The best music for medicine?
A concert featuring a depiction of 18th century surgery without anaesthesia...
Medical technology and treatment have improved enormously over the past few centuries - but what was it really like to be treated in the 18th century? It’s not something one would want to experience first-hand, but an upcoming concert by Royal Baroque promises to satisfy our curiosity in a far more enticing way.
Music and Medicine offers a programme featuring music by Marais, Lully, Froberger, Couperin, and Zelenka, reflecting the composers’ illnesses, anxieties concerning surgery without anaesthesia, the remedies of the time, and the healing power of music. The centrepiece of this fascinating concert will be the 'Tableau de l'opération de la taille' (1725) by Marais, a musical depiction of the stages of Marais’ own operation for removing a urinary bladder, without anaesthesia. The piece is written in a form of storytelling, where music is interrupted by the narrator’s commentary on a gruesome account of the operation.
Royal Baroque: Music and Medicine
Sounds Historical: The Bird Fancyer’s Delight
Appearing at multiple locations, Sounds Historical’s “The Bird Fancyer’s Delight” tour offers an entertaining evening of early music inspired by birdsong.
Kings’ School Grantham (and other venues), from Wed, 21 February 2024
Playing Samuel Pepys at Keble Early Music Festival
Keble Early Music Festival will shortly be underway - there are lots of concerts and other events, including “Playing Samuel Pepys” in which Andrew Parrott is joined by musical friends to evoke a dialogue between Pepys’ diaries and the music of contemporaries including Matthew Locke, John Blow, and Purcell.
Picking up the theme of ‘Music and Medicine’ - Pepys underwent a lithotomy to remove a bladder stone. It was a much-feared operation at the time (and to be fair, probably also to this day), and he writes about the stone in his famous diary, for example on the 26th March 1660, two years to the day after he went under the scalpel.
Keble College Chapel, Oxford, Fri, 23 February 2024 at 7.30pm
Consone Quartet: Felix & Fanny Mendelssohn Quartets
The Consones (who were the first period instrument string quartet to be selected as BBC New Generation Artists) launch their new partnership with Linn Records, including the complete quartets of Felix Mendelssohn.
Portsmouth Guildhall, Mon, 26 February 2024 at 7.30pm
Plenty more concerts taking place all over the UK are available to search at Continuo Connect - along with essays and interviews, and the chance to delve into early music and discover artists performing the full range of music from the past.
Until the next time -
Tim & the Continuo Connect Team