Inspiring Excitement and Passion about History and the Humanities
Every once in a while there’s a piece of music that paints such a beautiful picture of happiness, rebirth, renewal, and the essence of Easter, that you just have to get up and dance a jig. That’s what Byrd’s Haec Dies does for me. Latin for This is the Day (the Lord Hath Made), it…
Lady Margaret Beaufort was Henry VII’s mother, so in a sense she gave birth to the Tudor Dynasty. And now that I think about it, the birth of Henry Tudor is famous because it was so difficult for her…she was young (too young to be having children, and in the future when marriage negotiations were…
Yep, in case anyone is wondering, I do indeed have a lot of creative projects on the go right now. It’s been a study in project management keeping them all going, to be honest, and I’m truly glad that some of them are wrapping up soon. It will free up creative space to build my…
Between 1684 and 1688 English music, opera, and music history was changed when Purcell wrote Dido & Aeneas, one of England’s earliest operas written by the Grandaddy of English Baroque. Now, 350 years later, it is still alive and well as a new recording by the Armonico Consort demonstrates, and it’s time to once again…
About 2o years ago I read Alison Weir’s Six Wives of Henry VIII. I remember starting it, laying in my bed in my attic bedroom when it was snowing outside. I was immediately hooked on this saga of drama and the way lives could be forever changed because of the inability to bear a son. Little…
I’m going on tour y’all! Blog tour, that is. I’ve ponied up the money to hire a blog tour coordinator. Later on in March I will be on a blog tour that’s being coordinated by Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours. It’s a company that specializes in, as the name would imply, blog tours of historical…
In March 1527 Henry VIII and his wife Catherine of Aragon visited Cardinal Wolsey’s new foundation – Cardinal’s College – in Oxford. John Taverner, one of the most famous composers of his time, was commissioned to write an appropriately stunning piece of choral music that would wow the King and his Queen. Taverner turned out…
Mary Tudor (aka Mary I, aka Bloody Mary) is the Person of the Month over on the Tudor Times website. I did a podcast episode on her about a year and a half ago, and I wanted to revisit this much-maligned woman. So here, for your reading pleasure – some random facts about Mary I that…
A few weeks ago I was reading a book in the bathtub. This isn’t a new occurrence. Reading in the bathtub is one of my favorite luxuries. What happened during that particular bath, though, was kind of a big deal. I’ve been ruminating for a while on different projects I could start – because writing…
It’s been just over 20 years since I first became hooked on early English choral music through singing Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus in my high school chamber choir. I talk about that piece a lot – it sums up for me this struggle of humanity; how much do you conform vs being true to yourself. Byrd…