An Early Music Pioneer was a Dork!

Arnold Dolmetsch really was a pioneer of the revival of early music that took place in the 20th Century. As this video proves, he was also kind of a dork,in an early 20th century free love sort of way.

If for no other reason,watch this video for the dancing. It made me laugh until I almost peed.



As long as we're on the subject,this next video is from a Dutch guy who mostly plays baroque and renaissance string instruments. Here he's playing one of my favorite songs to play. I can do this too, almost as well as him. This is 'Under the Linden Tree (Onder Der Linded Groene)', as written by Jacob Van Eyck,and published in 1651 as part of 'Der Fluten Lust Hof'. This is an good example of the music that was popular in Northern Europe at the time.



Why care about this, you might ask? I'll tell you why. Van Eyck lived in the times of The Three Musketeers and Captain Alatriste (OK, if they weren't fictional characters,this would have been the time in which they lived). If they perchance ever met, It would have been near Utrecht,where both parties went to fight the heretic protestants. This is the music they would have heard. Although Van Eyck was a Dutch Protestant, these heroes may have spared him,given that he was a blind older man by this time. So There.

BTW,you might notice more than a passing resemblence between Captain Alatriste and the King of All Free Peoples of Middle Earth.


That's my story and I'm sticking to it.