Sunday January 29 at 2 pm, EST

 "Pianos and the Salon in the Eighteenth Century"

featuring Rebecca Cypess (Rutgers University) and Marcia Hadjimarkos ( France)

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With your hosts: Maria Rose and Yi-heng Yang

From our virtual 21st century fortepiano salon, we take a scintillating peek into the Salons of Europe in the 18th century. Renowned scholar and performer Rebecca Cypess will present a talk on "Musical Salon Practices and the Culture of Play in the 18th century" and share performances. Then internationally-acclaimed fortepianist and clavichordist Marcia Hadjimarkos will join us from Cluny (France) and perform French keyboard music that would have been familiar in French salons. As always, lively discussions will follow!

To watch the livestream, use one of these links: 

https://www.facebook.com/events/727679482013752

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoaWmwUhdVM

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In eighteenth-century Europe, salons featuring music served multiple purposes: they helped women, generally excluded from receiving a formal education, to gain access to knowledge and ideas; they fostered patronage of professional artists; and they served as liminal spaces that allowed women's ideas to move from the private to the public sphere. Perhaps most importantly, however, they were sites of conviviality and conversation, all facilitated by a sense of play. This ludic quality can be seen in salon games such as chess and proverbs, and it also manifests itself in musical practices. Often enacted on the spur of the moment and adapted to suit the needs and interests of the salon attendees, music functioned as another salon game--a puzzle waiting to be solved through wit, ease, and gracious sociability. (Rebecca Cypess)

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For more information on Rebecca Cypess: www.raritanplayers.org

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Performances by Marcia Hadjimarkos, on a square piano by Johannes Bätz:

- Mme de Villeblanche,Sonata no. 1 in c minor, 1782 

- Claude Balbastre, La Chanteloup

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For more information on Marcia Hadjimarkos:

https://www.marcia-hadjimarkos.com/en/

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