New Release!
Amanda’s debut album, Music for French Kings, was recorded at Top Chapel, Derbyshire (UK) in August 2021 and released on 7 October 2022. It contains hitherto unrecorded works for Musette, accompanied by baroque cello and harpsichord. You can buy it here and download the full, reference, booklet notes here.
Musette on the BBC
Amanda Babington talks to Lucie Skeaping for the Early Music Show
Online Concert & Talk!
Amanda: I was really happy to be invited recently to talk to the Alliance Française de Manchester about the Musette. You can watch the concert/talk below. Enjoy! #virtualtravelswithmymusette
New Release!
N. Chédeville, Les Impromptus de Fontainebleau, Jean-Pierre Van Hees & Pieterjan Van Kerckhoven
Michael Muskett on Musette
Thanks to Francis Wood for sharing this fascinating short broadcast.
Alan Kloatr – Another important figure of 20th Century Musette
Alan Kloatr was one of the early pioneers in making and playing the Musette. Of Breton origin and with a passion for Celtic music, he took an interest in the Musette in the late 1970s. Having obtained permission from L’Ancien Musée Instrumental at the Paris Conservatoire, rue de Madrid (a museum which was later transferred to La Villette), to be able to examine some musettes, he drew plans. By around 1980-81 he had made two prototypes of musettes from these plans, the first using the workshop of Joseph Ruols, in the Auvergne, the second with Fanch Gourves, a maker of Scottish pipes in Lorient, Brittany. Alan played this Gourves musette at the “Interceltic Festival of 1982” and we are hugely lucky to have a recording of this, courtesy of Dominique Paris.
Alan didn’t read music, unfortunately, and he gave up the musette to focus exclusively on the Celtic music of Ireland, Brittany and Scotland. But it is fascinating to hear the fruits of his important work at this early stage in the renaissance of the musette.
Alan died in 2018 but his facebook page is still live and can be seen here: https://www.facebook.com/alan.kloatr
Thanks to Jean Claude Compagnon and Dominique Paris for this information.
Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Musette…or one of them at least!
There are two Musettes in existence that purportedly belonged to Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie). Amanda is currently researching what repertoire Charles Edward might have played and so was thrilled to be able to visit this fine specimen of a Musette, in the West Highland Museum in Fort William. Thanks must go to the Museum for allowing her to take and share these images.
Amanda is hoping to publish her findings as an article as soon as lockdown allows her to visit one final archive. Keep checking back here for publication details. And see below for a link to a research seminar she gave in January 2021 on some of her findings.
Here is a link to a research seminar on the topic of what Bonnie Prince Charlie might have played on his musette. Given by Amanda at the University of Aberdeen in January 2021. Please excuse the sound quality. And for some reason the embedded sound clips didn’t record, hence the odd silences. https://abdn.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=eb35d573-bc50-4824-a284-acbe014e3a09
Bibliographie sur la Musette – Florence Getreau
Here at The Musette Society we are great believers in sharing our work. And so we are really grateful to Florence Getreau for allowing us to share her bibliography of scholarly work concerning musette. This is the most up to date resource of this kind and will be useful to anyone researching anything to do with musette. We are also happy to see that Florence’s book, Voir la Musique, has now been published in China. Felicitations et merci beaucoup Florence!
The Musette Society 