Post 19: Celebrating the Magnificent Clocks of the 18th Century

   I am trying to come up with enough different visual themes to keep people interested for about an hour (depending on Carlos version of the piece), and that is a long time. My first ideas were more along the lines of a layered historical fresco of the period between 1770 and 1816. But that includes much turmoil, violence and major political changes, and events having really nothing to do with the ”honorees” so to speak: Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI.

    A lot of people see a Requiem as a “heavy” piece of music because it is a mass for the dead. I want to look at it more as a joyous celebration of the lives of the deceased.

   The purposes of this particular Requiem are clear: of course to burry the ashes of the royal pair in Saint Denis with other French Royalty, but also and foremost to rehabilitate Royalty itself and re establish the previous order, to celebrate the victory of the Bourbons and their return to the throne in the person of Louis XVIII, to celebrate eveything they stood for and the superiority of their ways, traditions and culture.

    Now, I am a Republican, and deplore the many faults and the arrogance that caused the ultimate permanent demise of Royalty in France, but at the same time I love everything that it left behind in terms of Architecture and Art. There would not be very much in the Museums if it wasn’t for the patronage of the Church and the Nobility. The 18th century was the golden Age for France, and I ultimately would rather celebrate that than show the violence of the French Revolution  and the carnage of the un necessary Napoleonic Wars. 

   It is no doubt a bit of an elitist vision of things, but I somehow feel the images should be as beautiful as the music, and celebrate the life of Marie Antoinette and Louis the XVI and the greatness of the times rather than the horror of their death. 

   Case in point, having been interested in clockwork and mechanical devices a long time, I have a "virtual" collection of magnificent 18th Century clocks in images, not being able to afford the real thing... The period was a golden age for French Clockmakers, that strived to come up with more ingenious, elaborate and beautiful designs. Every mantel in every castle and mansion was surmounted by a clock or cartel, and Versailles of course had the most elaborate and extravagant. 

    So I came up with the idea of a "Clock Parade" to accompany the Sanctus, a bit like a fashion show on a runway. It wasn't quite enough, so I added a large embossed gilded dial with turning hands , and my hand made mechanical holding a magnifier that keeps the beat and shows details of the clocks dials at the same time:

        

   I am also testing the idea of using a Title at the beginning of each of the movements, "Sanctus" in this case, using a font based on Leonardo da Vinci's handwriting, which I posted on YouTube:

                                                SANCTUS CLOCK PARADE TEST

Post 18: Tackling the "Dies Irae" at last!

    The Dies Irae is basically the most dramatic part of Cherubini's Requiem. There  are undoubtedly other passages when the music heats up a little , but for the most part, the piece is mostly very harmonious flowing counterpoint for Chorus and Orchestra, absolutely beautiful, and totally angelic at times. 
    So I have been playing with ideas for the rest of the piece, but had so far stayed away from the Dies Irae, reserving it for the most dramatic moments of the story, namely the fall of the guillotine blade onto the King and Queen's supremely inbred and aristocratic necks...
   I didn't want to be gory, but wanted to show at least a few drops of Royal Blue Blood.
   I finally got an idea this morning using the coronation portrait of the King for a "virtual beheading", and played with it all day. I think it might work, I just have to keep it going for eight more minutes....

   I loaded the Test on YouTube like the previous one, but "the Copyright Owner removed the Music Track". Apparently, they don't give a hoot about the Introit or the Graduate, but they don't want anybody to hear their Dies Irae for free...
                       Dies Irae Test 1

Post 17: Paper Doll Animation Test

   It actually took a lot longer than I expected to do the Test, and I only used only 4 of the dolls, but I am well pleased with the results, and am thinking of using some of the other dolls for other scenes in different settings.
   This is a very first rough "quick draft", and I didn't make any attempt to synchronize the animation to the music, yet it appears remarkably smooth, which yields me to believe my job may not be as hard as I thought at first, since most of the Requiem is slow flowing music with relatively few dramatic moments. 

  The Dies Irae is going to be the hard one, and I am probably going to play with it next. It will also require much stronger images, and would almost have to be the climactic part of the piece, even though it's hardly half way through. Most music builds to a final climax, that is just not the case here.
  I posted a small video of the test on YouTube:
                                                PAPER DOLLS TEST 1

  But it really doesn't do justice to the full 5760 x 1080 full size triple HD giant video playing on my 25 foot wide spandex screen...
    One could conceive of a scene inside the Palace, may be in the Queen Bedroom(or her bathroom?), another in a salon at the Trianon playing games with "courtisans", or in the Farmhouse with milk maids and animals, or yet another in the Queen Theatre.
   What I can do largely depends on the size and quality of the images I can find, as even though large images are becoming more common on the internet, my 5760 pixels wide canvas is still quite demanding.
    

Post 16: Back to the Animated Paper Doll Idea

     I sent an e mail to the Artist I had mentioned in a previous post that sold very whimsical Marie Antoinette paper dolls on Etsy, asking if it would be OK to use them in an animated sequence, and she said it was fine. I suppose I could design my own, but that's a lot of extra work and time for a result that may not be any better. Her dolls come already equipped with my trademark "Steampunk" wheels(well, I might change them), clockwork and winding keys, but retain a frilly appearance. They could be used as puppets in a 2D Animation made in After Effects. I started cutting them up, in a bit of reverse engineering, and just to see, placed them in front of a stylized Versailles:

   I think they look pretty good, and would bring a bit of whimsy to the obligatory solemnity of the Requiem.   I will do a short Animation Test in After Effects, and see how it plays...

Post 15: How About a Cherubini Requiem Music Video?

   I think I have said before that the time when I first wake up is often for me a time to generate new ideas and brainstorm.
   The idea that dawned on me this morning is to produce an adapted 1920 x 1080 version of the show, and sell it as a Classical Music Video. I wonder have not found anything like it done by another Symphony orchestra. If we could make a recording of the music in advance, it could be actually be sold the day of the performance. Or we could take orders for it.
  Of course, I am throwing the idea out not knowing whether Carlos and the Symphony would want to do something like that...

Post 14: Injecting a Steampunk Flavor into the mix...

    I am as you may know "into Steampunk", and have an ongoing Steampunk Project. I have studied early balloons, dirigeables, airships, steamships and submarines at length, including Monturiol's 1850 beautiful wooden Ictineo .
   So I wouldn't mind introducing a "Steampunk flavor" to the whole thing, with wheels, spring motors, clocks, period vehicles. After all , the first steam powered vehicle, Cugnot's clumsy "Fardier" was built in 1769:

and Trevithick's wonderfully whimsical and fanciful London Steam Carriage was built in 1803:

   One could imagine such a contraption would have made it to the court. After all, the King was known to be a keen locksmith, and more interested in mechanics than in economics or politics.
   Steamboats were also experimental at the time, and we could conceive of one gracing the "Pièce d'Eau" together with rowboats and sailboats... Actually, the very first steam-powered ship "Pyroscaphe" was built in France in 1783 by the Marquis Claude de Jouffroy and his colleagues as an improvement of an earlier attempt, the 1776 Palmipède. I was a paddle steamer powered by a Newcomen steam engine, and we know what it looked like, as there is a model in the Maritime Museum in Paris:

   Also, the American engineer Robert Fulton, then living in Paris, designed the first working submarine, the "Nautilus" between 1793 and 1797, while living in France. It's design is even more whimsical than that of the London Steam Carriage:

    He asked the French Government to subsidize its construction but he was turned down twice. Eventually he approached the Minister of Marine himself and in 1800 was granted permission to build. The shipyard Perrier in Rouen built it and it sailed first in July 1800 on the Seine River in the same city.  When tested his submarine went underwater for 17 minutes in 25 feet of water, an amazing feat. 
    Just fantasizing guys!

Post 13: Another Side Trip, this Time Through Paper Doll History

   One thing tends to lead to another when I start brainstorming, and the playing card research led to another king of paper product that started to be created in the early 19th Century, about the time Cherubini was making landscapes cutting up playing cards.
   Even though I am working on a Light Show, everything here is revolving around paper it seems: the written music itself, going from Cherubini's manuscript to published printed score

the prints from the period that I have collected and gathered to tell the story in images

the documents and manuscripts by Royal hands

 the portraits of French kings and queens:

the playing cards I started designing

 and now the incredible wealth of paper dolls inspired by Marie Antoinette, to this day. There are delightful 19th Century plates:

old advertisement paper dolls

whole books , cutout figures and  sets of clothes still being designed by Artists

 especially the almost three dimensional collection of whimsical scenes by Rhonda Knauf on Etsy:

     These really got me thinking theatre, with the two sided design, the accessories, the spring winding key, the wheels(I love wheels). I then ran across these two jointed paper dolls:

and started brainstorming about a 2D animation sequence with paper sets.

  A while back, I got interested and researched old children toy theaters:

 and some of their contemporary re interpretations:

   I can envision building one of these in 3D in After Effect, cutting the paper dolls into parts, adding wheels, sets based on Versailles, and coming up with a sequence technically similar to the dancing écorché's "Danse Macabre" sequence in my Light Dreams Show:

   Except that the puppets would be Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, the Princess of Lamballe, and other "courtisans", and the sets would be the Hall of Mirrors, the Gardens, the Lake, the Trianon, the Farm, any part of Versailles I could rebuild as a 3D stage: