Off to Southampton City Art Gallery today to have a look at Sophonisba Anguissola’s 1555 portrait of her sister Elena in her Benedictine habit. It’s not on display, and the curator has to lead me down into the vaults. Spooky. It’s not a perfect match – Corpus Christi was a Clarissan house – but at least it will give me ideas for the chorus’s costumes. But the portrait is beautiful, and so is Elena, with her sad, peaceful face. She has this neat little peak in her veil that might, or might not, be difficult to reproduce, and huge, wide turnbacks on her sleeves. That will look nice, but I hope they won’t interfere with harp and/or lute playing.
Archive for the ‘Musica Secreta’ Category
Visiting the gallery
Monday, June 19th, 2006What does a musicologist do all day?
Wednesday, June 14th, 2006Last night Deb and I recorded most of the music for Fallen – lots of delicious Grandi, and other bits and pieces. All a bit hairy – polyphony one voice at a time is nothing like three-part BV’s, especially when you’re singing to a midi organ track. Am disgusted with the way I sound, but at least it’s more or less in tune. Must have some singing lessons again soon. The boys had to make do with Domino’s pizza, again, but I didn’t hear them complaining. Son 1 was terrific and got Son 2 to bed; Son 2 was terrific and let Son 1 put him to bed, and didn’t complain once about the caterwauling under his bedroom. I wonder what they will think of their childhood when they are grown – having to put up with a mother that has too many things in her head at once. What does your mum do? Oh, she writes articles about musical pornography, sings a bit, keeps disappearing off to conferences and libraries and stuff, comes home late from committee meetings, calls going to Red Hot Chili Peppers gigs “research” (well, it is)…
I'm an American-and-naturalised-British academic who tries to juggle musicology with family life, singing, extreme knitting and football. Most of the time I succeed in keeping the balls off the ground.