Portfolios
Miscellany
Daniel Joseph Betsill, luthier, et al
Artist's Profile, UGA Website 2008
Sunday, June 2, 2013
A celtic mandola I slipped in for myself between commissions. It's walnut with Brazilian rosewood fingerboard and peghead veneer. I wanted an instrument that would be at home in the 19th c. so I used friction pegs and brass frets.
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Saturday, May 25, 2013
The symphonia is complete! See here for project log.
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Saturday, March 16, 2013
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A day off for bowlturning. See here for project log and scroll down to 'A Beechwood Bowl.'
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Tuesday, February 26, 2013
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Progress on the symphonia. See here for project log.
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Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Some recent activity with Stockhausen's Heaven's Door. See the Instruments page for project description. The Door was set to be performed at Lincoln Center in NYC yesterday, but unfortunatly Hurricane Sandy put the skids on and the door is headed back to Atlanta unplayed. A reschedule is in the works. In the mean time, WABE did this article on the piece:
WABE on City Cafe and a corresponding Georgia State Article
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Saturday, July 21, 2012
I am beginning my research on the 16th c. vihuela de mano for a commission. I've always wanted to make one of these instruments, having danced around them chronologically with my study of the pre-renaissance vielles, the chitarra battente and the baroque guitar. On the page I have created I will compile my research of the three surviving documented examples, a survey of the iconography and of the revival instruments. Click here.
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Workshop in a closet.
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Online Chap Book:
And
did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?
-William Blake
Live with the gods. And he does live with the gods who constantly shows to them that his own soul is satisfied with its daimon, that portion of himself that Zeus has given to every man to be his guardian and guide and that his soul does all that the daimon wishes. And this is every man's understanding and reason.
-Marcus Aurelius
And there the sunset skies unseal’d, Like lands he never knew, /Beyond to-morrow’s battle-field /Lay open out of view /To ride into.
-D.G. Rossetti, from The Staff and Script
Let Athene dwell in the cities she's founded. For me, the woodlands.
-Virgil
Far
from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,/ Their sober wishes never learn'd
to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life/ They kept the noiseless tenor
of their way.
-from
Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
He slept thus until late morning, while the pillows arranged themselves into a large flat plain on which his now quieter sleep would wander. On these white roads, he slowly returned to his senses, to daylight, to reality - and at last he opened his eyes as does a sleeping passenger when the train stops at a station.
-Bruno Schultz, from The Cinnamon Shops
Deus Mysterium tremendum et fascinans.
-Rudolph Otto
Are you angry with him whose armpits stink? Are you angry with him whose mouth smells foul? What good does this anger do you? He has such a mouth, he has such armpits: it is necessary that such an emination must come from such things. But the man has reason, it will be said, and he is able, if he takes pains, to discover wherein he offends. . .there is no need of anger, the stuff of tragic actors and whores.
-Marcus Aurelius
Green aisles of Pullman cars/ Soothe me like trees/ Woven in old tapestries/ I love to watch the stars/ Remote above the earth/ In watery light,/ while in the lower berth./ I whirl through the night.
-William Rose Benet
With faith, discipline and selfless devotion to duty, there is nothing worthwhile that you cannot achieve.
-Jinnah
The
full streams feed on flower of rushes, /Ripe grasses trammel a traveling
foot, /The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes/
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;/And fruit and leaf are as gold
and fire,/And the oat is heard above the lyre, /And the hoofèd
heel of a satyr crushes /The chestnut husk at the chestnut root.
-Swinburne
Both music and dance are voices of the way.
-Zenji Hakuin
The richest of men is not more fortunate than he that has enough for the day, unless his good fortune attend him to the grave and he finish his life in honour. Many wealthy men are fortunate, whilst many of only moderate riches are blessed by fortune. The wealthier but less fortunate man is indeed better furnished with means to gratify his passions and to bear the blow of a great calamity. But if the other is less able to do these two things, his happy life saves him from the need to do them.
-Solon to Croesus, Herodotus (I, 32)
For the dulcimer rhimes are grace place and the like.
-Christopher Smart