Posts Tagged Music

Reveling in the Renaissance… Elizabethan Style

Reveling in the Renaissance… Elizabethan Style

A Post by Elizabeth A. Fulford, Music Director and Evanne Brown, Assistant Music Director
While most of us have some awareness of the most notorious facts and legends about King Henry VIII (who reigned from 1509 to his death in 1547), few are aware that, in addition to his having six wives and founding the Church of England, Henry Tudor was also a poet, musician, athlete, and scholar. Originally destined, as the second son, for an ecclesiastical career, Henry received the musical training appropriate for a clergyman. An expert singer with a clear tenor voice; a player of lute, flute, recorder, cornett, and virginals; and a composer of sacred and

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We’ll Take That to Go: Parades, Processions and Connecting with the Broader Community

We’ll Take That to Go: Parades, Processions and Connecting with the Broader Community

Posted by Washington Revels
So a dragon, a hobby horse, and a jester walk into Takoma Park… It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it becomes reality each 4th of July when Washington Revels steps out and sings out at the Takoma Park Independence Day Parade. Whether the temperatures are in the 70s (this year) or inching towards the 100-degree mark (2012), several dozen revelers of all ages can be relied upon to sing, play, and march their way through a community institution, and share a few centuries-old traditions in the process.

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Song and Music in Québec: A Brief Introduction

Song and Music in Québec: A Brief Introduction

A guest post by Stephen Winick, Ph.D.
This French-Canadian Revels includes a selection of ancienne musique and nouvelle musique Québécoise, blending old French tradition and New World ingenuity with a modern flair. On his first trip to the New World, in 1534, explorer Jacques Cartier found a rich land inhabited by Huron and Iroquois Indians. He promptly claimed it for France. After permanent settlement began in 1608, immigrants to Québec came from all over France, but especially from several provinces in the north and west: Normandy, Picardy, Anjou, Poitou, and Brittany. Not surprisingly, many of the traditional French songs we now find in Québec are common in those provinces as well. “Dans les prisons de Nantes,” for example, is set in Nantes, an important city that was historically the capital of Brittany. Located at the confluence of the Loire, the Sevre, and the Erdre, Nantes may be remembered fondly by many of our villagers as a model for their own Trois-Rivières.

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