Oates for Tanger

Photos from Valtice

As usual I was rather too busy playing flute at Valtice to be able to do much photography. I did though get one or two nice shots of our class with Nancy Hadden and more of our class mate David's son Xesco dancing.

The Loire Chansonniers

I recently published indexes to the online facsimiles of the Laborde and Mellon chansonniers.
Discussion at the early flute group and rec.music.early led me to facsimiles of two more of the Loire Chansonniers, the Copenhagen and Wolfenbüttel. Indexes to these last two chansonniers are now available here for the Copenhagen and here for the Wolfenbüttel.

Neuhaus fingering chart

I have published a web and text version of the main Neuhaus traverso fingering chart at http://www.cowderoy.net/neuhaus/

The main aim was to build a version useable on mobile phones or pdas so it's an extremely basic chart designed to fit on very small screens. Nevertheless this means that it is possible now to have a version of the primary reference chart for traverso fingerings available on small mobile devices.

The book from which it is drawn is copyright Ardal Powell and this version is published with his permission for which I am most gratefull.

The site offers three versions of the chart;

a very basic html one suitable for installing on any mobile phone or pda that has a web browser.
a simple text version for use on machines that don't offer a web browser.
an online version for those not wishing to install it to their own computer/pda/mobile.

More details about the chart, how to use it and the differences with the book version will be found on the site.

Gentlemen prefer Brunetes

When I published a facsimile of volume three of Ballards Brunetes ou petits airs tendre the first question several people asked was "Are you going to do volumes I and II?" to which I replied that they were unfortunately more or less unobtainable. They were published in 1703 & 1704 and are much, much rarer than the third volume published in 1711.

Well to my considerable delight and contrary to all expectations I have managed to find copies

Taken as a whole these three volumes are an extremely important collection of late 17th and early eighteenth popular french song and I will be publishing facsimile copies of the entire collection hopefully by this autumn.

As many people noticed the quality of the scans of volume three that I have already published leave something to be desired. Happily I now have access to equipment that should enable me to produce high definition images. I plan to take this opportunity and re-photograph the third volume as well.

So I hope soon to be able to publish a full high definition facsimile of all three volumes of Ballards Brunetes!

An index for the Laborde Chansonnier

The Laborde chansonnier is one of the finest french song collection manuscripts to have survived. The publication by Octavo / rarebookroom.org of a full digital version represents a wonderfull resource for those interested in the work and the songs it contains. As the site stands though it offers no information as to what songs are contained in the collection nor any way of accessing them by title or composer. That is the aim of this index.

Poetry and Police in Eighteenth Century Paris, Robert Darnton

Fascinating article on the mechanisms of diffusion of popular verse in eighteenth century france. You can listen to the lecture as well (scroll down to "Robert Darnton") or read it here.

Bibliography

I've added a bibliography to the brunetes site to try and keep track of publications on the subject.

Doulx Regardiens rejoice

New version of the site. Thankyou webmake.

Je t'aime, Je t'aime

Ca doit bien faire plus de trente ans que je l'ai vu et des images de ce film de Resnais, sa construction en flashbacks disloqués et son humour noir me sont restés intactes. Longtemps indisponible Dissidenz/Blaq Out viennent de le ré-editer.

Le Mercure Galant

The Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles are in the process of digitalising and publishing all the airs from the Mercure. Already some 200 airs from the 1670s and 80s en ligne. Wonderful

It's getting a little complicated.

I've semi retired the photolog and moved it to flickr. Links personal and musical go to delicious and I'm gradualy picking up my old weblog again. So I'm giving Jaiku a try to see if that can help tie everything together nicely.

A l'ouest des rails

Un chef d'oeuvre de documentaire fleuve de neuve heures de Wang Bing

Site, festival and concerts

I've published a new site for our renaissance flute ensemble "Un Doulx Regard", we soon have our flute days with Nancy Hadden and several concerts coming up afterwards.

Bela Tarr

I still think Werckmeister Harmoniak is one of the finest films I've seen in years but I realy do not remember the last time a film impressed me as much as Satantango. Good review here and a more general overview of Tarr's films here, DVD available in france from Clavis films

Petits airs tendres

When I last posted it was about Ballards Brunetes and after a hiatus my first new post is again about Brunettes. This time because i've built a site to host a full facsimile of the Ballards third, 1711 volume.
Also new is a site for our renaissance flute ensemble 'Un Doulx Regard'