Rooted in Christmas

While the more commercial aspects of Christmas move in tandem with market sentiment, some elements of the season’s celebrations happily remain more constant. Christmas cards (dating from the 1840s), Advent calendars (the first examples appeared around the same time) and attractively wrapped presents (a reminder of the Three Wise Men’s gifts of gold, frankincense and Read More …

Sounds more effective

A few weeks ago we looked at the capability of instruments to make a variety of changes to their usual timbre. We examined the history of pizzicato and col legno, just a couple of tools in the string department’s box of tricks. String instruments have arguably the greatest range of alternative voices, but they are Read More …