THE MAKING
of
PALLADIAN PRELUDE
(in C MAJOR)
Architecture as Frozen Music
All of my projects have stories behind them, but some have longer explanations than others.... This project belongs to this latter group. For those of you who would like to read it, what follows is a description of the design process, the source references, and the inspirations that were instrumental in making Palladian Prelude (in C Major)... As well as a few of the iPhone pics I took while it was under construction in the studio... from the cartoon to the very FIRST moment that light came through the finished product...
Above is the main cartoon laying flat on the light table... and a folded 50% reduction on top...
This is the booklet I printed for the doctor as a quick reference of the sources and various inspirations I used in designing and making this project... Many of the pictures below (the ones showing the coiled binding) are from this booklet...
This whole project began when my patron handed me a piece of paper with this graph on it and asked me if I could do anything with it....
"What is it?" I asked...
It turns out that this is the governing geometry that generates a rather interesting shape... This particular shape, when rotated around its enclosing square, will generate another square if you follow the path of the center of the smallest circle, where the two diagonal lines intersect. This was an engineering challenge that, when solved, allows for rapid drilling of square holes in manufacturing production.... And this was just fascinating to my patron...
Being myself an artist, and not a production engineer, I rotated the drawing in my hand 90 degrees clockwise... And suddenly I was looking at the governing geometry of a Madonna and Child from some Renaissance Master....
"Yes indeed! I can do something with this....."
When I visited my patron in his apartment I quickly saw that he had no immediate location for a stained glass window.... So I suggested a folding screen.... He was game... A folding screen can be moved where ever he wanted to put it...
I should also mention that the first thing I encountered on that visit, was a rather large Steinway grand piano.... It filled his living room... A quick glance revealed not ONE photograph... and NO dust... This gentleman PLAYS this piano... so I HAD to ask.... "Who is your favorite composer?" ... Complex mathematical problem..... spectacular keyboard.... I already knew the answer... "Johan Sebastian Bach!"
After some thought, it became clear that the governing geometry he handed me would give us the exact proportions of the folding screen we needed to make for him.... And it also gave us the sizing... This wonderful shape created for those drilling experts is exactly the same unit wide as it is tall... We made our unit equal to one foot... 12 inches... And this gave us a four panel folding screen where each panel is one foot wide and three feet tall...
"What is it?" I asked...
It turns out that this is the governing geometry that generates a rather interesting shape... This particular shape, when rotated around its enclosing square, will generate another square if you follow the path of the center of the smallest circle, where the two diagonal lines intersect. This was an engineering challenge that, when solved, allows for rapid drilling of square holes in manufacturing production.... And this was just fascinating to my patron...
Being myself an artist, and not a production engineer, I rotated the drawing in my hand 90 degrees clockwise... And suddenly I was looking at the governing geometry of a Madonna and Child from some Renaissance Master....
"Yes indeed! I can do something with this....."
When I visited my patron in his apartment I quickly saw that he had no immediate location for a stained glass window.... So I suggested a folding screen.... He was game... A folding screen can be moved where ever he wanted to put it...
I should also mention that the first thing I encountered on that visit, was a rather large Steinway grand piano.... It filled his living room... A quick glance revealed not ONE photograph... and NO dust... This gentleman PLAYS this piano... so I HAD to ask.... "Who is your favorite composer?" ... Complex mathematical problem..... spectacular keyboard.... I already knew the answer... "Johan Sebastian Bach!"
After some thought, it became clear that the governing geometry he handed me would give us the exact proportions of the folding screen we needed to make for him.... And it also gave us the sizing... This wonderful shape created for those drilling experts is exactly the same unit wide as it is tall... We made our unit equal to one foot... 12 inches... And this gave us a four panel folding screen where each panel is one foot wide and three feet tall...
The picture below shows the major sources for Palladian Prelude, the music of Bach and the architectural drawings in the Four Books of Architecture by Andrea Palladio...
Below is an eighteenth century print of the Doric Order. Many of these drawings have been framed in our time and hang in corporate offices or the homes of discerning collectors... It is this tradition of displaying these wonderful drawings that is the main precedent for this particular work.... This is a stained glass rendition of them... introducing color and light!
The version of Palladio's Four Books that I used is this one... An old friend from my college days...
And here is Palladio's Doric Order in colonnade form... Notice the alternation of cattle skulls (bucrania) with circular shields.... I updated the bucrania with some help from Georgia O'Keefe and I replace the shields with some shells inspired by the carvings on San Francisco City Hall, one of the finest Doric buildings in America...
Below is one of the bucrania with the "Shape" gently superimposed upon it... The shape that governs the drilling of a square hole and the geometry that created that shape told me just exactly where to put the ribbon, where to place the eyes, and, when the curve at the top is reversed, it gave me the curve of the horns...
The shell was designed using the entire set of circles...
Below is a screen shot from my iPhone when I googled Bach's Prelude in C Major.. BWV 846.... We are more familiar with it as the background to Ave Maria... This particular version has a copyright release! and it's simple enough to translate into a graphic representation that can be more readily made with little pieces of glass wrapped in copper foil.. In this project I put one measure of Bach's music in each panel... The first and the forth measures are the same... and that gave it a nice sense of closure...
Again from my iPhone, this particular recording of the Prelude in C Major is the very first I found on YouTube... And its WONDERFUL! I listened to it at least a thousand times while working on this project. This isn't much of an exaggeration....The project took just over a year to complete... 1000 times is less than three times a day... I NEVER got tired of it...
Here is a link to it, if you would like to enjoy Irena Koblar yourself
Below is the first four measures of BWV 846 in the completed stained glass...
Below, the first four measures in musical notation.... and then, the second measure in stained glass under construction... I tried to convey the way a non-musician would encounter the music while listening to it instead of the instructions Bach gives for the way it should be played by a professional...
These are some pictures taken while the work was in progress showing the construction of one of the shells...
And a few more progress pictures showing the strategy for cutting the columns so that the grain of the glass carried through to all the pieces uninterrupted...
This project was assembled panel by panel... Just below was the first moment after the third panel was installed...
First light! This pic from a slightly shaky iPhone, is the very FIRST light to shine through the completed project....
And here, above, is a detail picture of one of the bucrania in the patron's home with sunlight striking a building in the distant background and shining through the red glass... and below, the second bucranium on a different day, with the light striking the buliding next door. Notice the stone windows of the neighboring building peaking through from behind in that transparent red glass...
One of the many fascinating things about a stained glass folding screen, is the play of light from behind AND from the sides and front. Knowing about this, and designing for it is one of my favorite things to do... The glass for the shells, bucrania, and columns has an iridized surface. This surface reflects light much the way an oil slick does... It separates the colors of the light like a prism and then sends back to your eye MORE color than is actually there... And sometimes, instead, it presents a mirrored surface depending on the coating and the heat applied by the glass manufacturer... Capturing this in a still photograph is almost impossible... So I tried to capture it on an informal iPhone video... and posted it to YouTube... This video was actually the very first view my patron had of his finished project! He was in Europe at the moment of completion... click here... (Its about 24 seconds long...)