La Calinda

Yevgeny Huxtable is giving his annual Seven Dials Music Talk at the Old Chapel Arts Centre. He reads extracts from the Syntagma Musicum by Michael Praetorius. In this work, the composer described the claviorganum (also known as the claviorgan, or organised piano) which is a combination of harpsichord and organ (and has nothing to do with the French surreal writer Boris Vian). Its origin is uncertain, though a number of "virgynalls with regals" are mentioned in the inventories of Henry VIII. However in the middle of the talk, a hurricane wind sweeps away the rear extension roof of the Centre, and the audience takes shelter in McGonagall’s Writer’s Café where Huxtable performs a piano arrangement of La Calinda by Delius.