The Tudor Fair Blog
Old Music Monday: Christmas Edition
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. …
Favorite Places in England: Chichester
The church I go to is called St. Richard’s of Chichester, and so on one of my trips to the UK I felt compelled to spend some time getting to know St. Richard, and his town. Fortunately for me, it’s a nice place to visit, and I was also able…
The Week in Books: Island of the Lost
Another fantastic Oyster find, I devoured Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the End of the World by Joan Druett this past week. It’s a true story about two simultaneous shipwrecks on Auckland Island in the 1860’s (though they never met each other, being on opposite ends with a mountain range in…
Old Music Monday: The Agincourt Carol
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…
Random Friday Fun Facts: Coffee and How it Works
“As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move…similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle” 19th century philosopher Balzac Before I had a kid I was never a big coffee drinker. Oh,…
The Week in Books: The Wars of the Roses – Politics and Constitution in England 1437-1509
When I lived in the UK one of my favorite things to do was go to Cambridge where I’d attend evensong service at King’s, and then go to the Cambridge University Press bookstore on the corner of King’s Parade and the market street, and I’d buy a book that made…
Old Music Monday: The Cardinall’s Musick and Elizabethan religious PR gigs
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bMiYnzkZx4?list=PLhHbeycso61VkjUYaeHgmoVrs1lkU8Q_f] 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…
Random Friday Fun Fact: Shakespeare’s Richard III (aka the Victors get to write the History)
I’ve had a project going on over the past few years that I call my Shameful Shakespeare Catch-up (shameful because it’s shameful that so much of my life has gone by without me reading any Shakespeare at all – it’s been since college, which, sadly, was fifteen years ago) and today…
Favorite Places in England: Not Drowning in Scaroborough
When I lived in the UK when I was in my early 20’s post-college figuring-life-out phase (which I never really grew out of), I used to go to random tourist places based on British folk songs, or throwing darts at maps. Or showing up at the train station and picking…
The Week in Books: Howard of Warwick
I spent much of this past week being a Single Mama while my hubby was away in Amsterdam, and consequently, what with NaNoWriMo and Hannah refusing to nap because her schedule was all screwed up, etc., I haven’t had a lot of time to read. But with that said, I…
Old Music Monday: Mary Tudor and Choral Music
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,…
Random Friday Fun Facts: The Music of the Spheres
“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…