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Category Archives: Music in Canada

Le Vent du Nord: Celtic Roots

16 Tuesday Feb 2021

Posted by michelinewalker in Acadia, Canada, Music in Canada, Québec Songs

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Celtic music, Le Vent du Nord, podorythmie, the BBC

Le Vent du Nord performs Octobre 1837, recorded by the BBC

Quebec Music’s Celtic Roots

I enjoyed listening to C’est dans Paris … The melody is so soothing. I do not think that album or CD is on the market at this point. It was recorded in December 2020, during the Covid-19’s pandemics. Moreover, C’est dans Paris is French folklore. The very last sentence of the song, C’est dans Paris … reads as follows

 C’est pas l’affaire d’une servante … de se farder.
 [It is not a servant’s business to wear makeup.]

Equal Temperament

However, three of the musicians I featured in my was post were in Britain in 2015 performing Celtic music. This time, the ensemble has a fiddler, a violoneux, or violinist/fiddler. Certain performers play with different ensembles. You will notice that at the very beginning of the group’s performance, the violineux/fiddler plays consecutive notes that span less than a semitone. Using a string instrument, such as the violin, and certain wind instruments, a musician is at liberty to play two consecutive notes spanning less than a semitone. On a piano, one plays a semitone by moving from C (white on a piano) to C sharp (the next black key). There are smaller units than the semitone, but a piano cannot produce these smaller units. Were it not for the development of equal temperament, an arbitrary division of the scale into semitones, instruments could not play together. When I was a student of music, the European music theorist who developed equal temperament was Vincenzo Galilei, Galileo Galilei’s father. More research has led to new findings.

Celtic Music

The piece we are hearing today is Celtic music, or it has been influenced by Celtic music. Our fiddler is sitting on a chair and uses podorythmie. Podorythmie is not step dancing. Our fiddler is emphasizing the rythmic pattern of the piece the group is interpreting. Until research proves underwise, podorythmie originates in Quebec and Acadie. As for step dancing, it occurs in many cultures, including Quebec. Podorythmie is a technique that was not used when I was a child in Quebec. Its use or revival dates back to the 1970s. As well, in the Quebec of my childhood, before 1960, there were fiddlers, but the piano was the instrument of choice. We have heard Jean Carignan, an accomplished fiddler, perhaps the best ever, play with the legendary Jehudi Menuhin. They played a piece composed by André Gagnon who died in December.

Le Vent du Nord

Many of Quebec’s Irish population came to North America at the time of the potato famine. My great-grandmother was Irish. These immigrants were very poor, as were many French Canadians. The McGarrigle sisters also had ancestors who moved to Quebec in order to eat. Owners evicted tenants who could not pay the rent.

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RELATED ARTICLES

  • C’est dans Paris … (14 February 2021)
  • Violoniste & Violoneux (27 Octobre 2020)
  • Quebec Folklore: Celtic Roots (24 October 2020)
  • Blanche comme neige, cont’d (30 August 2020) 
  • Blanche comme neige (28 August 2020)
  • Old French Song : Le Navire de Bayonne (8 August 2018)
  • Sir Ernest Macmillan: a Testimonial (9 January 2012)

© Micheline Walker
16 February 2021
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Chronicling COVID-19

25 Wednesday Mar 2020

Posted by michelinewalker in Canadian art, Canadian wilderness, Music in Canada, Pandemic, Quebec Art

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Arrogance, Covid-19, Early Music, Hank Knox, Quebec lockdown, Self-Isolation

133cfc7f9aa5492d9b9da3943c7c99be_18

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

My posts are delayed because of essential business. Quebec is closed.

My main meal comes from meals-on-wheels. As I was going to pick it up, wearing protective gear, I bumped into an assembly of people who doubted we should take authorities seriously. They were not standing at a distance from one another and I saw a person coming out of the swimming pool room.

I didn’t think I had it in me to transform myself into the manager of the building. It was an incredible moment. What I said and wrote in emails was, basically,

disperse immediately and do not let anyone into the building. If something is delivered, it stays in the lobby and someone rings your apartment. Three apartments are for sale. Real Estate is not an essential service. No one comes to visit apartments. If a rule is broken, I’ll call the police, the RCMP (Mounted Police), la GRC (Gendarmerie royale canadienne)  …

This morning I saw a sign asking people not to use the swimming pool.

Our worst enemies are the people who are too arrogant to obey the law. They don’t know that their freedom ends where the freedom of others begin. Only food, medication and the mail can be delivered.

I then had a conversation with a friend who is a postmaster. Mailmen will not ask you to sign if there is a delivery. That is contact. Covid rests on surfaces, which may include the mail.

One must also realize that there is very little medical help. I often tell people that if they wish to be well treated, they should go to the vet’s office. They have to learn medicine carefully as animals do not speak, except “en son langage.”

I am embedding music played by Hank Knox, a member, by marriage, of Sir Ernest MacMillan‘s family. My dear friend Andrea, whom I lost to cancer recently, was Sir Ernest’s niece. I knew the family but not closely, except for Andrea. We became friends when David and I rented the lower floor of her house.

David had found employment in Toronto. We were in a hotel looking for a home. David drove through streets he knew I would like. He saw a sign on a big tree and Andrea standing outside. He learned that she loved music and cats. So David said he would pick me up because he was certain I wanted to live in that house and that a friendship would grow. I must phone Betsy. She sent me harpsichord music.

https://www.mcgill.ca/music/hank-knox

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Hank+Knox&&view=detail&mid=4484F90DC0AD59DEDB0C4484F90DC0AD59DEDB0C&&FORM=VDRVRV

barns-1926

Barns by A. Y. Jackson, 1926 (The Group of Seven) (WikiArt)

© Micheline Walker
25 March 2020
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  • Bibles moralisées: 13th-century France
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  • The Bible of Saint Louis, Toledo
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  • October 1837
  • Le Vent du Nord: Celtic Roots
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