Accordions in a castle

 

 

The Château de Sédières is surrounded by 130 hectares of forest, lakes and rivers.

The castle is empty of period furniture, but it's a great venue for festivals, exhibitions and entertainment.

 

We visited an exhibit on the history of "accordéons", an instrument so very representative of  French music.  When I think of the accordion, I imagine soft café music and am transported to warm evenings on the Champs Élysées .....

It all started in Asia.

 

Accordions are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type, colloquially referred to as a squeezebox.  A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist.

Maugein is a big name in France, a specialist in accordion making, located in Tulle.

A name sometimes used to refer to an accordion is "piano à bretelles", which means piano with suspenders.  I think that one is very descriptive.

This is a very special accordion since it was used to accompany Edith Piaf, the little sparrow of French song.

This is a real accordion, but used as a prop and an advertisement, not played by a giant Frenchman with huge fingers.

Accordions are found in parts of Africa and French Polynesia.  Some accompany war chants.

 

 

We are looking forward to "Les Nuits de Nacre" coming to Tulle.  There will be accordion music in various venues for us to enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNCBt4jz3-k


This link to You Tube will bring you to about 52 minutes of French café music by Ann Redgewell.

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This is neither about accordions nor castles.  In the gift shop at Le Château de Sédières, I found this booklet called "Remèdes de bonne femme", which is all about the old remedies used during my grand-mother's time.  It is really informative!  Perhaps we should refer to this old knowledge more often and forget about getting antibiotics at the first sign of a sniffle.

 

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