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doodlyroses.com
🎹 sharon su
@doodlyroses.com
3.9K followers 160 following 4.3K posts
Classical pianist, recording artist, writer | she/her

Website: sharonsu.com

Biweekly newsletter: https://buttondown.com/doodlyroses

One of the “Three Musketeers of classical Bluesky”
— @violanorth.bsky.social
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doodlyroses.com
More important than the appearance of the silver is the fact that I have proved the bishop is a Hot Priest

I am a seriously scholarly person
In his description of the bishop's bedroom, Hugo drops this intriguing detail: ...behind a curtain, the toilet articles that betrayed the old stylish ways of the man of the world." As a reminder if you're more used to reading modern stuff, "toilet" here doesn't refer to the thing you poop in, but to stuff you use to groom yourself. Given that the bishop is described as "good-looking" in Chapter 1, and is just vain enough to keep himself well-groomed like the fancy boy he once was, I think we can safely conclude that the bishop is canonically hot. This is very important to me, thank you for your attention to this matter.
December 8, 2025 at 6:27 PM
doodlyroses.com
Chapter 6, in which I get way too excited that the silver has appeared lesmis.doodlyroses.com/2025/12/08/6...
Part I, Book 1, Chapter 6 Under Whose Protection He Placed his House Silverware alert!!!!!!! It's mentioned as a sort of passing note, but I have seen the musical! I know the significance of this particular detail! Victor Hugo, I know exactly what you are doing!
December 8, 2025 at 6:25 PM
doodlyroses.com
Chapter 5, in which I make an argument about who the real hero is in the bishop’s day-to-day life

lesmis.doodlyroses.com/2025/12/07/5...
The bishop's meals are simple to the point of being bleak; his breakfast and lunch are rye bread dipped in milk, which sounds only slightly better than the toast sandwich, a depressingly absurd item inflicted on us by the British who seem determined to outperform the rest of the world in inventing sad foods. Dinner is boiled vegetables and soup, unless he has a parish priest to dinner and needs something fancier, at which point Madame Magloire rustles up some fish from the lake or game from the mountains. I am genuinely concerned that my darling Monsieur Bienvenu has a nutritional deficiency.
December 7, 2025 at 6:55 PM
doodlyroses.com
Apple Music: here are the albums you listened to most this year

Me: yeah this sounds about right
Screenshot of my Apple Music Replay showing my top 5 albums of 2025. They are 1. Kpop Demon Hunters 2. Mayhem by Lady Gaga 3. From the Pyre by The Last Dinner Party 4. Les Misérables 10th Anniversary staged concert 5. GNX by Kendrick Lamar
December 2, 2025 at 8:53 PM
doodlyroses.com
It’s happening
My hand holding a paperback copy of Victor Hugo’s Les Misèrables, translated into English by Christine Donougher. The book is like 3 inches thick, it’s absurd, you could build a house using these books as bricks
November 30, 2025 at 12:23 AM
doodlyroses.com
So it turns out the Marquis de Lafayette was at General Lamarque’s funeral

I’m going to need a Hamilton-Les Mis crossover event where Lafayette raps over “Red and Black”
The cortege was diverted to the Place de la Bastille where speeches were made in favour of a Republic. When a member of the crowd rose waving a black-bordered red flag with the words "Liberty or Death" on it, the crowd broke into rebellion and shots wore exchanged with government troops.181 Marquis de Lafayette, who had given a speech in praise of Lamarque, called for calm, but the disorder spread. 1101
November 24, 2025 at 8:03 AM
doodlyroses.com
Victor Hugo was basically a tumblr shitposter, this is absolutely incredible
When Hugo returned to Paris in 1870, the country hailed him as a national hero. He was confident that he would be offered the dictatorship, as shown by the notes he kept at the time: "Dictatorship is a crime. This is a crime I am going to commit." but he felt he had to assume that responsibility.
November 18, 2025 at 5:54 PM
doodlyroses.com
hahaha get his ass, Victor
On the other hand, he had low esteem for Richard Wagner, whom he described as "a man of talent coupled with imbecility."
November 18, 2025 at 5:51 PM
doodlyroses.com
WAIT VICTOR HUGO IS THE ONE WHO INTRODUCED CHOPIN AND GEORGE SAND??
He was also on friendly terms with Frederic Chopin. He introduced him to Amantine de Francueil (known as "George Sand" despite being female) who became Chopin's lover. In 1849, Hugo attended Chopin's funeral.
November 18, 2025 at 5:50 PM
doodlyroses.com
Unexpected Victor Hugo/Romantic composers crossover
Two famous musicians of the 19th century were friends of Hugo: Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt. The latter played Beethoven in Hugo's home, and Hugo joked in a letter to a friend that, thanks to Liszt's piano lessons, he learned how to play a favourite song on the piano - with only one finger. Hugo also worked with composer Louise Bertin, writing the libretto for her 1836 opera La Esmeralda, which was based on the character in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. 1581 Although for various reasons the opera closed soon after its fifth performance and is little known today,
November 18, 2025 at 5:49 PM
doodlyroses.com
What no not yet

I did get stuck on this upsetting 24601 lore
Hugo believed himself to have been conceived on 24 June 1801, which is the origin of Jean Valjean's prisoner number 24601
November 18, 2025 at 5:41 PM
doodlyroses.com
So Victor Hugo def had ADHD right
More than a quarter of the novel-by one count 955 of 2,783 pages-is devoted to essays that argue a moral point or display Hugo's encyclopedic knowledge but do not advance the plot, nor even a subplot, a method Hugo used in such other works as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Toilers of the Sea. One biographer noted, "The digressions of genius are easily pardoned". The topics Hugo addresses include cloistered religious orders, the construction of the Paris sewers, argot, and the street urchins of Paris. The one about convents he titles "Parenthesis" to alert the reader to its irrelevance to the storyline.
November 18, 2025 at 4:57 PM
doodlyroses.com
Clint Smith gets it, also I do highly recommend his book How the Word Is Passed

share.libbyapp.com/title/6315271
The ability to connect the past and present is one of the most crucial functions of learning history. A curriculum that ignores these connections promotes a kind of lie by omission. We owe it to our young people not to lie to them anymore. A democracy whose citizens operate with fundamentally different understandings of the past and its implications cannot sustain itself. Americans desperately need a shared story, with all its complexities and contradictions. Without that, this American experiment, as we understand it, will end.
November 18, 2025 at 4:46 PM
doodlyroses.com
This is the thing that drives me a little insane about people saying that slavery/racism/systemic inequality is “inappropriate” for children—young people are fully capable of understanding complexity, in some ways more so than adults

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
This duality made intuitive sense to the students. They understood that their country and its heroes, like all of us, aren't perfect-that everyone makes mistakes, even if we don't immediately understand them as such. What we do is try to learn from our mistakes to become better versions of ourselves. "Doesn't seem that hard," an eighth grader in Memphis said, shrugging her shoulders. "Just say both things."
November 18, 2025 at 4:44 PM
doodlyroses.com
Sometimes I think about this guy and I hope he's having a great life
Screenshot of an old tweet of mine. Text reads "The guy behind me at the LA Phil today had never seen a concert grand piano before and couldn't stop marveling at it and kept saying 'I didn't know they made pianos that big!' I hope life only continues to bring him more such astonishment and delight"
November 14, 2025 at 5:46 AM
doodlyroses.com
Not impressed by mommy’s music school training
A brown tabby wearing a yellow collar is looking away from the viewer. A brown tabby wearing a yellow collar is staring at the viewer with wide green eyes that look startled and maybe a little judgmental.
November 11, 2025 at 7:15 PM
doodlyroses.com
Asian pears > honeycrisp apples
The Norman Rockwell painting of a guy standing up in a town hall meeting that has now become a meme
November 7, 2025 at 9:43 PM
doodlyroses.com
Spotify wants to know what "mood" my recording of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel's g minor sonata is
Screenshot of a menu of options provided to me by Spotify. It says "Choose up to 2 moods" and the options are "chill, energetic, happy, fierce, meditative, psychedelic, romantic, sad, sexy, none of these"
November 7, 2025 at 7:54 PM
doodlyroses.com
Looked up Delphine von Schauroth, German Romantic pianist-composer, and ummm how had I never heard this Felix lore
When Felix Mendelssohn visited Munich in 1830, he considered marriage with Von Schauroth. It was at her behest that he revised his Rondo capriccioso, Op. 14, which he completed in June of that year. He later wrote to his sister Fanny that she had composed a passage of his Piano Concerto in G minor "that makes a startling effect." However, he never revealed what passage she had written. The concerto premiered in 1831 and Mendelssohn dedicated the work to her.
November 6, 2025 at 5:53 AM
doodlyroses.com
the common fp is such a usual event but when I see a pf in the wild I feel like I have sighted a rare endangered species
Photo of a bit of sheet music showing a pf above a measure
November 6, 2025 at 12:39 AM
doodlyroses.com
Having a clever little cat who follows me around and always wants to be by my side makes me feel like this
Book cover for the Cleopatra book in The Royal Diaries series, which was a set of fictional diaries from the point of view of various young royal figures through history. Cleopatra's cover shows a young woman in a white dress holding a lily and resting her hand on a tame leopard standing by her side with the Nile in the background. The whole effect is very badass and left a strong impression on me as a kid.
October 17, 2025 at 8:30 PM
doodlyroses.com
ok please someone just put me out of my misery and confirm that this is indeed one of those exotic 6ths (measure before this is f# dim 7, measure after is G Maj)
A measure of not very complex music that I need one of you nerdy ass music theory people to look at
October 16, 2025 at 11:02 PM
doodlyroses.com
At this point if I encounter some harmony that can’t be easily reduced into a snowman and there’s some funky fourth going on I just assume it’s one of those sixth chords and move on
The meme of the guy seeing a butterfly and saying “is this a bird?” Only in this case the butterfly is “any harmony that I can’t identify” and I’m saying “is this a sixth chord?”
October 16, 2025 at 10:55 PM
doodlyroses.com
Had occasion, while writing this week's newsletter, to link to my old story of possibly the most absurd photoshoot situation I've been in, which was actually not the first time a photographer decided to throw me into a body of water

buttondown.com/doodlyroses/...
It reminded me of the time in 2020 when the LA Times did a profile of me and booked a Pulitzer-winning photographer to take my photo for the story. I thought it was a "show up, have a headshot taken, peace out" situation so I put a lot of effort into curling my hair and doing my makeup, wore a sweater with a flattering color and neckline, and threw on the only clean jeans I had as an afterthought. I suggested that we meet at a park overlooking the beach, figuring that would make for a decent backdrop since I couldn't haul my instrument out for the photo. The photographer met me, looked me up and down—a confused pianist in a cashmere sweater and skinny jeans, clutching her sheet music—and said "Let's put you in the ocean."
October 16, 2025 at 5:42 PM
doodlyroses.com
And it’s from 1986 🙃
Hamburg, summer 1986 Janina Klassen
October 15, 2025 at 11:17 PM