Blog features innovative prose writings of the intersections between composers, their music, and selected works of art.
“A great owl watches from his tower in the red night. Two notes in golden irises dance like two pears. He takes an umbrella and puts on his hat. Then he closes his tower and dances in silence.”–Preciada Azancot Music as anti-revolution revolution. Music going nowhere, Lent et doloreux. A Gymnopedie or Gnossienne does not […]
Galileo turns his telescope outwards towards the heavens. Monteverdi turns his microscope inwards towards emotions. The background dark, the coat even darker, in Strozzi’s portrait. Monterverdi’s eyes probing, intense. His left hand rests on one of his innovative scores, his right hand touching its notes as if to explore his new world of sounds. Forget […]
Mars: Holst wrote Mars on the eve of WWI. Venus grabs Mars’ arm in Rubens’ painting, but she cannot hold him back. The muscular legs of Mars move forward as relentlessly as the 5/4 ostinato pattern in Holst’s Mars. All the strings in the orchestra march as one, striking their string with the wooden side […]
Beethoven’s funeral march plays as we stare into the eyes of Goya’s Third of May. A slow march in a minor key. A dotted rhythm to push as along as we grieve. The oboe and its sighs seem a solitary individual in the gathered crowd. Contrasts of light and dark, the church a shadow in […]