We do not aim to follow in the tangled path of “the Evangelical-Lutheran town church pc. Jakob in Rothenburg whether that deaf ones” (via Transblawg) Further news: an advisory panel is being formed. Apparently the next Archbishop of Canterbury is too busy, but there will be big names in there. And we are getting closer to determining budget and sources thereof.

Nice little video here from this sparsely documented international artist:

I don’t know what its specification is, and I don’t know the Kassel maker, but this is probably the kind of thing I’m interested in. The mini-pram-type carriage is interesting, but a trike will give me speed and flexibility.

I’m not much good with chordophones, so the closest I’ll get to this is on my fine collection of Swanee whistles. Here’s another musical sawyer playing Vie en rose:

For some peculiar reason it makes me want to urinate. I believe 17th century transverse flutes had the same effect on some contemporary French theorist. I wonder if dogs or cats experience the same discomfort.

Petrushka, accordeons and theatre lead inevitably to the best film ever: The tranny plumping up his chest to make the wedding guests smile for the cameraman remind me that this show needs tits. My pink dress–made by Lou B–has suffered over the years. If I knew where she lived I’d try to get her to make me another one.

If you’re interested in organs and theatre, quite soon you will visit Mr Stravinsky & Co and their lenten feast. Some background:

The play Petrushka seems to derive from a native older Russian buffoon and minstrel tradition and the Western European puppet theater tradition with its roots in the Italian commedia dell’arte. Possible evidence of the Petrushka play in Russia is found as early as 1637 in an engraving and description by a Dutch traveler, Adam Olearius. From around the 1840s to the 1930s, the Petrushka show was one of the most popular kinds of improvisational theater in Russia, often performed at fairs and carnivals and on the streets on a temporary wooden stage (balagan). The show was presented by two performers, one of whom manipulated the puppets, while the other played a barrel-organ. Recorded textual variants from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries depict the adventures of Petrushka, a dauntless prankster and joker, who uses his wit as well as a vigorously wielded club to get the better of his adversaries, who often represent established authority. The themes tend to be sexist and violent. Petrushka is usually dressed in a red caftan and pointed red cap, and has a hunch-back, a large hooked nose, and a prominent chin. The most popular scenes involve Petrushka and a handful of characters, among them his fiancée or wife, a gypsy horse trader, a doctor or apothecary, an army corporal, a policeman, the devil, and a large fluffy dog. Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka (1911) is probably the most famous adaptation of this puppet theater show.

Here are two music-box players and dancers competing for public in the first Shrovetide Fair scene, at the beginning of the ballet:

Recalling that a barrel organ is in some ways nothing more than a mechanised accordeon, some more fair soundscape with accordeon noises, here in accordeon transcription (ho!ho!) played by Mika Vayrynen:

If accordeon pastiche can be played on the accordeon, there’s no reason why a ballet about organs and puppets and puppetmasters shouldn’t be performed with organ, puppets and puppetmaster. That’s roughly what Basil Twist seems to have done starting in 2001:

First performed in 2001, this “Petrushka” also involves a conceptual sleight of hand. In the ballet dancers play puppets that come to life. In Mr. Twist’s version, puppets play puppets, and when they come to life, they dance. It works perfectly, plunging us directly into the story’s imaginative universe.

Unfortunately I can’t find video of him in action.

[There’s a more interesting introduction to the Russian stuff here.]

No way José.

He’s got a false arm, he’s a spoons virtuoso, he’s got a good hat, his monkey plays the violin. In short, a genius:

Comments:

1. He’s got a pole support and the organ strapped round his neck, like all the guys in Mexico DF. That’s fine, although I imagine it must cause back trouble, but I like to be able to jump and run about in order to inspire a slightly higher degree of fear in the public.
2. I’m slightly puzzled by the machinery. If he’s got his books spilling all over the place his replacement bill must be rather high. And I can’t figure out what’s going on inside when the front case opens. Are those more puppets inside? The monkey-violin effect must be digital, so is there actually any conventional machinery at all? Whatever, I need to look at more organ innards.
3. We tend to associate the French with accordeons, but in fact their (related) barrel organ tradition (ah! French engineering!) is far more glorious, and to my mind superior to what those cunning Dutch and Germans get up to.
4. Who is this man? What’s the rest of his show like?

“Orgue de Barbarie”

What with QEI having sent an organ to the Turk, it’s only right that the French have their organs come from Barbary. Wikipédia says:

L’explication la plus répandue de son nom viendrait d’une déformation d’« orgue de Barberi », d’après le fabricant italien de Modène, Giovanni Barbieri (début du XVIIIe siècle), mais selon d’autres opinions il vient plutôt du fait que les joueurs du XVII^e siècle et XVIII^e siècle « baragouinaient un français approximatif et qu’ils venaient “d’ailleurs” ».

Une autre hypothèse est une provenance du Maghreb. En effet à cet époque-là, le Maghreb était appelé la « Barbarie » par les Européens. Pour les « vrais » musiciens, les « amateurs » qui se contentaient de tourner une manivelle venaient voler comme des barbares leur musique et leur gagne-pain. Toutefois, l’usage veut que l’on écrive Barbarie avec une majuscule.

Le nom orgue est masculin au singulier, et au pluriel, lorsqu’il désigne plusieurs instruments distincts. Il peut être utilisé au féminin pluriel lorsqu’il s’agit d’un seul instrument. Exemple : les grands orgues de France (plusieurs instruments), le grand orgue de Notre-Dame, ou les grandes orgues de Notre-Dame (un seul instrument). Cette particularité ne s’applique pas aux orgues de Barbarie, pour lesquels on conserve le masculin.

To close the circle, here’s Mozart’s Turkish March (slightly tweaked) played on a Odin Barbary organ:

From an 1854 report of the New York Children’s Aid Society on an Italian school:

There is going on a certain change for the better among this low class of strangers. On visiting them, I have remarked a considerable reduction of organs and monkeys in their apartments, usually filled with such instruments and beasts. The vile traffic of hireling children is also almost extinct, for the organ-grinder can not any more afford to pay for them, as it is becoming day by day a poor business; and in fact, while in former years a boy was invariably attached to an organ-grinder, now never, or very seldom, is one seen in that trade. A girl may be seen now and then, but generally the grinder travels alone.

No plans to employ children or monkeys, and gorillas are out:

A bit of Swedish totty had however crossed my mind–more anon.

In New York the whole business came to an end 80 years later, thanks to mayor LaGuardia says Wikipedia:

Street organs were banned in New York City in 1936 by Fiorello LaGuardia. An unfortunate consequence was the destruction of hundreds of organs. This was unfortunate because the barrels in these organ contained a record of the popular music of the day. Before the invention of the cylinder record player, this was the only permanent recording of these tunes. The law that banned barrel organ in New York was repealed in 1976 but that mode of musical performance had become obsolete by then. However, organ grinders did return to New York on the 9th of April 2006, when the first organ rally in the area was held on Coney Island.

From The Parish Clerk (1907) by Peter Hampson Ditchfield:

Robert Dicker, quondam cabinet-maker in the town of Crediton, Devon, reigned for many years as parish clerk to the, at one time, collegiate church of the same town. He appears to have fulfilled his office satisfactorily up to about 1870, when his mind became somewhat feeble. Nevertheless, no desire was apparent to shorten the days of his office, as he was regular in his attendance and musically inclined; but when he began to play pranks upon the vicar it became necessary to consider the advisability of finding a substitute who should do the work and receive half the pay. One of his escapades was to stand up in the middle of service and call the vicar a liar; at another time he announced that a wedding was to take place on a certain day. The vicar, therefore, attended and waited for an hour, when the clerk affirmed that he must have dreamed it! Dicker was given to the study of astronomy, and it is related that he once gave a lecture on this subject in the Public Rooms. There is close to the town a small park in memory of one of the Duller family. A man one night was much alarmed when walking therein to discover a bright light in one of the trees, and, later, to hear the voice of the worthy clerk, who addressed him in these words: “Fear not, my friend, and do not be affrighted. I am Robert Dicker, clerk of the parish. I am examining the stars.” Another account alleges that he affirmed himself to be “counting the stars.” Whichever account is the true one, it will be gathered that he was already “far gone.” Another of his achievements was the conversion of a barrel organ,purchased from a neighbouring church, into a manual, obtaining the wind therefor by a pedal arrangement which worked a large wheel attached to a crank working the bellows. On all great festivals and especially on Christmas Day he was wont to rouse the neighbourhood as early as three and four o’clock, remarking of the ungrateful, complaining neighbours that they had no heart for music or religion. The wheel mentioned above was part of one of his tricycle schemes. His first attempt in cycle-making resulted in the construction of a bicycle the wheels of which resembled the top of a round deal table; this soon came to grief. His second endeavour was more successful and became a tricycle, the wheels of which were made of wrought iron and the base of a triangular shape. Upon the large end he placed an arm-chair, averring that it would be useful to rest in whenever he should grow weary! Then, making another attempt, he succeeded in turning out (being aided by another person) a very respectable and useful tricycle upon which he made many journeys to Barnstaple and elsewhere. However, just as an end comes to everything that is mortal, so did an end come to our friend the clerk; for, as so many stories finish, he died in a good old age, and his substitute reigned in his stead.

I’ve never seriously ridden a tricycle, but it’s the logical solution.

The beautiful and the damned

Is is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ–and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory. A brilliant ball, gay with light romantic laughter, wears through its own silks and satins to show the bare framework of a man-made thing–oh, that eternal hand!–a play, most tragic and most divine, becomes merely a succession of speeches, sweated over by the eternal plagiarist in the clammy hours and acted by men subject to cramps, cowardice, and manly sentiment.

Despite my age I hope to be an organ grinder.