Back to Name That Tune this week! This is the tune that started it all! Read more about it below, and then have a listen to the versions from the video game and then from my friends in Seven Times Salt (who included it on their “Courtiers and Costermongers” CD)!
Temperaments
We interrupt our Name That Tune Adventure to bring you a fascinating look at tuning systems instead! Want to understand what temperament actually is, how they differ from each other, and why it matters? Look no further than this fantastic video from Early Music Sources! #earlymusicmonday #temperaments
More about Carmans Whistle
Our mid-90s computer game creator wasn’t the only one captivated by Carmans Whistle - Johnson, Byrd, Grainger, and even Rimsky-Korsakov all used it in various ways!
Name that (early music) tune, part 1 - Carmans Whistle
In the mid-90s, I spent a good chunk of time playing a computer game called Logic Quest. It was all puzzles and mazes, knights and castles, and I loved it. Except… in retrospect I may have loved the music more than the game.
Fast-forward 20 years or so, and I was sitting in the audience for a concert by my friends in Seven Times Salt. Imagine my surprise when they begin playing one of the tunes that I knew from the game! So this got me thinking that if one of the songs from the game was a legitimate piece of early music, perhaps some of the other ones were as well!
Now that pretty much the rest of my season has been canceled due to the pandemic, I’ve had some time to research these pieces. With the help of my good friends Alastair Thompson and Daniel Meyers, I’ve started a new (Logic) quest to identify all 7 of the main themes. It turns out that whoever designed the music for this game was definitely into early music!
Here’s installment one: first the version from the game, and then the actual tune - Carmans Whistle, as set by William Byrd in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book!
Gradualia
Most of my favorite pieces by William Byrd are taken from his two collections entitled “Gradualia" - music written for private performance in a devotional setting rather than for large audiences in a concert hall. Seems rather fitting to explore these pieces again now, when live concerts for large audiences are almost unthinkable. Read more below about this incredible collection of music and the circumstances in which it was composed!
Singing in secret: how William Byrd created his best work in isolation
Music of Medical Horrors
This pandemic may have us recalling the rampant disease and political strife of centuries past, but at least medicine has advanced *somewhat* since then!
This Early Music Monday we explore a 3-minute programmatic piece by Marais about a horrifying surgical procedure (which he experienced).
How a painful operation inspired the 18th-century equivalent of a horror movie soundtrack
New Early Music Monday Index!
After 2.5 years, we finally have a searchable index! I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, and the cancellations because of Coronavirus finally provided me with enough time (and in-house tech support) to make it happen!
On the right side of the Writing/Research page, you’ll find a link to the Early Music Monday Index, which keeps a tally of how many posts in each major category as well as a listing of tags by category to make it easier to find topics or people or whatever your heart desires (that it can find here).
It also revealed some conspicuous absences, which I will be working to remedy going forward!
A new (old) St. John Passion
From Bach-Archiv Leipzig, here’s a performance of Bach’s St. John Passion. but in a way you've never heard it before (appropriate for a time we've never experienced before). Intimate, solitary, haunting, and beautiful.
A Mozart Celebration
How about a dose of Mozart to help in this time of quarantine? 99.5 WCRB is rebroadcasting Handel + Haydn Society’s “A Mozart Celebration” from last October - have a listen here!
Guerrero and the Plague
Here’s another post from 2019: Guerrero is known as one of the giants of renaissance polyphony, but he also was a plague victim. Before that he was held for ransom by pirates, spent time in prison, and wrote a book about his adventures, among other things.
