England's National Musical-Instrument?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 06:29 PM

Eliza FC - that's got a good ring to it! Name of the next album perhaps? Should lead to some interesting interviews as you explain the name.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 06:25 PM

Peregrina - of course you're correct. Hence I'm off to live in WAV's England....

Everybody here drinks mead, eats pottage, believes in Jesus & sings in aussie accents. Nobody ever goes anywhere, learns anything, or ever changes. We all look the same, with reassuringly white skin and play all the latest tunes on our pipes & recorders. Anybody attempting any new or different music is either re-programmed, or stripped of their nationality and shipped out of the country never to return.

We have a fine education system which produces university graduates with no sign of any analytical reasoning skills but they can drive a forklift and write really bad poetry. All non-local issues are dealt with by the UN who also forcibly evict anybody attempting to live anywhere other than where they were born.

I've got my pig's bladder, clogs, jags and bubonic plague and with a bit of luck somebody will play the cittern while the barber cuts my leg off.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza f c
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 06:22 PM

What I am trying to get across to you D, is that there are naturally many, many ways of doing things both in the wider world and in the smaller sphere of one nation, or the even smaller sphere of different regions.
People will and always have used whatever is around them to play music, and they will always take up a new technology, a new idea, when it comes along, be it polyphony or an organ. That's how people work. To seek to restrict a nation to one style, that may have been around two hundred years ago but probably wasn't widespread is folly. How far back do you want to go? Banging rocks together? Likewise to restrict the music to a single line is historically wrong in a lot of geographical and social instances if you want to be accurate.
If you just want to sing a single line then go ahead, but leave off telling everyone else your perceived "right" way to do it. It's just your way, because of your own predilections. It's good to have a cause. Serve it better.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 05:11 PM

I hate to be outdone :-)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 05:10 PM

Thank you ever so much for that bit of trivia, Smokey. If I thought that nothing on this thread could be more revolting than Wav's ideology, then I was wrong.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 04:42 PM

Re. weighted keys: Roland tend to have a heavier action than Yamaha - more like what is known as a 'German action' in a real piano. I'd recommend your wife tries them both at some length to be sure of getting what she wants. The difference is far more significant to an experienced pianist than to a beginner, obviously.

Will - I'd be interested to know what you find out about your organ, it looks and sounds rather nice. I was going to suggest de-fluffing its innards to try and get you Vox Humana going but it sounds as if you already had it to bits. It's a little known fact that, like carrots in vomit, harmonium (ahem, reed-organ) fluff always contains a small quantity of pubic hair.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 03:06 PM

Yeah, Jack, here I am, well into the august state of geezerhood, and nobody ever told me! I've been living in abject ignorance all my life and transgressing horribly on the limits of cultural boundaries with my singing of songs and ballads other than what I heard in my immediated surroundings on Oak Knoll Avenue in Pasadena back before I was ten years old. Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa! Oh, woe! Oh, remose! Oh, guilt! Sack cloth! Ashes!

But one of the things I did hear back then was a radio program called "The American School of the Air," and one of the programs was Alan Lomax's program on American folk music (I had no idea who Alan Lomax was until ten or fifteen years later). They had other music programs as well, featuring the folk music of all lands, particularly English-speaking countries (I heard a lot of Irish songs sung by John McCormack, Scottish comic songs sung by Harry Lauder, and various somgs by many other singers). So this undoubtedly how my education became muddled and I was led into the sin and transgression of singing songs like Jock o'Braidesley, Dick Darby the Cobbler, and David of the White Rock. But how was I to know??

Well, David, I guess you'd rather not hear me sing any of the songs that audiences have been expecting and requesting of me since I first began singing for audiences back in the mid-1950s, such as the aforementioned, or standard, classic songs and ballads such as Greensleeves, Barbara Allen, Lord Randal, Early One Morning, The Braes of Yarrow, or any of the others that I have been singing for years in coffeehouses, clubs, in concert, and on television and radio.

You see, David, a large part of the problem with the American songs that you want me to sing exclusively is that—well, take The Streets of Laredo for example:   it, like many Americans such as myself, have Old World forebears. It is an English song, The Dying Soldier's Lament, modified slightly to fit new circumstances. And this is only one of a huge list of such songs. The vast majority of "American" folk songs have a similar genealogy.

And I think you will find, should you be motivated to look, that many of the folk songs of your "good English culture" can be traced back in a similar manner to immigrant songs—songs that originally came from other cultures. I had a friend who did a term paper on English folk ballads, and he found in his wide-ranging research that many of the same songs he encountered in Francis James Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads had counterparts all over Europe—particularly in the Scandinavian countries.

So if I should be limited to singing only the songs of my own culture, then the question arises:   What is my culture?

True, I am an American. But what does that mean? Am I Californian? That's where I was born. Am I a Washingtonian? I have lived most of my life in Seattle, Washington. But my father's grandfather was Scottish and my mother's parents were Swedish. Living in a city as I do, and have most of my life, I don't hear much indigeonous folk music unless I deliberately seek it out on recordings and specific radio stations--or go to places where folk music, specifically, is performed.

You see, unless I actively seek it out, folk music itself is not an integral part of the culture in which I live.

And what of the matter of regional accents? There are many regional accents in the United States. In two boroughs of New York City, one can distinguish between the accents of someone who grew up in Brooklyn and someone who grew up in The Bronx. In the South, the accent you hear in Louisiana is not the same as the accent you hear in Georgia. Texas, Kansas, North Dakota, Montana, all have different accents to someone whose ear is tuned to regional accents.

And what about me? I took broadcasting training and worked many years as a radio announcer and newscaster. My broadcast training included the purging of regional accents to be replaced by a sort of "standard English" (which is to say, standard American English). The result is that I'm quite sure that neither Professor Henry Higgins nor Zoltan Karpathy could tell what part of the United States I live—or lived—in.

Add to this that, if I do say so myself, I am a talented mimic, and by listening carefully and doing a bit of practice, I can do accents quite well. I consider this a part of my art. After all, in addition to being a ballad scholar, I am an entertainer.

If you don't want to listen to me do anything but American songs, I guess I can come up with a few "Possum up a gum stump" ditties for you. But to do those, I would have to adopt an accent which comes, perhaps, even less naturally to me than adopting a Scottish accent.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: peregrina
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 01:54 PM

What is the point of arguing here seriously? You --now, I too, so, we-- just add the oxygen of publicity.

One of the most sinister organizations in US history was discredited by satire (see the index of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point for the story of the KKK being undermined by a cartoonist)

In the interests of deflating the bad odour of this thread, I challenge readers to answer this: of what polity is the 'national musical instrument' a fart cushion?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 01:42 PM

OOPS, forgot italics.

I hate imperialism (be it Nazi, Victorian, or any other) and love our world being multicultural, Woody.

Would you consider imperialism as the imposing of a set of ideas or culture?

Volgadon: that "regulative principle" is NOT among the proposed regulationsim in my life's work

But where do you stop once you start regulating everything?

- however, some of the nationalisation and regulations that we are suddenly hearing from "world leaders" is.

Please be SPECIFIC. I want to know which world leaders, which nationalisation and which regulations.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: peregrina
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 01:39 PM

No sense of humour!? I thought the idea of a national instrument was a joke.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 01:39 PM

I hate imperialism (be it Nazi, Victorian, or any other) and love our world being multicultural, Woody.

Would you consider imperialism as the imposing of a set of ideas or culture?

Volgadon: that "regulative principle" is NOT among the proposed regulationsim in my life's work

But where do you stop once you start regulating everything?

- however, some of the nationalisation and regulations that we are suddenly hearing from "world leaders" is.

Please be SPECIFIC. I want to know which world leaders, which nationalisation and which regulations.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 01:12 PM

Pip - it's because the likes of you and Woody keep going off-topic and leaving me no choice but to respond.
Here's my, on-thread, post just before Woody's re-accusation:
...either way, I just enjoyed hearing "the beast", Will Fly; going back to some earlier beasts, it's interesting to note, as Shakespeare did in Hamlet, the similarities in the workings of the pipe organ and the recorder/"little organ": one has many fippled pipes of varied length, the other is one - with an effective-length varied via covering holes..."Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music...?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 01:11 PM

I hate imperialism (be it Nazi, Victorian, or any other) and love our world being multicultural, Woody.

Would you consider imperialism as the imposing of a set of ideas or culture?

Volgadon: that "regulative principle" is NOT among the proposed regulationsim in my life's work

But where do you stop once you start regulating everything?

- however, some of the nationalisation and regulations that we are suddenly hearing from "world leaders" is.

Please be SPECIFIC. I want to know which world leaders, which nationalisation and which regulations.

Subject: RE: Yorkshire's National Musical-Instrument?
From: peregrina
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 01:01 PM

If the banjo is God's banjo (see the recent thread)


and Yorkshire is God's own country


then

the banjo must be the national instrument of Yorkshire

(please excuse all logical fallacies, not just the undistributed middle!)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 12:37 PM

By gum, this thread gets boring sometimes. I could listen to the likes of Jack and Sedayne and EFC all day, but what's anyone supposed to make of all this?


16/4/08: "I do love our world being multicultural"
23/9/08: "I love our WORLD being multicultural."
2/10/08: "I love the world being multicultural"
12/10/08: "I hate imperialism (be it Nazi, Victorian, or any other) and love our world being multicultural"


18/4/08: "whilst nationalism with conquest IS bad, nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade (via the UN) is good for humanity"
18/9/08: "nationalism with conquest IS bad; but nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade, via a stonger UN, is good for humanity"
19/9/08: "I mean nationalism WITHOUT imperialism and WITH eco-travel and fair-trade between nations, via a stronger UN"
6/10/08: "Again: 'nationalism with conquest is bad; but nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade is good for humanity'"
8/10/08: "'Nationalism with conquest IS bad; but nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade (via the UN) is good for humanity' (me)"


18/4/08: "I think I'm Left-wing, and that questioning economic-immigration/emigration ... plus loving the world being multicultural, is actually a Left- NOT Right-wing attitude/policy."
18/9/08: "there IS a difference between racism and questioning immigration"
26/9/08: "That's the questioning of immigration/emigration ... NOT racism"
27/9/08: "it's the act of immigration/emigration itself that I keep questioning"
2/10/08: "I love the world being multicultural; you hate anyone questioning immigration"
2/10/08: "I'm Left Wing, and the questioning of economic/capitalist immigration/emigration is a Left NOT Right Wing attitude"


That's from this thread alone. I think I'll find another thread to talk about music on.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 12:09 PM

I hate imperialism (be it Nazi, Victorian, or any other) and love our world being multicultural, Woody.
Volgadon: that "regulative principle" is NOT among the proposed regulationsim in my life's work - however, some of the nationalisation and regulations that we are suddenly hearing from "world leaders" is.
Don: I look forward to HEARING your recordings of those American songs - if you can get the (c) i.e.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 07:03 AM

Don Firth:
: I've never heard of it referred to as an "American reed organ."
: Maybe it's an English thing. . . .

You mean nobody's yet told you IT'S YOUR NATIONAL INSTRUMENT and you ought to be playing one, with a repertoire comprising "America the Beautiful", "American Patrol", "American Pie" and "Born in the USA"?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 06:52 AM

Watching EC and the Ratccatchers on youtube, I think that singing a song like The Good Old Way in one's sweet/sunday best voice would rob it of it's urgency and driving force.

Here is an interesting article on 'regulationism', from one of your favourite sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulative_principle_of_worship
You wouldn't be singing anything from Hymns Ancient and Modern if they had their way!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 06:41 AM

Sorry - last post was me

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 06:40 AM

WAV - you talk about the linking of English folk to English nationalism

First you attempt to construct a fantasy of national identity, then you attempt to link it with rigidly constrained definitions of existing cultural expression, harking back to a "purer" past. This serves both to bolster the legitimacy of the fantasy and to define parameters which mean that a large number of people belong, and a smaller group do not. Moving on you then use the newly defined cultural aspects to make the smaller group seem more different and increasingly less sympathetic, identifying them as the cause of the "weakening" of national identity and the reason why these days the nation is less "English" than in the past.

These are exactly the methods the Nazis employed. They had their definition of good German music and identified "foreign" artistic elements as corrupting and non-German. Step-by-step these seemingly small efforts helped to lead to the unthinkable becoming thinkable.

Isolation, whether cultural or physical, breeds mistrust and stagnation, and eventually leads to inbreeding which would mean an end to the nation you say you want to preserve. The world you describe is limited, dull, uninspired and hateful - a world in your image perhaps? Certainly it seems to have little in common with the richly diverse & vibrant culture of England which was founded on migration, interaction and cultural exchange.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 06:04 AM

...either way, I just enjoyed hearing "the beast", Will Fly; going back to some earlier beasts, it's interesting to note, as Shakespeare did in Hamlet, the similarities in the workings of the pipe organ and the recorder/"little organ": one has many fippled pipes of varied length, the other is one - with an effective-length varied via covering holes..."Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music...?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 05:47 AM

I don't play, but I've been around Rolands and Yamahas, the keys indeed are weighted. Couldn't tell the diference myself.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 04:57 AM

Hi Smokey - the "thing" on a spindle, as you say, is a little paddle which spins round to create the shimmering sound. The metal label on the harmonium gives a firm in North London - but that could equally be a distributor as much as a maker. I'll check further. The beast was a chapel harmonium in Birmingham (UK, not Alabama!).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 12:20 AM

Great! Thank you, Tootler.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Tootler
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 11:23 PM

Yamaha call their electric pianos "Clavinova" The have a full range 7.5 octave full size keyboard and the keys are weighted to simulate the feel of piano keys. Not being a pianist, I do not know exactly how they feel, though I have known know people who have them. I have also heard them played - they sound pretty good.

Google "Yamaha Clavinova" for more info and you will get plenty of relevant hits. I am UK based, so Google brings up UK based sites for me. So it is better if you Google yourself rather than I post links.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 07:00 PM

Will - If it's got a Vox Humana, it's an American Organ - wherever it was made. (As in French horns which have been made in China) Vox Humana isn't a sound of its own though, it's a sort of shimmering effect brought about by the air-blown rotation of a thing on a long spindle that I can't quite describe. The VH stop won't make a sound on its own.

Don - You won't go far wrong with Roland or Yamaha, not much to choose between them price or quality-wise. The Roland tone tends to be fuller/richer than Yamaha, who score when it comes to brightness/top-end. They both do a full range from minimal looking studio keyboards up to front-parlour instruments that are more like furniture.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 05:49 PM

Here's a YouTube vid of my Edwardian, English-made harmonium. Vox Humana on the stops is, unfortunately, not working. The video's a guitar & harmonium duet...
Love's Old Sweet Song

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 05:17 PM

Thanks, Smokey. I'll check them out.

(I think I'm in way over my head. . . .)

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 05:09 PM

Insane Beard: your YouTube links don't communicate much to me at the moment ad the only computer in the house capable of playing them is terminally bust. But for this one

: Here's a nice Turkish wooden G...

I would guess the player you have in mind is either Selim Sesler or Husnu Seslendirici, who are both stunningly good. I've tried a wooden G in an Istanbul shop and was tempted, but not quite enough considering the price

Look for a duet on YouTube between Husnu Seslendirici and the violinist Canan Leslie Anderson. There are substantial non-musical reasons for watching it...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 04:41 PM

"but she wants one with the standard eighty-eight full-sized keys and one that sounds as much as possible like a piano, without all the expensive features like drum machines and gizmos that make it possible to sound like a kazoo on steroids or Jimi Hendrix's electric guitar on overload, merely at the flip of a switch. Just piano is fine" (Don)...I looked in vain for one with the voice of a concertina, but the inexpensive Yamaha I chose does have the accordion and many other sounds that are fun to try occasionally as I practise my repertoire - although it's mostly on organ for hymns, and piano for folk.
"As far as I know, the 'Indian' ones were originally introduced there by missionaries from here, and by happy coincidence were very suitable for playing their music." (Smokey)...yes, Indian musicians like the hand-pumped ones - playing just the tune with the other; for what it's worth, I play just the tune with 2 hands, and would like to try a foot-pumped one, one day...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 03:53 PM

Don - take a look at Roland keyboards; excellent feel and sound.

http://www.rolandus.com/products/productlist.aspx?ParentId=87

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 03:51 PM

I know Yamaha makes a darn good regular piano, and I've heard that their electronic keyboards are pretty good. There are dozens of piano stores around Seattle and many of them also sell electronic keyboards.

I'd like to surprise Barbara (she has a birthday coming up), but that could be a bad way to go. I know she's kinda picky about what she wants as far as sound is concerned, and I know touch is most important (as a classic guitarist, I can understand that). So I'd better not try to surprise her. Just encourage her to pick out one that works for her.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:47 PM

I've got a Yamaha electric piano that sounds just like a piano, really. At least I haven't yet discovered how to make it sound like Jimi Hendrix . . .

The only problem was getting used to the lightness of the keys, a bit like swapping an old manual typewriter for a modern computer keyboard. I once had a baby grand piano, a Broadwood someone gave me. It was just so vulgar. White with candlesticks. Yeuk. Had to go.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:30 PM

As far as I know, the 'Indian' ones were originally introduced there by missionaries from here, and by happy coincidence were very suitable for playing their music.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:29 PM

Lovely, Diane!

Actually, Barbara has two reed organs, the portable that I previously described and another larger console that sits in our living room. Looks quite a bit like THIS.

Barbara's quite an accomplished pianist (Bach, Chopin, Debussy) and despite having the two reed organs, we don't have a piano, and she misses having one. I'd love to see her have something like a baby grand, and although we live in a fairly large apartment, unfortunately the rooms are such that we don't really have room for one. I'm encouraging her to look into electronic keyboards (something that can be folded up and put away, sort of like THIS), but she wants one with the standard eighty-eight full-sized keys and one that sounds as much as possible like a piano, without all the expensive features like drum machines and gizmos that make it possible to sound like a kazoo on steroids or Jimi Hendrix's electric guitar on overload, merely at the flip of a switch. Just piano is fine.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:21 PM

For the information of the ridiculously monickered "traddies against racism", eBay is flooded with modern Indian subcontinent-manufactured organ thingies, as you'd see immediately if you cared to take a look. I have one myself because getting hold of an original is like hunting for hen's teeth. This one is on at £50 but minutes before closure, the site will go bonkers as bidding goes higher and higher.

Obtaining an Indian one is far simpler.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Traddies Against Racism
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:06 PM

Makes a change from all the Indian ones anyway

Methinks WAVs odious influence is rubbing off here.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:00 PM

(Ebay link) That's an American Organ, not a harmonium - they can look very similar but it has a 'Vox Humana' stop on it, and that can only be achieved on a sucking, rather than a blowing 'system'. I don't think I could adequately describe how that work in words.. sorry. The sucking system was invented in America I think, but American Organs were sometimes manufactured outside America. I had a harmonium for years before I discovered it was an American Organ. I wasn't bitter.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 01:25 PM

Here's a nice one on eBay. Makes a change from all the Indian ones anyway.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 12:56 PM

I have heard of the harmonium. As described in an article I found on the internet, this is essentially what my wife owns. It's a reed organ. It stands upright like a small piano, and the air to operate the reeds is produced by pumping pedals. It's portable and can be collapsed into a box about the size of a foot locker. Similar to, but not exactly like, THIS. These instruments were very popular in small frontier churches and at traveling tent meetings. Barbara says she has never heard it referred to as anything but a "portable reed organ" or a "camp organ."

Genealogy:

The harmonium was invented in Paris in 1842 by Alexandre Debain, though there was concurrent development of similar instruments. Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1723-1795), Professor of Physiology at Copenhagen, was credited with the first free reed to be made in the western world after winning the annual prize in 1780 from the Imperial Academy of St.Petersburg.

I've never heard of it referred to as an "American reed organ." Maybe it's an English thing. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 11:38 AM

IB - you talk as if traditional English music is, and has always been, as free as American jazz...but, if true, we wouldn't have that body of songs/tunes that you just recommended I again dip into.

Ignorance rears it's ugly head again. Jazz has a large body of songs/tunes in it's tradition, much like folk music.
Mere playing of random notes does not jazz make, just like sticking fingers in ears and singing tunelessly is not folk music.
http://www.jazzstandards.com/

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 08:48 AM

WAV I could have accepted your last post except for your patronizing Eliza, a young woman of great talent wide knowledge and impeccable credentials in folk music. Perhaps you don't know you do it.

Read, edit, consider, before you post. Unless you wish to be rude



Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 07:58 AM

Just got back from hols, logged in to find all and sundry still trying to persuade WAV he needs to accept some advice from people that know, including Eliza F. Carthy and still he persists, despite overwhelming evidence and well-intentioned direction from numerous individuals in this and other threads to ignore all of it.

For the real deal, check out Sugarfoot Jack, whose instinctive understanding of song and harmony is deeply rooted in the traditions of these islands.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 06:18 AM

You got a metal Turkish G, Jack? I play one in my dreams! I use a nice old Eb alto (for the bottom end) and two old simple systems in C and Bb, albeit miltary pitch which seems work out around 39 cents sharp of concert, same as my Indian pocket trumpet. These latter have very wide bores, so nice for getting those Albanian kaba brays in the bottom end, though given the chops on those guys I doubt it would bother them what they play - like this guy Here, who looks like he's playing a full Boehm and sounding like a dream.

Here's a nice Turkish wooden G...

Otherwise, here's my C clarinet (and citera, doromb, bendir etc.) and some fruit lovely bats I filmed in the dark at Chester Zoo's free flying bat exhibit a couple of years back: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Z53_paumPlo.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 06:05 AM

Pipe organs have been used for accompaniment in our English cathedrals for centuries; smallish country churches used to have much unaccompanied singing before the church bands that you mention, Eliza, and relatively inexpensive harmoniums - the most portable of which came to be used by travelling preachers.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:17 AM

American organs are a kind of small harmonium, but as Smokey says they work differently internally. They were popular in the UK at the end of the 19th century and there are a lot of tunebooks for them. It seems to have been rather limited in its capabilities.

TheSnail: thanks, that book looks fascinating. The guy on the cover is playing what looks very like my metal Turkish G clarinet, only with less keys. It's a very good instrument for accompanying singing and is not at all raucous. It originated in France, as the "clarinette d'amour", and some of them must have made it to England.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 01:08 AM

Oh, hell! As long as I'm here, why not?

700!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 01:06 AM

The question remains: What is an "American organ?"

I am an American and I've never heard of an "American organ."

Don Firth

P. S. At least not one of the musical variety. . . .

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 10:35 PM

American organs suck, harmoniums blow. (honest!)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 10:29 PM

"American organ?"

Not quibbling, just curious. Considering that the organ has been an integral part of the architecture of churches and cathedrals throughout continental Europe for centuries, I would find it most odd if I were to suddenly, in my advanced years, to learn that the organ was not a part of church services in the British Isles. Especially in the light of THIS.

And was there not quite a large number of composers, English and otherwise living in England (Handel, composer of The Messiah, for example: German born but lived most of his life in England), who wrote reams and stacks of liturgical music? I can't believe that this music was never performed until recently. . . .

What distinguishes an American organ from the organs that, say, Bach, Buxtehude, and others played and composed for? Indeed, what is an American organ? The Estey reed pump organ, often used in camp meetings on the American frontier? The Hammond electric, sometimes found in cocktail lounges and/or used by rock bands?

Don Firth