It seems as inevitable as bell bot­toms and shoul­der-wide col­lars that Ste­vie Nicks would trans­form into the New Age priest­ess who greet­ed the 70s with a wave of a bil­lowy, shawl-draped arm. “It makes sense,” Bill DeMain writes at Clas­sic Rock, that her “sig­na­ture song was inspired by a kind of ancient mag­ic” of the kind that every­body was get­ting into. That song, “Rhi­an­non,” takes its name from “an old Welsh witch,” as Nicks would often announce onstage. Dur­ing Fleet­wood Mac’s Nicks/Buckingham hey­day, Nicks embod­ied the char­ac­ter as though pos­sessed, her per­for­mances of the song “like an exor­cism,” Mick Fleet­wood recalled.

The sto­ry of how “Rhi­an­non” came to be, how­ev­er, is not as straight­for­ward as Nicks’ reach­ing into the pages of the Mabino­gion, the Welsh prose cycle in which Rhi­an­non first appears. The name came to her sev­er­al steps removed from its myth­i­cal ori­gins, from a nov­el by Mary Leader called Tri­ad.

“It was just a stu­pid lit­tle paper­back that I found some­where at somebody’s house,” she recalls of the uncan­ny 1974 com­po­si­tion. “And it was all about this girl who becomes pos­sessed by a spir­it named Rhi­an­non. I read the book, but I was so tak­en with that name that I thought: ‘I’ve got to write some­thing about this.’ So I sat down at the piano and start­ed this song about a woman that was all involved with these birds and mag­ic.”

“I come to find out,” she says, “after I’ve writ­ten the song, that in fact Rhi­an­non was the god­dess of steeds, mak­er of birds.” The per­fect anthem for a singer on the thresh­old of turn­ing the already famous Fleet­wood Mac into one of the biggest rock bands in the world. They were in a kind of wilder­ness peri­od, hav­ing fired long­time gui­tarist and musi­cal linch­pin Dan­ny Kir­wan and lost gui­tarist Bob Welch. When Lind­say Buck­ing­ham, his replace­ment, insist­ed that Nicks join with him, she brought the song “about an old Welsh witch” along with the pair’s col­lec­tion of shawls, capes, and kimonos.

You can learn more about the myths of the Mabino­gion, the old­est known prose sto­ries in Britain, in the Poly­phon­ic video above. The col­lec­tion inspired the epic fan­tasies of J.R.R. Tolkien, and by proxy the epic fan­tasies of Led Zep­pelin and every heavy met­al band there­after. It also fea­tures in Lloyd Alexander’s 1960’s fan­ta­sy series Chron­i­cles of Pry­dain (lat­er poor­ly adapt­ed in Disney’s The Black Caul­dron). The pop cul­ture of the 70s had been infused with ancient Welsh before Rhi­an­non came along, but the god­dess her­self seemed to belong exclu­sive­ly to Ste­vie Nicks, who intu­it­ed a deep mag­ic in the music of her ancient name.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Fleet­wood Mac Makes A Song: A Video Essay Explor­ing the “Son­ic Paint­ings” on the Clas­sic Album, Rumours

Ste­vie Nicks “Shows Us How to Kick Ass in High-Heeled Boots” in a 1983 Women’s Self Defense Man­u­al

When Lucy Law­less Imper­son­at­ed Ste­vie Nicks & Imag­ined Her as the Own­er of a Bad Tex-Mex Restau­rant: A Cult Clas­sic SNL Skit

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

We could say that the music of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach tran­scends instru­men­ta­tion. Wendy Car­los did a great deal to prove that with her 1968 album Switched-On Bach, com­posed entire­ly (and labo­ri­ous­ly) on an ear­ly Moog syn­the­siz­er. Despite its con­tro­ver­sial union of long-revered com­po­si­tions with prac­ti­cal­ly untest­ed musi­cal tech­nol­o­gy, that project won high praise, not least from as famed an inter­preter of Bach as Glenn Gould. Here at Open Cul­ture we’ve fea­tured many of Gould’s own per­for­mances of Bach: of the Key­board Con­cer­to No. 1 in D minor in his 1960 U.S. tele­vi­sion debut, of the can­ta­ta BWV 54 on a 1962 CBC spe­cial, of The Art of Fugue and the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions as played toward the end of his life in the ear­ly 1980s.

Going back to 1959, we find a 27-year-old Gould play­ing Bach in a Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da doc­u­men­tary, and on “the piano he favors above all oth­ers for prac­tic­ing: a 70-year-old Chick­er­ing with a res­o­nant, harp­si­chord qual­i­ty recall­ing the instru­ments of the time of Bach.” But to tru­ly hear Bach’s music as Bach him­self would have heard it, you need to bring out those very same instru­ments.

That’s the man­date of San Fran­cis­co’s Voic­es of Music, an ensem­ble ded­i­cat­ed to “renais­sance and baroque music, draw­ing upon the many and var­ied sources for his­tor­i­cal per­for­mance prac­tice.” We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured their per­for­mances of Pachel­bel’s Canon and Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons on orig­i­nal instru­ments; more recent­ly they’ve put togeth­er a Youtube playlist of their orig­i­nal-instru­ment per­for­mances of Bach.

The ten selec­tions on Voic­es of Music’s Bach playlist include the Cel­lo Suite No. 2 in D Minor BWV 1008, Alle­mande and Courante played on the baroque cel­lo by Eva Lymen­stull; the Arioso from Can­ta­ta 156 (Sin­fo­nia) with Marc Schachman on the baroque oboe; the Bran­den­burg Con­cer­to No. 6 in B Flat Major BWV 1051 played by Kati Kyme and Eliz­a­beth Blu­men­stock on baroque vio­la (vio­le da brac­cio), Elis­a­beth Reed and William Skeen on the vio­la da gam­ba, Tanya Tomkins on the baroque cel­lo, Far­ley Pearce on the vio­lone, and Han­neke van Proos­dij on the harp­si­chord; and the Sonata No. 3 in C Major for baroque vio­lin BWV 1005 inter­pret­ed by August and Georgina McK­ay Lodge, the for­mer play­ing the baroque vio­lin and the lat­ter read­ing Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s poem “Hymn to Time.”

This isn’t the first time the work of Le Guin, now remem­bered as an influ­en­tial author of sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy lit­er­a­ture, has been set to music. Just after her death in 2018 we fea­tured Rigel 9, the space rock opera she cre­at­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with avant-garde com­pos­er David Bed­ford in 1985. If Le Guin’s words suit­ed a tale of the future told with high-tech New Wave sounds, they suit an acoustic return to the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry just as well.

This is a ver­sa­til­i­ty much like Bach’s own, which has guar­an­teed that, more than 250 years after his death, his music retains its pow­er and depth whether expressed through a piano, a syn­the­siz­er, or indeed the instru­ments of his day — not that the play­ers of per­cus­sion tubes or wine glass­es have done him great injus­tice either.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch J.S. Bach’s “Air on the G String” Played on the Actu­al Instru­ments from His Time

Musi­cians Play Bach on the Octo­bass, the Gar­gan­tu­an String Instru­ment Invent­ed in 1850

Hear the Sounds of the Actu­al Instru­ments for Which Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Han­del Orig­i­nal­ly Com­posed Their Music

The Authen­tic Pachelbel’s Canon: Watch a Per­for­mance Based on the Orig­i­nal Man­u­script & Played with Orig­i­nal 17th-Cen­tu­ry Instru­ments

The Authen­tic Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons: Watch a Per­for­mance Based on Orig­i­nal Man­u­scripts & Played with 18th-Cen­tu­ry Instru­ments

All of Bach for Free! New Site Will Put Per­for­mances of 1080 Bach Com­po­si­tions Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

What makes one arti­san stand out in a field of high­ly skilled com­peti­tors? When we think of clas­si­cal instru­ments, we think of the Stradi­vari fam­i­ly, famed mak­ers of vio­lins, vio­las, cel­los, and oth­er instru­ments. But the Stradi­var­ius’ suc­cess may owe as much to chance as to supe­ri­or crafts­man­ship. A Texas A&M pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of bio­chem­istry, Joseph Nagy­vary (also a vio­lin­ist and vio­lin mak­er), dis­cov­ered that Stradi­var­ius instru­ments were soaked in chem­i­cals “to pro­tect them from a worm infes­ta­tion that was sweep­ing through Italy in the 1700s.”

“By pure acci­dent,” this method of pest con­trol, Texas A&M Today writes, had “the unin­tend­ed result of pro­duc­ing the unique sounds that have been almost impos­si­ble to dupli­cate in the past 400 years.”

So, there you have it, the secret of the Stradi­var­ius sound: borax and brine. There’s more to it than that, of course, but the chem­i­cal bath advan­tage makes for a fas­ci­nat­ing bit of triv­ia. To the ear, it mat­ters lit­tle whether a sound is the result of acci­dent, inten­tion, or some mea­sure of the two.

If it sounds sweet, it is, and Stradi­var­ius instru­ments (in playable con­di­tion, any­way) sound like the voic­es of angels. Hap­pi­ly, the Stradi­var­ius exper­i­ment was repeat­able hun­dreds of times, and not only for the famed orches­tral instru­ments with which we’re famil­iar, if only by rep­u­ta­tion. The fam­i­ly made around 1000 instru­ments, 960 of which are vio­lins. They also made a cou­ple hand­fuls of gui­tars, five of which exist in com­plete form. These are:

• The ‘Sabionari’ (1679)
• The ‘Gius­tini­ani’ (1681)
• The ‘Hill’ (1688)
• The ‘Rawl­ings’ (1700)
• The ‘Vuil­laume’ (1711?)

The first, and ear­li­est of these instru­ments, the so-called Sabionari, was made by Anto­nio Stradi­vari him­self and hap­pens to be the only playable gui­tar of the five, due to a restora­tion by three mas­ter luthiers. All of the Stradi­vari gui­tars are ten-string (five-course) instru­ments, with dou­bled notes like a mod­ern 12-string gui­tar. But, “as with all Stradi­vari instru­ments,” The Strad points out, “the ‘Sabionari’ was mod­ern­ized,” con­vert­ed to six-string in a process that sounds espe­cial­ly vio­lent in rela­tion to what we now view as a pre­cious muse­um piece (espe­cial­ly as Andrés Segovia signed the gui­tar in 1948).

In the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry, Ital­ian luthi­er Giuseppe Mar­conci­ni “changed the neck, peg­head and bridge, and added new lin­ings and braces.” The orig­i­nal parts he removed were long gone, so restor­ers had to fit new ones to the body. Curi­ous­ly, Marconcini’s 150-year-old parts were “infest­ed by wood­worm,” but “the insects spared the orig­i­nal sound­board and brac­ing wood by Stradi­vari.” Effec­tive pest con­trol not only pre­served the wood; it also con­tributed to the sound we hear above in these many videos fea­tur­ing the Sabionari, with play­ers Krish­na­sol Jimenéz, Ugo Nas­ruc­ci, and Rolf Lisl­e­vand, who plays a live­ly Taran­tel­la below and gives us a taste of how the instru­ment was like­ly used to accom­pa­ny dances.

Where it was once “extreme­ly rare” to hear the sound of a Baroque gui­tar, we can now all, thanks to the inter­net, enjoy Stradi­var­ius gui­tar per­for­mances. You can see many more here, and learn much more about the 1679 gui­tar itself, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Musi­cian Plays the Last Stradi­var­ius Gui­tar in the World, the “Sabionari” Made in 1679

What Makes the Stradi­var­ius Spe­cial? It Was Designed to Sound Like a Female Sopra­no Voice, With Notes Sound­ing Like Vow­els, Says Researcher

Why Stradi­var­ius Vio­lins Are Worth Mil­lions

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness