This was the period in which opera and oratorios were invented. The first opera was generally considered to have been written by Claudio Monteverdi in Venice in the 1620s. Heinrich Schutz is credited with writing one not long after that. The first English opera was written in the 1680s.
There are no opera halls in this time. We're building the first one in Magdeburg in 1634-5. These operas were basically staged in the largest rooms in noblemen's palaces. They were often done in concert style — standing in one place, no emotive acting, no costumes. If there was any scenery, it was very simple and wasn't changed during the performance.
The big opera voice was being developed in this time. Prior to Monteverdi, most voices were just used with whatever natural talent or facility existed in the singers. Up-timers will have something to teach the down-timers there, although the down-time preachers had learned how to project their voices without wearing them out. They had to; no p. a. systems or microphones existed before the Ring of Fire.
My personal belief is that opera in the New Time Line will sound a lot more like Rodgers and Hammerstein than like Verdi, Puccini, or Wagner; more like Broadway than Old Time Line high opera.
But I am convinced there will be a Ring cycle of opera in the New Time Line. Only it won't be Der Ring des Nibelungen, by Richard Wagner. Instead, it will be Der Ring des Frodo by some genius yet to be born.
Musicians-and actors-tend to be an irreverent and bawdy lot. And they look for humor in their music wherever they can find it. (When I called for a show of hands as to whether anyone knew Peter Schickele, a few hands went up. When I explained he's the alter ego of P. D. Q. Bach, I got more hands up.) And so the down-time musicians would have heard something like this.
My Bonnie Lass She Smelleth, from The Stoned Guest, Peter Schickele et al, put out by Vanguard Records, cd VMD6536. My clip was the first three verses.
There are enough people in Grantville with college training in music that I promise you that every single P.D.Q. Bach album produced before the Ring of Fire is there. And once the down-timer musicians discover this music, it will literally go viral. They will scarf this up, everywhere, and whether or not they dare play it for the patrons, they will play it for themselves.
One of the new instruments that will come back from the future is the harp. Now the concept of the harp isn't new to the down-timers. They have lap harps, and even some relatively large harps similar to the Tara harp. But the big modern concert harp will be something very new to them, and I suspect it will become pretty popular. And so, they might do things like this:
Prelude, from the Violin Partita No. 3, BWV 1006, Johann Sebastian Bach, by Caitrin Finch, from the album Crossing the Stone, put out by Odyssey.
(Here someone asked if there would have been an actual concert harp in Grantville. The answer is no, but there would have been photographs, descriptions, and perhaps some partial diagrams of the mechanism. It might have taken some experimentation to duplicate the concert harp, but it's within the down-timers capabilities.)
And many people can learn to play harp. If you can play piano or harpsichord, the skills transfer easily to harp. My wife and I have a friend who has played piano for decades, and a few years ago decided to take up harp. Her biggest problem in learning to play, she said, was that the strings are color-coded, but the colors don't match the colors she hears when she plays.
Moving on, think about what would happen when gypsies get ahold of modern instruments. You might get something like this:
Mundo Cocek, by Boban Markovic Orkestar, from the album Balkan Brass Fest, put out by Piranha Records, CD-PIR1790
And meanwhile, back in that plaza in Paris, you might hear something like this:
Hurt, by 2 Cellos, from the album 2 Cellos, put out by Sony.
Somewhere about here I played a clip as an example of another kind of thing the Germans might pick up on: German rap. (Unfortunately, I lost the link to the clip and haven't been able to find it again. But Google on German rap, and you'll find a lot of samples.)
Yeah, by 1660 I can see German kids out rapping on the street corners. And maybe even some doo-wop happening as well.
Following is a piece that I think the down-timers will be seriously affected by.
Fanfare for the Common Man, Aaron Copland, played by Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, from the album Copland: The Music of America, put out by Telarc, CD80339.
I don’t have any idea as to where they will jump off to from it. I just know they will.
And here is where I realized I was running out of time. I had to skip over six excerpts to get to the piece I was going to close with, which was an absolute must-hear item.
Before I played it, I encouraged people to go outside the hotel and listen to the street-drummers in downtown Chicago, and to go to YouTube and search street-drumming. I think that is something that the down-timers will take to, especially the idea that you can make percussion out of anything: pots, plastic buckets, boxes, whatever you can drag up and play.
(Someone asked about steel drum bands. I suspect they'll catch on.)
And now, the finale: in 1730 in a small hall in Edinburgh, Scotland, you might hear something like this:
Red Hot Chilli Pipers — scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the Smoke On The Water YouTube link.
Rock and roll bagpipes! How cool is that? (By The Red Hot Chilli Pipers. Check them out at www.redhotchillipipers.co.uk Buy their albums.)
That was the end of the presentation.
What's that? You want to hear the excerpts I had to skip?
You'll have to wait for next year.
David
Naval Armament and Armor, Part Two: Ready, Aim, Fire
In part 1, I provided an overview of how warships were armed in the seventeenth century and later in the old time line, and considered the choices between muzzle and breechloading, and smoothbore and rifling. I also explained how cannon were manufactured. Here, I look at how the guns were mounted, laid, sighted, and fired, and at their internal ballistics. I also review the propellant options.
Gun Mounts
There are two basic gun mounts. First, the cannon could be mounted on a mobile carriage which recoils by rolling or sliding. Secondly, it can be mounted on a fixed pivot on the bulkhead, or a pivotable turntable on the deck; the recoil force must then be absorbed by the ship structure.
Mobile carriage. The wrought iron guns of the Mary Rose (sunk 1545) were mounted on "wooden beds," said to resemble "hollowed tree trunks," and these were equipped with one pair of wheels. In contrast, her bronze guns were mounted on four-wheeled truck carriages. (Konstam, 40). The gun carriages of the Vasa were of the latter type.
When a gun fires, the Law of Conservation of Momentum applies. Momentum is mass times velocity; the backward momentum of the cannon must equal the sum of the forward momenta of the projectile and of the gases that escape out the muzzle. The cannon being a lot heavier than the projectile, the effect upon it is less dramatic, but still quite visible; the cannon recoils backward.
The recoil is arrested eventually as a result of friction (rolling or sliding), gravity (the deck was cambered so the backward movement was slightly uphill), and elastic tension (the carriage was fastened to the hull with ropes, "breeching," that stretched taut when the gun moved backward enough). If the ropes broke, you had the proverbial "loose cannon on deck." The distance of recoil would depend on the weight of the cannon and shot, the powder charge, the elevation of the gun, and the particulars of the restraint. A 24-6.5 fired with a six-pound charge at point blank elevation had a recoil of 9.4 feet. (Beauchant 21). On narrow-beamed ships, port guns could be staggered relative to those on starboard to allow more recoil room. (Ireland 47).