Category: Classical

Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons – Autumn – allegro the fifth is a series of thirteen artworks that will represent these four great concertos.  When you enlarge the image you are seeing about nine and one-half of this fifteen foot (4.57m) canvas.

Since this is the first music of the Autumn concerto there is a lot of bright fall colors, but interestingly when you read the sonnet for this allegro it is about the celebrating the harvest with plenty of liquor that ends with the country-folk heading off to sleep.  The words chosen for this artwork are from the first line of the Autumn sonnet, with one translation being, “The country-folk celebrate, with dance and song.”  The feeling of the rest of this paragraph does speak to the coming of the night, maybe referring to the arrival of shorter, cooler days. Because of this feeling of change in the air the colors of this artwork move from the bright to darker; but too dark.  The darkness of  Autumn was the theme in an early artwork.

A personal note: I am taking a class in Music Theory at the University of Wisconsin, which will consume a lot of effort and time, including painting time.  The thought is this will enhance my understanding of music which will improve my art. It should also give me a better understanding of the piano, and maybe even improve my play.  So far, it has been a lot more difficult class than I thought it would be, so the rewards may also be greater than I anticipated.  That is if I survive.  Already two people have dropped out. But that would not be my style, for I am in it for the very long haul.

Scott Von Holzen

Image one on Monday:

This is the second image from Monday night:

The studio is not large enough where I can take a full image of this artwork.  What I have is drawing of the outline of the artwork which is 15 feet(4.57m) long with a height of 41 inches.  These pictures are not pretty and probably never be  throughput this project, until the last photograph outside.

This is my favorite YouTube video of  Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Autumn – allegro :

At 1 minute 26 seconds is where this artwork begins.  It ends at 1 minutes 32 seconds. That is right this 15 foot artwork using only 6 seconds of Antonio’s Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons,  RV293, Autumn – Allegro will try to capture the feeling of this entire movement. This may take time.  I am guessing over a month to complete.

Since this canvass has an irregular shape, the two preliminary yellow strips are there, for balance, and to pull this work together.  The green, is a starting color.  Even though this is a fall picture, it is early fall, and so the landscape would  still has plenty of green color used here for parts of the background to better help the yellows, oranges, and red colors stand out.

If you look closely at the first image you will see a lot of pencil marks that are apart of the math to  calculate where to connect the six canvases. This artwork flows with the movement that the music that drops down the scale.