Sacred Face and Sacred Places

Dear Music Lover, 

Linda T has commissioned our first square. Known as the Passion Chorale, “O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded” has a long history. The text is based on a medieval poem which addressed various members of Christ’s crucified body in seven cantos, the last of which focused on his face. It was translated by Presbyterian minister J W Alexander in 1830 and it was this last section which became the popular hymn. The melody first appeared around 1600, was simplified by Johan Crüger in 1656 and later rearranged by Bach. So this is for you Linda - thank you for supporting the Elora Festival!

The image I used was developed from photographs of the Shroud of Turin, which has always fascinated me. The single most studied artifact in human history, it is believed by millions to be the cloth that wrapped Christ’s crucified body. Countless others, however, maintain that it is a medieval forgery perpetrated by a clever artist. Whatever the truth is, the image of the straight nose topped by prominent eyebrows suggested to me an empty cross, as illustrated here, the open eyes signifying a living, risen Lord, as stated in the text.

Our second request today is Psalm 23, set to music by Schubert. This is for Nellie, who sees God as leading us, his Word moving us on the rightful path towards eternity. In the passage about walking in death’s dark vale, the music is subdued, and I imagine that this is in a forest, where the light through the trees reminds us of stained glass windows, and the canopy overhead is like the soaring vaults of a cathedral. It is in a house like this that we shall dwell forever.  The shepherd’s crook will comfort us and make our way easier, as we pass by still water on either side.

The challenge of developing an image for Psalm 23 is that there are so many of them, usually showing Christ as a shepherd and guide. However, instead of focussing on the shepherd analogy, I decided to start with Schubert, and chose to work from a photograph of the woods outside Vienna, where he was born, lived, and might have walked for inspiration.

This last square is for Jay, and it was designed and stitched by Kathy. One of her favourite hymns, Jerusalem is based on a poem by Blake, which in turn was inspired by the legend that a young Jesus and his uncle Joseph of Arimathea sailed to England and visited Glastonbury. Since this tale is apocryphal, instead of depicting Glastonbury, Kathy chose to depict a circle of stones representing the new church that was about to be founded – the "new Jerusalem".

The petroglyphs tell the story of a people on the move. "And did those feet in ancient times, walk upon England’s mountains green" are the first words of the text, and it ends with "I will not cease from mental fight .... till we have built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land." A call to evangelism, set to stirring music by Parry.

Take care, all, and may your paths be straight and smooth!

Susan

Duets for Cats

Dear Music Lover,
“We are Siamese, if you please. We are Siamese, if you don’t please.”  Even as quite a young child I understood the wit behind this text, the Asian sound of the accompaniment, and the yowling Siamese twang of the voices. Anyone who has ever owned, or even just known a cat, understands how these lyrics from Lady and the Tramp (by Peggy Lee, I understand) sum up their stereotypical behavior of independence and disinterest in their owners' wishes!

All the squares in the quilt are made of cotton, but to get the look of the mayhem and destruction the pair of cats create in the film, I covered my square of cotton with a very sheer layer of "craquelure"silk. It was given to me, so I don't know where it was made, but perhaps it came from Thailand.

Another little gem that betrays a deep understanding, if not love of cats is Duetto Buffo de due Gatti, typically attributed to Rossini. Apparently, it was actually a compilation written in 1825 that draws principally on Rossini's 1816 opera Otello, most likely by the English composer Robert Lucas de Pearsall, who used the pseudonym G. Berthold. Whatever - my favourite version of it is by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Victoria de los Angeles (check out YouTube), who have a lovely little spit and hiss at the end.

Just to be contrary, like the cats portrayed, the elegant and gorgeous opera singers get portrayed as alley cats, and those created for a child's animated movie get the hand-painted treatment.

Miaow!

Susan

Tugging at the Heart Strings

Hello, Music Lover,

Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, as it has become known, is the second movement of his String Quartet, op 11, and is so full of pathos and sadness, it will leave a lump in your throat the first time you hear it. It has been played at the funerals and memorial services of numerous prominent people, and it is reported to be the most often requested piece of music on anniversaries of 911. It has been requested in memory of Michael, by Charles.

Musically the piece is full of changing time signatures, and the dynamics tend to build over the piece. It is this that I tried to suggest in the changing curves in the square. Even on the first page of music (a piano score), it changes from 4/4 to 5/4 after 3 bars. So my square reads from left to right, beginning with 4 “strings” and exiting with five, splitting and rejoining at evolving intervals. Barber is said to have envisioned a river growing from a small one to a larger one; hence the watery tones.

It’s deceptively simple and somehow so honest!

Take care -

Susan

In Memoriam

Dear Music Lover,

Many people have wanted to support our project but just can't decide on a "favourite" piece of music. Try asking a musician to select something! But it's easier to choose for someone else, especially someone we've been close to for years, and who we associate with that piece of music.

That's the case with our two squares today. First, Away From the Roll of the Sea by Allister MacGillivray, whose every composition seems to betray his Cape Breton roots. There is something about his tunes that make you wonder if they are really old folk tunes - they seem vaguely familiar, and you listen as if you know where the tune is going, and even if you get it wrong, you are humming along by the end of the song. This is for Veronica, in memory of Kathy Deters, a wonderful lady and supporter of the festival. She and her husband spent many happy holidays at their cottage in Nova Scotia where she sang and conducted her own choir, named Roll of the Sea.

The boats are securely moored in the harbour for the night, just like the baby being rocked to sleep in your arms. Rest in Peace, Kathy.

Our second request, from Jay, is My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose by Robbie Burns, in memory of Brian Emery, also a beloved friend of the Festival who died suddenly two weeks ago. Brian sang in the Festival Singers for 31 or 32 years, and his humour and prodigious memory for detail and lyrics was renowned. He was very gifted musically, a conductor and organist in his church, and a talented singer. He was most comfortable in the tenor range, but he also sang bass, and in one instance I remember, he sang a beautiful and yet hilarious falsetto version of Buttercup in a concert version of HMS Pinafore.

It took a little time deciding how to do this square. In the end there had to be a landscape from Ayrshire,  where Robbie Burns was born. This view is from the top of Goatfell on the Isle of Arran, looking down on the town of Brodick with Holy Island in the distance. I think Brian would have loved this view and I'm kind of partial to it myself. It was inspired by a photograph by Robert Strachan, of Ayrshire - he must be a relative of mine, with a name like that.

In our memories always, we miss you Brian.

Take care, all, and see you soon,

Susan Strachan Johnson

Art Influencing Art

Hello, Music Lover!
Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky, which inspired today's square, was a major influence in my decision to create this quilt. If a piece of music could be composed so closely around a collection of images, why not create a piece of art containing many images from studying many individual pieces of music? Or any other form of art, for that matter? For example, what about a fragrance? ....

I found out recently that Tommy Hilfiger decided to create a perfume for teens, inspired by the type of music they like. Following much market research, many focus groups, etc. his team came up with the name LOUD, and based the packaging design on the look of a CD. This is what the bottle looked like.

The project never came to anything, because although the designer of the fragrance, Guerlain, did come up with a product that Tommy liked, the elder patriarch of the company, Jean Paul Guerlain, made a very racist comment in public about how hard he worked just before the product was launched. Tommy felt this clashed with his image, and decided to cancel the whole project. (Actually, this is probably a good thing. Tommy should have had me on his product development team - Loud is a pretty good name, but I think Beat might have had an even more universal appeal. But that's just my opinion!)

So, there's an instance of a style of music inspiring a perfume. How about a piece of music inspiring a poem, as illustrated by a piece of art? I was honoured recently by being contacted by the Israeli poet Yael Cohen, who has asked if she might use our square for The Lark Ascending on the cover of her next book of poetry. Yael, who lives near Tel Aviv,  loves the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and liked the rationale behind the development of our square. Of course I said "yes". So we now know of an international readership oft our quilt blog!

And then I got a telephone call from an amazing guitarist/arranger/writer, Steven Hancoff, who lives in the United States and has been working on a transcription of Bach's cello suites for 6 years, recording them on his acoustic guitar. He has just completed an e-biography about Pablo Casals and his role in collecting, preserving and recording the definitive collection. He is including in his book several pieces of art inspired by Bach, and asked if he could include my Robert's Quilt on the Goldberg Variations, and our square on Air on a G String. Another international follower - how cool is that?!

So a transcription from a four-stringed instrument to a six stringed instrument - of course I had to ask him which suite and which movement was his favourite, so I can produce a square on that too!

But, back to Mussorgsky and his amazing Pictures at an Exhibition. Those opening bars are iconic - how many advertisements have included them? (I learnt at the BBC years ago - another life, a previous career - that if you "borrowed" less than 15 seconds from a piece of music, you didn't have to pay royalties. I wonder if that is still true?)

Anyway, researching this one was a wonderful journey. I knew about Mussorgsky's friendship with the painter Viktor Hartman, whose paintings inspired the work. But I didn't know that it was originally composed as a piano piece, that many composers/conductors subsequently scored it for orchestra, or that it was Maurice Ravel who was commissioned in 1922 to do just that, his version becoming the most often performed one.

I do know, however, that the recurring "promenade" theme is one of those melodies that keep floating to the surface when you are trying to think about something else, and that I really enjoy the finale - the great Gate of Kiev, and the variations on the promenade theme. Hartman's design for the Gate of Kiev is shown in the middle of the top row of reproductions, and the two paintings at the lower left and right were owned by Mussorgsky and inspired the "Two Jews" movement.

Music flows through everything, doesn't it? I am sure you knew that Einstein was pretty good on the violin? He knew that e = f♭ way before he figured out e = mc². LOL!

Take care, and talk to you soon,

Susan