Category: Classical music

S_V_H Bach Menuet image2

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

Bach Menuet in open position, L76″ x H31″:

Bach Menuet in closed position, L76″ x H24″:

My lovely wife asked me why I was doing this?  I saw that question as why spend a considerable amount of time adding this moveable feature?  Besides, losing time, solving the many problems adding motion causes and not knowing for what purpose, I had no answers.  The ability to move the music around the artwork adds nothing to its meaning. That we both could agree with.  My response was ” ’cause I can?”  Not an answer I could defend.  She did not ask me to.  Now I can.

If I may borrow a title given too many of Kandinsky’s artworks, “improvisation”, that is what I should add to the title of this artwork.  For me, improvisation means experimental. This is what this artwork is all about, beyond the music it represents.   I am in the mood for change.  I have grown tired of creating more 2019 art and want a fresh look for 2020. Although,  for many,  I am wondering if this will be the year they wish to forget and end.  For me, not so much.  Time is what I need a lot of, for this artwork needs explanation.  The time I have left in 2020 will not be used to search out group venues and to create works that match some made-up theme.  For this year, none of that.  I have lost my motivation to show.   For the rest of 2020 I am tired of the same-oh-same-oh and want another way to represent music. This artwork, for all of it still stuck in 2019 aspects, is going somewhere else.  Hi, ho silver! The masked artist is making a move.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H J S Bach Menuet image 1

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

This is the first image of a Bach Menuet on a two foot by four foot canvas, the largest that I have used in years.  This music will be in two sections, top and bottom, which will spill over the side edges.

I have a stockpile of stretched canvas in many sizes I collected years ago.   Many of them are large.  That came about because of the momentum created by Vivaldi’s Four Seasons series.  This group of thirteen giant paintings took almost three years to complete, from 2012 to early 2015.  All of them required multiple canvases bolted and screwed together.  That allowed me to create artworks for this series from 10 to 20-feet.   That was years ago.  What I paint today looks nothing like the Vivaldi group.   I know this art is early it in evolution, but will I ever use up the vast majority of my larger stock canvases.  I don’t think so.  The advantage of using a larger canvas for this project has little to do with the music or my canvas inventory. All my previous works from early 2019 to my latest I Will, are similar in style.  I felt enough of that.  That is when, for this project almost randomly, I  pick a 2 by 4 canvas for a change.  My other reason to use a bigger canvas was to give me more space to test out my new scratch-off technique still in development.

After painting my big canvas in the tradition of 1950s Abstraction, I glued on a canvas copy of Bach’s two page original manuscript of this Menuet.  I followed this by covering the entire canvas, using a process,  that when done and dry, allowed me to scrap off areas of the top layer of paint.  This then reveals my abstract1950s background.  I am still experimenting with this scrapping technique, finding that some areas scrapped off as expected and other parts did not.

The dictionary spelling of minuet differs from Bach’s spelling  which is menuet. I have read on Wikipedia that a minuet is a social dance with a 17th century French origin.  Bach’s best known minuet (written by Christian Petzold)  became a pop hit titled “A Lover’s Concerto,”  This is  BWV  Anh114:

I did not go that direction.  Maybe next time (which may come sooner than I first thought).  Instead, here is the YouTube video titled, J.S. Bach- Suite No.2 in B minor, BWV 1067: Menuet mvt. 6.  I have a draft of my music for this artwork.   Since this song repeats all parts, I like the Tempo of this version for it moves this music along.  I  also like my forty-five second version of this music.

I picked this minuet for its simplicity and the entire song is has a lot of nice  “hooks.” that kept my interest.

Scott

S_V_H Twinkle Little Star Final Image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
Twinkle Little Star L44.25″x H65.50″ x D4.25″

I finished Twinkle Little Star, on October 11th.  I delayed this blog entry because my attention quickly pivoted to my next major project, Unbroken, based on the music Will the Circle Be Unbroken.  When I first put together and then started this project, my enthusiasm was high.  That feeling came from my arrangement and from Twinkle Little Star being highly recognizable music.  I felt this artwork would increase awareness and appeal for this art.   Later, after over a month of work, I lost that excitement, except for my arrangement of the music.  You can see those feelings in my final video of Twinkle little star.

What I forgot to mention in the video is my concerned with the dominates of these sculptural artworks by the musical flow while smaller and smaller backgrounds are adding less interest and support to the music.  My direction in 2019 has been to minimize the backgrounds while emphasising the flow of that music.    In Twinkle I have pushed this idea even further with such small backgrounds that add little interest.  Part of why this happened was because of Twinkle’s theme,  Mozart’s piano version number 5, and not today’s version of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.  I may need to change this direction made obvious by this artwork.  This all became part of my concerned when I found it hard to follow the musical flow while listening to my arrangement of Twinkle Little Star.  Then the question became, why should anyone follow the flow today, if It never mattered before?

From this art’s beginnings I have portrayed a small flow of a particular piece of music, that only a trained musician had any chance of understanding.  I thought nothing of it.  I was creating artworks that contain much more canvas so I could add lots of visual interest and colors to enhance the flow of the music.  That began to change when I took the flow of the music of the canvas and made it three dimensional.  That resulted in a reduction in the background’s value.  I then discovered sound when I added it to a small artwork of the first four notes from Beethoven’s fifth symphony.  Pressing the play button brought smiles.  That caused me to add sound to my artworks thinking this helped the viewer better connect to the artwork.  I then made improvements to the sound and the quality of my arrangements to where I have found it hard to follow the flow and the sound of the music.  It looks like I am back where I started in 2006.

That tells me to succeed, I need to go “Back to the Future.”  I look at it in this way using my mentor Vincent Van Gogh and two of his images, courtesy of Wikipedia  The first is Van Gogh’s masterpiece The Potato Eaters done early in his career:

Wikipedia
Wikipedia

On my art path, The Potato Eaters may be where I am today with this art.

This other image is of Van Gogh’s popular Sun Flower artworks.   The big change is his lightening of his palette.   That is where this art needs to end up.  I thought my “big change” was adding sound.  That may be only part of this story.  There remains some extra volumes to write if I want to reach the “lightening” of this art.

Wikipedia

Scott Von Holzen