Month: March 2016

Weekly Photo Challenge: One Love

LOve

Those of you who follow my blog will not be surprised at my interpretation of one love today.

Tuscan Reverie

For this inaugural Discover Challenge: Blogging the Senses, Cheri asks us publish a post that piques one of the five senses, hearing, sight, touch, smell, and taste, having found inspiration herself in an interview with medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel. Since we are free to “interpret this in any way, and in any format: prose, poetry, photography, audio, video,” and having been also inspired by Erik Kwakkel’s blog myself thanks to Cheri’s introduction, I thought how appropriate this would be to revisit the Abbey of St. Antimo, a former Benedictine Monastry in the commune of Montalcino in Tuscany, which I blogged about over two years ago.

St Antimo

The map is from a journal I kept during our Italian travels in 2000, and the entry for the 21st of April describes our visit to the Abbey that day. As you can read we took the bus from Siena to Montalcino and then walked the 10 kilometres to St. Antimo.

journal

The video is from the photographs I took during that memorable 10 kilometre walk through the magnificent Tuscan countryside. I hope your senses will be piqued as you enjoy the beauty of those Tuscan hills and listen to the Gregorian chant, “Haec Dies” from “Mysterium” a recording made in the Abbey in April 1995 by the five fathers of the Communita die Canonici Regolari di Sant’Antimo.

a little MOZ…ART

MozArt

delete accents – acrylic on canvas 36″x 47″

Color harmony and tone come together with a little piece of Mozart.

The story of the painting, which I painted a few years ago, is worth re-telling. It began when I was attempting to master Mozart’s Piano Sonata in C, K 330, (without much success I might add). I had obtained a copy of the music in a music sale and as I struggled to learn it I became more and more intrigued by all of the marginalia written by whoever had been my predecessor. I particularly enjoyed, and could relate to, the note written presumably by his or her music teacher, “breathe”. You will find the small section I used for the painting at the top of the page.

Sonata K330

For the completeness of this week’s Photo Challenge I thought I would search for a recording of the Sonata and found one by Deutsche Grammophon of Vladimir Horowitz in 1986, which was recorded in Moscow.

Why not follow along with the music and enjoy the mastery of one of the greatest pianists who has ever lived.

A Little Mozart iii