Singing around the Table
professional direction.
voice training.
technique.
history.
listening & tuning with the Streichrohr.
It was quite commonplace to sit around a table playing music and/or singing, until well into the 1800s as the frontal positioning of instrumentalists and singers in concert halls became the norm...
Giorgio Vasari (1511- 1574) about the Carro della morte by Piero di Cosimo:
„The trionfo, pulled by oxen, was a very large carro, black all over and painted with the bones of the dead and with white crosses. (...) In every place that the trionfo stopped [to allow its riders] to sing, (...) These figures of the dead, to the sound of certain muted trumpets, rose up half-way out of the tombs and, sitting on them, sang with a hoarse and dead tone and a music full of melancholy that most noble canzone still renowned today, 'Dolor, pianto e penitenzia'."
...Still in some traditional music people gather around the table to play their instruments and to sing.
from Aufzeichnungen aus Georgien [Notes from Georgia] by Clemens Eich:
“We drank something to say goodbye to the village where the president was born.
The old man placed the wine carafe on the damp grass and grabbed into the pocket of his trouser.
It was a dreadful dagger like out of an old oriental fairy tale, which he pulled out of a silver sheath.
The dagger had a golden hilt with jewels, a piece of jewelry as if it would have been made for a woman, (...)
He grasped the hilt and pulled out the blade. Holding the dagger in one hand, he pulled me up to him and embraced me with such unexpected power. The old man let go of me. Without words he turned around and went back in to the house.”