The Calvert
Volume
The Practitioners of Musick plan to perform and
record many selections from a remarkable new source. A collection of
sheet music, published in London between 1790 and 1815, was acquired by
and bound for one of the members of the celebrated Calvert family of
Maryland . Among the many felicities of the volume are keyboard
arrangements of English and Scottish dance tunes.
Schaffner Manuscript
In the coming months, the Practitioners of Musick will begin a
recording project highlighting the English and German
repertory found in the manuscript. The music will be performed on a
series of historic keyboard instruments, most notably a 1791 Kirkman
harpsichord and a 1794 square fortepiano made by Longman and Broderip.
In addition, the Practitioners will record music on a
rare surviving instrument made by the Lancaster County Organ
builder Conrad Doll in 1807.
The Old Barracks Fife and
Drum Corps, Trenton, New Jersey
(photo courtesy of the Old
Barracks Association)
We are happy to
announce that the Old Barracks
Fife and Drum Corps has
released, in 2010, a recording that includes
marches found in the Schaffner manuscript, arranged and edited by Steve
Hudak, for the Corps, of which he is the distinguished
director.The CD, titled, “Guardian Angels” debuts the talents of the
fifes and drums of the Old Barracks. But it offers more than just the familiar
compilation of martial music drawn from the 17th to the early 19th
centuries; it is unique in that man of the melodies recorded are
extracted directly
from the previously undisclosed original manuscripts of Caspar
Schaffner
(1767-1825) of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
