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Instruments of the Baroque Period

For the holiday season, Jeanette Sorrel conducts the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, Apollo's Fire, in a performance of Bach's Christmas Oratorio. Each day this week, Performance Today is presenting the oratorio in separate cantatas, the same way that Bach performed it in the 1730s.

Taking its name from the classical god of music and the sun, Apollo's Fire is dedicated to the performance of 17th and 18th century music on period instruments. The trumpets and drums that open the third cantata are Baroque models – valveless trumpets and low-tech timpani.

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