How Stands The Glass Around?

History sideblog; curated by @iamthemaestro History & music composition student. Musician, reenactor, interpreter. Possibly died back in 1778. Huzza!

[thebaffledcaptain]

For Shame, Ye Take No Care, Me Boys…

Queer. History and music composition student. Historical reenactor, interpreter, and musician of many trades. Tortured composer, aspiring dandy, redcoat fifer; my soul is stuck in 1778. Also found at @iamthemaestro, my main, and runner of @redcoatsuggestions.

My main interests being (taglist):

Anything and everything 18th century/Georgian era

The American War of Independence

Historical reenactment

British military history

Age of Sail

Folk music & field music

Classical music & music history in general

Historical fashion/military uniforms

The Flight of the Heron

Transcription, mostly of old whaling journals

My content:

Sometimes I ramble about history in a way that’s actually coherent and researched. You can find those posts here.

I play a lot of folk music.

I am not normal about reenactment.

I draw soldiers sometimes.

I also run a largely inconsistent informational series on 18th century folk/field music, known as Music of the Revolutionary Century. The audience is very niche (me), but I do dedicate research to the tunes’ histories however I can and usually talk some music theory, if you too have highly obscure interests.

Hope you decide to linger with me for some time in the past :)

Some miscellaneous information:

For reenactment purposes, I am a fifer for a the US-based 22nd (Cheshire) Regiment of Foot—if you want to know more please reach out! I would love to have more reenactment mutuals. I post about it frequently; I have a lot of regimental pride.

For this reason among others I tend to lean more toward the British history of the American Revolution. Not a British apologist but I frequently joke that I am a bit of a redcoat bastard. Please do not take me for a monarchist. I do not control the special interests.

As I've gained a following and posted more original content I've been kind of cleaning up this blog. At one point it was for anything vaguely history related but now it's pretty much just informational stuff. The vast majority of fandom and silly history stuff goes to my main.

Bigots can and will be blocked.

As always I am not a historian; I generally try not to post about anything I haven’t put research into or couldn’t provide sources for, for but I am not a professional, so take anything I say with a grain of salt and feel free to enlighten me if I might have gotten something wrong.

And lastly—please reach out if you want to talk! I am constantly looking for more people to talk history with, I'm just very bad at reaching out myself lol. I am by no means an expert but I love answering questions when I can just because it gives me an excuse to talk, and I would also love just nerding out with equally passionate individuals.

Your most hbl. and obt. svt.,

The Captain

[recolored-classics]

Lunar night (1899) by Ivan Aivazovsky

[venustapolis]

Walkers on an Avenue (Hubert Robert, 1733 - 1808)

[history-of-fashion]

1723 Charles-Étienne Geuslain - Portrait of the artist Nicolas de Largillière

(Louvre Museum)

[history-of-fashion]

1776 Dmitry Levitsky - Ekaterina Molchanova

(State Russian Museum)

[random-brushstrokes]

Kōno Michisei - Self-Portrait (1917)

Kohno Michisei, seen here at twenty-two, presents himself in a pose modeled on Western Renaissance master Albrecht Durer's (1471-1528) self-portrait produced in 1500. Between 1914 and 1924 a remarkable quantity of high-quality portraiture was produced by Japanese artists who blended Western and East Asian painting traditions. While some of these painters had first-hand knowledge of Western painting, most, like Michisei, culled their images from books and magazines. The young artist was raised in an environment filled with powerful iconic images. His father was a portrait photographer, an artist in both Japanese and Western modes, and an active member of the Russian Orthodox Church. These influences are readily apparent in this self-portrait. Michisei's perceptive understanding of classic Western images was based on constant perusal of his father's extensive library; a portrait's potential for psychological and spiritual impact was impressed on him through exposure to religious icons used in the Orthodox liturgy. (source)

[bizarreauhavre]

Vanitas (Memento Mori), bust carved in marble, Italy 18th century

[nancydrewwouldnever]

Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lady Worsley in Riding Habit, ca. 1779, oil/canvas (Harewood House, West Yorkshire)

[thebaffledcaptain]

hey! i have been following for a while and been loving listening to all the tunes you play, and i was wondering if you had any advice for someone who wants to get into playing folk music, preferably with other people? i have been playing guitar for 10 years but learning by ear and improvising (like a lot of folk tunes/instrumentalists seem to do) is not my strong suit...

Ah this is a great question! I’m honored I was the person you went to for it :) There are of course multiple aspects to this question so I’ll try to address them all as best I can.

I can vouch for the fact that the best way to learn folk music is definitely to play it with other people. This is the nature of folk music after all—it’s passed around, adopted, adapted, traditionally in very communal settings. I can’t tell you how many tunes in my repertoire have come from other people.

Of course, this begs the question of how to find these other people, which I admit can be a tricky one depending on your situation. I was lucky in that I initially fell in with my group at college, where we had a club specifically devoted to folk and traditional music. From there I’ve made multiple friends who sort of operate in different worlds of folk music—I’ve accompanied some of them to traditional Irish pub sessions, where they’ve learned and brought back a ton of new tunes for us to play independently, or been invited to contradances at local arts centers. Meanwhile, my preferred place is in the living history scene, where doing folk music at reenactments and at my current museum has introduced me to new friends as well as led to a number of gigs, but the music I play there is more restricted than stuff you would play at the average session. I can really only speak to these two facets of the folk music community (which is to say, the broadly “Irish” folk music world as well as British and early American 18th century music) so if you’re looking to do other sorts of music I’m not sure what advice I could give, but if you’re looking for a “session” sort of community I would first try and look into local pubs and bars and see if they might host regular sessions? Obviously it’s super location dependent, but a lot of Irish pubs will host regular (weekly or maybe bimonthly, for example) sessions open to the public. If you’re scared to jump in directly you could just show up to one, sans instrument, just to hang out and scope out the vibe and the people there. Other places that might have similar things going could be community centers or local arts centers like I mentioned, or perhaps if you have a local college (or are in school yourself) they might have public music events or organizations to look into. Finding and building a community is difficult, so I very much sympathize with that, and consider myself lucky that I basically happened to stumble into a good situation—I hope any of that might give you a place to start.

As for actually learning music, I think my first piece of advice would be to just listen to the sorts of music that you want to be playing—cast a wide net, listen to lots of things, build up sort of a mental “repertoire” even if you can’t necessarily play these tunes yourself—chances are, if you decide to show up to a session one day, they will eventually play a tune you recognize, which will help you be able to jump in!

Learning how to play and adapt to this music on the fly, as well as make creative decisions with it, is obviously a skill. It’s hard for tons of people and I would never call myself an expert either, so being intimidated or otherwise lost or frustrated is frankly a very reasonable response. And it will take time no matter what. As a fellow rhythm player, I think a good place to start is just by applying chords you know to tunes you know. I assume, having played guitar for so long, you definitely know your way around the instrument pretty well, so you’re probably already familiar with the concept! There are tons of tabs and chord sheets you can start with, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, but as for learning by ear, I’ll be the first to tell you that folk music is quite repetitive. If you look at enough tunes you’ll be able to start identifying chord patterns and applying them to tons and tons of individual melodies, and as time goes on, develop and embellish your own progressions as well. Learning these patterns in common keys is super helpful in being able to recognize them in tunes you hear. Again, it’s a skill that takes time, so the more you do it, the more you’ll start to feel comfortable with it.

If you’re venturing into improv, having a strong sense of chord structure will definitely help. If you’re interested in doing melodic stuff as well, I would work on slowly building your those skills by practicing individual melodies. There are tons of libraries of notated folk tunes—start with ones you know and look for written music or tabs. Thesession.com and Traditional Tune Archive are my favorite places for this!

I technically can’t speak exactly to your experience as I primarily do mandolin stuff and my guitar skills are quite rudimentary, but building up the separate skills of chord/rhythm work and melody will allow you to begin to combine them. After several years of becoming comfortable in my instrument I now think as myself as sort of “fluent” in it, in the sense that I don’t have to think about the chords I’m playing—I just sort of automatically know where they fit in the progression as well as in my fingers—so adding some simple melodic stuff on top of those chordal shapes is quite easy. But as I said, this came with years of practice, and I certainly wouldn’t even consider myself a “good” mandolinist (I’m totally self taught and pretty sure any professional would take one look at me and ask wtf I was doing), but it has allowed me to hold down the rhythm section for my non-rhythm friends, or jump in on a session in either rhythmic or melodic capacity, so I’d argue that’s the most important part! I’m a strong believer that you don’t have to do music the “correct” way as long as it’s right for you.

Hope this helped, and that it wasn’t too overwhelming LOL. Again, I’m no expert but I’m always happy to talk folk music!

(I also have generally switched to posting my musicking endeavors on my main @iamthemaestro if that’s something that interests you :) )

[ltwilliammowett]

Representation of Maritime Craft of the Various Nations in the World,” appeared in the June 1855 issue of Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion. The illustration presents a diverse array of sailing vessels and steamships from different maritime traditions, reflecting the global character of mid 19th century seafaring and ship design

[random-brushstrokes]

Theodor Philipsen - A road in Dyrehaven. Autumn (1889)

[ltwilliammowett]

Three Masted Ship by Johannes Christiaan Schotel, 1797 - 1838

Rijksmuseum - Amsterdam

[frostedmagnolias]

Faille & Patterned Silk Gown

c. 1880

Augusta Auctions

[hmshistoricallyinaccurate]

Trafalgar Battle Surgeon - drama - full film 50min

Gripping, action-packed, RTS Award-winning true story of the Battle of Trafalgar, through the eyes of Ship's Surgeon William Beatty, from be

Haven't seen anyone else mention this documentary on here. If you're into Nelson/ Age of Sail it's well worth a look.

It's a documentary/drama adaptation of William Beatty's first hand account of Trafalgar and the death of Nelson. It's pretty low budget, but the performances are really great and it gets quite emotional in places. I think it does a good job of capturing Beatty's personality.

Bonus points for casting someone who actually looks like Nelson.

[frostedmagnolias]

Two-Piece Ceremony Dress

c. 1898-1899

Purple silk velvet, chemical lace, silk organza

Pitti Palace

[misscromwellsmonocle]

Did You Ever Kill Anybody Father? (1883) by Frank Holl

[memecucker]

Invention of bread is weird bc it’s like some Neolithic ppl were like “hey you know that tall grass thing that’s sorta edible but not really how about we take it and grind it into a very very fine powder which is extra backbreaking right now bc the wheel won’t be invented for awhile and then we mix it with water and heat it up and you know what let’s also toss some mold in there just to see what happens”

[quoms]

there are a number of distinct steps though, each of which can be observed in isolation. “grind tough seeds to make them edible” is practiced with other foods besides grains (like acorns). the natural next step after that is to add water, which gives you porridge: a common ancient roman meal was puls, very similar to modern cream of wheat. once you have that you also have a simple dough, and baking it to preserve it is a logical experiment (as is baking some you forgot about and left out for a few days, just so you don’t waste it... voila, leavened bread)

there could have been, and probably was (though i’m not an archaeologist) a substantial time between each of these innovations. it’s not too hard to imagine people being chill with “grind seeds for soup, select plants for bigger seeds” for a good while

[quasi-normalcy]

Do you ever wonder how many amazing things are fated to go forever uninvented because each step necessary to invent them is a completely unintuitive thing to do?

[noctumsolis]

Okay, that's not how bread was invented. I wrote a potted history, I could try to dig that out if anyone is interested?

[quasi-normalcy]

Please do

[panecultus]

I'm putting this on my bread blog, because of course I am. Also tagging @appendingfic who I think expressed interest.

Tens of thousands of years ago people foraged and hunted for their food and ate whatever they could. Among their forage were wild cereals, which included the ancestors of modern cultivated wheat, barley and others.

People like sweet things. Grains are starchy, but if sprouted they start converting those starches to sugars, so people would've left grains in water to sprout. These sprouts are also easier to digest, thus more nutritious, which bestowed an invisible advantage on those sprouting their grains.

If grains are left in water too long, however, they begin to ferment. Alcohol is produced. People like alcohol.

In ancient Mesopotamia the fermented grains were experimented with, resulting in an early form of beer. The process of making that beer was quite complicated and involved a combination of sprouted and mashed grains.

People wanted beer all year round, but early beers did not have long shelf lives and the grain could only be harvested at certain times. So the ancient Mesopotamians invented a way of storing the ingredients for beer.

It was made of the grain mash, honey, dates and spices that were fermented to make beer. For storage, prior to fermentation, the mixture was baked dry, cut into smaller pieces and baked again to remove all water. This produced bapir, a product very much like biscotti, which could be stored for later rehydration and fermentation. Sometimes it was eaten instead.

I've made bapir, and I've eaten it. It is brittle but delicious. It's also a form of unleavened bread.

Bread was invented as a way to store the ingredients for beer, which was most likely a development from a chance discovery. Leavened bread (that is, with bubbles) may well have been discovered when a mixture like that for bapir was accidentally allowed to ferment before baking. Yeast is responsible for both alcohol production and leavening.

There's a lot more to it, in terms of the cultivation of grains and the development of milling, than I've written here. It's been a process of millennia to go from chewing sprouts to eating soft white bread like that pictured. But every step along the way was small and simple.

[quasi-normalcy]

I never would have guessed that beer pre-existed bread. I've always just assumed that beer was an accidental discovery by breadmakers.

[jenniferrpovey]

Nope, beer came first. Mead is also very old.

[headspace-hotel]

Thanks, ancient humans!

[thirtyknives]

Australian First Nations people developed their own bread making culture independent of the beer-base route. As far as I'm aware, pre colonial Australia had little to nothing by way of fermented drinks at all, so the likelihood of beer being part of the evolution of native breads is unlikely. Their breads, made from native grasses, are both leavened and unleavened. There's also different bread making practices using different grains, dependent on location - Australia is big and Indigenous culture over here is no more a monolith than it is anywhere else. Kamilaroi bread is different to Yuin bread, for example.

The colonization of Australia actively suppressed Indigenous knowledge, and creating an image of the idle wandering tribes was required to justify taking Aboriginal lands. This means a lot of the archeology of how First Nations people developed their breads has not just been lost but deliberately suppressed. The idea that they were settled enough to have ovens, let alone a bread-making tradition, is only now really being examined. I wouldn't be surprised if the grains-porridge-bread route was true for Aussie breads, though.

[sunspotpony]

People also are smart enough to observe nature and recognize the way the harsh heat of the summer sun dries things out quickly. They also are smart enough to see that dry things last longer. And that ground plants are easier to eat than whole, and also take up less space for the same amount of food. But the it’s loose and gets everywhere, so making them solid like clay with a little water or fruit juice would be reasonable.

I imagine some early forms of bread probably came from somebody putting some rudimentary pancake batter on a hot rock in the summer to let it dry, and the finding out it fucking slaps.

And if one thing works, the I imagine many things work similarly and probably made variations. People are astoundingly creative and observant especially when they don’t have a bunch of preconceived notions, when they’re bored, and when trying new things can potentially save lives.

@panecultus — in the tradition of bread making you researched, do you know if the practice pre or post dates the use of fire?

@thirtyknives — out of curiosity, do you know/are you willing to share offhand if Yuin bread or Kamilaroi bread predates fire usage?

If it’s in your sources already, I probably missed it. Reading is hard for me and my brain is a sieve. A mind like a steel trap that’s already been sprung. Apologies if redundant inquiries, and thank you.

[panecultus]

Oh it massively post-dates the use of fire. Humans have been using fire for perhaps as much as two million years (that is, since 2MYA (See link) whereas this bread tradition dates to only around ten thousand years ago (10kYA.)

Since the addition from @thirtyknives I've learnt that there are grindstones in Australia dated to sixty thousand years ago (60kYA) around the time humans first arrived there. Which is fantastic but also decidedly post-fire.

So we had both fire and grinding long before actual bread. This naturally leads to various breadmaking traditions around the world developing separately by building on those older technologies.