In Cambridge last week for Evensong. Every bit as amazing as I had hoped.
Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart
30 Tuesday May 2023
Posted Architecture, art, Education, History, Music, Nostalgia, Photography, Religion, Sculpture
inIn Cambridge last week for Evensong. Every bit as amazing as I had hoped.
Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart
12 Friday May 2023
Posted Architecture, Arts, Music, Photography, Social Comment
in25 Saturday Mar 2023
Posted Animals, art, Music, Photography
inTags
Alton Barnes, Alton Priors, etched glass, Laurence Whistler, Pewsey Downs, Purcell Music for a While, Ridgway, White Horse
Alton Barnes, Wiltshire.
Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart
04 Sunday Dec 2022
Tags
acrylic paints, Christmas, partridge in a pear tree, traditional songs, Twelve Days of Christmas
Christmassy Painting by Candia Dixon-Stuart
27 Sunday Nov 2022
Posted art, Bible, Literature, Music, mythology, Nature, Photography, Religion
inTags
Ashmolean, Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, King Arthur, Millais, Oxford, Pre-Raphaelites, Ruskin
From the closing exhibition at The Ashmolean, Oxford
Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart
23 Sunday Oct 2022
Posted Architecture, Autumn, Music, Nostalgia, Photography
in08 Sunday May 2022
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10 Thursday Jun 2021
Posted art, Music, Nostalgia, Photography
in18 Tuesday May 2021
Posted Environment, Music, Nature, Nostalgia, Personal, Photography, Spring
in15 Saturday May 2021
Posted Environment, History, Music, Nature, Poetry
inTags
Aeolian harp, Alpenglow, dendrology, gibbous moon, Il Bosco Che Suona, luthier, Magnificent Sorella, master craftsman, Mother nature, musical instrument maker, Pale di San Martino, terroir, topography, Val di Fiemme, violin
btristan Predazzo (TN) 5 Sept, 2009.
L’abete di risnanza gives you wood
from the Val di Fiemme, the Magnifica Sorella.
In that forest of harmony is Spruce,
cradled by Pale di San Martino;
warmed in turn by Alpenglow and then chilled.
Prolonged, reduced solar activity
narrows its rings; matches them to your wrinkles.
Your belly has developed fine grain lines;
your voice has a sylvan modulation.
You haunt Il Bosco Che Suona,
a seasoned genius, skilled in selection.
Work is a divertimento for you.
The gibbous moon is your precise signal
to select the slow-maturing timber
to be quarter-sawn; air-dried in your shop.
The vibrating air, combined with your breath,
creates singing sap, needles, resin,
responsive, like an Aeolian harp
and the terroir gives you vine ash for your reds,
which stain your hands, transforming you to live tree,
bridging the gap between man, instrument,
climate, topography, dendrology.
When your master craftsman fingers relax
and your touch becomes lighter and lighter
and Fortune fells you just where you have stood,
for aeons, those in your shadow will grow,
more vigorously for having known you
and your arcane method of fusing strength
with Mother Nature’s flexibility.
They will internalise resonances
from tonewoods subject to your discipline.
Autorotation will spread all your skills.
Though, in the beginning was Man and Tree
and an inhospitable mountain range,
now Nature has been given her own voice.