Classical Renaissance

Classic paintings and historic recordings, made into short films.

Classical Renaissance is our YouTube channel. Each film travels through public-domain paintings, set to a recording that is free to share, and some of those recordings were made in the 1920s. Every painting, composer, performer and recording is credited by name.

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Still from the Rachmaninoff film: the sun through a breaking wave, inside Ivan Aivazovsky's The Ninth Wave (1850)

What it is

Short films that walk you into a painting, in time with the music.

Each film takes one piece of music and a set of paintings that suit it. The camera moves forward through each painting and into its details, then travels on to the next one, so you see the brushwork, the faces and the skies up close while the music plays.

The recordings are public domain or openly licensed, and some are over a hundred years old. In our first film you hear Sergei Rachmaninoff himself playing the Adagio of his Second Piano Concerto, with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, recorded in 1923 and 1924.

Coming soon: famous plays, speeches and scenes from great books, from Greek theatre and Pericles to Shakespeare, Cervantes and Dante, told through the eyes of the ordinary people who were there.

Still from the Rachmaninoff film: a lone figure on a green hill above a wide river, inside Isaac Levitan's Above Eternal Peace (1894)

Why we make it

Why we make Classical Renaissance.

The channel's aim, in Joe's words: “giving new life to timeless classics, and the flourishing of human spirit”, and “to bring history alive, for us to experience history and learn from it”.Joe Oppenheimer, founder

Many of these paintings hang in museums, and many of these performances sit in sound archives. We want them in front of people who would not go looking for them, on the phone in their hand.

Every film credits its sources, on screen and in the description: the composer, the performers, the recording, and each painting by artist, title and year. The artists did the real work, so they get the credit.

How we make it

How each film is made.

We choose the recording.

It has to be public domain or openly licensed, with a source that shows it. We restore the sound gently, taking out hiss and clicks without AI, so the performance keeps its character.

We choose the paintings.

Every painting is public domain, taken from museum and public collections through Wikimedia Commons.

The camera moves through them.

AI video (LTX-2.5) moves the camera forward through each painting and its details, timed to the music: bigger moves when the music rises, slower ones when it is quiet.

We credit everything and say how it was made.

Each painting is named on screen as it appears, and the description lists every source. The AI use is disclosed on every video.

The films are made by Yobot's media system, running on our own graphics card (GPU) rather than a rented cloud service. It shows what Yobot can build: a system that turns a recording and a set of paintings into a finished, credited film.

Still from the Rachmaninoff film, inside Ivan Aivazovsky, The Ninth Wave, 1850
From the Rachmaninoff film: Ivan Aivazovsky, The Ninth Wave, 1850
Still from the Rachmaninoff film, inside J. M. W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1839
From the Rachmaninoff film: J. M. W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1839
Still from the Grieg film, inside Theodor Kittelsen, Nøkken (The Nix), 1904
From the Grieg film: Theodor Kittelsen, Nøkken (The Nix), 1904

Watch

Watch the films.

Each film also has a Short, a 50 second cut for your phone. There are more on the channel.

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2, Adagio sostenuto

Sergei Rachmaninoff, piano, with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski, recorded 1923 to 1924. Paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, Ivan Aivazovsky, J. M. W. Turner and Isaac Levitan.

Watch on YouTube →Watch the Short →

Grieg: In the Hall of the Mountain King

From Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. Musopen Symphony, recorded 2012 and released into the public domain by Musopen. Paintings by Theodor Kittelsen and John Bauer.

Watch on YouTube →Watch the Short →

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