The Guinness Book of Music Facts & Feats nominates Luigi Boccherini as “the most ingratiating composer”: In nearly 600 works comprising 1400 movements, the following directions appear:

• Affettuoso (“affectionately”): 20 times
• Grazioso (“gracefully”) or grazia (“with grace”): 25 times
• Amoroso (“lovingly”): 37 times
• Soave (“agreeably,” “sweetly,” “delicately,” “gently,” “caressingly,” “lightly”), also soave assai (“extremely …”) and soavita, and once even soave e con grazia: 54 times
• Dolce (“sweetly”) or Dolcissimo (“very sweetly and gently”): 148 times

“Also to be found are Armonico (‘harmoniously’), con innocenza (‘with innocence’), piacere (‘pleasingly’), and allegretto gentile (‘not too fast, lightly and cheerfully,’ ‘pleasingly,’ ‘elegantly,’ ‘gracefully’), together with hundreds of directions calling for very quiet playing (pp and pp sempre).”

For comparison, Appassionato (“passionately”) appears only 8 times, con brio (“with fire”) only 6 times, and con forza (“with force”) only once.

Type designer Hermann Zapf could reproduce a typeface by hand. In The Art of Hermann Zapf, an educational film he produced for Hallmark Cards in 1967, at 14:13 he draws Melior, a serif type used in newspapers such as the Village Voice.

Typeface designer Steve Matteson said, “Zapf was someone who could write 10-point type and it looked like a typeface. It was pretty astounding; his muscle control was so fluid.”

Zapf created around 200 typefaces, including Palatino, Optima, and Zapfino. When he died in 2015, “all the rest of us moved up one,” type designer Matthew Carter told the New York Times. “That’s my way of saying Hermann was on top.”

Susan Cahill performs a self-referential piece by Tom Johnson at the 2014 Festival Mozaic.

(Via MetaFilter.)

University of Minnesota percussionist Gene Koshinski’s composition “As One” has two performers (here, Koshinski and Tim Broscious) complementing each other on identical setups, splitting one complex piece into two complex halves.

More about Koshinski at his website.

In his letters, Tchaikovsky comes to two contrary impressions of Venice in the space of three years:

April 17, 1874: “Now I will tell you about Venice. It is a place in which — had I to remain for long — I should hang myself on the fifth day from sheer despair. The entire life of the place centres in the Piazza San Marco. To venture further in any direction is to find yourself in a labyrinth of stinking corridors which end in some cul-de-sac, so that you have no idea where you are, or where to go, unless you are in a gondola. A trip through the Canale Grande is well worth making, for one passes marble palaces, each one more beautiful and more dilapidated than the last. In fact, you might suppose yourself to be gazing upon the ruined scenery in the first act of Lucrezia. But the Doge’s Palace is beauty and elegance itself; and then the romantic atmosphere of the Council of Ten, the Inquisition, the torture chambers, and other fascinating things. I have thoroughly ‘done’ this palace within and without, and dutifully visited two others, and also three churches, in which were many pictures by Titian and Tintoretto, statues by Canova, and other treasures. Venice, however — I repeat it — is very gloomy, and like a dead city. There are no horses here, and I have not even come across a dog.”

November 16, 1877: “Venice is a fascinating city. Every day I discover some fresh beauty. Yesterday we went to the Church of the Frati, in which, among other art treasures, is the tomb of Canova. It is a marvel of beauty! But what delights me most is the absolute quiet and absence of all street noises. To sit at the open window in the moonlight and gaze upon S. Maria della Salute, or over to the Lagoons on the left, is simply glorious! It is very pleasant also to sit in the Piazza di San Marco (near the Café) in the afternoon and watch the stream of people go by. The little corridor-like streets please me, too, especially in the evening when the windows are lit up. In short, Venice has bewitched me … To-morrow I will look for a furnished apartment.”

(Thanks, Charlie.)

Giuseppe Sanmartino’s 1753 sculpture Veiled Christ is so convincing that for 200 years a legend circulated that an alchemist had transformed a real shroud into marble.

In fact a close examination shows that Sanmartino carved the whole work, shroud and all, from a single block of stone. Antonio Canova said he would give up 10 years of his own life to produce such a masterpiece.

Like his Celui qui tombe of 2014, acrobat Yoann Bourgeois’s La mécanique de l’Histoire is entirely abstract and yet freighted with meaning.

He presented it at the Panthéon in Paris last year — the site of Léon Foucault’s original rotation-demonstrating pendulum.