Archive for the ‘Music & Art’ Category
Friday Soirée III: Dangerous Ideas
I'm not certain that "dangerous ideas" is exactly right, but I'm not certain that it's not, either. Tonight's program is a bit longer so let's get right to it. One of the "dangerous ideas" is due to Darwin, to use the phrase that Daniel Dennett used in his excellent book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, a book […]
In: All, Friday Soirée, Music & Art, The Art of Conversation
Friday Soirée: Mensuration Canons
Oh dear. What started as something simple again becomes complicated and a bit circular* without my intending it, but that may be suitable because the subject is the musical canon, specifically the "mensuration canon". Let's keep it simple. Perhaps you recall that a "canon" is a musical device in which one musical line, or "voice" […]
In: All, Friday Soirée, Music & Art
Mozart Hated It–We Should Love It?
Somewhere in my top-10 of all-time vapid pieces of music is Mozart's concerto for flute and harp, K. 299, in c major. It is dull, totally devoid of inspiration, and defines the tedious listening experience. Virtually every radio announcer who introduces this playlist favorite will point out how much Mozart is reputed to have hated […]
In: All, Music & Art, Splenetics
Friday Soirée: Feynman & Villa-Lobos
Let us have now a little soirée, a short program of ideas and music to cheer up my rather drab Friday evening. On tonight's program, Richard Feynman and Heitor Villa-Lobos. The Feynman bits are both excerpts from a BBC series called "Fun to Imagine" (1983), in which Feynman is interviewed and talks about all sorts […]
In: All, Friday Soirée, It's Only Rocket Science, Music & Art
Beard of the Week LXXXIII: Variations on America
This week's beard belongs to American composer Charles E. Ives (1874-1954). He's been a personal favorite ever since I tripped over some of his music a few decades ago. It is hard to find a biography of Ives that does not use the phrases "iconoclastic" and "quintessentially American". (This nice one, also the source of […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Music & Art
Beard of the Week LXXXI: Pagan Russia
This week's beard belongs to Nicholas Konstantinovich Roerich* (1874–1947), painter, lawyer, peace activist — any number of things, it seems. Excerpting some from biographical notes from the Nicholas Roerich Museum of New York Nicholas Konstantinovich Roerich was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on October 9, 1874, the first-born son of lawyer and notary, Konstantin Roerich […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Music & Art
Short & Succinct
Some blog I read suggested that I (among other readers) might enjoy watching this video of Richard Dawkins being interviewed for the BBC by one Matthew Stadlen, who seems agreeable enough but it otherwise unknown to me. Although I enjoyed Dawkins' answers, it was not the answers as such that impressed me so much as […]
In: All, Music & Art, The Art of Conversation
On the Death of Mr. Handel
George Frideric Handel died 250 years ago, as Alex Ross ("For the Late Mr Handel") reminded me.* Mr. Ross suggested the video below as a tribute and I thought it was a swell idea. Perhaps because I am an instrumental musician, my education in the vocal arts lagged by decades and it's only in my […]
Beard of the Week LXXVI: Barbe en Château
This week's stylishly modern-looking beard belongs to the unidentified subject of a painting, known as "Portrait of a Red-Bearded Man", attributed to Dutch painter Jan Anthonisz van Ravensteyn (c. 1570–1657), a man for whom I can find virtually no biographical information. Judging from dates painted on the canvas (outside the frame of my cropped image […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Music & Art
Autographical Ephemera
The other day I was reading something by someone on the theme of how difficult it is to browse books on the internet, the way one might browse in a library. It's true that there is no comparable experience. I often find the most interesting books at the library because of an accident of shelving, […]
In: All, Laughing Matters, Music & Art
Saga of the 'Cello Bow
On Sunday, 22 January 2009, Isaac had planned a recital featuring himself playing some organ music, plus a whole array of friends performing a nice variety of music. This is just the latest installment in a recital series that has seen at least two, sometimes three programs a year since about 1993, the year that […]
In: All, Music & Art, Personal Notebook
Beard of the Week LXXIII: Neo-Classical Painting
This week's precisely styled beard belongs to Victorian artist Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912). This image I've cropped from his famous "Self-Portrait" of 1896. (visible, e.g., here.) I like the short biography at "Olga's Gallery", but perhaps the quick introductory summary from the longer Wikipedia article on Alma-Tadema will serve us here: Born in Dronrijp, the […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Music & Art
Decorative Arts, Spectral
Still in operation, NASA's SOHO (Solar and Heliophysical Observatory) spacecraft orbits the sun (not the Earth) in step with the Earth, by slowly orbiting around the First Lagrangian Point (L1), where the combined gravity of the Earth and Sun keep SOHO in an orbit locked to the Earth-Sun line. The L1 point is approximately 1.5 […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Music & Art
Beard of the Week LXIX: Accordion Virtuosi
This week's beard–not to mention the accordion–belong to virtuoso Swiss accordionist Hans Hassler. Mere hours ago I knew nothing about Mr. Hassler, but thanks to the serendipity of free association with google images,* I now know more. Here is a thumbnail biography (source): Hans Hassler was born in Switzerland in 1945. He studied accordion with […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Music & Art
Beard of the Week LXVIII: Being in the Art
This week's beard belongs to filmmaker Daniel Anker. Here's a convenient biographical sketch (from the 2007 Florida Film Festival, also the source of the photo): Filmmaker Daniel Anker has been a producer/director of independent feature documentaries for more than a decade. His credits include Scottsboro: An American Tragedy, for which he received an Oscar nomination […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Music & Art
Screaming Women! Jagged Lines!
As I've mentioned, we've been enjoying watching (on DVD) Simon Schama's BBC-produced series "Power of Art". The last episode was about Mark Rothko and his commission for the Seagram murals (June 6, 1958 in this chronology). I still tend towards thinking Rothko overrated but I was happy to hear more about him and his work […]
In: All, Music & Art, Reflections
Beard of the Week LXVI: Cubism
This week's beard belongs to art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1866–1939), seen here in a portrait painted by Pablo Picasso in 1910. The painting is currently in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow. When I was much younger I could get quite excited about modern art and the avant garde. Now it seems more like […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Music & Art
Beard of the Week LXV: A New Year, A New Art
This week's beard belongs to Dutch-born artist Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853–1890), an artist who, these days, really needs no introduction. This visual extract is from the last of his many self-portraits, painted in September, 1889 when van Gogh was living in Saint-Rémy, France.* The obvious point of this extracted beard is that almost anyone […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Music & Art
Messiaen's Centenary
I knew it but the day, 10 December, 2008, ended yesterday before I got around to mention that it was the centenary of the birth of Olivier Messiaen, the French composer like whom there is no other. People who write or talk about Messiaen always look for unusual words to talk about him and his […]
The Thrill of Museums
If you add up the attendance for every major-league baseball, basketball, football and hockey game this year, the combined total will come to about 140 million people. That's a big number, but it's barely a fraction of the number of people who will visit American museums this year. Museums are big business, attracting billions of […]
In: All, Music & Art, Raised Eyebrows Dept.