Category: Classical music

S_V_H Chopin’s Polonaise in A flat major, Op. 53

Published on by Scott Von Holzen


I have painted Chopin in the past and certainly in the future, but,  in the now I am also painting Chopin.  This time it is one of his 23 Polonaises, and one of Chopin’s most admired compositions, published in 1843, according to Wikipedia. The casual listener to Classical Music will know this melody if not the composer.

Here is Vladmir Horowitz cruising through the hard parts of this Chopin Polonaise.  It is at 1:18 minutes and over the next second you hear the music of this artwork. Also, using Wikipedia I found the meaning of polonaise which is a dance of polish origins. Okay!

The smaller detail image and the full first image look a lot a like, and are not much to look it. That is because this artwork is a flash back in style to the 2016 Bach painting for the Grand Bach Hotel in Kyoto Japan.  This Chopin artwork is obviously different from my last post featuring the music of Tom Petty, and that is because it is a commissioned requested artwork to be done in the Grand Bach painting style.

Here is  the Bach BWV 988 – Aria painting, which is 64 inches in length, while the Chopin work is 24 inches by 36 inches.


Next up I need to add a foundation to place the music on. It will be something like what you see in those darker brown rectangular strips in the Bach painting.  This is important to do for by adding an intermediary structure on top of the background that will than connect it to the music.  Otherwise, if it is left out the music would seem to be floating in an empty space. My challenge is to accomplish this in way so that this Chopin painting updates this style.  I am not doing this project to repeat the Bach painting with a name and music change only.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Bach Chaconne BWV 1004, Final Image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
Bach Partita No. 2 in D minor – Chaconne, BWV 1004 with a maximum height of 20 3/4 inches x 29 1/4 inches in length.

Bach’s Partita No. 2 Chaconne is finally done.  The work sheet for this music I dated July 3rd. I mentioned that for it is hard to write this entry for this project has exhausted my love and appreciation for this great music.  Like earlier works this deliberately small-sized artwork continues the trend of consuming huge amounts of time. I don’t expect to shorten production time until this art has fully exploited the current sculptural look.  For me, a three-dimensional look better represents the full range of music.

Taking a look at Bach’s notation from his Chaconne manuscript,  I used his hand writing style to personalize parts of the design of this artwork, and kept my color choices limited to mostly browns and grays.  I added a splash of violet,  to relieve color boredom, which I like doing when a few colors dominate an artwork. After photographing, I spend time cutting out this final image from its background only to discover that I had use Photoshop to paint two small parts,  pale green. Finally, I spend more project time adding two other small pieces to the music that are missing from this final image. Here is a sample from the Bach manuscript:

I was curious about a recent New Your Times article  that maps the musical taste of the fans of 50 current popular musical artists on YouTube.  I wanted to know how out-of-touch I was with today’s popular music. Going through the list I found that I was at least aware of, or have actually listen to the music of 21 artists on the list.  When I checked my iTunes for their music,  that list changed. Putting both observations together,  my a musical connection to today’s popular musical artists expanded to 28 out of fifty.   I thought that was a decent number for only being a casual fan of current music.

 

Scott Von Holzen

 

S_V_H J S Bach Chaconne BWV 1004 Image 2

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

J. S. Bach’s Chaconne is a small work, under three feet, but is turning out to be a time-consuming artwork. I have mentioned the advantages of smaller artworks, and have created them when needed, but only recently have I known the real need to limit the artwork’s size.

Smallness become the guiding rule as this art evolved from applying acrylic paint to canvas, to  applying acrylic to canvas and then attaching the music as wooden pieces of sculpture on and off of the canvas. By adding this unconstrained extra dimension the amount of extra time needed to completion has greatly increased.  Smallness to save time has become a practical necessity.

Here is a video of Chaconne played beautifully on the guitar by John Feeley:

Scott Von Holzen