Professor, Poet, Prose Writer, Tennis Player

Month: March 2025

John Dowland’s Lute and Holbein’s The Ambassadors

Post author By David Linebarger
Post date March 20, 2025
2 Comments on John Dowland’s Lute and Holbein’s The Ambassadors

Hans Holbein, Detail of Globe, Lute, and Book from "The Ambassadors," taken from Wikimedia Commons.

In Holbein’s painting a brilliantly foreshortened lute. One string is broken, hinting at the discord between Catholic and Protestant faiths. Five million would die in those wars. A generation later, the Catholic John Dowland, the most famous lutenist in history, could not get a job in Queen Elizabeth’s court. When I was a young man […]

Composers as Works of Art

Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez (Adagio) and Picasso’s Guernica

Post author By David Linebarger
Post date March 10, 2025
4 Comments on Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez (Adagio) and Picasso’s Guernica

A tiled wall in Gernika after the Pablo Picasso painting "Guernica." Image from wikimedia commons.

Music as fragile as a butterfly and as precise as a matador’s pass. A minor chord, or a chord spiced with dissonance, on a strummed guitar. An English horn weaves what Rodrigo wept in his piano night of lost children.* (Again and again his wife, Victoria, reports.) A solo guitar takes over the lament, adds […]