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Just for fun ...

Savoyard tourists visit Chicago.

Famous Route 66 begins just in front of the Art Institute of Chicago, one block away from my school, DePaul's CTI (School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems).
The pastry shop/café Au bon Pain is a favorite meeting place for a cross section of humanity, including students from several universities found in Chicago's Loop.

These Savoyards are staging a magic lantern show, highlights of their trip from Illinois to California.

Serious: Overview of the Savoyard project

Philippot (ca. 1610 - ca. 1675 according to [Duneton, vol. I, p.533]) was a blind street musician who had the good idea to supplement his income by selling broadsides containing the lyrics of his best songs. Eventually these broadsides were published in two volumes, the
Recueil général des chansons du capitaine Savoyard, par lui seul chantées dans Paris
[General collection of the Captain Savoyard's songs, as sung by him, exclusively, in Paris] Paris: Jean Promé, 1645,
and the
Recueil nouveau des chansons du Savoyard par lui seul chantées dans Paris.
[New collection of the Savoyard's song as sung by him, alone, in Paris.] Paris: chez la Vve Jean Promé, 1665.
While the first collection (1645) seems to have been lost, a copy of the second (1665) is in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal and [Duneton] reproduces many examples of these songs.


A La Vielle Royale. Jean Louvet was the proprietor of the Vielle Royale, a music publishing house (c. 1754 - 1755) located on the Rue Croix des Petits-Champs (Paris), according to Cecil Hopkinson [Hopkinson, p. 83]. [Boulesteix, p. 116] reproduces a label from inside a hurdy-gurdy made by Pierre Louvet at the Vielle Royale, an instrument-maker's shop, rue Montmartre (Paris).

Lambert HG

For another view of this instrument, see my bio (hobbies).

This is Louis Binet's illustration for Restif's "La belle vielleuse." I colored it in using my box of crayons (Adobe Photoshop).

To view to original engraving by Binet, or to read the story, go to the pretty hurdy-gurdy girl.

Clarisse Miroy was the talk of the town after her discovery by the actor who called himself ‘Frederick.' Victor Hugo, however, spoke of her as just one more in the series of Frederick's mistresses; and when down on her luck, the critics treated her with condescension.

The true story of Mlle Miroy has yet to be told.

Black Crook: Harry Paulton's wonderful clown hurdy-gurdy --
A redrawing (more detail) of the instrument seen in the Black Crook poster reproduced in Kurt Gänzl's Encyclopaedia of the Musical Theatre.

A more personal note.

This is one of my early posters (25 years ago) promoting a concert of the University of Chicago French Horn Quartet (off-campus we called ourselves ‘Esprit de Cors').

There were five members of the quartet: one assistant professor of chemistry, two students, one student spouse, and a janitor. (Guess which one was the janitor.)
We rotated chairs so that each member got to play every part, and we played though all the literature for four horns in print, plus our own arrangements of favorites.

A highlight was our premier performance of the very beautiful composition by Joe Reiser (Music for Virtuoso Violon and Horns), with Mark Feldman, violin.

A hurdy-gurdy lesson in Burkina Faso: the student is Enoch Nanéma.
He is playing a Kurt Reichmann lute-shaped h.-g., a solid, sweet-sounding instrument that kept me good company while in Africa.
JR (me) is in lower right corner.

Enoch was one of my best students at the lycée provencial de Yako, where I taught high school sciences naturelles (life science: zoology, botany, geology) while in the Peace Corps (1985 - 87).

After, I stayed on for three more years at the International School of Ouagadougou to teach middle school math and science.

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