Recent content by stlukesguild

At last an admission that opera is a waste of time. That may have been true for Beethoven. I’ll not say that Fidelio is worthless… but in spite of his opinions to the contrary, it is no where near as marvelous as the major operas of Mozart (or many others) and I can only say I wish he’d spent...

Another interesting painting I just stumbled upon is Good Night by Francesco Fonseco:

I just came upon these two paintings by Robert Winthrop Chanler (American, 1872-1930). He was an American artist whose works merged elements of the decorative with the bizarre. He was a member of the Astor and Stuyvesant families… both wealthy and politically connected families in the US. His...

I’ve been slowly populating my library in Spotify with all the works I have on CD. There are a few exceptions of recordings unavailable on Spotify. One is this recording of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde… Another one I found unavailable today is the disc of Massenet Arias that I quite love (And...

Quite possibly the first classical song-cycle, A die fern Geliebte (To the distant loved one) established a model that Schubert, Schumann, Richard Strauss, and others would build upon. Just as I wish Beethoven had composed more concertos for violin and piano (and not spent time on his sole opera...

Many of the composers of the Baroque era were forgotten for a good deal time… with the exceptions of J.S Bach, G.F. Handel (largely on the basis of The Messia), and Antonio Vivaldi (largely on the basis of The Four Seasons). Late in the 20th century musicologists began to rediscover the wealth...

I highly doubt that. It would be far easier to learn how to draw.

I have used projectors to more rapidly transfer images of the figure on my large painting surface. I have access to projection by electric light and yet the use of the projector remains limited. It can allow you to more rapidly establish proportions but working in the dark limits you to the main...

I have long admired Samson François’ recordings of Ravel and Debussy but just came upon this one of Liszt. I am slowly building my playlists of classical music on Spotify… composer by composer.

Don’t get me wrong; I like a lot of Hockney’s art but have issues with his theories of how the old masters “cheated” through the use of the camera obscura and such projection devices.

I know I am probably missing much by practically never listening to jazz. Rather than the raw, original works, I am only able to appreciate jazz second hand, filtered through the ears of composers like Gershwin, Copland, Bernstein, or Ravel. The only jazz I have ever really enjoyed has been from...

I’ve got this set playing on Spotify on random while my little puppy is sleeping on the chair next to me.

Arguably the finest jazz album ever. ❤️ Nearly everyone who played on this album was a major artist in their own right: Cannonball Adderly, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, etc…