For the Love of the Viol - a talk by Dr Lucy Robinson

The Tithe Barn, Brecon Cathedral Close

Sunday 13 October at 10.30am

It was Castiglione (1528) who sold viol playing to European courts.  Mersenne (1636) believed the viol portrayed ‘the voice of the perfect orator’.  Charpentier, Marais, De la Guerre, Couperin and Rameau cherished the viol; from 1725 it metamorphosed into the popular pardessus. 

Dr Lucy Robinson is passionate about performing Baroque music on historically-accurate instruments, not only studying the techniques of the time but also exploring the environment in which it was written – even what the musicians read and ate. To this end she studied at York (BA), Cambridge (PhD entitled The Forquerays and the French Viol Tradition) and the Brussels Conservatoire, for which she was awarded a Churchill Travelling Fellowship to study with Wieland Kuijken. Lucy has subsequently performed in venues from the Wigmore Hall to Fez to the Sydney Opera House. Together with Andrew Wilson-Dickson, she hosts Marnaves Summer Baroque, a string summer school in France, which has a parallel emphasis on performers’ wellbeing.

Duration: 1 hour

Tickets: £10