HN004 Leonardo da Vinci, his musicianship and the Mona Lisa

We know that Leonardo da Vinci was raised and trained in Florence, within the beating heart of the Renaissance. We also think of him as the painter of the Mona Lisa and as an outstanding researcher into the wonders of nature. He was active for many years at the court of the Dukes of Milan where he painted his famous Last Supper.

But, how many of us are aware that, according to his early biographer, Giorgio Vasari, Leonardo da Vinci was initially summoned to Milan due to his reputation as a musician? I quote from A.B. Hinds translation, of Vasari’s lives, ‘On the death of Giovan. Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, and the accession of Ludovico Sforza in the same year, 1493, Lionardo was invited to Milan to play the lyre, in which that prince greatly delighted. Lionardo took his own instrument, made by himself in silver, and shaped like a horse’s head, a curious and novel idea to render the harmonies more loud and sonorous, so that he surpassed all the musicians who had assembled there.’

The relation between Leonardo and music doesn’t stop here though. He wrote many notes in his research and pondering on the nature of sound, and about music and the production of sounds. But as a final interesting fact, and again from Vasari, whilst painting the Mona Lisa, ‘he engaged people to play and sing, and jesters to keep her merry, and remove that melancholy which painting usually gives to portraits.’

HN004 Leonardo da Vinci, his musicianship and the Mona Lisa

We know that Leonardo da Vinci was raised and trained in Florence, within the beating heart of the Renaissance. We also think of him as the painter of the Mona Lisa and as an outstanding researcher into the wonders of nature. He was active for many years at the court of the Dukes of Milan where he painted his famous Last Supper.

But, how many of us are aware that, according to his early biographer, Giorgio Vasari, Leonardo da Vinci was initially summoned to Milan due to his reputation as a musician? I quote from A.B. Hinds translation, of Vasari’s lives, ‘On the death of Giovan. Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, and the accession of Ludovico Sforza in the same year, 1493, Lionardo was invited to Milan to play the lyre, in which that prince greatly delighted. Lionardo took his own instrument, made by himself in silver, and shaped like a horse’s head, a curious and novel idea to render the harmonies more loud and sonorous, so that he surpassed all the musicians who had assembled there.’

The relation between Leonardo and music doesn’t stop here though. He wrote many notes in his research and pondering on the nature of sound, and about music and the production of sounds. But as a final interesting fact, and again from Vasari, whilst painting the Mona Lisa, ‘he engaged people to play and sing, and jesters to keep her merry, and remove that melancholy which painting usually gives to portraits.’

JENNY LIND, SOPRANO, OCTOBER 6TH, 1820

Jenny Lind 1820

Coined the ‘Swedish Nightingale’, Jenny Lind was born in Stockholm in 1820. Her exceptional voice was noticed at age ten, and as even as a young girl she was enrolled in the Royal Opera School in Stockholm. In 1838 she made her debut at Agathe in Der Freischütz. Early demands and success overtaxed her voice and this led her to travel to Paris to seek consultation and tutelage from Manuel García the younger, who immediately prescribed some time of vocal rest before taking her on as a student. In 1842 upon returning to Stockholm her much improved voice was apparent when she appeared in the title role of Norma.

When touring Denmark, in 1843, she met the writer Hans Christian Andersen who fell in love with her. The two became good friends but his romantic feelings were not reciprocated. She is believed to have inspired three of his fairy tales: “Beneath the Pillar”, “The Angel” and “The Nightingale” and possibly the “Snow Queen”, after what was perceived as an icy rejection from Lind. He wrote, “No book or personality whatever has exerted a more ennobling influence on me, as a poet, than Jenny Lind. For me she opened the sanctuary of art.”
Among her early admirers were Robert Schumann, Hector Berlioz and, most importantly for her, Felix Mendelssohn. The pianist and composer, Ignaz Moscheles wrote: “Jenny Lind has fairly enchanted me… her song with two concertante flutes is perhaps the most incredible feat in the way of bravura singing that can possibly be heard”.
The character of Vielka, from Meyerbeer’s Ein Feldlager in Schlesien (The Camp of Silesia) 1844, was a role specifically written for Lind but not premiered by her. Nevertheless the Gypsy Song from the opera became one of the arias most associated with Lind, and she was called on to sing it wherever she performed in concert. Her operatic repertoire included the title roles in Lucia di Lammermoor, Maria di Rohan, Norma, La sonnambula and La vestale as well as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, Adina in L’elisir d’amore and Alice in Robert le diable.
Mendelssohn who was greatly enamoured with Lind wrote the soprano part of the Oratorio Elijah with her voice in mind, apparently giving great attention to the tessitura of the aria around the note F-sharp (F#5), which was a note in her range that Mendelssohn supposedly found irresistibly charming. Devastated by Mendelssohn’s early death, Lind felt unable to perform the piece at its premiere.
Her fame had spread and when she arrived in England, she took the English audiences by storm. Queen Victoria herself attended all sixteen of Lind’s premiere performances.
Of her performances at Her Majesty’s in London it was written by the reviewer in The Sun, on 5 May 1847, ‘So highly had Jenny Lind’s musical powers been praised, that we went almost prepared to be disappointed. We expected to find her a second Sontag from the descriptions we had read, but we certainly were not prepared to find, as we did find, the beautiful tones of a Sontag, united to the powers of a Grisi, the compass of a Malibran, the more than flexibility of a Persiani, and the correctness of intonation of the most perfect of musical instruments. It is impossible by language to convey any idea of what the voice of Jenny Lind really is, because it is so surpassingly beautiful – so superior to any other voice, uniting, as it does, the perfection of all voices, that there is no standard to which it can be compared. It is, in fact, itself the standard, as being the nearest approach to perfection of any voice ever heard, and hence the difficulty, nay, the absolute impossibility of doing justice by description to the powers of Jenny Lind. Truly has she been called the nightingale, for she possesses in the utmost perfection the “jug” note of the bird, and also that marvellous power of throwing, as it were, the warble into the distance – now dying away, and now swelling again, even as an organ does – a power possessed by no other human voice that we have ever heard.’
In 1849 after performing at two successful seasons at Her Majesty’s in London and an extensive tour of Great Britain she gave her final performance at Her Majesty’s and from the retired from the opera stage.

A next chapter was to open with a collaboration in America with the entrepreneur and showman B.T. Barnum of ‘Barnum and Bailey’s Circus’. Before her arrival, Barnum had managed to whip up a fever by an immense publicity campaign, which resulted in what was known in the press as, Lindomania. The eight months of concert tours were a huge success, and by the end of the New York engagement, the Lind concerts had generated some $87,055.89, which would be over three million dollars in today’s money. The total receipts for the concerts amounted to $712,161.43, being in 2020 the equivalent of $24.5 million.
Lind commanded a guaranteed fee $1,000.00 per performance. Later, as a result of Lind tiring of Barnum’s relentless promotion, she invoked a clause in her contract to terminate the agreement and continued to tour under her own management.

Her devotion and generosity to charitable causes remained a key aspect of her career and greatly enhanced her international popularity, even among the unmusical, as she chose to give most of it away to charities she loved—primarily music scholarships and private schools. Some of the recipients were in the United States and the rest were mostly in England and Sweden.

During the American tour she met her husband, pianist and conductor, Otto Goldschmidt. In 1852 they returned to Europe where they initially lived in Dresden Germany. It was in Dresden that her first child was born. Later, in England, two other children were born to Jenny and Otto. She refused requests to return to the opera stage but continued to give concerts.

The critic H. F. Chorley, who admired Lind, described her voice as having “two octaves in compass – from D to D – having a higher possible note or two, available on rare occasions; and that the lower half of the register and the upper one were of two distinct qualities. The former was not strong – veiled, if not husky; and apt to be out of tune. The latter was rich, brilliant and powerful – finest in its highest portions.”
In 1883, at the request of the Prince of Wales, “she accepted the post of first Professor of Singing in the Royal College of Music”.

She believed in an all-round musical training for her pupils, insisting that, in addition to their vocal studies, they were instructed in solfège, piano, harmony, diction, deportment and at least one foreign language.
Among the numerous recognitions of her remarkable career and vocal art still visible more than 130 years since she died in 1887; there are streets named for Jenny Lind in a dozen or more American cities – but two towns bear her name as well: Jenny Lind, Arkansas and Jenny Lind, California! Her name is honoured at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, and her image adorned the Swedish 50-krona banknote. Another interesting fact is an Australian schooner was named Jenny Lind in her honour. In 1857, it was wrecked in a creek on the Queensland coast; the creek was accordingly named Jenny Lind Creek.

JENNY LIND, SOPRANO, OCTOBER 6TH, 1820

Jenny Lind 1820

Coined the ‘Swedish Nightingale’, Jenny Lind was born in Stockholm in 1820. Her exceptional voice was noticed at age ten, and as even as a young girl she was enrolled in the Royal Opera School in Stockholm. In 1838 she made her debut at Agathe in Der Freischütz. Early demands and success overtaxed her voice and this led her to travel to Paris to seek consultation and tutelage from Manuel García the younger, who immediately prescribed some time of vocal rest before taking her on as a student. In 1842 upon returning to Stockholm her much improved voice was apparent when she appeared in the title role of Norma.

When touring Denmark, in 1843, she met the writer Hans Christian Andersen who fell in love with her. The two became good friends but his romantic feelings were not reciprocated. She is believed to have inspired three of his fairy tales: “Beneath the Pillar”, “The Angel” and “The Nightingale” and possibly the “Snow Queen”, after what was perceived as an icy rejection from Lind. He wrote, “No book or personality whatever has exerted a more ennobling influence on me, as a poet, than Jenny Lind. For me she opened the sanctuary of art.”
Among her early admirers were Robert Schumann, Hector Berlioz and, most importantly for her, Felix Mendelssohn. The pianist and composer, Ignaz Moscheles wrote: “Jenny Lind has fairly enchanted me… her song with two concertante flutes is perhaps the most incredible feat in the way of bravura singing that can possibly be heard”.
The character of Vielka, from Meyerbeer’s Ein Feldlager in Schlesien (The Camp of Silesia) 1844, was a role specifically written for Lind but not premiered by her. Nevertheless the Gypsy Song from the opera became one of the arias most associated with Lind, and she was called on to sing it wherever she performed in concert. Her operatic repertoire included the title roles in Lucia di Lammermoor, Maria di Rohan, Norma, La sonnambula and La vestale as well as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, Adina in L’elisir d’amore and Alice in Robert le diable.
Mendelssohn who was greatly enamoured with Lind wrote the soprano part of the Oratorio Elijah with her voice in mind, apparently giving great attention to the tessitura of the aria around the note F-sharp (F#5), which was a note in her range that Mendelssohn supposedly found irresistibly charming. Devastated by Mendelssohn’s early death, Lind felt unable to perform the piece at its premiere.
Her fame had spread and when she arrived in England, she took the English audiences by storm. Queen Victoria herself attended all sixteen of Lind’s premiere performances.
Of her performances at Her Majesty’s in London it was written by the reviewer in The Sun, on 5 May 1847, ‘So highly had Jenny Lind’s musical powers been praised, that we went almost prepared to be disappointed. We expected to find her a second Sontag from the descriptions we had read, but we certainly were not prepared to find, as we did find, the beautiful tones of a Sontag, united to the powers of a Grisi, the compass of a Malibran, the more than flexibility of a Persiani, and the correctness of intonation of the most perfect of musical instruments. It is impossible by language to convey any idea of what the voice of Jenny Lind really is, because it is so surpassingly beautiful – so superior to any other voice, uniting, as it does, the perfection of all voices, that there is no standard to which it can be compared. It is, in fact, itself the standard, as being the nearest approach to perfection of any voice ever heard, and hence the difficulty, nay, the absolute impossibility of doing justice by description to the powers of Jenny Lind. Truly has she been called the nightingale, for she possesses in the utmost perfection the “jug” note of the bird, and also that marvellous power of throwing, as it were, the warble into the distance – now dying away, and now swelling again, even as an organ does – a power possessed by no other human voice that we have ever heard.’
In 1849 after performing at two successful seasons at Her Majesty’s in London and an extensive tour of Great Britain she gave her final performance at Her Majesty’s and from the retired from the opera stage.

A next chapter was to open with a collaboration in America with the entrepreneur and showman B.T. Barnum of ‘Barnum and Bailey’s Circus’. Before her arrival, Barnum had managed to whip up a fever by an immense publicity campaign, which resulted in what was known in the press as, Lindomania. The eight months of concert tours were a huge success, and by the end of the New York engagement, the Lind concerts had generated some $87,055.89, which would be over three million dollars in today’s money. The total receipts for the concerts amounted to $712,161.43, being in 2020 the equivalent of $24.5 million.
Lind commanded a guaranteed fee $1,000.00 per performance. Later, as a result of Lind tiring of Barnum’s relentless promotion, she invoked a clause in her contract to terminate the agreement and continued to tour under her own management.

Her devotion and generosity to charitable causes remained a key aspect of her career and greatly enhanced her international popularity, even among the unmusical, as she chose to give most of it away to charities she loved—primarily music scholarships and private schools. Some of the recipients were in the United States and the rest were mostly in England and Sweden.

During the American tour she met her husband, pianist and conductor, Otto Goldschmidt. In 1852 they returned to Europe where they initially lived in Dresden Germany. It was in Dresden that her first child was born. Later, in England, two other children were born to Jenny and Otto. She refused requests to return to the opera stage but continued to give concerts.

The critic H. F. Chorley, who admired Lind, described her voice as having “two octaves in compass – from D to D – having a higher possible note or two, available on rare occasions; and that the lower half of the register and the upper one were of two distinct qualities. The former was not strong – veiled, if not husky; and apt to be out of tune. The latter was rich, brilliant and powerful – finest in its highest portions.”
In 1883, at the request of the Prince of Wales, “she accepted the post of first Professor of Singing in the Royal College of Music”.

She believed in an all-round musical training for her pupils, insisting that, in addition to their vocal studies, they were instructed in solfège, piano, harmony, diction, deportment and at least one foreign language.
Among the numerous recognitions of her remarkable career and vocal art still visible more than 130 years since she died in 1887; there are streets named for Jenny Lind in a dozen or more American cities – but two towns bear her name as well: Jenny Lind, Arkansas and Jenny Lind, California! Her name is honoured at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, and her image adorned the Swedish 50-krona banknote. Another interesting fact is an Australian schooner was named Jenny Lind in her honour. In 1857, it was wrecked in a creek on the Queensland coast; the creek was accordingly named Jenny Lind Creek.

Episode 7 Part 1 of The Voice Detective Show with Garth McLean

Garth McLean, is a Canadian actor, author, and a dedicated practitioner and highly respected teacher of yoga living in Los Angeles, U.S.A.
Blessed in his own words with a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in 1996, and having navigated many of the the symptoms associated with the condition, Garth manages his course of MS and a hectic schedule with a daily practice of Iyengar Yoga as presented by Yoga master, Yogacharya B.K.S. Iyengar.
Garth is a leading light in the world Iyengar community and the Iyengar family in Pune, India where since 2000, he returns annually to study and deepen his practice. He learned yoga directly from both B.K.S. Iyengar himself, and his eldest daughter Geeta.
As a teacher of yoga, he is a senior level Certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher “CIYT” (Level 3 – Intermediate Sr III), a Certified Yoga Therapist and Approved Professional Development Provider with the International Association of Yoga Therapists (C-IAYT), and a Registered Yoga Teacher (E-RYT 500) and Continuing Education Provider (YACEP) with yoga alliance.
In 2019, Garth was honoured to serve as the headline Iyengar Yoga teacher at the World Yoga Festival. In addition to this, that same year, he was a presenter and plenary speaker at the International Association of Yoga Therapists Symposium of Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR).
Garth has served as a guest teacher at the France Iyengar Yoga Teachers’ Convention (2009), the Spain Iyengar Yoga Teachers’ Convention (2011), and more recently is a co presenter at the European Congress of Rehabilitation and Medicine in Slovenia (April 2024).
He teaches yoga intensives locally and globally. In addition to regular intensives, he offers workshops on the positive effect of yoga on multiple sclerosis and other neurological conditions. He regularly offers workshops in Europe, the UK, and South America. He has also taught in Australia, Russia Federation and Tunisia.
He is a co-founder and current board faculty member of the Iyengar Yoga Therapeutics group, a non-profit organisation based in Los Angeles whose mission is to helping people manage diseases and conditions through the therapeutic applications of yoga. Garth serves on the advisory board and is a faculty member of AnuYoga, a non-profit organisation (Tel Aviv), that facilitates the integration of Iyengar Yoga as a therapeutic intervention for patient rehabilitative care in hospitals and the medical field.
He has published Yoga and Multiple Sclerosis, A Practical Guide for People with Multiple Sclerosis and Yoga Teachers, (Singing Dragon Books, London 2020).
In this month’s Episode 7 Part One ‘Iyengar Yoga for (Dis)Abilities’, Garth tells Gyaan about his journey with Multiple Sclerosis and how Iyengar Yoga has helped him keep his condition in remission…
In next month’s Episode 7 Part Two, ‘Garth McLean’s Journey as an Actor’, Garth will talk about his experience in acting and performing. His experience as a student of acting included working with Sanford Meisner in New York. More recently, he has written and performed a one-person show entitled, Looking For Lightning, about his journey which he performed live at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2018).

Episode 7 Part 1 of The Voice Detective Show with Garth McLean

Garth McLean, is a Canadian actor, author, and a dedicated practitioner and highly respected teacher of yoga living in Los Angeles, U.S.A.
Blessed in his own words with a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in 1996, and having navigated many of the the symptoms associated with the condition, Garth manages his course of MS and a hectic schedule with a daily practice of Iyengar Yoga as presented by Yoga master, Yogacharya B.K.S. Iyengar.
Garth is a leading light in the world Iyengar community and the Iyengar family in Pune, India where since 2000, he returns annually to study and deepen his practice. He learned yoga directly from both B.K.S. Iyengar himself, and his eldest daughter Geeta.
As a teacher of yoga, he is a senior level Certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher “CIYT” (Level 3 – Intermediate Sr III), a Certified Yoga Therapist and Approved Professional Development Provider with the International Association of Yoga Therapists (C-IAYT), and a Registered Yoga Teacher (E-RYT 500) and Continuing Education Provider (YACEP) with yoga alliance.
In 2019, Garth was honoured to serve as the headline Iyengar Yoga teacher at the World Yoga Festival. In addition to this, that same year, he was a presenter and plenary speaker at the International Association of Yoga Therapists Symposium of Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR).
Garth has served as a guest teacher at the France Iyengar Yoga Teachers’ Convention (2009), the Spain Iyengar Yoga Teachers’ Convention (2011), and more recently is a co presenter at the European Congress of Rehabilitation and Medicine in Slovenia (April 2024).
He teaches yoga intensives locally and globally. In addition to regular intensives, he offers workshops on the positive effect of yoga on multiple sclerosis and other neurological conditions. He regularly offers workshops in Europe, the UK, and South America. He has also taught in Australia, Russia Federation and Tunisia.
He is a co-founder and current board faculty member of the Iyengar Yoga Therapeutics group, a non-profit organisation based in Los Angeles whose mission is to helping people manage diseases and conditions through the therapeutic applications of yoga. Garth serves on the advisory board and is a faculty member of AnuYoga, a non-profit organisation (Tel Aviv), that facilitates the integration of Iyengar Yoga as a therapeutic intervention for patient rehabilitative care in hospitals and the medical field.
He has published Yoga and Multiple Sclerosis, A Practical Guide for People with Multiple Sclerosis and Yoga Teachers, (Singing Dragon Books, London 2020).
In this month’s Episode 7 Part One ‘Iyengar Yoga for (Dis)Abilities’, Garth tells Gyaan about his journey with Multiple Sclerosis and how Iyengar Yoga has helped him keep his condition in remission…
In next month’s Episode 7 Part Two, ‘Garth McLean’s Journey as an Actor’, Garth will talk about his experience in acting and performing. His experience as a student of acting included working with Sanford Meisner in New York. More recently, he has written and performed a one-person show entitled, Looking For Lightning, about his journey which he performed live at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2018).

SHORT005 WHAT’S IN THE PIZZA IN PISA?

Check out the Voice Detective Gyaan Lyon’s latest observation in Pisa, Italy…

SHORT005 WHAT’S IN THE PIZZA IN PISA?

Check out the Voice Detective Gyaan Lyon’s latest observation in Pisa, Italy…

HN003 Franz Kafka’s ‘Unmusicality’

The German language author Franz Kafka wrote very little about music. In fact, he even claimed in a diary entry on the 13 December 1911 that, ‘The essence of my unmusicalness consists in my inability to enjoy music connectedly, it only now and then has an effect on me, and how seldom it is a musical one…’ Nevertheless, we know never to read a book by its cover. Later in 1912, whilst in Weimar, he noted, ‘Carmen garden concert. Completely under its spell.’ So when someone claims to be unmusical, its not a statement of fact. Like all human beings, we are susceptible to music. Indeed Kafka was an acute observer of feelings and his rare diary entries of opera performances display in no uncertain terms that he did respond strongly to music, dance and singing.

HN003 Franz Kafka’s ‘Unmusicality’

The German language author Franz Kafka wrote very little about music. In fact, he even claimed in a diary entry on the 13 December 1911 that, ‘The essence of my unmusicalness consists in my inability to enjoy music connectedly, it only now and then has an effect on me, and how seldom it is a musical one…’ Nevertheless, we know never to read a book by its cover. Later in 1912, whilst in Weimar, he noted, ‘Carmen garden concert. Completely under its spell.’ So when someone claims to be unmusical, its not a statement of fact. Like all human beings, we are susceptible to music. Indeed Kafka was an acute observer of feelings and his rare diary entries of opera performances display in no uncertain terms that he did respond strongly to music, dance and singing.