The Tudor Fair Blog
Early photographic art: Frank Hurley
Recently I read a book about Ernest Shackelton’s Endurance journey to Antarctica, which started out as the first expedition planned to cross the entire continent, but wound up instead trapped in pack ice when barely starting out. After spending nearly a year drifting in a giant circle with the tide in the…
Old and New Music Friday: O Magnum Mysterium and Danse Macabre
I’ve talked a lot about the Old Music I love – the English choral evensong tradition, and Renaissance polyphony from the Flemish composers like Gombert, and even the Grandaddy of them all, Palestrina. But what many casual choral enthusiasts don’t realize is that there is a huge upsurge in amazing…
Writing about Reading: Scribd and Oyster
Because I spend a lot of time reading online publishing news, I kind of thought everyone’s heard about Oyster and Scribd, the two main ebook subscription services. I was recently reminded that most people don’t have their head stuck in digital publishing news the way I do, so I thought…
Hildegard of Bingen: another in the line of cool medieval women mystics
In my quest to turn my library completely digital and get rid of all my paper books, I’m finally catching up on some of the books that have been on my shelf for years, and one of those “finally” books is Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age by…
The Perfect Crime of the 1870’s
I’ve been reading The Men Who United the States by Simon Winchester, a history of the US told through the elements of wood, metal, water, fire, and air, which is an interesting lens through which to view history. The wood chapter, for example, was all about when wood was the…
Voces8 and Purcell
Henry Purcell is a Grandaddy in the world of early music. There are a couple of Big Names that most people who are into music, but not early music, have heard of, and Purcell is always one of them. He lived in the late 17th century, and was right on…
Making Cake Balls (nomnomnom)
A diversion from intellectual and deep thinking today, to engage in…. making Cake Balls! I found this recipe from The Pioneer Woman, and they looked crazy easy to make. I mean, are you kidding? Cake balls? The things they charge $2 for at Starbucks? I’m totally in. Part of me…
Old Music Tuesday: Alamire
I spent the weekend working with the Golden Bridge Choir in Los Angeles; a new choir formed by Suzi Digby (Lady Eatwell, and a choral goddess in the UK) to explore the musical links between the Golden Age of the Tudor/Elizabethan composers and the current choral Renaissance that Southern California…
Charlotte Salomon: Pouring your life into your Art
I recently discovered the work of Charlotte Salomon. She was a young Jewish artist during the Holocaust, but her work shouldn’t be viewed simply as Holocaust art. To view it that way is to miss the extraordinary poignancy of what she created. I feel bad even comparing her to Anne…
Old Music Monday: New York Polyphony
One of the many things I lurve about autumn is that all my favorite choral groups start releasing Christmas albums. I can’t get enough Christmas music. Though with the caveat that I don’t mean “I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” kinds of Christmas music, but rather the good O Come O…
A brief history of Museums
I’ve been reading The Accidental Masterpiece, on the Art of Life and Vice Versa by Michael Kimmelman. Above all else, it seems to be a meditation on how art, or appreciating art, helps us to appreciate our everyday lives; and how our every day lives (and deaths) can be art…
Petrarch the Mountain Climber
The Italian poet Petrarch, who is often credited as the father of Humanism (and as such, the Renaissance), was, when he wasn’t inventing sonnets and writing poetry about his unrequited love for Laura, also was an extensive traveler. In fact, in addition to being the father of the Renaissance, he is…