Hello dear friends! Hope you all had a great weekend. I wanted to share some pictures with you of my concerts I had with Quidditas. Many of you probably don’t know what some of these instruments are, so I wanted to introduce you to some of them. Not all of them however, because two of our regular players were not with us for these two concerts.
The first picture and a couple more shots of it underneath are pictures of Priscilla (queen and goddess of the woodwinds) playing the SHAWM. This is a little info. about it from Wikipedia! The shawm was a medieval and Renaissance musical instrument of the woodwind family made in Europe from the late 13th century until the 17th century. It was developed from the oriental zurna and is the predecessor of the modern oboe. The body of the shawm was usually turned from a single piece of wood, and terminated in a flared bell somewhat like that of a trumpet. Beginning in the 16th century, shawms were made in several sizes, from sopranino to great bass, and four and five-part music could be played by a consort consisting entirely of shawms. All later shawms had at least one key allowing a downward extension of the compass; the keywork was typically covered by a perforated wooden cover called the fontanelle. The bassoon-like double reed, made from the same Arundo donax cane used for oboes and bassoons, was inserted directly into a socket at the top of the instrument, or in the larger types, on the end of a metal tube called the bocal. The pirouette, a small cylindrical piece of wood with a hole in the middle resembling a thimble, was placed over the reed—this acted as a support for the lips and embouchure. Since only a short portion of the reed protruded past the pirouette, the player had only limited contact with the reed, and therefore limited control of dynamics. The shawm’s conical bore and flaring bell, combined with the style of playing dictated by the use of a pirouette, gave the instrument a piercing, trumpet-like sound well-suited for out-of-doors performance.
I am sure that is more than you needed to know, but just know that it is a member of the “louds” family of instruments in the Medieval and Renaissance periods. There are two classifications of instruments. Louds and softs. the shawm as well as the dulcien are indeed loud instruments.
The dulcien is like and early version of a bassoon. This instrument has a wonderful sound that sounds great with my voice, hee hee. That is the one pictures where I look like I am singing with great furvor and have the scariest face imaginable!
The first instrument I am holding next to the tree is in fact a transverse flute. This is an open-holed wood flute (which I own, but am just learning to play) made during the Renaissance period. This has no keys like the modern flute, which makes it an absolute bear to play.
The last instrument is a recorder. The one I am holding is a baroque recorder. I don’t know why I forgot to get a picture of Priscilla’s recorders, but she has Renaissance ones. I will try and remember next time we have a concert. My recorder is made out of ebony with ivory rings. Something they obviously don’t make anymore.
SO…in honor of over 2,000 hits in less than a month (holy cow), I will be making a tutorial on the beaded pen holder that I will post sometime on Wednesday when I am finished making it. I was going to do some more blog candy, but I just did that for the 1,000 mark! Maybe at 3,000! Thanks so much for coming by and visiting.
