Classical Music, Poetry and stuff

[robertlouis]

Story of Cinema sounds interesting, does it cover Japan and India or is it mostly Europe and America? I can't get much on tv now so I assume it will make it to C4 sometime in the future. Potemkin is so over-rated; Ivan the Terrible is Eisenstein's masterpiece. Vertov's The Man with a Movie Camera must be one of the best silent films ever made -? Did anyone see the restored version of Abel Gance's Napoleon?



It's all-embracing, Stavros, every culture and influence you can think of. And one of the things I'm finding most interesting is that he's charted the first time that a particular technique was used. Taken for granted now, but so innovative - the reverse-angle shot, shifting scenes to ramp up a narrative, the tracking shot etc. Utterly enchanting.

But oh, that vocal delivery. Given the subject, maybe they should have gone for onscreen titles and a pianist instead.

[Stavros]

So if you don't like clutter you don't care for Breughel?

It may sound like a contradiction, but I don't see clutter in Breughel or Vermeer for that matter, I see details that inform and which are integral to the scenes being painted. LS Lowry I cannot connect to at all, by comparison. Clutter to me is stuff that could easily be taken out and not be noticed as an omission; I can understand the importance of Poussin but rarely connect to his work. There is a lot of detail in some Goya and Velasquez but again it makes sense, well it does to me.

Has anyone seen that legendary Japanese film with a transexual/transvestite, I think its called The Black Lizard -?

[Stavros]

The Guardian reports that McCartney's Ballet Ocean Kingdom has been slated heavily by the critics; apparently the choreography is poor, but is trying to make sense of this scenario, quoted from the paper (link below)

"Princess Honorata and her single parent King Ocean are living a happy sub-aqua life when they're invaded by King Terra and the Terra Punks. King Terra lusts after Honorata, but she prefers his brother Prince Stone. Aided by the wicked Scala, a mole in Honorata's camp, Terra kidnaps Honorata. But Scala, who turns out to be not so wicked after all, whips up a catastrophe in which many Terrans die, herself included, allowing the lovers to live happily ever after beneath the waves."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/sep/29/paul-mccartney-ballet-ocean-s-kingdom

[robertlouis]

The Guardian reports that McCartney's Ballet Ocean Kingdom has been slated heavily by the critics; apparently the choreography is poor, but is trying to make sense of this scenario, quoted from the paper (link below)

"Princess Honorata and her single parent King Ocean are living a happy sub-aqua life when they're invaded by King Terra and the Terra Punks. King Terra lusts after Honorata, but she prefers his brother Prince Stone. Aided by the wicked Scala, a mole in Honorata's camp, Terra kidnaps Honorata. But Scala, who turns out to be not so wicked after all, whips up a catastrophe in which many Terrans die, herself included, allowing the lovers to live happily ever after beneath the waves."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/sep/29/paul-mccartney-ballet-ocean-s-kingdom

The Liverpool Oratorio and Standing Stones, Macca's previous attempts to gain credibility beyond the pop music universe, were both derivative, mildly melodic (he always did have the knack of writing a good tune) but immediately forgettable.

While I don't buy the view that he has stagnated completely since 1970, and I do applaud his enterprise in trying his hand at other art forms, the best advice to Sir Paul would be to stick to what he knows best.

[Erika1487]

What are your thoughts of Lisa Gasteen? I just came across her 2005 BBC PROMS preformance. Good stuff.
I am a big Wagner:geek: lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z08snR-_04&feature=related

[Prospero]

McCartney: "Stick to what he knows best?" Trouble is that is silly ditties with banal words and la la choruses - to judge by his output over the past 30 years. His attempts at orchestral or oratorio are derivative and banal. Sorry. i used to love the group he was in before... what was their name now?

[robertlouis]

At last, an art exhibition which doesn't involve a schlep into London, queues and an exorbitant fee.

The Fitzwilliam in Cambridge is putting on an exhibition of Dutch portraiture and interiors from the 17th and 18th centuries, with a heavy emphasis on Vermeer and his contemporaries. Runs from tomorrow to mid-January.

If anyone fancies a visit, drop me a pm and we can do lunch at Browns across the road as well!

http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/whatson/exhibitions/article.html?2793

[Stavros]

I would have expected you to walk further up Trumpington St to Loch Fyne to enjoy your Scottish heritage...

Meanwhile the bookies have slashed Bob Dylan's odds of winning the Nobel Prize for Literature from 100/1 to 10/1. I have never rated literary prizes, plenty of the best writers in history never won a prize, and winning a prize doesn't suddenly make a poem or a novel better than it was before. But, I mean, Dylan...!

[robertlouis]

I would have expected you to walk further up Trumpington St to Loch Fyne to enjoy your Scottish heritage...

Meanwhile the bookies have slashed Bob Dylan's odds of winning the Nobel Prize for Literature from 100/1 to 10/1. I have never rated literary prizes, plenty of the best writers in history never won a prize, and winning a prize doesn't suddenly make a poem or a novel better than it was before. But, I mean, Dylan...!

The Loch Fyne's in Elton just outside Peterborough and in Woburn are favourite haunts - and you don't have to deal with Cambridge's traffic either!

Dylan? Ye Gods. As a songwriter, peerless. His poetry, well, execrable. Chronicles was a fun read, but how on earth does his prose oeuvre compare with the so far unrecognised giants of global literature? If the Nobel jury goes with this one, then celebrity culture has won and we can all pack up. Presumably it will go to Katie Price next year.....

[robertlouis]

I should have added that the exhibition features Vermeer's Lacemaker, one of his most delicate portraits, worth going to see that alone.

[Erika1487]

Anne Sofie von Otter :geek:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tJbJvKzuEo&feature=related

[robertlouis]

What are your thoughts of Lisa Gasteen? I just came across her 2005 BBC PROMS preformance. Good stuff.
I am a big Wagner:geek: lol


I somehow thought you might be, Erika. Sorry, it's a cheap one, but I couldn't resist. Genuinely, no offence intended.

Wagner is the toughest test for the listener, unless you can completely divorce the music from the man, who was an anti-semite of the most vocal and virulent kind. It was that anti-semitism, coupled with the subject matter of his operas which harked back to a mythic and heroic German past and chimed perfectly with the Nazis' preferred basis of German culture, that elevated him to the pinnacle of composer worship under their regime.

The music has sublime moments, and it's also important to remember that he was very much an innovator, but I find it difficult to listen to without the reminders.

My favourite Wagner anecdote concerns the Prague Conservatoire during the war, during which the Nazis took their hatred of all things Jewish to the absurd extent of removing and destroying statues of Jewish artists, writers and composers. The staff were ordered to remove the statue of Mendelssohn from the array of figures which lined the roof, but refused to risk their lives, so the Gestapo undertook the task. The statues weren't labelled, so the commanding officer simply took down and destroyed the one with the biggest nose.

It was, of course, a statue of Wagner.

[trish]

Tristan and Isolde sweeps me up into its endless despairing crescendo of passion every time I listen to it. I love how Wagner's harmony floats adrift within a chromatic sea of sevenths and ninths and eleventh chords. After Wagner there was nothing left to do but break with the rules of harmony altogether.

If I allowed myself to be burdened by extra-musical meaning I could never listen to a Mozart mass or a passion by Bach, or the liturgical music of Messiaen. Music transcends the little narratives that were once the scaffolds of its composition.

[robertlouis]

Tristan and Isolde sweeps me up into its endless despairing crescendo of passion every time I listen to it. I love how Wagner's harmony floats adrift within a chromatic sea of sevenths and ninths and eleventh chords. After Wagner there was nothing left to do but break with the rules of harmony altogether.

If I allowed myself to be burdened by extra-musical meaning I could never listen to a Mozart mass or a passion by Bach, or the liturgical music of Messiaen. Music transcends the little narratives that were once the scaffolds of its composition.


I know, Trish. But I genuinely find it difficult to listen to Wagner without the negative associations, although some of it is heart-stoppingly beautiful.

In terms of the break with traditional romantic boundaries, yes, but there was a glorious interim period during which Mahler and Sibelius, so utterly different in their views of symphonic scale and purpose, took the last threads of the romantic and fused them with the beginnings of modernism to provide stunning contributions to the symphonic canon.

[Prospero]

I know what you mean. the majesterial tone of the music is hard to resist. In a sense something of the impulse which made the torchlit rallies in Nuremberg so magnetic (and with knowledge of all they represented utterly cvhilling) is there in that music. Resist it perhaps but it has an arousing quality which is also deeply disturbing. I think Wagner reaches past the conscious to stir certain archetypal impulses.

But I have a greater love for Mahler personally. The wonder of the second was never surpassed but the sadness of the final movement of the 9th really does embody a profound Weltschmerz

[Stavros]

Music seems to generate some odd responses in people -first, Lisa Gasteen is a good but not a great singer, I wouldn't make an extra effort to go and see her. Second, the final movement of Mahler's 9th is not weltschmerz, a juvenile emotion, but the deeply felt reflection on a life about to end, by a mature adult who was aware of his imminent death.

Third, I thought we had already done the Music and the Nazi's in another thread -Beethoven was (and still is) considered the pinnacle of German music, not Wagner -see Beethoven in German Politics 1870-1989 by David Dennis. Beethoven himself was at one time a supporter of the megalomaniac Napoleon, and by today's standards a German nationalist too -it is assumed he would not have welcomed Hitler, but on what basis? In Wagner, Race and Revolution, Paul Lawrence Rose compares the 'deep humanity' of the funeral march in Beethoven's 3rd, to Siegfried's death march in Gotterdammerung, saturated with violence and of course a premonition of the violence yet to come...no mention of the wars and violence Beethoven was thinking of when he wrote the 3rd (he only withdrew the dedication to Napoleon after writing it, not during its composition). This precise attempt to locate anti-semitism in the music, was taken to absurd lengths by Marc Weiner in Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination, where he correlates the sound of Sixtus Beckmesser in Meistersinger to the caricature of a 'whining Jew' even though Beckmesser was modelled on Eduard Hanslick, the notorious and acid-tongued music critic in Vienna who was not a Jew. Nevertheless by casting a figure of ridicule as a high baritone was the key, it was musical code, and it goes on throughout the works, ignoring all the pre-existing issues: why are heroines in opera usually sopranos, and why are heroes tenors? Why are villains basses and why are scheming harridans mezzo-sopranos or contraltos? And so on.

Chopin's anti-Jewish feeling was as strong as Wagner's whereas Wagner actually employed Jews as musicians and conductors and as someone convinced of his own global importance would probably have seen Hitler as rival -but taken any money that was offered, ultimately, it was money that mattered most to Wagner for most of his life.

Puccini was so disgusted with the inefficiency of the Italian republic that he welcomed Mussolini on the basis that his affinity with the German variety of fascism would introduce German style efficiency to Italy, but I don't know people are suddenly going to find La Boheme, Tosca or Turandot polluted by Puccini's retrogade politics and Mussolini's catastrophic fascist experiment and its treatment of Italian Jews. Carl Orff joined the Nazi party, was he a Nazi or did he do it because he wanted to promote himself? At least one conductor (Charles Groves) has said he couldn't conduct Carmina Burana because the episode with the roasted goose made him think of the 1930s and made him shudder with fear.

Same with Karajan, same with Schwarzkopf although she didn't join. Furtwangler is filmed conducting Beethoven's 9th while wearing a Nazi armband, there is a file on him in the National Archive which was generated when Furtwangler was about to do a concert tour of the UK in the late 1940s and some protested. A well-known tenor of the day wrote to the Foreign Office with the emphatic statement He is a Nazi through and through, yet we now know Furtwangler helped many Jewish musicians escape.

Richard Strauss was appointed director of the Reich Musikammer in 1933 by Goebbels, and used it to get a law on copyright published which guaranteed composers would get royalities for music performed. When the Nazi's insisted that Stefan Zweig's name be removed from the libretto of Die Schweigsame Frau at its premiere in Dresden in 1935, Strauss wrote a sarcastic letter that was by intercepted by Goebbels office, and he was sacked. He fled Garmisch at the end of the war and was subsequently arrested by the Americans, but never actually put before the de-Nazification court (I have tried to find records of this and failed). His daughter-in-law, Alice, who lived in the family house in Garmisch, and who is still alive, is Jewish -so in fact according to Nazi law, the Nazi's could have arrested him for harbouring a Jew. His Olympic Hymn (1936) is rubbish, but so is a lot of Strauss's music. Webern's son was in the SS, what about him? He was shot dead by someone who thought they were shooting his son.

Sometimes it seems clear, at other times it becomes ambiguous, or not proven, or false. One should be wary of retrospective judgements, and as far as Wagner and the earlier composers go, it is an interesting but a pointless historical exercise that does no justice to the composer or his music. We haven't even got started on the painters and the writers....

[robertlouis]

I agree with your analysis of Mahler's 9th, Stavros. The entire symphony is a musical reflection on the approach of imminent death, foreshadowed by the loss of his children in the 6th. With Mahler, I always get the impression of a teeming mind unwilling to leave anything out and striving in the opposite direction to ensure, as he said, that the whole world should be in the symphony. Given the virulent nature of both music criticism and anti-semitism in fin de siecle Vienna, and the extravagant nature of his music, it's not surprising that he was under hideous pressures from all sides during his career in the capital.

And as for Sibelius, he is often regarded as the dark master of Scandinavian bleakness, but that ignores his separateness as a Finn, his immense personal contribution and commitment to the cause of Finnish independence, and the warmth that underlies the symphonies, invariably in the third movement.

If I had to choose just one work to take to the mythical desert island, it would be the Sibelius 5th in the 1993 recording by the CBSO under Rattle. The tension created by the final hammer blows of that symphony in live performance is a tour de force unmatched in the canon.

[Stavros]

I don't know what to make of Vienna, it has been a focal point in the classical tradition and yet there is a consistent tug of war between traditionalists and radicals: Mozart and Beethoven and later Brahms left their petty-bourgeois enclaves to hit the high life but also the financial and artistic opportunities the city had: the arch-conservative Vienna of Metternich hid an underground of sexual experimentation (Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini). And yet after the death of Schubert, all Austria could produce was the relentless froth of the Strauss family, the emotionally wrought cathedrals of sound through Bruckner, and ultimately the death of tonal music in Schoenberg. Superb musicians, however, seem to grow on the trees. It seems that Mahler was admired as a musician, but provoked the traditionalists who hated his experiments with Beethoven, the tempi he chose (too fast) and his determination to both break the star system at the Opera to create an ensemble, and his use of avant-garde producers for stagings. It becomes part of that extaordinary cultural battleground with Freud, Mahler, Karl Kraus, the Secession, Schnitzler on one side and the starched imperialist-catholics on the other. Fischer-Diskau once said that is the 'Jewishness' of Mahler's music that upsets people, even though he blithely signed it all away to convert -I don't think it meant anything to him in religious terms, he was some sort of pantheist, he did it to get a plum job. Cosima Wagner, more anti-Jewish than her dead husband, hated him. Hitler rather enjoyed a performance of Tristan Mahler conducted, but he was a teenager at the time, and we don't take Hitler's views on music seriously...

I don't rate Sibelius as highly as you do, but it raises the question again, does it make any difference to the music who the man was and what his biography means -in terms of world history, Finnish history, music history?

[Prospero]

re weltschmerz - I stand corrected. I know that it was his reflective farewell to life so i guess i used the wrong word. i don't speak german.

[Prospero]

Stavros - your question about does it make any difference is a complex one. Is music value free in the sense that the political ideas of the creator are seperate wholly from the fabric of his or her work? Certainly can't be said to be true of great works of literature. Prably nor of visual arts. Certainly the uses to which art is put change it and also one has to judge the entire corpus of work by someone like Leni Riefenstahl by her work glorifying Nazi ideology

[Stavros]

I agree, the problem with music is that when critics discuss it politically, they are not actually talking about the music qua music, which is the flaw in the arguments proposed by Rose and Weiner on Wagner, for example. If Wagner's music is anti-semitic because he was, then it must be the notes, because they are the music: but if C sharp minor or C Major are part of an anti-semitic expression, does it mean that C sharp minor and C Major always are? In other words, it is the reception of those notes that informs not the notes themselves, the extreme reactions to the Rite of Spring being another example. But if music becomes part of a ritual, such as the Horst Wessel Lied, it becomes discredited when its ideology is discredited, but that is a special case -the Nazis adopting/co-opting/enslaving Beethoven and Wagner has not damaged the reception of Beethoven and Wagner since 1945 with the obvious exception of Wagner in Israel -I was writing an article on this topic around the time of Rose's book and discovered that in its early years, Israel had a phobia about the German language -in addition to Wagner, Richard Strauss's music was banned (a ban that was eventually lifted through the efforts of the late Igor Markevich); a singer who included songs by Schubert in a recital had to remove them (in the 1950s). And yet many Israeli immigrants, particularly survivors from Central Europe, had German as a substitute language to Hebrew or could only speak English or French in addition to German. Its one of those issues that has fascinated me for years, but although I recall an essay by Tovey on Beethoven that rejects a link between personal biography and music, I can't recall why or where it is.

[runningdownthatdream]

Tristan and Isolde sweeps me up into its endless despairing crescendo of passion every time I listen to it. I love how Wagner's harmony floats adrift within a chromatic sea of sevenths and ninths and eleventh chords. After Wagner there was nothing left to do but break with the rules of harmony altogether.

If I allowed myself to be burdened by extra-musical meaning I could never listen to a Mozart mass or a passion by Bach, or the liturgical music of Messiaen. Music transcends the little narratives that were once the scaffolds of its composition.

and perhaps even transcends the baseness of its creator..........

[Prospero]

Trish wrote: Tristan and Isolde sweeps me up into its endless despairing crescendo of passion every time I listen to it. I love how Wagner's harmony floats adrift within a chromatic sea of sevenths and ninths and eleventh chords. After Wagner there was nothing left to do but break with the rules of harmony altogether.

If I allowed myself to be burdened by extra-musical meaning I could never listen to a Mozart mass or a passion by Bach, or the liturgical music of Messiaen. Music transcends the little narratives that were once the scaffolds of its composition."

Hugely eloquent Trish. And with regard to the direction music took after Wagner I'd agree.

But i think the narratives that inspired Bach and Mozart were a little more than scaffolds. Without those encompassing narratives this music and much of the rest of the great creations of Western civilisation would not exist. Without similar narratves much of the great architecture and art of Eastern civlisation would not exist. All this is cut through and throughl entangled. Maybe great art inspired by our modern scientific understanding of the universe may emerge, but there has been recious little to riva the great religiously informed art yet.

[Erika1487]

Althogh it is easy to have a strong distain for Wagner, politically and personally, his music stands almost alone in operatic history.
To me personally nothing stands head and sholders above than the second act of Parsifal.
The crowning scene of this Second Act perhaps of the whole work is the duet between Parsifal and Kundry. Herein; the entire gamut of passion, maternal, exquisite, voluptuous, is traversed by a master’s hand. It is with the same passion Wagner wrote the wonderful choral scene for sopranos, sung with such soothing pitch that it only fits in the lovely magic garden of Kilngsor’s castle.
This is written in as many as eighteen separate groups, and frequently in twelve real parts. Its sweet, plaintive melody and graceful rhythm cannot escape notice. Kundry’s tender recital of the woes and sufferings of Parsifal’s mother, an aria sung in minor with low pitch. Later the glissando passage of the harps (through two octaves) to express the act of hurling the spear at Parsifal’s head. It is often cited as the most astonishingly unvocal specimen in all Wagner’s musical writings.

[robertlouis]

Althogh it is easy to have a strong distain for Wagner, politically and personally, his music stands almost alone in operatic history.
To me personally nothing stands head and sholders above than the second act of Parsifal.
The crowning scene of this Second Act perhaps of the whole work is the duet between Parsifal and Kundry. Herein; the entire gamut of passion, maternal, exquisite, voluptuous, is traversed by a master’s hand. It is with the same passion Wagner wrote the wonderful choral scene for sopranos, sung with such soothing pitch that it only fits in the lovely magic garden of Kilngsor’s castle.
This is written in as many as eighteen separate groups, and frequently in twelve real parts. Its sweet, plaintive melody and graceful rhythm cannot escape notice. Kundry’s tender recital of the woes and sufferings of Parsifal’s mother, an aria sung in minor with low pitch. Later the glissando passage of the harps (through two octaves) to express the act of hurling the spear at Parsifal’s head. It is often cited as the most astonishingly unvocal specimen in all Wagner’s musical writings.

I would never for a moment question Wagner's genius, Erika, nor his wonderful facility for innovation. We forget that in the absence of mass communication, recorded music, or anything other than the folk music of countries that has survived separately, composers were the rock stars of their day. It isn't a facile comparison by any means. Wagner's music washes over you in a wave of sensual and emotional power. At that level, only Beethoven and Bach also do that for me - such moments are rare in Mozart, I'm afraid.

[Jackal]

Hey, I was wondering if anyone had recommendations for poetry/spoken word albums/audiobooks.

[robertlouis]

Hey, I was wondering if anyone had recommendations for poetry/spoken word albums/audiobooks.

Alec Guinness's version of The Waste Land is well worth a listen.

[Stavros]

The crowning scene of this Second Act perhaps of the whole work is the duet between Parsifal and Kundry

Erika, there are no duets in Parsifal, only conversations; and while you are entitled to your opinion some would suggest other works and other parts of Parsifal are Wagner at his best, although many people have said that Act II is the only time Parsifal gets interesting dramatically, because Klingsor is wicked and Kundry is a voluptuous deceiver -musically, the resurrection surely cannot be surpassed, but as I say, its a matter of personal taste -the Liebestod? Siegfied's funeral march? The quintet in Meistersinger? Why choose when you can have them all?

[Jackal]

Alec Guinness's version of The Waste Land is well worth a listen.

That sounds great, I'll have to search for it. Have you heard Richard Burton's "The Days of Wilfred Owen"? It is an amazing performance.

[Prospero]

I'd also recommend Richard Burton reading Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas.

[Prospero]

And today I'm posting a song by the late great Bert Jansch and a track by Donovan recorded some 40 years ago which was a sort of tribute to Jansch.
Bert Jansch - Fresh as s Sweet Sunday - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf9jC9yh1Bw&feature=related)
Donovan - House Of Jansch - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK4P_rH4d_0)

[Yvonne183]

As I read posts on other sections of this forum I'd like someone explain something to me. What the hell is a topic about classical music, poetry doing on this type of forum?

[Stavros]

Yvonne -to prove that even people who lust after transexuals and want to discuss who, when, where, how much, at what time, in what position, wearing what?, how old?, with or without, high or low, black or white, Hispanic or Asian?, large or small?

are also interested in the fall-out from Heidegger's capitulation and moral collapse...the violin..the orchestra...la voix humaine...Ibsen or O'Neill? (Ibsen), themes and symbols in Moby-Dick...aka The Brains Trust.

Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome...

[Prospero]

And indeed if you find this strand odd on this forum what about all the political arguments? The sports strand? What about the what are you listening to now strand? And the what films have you seen? etc etc. Sure this forum could just be about transexuals and sex and hookers and the like. But everyone - and not least you Yvonne - re interested in millions of other things. So why not. There is room for it all.

[Yvonne183]

And indeed if you find this strand odd on this forum what about all the political arguments? The sports strand? What about the what are you listening to now strand? And the what films have you seen? etc etc. Sure this forum could just be about transexuals and sex and hookers and the like. But everyone - and not least you Yvonne - re interested in millions of other things. So why not. There is room for it all.

I agree, I am not saying that this topic shouldn't talked about. I just find the dual nature of posts in other sections and these cultural posts kinda bizarre.

I mean, posts about how big is this guys dick included with posts about Mozart, ya gotta admit, it is kinda strange.

[Prospero]

All part of life's rich tapestry

[Yvonne183]

All part of life's rich tapestry

Yes, life is strange

[Jericho]

I mean, posts about how big is this guys dick included with posts about Mozart, ya gotta admit, it is kinda strange.


Mozart did have a big 'un! :shrug

[robertlouis]

As I read posts on other sections of this forum I'd like someone explain something to me. What the hell is a topic about classical music, poetry doing on this type of forum?

As the guy who started the thread in the first place, I threw it out there to find out if there were other people on here who had a cultural hinterland that went further back than hiphop and Hollywood blockbusters. Thankfully it took, and I've learned and experimented with music and literature that was new to me as a result, although I draw the line at Stavros' championing Bela Tarr's seven-hour Hungarian epic about farming lol. :hide-1:

I don't know what other regular contributors feel, but for me it's also become something of a refuge in those increasingly frequent times when the noise and hate elsewhere on the forum gets a bit too much to bear.

[Jackal]

I'd also recommend Richard Burton reading Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas.

I love it! :)

[Stavros]

Thankfully it took, and I've learned and experimented with music and literature that was new to me as a result, although I draw the line at Stavros' championing Bela Tarr's seven-hour Hungarian epic about farming...

The decline of a collective farm -think about it, RobertLouis, its the decline of a way of life that dominated a large part of Europe and the USSR -what Satantango does is expose the willingness of people to submit to a crushing system out of some mistaken belief that it will be worth it, one day...by subjecting the audience to, for example, a one-hour sequence in which a doctor does more or less nothing except drink plum brandy and write observations of his neighbours in a scrap book, he is presenting you with the tedium of everyday life; and yet through this challenge to sustainability in cinema, there is an accumulation of knowledge through fine details that by the conclusion is devastating; you wonder how anyone put up with communism for so long, while realising, oddly, how easy it was. The english translation of the book is out soon I think.

If Satantango is too much of a challenge, try Werckmeister Harmonies.

[robertlouis]

Thankfully it took, and I've learned and experimented with music and literature that was new to me as a result, although I draw the line at Stavros' championing Bela Tarr's seven-hour Hungarian epic about farming...

The decline of a collective farm -think about it, RobertLouis, its the decline of a way of life that dominated a large part of Europe and the USSR -what Satantango does is expose the willingness of people to submit to a crushing system out of some mistaken belief that it will be worth it, one day...by subjecting the audience to, for example, a one-hour sequence in which a doctor does more or less nothing except drink plum brandy and write observations of his neighbours in a scrap book, he is presenting you with the tedium of everyday life; and yet through this challenge to sustainability in cinema, there is an accumulation of knowledge through fine details that by the conclusion is devastating; you wonder how anyone put up with communism for so long, while realising, oddly, how easy it was. The english translation of the book is out soon I think.

If Satantango is too much of a challenge, try Werckmeister Harmonies.

I was joking, Stavros. I certainly enjoyed the Werckmeister Harmonies and Damnation, which I have on the two disc DVD set.

While no director can be said to be entirely unique, Tarr explores the possibilities of the camera in a unique way and yes, you do find yourself challenging long-held beliefs and prejudices as his films wash over you.

[Stavros]

You kept that a secret all this time? I am waiting for the Turin Horse to come out. But yes, an acquired taste -

I forgot to mention that Finlandia is one of my favourite Sibelius pieces, it is surely even more rousing than the 5th...?

[robertlouis]

You kept that a secret all this time? I am waiting for the Turin Horse to come out. But yes, an acquired taste -

I forgot to mention that Finlandia is one of my favourite Sibelius pieces, it is surely even more rousing than the 5th...?

I can't remember life without both Finlandia and the Karelia Suite, always there from my childhood, but I only came upon the symphonies in my 30s, via arguably the most immediately accessible, the 2nd. The 5th, however, with the first rumblings of assonance between the strings and the brass and the triumphal congregation of the third and final movement surpasses anything else in his oeuvre for me.

If you'll forgive me, the two pieces mentioned earlier demand relatively direct appeals to the emotions. All the symphonies, on the other hand, lack that immediacy and require a degree of dedication and effort from the listener; the single-movement 7th also has a special place in my heart, especially as conducted by Ashkenazy, but the 5th remains the pinnacle.

He's hardly overlooked as a symphonist, but he's certainly not as well-known as his work deserves. The sheer variety on display and the adventurous and daring approach for me prefigure the work of those who followed him into the rest of the 20th century. And because they are challenging rather than wilfully difficult, I simply love his work.

[Prospero]

I've had a DVD of The Turin Horse at home for a couple of weeks. It's shortlisted for a European Film Academy Award. Not watched it yet but hadn't realised it was the same director that Stavros has been lauding so it's now on the viewing list for this weekend.

[Stavros]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/nov/03/five-symphonies-that-changed-music

The BBC is going to broadcast a series of programmes on the Symphony, but I am puzzled by the selection. I am not sure what the criteria are but I would have assumed the work of Johann Christian Bach was as important as Haydn whose work has to be in any programme on the symphony even though I find Haydn relentlessly boring.

I only agree with the Eroica on the BBC list, if it was me, and it was about selecting the symphony which I think had an impact on the form maybe on music more widely, the list would have only three works:

Beethoven Symphony No 3, Eroica: the 3rd is hugely important because of the tonal development of the first subject, which subverts the conventional form that had existed up until then, just through the sudden conclusion of the line when it falls into a minor chord. This opened up new possibilities in the expansion of the relatively simple musical subjects perfected by Mozart, and above all introduced complexity into music.

Beethoven Symphony No 9: if the 3rd marked the onset of a tonal revolution in music, the 9th split form asunder, the radical 4th movement almost sounds as if it is indeed falling apart from its outset -not just the use of a chorus as an addition to the orchestral writing, but the way in which the use of variations, which Beethoven had also used in the last movement of the 3rd, give the symphony a completely new perspective on music -hardly surprising that it opens the Bayreuth festival every year and that Wagner idolised LvB.

Berlioz, Symphony Fantastique. I think this was the first 'programmatic' symphony in which each part of the work was given a specific story; most of Berlioz's music sounds to me like hysterical slop, but this is a work of genius, and one of the most thrilling experiences when heard live. The key point is that each movement does sound like its theme/story, which is another reason why it works, and also because it doesn't become a patronising exercise by a composer desperate to impress his audience.

I think that once Beethoven and Berlioz had shown what a symphony could do, what happened after took these existing formats, in some cases it repeated them, in other cases it stretched them but never offered something completely new: in effect, the Symphony, like the Concerto, has become a dead form: literally in the case of Stravinsky's Symphony in C, in which the vacuous, insipid, pseudo-musical junk notes concocted by this occasional fraud die as soon as they are played. None of this should diminish the work of Brahms, Bruckner, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky or Mahler- but in the context of the history of the symphony I don't know what it is that is original about them. Mahler, after all, followed Beethoven by introducing choral movements in his symphonies. Some may want to put Shostakovich in the context of his times, fair enough, but the format of the symphony, even the 13th and 14th, was taken over from pre-existing examples (Mahler's 4th, Zemlinsky's Lyrisches Symphonie).

[Prospero]

Waiting for the Barbarians

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are to arrive today.

Why such inaction in the Senate?
Why do the Senators sit and pass no laws?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
What laws can the Senators pass any more?
When the barbarians come they will make the laws.

Why did our emperor wake up so early,
and sits at the greatest gate of the city,
on the throne, solemn, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
And the emperor waits to receive
their chief. Indeed he has prepared
to give him a scroll. Therein he inscribed
many titles and names of honor.

Why have our two consuls and the praetors come out
today in their red, embroidered togas;
why do they wear amethyst-studded bracelets,
and rings with brilliant, glittering emeralds;
why are they carrying costly canes today,
wonderfully carved with silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today,
and such things dazzle the barbarians.

Why don't the worthy orators come as always
to make their speeches, to have their say?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today;
and they get bored with eloquence and orations.

Why all of a sudden this unrest
and confusion. (How solemn the faces have become).
Why are the streets and squares clearing quickly,
and all return to their homes, so deep in thought?

Because night is here but the barbarians have not come.
And some people arrived from the borders,
and said that there are no longer any barbarians.

And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?
Those people were some kind of solution.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1904)

[Stavros]

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

[Stavros]

I have managed to read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2004). I wanted to read this book before seeing the film which opens in the UK at the end of February.

Cloud Atlas is made up of six episodes/narratives, five are in two parts, with one central section. The episodes/narratives begin in the 19th century and work their way through 1,500 years at the central section, before returning in sequence to the 19th century at the end. The book was inspired by the piano work, Cloud Atlas by the Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi (see link below) and thus may be thought of as a Theme and Variations novel: there are themes such as -depending on your point of view- the nightmare/myth of Nietzsche's Eternal Return- or the simple/naive view that human nature does not change and that we are doomed to repeat our mistakes from one millenium to another. The variations come in the literary form of each episode/narrative, which is a pastiche of an existing form: thus the fist narrative is derived from Melville's Benito Cereno; the second the 'confessional' novel which tends to use the diary or letters as a vehicle; the third is pulp fiction; the fourth a possibly deliberately badly written pastiche of the drivel one associates with Hunter S. Thompson and Martin Amis; the fifth derived from sci-fi futurist novels and films of which 1984, Brave New World, and Blade Runner are the most obvious. At the heart of the book is the far off future, written in pidgin English in which a Margaret Mead-style anthropologist explains to the Hawaiian native that her ancestors believed their people had survived 'the fall' but all they ever found on their travels was dead-rubble cities, jungle-choked cities, plague-rotted cities...half the world/most of the world? has been destroyed by nuclear radiation in the previous section set approx 500 years before, and here we end up in the distant future with a collapsed world and Hawaiian society riven by greed and brutality. Indeed, this is but the repetition of the fate visited on Adam Ewing in the 19th centry who saves the life of a stowaway (read: savage)who ultimately turns against him, with the central message of this novel:
He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!

Cloud Atlas is a hymn to nihilism, a belief that however hard you try to change things, everything remains the same. So why bother? In each of the episodes birth-marks, music, books, images recur, because we are doomed to repeat ourselves. As with other examples of nihilism in art -notably the films of Antonionio and Stanley Kubrick- there is no room in this human experience for love or laughter, love has no healing or liberating properties, indeed it does not appear to exist at all.

The book is twice as long as it needs to be, and is written with a verve which belies its essentially pessimistic message. The author acknowledges the grants he received to conduct research on Melville and Delius, a confession of his lack of imagination. When the blind composer accepts an interloper into his house as an amanuensis, and you discover his wife is called Jocasta, you know what will follow, as it does a few pages later. The local music shop is called Flagstad, rather than say, Nilsson's or Schwarzkop's; just as in other parts of the novel Mitchell refers to his own brilliance as a writer, citing the letters from the amanuensis as examples of 'vivid' writing. This narcissistic rubbish has been encountered before, Nabokov does it in Pale Fire and Rushdie does it in The Satanic Verses.
In sum, the film might be worth watching, the novel is garbage.

The link to an excerpt from the original Cloud Atlas:
Cloud Atlas I & III - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkHeYVQE5GA)

[runningdownthatdream]

I enjoyed this thread in the past so thought I'd resurrect to give Stavros, Prospero, Robert, et al the chance to post more goodness.

Not sure whether the performance below would be considered classical. It's an interpretation of a medieval Norse song that I like a lot with Sax by Jan Garbarek and vocals by a traditional norse singer by the name of Agnes Buen Garnas. If you like to escape from modern music a bit, give it a listen.

Agnes Buen Garnås / Jan Garbarek - Margjit og Targjei Risvollo - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx9j7s8NMMQ)

[Lovecox]

I love Emily Dickinson.
I love how frugal she is.
Frugal but so deep.
Example:

The Pedigree of Honey
Does not concern the Bee
A Clover, any time, to him,
Is Aristocracy

I carry her poems with me through life. They often explain, comfort and guide.

[danthepoetman]

This is a great thread indeed! Great idea, runningdownthatdream!
Stavros, great analysis of Cloud Atlas. Thank you.

[runningdownthatdream]

By Pablo Neruda. Seems especially appropriate for this forum.

Ode To A Naked Beauty

With chaste heart, and pure
eyes
I celebrate you, my beauty,
restraining my blood
so that the line
surges and follows
your contour,
and you bed yourself in my verse,
as in woodland, or wave-spume:
earth's perfume,
sea's music.

Nakedly beautiful,
whether it is your feet, arching
at a primal touch
of sound or breeze,
or your ears,
tiny spiral shells
from the splendour of America's oceans.
Your breasts also,
of equal fullness, overflowing
with the living light
and, yes,
winged
your eyelids of silken corn
that disclose
or enclose
the deep twin landscapes of your eyes.

The line of your back
separating you
falls away into paler regions
then surges
to the smooth hemispheres
of an apple,
and goes splitting
your loveliness
into two pillars
of burnt gold, pure alabaster,
to be lost in the twin clusters of your feet,
from which, once more, lifts and takes fire
the double tree of your symmetry:
flower of fire, open circle of candles,
swollen fruit raised
over the meeting of earth and ocean.

Your body - from what substances
agate, quartz, ears of wheat,
did it flow, was it gathered,
rising like bread
in the warmth,
and signalling hills
silvered,
valleys of a single petal, sweetnesses
of velvet depth,
until the pure, fine, form of woman
thickened
and rested there?

It is not so much light that falls
over the world
extended by your body
its suffocating snow,
as brightness, pouring itself out of you,
as if you were
burning inside.

Under your skin the moon is alive.

[Stavros]

Falling Out of Time, David Grossman (2014).

There have not been many achievements in fiction in the last 50 years or so, one thinks of the melancholy but seductive fictions of WG Sebald as a high point in a limited field where most of the best writing (Modiano, Morazzoni) has been in miniature. David Grossman, by contrast, has established himself as a writer of sensitivity and insight, seeming to write from within Israel and outside it at the same time.

Grossman's latest work of fiction follows on from his previous novel To The End of the Land (2010) in which the main character, Ora, chooses to walk from Jerusalem to Galilee to avoid being notified of her son's death on active service with the Israel Defence Force (IDF). In fact the literal translation of the previous book is A Woman Escaping News. Towards the end of writing the book, Grossman's son Uwi was killed during Israel's campaign in Lebanon in 2006 and he re-wrote part of To The End of the Land as a result, but Falling Out of Time is a more direct attempt to express grief, and is done so through the medium of poetry or more properly recitation, rather than conventional prose. This also gives the book an en-chanting hold on the reader, but does not overdo any religious symbolism, bringing in a few occasional motifs -fire, walls, burial grounds, but without detracting from the core emotional driver of the book.

The principal motif in Falling Out of Time -as was the case with Ora in the previous book- is walking, but where Ora attempts to walk away from bad news, the unnamed 'man' in this book suddenly gets up from the kitchen table to walk towards it, or as he puts it, to 'go there', and in a sort-of magical realist setting meets other parents on his walk whose children have died before them and with whose death they are not reconciled. Although, ultimately, it is about 'letting go', the condensed emotions of the book produce a lyrical searching for a place that does not exist, a condition that cannot be reached, but which, inevitably lies within.

The prose is concise in its treatment of someone young dying -'falling out of time'. The refusal of the parent to accept the finality of death as complete obliteration is configured in a sense of a space yet to be identified:

It has one final place,
a window opened
just a crack
where still the absence breathes, still loosened,
palpitating, where one can still touch the here,
still almost feel
the warming hand that touches there.

later he describes the burden of his son's death as 'a coldness tax' and ultimately resolves to lift the burden in an imaginary conversation with his son

I asked if I could make one more request.
I'd like to learn to separate
memory from the pain.

[Prospero]

"There have not been many achievements in fiction in the last 50 years or so," I agree that Grossman is great but beg to differ otherwise ... so from the mid sixties onwards here are a few who come to mind....Thomas Pynchon, Saul Bellow, Vasily Grossman (in the or-so bit),James Baldwin, Raymond Carver, Philip Roth, Vladimir Nabokov,J D Salinger,William Saroyan, Orhan Pamuk, Heinrich Boll, Anthony Powell, Kenzaburo Oe, Chinua Achebe, Gao Xingjian, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Hilary Mantel, Nadine Gordimer, Italo Calvino, Toni orrison, Patrick White, J M Coetzee, Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, Naguib Mahfouz, Yasunari Kawabata, Hisham Matar, Umberto Eco, Jose Saramago, Nawal al Sadaawi, Vikram Seth, William Goding, Georges Perec, Michel Houellebecq, V S Naipaul, Gabriele Garcia Marquez, J M G Le Clezio, Gunter Grass, Doris Lessing,Anthony Burgess, Maria Vargas Llosa, Haruki Murakami, Salman Rushdie

[Stavros]

I did not say there have not been any achievements in the last 50 years, just 'not many', and all your list of well-known writers proves is that you can write a list of well known writers. I would rather pare a list down to say, five, than cram in as many as I can.

I don't know what criteria you use to judge someone's work, if you have any. I was also thinking of literary fiction rather than specific genres such as crime, science fiction/fantasy, romance, etc, which is not to downgrade them for that reason; and value a combination of things: the craft of writing, imagination, structure, emotion (not always essential) and content. I also think that if you set yourself the task of choosing one writer, or one book above all the rest to save for posterity, it concentrates the mind. I also separate books I enjoy reading from those I think are serious contenders for posterity.

On that basis, while I have admired Patrick Modiano and Marta Morazzoni for years, I concede they are personal favourites whose broad appeal is limited, and who are therefore not likely to figure in anyone's list of writers for posterity. I also put 50 years as a convenient figure, hardly set in cement, although one notes regarding two of the great writers on your list that the best work of Heinrich Boll was published between 1949 and 1959, and Grass will be best remembered for The Tin Drum and Dog Years rather than anything published after 1965.

On your list, we can safely discard all of them except possibly Orhan Pamuk whose books I have not read. The rest are for the most part writers unable to produce work that is worthy of retention, or in some cases -Golding, Lessing, Naipaul, White, Nabokov and Achebe you have writers so politically offensive it makes one wonder why anyone would be attracted to them.

A particularly nasty figure is Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a politically deluded, anti-Jewish, Russian nationalist whose claim to fame is based on non-fiction rather than fiction, even if there are doubts about the sources used in The Gulag Archipelago. To claim Solzhenitsyn as a great writer does not suggest the application of critical faculties to either the man or his work for a simple reason: he is not very good at writing.

I would be inclined to include Thomas Pynchon if I could get through ten pages of his work without being confused and disinterested. I assume the appearance on that list of Michel Houellebecq is a sarcastic joke at literature's expense, you might as well include Martin Amis on that basis.

Personal taste will always be a factor, my preference is for the modernism of Joyce, Woolf, Conrad and the early Faulkner even though, or because it has so many challenges; but there must also be standards, and an ability write must be fundamental to the assessment of a reputation, as well as the ability to communicate -what it is that writer is saying cannot therefore be ignored just because, for example, they have an elaborate style -a problem that arises with Danielewski's House of Leaves. Again, producing a list of writers, such as those on your list who have produced for the most part tedious, mediocre books doesn't encourage me to take it seriously.

You might want to think more intensely about what books you would want to save from a fire. And then you might decide not to bother.

[Prospero]

it was a scurry through the first names that came to mind - addressing your assertion that there were not many achievements. Your judgement of certain names on the list is so utterly out of key with the general canon i frankly don't understand them... Naipaul, Nabokov and Lessing for instance.

And your dismissal of all as writers whose work is not worthy or retention is, frankly, ludicrous.

Solzhenitsyn's politics are hardly relevant - otherwise we should utterly banish Journey To The End of The Night from any discussion of literature in the light of Celine's viscious anti-semitism. I included the Russian him on the strength of Ivan Denisovich and Cancer Ward.

I do wonder i you have actually read many of the names on my list or are simply being a controversialist...

[Stavros]

it was a scurry through the first names that came to mind - addressing your assertion that there were not many achievements. Your judgement of certain names on the list is so utterly out of key with the general canon i frankly don't understand them... Naipaul, Nabokov and Lessing for instance.

And your dismissal of all as writers whose work is not worthy or retention is, frankly, ludicrous.

Solzhenitsyn's politics are hardly relevant - otherwise we should utterly banish Journey To The End of The Night from any discussion of literature in the light of Celine's viscious anti-semitism. I included the Russian him on the strength of Ivan Denisovich and Cancer Ward.

I do wonder i you have actually read many of the names on my list or are simply being a controversialist...

I have strong opinions, I think that it what you find difficult to cope with -you have not attempted to provide any criteria for what makes great literature, you just list well-known writers on the assumption that they are worthy of inclusion.

If I don't have space on my desert island bookshelf for say, Toni Morrison, it is because I find her work of little interest, and don't consider her a stylist of any note, in fact in a book like Beloved, I think she takes magical realism to places it doesn't need to go to cover up an inadequacy in her writing, the same is true of Rushdie in The Satanic Verses, a book whose most notable feature is its tedious misogyny. I compare these writers to the ones I have returned to again and again over many years and the gap between them is huge, it is a gap caused by a failure of the imagination, a failure to use writing to create something unique, a message that has been heard so many times it is boring, and so on -you only need to enter the complex world of Conrad to see the difference in both narrative structure and motive as well as the quality of the writing -few writers in his own day matched his skills, none have since then.

Solzhenitsyn is a political writer, and his politics stinks. Anyone could write a diatribe on the USSR, and Orwell did it brilliantly in both Animal Farm and 1984, books far apart from the miserable, asthmatic prose of the Russian -he was a courageous man, that is true, but when you peel away the hype and look closely, I don't think you will like what you see. I think he would have welcomed any law discriminating against homosexuals, and that is just one example.

The issue around Celine I agree could be complex -Edith Wharton was a rampant Jew-hater, as were Wagner and Chopin; Edgar Degas took sides against Dreyfus; yet people read Wharton and listen to the music and admire the paintings -but Celine did actually denigrate Jews in his work, so one has to be more cautious with someone so explicit in his views, it is not as if he can hide behind C Major or a petite danseuse.

If you are familiar with the 'canon war' that broke out in the 1980s with Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind you will understand how the inclusion in the study of literature of previously neglected books -in the US in particular works by Black and Women authors -you will find courses in some American universities that dropped Faulker in favour of someone frankly obscure because they couldn't write as well as Faulkner but was Black, or Gay (Djuna Barnes is an example) -but who could delete Faulkner from a list of great American writers? There is a useful article on it here -
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/books/review/Donadio-t.html?pagewanted=all

The Canon in this country is established, and runs from Beowulf through Piers Plowman and the Canterbury Tales, through Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare through Milton, Pope and Dryden to Byron, Keats, Shelley and Wordworth, progressing through the 19th century novels of Austen, the Brontes, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, James and then the moderns- Wells, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, Conrad, Huxley, Auden, Orwell -and then falls apart because in our contemporary world we cannot decide who is important after 1950. Kingsley Amis? CP Snow? The canon exists because it is recognised that some works have been well written, others influential, sometimes both, but it clearly doesn't cover all genres -is Agatha Christie a great writer? Where do you place Conan Doyle?

I detest the work of William Golding; his crabbed writing style cannot mask his dreary English, Burkean Conservatism, you need only read Lord of the Flies to understand the meaning of despair, a despair created by an intense fear of change, as if change did not make the modern world in which he lived -or maybe that was the problem. Lessing's work is more diverse, but having to wade through the series of books in Canopus in Argos was worse than being given a lecture in anthropology by a first year student, all wrong, all stupid, an embarrassing farago of one-dimensional drive.

In English, I think there has been a major falling off of talent in the novel since say the death of Orwell. That doesn't mean there haven't been some good books or good writers, but I think in the end every century produces only a few writers whose work stands the test of time. Who should be on that list makes for entertaining reading, because few people agree on who should be on it.

[buttslinger]

Somebody should chronicle the classic tiffs between Stavros and Prospero.

[Prospero]

Re Lessing. Why judge her by her worst work, rather than the Golden Notebook, for instance?

[Stavros]

If I had been able to read it I would tell you, but it is to my mind the kind of writing that alienates the reader by not letting them into the narrative. That doesn't mean writing has to be simple and accessible, you could hardly say that of Joyce, for example, but Lessing to me writes rather like Irish Murdoch, with cement rather than ink. A friend of mine, an English graduate and feminist can't stand Lessing and has nothing good to say about The Golden Notebook. But we both used to know another woman who did like it and Lessing in general, which only proves that the reputations of contemporary authors are harder to manage than dead ones, although Lessing has now gone that way, as do we all.

[Prospero]

Dead reckoning takes over, eh...

[Stavros]

The Door, by Magda Szabo.
First published in 1987 in Hungarian when the writer was 70 years old, I was recommended this book by an Hungarian I met, and I was not disappointed (by either). It is a complex story of a writer who hires a caretaker who more or less takes over her life while trying to conceal the truth of her own. The truths that do emerge about the life of the caretaker (Emerence, who hides her life behind a door), present a tragic figure whose survival through the ages of Hungarian history since the 1930s has relied on her making her indispensable to others, and apparrently never refusing to do anything for them. The style, in English, is not complex, but the story is brilliantly told, and I discovered after reading this that the controversial director, Istvan Szabo (no relation) made a film of The Door in English, with Helen Mirren as Emerence, although the DVD is only available on Amazon in a German edition (as Hinter den Tur).
My knowledge of Hungarian literature is limited to Lukacs, Krasznahorkai and a poor novel also recommended called Embers, by Sandor Morai. I understand Magda Szabo is highly thought of in Hungary.

[bluesoul]

i wrote a poem just now i wish to share with the community:

my penis
floating in the sky
straight into your mouth
my penis flies
open your mouth wide
let my penis inside
into your mouth
the penis will lie

penis: why do you love me so?
penis: what have i done to deserve you so?

thank you penis. thank you for coming home
where you will stay
in my mouth, forever
because that is where you call home
inside my mouth

http://i.imgur.com/uc8n0o8.jpg

[bluesoul]

this is poetic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWVb5I6JzFs

[Stavros]

i wrote a poem just now i wish to share with the community:



Your talent is clearly wasted on this thread, had you written this on a brick wall you might even now be cashing in your cheque and ordering that two-door Ford Tango. Banksy better watch out!

[Jackal]

Dead reckoning takes over, eh...

Do you love the Bard? I never knew your username to be a word inspired by Shakespeare until I saw it was today's word of the day: http://wordsmith.org/words/today.html

[bluesoul]

thank you stavros. here is another great piece of classical music. first published in the early 2000 when the artist was in his 50s. i was recommended the youtube link by another artist and i was not disappointed. i don't think you will either. lend him your ear

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PetMOOBCAgg

[buttslinger]

The first time I ran into Stavros, he shot down a post I made on the movie thread about John Holmes. Whatever Stavros thinks about a book or film, I generally think the opposite. In fact, I think the opposite of Stavros on pretty much everything! Since that time I have come to appreciate Stav as a bit of a classic himself. I picture him at the Diogenes Club reading a book in complete silence.


Here's my addition to the thread, it's a picture of my face photoshopped into a lovely young lady I named TORPEDOES and posted on Alt.com years back, when women got everything free there. I posted the most hideous creature I could imagine, there was a guy from Pennsylvania who kept offering me money, and there were SEVERAL English Gentlemen who came a' courtin me.

[Jackal]

From her Twitter page:


https://twitter.com/tgrlxluvr/status/454393184919904256/photo/1

[Stavros]

I don't mind people disagreeing with me, although it does disappoint me when they cannot produce an argument to explain why. What does mystify me is why people with no real interest in classical music, poetry or the arts would open posts in a thread devoted to it merely to poke fun at it. Not least because it isn't funny.

[buttslinger]

I don't mind people disagreeing with me, although it does disappoint me when they cannot produce an argument to explain why. What does mystify me is why people with no real interest in classical music, poetry or the arts would open posts in a thread devoted to it merely to poke fun at it. Not least because it isn't funny.

Oh no! I've been SCHOOLED by Stavros!!!!

[Stavros]

I recently bought a dvd of the Royal Ballet's performance of Mayerling, the full-length, 3 Act ballet created by Kenneth MacMillan in 1978. Hailed by some as a masterpiece the ballet has some great moments that reflect Macmillan's strengths and some poor moments which reflect his weaknesses. The most obvious weakness is the music of Franz Liszt, tepid and insipid, lacking in focus, it serves to provide the dancers something to dance to, but in itself lacks the qualities one finds in the great ballet scores by Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Stravinsky. Dramatically, it is another tale of doomed love, albeit based on real events. Crown Prince Rudolph of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is besieged in Acts 1 and 2 by Hungarian nationalist friends of his, and this is supposed to contribute to Rudolph's 'bad boy' image given his addiction to morphine and infidelity, but they make no appearance in Act 3 so their appearance at all makes no sense -indeed, this ought really to be a two-act ballet as it also includes scenes which last a few minutes in order to flesh out a story which, at its core, involves just two lovers and the world that they are trying to escape from.

Macmillan's strength in the choreography of the pas-de-deux is seen three times, in the Act 1 pas-de-deux between Rudolph and his wife, and the Acts 2 and 3 pas-de-deux with his lover Mary, as seen here in the Act 2 scene when they first make love, taken from a Hungarian performance (some of Covent Garden's youtube extracts are blocked in some countries on copyright grounds).

Tamás Solymosi in Mayerling 2nd act - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AzoqFks8OA)

[Stavros]

Another Macmillan ballet, this one a beautifully realised short piece in full with the superb American dancer Amanda McKerrow. I love Prokofiev's violin concerto but think Macmillan should have used different music or asked for an original score. First performed in London in 1972, and is described thus on the Macmillan website:
Triad graphically portrays the intensities of adolescence and yet again MacMillan created an ‘outsider’ figure, one left behind. There are three central characters, two brothers and a girl. Her arrival disrupts the very intense relationship between the brothers. The elder tries to impress the girl and cynically pushes his junior into the clutches of a gang of young toughs (with whom the girl arrived) who beat him up. He then has a dalliance with the Eve-like newcomer. Driven by resentments he can barely understand the younger brother lashes out. But dawning sexuality has undone childhood sweetness. The elder has been swept across the threshold of eroticism and the younger must wait outside.

Prokofiev - Triad - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0FMug-2SsU)

[sukumvit boy]

One of my favorite music/poetry combinations is Sir John Gielguld reciting the poetry of Aloysius Bertrand that inspired Maurice Ravel's "Gaspard de la Nuit" . Stunning combination of piano and the spoken word.
Ravel Gaspard de la Nuit - Gina Bachauer & John Gielguld - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkpPHxlZI5Q)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspard_de_la_Nuit_(book)

[Stavros]

Thank you for the link, unfortunately I think it is mistake and that the juxtaposition of words and music in this case does not work, although it does confirm that Ravel's music is superior to Bertrand's poetry.

[sukumvit boy]

Thanks Stavros , interesting observation.
For me , it is the juxtaposition of the moods that the poetry and music evoke . Sorry that link doesn't work. I'll try another.
Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit -- Robert Casadesus, John Gielgud - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylWW_EN2T1Q&list=PLS857vg4f8_Gb_z4K_C2OK8fACCO7Drg)-

[Stavros]

The previous link worked well. It is just one of those things, there is a programme on BBC Radio 3 on Sundays called Words and Music which alternates between the two and often with great effect, I have been introduced to both words and music I had not previously known.

[eded]

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky / Nina Kaptsova - Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz_f9B4pPtg)

[Stavros]

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky / Nina Kaptsova - Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz_f9B4pPtg)

Too slow! It is a dance, not a funeral march.

I saw Natalia Osipova in Swan Lake this week, and I must say that in all the years I have spent watching outstanding dancers, I have rarely seen Odette/Odile danced with such a magical combination of physical expertise and poetry. She is even better than the hype.

[Stavros]

Maya Plisetskaya has died at the age of 89. She was one of the finest ballerinas of the last 100 years and established her reputation during and after the Stalinist period which saw her father shot in the Terror of 1936 and her mother shipped off to the Gulag. Her family was Jewish a fact which worked against her as she was a member of the Bolshoi company but prevented from touring outside the country until the Khruschchev period. She excited an adulation that only Russians can shower on their favourites, and at a famous performance of Swan Lake in 1956 the KGB were ordered into the Bolshoi to intimidate the audience from showing their approval of this magical dancer. At the end of the first interval the audience went berserk, leading the KGB to grab people by the scruff of their necks and haul them out of the theatre, though by the end the applause was so ecstatic they gave up. She never defected, but became an international ambassador for Russian ballet though died in Munich where she lived with her composer husband Rodio Shchedrin. She was tall, at 5 foot 9 inches, with size ten feet which may have given her the lift which set her apart from her contemporaries. In the film below she dances Ravel's Bolero, created for her by Maurice Bejart when she was 50 years old in 1975 -this is typical Bejart, the constant movement (she doesn't stop moving once in the entire ballet) in which one dancer becomes enmeshed with the ensemble, and it a fitting tribute, I think, to a phenomenal dancer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsSALaDJuN4

[eded]

Fine Arts are the Jewel of the Pangea Spirit.

[runningdownthatdream]

Resurrecting this thread again so some of the newer members who came for discussion could contribute..........I think this belongs here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OMh0u-ir9w

[hamdasl]

Try Telemann. He was a virtuoso recorder player.

[sukumvit boy]

Thanks for reviving this thread .I'm a fan of early music and instruments too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FysO3inyM18

As well as 'resonant' music bringing new life to ancient instruments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4BJ3wng6Mk

[runningdownthatdream]

Thanks for reviving this thread .I'm a fan of early music and instruments too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FysO3inyM18

As well as 'resonant' music bringing new life to ancient instruments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4BJ3wng6Mk

Excellent......we share similar musical tastes....and even as specific as central Asian stuff. You might like these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTMJCsCCCK4&feature=related
I want to walk on the steppes one day while listening to this.......like listening to the traditional El condor Pasa played on flute only while on the train from Cuzco to Aguas Caliente at the foot of Macchu Picchu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew-bu4bBC7k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYevBLUtuLc&feature=related

[Stavros]

Jessye Norman has died at the age of 74. She was one of the finest singers of her generation, though she did not in fact perform opera as much as her contemporaries or the generation slightly before here, in particular Leontyne Price whose voice range is probably closest to hers. I did see her at Covent Garden sing Ariadne in the opera by Richard Strauss, Ariadne auf Naxo, and can still remember those soaring resplendent tones rising from the depth -one of the hardest roles Strauss composed. It is a notoriously difficult opera to stage as it asks a tragedy and farce to be performed simultaneously, but they got it right that evening as Jessye/Ariadne reached a level of perfection of singing rarely heard on any stage.

The BBC in its broadcasts has been playing her Countess from Mozart's Figaro but this was not a role suited to her -it is suited to a lighter toned soprano-, whereas she was better in the heavier roles for Strauss and Wagner and thus had a different repertoire from Price who in her time was the outstanding Aida, though both also exalted in gospel music, and had a wide repertoire.
74 is a young age, and though I think she had stopped singing, she will be remembered not just for that fabulous, fabulous voice, but also her deep humanity, her commitment to the politics of liberation, and above all the use of her art to improve the quality of the lives of all, whoever they are, from wherever they have come from. Such talent is rare, it must be cherished, as it will be in the memory and recordings. Some of which are here- (first link is with orchestra not piano)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAg_08zRTnk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg_EHUGRgos