Art and Music

With some time to spare today, I visited the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square again. I'm still amazed that all this great art is accessible to the public entirely free of charge. All one needs is to walk in and be surrounded immediately by works which have taken literally thousands of hours to create. And each time I head there, I learn something new. The Impressionist gallery was closed, so I wandered through the works of the earlier centuries, and learnt more today about Pieter de Hooch, possibly a contemporary of Vermeer. There were a couple of portraits by him that echoed Vermeer's style. One featured a street scene of Delft, which Vermeer also painted. The other employed Vermeer's favourite setting of light streaming into a house from a window on the left of the picture. Compare this with this - both of which hang in the same gallery.

Stepping out of the National Gallery, I headed next door into St. Martin-in-the-Fields - or more accurately, into its crypt. The brass rubbing stand was still there, as was the gallery, the gift shop and the cafe. I still wonder why all the commercialism wouldn't disturb the spirits of the bodies that used to lie there. But I picked up a concert guide for performances in the coming months, and spotted an alluring triple Bach cantata performance on October 12, complete with Bach's Brandenburg Number 5. Perfect.

Walking down Piccadilly, past the Royal Academy - where I snapped the image above - and then up New Bond Street towards Oxford Street later on, I chanced upon 25 Brook Street, where the Handel House was located. So that's where Mr Handel spent many of his years in Britain, and where famous works such as the Music for the Royal Fireworks were composed. One room contained a harpsichord, on which a man was practising. I think that's the first time I had been so up close to that instrument, barely a couple of feet away. There was also a small exhibition featuring Handel's collaboration with famous castrati of his era. Problem was, the exhibits included some of the ancient instruments used *ahem* to achieve the castrati effect. Ouch.