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Les Folies d'Espagne: La Folia
  • The Folies d'Espagne is one of the oldest known dance forms. In this historical reconstruction, you will see the dance performed on instruments from the 17th century. On the right is the French baroque guitar, which was based on late renaissance instruments popular in Spain and Italy, as well the triple harp, which is a harp with three sets of strings (just for @Mark_the_Harp). On the left, an early form of the recorder, and a baroque violin using the smaller, lighter bow; the violin is played without a chinrest as well. The accompaniment is improvised by the musicians who are given a simple chord chart, similar to the way Jazz musicians improvise. The seven string instrument on the left is a viola da gamba, which existed side by side with the cello for hundreds of years before disappearing in the late 18th century. The viola da gamba has frets like a guitar, to facilitate the playing of chords, as well as microtones which were used in the baroque time.

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  • Cool.

    Don't you think that space is quite live? I mean it feels like slightly too much reverberation in recording.

  • I agree--the idea here is to recreate the sound that one hears in the front row, and the church--it is a church of course--is very live. So one could use spot mics to dry it out a bit, but then it is an ideal sound as opposed to a real sound. But absolutely, very live sound, and maybe I should have put the main pair a bit closer.

  • I think here it is more important to have more refined sound due to instruments used. Lots of strums and finger play and such.

    It could be cool to hear similar group in the small compact and good damped room. By idea harpsichord and such old instruments had been mostly made for chamber music.

    Do you have some harpsichord recording, btw?

  • Yes--I agree the spot mics are more revealing--and you can hear some detail that might be difficult to hear otherwise. It is an aesthetic dilemma. For example, in a museum, when you look at a painting sometimes they will show a photo of a detail next to the painting, and sometimes they will supply a magnifying glass. Here, the visual analogy to spot mics would be lots of little magnifying glasses on the surface of the painting. But there is no question that people like this effect for sound, and that we accept it on some level, and enjoy the details. But to my ear it always sounds like little magnifying glasses. I could go either way, and some of these--like the Brandenburg Concerto series, have some spot mics taped to the back of the music stands since they are also for commercial release as "albums", or soundtracks. For concerts, I usually forgo the spots, and one reason is that I do not want the musicians to have a mic in front of them, I don't want the mics in the closeups, and I don't want the audience to see a bunch of mics in front of the musicians. But, like you say, you would certainly get some fine detail, and we used spots for the Brandenburgs and they sound good and are very revealing.

    Here is a harpsichord as you request recorded in a controlled studio environment for contrast--using exactly the same mics that were used in the live recording above, but positioned differently.

    This is a baroque-style harpsichord, a double manual French harpsichord by Joop Klinkhamer, after the original Ruckers-Goujon instrument in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. The pitch of the instrument is A=392 Hz, which is a full tone lower than modern pitch. The strings are made of a special kind of wire which is drawn according to the formula used by string makers in the 18th century: this wire produces an overtone series that is stronger in the fundamental range and so has less of the high, bright harmonics usually associated with harpsichord. In this acoustically damped room, some reverb had to be added as the sound was very dry in the room.

  • This is a baroque-style harpsichord, a double manual French harpsichord by Joop Klinkhamer, after the original Ruckers-Goujon instrument in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. The pitch of the instrument is A=392 Hz, which is a full tone lower than modern pitch. The strings are made of a special kind of wire which is drawn according to the formula used by string makers in the 18th century: this wire produces an overtone series that is stronger in the fundamental range and so has less of the high, bright harmonics usually associated with harpsichord. In this acoustically damped room, some reverb had to be added as the sound was very dry in the room.

    Cool piece and good performance. Many of harpsichord recordings I have are still much more dry.