Harpsichords and antique instruments!
Oct. 7th, 2009 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
almaviva90Hurrah...I'm feeling better today. So hopefully this 'cold' will have worn off by the end of this week after copious amounts of rest. For the past two days, I've slept at least for 8 hours (which is quite something since I usually don't sleep that long on weekdays) and it seems to have benefited me in some way.
Ooh...and at the opera tutorial I had to go to today, it was probably the coolest tutorial we've had so far. We were allowed to go and see the historical, antique instruments the music department has. And the most interesting thing there? A HARPSICHORD. And we allowed to actually PLAY it...how darn cool is that? It's so different from a piano though. Piano keys are sort of 'softer' where you sort of forget you're tapping on wooden keys and they hit the strings rather than pluck them to make sound. Harpsichord keys are more wooden and harder and you can really feel the 'plucking' motion of the strings when you press a key. Plus the colours were inverted...instead of having black keys for sharps and flats, they were white while the other keys were a sort of dark brown. You can imagine the masters of music, e.g. Bach and Mozart playing on harpsichords like these while they were composing. I can't really play anything fancy on a piano (due to my total lack of piano skills) but had a go and played the opening melody of the overture to Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro which seemed appropriate to the instrument. Other people tried to play modern church music or pop songs on it...which to me is utterly ludicrous. -___-
Also was able to see early piano fortes from the 19th Century, a viola de gamba (an early version of the cello) and lutes where were also interesting. But I don't think I'll be able to get over the feeling of actually having been allowed to play on that marvellous instrument which is the harpsichord...
Ooh...and at the opera tutorial I had to go to today, it was probably the coolest tutorial we've had so far. We were allowed to go and see the historical, antique instruments the music department has. And the most interesting thing there? A HARPSICHORD. And we allowed to actually PLAY it...how darn cool is that? It's so different from a piano though. Piano keys are sort of 'softer' where you sort of forget you're tapping on wooden keys and they hit the strings rather than pluck them to make sound. Harpsichord keys are more wooden and harder and you can really feel the 'plucking' motion of the strings when you press a key. Plus the colours were inverted...instead of having black keys for sharps and flats, they were white while the other keys were a sort of dark brown. You can imagine the masters of music, e.g. Bach and Mozart playing on harpsichords like these while they were composing. I can't really play anything fancy on a piano (due to my total lack of piano skills) but had a go and played the opening melody of the overture to Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro which seemed appropriate to the instrument. Other people tried to play modern church music or pop songs on it...which to me is utterly ludicrous. -___-
Also was able to see early piano fortes from the 19th Century, a viola de gamba (an early version of the cello) and lutes where were also interesting. But I don't think I'll be able to get over the feeling of actually having been allowed to play on that marvellous instrument which is the harpsichord...
