The art on our home page

For our 2019 season we’ve chosen a work by Frans Snyders (1579-1657). In it, an owl clutches a score and directs a chorus of fifteen other birds. Paintings like these, depicting different species of birds perched on tree trunks, sometimes with musical scores, were known as Concerts of Birds and were popularized by Flemish artists in the early 17th century; Snyders was an especially adept practitioner of this genre. This painting, along with two other Concert of Birds works by Snyders, is housed at the Prado, in Madrid.

Some of the bird species depicted here include the Raggi Bird of Paradise, from New Guinea and Australia, the Blue-fronted Amazon from South America, the Hoopoe, the Eurasian Jay, the Bohemian Waxwing and the Eurasian Bullfinch. As for the owl’s musical taste? The music and lyrics are written in what seems to be a notebook with four voice parts. While others have noted that some title fragments are legible and appear to be in French, neither the composer nor the work have been definitively identified. But that doesn’t make the work any less delightful.