Category Archives: Architecture

by | November 21, 2011 · 1:00 am

Early muzak

In 1760 the Swedish diplomat Count Ulrich zu Lynar reported on an ingenious system for Tafelmusik at the court of Ludwig VIII, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (above, 1691–1768):

“Next [to the palace] is a small garden and in it a Lusthaus where the Landgravial family dines during the summer, and in the middle of which, where the table is set up, there is a small round hole that leads to a basement, out of which music is meant to sound very beautifully. To that end, in each of the four corners there is also an opening from which the sound can come.”

This pavillion, built in the early eighteenth century and apparently used during Ludwig’s reign as a special entertainment for visitors, was demolished in the nineteenth century. A surviving architectural plan, however, indicates an underground passageway to it from the palace’s main building, presumably intended for the serenading musicians.

This according to “The court of Hesse-Darmstadt” by Ursula Kramer, an essay included in Music at German courts, 1715–1760: Changing artistic priorities (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001, pp. 333–363).

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by | August 25, 2010 · 7:37 am

Bees at the Opéra

 

Besides his training as a graphic artist, Jean Paucton, the prop man at the Palais Garnier in Paris, studied beekeeping at the Jardin du Luxemboug. In the mid-1980s he ordered his first hive, which was delivered to him at the Opéra, sealed and full of bees. He had intended to take it to his country house north of Paris, but when his plans changed the building’s fireman—who had been raising trout in a huge firefighting cistern under the building—advised him to place them on the seventh-floor roof at the back of the Palais Garnier.

Paucton gradually increased the number of hives to five, and from approximately 75,000 bees he annually collects about 1000 pounds of honey, which he packages in tiny jars, each with the label “Miel récolté sur les toits de l’Opéra de Paris, Jean Paucton”.

Thanks to the concentration of fragrant flowering trees and shrubs at the Bois de Boulogne, the chestnut trees in the Champs Élysées, and the linden trees in the Palais Royal, his honey has an intense floral flavor; it is sold at the Opéra’s gift shop and at the Paris gourmet shop Fauchon.

This according to “Who’s humming at Opera? Believe it or not, bees” by Craig S. Smith (The New York times 152/52,526 [26 June 2003] p. A:4).

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by | August 12, 2010 · 3:56 pm

Wine for the organist

The organ built by Gebrüder Oberlinger Orgelbau in 1997 for St. Martin in Cochem includes an innovative stop called Riesling 2fach. Pulling the stop opens a small cabinet holding two bottles of Riesling wine.

This according to “Neue Orgel in der Pfarrkirche ‘St. Martin’ zu Cochem/Mosel” by Wilhelm Basten (Die Auslese 42/2 [1999], pp. 22–23).

(Thanks to Tina Frühauf!)

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by | April 29, 2010 · 12:26 pm

Nonsense neumes

Built at the behest of Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick (1382–1439), the Beauchamp Chapel at the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick, is a remarkable survival of fifteenth-century architecture, sculpture, and—above all—stained glass. These windows are well known to organologists for their depictions of instruments and performance practice; they also provide useful information about chant and polyphony in fifteenth-century England by preserving fragments of neumatic notation.

Over the centuries craftspeople have restored damaged windows, and, lacking the requisite musical training, they often left replacement staves blank; but in two cases nonsense neumes were devised, supplying consistent-looking décor that most observers would never suspect was counterfeit.

This according to Alexandra Buckle’s “Fit for a king: Music and iconography in Richard Beauchamp’s chantry chapel” (Early music XXXVIII/1 (2010), pp. 3–20).

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by | March 4, 2010 · 5:40 pm

Arte Organaria Italiana

arte organaria

Published by the L’Associazione Culturale Giuseppe Serassi,  Arte Organaria Italiana was launched in 2009 to provide a forum for research on organs in Italy.

Articles in the first issue include a discussion of pedaling in Frescobaldi’s organ works, a study of organs in the Cattedrale di Mantova during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and an exploration of nineteenth-century organ case aesthetics.

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by | February 23, 2010 · 12:27 pm

Antichi organi mantovani

With the 2009 publication of L’organo Luigi Montesanti 1813 della chiesa di San Tommaso in Acquanegra sul Chiese, the Associazione Culturale Giuseppe Serassi launched the series Antichi organi mantovani. Edited by Federico Lorenzani, the book includes articles by Maurizio Isabella, Silvio Micheli, Francesco Melli, and Lorenzani himself. Montesanti’s organ for the Basilica di Sant’Andrea di Mantova is shown above.

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