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Here I am. I'm Kath from Communications
and I'm here at the Recital Room
to talk to Professor David Rowland who's the Dean of Arts
and part of the Music Department
about this fab place which is the Recital Room.
So here we go.
David might play something for us.
David, can you play us a quick tune on that.
This is the clavichord, I gather.
Very nice. That looks quite difficult.
Is it a hard instrument to play or not too bad?
Once you get used to it it's all right.
It's very different to the piano.
You have to treat it with great care
but on the other hand you have to press quite hard.
Totally different sensation.
We can see a piano in the background there.
What else has the Recital Room got?
We've got a second clavichord,
bought in the early days of the Music Department.
We're about to get rid of that because this instrument
is a step up for us.
It's actually a copy of an historic instrument.
Very nice. Let's go to the harpsichord.
You can give us a few tunes on that.
This is quite hidden away at the OU, isn't it?
- Something to sit on. - That would be useful.
Who uses this room, David?
A range of people.
We use it for preparing course materials.
So we use it for recording in here.
We use it for seminars, for research days
and it gets used by external groups.
We had the British Clavichord Society in here last summer.
Okay, do you want to give us a tune?
Why has it got black keys and white sharps and flats?
I wish you hadn't asked me that.
I think the reason has to be the availability of raw materials
in the 18th century
because you often find this with 18th century instruments.
Black keys are made with hard wood
whereas the white keys are made with ivory.
It's just down to the availability...
Just economics not aesthetics.
Very nice.
Okay, let's have a little whizz round the rest of the room.
There's Lisa again. Hi Lisa.
Okay, David. Thanks very much for your time.
Okay, it's bye from me.