Wonder and Yearning

Hello, Music Lover,
I guess it's been a contemplative week. The first square I finished was of "Fare Thee Well, Love" by the Rankin Family. What is it about an octave jump that makes the nerves in one's spine go "twang"? Sometimes it is just achingly nostalgic and the Rankins do a superb job of it in their gentle and unaffected way.

This is for Thelma, who used to often visit a friend for a drink before he passed away in 2004. The first line of the chorus is "So I'll drink today, love", but sorry, Thelma, somehow I just couldn't put a glass of wine in the hand of the man waving goodbye. It was just a little like he was then going to turn and get back to the party on the dock, when from the song you don't get the impression that he has anything to celebrate, and he is also much too nice to go and drown his miseries either. But I put in the mountains that are referred to in the text!

The other piece I have just finished also has a kind of nostalgia - the second movement from Gerald Finizi's "Dies Natalis". A bit of whiplash, I guess, from the Maritimes to England, and from a family-based folk song to a "classical" tenor solo. But they have a lot in common too.

This was requested by our son Will, who is a tenor and sings professionally, although does not do solo work. What really grabs Will about this piece is the text, from 17th century poet Thomas Traherne, which he told me makes him wonder at the greatness of the universe and its innocence, the innocence that we all have on our "day of birth". Here is some of the text from the last movement, the Salutation:

These little limbs, these eyes and hands which here I find, This panting heart wherewith my life begins; Where have ye been? Behind what curtain were ye from me hid so long? Where was, in what abyss, my new-made tongue? ........  A gift from God I take, the earth, the seas, the light, the lofty skies, The sun and stars are mine: if these I prize.

I was reminded of two things when I was designing this square. Do you remember 2001: A Space Odyssey? I am sure that somewhere in that there was an image of an unborn foetus displayed again an image of space, and I vaguely remember it was near the end somewhere and I recall it was supposed to have some deep meaning although I couldn't quite grasp it.

The second thing it reminded me of was the supposedly true story of a 4 year old who wanted to spend some private, unsupervised time with his newborn sibling. The parents were nervous about this, but decided to allow the boy into the nursery on his own. They stayed to peek through the slightly open door as the boy approached the crib, and introduced himself. The he whispered to the baby: “Please could you remind me what God is like – I forget!” Holding my first grandchild Max for the first time (that's his ultrasound photo you are looking at) also brought that story to mind. New babies are indeed a miracle - to paraphrase Traherne, "the infancy of a sublime and celestial greatness".

Talk to you later,
Susan

  

Boy Sopranos and Boyish Men

Hello, Music Lovers!

What better way to start the day than with the pure voice of a boy soprano hitting a high G in an English cathedral or college chapel? Sharon has requested this, for her son Geoff, the second part of Mendelssohn's "Hear my Prayer" - particularly the solo " O for the wings, the wings of a dove! Far away would I rove . . ." I lucked out finding a photograph of a white dove in flight, seen from above and from from the back. Couldn't you just crawl on that back and be lifted aloft and go to a place where there are no problems and no one is asking you to do something!

Or - you could go to live with your friends the Beatles, and "sail into the sun" beneath the waves. The water is one of Kathy's brilliant fabric choices, and I painted the yellow submarine after the image on the old album cover. Remember it? What were they thinking, when they recorded this song?

And now for something completely different. Chosen not only because we like the music, but also because Kathy brought over a UFO (unfinished object) which involved this wonderful Japanese-inspired fabric. 

My children were involved in a production of The Mikado at school. Our daughter played and sang the role of Katisha, and I will never forget her entrance. The make-up lady had done a brilliant job of making her look really crabby, and she jumped onto the stage in such a jealous-looking rage everyone in the audience shrank back in their seats with a gasp. It was a wonderful production, and as silly as most of the G&S operettas! 

That reminds me - you have a chance to be entertained by this silliness in the upcoming concert performance of The Mikado at the Elora Festival. It's on August 3rd in the Gambrel Barn, and Jean Stilwell is playing Katisha (well, of course that's my favourite part!) David Curry is Nanki-Poo, and Michael Cressman plays the Mikado. See you there!

And then, from another Japanese print, how could we not include one of the most often performed operas of all time, Madama Butterfly. Another Japanese inspired print which actually included dragonflies, not butterflies. But it also happened to include a shade of green and something very close to our coral colour. So using Setacolor paints, I changed the dragonfly into a butterfly. Maybe it's a cop-out, just doing a play on the name, and not focusing on the music, but I wanted you to be reminded of it instantly.

We've got four more squares in the works, but they all involve hand-stitching. Maybe there'll be something good on TV tonight!

See you soon,

Susan

From Cesar Franck to Elton John

Hello, Music Lover,
Four new squares for you. Two pieces of music are very familiar, and two I'd never heard of before! First of all, Panis Angelicus, which has been requested by Sharon, for Kay. I have loved this piece since I was a small girl, although I've never sung it myself. So, how do you depict angelic bread? I have painted and drawn angels before and I always wondered how their wings actually work and how they connect to their spines. It's not like birds, or bats, because they have wings instead of arms, but angels have arms as well. And how do you operate them separately from your arms? However they do it, they need arms if they are going to carry bread around!

So, when in doubt, use someone else's idea of an angel, and here it is: a bronze angel statue, perhaps just alighting from the skies with her precious armful of heavenly baguettes. I allowed myself a little metallic paint for this one - Setacolor for fabrics, by Pebeo. The sky fabric came like that - an inspired choice, don't you think?!

It was Kathy who decided to do a song by Elton John, and she chose Tiny Dancer. I just love this image, which she has carefully built using parts of a fabric that says calm seas, so there is a terrific shadow of the dancer in the reflection on the wet sand. I must look up this song and give it a listen.

And now for something a little different. Do you remember Cabaret? The first time I heard Joel Grey singing "Money, money, money, money", I was reminded how musicals just get it right sometimes. It's such a truism that money makes the world go around that it's almost boring. But the song makes it funny and entertaining and dark all at the same time. And the lyrics are so clever as well.

My husband travels a lot in Africa, so he has a collection of small bills that are not worth very much at all. As it happens, he had several that happened to be in our 35th anniversary colours of coral and emerald green, so of course I had to use them. I wanted to put one of the new $50 bills in as well, for Canadian content, but would you believe that if you scan it or photocopy it, it WILL NOT print! Of course this must have something to do with preventing counterfeit notes, but it was spooky - and one of the messages I got from the two printers I tried said something about the pixels being scrambled or something. What incredible technology we have now.

Anyway, here is my piece. None of the bills is complete, so there is no point in trying to print and spend them! Love the elephant and the rhino, and yes, I did have to check that the world is going around the right way.

The last piece was vaguely familiar to me, but it was a treat to listen to it properly. What a ghostly piece by Debussy: La Cathedral Englutie (the Submerged Cathedral). This was also printed on a laser printer. First I found a photograph of a ruined English cathedral. Then I de-saturated it (in Preview, actually - I didn't even have to open Photoshop) and bumped up the contrast to get rid of any detail in the sky, and then I printed it on a commercial fabric with an underwater pattern. There was some touch-up painting required so it didn't look like a cardboard cut-out glued onto the outside of an aquarium, and I darkened some of the solid area with a Sharpie to add more weight to the ruins. And then in went lots of tiny Nemo-type clown fish to help the building look huge.

Well, that's it for the moment. I am still thinking of how I am going to do Adagio for Strings. Sometimes you just have to let them percolate. . . . 

Happy coffee time!

Susan

Four New Squares

Hello Music Lover,
Kathy and I got together yesterday, and by the end of the day, we had completed four new squares!

Kathy had brought with her a work-in-progress square, "Here Comes the Sun". Afterwards we decided that the order of colours at a sunset weren't quite right, so we changed them, and then for good measure we added some crazy quilt-like stitches.

Thinking of the Beatles made me all nostalgic for some of the greatest songs of all time. So - from "A Hard Day's Night", right in the middle of the Sixties, is another great hit by Paul McCartney.

I'm not going to give you a title for this one - I'll let you figure it out for yourself!

Rubber Soul came out when I was living in London, and "Nowhere Man" was instantly singable. It is probably the first song I figured out the chords for the first time I played it on my guitar!

But I think this one is the best of the day's efforts. Both Kathy and I have sung Stanford's "The Bluebird"and I think this interpretation by Kathy beautifully captures the clear soprano voice singing "blue in blue"as the bird sees his reflection in the water below. Great one, Kathy!

Well, that's all for now. Back to the studio to tackle something without words - something a little dark and so poignant: Barber's Adagio for Strings.

Take care!

Susan

New Thought - Doodle into your Square

Hello Music Lover,
One of the greatest pieces of music of all time has to be the intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana. This gorgeous melody comes out of nowhere and as I recall from seeing an English National Opera production of "Cav and Pag" in London some 30 years ago, it plays over an empty stage when all the happenings are going on (offstage) in the village hall. So it's full of mystery before it even begins.

But, how do you put that into something visual? In the end I decided that it had to be about something convoluted happening in the middle of something. Driving two solitudes apart. The opera is about broken relationships and hearts (of course - what else?); boy meets girl, boy gets engaged to girl, girl marries another boy when boy#1 is away, boy#2 comes back and takes up with girl #2, girl #1 gets jealous and then has an affair with boy#1). Etc. I decided to use a violet blue and the light coral to represent the boys and the girls.

Just to review - that is within the colour parameters. I am still sticking to a colour scheme that involves emerald green and coral. I have just split the green into yellow green, blue green and blue violet, to make a neat kite tetrad. The square still needs to blend with the other 143 squares in the quilt.

Regarding the central shape with the doodling - a friend has introduced me to Zentangling. This is a meditative doodling technique invented by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas, and it is copyrighted. There are a couple of demos on YouTube which I enjoyed, and you may wish to find a local trained instructor to teach you how to do it properly. But I thought it suited the mood, and I didn't feel like scouring quilt fabric shops looking for just the right print, in my colour scheme. I needed a small patch that says "tangled", "boy/girl", "rural", "Art Nouveau-ish" etc. Easier to just draw it!

So, this is the result:

The other square I have just finished is the Rite of Spring by Stravinsky. I have never seen the ballet, but it was fascinating researching it, and discovering that the first production was done (1913) at the same time that the world was still adjusting to Picasso's shocking Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907). Using cubism on the human figure - it must have caused quite a stir.

That first production was choreographed by Diaghelev and Nijinsky danced in it. The sets were designed by Roerich. You have to look him up - the sets will remind you of Emily Carr and various members of the Group of Seven. ( But of course - they had been to Paris, and many G of 7 artists had been war artists in France, etc. Isn't it fascinating how we all influence each other!)

Anyway, I felt I had to portray dancers, but I didn't want to work from Picasso's Demoiselles, so I chose a more subdued threesome of muses by Delauney (Ville de Paris, 1912) since he was working around the same time, and had clearly been influenced by Picasso and the new Cubist rage.

So here is my Rite of Spring. My brief (this is a commissioned square) was to "use mauve, and black and white, and be exhilarating and chaotic." I hope I have achieved it! Same colour scheme as above by the way, but with more white.

Well, that's all for now. Percolating in my mind at the moment is another commissioned square, The Trumpet Shall Sound by Purcell. Have you heard the new CD (by the same name) with Alison Balsom and Iestyn Davies? It is just wonderful.

More soon - keep listening to your favourite music. E-mail me if you would like to learn more about how to produced a piece of visual art inspired by music, or if you would like to contribute to the quilt.

Susan

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