hi, I’m a new co-author to this blog and early music is quite new to me although i have played it all my life. I am mostly puzzled, stupiefied and amazed by the things possible (and impossible) in early music and i hope my startlement will only increase as more early music reveals itself before my anxious eyes and fingers.

I’m actually an organist that recently threw my energy on the harpsichord. I now play many kinds of music with many different people. I’m happy to discover that many techniques used on the organ can be used on the harpsichord too (and many cannot - still happy, and learning). I hope you will find your time to comment and discuss my following post on these and many other matters concerning early music.

Happy blogging

Sarah Peck has started to build a gamba. It’s all nicely documented on her blog and the progression will be linked in the column to the right. Check out the first entries about the beginning: and how far she has come today: Looking forward to following your progress, Sarah. Keep us updated!

Hi, I thought I’d give you a heads-up on what’s happening with the blog. It’s now almost one month ago that the blog officially came up on http://earlymusicblog.net and we’ve added a number of features. We’ve now got the most recent scores from the Werner Icking Music Archive linked in the sidebar, a number of blogs linked up and their resent posts linked and made bookmarking on different bookmarking services up and running. Not to mention a little set of entries and a couple of design changes.

So what are the goals for the next month? Getting active co-authors and improving the blog further, and finding more blogs to link up. So please post your early music blog link as a comment here and I’ll add it quickly. If you’d like to become an author, send me an email. There are already a handful of co-authors that are gearing up to submit their first article. Stay tuned for yet an interesting month!

Christian and Annette Mondrup maintain an archive of scores for recorder ensembles. The latest addition is a madrigal consisting of 8 parts for 5 voices: Al bel de tuoi capelli by Orazio Vecchi (1550-1605). The score is complete with text, so should be nice for singing as well.

I’ve been reading Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellemister and written about it a bit in my blog in the entries Mattheson on Perfection, The Location of Paradise Revealed, The Origin of Music and What you really need to know about Angles. Today I’m reading chapter six, and I love how he writes about the need for good posture:

Can the attentive listener be moved to pleasure if he [….] sees a dozen violinists who contort their bodies as if they are ill? If the clavier player writhes hsi jaws, wrinkles his brow, and contorts his face to such an extent that it could frighten children? If many of the wind instrumentalists contort or inflate their facial features (one must not omit the lips of the flutist) so that they can bring them back to their proper shape and color in half an hour only with difficulty?

It is even said of Minerva, that she threw the flute away just because wind instruments have the misfortune that they distort the features; and is also known from history that Alcibiades, though he was otherwise a great lover of music, nevertheless hated flute playing for the cited reasons. The viola da gamba would have pleased him more: For there is, after the lute, hardly any instrument with which one can produce a more refined posture. Because of this, the French love both instruments before all others, since their strong inclination toward the bon air often goes so far that their zeal makes them seem comical.

In paragraph 23, chapter 4, page 58 of On playing the Flute Quantz writes on intonating:

“The flute has the innate defect that some of its notes when sharpened [playing sharps] are not quite true, some being a little too low, some a little to high. For in tuning the flute you must first see to it that the natural [diatonic] notes are tuned truly in accordance with their proportions. The faulty ones you must, as much as possible, seek to play in tune with the help of your embouchure and your ear.�

This is a little note to those who claim that you should play any instrument as is and that some instruments can never be played in tune. Many other instruments have the same problems (i.e. saxophone and recorder) and the players of all the instruments that have these problems should seek to play them as well intonated as possible.

In paragraph 16 he writes: “This defect can be easily remedied, however, if the player possesses a good embouchure, a good musical ear, a correct system of fingering, and an adequate knowledge of the proportions of the notes.�

Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to go practice playing in tune