See the whole “Dante Alighieri racconta la politica” Facebook page here (last accessed January 13, 2021).
Weather in Amsterdam, Netherlands, January 2021
CARROT Weather app for iOS
Uffizi honors the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death with virtual exhibit of Federico Zuccari’s illustrations (Jan. 1, 2021)
“MILAN (AP) — Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is making available for viewing online 88 rarely displayed drawings of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” to mark the 700th anniversary in 2021 of the Italian poet’s death. The virtual show of high-resolution images of works by the 16th-Century Renaissance artist Federico Zuccari will be accessible from Friday [Dec. 31, 2020] “for free, any hour of the day, for everyone,” said Uffizi director Eike Schmidt.” […] AP News, January 1, 2021
See the 88 drawings by Federico Zuccari (1540-1609) done between 1586-1588 while in Spain here.
…mi ritrovai in una strana pandemia… (2020)
In the last days of 2020, the image below was circulating on various social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook):
Contributed by Irene Zanini-Cordi (Florida State University)
Scenes From the Mountain, a score for Purgatorio by Zachary Cheng (2020)
Scenes From the Mountain is a musical score for Purgatorio by Zachary Cheng (DeMatha Catholic High School ’21).
Of his composition, Cheng writes: “This small movement, which is only around six-and-a-half minutes long, was incredibly difficult to complete despite its length. I returned to it many times over quarantine though I could not seem to find any musical ideas that would stick with me. That changed for the better when I returned to the work in late August and decided to shift my approach. Instead of specifically cataloguing the tale of Dante, I decided to use music to describe the general environment of the Mountain of Purgatory. This ended up giving me more musical freedom. I also shifted the orchestration from a traditional orchestra towards something I am much more familiar with, that being the wind ensemble. The specific movement here encapsulates the base of the mountain (Canto I) up to just before the Valley of Princes (Canto VII).”
The score, with Cheng’s interlinear notes, are available to view here. Listen to it on Soundcloud.
The DeMatha Wind Ensemble (pictured) recorded a performance of Scenes from the Mountain in April 2021.
Many thanks to Zachary Cheng and his teacher, Mr. Homer Twigg of the Department of Theology at DeMatha Catholic High School, for permission to share the composition.
