Inspiring Excitement and Passion about History and the Humanities
About a month ago I was in the UK for a girls’ weekend (by myself), and as I’ve been trying to do more with my Renaissance English History Podcast lately (like my Tudor Minutes on youtube), I decided to find an interesting person to interview for the show. At the top of my wish list…
A few weeks ago I had the privilege of going to Sidney Sussex College, in Cambridge, and interviewing Dr. David Skinner, the choral director there, and a brilliant musicologist. In addition to being incredibly charming, he is also bursting with information which he relays in an approachable way. I taped our conversation for a podcast,…
I’m going to Iceland next week. I first went there in 2012, just for a few days, at the suggestion of several friends who had visited and loved it. We were on an extended visit to the UK, and decided to take a few days to make the short flight to Reykjavik, and rented a…
Yep, I’ve had a little break from blogging recently, mostly doing a lot of writing and working and other fun creative things. But let’s get back to business, shall we? Everyone who has studied even a smidgen of music has heard about the Bach clan. Johann Sebastian and his son Carl Philipp Emanuel (known as…
I’ve been busy the past few days getting another Renaissance English History Podcast episode researched, written, recorded, and posted. I’m always getting emails and facebook messages asking me what the music is that I use in the intro. So I decided to do my Old Music Monday on the intro music to my podcast, which…
This week the Old Music that I’ve been listening to has centered around Yuletide, specifically a hyperion recording of the Sixteen from 1987 called Christmas Music from Medieval and Renaissance Europe. As usual, Hyperion doesn’t work with Spotify (grrrr) so I also have been streaming Christmas with the Tallis Scholars. I also have a Pandora…
While browsing on youtube this weekend (I love that sentence because it implies long childfree days spent clicking from one interesting program to the next) I found this 2013 BBC documentary from David Starkey, the most fabulous British historian (and who puts on a fabulous show in the 1980’s Channel 4 Trial of Richard III…
This week The Cardinall’s Musick has seen some heavy rotation on my Spotify. They are a UK based ensemble that, like many early music groups, is scholarly in their recordings of 16th and 17th century music. They mostly record with Hyperion – a label I love – but sadly Hyperion isn’t on any of the…
I just finished another episode of my Renaissance English History Podcast (the most uncreatively named podcast ever!) (get it on itunes!) on Mary Tudor, and it got me thinking about church music during the five years that Mary reigned. She wasn’t famous for endowing any colleges, or really supporting scholars, but it could be said…
“music is so naturally united with us that we cannot be free from it even if we so desired” Boethius: De institutione musica Most serious musicians understand that music and math are inextricably linked. The early mathematician Pythagoras discovered many different ratios within musical harmonies (a perfect fifth, for example) by playing around with glasses of…