Hans Meijer's Videos (Early Guitars and Vihuela) - Early Guitars and Vihuela

Ave maris stella Fernando Sor (1778-1839) PART II

2009-09-16T09:33:27.145Z

Ave maris stella
Fernando Sor (1778-1839) PART II
High Bitrate QuickTime Movie:
http://web.me.com/hortense1/Musicksmonument_movies/O_Crux.html
Ave Maris Stella ("Hail Star of the Sea") is a plainsong Vespers hymn to the Virgin Mary. It is of uncertain origin and can be dated back at least as far as the eighth century. It was especially popular in the Middle Ages and has been used by many composers as the basis of other compositions. The creation of the original hymn has been attributed to several people, including Saint Venantius Fortunatus.

Art collection Old Catholic Church Amersfoort The Netherlands:

• Dirck van Voorst (ca 1650-1655) copy Antoon van Dyck
• Hendrick, Abraham Bloemaert’s oldest son, was born in Utrecht in 1601/1602. He was trained by his father, a fact which determined his style and future career. Hendrick was in Rome in 1627 for about three months and entered the St. Luke’s guild in 1630/32. In 1631 he married Margareta van der Eem, daughter of the lawyer and painter Cornelis van der Eem in Utrecht. Hendrick is the best known and most accomplished painter of Abraham’s sons. Hendrick was principally a portrait, genre and the history painter who initially followed in the footsteps of his father, Abraham. However, his later style and more accomplished technique leads away from a Caravaggesque style associated with Abraham, to a more classical approach practised in Utrecht, Haarlem and at Court in the mid to latter part of the seventeenth century.

O crux, ave spes unica (Vexilla Regis) Fernando Sor (1778-1839) PART I

2009-09-16T09:05:11.143Z

O crux, ave spes unica (Vexilla Regis)
Fernando Sor (1778-1839) PART I
High Bitrate QuickTime Movie:
http://web.me.com/hortense1/Musicksmonument_movies/O_Crux.html
Vexilla Regis (Royal Banners)
Vexilla Regis was written by Venantius Fortunatus (530-609) and is considered one of the greatest hymns of the liturgy. Fortunatus wrote it in honor of the arrival of a large relic of the True Cross which had been sent to Queen Radegunda by the Emperor Justin II and his Empress Sophia. Queen Radegunda had retired to a convent she had built near Poitiers and was seeking out relics for the church there. To help celebrate the arrival of the relic, the Queen asked Fortunatus to write a hymn for the procession of the relic to the church.
The hymn has, thus, a strong connection with the Cross and is fittingly sung at Vespers from Passion Sunday to Holy Thursday and on the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. The hymn was also formerly sung on Good Friday when the Blessed Sacrament is taken from the repository to the altar.

Art collection Old Catholic Church Amersfoort:
• North of the Netherlands, ca 1600
• Jan van Scorel - Crucifixion??
Jan van Scorel was born in 1495 in Schoorl (Scorel) near Alkmaar. It is not certain where he studied, some scholars think that he was apprenticed to Jacob Cornelisz in Amsterdam, others - to Jan Gossaert in Utrecht. Passion for traveling put Scorel on an extended tour: he visited Dürer in Nuremberg, painted his first representative work in Obervellach in Austria ("Sippenaltar", 1520), then traveled via Venice to Rome. There Pope Adrian VI, a native of Utrecht, appointed him painter to the Vatican and successor to Raphael as Keeper of the Belvedere. From Rome Scorel went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
After his return to the Netherlands he lived in turn in Haarlem, Ghent, at last, in 1524, he settled in Utrecht and developed a brilliant career as a painter and teacher. Highly gifted and educated (he was an architect, engineer, poet, musician, knew several languages), equally endowed with intellect and spontaneity, he created a wealth of altarpieces and portraits in which Italian art merged with native tradition that gives us the right to consider him the leading Netherlandish “Romanist”. (Netherlandish “Romanist” is a term used to denote a large group of leading Flemish artists of the first half of the 16th century, who integrated the classical imagery in their work. From this time on, painting mythological scenes and nudes as the main subject also became popular in the Netherlands.) Many of the artist’s works were destroyed during the Iconoclasm (1566). Jan van Scorel died in Utrecht in 1562.

Sonata No VI for violin & guitar

2009-09-04T06:48:45.430Z

Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840)
Sonata No VI for violin & guitar
Federico Agostini - violin
Hans Meijer - guitar
recorded 1993
High Bitrate QuickTime movie and information of the restoration of the painted guitar

http://web.mac.com/musicksmonumentdownl/Paganini/Paganini_Sonata_VI.html

Greensleeves

2009-09-01T07:57:39.304Z

Paula Bär-Giese soprano & Hans Meijer lute

MILLE REGRETS - JOSQUIN

2009-09-01T07:35:17.300Z

High bitrate performance:
http://web.mac.com/musicksmonumentdownl/Musicks_Monument_Foundation/Hans_Memling-Mille_regrets-2.html

Paula Bär-Giese soprano Hans Meijer vihuela (Vihuela made by Hans Meijer)
Recorded at Castle Radbout-Medemblik:
HANS MEMLING project

Hans Memling (1435/40(?) - 1494)

Hans Memling is considered one of the most important 'Flemish primitives', although he was probably born in Gelderland (his family came from Medemblik?)There are not a lot of precise details known about him and his life. He was most probably influenced by the painting school of Cologne and by the painter Rogier van der Weyden in Brussels. In 1465 Memling is mentioned for the first time in the city books of Bruges. In 1480 he is considered to belong to the group of wealthy inhabitants of the city. He married Anna de Valkenaere and had three children with her. He died in Bruges on August the 11th 1494 and was buried in the local St.Gilles church. The reason why some of his most beautiful paintings were made for the St. John's Hospital has given rise in the 19th century to a legend about his arrival in Bruges. Hans Memling might have been a soldier in the army of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy. When he arrived severely wounded in Bruges he was taken care of by the sisters and brothers of the Hospital. To reward them he made the paintings that are still to be seen in the Memling Museum.
With the exception of his devotional works, this painting is the only Memling portrait of an individual woman to have survived. At the same time, it functions as an exemplar of the well-to-do Flemish townswoman of the final decades of the fifteenth century. Her almost nun-like appearance, with her pale face and severely swept-back hair, starched, transparent headdress and dark clothes, is ornamented only by an olive-green belt, worn high, a wine-red chest-piece, and several rings and a necklace studded with precious stones. She poses in devout reverie against a darker void, her hands clasped primly together. The background is barely distinguishable now from her close-fitting, dark purple dress because its original bluish-green colour has darkened. The frame that surrounds her is marbled dark brown, with the date painted onto the imitation stone in the Eyckian manner, as if made up of inlaid gold or yellow metal letters.
An earlier example of this type of portrait, with the same background, frame and date is the Portrait of Gilles Joye, dating from 1472. The Portrait ofJacob Obrecht also has this type of marbling on its frame. The portrait is somewhat disfigured by a painted metal cartouche top left and a banderole with an inscription on the frame at the bottom, which identify the woman as the Sibyl of Persia (SIBYLLA SAMBETHA QUAE / EST PERSICA). Judging from the style, these were added in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century. The fingertips painted over the frame are original. This trompe-l'oeil technique is an example of a process frequently applied by Memling with the aim of breaking through into the real space beyond the picture plane. The painted strip on which the sitter's hands rest is not a window-sill, but is seemingly intended as a continuation of the frame.
The sitter of this celebrated portrait was identified in the 19th century as Maria, the second daughter of Willem and Barbara Moreel. However, later this identification was not generally accepted. The painting is also known as the Sibyl of Sambetha on account of an inscription on the scroll.