The hummingbird hawk-moth

When, on a summer's afternoon, we sit and relax in the garden near where a lavender plant is growing, we often see a lot of activity around the lavender flowers.

Hummingbird hawk-moth in action

Bumble bees are busy doing whatever bumble bees are doing, but a few weeks before the bumble bees become very active we notice some insects we had never seen before we moved to France.

Hummingbird hawk-moth

The insects I am talking about look like moths, and have brown wings with an orange edge. The animals hang stationary in mid-air in front of a lavender flower, and it seems like they are sucking some fluid from the plant. We are not equipped with any knowledge on the subject, and since we had observed that the thing could hang still by moving its wings with tremendous speed, we happily called it a humming-bird moth.

Hummingbird hawk-moth in action

Wikipedia, as in many cases, put us on the right track. The animal is called hummingbird hawk-moth (Macroglossum stellatarum), a small moth with a wing span of 2 inches and a very long tongue with which it sucks nectar from plants. Only after I started to experiment a bit with the shutter speed of my camera I managed to take some interesting pictures of the animal.

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Orient-Occident with Jordi Savall - Cluny

Cellier (ground floor) and Farinier (first floor) - Cluny

When we ordered tickets for the concert series "Les Grandes Heures de Cluny" there was a bit of confusion. According to the booklet with the program there were seven concerts; a season ticket for six concerts was € 125 for the best seats at € 25 pp, hence six concerts for the price of five. We either had to skip one concert, or pay extra (full price) for one more concert. We chose for the first option and decided to skip Mozart's Requiem. Strangely enough, when we ordered the season tickets via internet we were not given a choice of which six concerts we would like to attend.

The set of instruments - Farinier

We ordered the tickets anyway, deciding to clarify matters later. When we phoned the organisation they told us that there was a mistake in the program. One of the concerts was € 35, and not € 25 as all other concerts. On top of that, that particular concert was not part of the season ticket, hence we had to pay separately an extra € 35 for that concert. At the end of the day we had tickets for all six concerts of the series, including Mozart, as well as for the concert of Jordi Savall that was part of the series, but not quite.

Anouncement

When we arrived at the Farinier within the abbey grounds in Cluny the concert was completely sold out, which did not really surprise us. What however surprised us was the fact that the guy who was supposed to play the oud (Arab lute) played the qanûn (a sort of Arab harp) all evening. The hand-out program made it clear: the originally announced musicians had been replaced by the Turkish qanûn player Hakan Güngör and the Greek percussionist Dimitri Psonis. Savall played the rabâb (a kind of fiddle) and lire d'archet (a kind of viola da gamba).

The concert

The program consisted of a mixture of Eastern and Western (early) music, from amongst others North-Africa, Byzantium, Armenia, France, Italy, etc. It was fascinating to hear how the music of the various regions during or around the middle Ages had cross-fertilised and influenced each other. Apart from that it was simply very interesting and beautiful music, played by three virtuoso instrumentalists. It does not happen that often that a renowned musician like Jordi Savall gives a reasonably priced concert at spitting distance from our doorstep.

2016

Reason the more, as I said before, to keep a good eye on the future concerts in the series "Les Grandes Heures de Cluny"!

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