Jan 302006
Jan 292006
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
Jan 282006
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!
Jan 272006
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! 
Jan 262006
Jan 252006
A little note to Dan & David from their latest show on CRAP, iTunes’ EULA and DRM technology is considered illegal in Norway according to the consumer rights watch. This is all over the news today. So publicity is coming on DRM technologies.
Jan 242006
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Jan 202006
Jan 162006
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.
Jan 142006
Jan 142006
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.â€?
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.â€?
Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to go practice playing in tune
Jan 132006
I just found the page of a guy called Geejay who obsesses over the recorder. A fun read. Speaking of fun, what a concert this must have been: 
Jan 132006
Wow, and I thought I made nice coffee! I need to work on my coffee decorating skills
Jan 122006
Jan 122006
Funny thing, I’ve found two other blogs called The Early Music Blog [1] and [2]. [1] is Italian and hasn’t been updated since september and [2] is a republished version of Goldberg Magazine. These two and other blogs I found or are emailed to me will be put in a feed and new updates from these blogs will be posted in the right-hand sidebar so that you can always have easy access to updated early music blogs (hopefully with original names, though, or we’ll have to come up with some kind of numbering system 
)
Jan 122006
Note to self: use delicious tags such as photoblog-posts for my photoblog.
Get it here