Renaissance Music at Lincoln Castle

I was in Lin­coln recent­ly for the glo­ri­ous Week­end at the Asy­lum Steam­punk Con­vivial (you can find a selec­tion of my pic­tures of that event here). Wan­der­ing around the cen­tre of Lin­coln as the event wound down on the Sun­day after­noon, I stum­bled across this group of musi­cians play­ing live in the heart of the old castle.

This video is very impromp­tu and hand-held – essen­tial­ly lit­tle more than a string­ing togeth­er of a few dif­fer­ent shots – but you can expe­ri­ence the atmos­phere of the per­for­mance (albeit with a touch of wind-noise from time to time).

Kudos to the City of Lin­coln Wait­es for their excel­lent play­ing and for the fact that they per­se­vered despite it being quite cool and breezy.

Instru­ments played include a vari­ety of per­cus­sion instru­ments; the sack­but (pre­de­ces­sor to the trom­bone); var­i­ous recorders; a rack­ett (the com­pact reed instru­ment played occa­sion­al­ly by one of the per­form­ers seat­ed on the step); a shawm or two (pre­de­ces­sor of the oboe); and a soprani­no rausch­pfeife shown below (played in some pieces by the woman on the right in the video), which has no mod­ern equiv­a­lent. It’s a capped reed instru­ment (like a bag­pipe chanter: your lips do not touch the reed as in mod­ern wood­winds) with a con­i­cal bore; it’s a rel­a­tive of the crumhorn but a good deal loud­er and more dif­fi­cult to play (as it eas­i­ly overblows).

Soprani­no Rausch­pfeife with cap removed (Wiki­Me­dia Commons)

Apart from the recorders this would prob­a­bly have been described as a “loud band”, play­ing the kind of instru­ments you would expect to hear out­doors at pub­lic events.

Post­script

I heard today (6 Octo­ber)  from Al Gar­rod, the Mas­ter of the City of Lin­coln Wait­es – the name of the band play­ing in this video. Al is the sack­but play­er. Do please vis­it their site and if you get the chance to hear them, I rec­om­mend them highly.