Saturday 4 April 2009

March for Two Pairs of Kettledrums: The Brothers Philidor


If you ever wondered what the sound of kettledrums in the late 17thc/early 18thc would be like this clip here is as good as it might get.
'This march was first performed in 1685 in the court of King Louis XIV and first transcribed in 1705. It is a fine representation of Baroque military timpani/kettledrum composition. Performed by two members of the Millersville University of Pennsylvania Music Department and Percussion Ensemble.'



2 comments:

Sir William the Aged said...

WAY COOOL!!!!

This is exactly why all of my 15mm French Cavalry regiments have carefully converted kettle drummers. Now I'll have to record this file and put it on a player that I can take to my games! I've been using snippets of tympani parts from movies that sounded appropriate, now I'll have the real thing. Thanks Ralphus!

Bill

Corporal_Trim said...

Good post, Ralphus. I have that Philidor drum piece on one Versailles collection or another, I forget which. There's also a few CD's featuring Philidor marches, French army bugle calls such as "a Cheval" and so on.

The Philidors were a very talented family of musicians and Francois-Andre was also the greatest chess player of the later 18th century.

Steve