Month: November 2013

Da Vinci, a cello and a harpsichord walk into a bar

Modern(ish), Renaissance

One of Leonardo da Vinci’s many brilliant ideas was to create a musical instrument that combined the fingerwork of a keyboard with the sustained sound of a stringed instrument. He called it a viola organista and explored various mechanisms of foot-treadle operated rotating wheels that pull a bow across strings, sketching different designs for it in his notebooks including the Codex Atlanticus, (page 93r), now in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, and Manuscript H (page 28r) in Paris’ Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France. As far as we know none of these designs ever made it to the prototype stage.

Almost a hundred years later in 1575, church organist Hans Hyden of Nuremberg created the first functional bowed keyboard instrument operated by a foot-treadle. He used gut strings (later switched to metal when the gut strings failed to stay in tune) and five or six parchment-wrapped wheels which, when turned by the treadle and a hand-crank at the far end operated by a helper, would be drawn against individual strings determined by which keys were played. Hyden claimed his instrument could produce crescendos, diminuendos, vibrato and sustain notes indefinitely solely through finger pressure on the keys. He even said it could duplicate the voice of a drunk man.

He called it a Geigenwerk (meaning “fiddle organ”) which is the German translation of da Vinci’s name for it, but although some sources imply or claim he based his design on da Vinci’s, I have serious doubts about that. Leonardo was hugely famous in his lifetime and after, but it was for his art, not his notebooks. Bequeathed to his friend and apprentice Francesco Melzi, the notebooks were sold off piecemeal by the Melzi family after Francesco’s death in 1579. Pages were scattered to courts and collectors all over Europe. Some of Leonardo’s notes on painting were published in 1651, but the bulk of the notebooks only made it into print in the 19th century. I don’t see how Hyden could have had access to them.

None of Hyden’s Geigenwerks — he’s reputed to have built as many as 32 of them although only two are thoroughly documented — have survived. The details of its operation and the sole surviving illustration of the instrument have come down to us from German composer and music theorist Michael Praetorius who included one of Hyden’s original pamphlets describing the machine and a woodcut of it in the appendix to the second volume of his Syntagma Musicum, published as the Theatrum Instrumentorum seu Sciagraphia in 1620.

Imitations have survived, the earliest of which made by Spanish monk Raymundo Truchado in 1625. It is now in Brussels’ Musical Instruments Museum. Truchado’s Geigenwerk is an oddly truncated little thing which could only have been played sitting on the ground or perched on a low table. It had no foot-treadle, just the hand-crank in the back. The instrument is no longer playable today. Given its design it doesn’t look like it was ever comfortably playable at all, but it must have been worth it because it was used on occasion in the Cathedral of Toledo until the late 18th century.

Since then, many people have made versions of the bowed keyboard instrument, some of them using Leonardo’s designs as the starting point. They haven’t all been successful. This 2009 version of a portable viola organista made from one of Leonardo’s sketches is serving hilariously awkward one-man-band realness. Pianist and keyboard instrument builder Akio Obuchi has made several Geigenwerks which can indeed produce the kind of sounds Hyden described.

Now Polish concert pianist Slawomir Zubrzycki has joined the fray with a viola organista that is as beautiful to look at as it is to listen to.

The instrument’s exterior is painted in a rich hue of midnight blue adorned with golden swirls painted on the side. The inside of its lid is a deep raspberry inscribed with a Latin quote in gold leaf by 12th-century German nun, mystic and philosopher, Saint Hildegard.

“Holy prophets and scholars immersed in the sea of arts both human and divine, dreamt up a multitude of instruments to delight the soul,” it says.

The flat bed of its interior is lined with golden spruce. Sixty-one gleaming steel strings run across it, similar to the inside of a baby grand. Each one is connected to the keyboard complete with smaller black keys for sharp and flat notes. But unlike a piano, it has no hammered dulcimers. Instead, there are four spinning wheels wrapped in horse tail hair, like violin bows. To turn them, Zubrzycki pumps a peddle below the keyboard connected to a crankshaft.

As he tinkles the keys, they press the strings down onto the wheels emitting rich, sonorous tones reminiscent of a cello, an organ and even an accordion.

It took him three years and $9,700 to build the instrument. Zubrzycki’s viola organista had its debut last month at the International Royal Krakow Piano Festival where it was given a standing ovation by an audience of virtuoso musicians and music lovers. It truly is magnificent, so rich and full you keep looking for the rest of the orchestra.

If you only have the time to watch one video, start with this one in which Zubrzycki tells the story of how he made the piece and plays it in his home. There are great closeups of the instrument and its moving parts. Click the CC icon for English subtitles.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/gOrn_z9m9lU&w=430]

Here he is performing a piece by Carl Friederich Abel for the viola da gamba (the predecessor of the cello) at Krakow’s Church of St. Peter and Paul on October 21st:
[youtube=http://youtu.be/JG7qvkGZkug&w=430]

This are snippets of several pieces he played at the International Royal Krakow Piano Festival:
[youtube=http://youtu.be/sv3py3Ap8_Y&w=430]

Prince Henry’s hawking vervel found in Norfolk

Modern(ish), Museums, Treasures

A small silver ring and shield that once identified a bird of prey used for hunting by Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales, eldest son of King James I, was discovered by metal detectorists Jason Jackson and Alan Daynes in the east Norfolk town of Cley-next-the-Sea last year. While historic hawking vervels, as these rings are called, are not uncommon in the area — the Castle Museum in Norwich has more vervels in its permanent collection than the British Museum — royal ones are rare. One belonging to King Henry VIII’s brother-in-law and standard bearer Charles Brandon, first duke of Suffolk, was found in December of last year but he was known to have hunted in the area many times. There are no records at all indicating Henry Frederick ever went to Norfolk at all so that makes this find even more exciting.

The vervel was declared treasure at a coroner’s inquest last year, after which experts at the BM assessed its market value at £6,000. Thanks to a £2,400 grant from the Victoria & Albert Purchase Grant Fund and a £2,000 grant from the Art Fund, the Castle Museum was able to acquire the rare piece. It will go on display along with the other vervels in the museum’s collection next year (May 24th through September 14th) in The Wonder of Birds, an exhibition exploring avian topics like the birth of ornithology, birds in art, birds as symbols of status, birds in their natural environment and much more.

It’s a wee piece, with the ring just 10.5 millimeters in diameter and the shield 10 x 8 millimeters in size. It weighs 1.37 grams. Much like avian leg bands today, vervels had to be small and light so as not to be a burden on the creature in flight. They were attached to the jesses, thin leather straps tied to the bird’s legs as tethers to make the birds easier to handle on the arm, and again like modern avian leg bands, served to identify the bird should it be lost during the hunt or in training.

That’s how we know the ring belonged to one of Henry’s hawking birds: the prince’s name and symbol are on it. The outside of the band is engraved “Henrye Prince” and the shield is engraved with the heraldic badge of the Prince of Wales: three ostrich plumes encircled by a coronet on top of a ribbon bearing the phrase “ICH DIEN,” a contraction of “I serve” in German. Henry was only Prince of Wales for two years, so we know the vervel was made between 1610 and 1612.

How it wound up where it was found is not so clear. Cley-next-the-Sea is a sleepy seaside village of 376 souls today, but in Henry’s day it was one of England’s busiest port cities thanks its location on the wide and deep estuary of the tidal River Glaven *. (Later in the 17th century, the estuary gradually began to silt over when local landowners attempted to reclaim marshy land by building embankments along the river. By the end of the next century, the River Glaven was no longer tidal and there was no more port.) Henry could have been in the area personally — just because no record of the Prince of Wales ever visiting Norfolk has survived doesn’t mean it didn’t happen — or one of his birds may have been there without him, either because it flew away never to return (entire breeding populations have been founded by escaped falconer’s birds) or because it was being trained for him by someone local.

Henry was an accomplished hawker and sportsman in general, despite his young age. His athleticism was one of his most praised features, along with his intelligence, reserve, judicious involvement in politics and public works and his moral rectitude (he made people who cussed in his presence put money in an alms box dedicated to the purpose, a 17th century swear jar). Falconry, the Sport of Kings as it’s still known today even though no kings do it anymore, was seen as a particularly proper pursuit for the heir to the throne as it was thought to teach leadership in battle.

Henry never got to put those leadership skills to the test on the throne. He died of typhoid fever in 1612 when he was just 18 years old. The country went into deep mourning for the prince. His father was unpopular and it was Henry who was seen as the unifying figure who could truly bring Scotland and England together. So many people wanted to pay their respects that Henry’s body lay in state for four weeks and his funeral procession was a mile long. After his death, his younger brother Charles, then 12 years old, became heir. He was not so roundly beloved. That would matter a great deal since he became King Charles I whose power struggles with Parliament became Civil War and whose head became separated from his neck on January 30th, 1649.

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Museum acquires famed Gibson shipwreck photos

Modern(ish), Museums

An exceptional collection of shipwreck photographs taken by four generations of the Gibson family was bought at a Sotheby’s auction yesterday by the Royal Museums Greenwich (RMG) for £122,500 ($195,645) including buyer’s premium. The archive contains more than 1,100 glass plate negatives, more than 500 film negatives and 97 original print photographs of shipwrecks off the coasts of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. They make the perfect complement to the RMG’s pre-existing collection of historic maritime photography.

For 125 years, starting with patriarch John Gibson, a seaman who became a professional photographer in 1860, the Gibson family braved shoals, waves and sand to capture haunting scenes of shredded ships, dramatic rescues, cargo salvage and burials of people who fell victim to the treacherous coastal waters of southwest England. John’s sons Herbert and Alexander joined the business in 1865 and their talents would come to define the Gibson archive and its exceptional high quality. The first wreck they photographed was in 1869 when the telegraph had just arrived on the Isles of Scilly.

These were not simple point and shoot operations. It was dangerous, highly physical labour.

On the occasion of the wreck of the 3500-ton German steamer, Schiller, in 1876 when over 300 people died, the two brothers worked together for days – [Herbert] preparing newspaper reports, and Alexander transmitting them across the world, until he collapsed with exhaustion. Although they were working in difficult conditions, travelling with a cart or boat to reach the shipwrecks – and scrambling over rocky crags and sand dunes with a portable dark room, carrying fragile glass plates and heavy equipment – they produced some of the most arresting and emotive photographic images of shipwrecks produced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

They were pioneers. This was at a time when most photography was still firmly wedded to the studio portrait. The equipment was so bulky and fragile that climbing over crags hauling not just the camera and plates but a freaking dark room would be inconceivable to most people. That the Gibsons pulled it off is amazing in and of itself; that they also created images of such beauty and emotional resonance makes the archive little short of miraculous.

The Gibson family business is still going strong on the Isles of Scilly, although they’ve added souvenir and wholesale postcard sales to the professional photography. Sandra Gibson, John’s great-great granddaughter, runs it now with her husband Pete. The family decided it was time to sell the archive rather than let it continue to languish in boxes. Author John Le Carré, who used some Gibson photographs in his books, visited the business, then run by Frank, Sandra’s father, in 1997. I love his description of the archive:

“We are standing in an Aladdin’s cave where the Gibson treasure is stored, and Frank is its keeper. It is half shed, half amateur laboratory, a litter of cluttered shelves, ancient equipment, boxes, printer’s blocks and books. Many hundreds of plates and thousands of photographs are still waiting an inventory. Most have never seen the light of day. Any agent, publisher or accountant would go into free fall at the very sight of them.

Now that National Maritime Museum has the pictures, we can all go into free fall at the very sight of them, and the family can be sure it will be archived properly and shared with the world. The museum plans to use the archive to study the dangers of the seafaring life and to display this invaluable record as widely as possible.

Having secured the archive RMG will initially conserve, research and digitize the collection, leading to a number of exhibitions to tour regional museums and galleries, especially those in the South West of England.

Lord Sterling of Plaistow, Chairman of the Royal Museums Greenwich, said:
“The acquisition of this remarkable archive will enable us to create a series of exhibitions that will travel across the country, starting with the South West. I am very pleased that the National Maritime Museum has been able to secure this wonderful collection for the nation, and I know that the Gibson family are delighted that their family archive will remain and be displayed in this country”.

Unique Ganymede statue stolen from Tunis museum

Ancient, Looting, Museums

An extremely rare late Roman statue of Ganymede with his arm draped across the shoulders of Zeus in eagle form was stolen from the Paleo-Christian Museum of Carthage in Tunis the night of Friday, November 8th. The statue is 49 centimeters (19 inches) high and is made out of white marble. The museum has been closed to the public for some time but three guards monitor the building in shifts. Not exactly a daunting security cordon for a thief to break through at best, and at worst a handy way in the door.

“Police are conducting an investigation and they arrested members of the museum’s security personnel,” Adnane Louhichi, general director of the National Heritage Institute, told Tunisia Live.

“All scenarios are considered, including the complicity of the museum’s security staff,” Louhichi said.

I hope it’s not too little too late, but the National Heritage Institute has alerted all law enforcement local and international, including border, customs and airport police and Interpol. The Ministry of Culture held an emergency meeting on Monday in the wake of the theft to determine what immediate steps they can take to protect Tunisian cultural patrimony. They will cooperate with the Ministry of the Interior to increase monitoring of museums and archaeological sites and give additional support to a joint national committee of the ministries of the interior, culture and tourism dedicated to the preservation of cultural heritage.

Looting is a major problem in Tunisia, as thieves step into the void left by ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who was adept at pillaging his own country of its fabulous history to decorate his family’s homes. Open-air archaeological sites are being illegally excavated at a precipitous rate, an estimated 5-10 new digs open every day. Museum burglaries have increased exponentially. Not even the National Heritage Institute itself is immune; a hoard of coins from Hannibal’s time and a number of Roman sculptures were stolen from its headquarters never to be seen again.

The statue is highly recognizable. It has been thoroughly published and there are no other copies known to exist. Its uniqueness makes it virtually impossible to sell, so keep your fingers crossed that someone is approach to buy it and turns in the thieves.

The Ganymede group was discovered in 1977 by University of Michigan archaeologists excavating a cistern under the sumptuous House of the Greek Charioteers in the ancient city of Carthage. The statue dates to the fifth century A.D. and is a remarkable example of pagan iconography adorning the homes of the wealthy in Roman Africa long after Christianity became the dominant religion. It was found broken in 17 pieces in a layer of 6th century debris. Archaeologists believe it once decorated the villa’s triclinium or formal dining room.

Once the pieces were put back together, an almost intact representation of Ganymede emerged, missing only his right ankle. In Greek mythology, Ganymede was tending a flock of sheep on Mount Ida when he was abducted by Zeus in the form of an eagle and made the immortal cup-bearer to the gods (also possibly Zeus’ lover). The sculpture depicts Ganymede wearing only his characteristic Phrygian cap and a cloak draped over his arm, standing with his right leg crossed over his left and his arm around his eagle friend/abductor/boss/lover. At his feet are an extremely adorable little goat and a protective little dog attacking the eagle.

Carthage was a Phoenician colony that became the dominant power in the Mediterranean until it was destroyed by Rome in 146 B.C. after the Third Punic War, then rebuilt as the capital of the Roman Africa province. Carthage was conquered by Vandals in 439 A.D., by the Byzantine Empire in 533 A.D. and by the fifth Umayyad Caliphate in 698 A.D. after which the city was destroyed again. The remains of the ancient city are now in a toney suburb of Tunis.

Ganymede’s casual, friendly stance suggests neither the fear in some representations of the kidnapping nor the sensuality of others. Except for the angry dog who clearly suspects the eagle is up to no good, the sculpture has more of an Orpheus vibe to it. This makes sense given that it was made hundreds of years after Carthage became one of the main center of early Christianity and Orpheus, who could charm all living things with his music, was one of the more popular pre-Christian mythological figures to be integrated into post-Christian art.

This sculpture is a fine example of the complexities of late Roman society. While Rome and Italy were in steep decline, the Western Empire was still functional in Africa. Carthage continued to produce wheat for export, continued to have a high standard of living with the quality consumer goods, minted coins and infrastructure like maintained city grids, aqueducts and public buildings that had collapsed or were on the verge of it in Italy. Christian Carthage, the home of Church fathers Tertullian and St. Cyprian, the city where the biblical canon was established at a council in 397 A.D., was pagan Roman too.

First day of the Somme in a 24-foot cartoon

Books, Modern(ish)

The Battle of the Somme began at 7:30 AM on July 1, 1916. At the end of that first day, 20,000 British troops were dead and 40,000 injured, the worst day in British Army history. The French, their numbers weakened by Verdun, had 1,590 casualties, the Germans 10,000-12,000. These horrific figures didn’t stop the battle. It would continue for another 140 days, finally ending on November 18th, 1916, by which time more than 1,000,000 men had been killed or wounded.

The opening day of what would become a months-long slaughter has been captured in a new way, as a single great panorama of chaotic action by cartoonist Joe Sacco.

In The Great War, acclaimed cartoon journalist Joe Sacco depicts the events of that day in an extraordinary, 24-foot- long panorama: from General Douglas Haig and the massive artillery positions behind the trench lines to the legions of soldiers going “over the top” and getting cut down in no-man’s-land, to the tens of thousands of wounded soldiers retreating and the dead being buried en masse. Printed on fine accordion-fold paper and packaged in a deluxe slipcase with a 16-page booklet, The Great War is a landmark in Sacco’s illustrious career and allows us to see the War to End All Wars as we’ve never seen it before.

I think cartoon is an outstanding and sorely underestimated medium for history. Larry Gonick’s works have pride of place on my bookshelves and those of many friends and family who have received his cartoon histories as gifts from me. The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme takes a different approach because there are no dialogue or thought bubbles, no quips or goofy visuals. All 24 feet of this masterpiece are wordless views of people and actions depicted in the most historically accurate manner possible, in keeping with Sacco’s journalistic documentation of current conflicts in cartoon form.

Sacco studied uniforms, artillery, troop positions, even learned how to draw horses and lots of them to make the first day of the Somme come to life. He used a magnifying glass to get the most minute details of the background figures right. It took him eight months to finish this one drawing, double what he expected it take.

To get a small glimpse of the richness and breadth of what Sacco has accomplished here, see this annotated tour of a small section on Slate. Publishers WW Norton have also put together a brief documentary video about the book and author. I can’t embed it, sadly, but it’s very much worth viewing so please do click through.