Episode 9: A dreadful hullaballoo
What should a military band actually look like?
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Category: Podcast
Episode 8: The bandmaster who had no authority
How can someone be held responsible for a band’s success while having little authority over the people and resources needed to achieve it?
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Episode 7: The freelance musicians who drove the army mad
How do you build an excellent musical organisation when its musicians are constantly coming and going?
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Episode 6: Why Good Bands Need Good Systems
For Frédéric Berr, writing in 1838, good bands did not appear by accident.
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Episode 5: Why do so many cultures invent the same instruments?
Why do cultures separated by oceans, deserts, and thousands of years so often create remarkably similar musical instruments?
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Episode 4: The Strange Story of the Bone Flute
This episode examines historical accounts of flutes fashioned from human and animal bones and asks what these extraordinary objects can tell us about the people who created them.
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Episode 3: Can Musical Instruments Reveal Human Migration?
Can a musical instrument become evidence of human movement?
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Episode 2: Why Do Bagpipes Exist All Over the World?
When most people hear the word “bagpipe,” they immediately think of Scotland. But the bagpipe is not only Scottish. Versions of the instrument appear across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Iran, India, and beyond.
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Episode 1: What was the first musical instrument?
In this opening episode of The Musical Archeologist, Craig Dabelstein explores a question raised by the Belgian musicologist Ernest Closson in L’Instrument de musique.
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