Saturday, June 29, 2013
Friday, June 28, 2013
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Senancour - Obermann
Obermann, first published in 1804, is the best known work of French writer Étienne Pivert de Senancour. Usually described as an epistolary novel, the letters that constitute this volume are much closer to being a series of interlinked essays. Supposedly written by the melancholy recluse Obermann, whom critics have generally seen as a thinly disguised stand-in for Senancour himself, the letters contain the emotional outpourings of a man forever searching the depths of his innermost self in the hopes of overcoming his despair and finding a place for himself in the world, yet never quite succeeding. The letters cover a multitude of topics such as the hypocritical morals of the time, the failings of religion, the poor treatment of women in society, and the futility of existence. But while these writings are always overshadowed by an inescapable sense of brooding and pessimism, there are also passages that contain striking descriptions of Obermann’s Alpine refuge that are almost mystical in their sense of union with nature. The work is similar in some respects to Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker, his Confessions, the Essays of Montaigne, and even to Thoreau’s Walden, yet it is wholly original in its form, and there is nothing else quite like it in the history of French literature. Though virtually unknown in America and largely forgotten in France, Obermann should nonetheless be seen as an essential text of early Romanticism whose rightful place is next to Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther and Chateaubriand’s René.
Book English
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Mexico - María Sabina
On June 29, 1955, R. Gordon Wasson, then a vice president of the prestigious banking firm J.P. Morgan, together with his friend, New York fashion photographer Allan Richardson, made history by becoming the first whites to participate in a velada. The nocturnal mushroom ceremony took place in the remote village of Huautla de Jimenez, in the northeast region of Oaxaca, Mexico.
Under the guidance of the now famous Mazatec curandera Maria Sabina, Wasson and Richardson each consumed six pairs of the mushroom Psilocybe caerulescens var. mazatecorum. After an hour the two men began to feel the effects, which were manifest by visions of colorful geometric patterns, palaces, and architectural vistas.
Life magazine, as part of its "Great Adventures Series," published in its May 13th 1957 issue an account of this event titled, "Seeking the Magic Mushroom." This article, which inspired Dr. Timothy Leary and countless others to try the mushrooms, is considered by many to be the instrument that ushered in the "Psychedelic Revolution" of the 1960s.
Huautla de Jimenez would later become inundated with hippies hoping to "trip" with Maria Sabina. John Lennon, Peter Townshend, Mick Jagger, and Bob Dylan are some of the celebrities who traveled to Huautla, seeking the spiritual guidance of Maria Sabina. Although the Life article made Maria famous, it also brought her great suffering. Sadly, her home would later be burned and she was banished to the outskirts of town as punishment for divulging the Indians' age-old secret about their use of teonanacatl, or "God's Flesh." She never regretted having met Wasson, however, and felt that it was destiny.
She passed away on November 22nd 1985, and is now a legend in Mexico.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Medieval Spain 7 - The Mistery Play of Elche
The mystery play of Elche is a sacred musical drama of the death, the passage into heaven (known as the Assumption) and the crowning of the Virgin Mary. Since the mid-fifteenth century it has been performed in the Basilica of Santa Maria and in the streets of the old city of Elche, situated in the region of Valencia. It is a living testimony of European religious theatre of the Middle Ages and of the cult of the Virgin.
This theatrical performance, which is entirely sung, comprises two acts, performed on 14 and 15 August. These depict the death and crowning of the Virgin in a series of scenes and related paintings: the death of Mary, the night procession that is followed by hundreds of participants carrying candles, the morning procession, the afternoon funeral procession in the streets of Elche, and the enactment of the burial, Assumption and coronation in the Basilica. The texts are in Valencian, the local form of Catalan, with certain sections in Latin.The stage has two levels: the horizontal “terrestrial” stage and the vertical “celestial” stage, characteristic of the medieval mystery play. Ancient aerial machinery is used to enhance the spectacle by means of special effects.
More than 300 volunteers take part in the performance each year as actors, singers, stage directors, stagehands, tailors and stewards, as well as in the preparations that last throughout the year.This tradition, which attracts the entire population of the town, is closely linked to the cultural and linguistic identity of the inhabitants of the region.The mystery play of Elche was designated a “National Monument” in 1931 and is protected by several laws aimed at safeguarding cultural heritage.
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Balzac - The Unknown Masterpiece
In 1927, Picasso's dealer Ambroise Vollard commissioned the artist to illustrate a special re-edition of Balzac's 1837 short story, "The Unknown Masterpiece".
Balzac's story is set in the Seventeenth century at a studio in the rue des Grandes-Augustins in Paris. It unfolds around an aging artist called Frenhofer, who is the greatest painter of his day. Frenhofer reveals to two of his ardent admirers, Pourbus and Poussin, that he has been working on a secret painting which has for years consumed all his creative powers. Pourbus and Poussin then scheme to get Frenhofer to show them the painting by procuring a beautiful young model for its completion. When they finally see the Unknown Masterpiece it appears to be nothing but a mess of lines and layers of paint which they immediately interpret as being the work of a raving madman.
Picasso identified with Frenhofer and was fascinated by Balzac's eerie story. In the 1930's, as if by a strange twist of fate, he rented Nº 7 rue des Grandes-Augustin, which he and others believed to be the the house in which the story begins. It was at this address in 1937, exactly one hundred years after Balzac's final version, that Picasso painted his most famous masterpiece - Guernica.
Picasso later claimed to have been haunted by Balzac; and there seem to be strange parallels between Frenhofer's Unknown Masterpiece and the 1934 drawing. As with Frenhofer's painting, the drawing seems to be the product of an extraordinary creative process. Its existence also appears to have been kept a closely guarded secret. Similarly, at first encounter, the drawing appears to be a mess of lines and smudged inks, yet what it contains is probably the most complete convergence of themes in the entire range of Picasso's work. For these reasons, it seems that the drawing was probably intended to be Picasso's version of the Unknown Masterpiece. © Mark Harris 1996
English formats
Book spanish pdf
Book French
Based on Honore de Balzac's "Le chef-d'oeuvre inconnu" (or The Unknown masterpiece), La Belle Noiseuse is a 1991 film directed by Jacques Rivette and starring Michel Piccoli as the distressed artist, obsessed with something that will never exist: The perfect and flawless artistic masterpiece.
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Thomas Adès - Tevot
I talked to Thomas Adès, one of today's most brilliant composers (and conductors, and pianists, and programmers) to get him to explain his musical universe. Did he explain? Only up to a point. But our conversations are sketches towards an understanding; their illumination, I hope, comes from how Adès answers, parries, and sometimes obfuscates the questions I ask him. Along the way, there are insights into the music he loves and loathes, especially the operas of Janacek and Wagner, aspects of Mahler's symphonies, and Brahms's and Britten's music. He also reveals his priorities as a composer and listener: the "magnetism" he hears in every note or combination of notes he plays on the piano or puts down on manuscript paper. Follow...
Thomas Adès - Tevot
Friday, June 21, 2013
Japan - Zen Hôyô, Liturgy of Zen Buddhism
Ocora's disc by Zen Hôyô features a monastic rite of Rinzai Zen Buddhism. Its alternation of the recitation of sûtras and prayers with instrumental sequences is done in the monk's search for sûnyatâ.
Zen aims at a perfection of personhood. To this end, sitting meditation called “za-zen” is employed as a foundational method of prāxis across the different schools of this Buddha-Way, through which the Zen practitioner attempts to embody non-discriminatory wisdom vis-à-vis the meditational experience known as “satori” (enlightenment). A process of discovering wisdom culminates in the experiential dimension in which the equality of thing-events is apprehended in discerning them. The most distinguishing feature of this school of the Buddha-Way is seen in its contention that wisdom, accompanied by compassion, is expressed in the everyday “life-world” when associating with one's self, people, and nature. The everyday “life-world” for most people is an evanescent transforming stage in which living is consumed, philosophically speaking, by an either-or, ego-logical, dualistic paradigm of thinking with its attendant psychological states such as stress and anxiety. Zen demands an overcoming of this paradigm by practically achieving an holistic perspective in cognition, so that the Zen practitioner can celebrate, with a stillness of mind, a life of tending toward the concrete thing-events of everyday life and nature. For this reason, the Zen practitioner is required to embody freedom expressive of the original human nature.
Japan - Zen Hôyô, Liturgy of Zen Buddhism
Moines du temple Daitokuji de Kyôto - Récitation du Daihishinjû
liturgie du bouddhisme zen (2010 | Ocora Radio France)
Taisen Deshimaru - Maka Hannya Haramita Shingyo
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Medieval Spain 6 - Martin Codax, Cantigas de Amigo
Martín Codax was a Galician medieval joglar (non-noble composer and performer—as opposed to a trobador), possibly from Vigo, Galicia, Spain. He may have been active during the middle of the thirteenth century, judging from scriptological analysis (Monteagudo 2008). He is one of only two out of a total of 88 authors of cantigas d'amigo who uses only the archaic strophic form aaB (a rhymed distich followed by a refrain). And he also employs an archaic rhyme-system whereby i~o / a~o are used in alternating strophes. His dates, however, remain unknown and there is no documentary biographical information concerning the poet.
The body of work attributed to him consists of seven cantigas d'amigo which appear in the Galician-Portuguese songbooks and in the Vindel parchment. In all three manuscripts he is listed as the author of the compositions, and in all three the number and the order of the songs is the same. This provides important evidence to support the view that the order of other poets' songs in the cancioneiros (songbooks) should not automatically be dismissed as random or attributed to later compilers. Rather, the identity of the poems and their order in all witnesses supports the view that the seven songs of Codax reflect an original performance set, and that the sets of poems by some other poets might also have been organized for performance.
This parchment was discovered by chance: the antiquarian bookseller and bibliophile Pedro Vindel in Madrid found it among his holdings in 1913; it had been used as the cover of a copy of Cicero's De Officiis.
Martim Codax's poems that appeared in the parchment are the following (untitled, they are listed by their first verse):
Ondas do mar de Vigo
Mandad'ey comigo
Mia irmana fremosa treydes comigo
Ay Deus, se sab'ora meu amigo
Quantas sabedes amar amigo
Eno sagrad' en Vigo
Ay ondas que eu vin veer
In the Vindel parchment musical notation (although with lacunae) survives along with the texts, except for the sixth one. They are the only cantiga de amigo for which the music is known (and, if Codax was indeed Galician, the only medieval Galician secular songs (see Cantigas de Santa Maria). The Pergaminho Sharrer contains seven melodies for cantiga de amor of Denis of Portugal, also in fragmentary form.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Very Old Recordings 7: Ysaye and Rachmaninoff
Eugene Ysaye Plays Mendelssohn Concerto (mov. 3) ca.1912
Rachmaninoff plays Rachmaninoff (Welte)
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Jardín Mecánico (Mechanical Garden) for String Quintet
Jesús Rueda - Jardín Mecánico (1999)
Arditti Quartet, Toni G. Araque, Cb
Rec. 2005 London
Monday, June 17, 2013
James Joyce - Ulysses
Joyce first encountered Odysseus in Charles Lamb's Adventures of Ulysses—an adaptation of the Odyssey for children, which seemed to establish the Roman name in Joyce's mind. At school he wrote an essay on Ulysses entitled "My Favourite Hero". Joyce told Frank Budgen that he considered Ulysses the only all-round character in literature. He thought about calling Dubliners by the name Ulysses in Dublin, but the idea grew from a story in Dubliners in 1906, to a "short book" in 1907, to the vast novel that he began in 1914.
Ulysses
Sunday, June 16, 2013
John Adams - Orchestral Music
One reason critic Alex Ross finds John Adams' music so appealing is that the composer doesn't shy away from emotion.
"The emotional thing is very important, I think," Ross says. "There's no caution there. There's no sort of intellectual jockeying for position. He just seems to just put it out there and not worry about the correctness of these sounds. They just kind of well up in him, and he's just not afraid to put them down on paper."
John Adams, The Chairman Dances Foxtrot per orchestra 1985
Francesco Ommassini Conductor
Orchestra Arena di Verona
Reg live 27.11.2011 Teatro Filarmonico Verona Italy
JOHN ADAMS - DOCTOR ATOMIC SYMPHONY - GSTAAD FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA - KRISTJAN JARVI - DIRECTOR - 2011
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Viet Nam - Nha Nhac Vietnamese Court Music and Traditional Music
Nhã nhạc is a form of Vietnamese court music. Vietnamese court music is very diverse, but the term nhã nhạc (雅樂, meaning "elegant music" or "ceremonial music") refers specifically to the Vietnamese court music performed from the Trần dynasty of the 13th century to the Nguyễn dynasty, which ended in the early 20th century.
Vietnamese court music was performed at annual ceremonies, including anniversaries and religious holidays, as well as special events such as coronations, funerals or official receptions, by highly trained and skilled court musicians. Along with the musicians, a number of intricate court dances also exist (see Traditional Vietnamese dance). Both musicians and dancers wore elaborately designed costumes during their performances.
While the largest foreign influence on nhã nhạc came from the Ming dynasty court of China, later on there were also adapted a few elements from the music of Champa, which the Vietnamese court found intriguing.
Instruments commonly used for nhã nhạc include kèn bầu (conical oboe), đàn tỳ bà (pear-shaped lute with four strings), đàn nguyệt (moon-shaped two-string lute), đàn tam (fretless lute with snakeskin-covered body and three strings), đàn nhị (two-stringed vertical fiddle), sáo (also called sáo trúc; a bamboo transverse flute), trống (drum played with sticks), and other percussion instruments.
It is believed that nhã nhạc did not truly reach the pinnacle of its development until the Nguyễn Dynasty, when it was synthesized. The Nguyễn emperors declared it as the official court music, and it became an essential part of the extensive rituals of the royal palace.
Nhã nhạc is still performed in the old capital of Huế. 'Nhã nhạc of Huế court' (Nhã nhạc cung đình Huế) was recognised in 2005 by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Extensive efforts have gone underway to preserve this truly unique and highly developed art. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Nha Nhac, Vietnamese Court Music
Musique élégante de Hue - Vietnam, Nha nhac
Vietnamese Traditional Music
Friday, June 14, 2013
Ted Hughes - Last Letter
Edward James "Ted" Hughes, OM (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation.
Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until her suicide in 1963 at the age of 30. His part in the relationship became controversial to some feminists and (particularly) American admirers of Plath. His last poetic work, Birthday Letters (1998), explored their complex relationship. These poems make reference to Plath's suicide, but none of them addresses directly the circumstances of her death. A poem discovered in October 2010, Last letter, describes what happened during the three days leading up to Plath's suicide.
In 2008 The Times ranked Hughes fourth on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Hughes and Plath had two children, Frieda Rebecca (1960) and Nicholas Farrar (1962) and in 1961, bought the house Court Green, in North Tawton, Devon. In the summer of 1962 Hughes began an affair with Assia Wevill who had been subletting the Primrose Hill flat with her husband. Under a cloud of his affair, Hughes and Plath separated in the autumn of 1962 and she set up life in a new flat with the children.
The death of Plath
Hughes' wife Sylvia Plath, beset by depression, and with a history of suicide attempts, took her own life on 11 February 1963, although it is unclear whether she meant to ultimately succeed. Hughes was devastated. In a letter to an old friend of Plath's from Smith College, he wrote, "That's the end of my life. The rest is posthumous." Some feminists argued that Hughes had driven Plath to suicide. Plath's gravestone was repeatedly vandalized by those aggrieved that "Hughes" is written on the stone and attempted to chisel it off, leaving only the name "Sylvia Plath." In 1970, radical feminist poet Robin Morgan published the poem "Arraignment", in which she openly accused Hughes of the battery and murder of Plath; other feminists threatened to kill him in Plath's name. In 1989, with Hughes under public attack, a battle raged in the letters pages of The Guardian and The Independent. In The Guardian on 20 April 1989 Hughes wrote the article "The Place Where Sylvia Plath Should Rest in Peace":
In the years soon after [Plath's] death, when scholars approached me, I tried to take their apparently serious concern for the truth about Sylvia Plath seriously. But I learned my lesson early... If I tried too hard to tell them exactly how something happened, in the hope of correcting some fantasy, I was quite likely to be accused of trying to suppress Free Speech. In general, my refusal to have anything to do with the Plath Fantasia has been regarded as an attempt to suppress Free Speech...The Fantasia about Sylvia Plath is more needed than the facts. Where that leaves respect for the truth of her life (and of mine), or for her memory, or for the literary tradition, I do not know.
As Plath's widower, Hughes became the executor of Plath’s personal and literary estates. He oversaw the publication of her manuscripts, including Ariel (1966). Some critics were dissatisfied by his choice of poem order and omissions in the book and some feminists argued that Hughes had essentially driven her to suicide and therefore should not be responsible for her literary legacy. He claimed to have destroyed the final volume of Plath’s journal, detailing their last few months together. In his foreword to The Journals of Sylvia Plath, he defends his actions as a consideration for the couple's young children.
On 25 March 1969, six years after Plath's suicide by asphyxiation from a gas stove, Assia Wevill committed suicide in the same way. Wevill also killed her child, Alexandra Tatiana Elise (nicknamed Shura), the four-year-old daughter of Hughes, born on 3 March 1965. Their deaths led to claims that Hughes had been abusive to both Plath and Wevill. In shock, Hughes could not finish the Crow sequence, which remained unfinished until the work Cave Birds was published in 1975. Crow, and the timing of its publication, seemed to underline Hughes's predisposition for dark violence, exemplified by the nature that he wrote about, red in tooth and claw.
Ted Hughes‘s previously unknown poem about Sylvia Plath‘s suicide has recently surfaced.
Full text of the poem after the jump.
“Last Letter”
What happened that night? Your final night.
Double, treble exposure
Over everything. Late afternoon, Friday,
My last sight of you alive.
Burning your letter to me, in the ashtray,
With that strange smile. Had I bungled your plan?
Had it surprised me sooner than you purposed?
Had I rushed it back to you too promptly?
One hour later—-you would have been gone
Where I could not have traced you.
I would have turned from your locked red door
That nobody would open
Still holding your letter,
A thunderbolt that could not earth itself.
That would have been electric shock treatment
For me.
Repeated over and over, all weekend,
As often as I read it, or thought of it.
That would have remade my brains, and my life.
The treatment that you planned needed some time.
I cannot imagine
How I would have got through that weekend.
I cannot imagine. Had you plotted it all?
Your note reached me too soon—-that same day,
Friday afternoon, posted in the morning.
The prevalent devils expedited it.
That was one more straw of ill-luck
Drawn against you by the Post-Office
And added to your load. I moved fast,
Through the snow-blue, February, London twilight.
Wept with relief when you opened the door.
A huddle of riddles in solution. Precocious tears
That failed to interpret to me, failed to divulge
Their real import. But what did you say
Over the smoking shards of that letter
So carefully annihilated, so calmly,
That let me release you, and leave you
To blow its ashes off your plan—-off the ashtray
Against which you would lean for me to read
The Doctor’s phone-number.
My escape
Had become such a hunted thing
Sleepless, hopeless, all its dreams exhausted,
Only wanting to be recaptured, only
Wanting to drop, out of its vacuum.
Two days of dangling nothing. Two days gratis.
Two days in no calendar, but stolen
From no world,
Beyond actuality, feeling, or name.
My love-life grabbed it. My numbed love-life
With its two mad needles,
Embroidering their rose, piercing and tugging
At their tapestry, their bloody tattoo
Somewhere behind my navel,
Treading that morass of emblazon,
Two mad needles, criss-crossing their stitches,
Selecting among my nerves
For their colours, refashioning me
Inside my own skin, each refashioning the other
With their self-caricatures,
Their obsessed in and out. Two women
Each with her needle.
That night
My dellarobbia Susan. I moved
With the circumspection
Of a flame in a fuse. My whole fury
Was an abandoned effort to blow up
The old globe where shadows bent over
My telltale track of ashes. I raced
From and from, face backwards, a film reversed,
Towards what? We went to Rugby St
Where you and I began.
Why did we go there? Of all places
Why did we go there? Perversity
In the artistry of our fate
Adjusted its refinements for you, for me
And for Susan. Solitaire
Played by the Minotaur of that maze
Even included Helen, in the ground-floor flat.
You had noted her—-a girl for a story.
You never met her. Few ever met her,
Except across the ears and raving mask
Of her Alsatian. You had not even glimpsed her.
You had only recoiled
When her demented animal crashed its weight
Against her door, as we slipped through the hallway;
And heard it choking on infinite German hatred.
That Sunday night she eased her door open
Its few permitted inches.
Susan greeted the black eyes, the unhappy
Overweight, lovely face, that peeped out
Across the little chain. The door closed.
We heard her consoling her jailor
Inside her cell, its kennel, where, days later,
She gassed her ferocious kapo, and herself.
Susan and I spent that night
In our wedding bed. I had not seen it
Since we lay there on our wedding day.
I did not take her back to my own bed.
It had occurred to me, your weekend over,
You might appear—-a surprise visitation.
Did you appear, to tap at my dark window?
So I stayed with Susan, hiding from you,
In our own wedding bed—-the same from which
Within three years she would be taken to die
In that same hospital where, within twelve hours,
I would find you dead.
Monday morning
I drove her to work, in the City,
Then parked my van North of Euston Road
And returned to where my telephone waited.
What happened that night, inside your hours,
Is as unknown as if it never happened.
What accumulation of your whole life,
Like effort unconscious, like birth
Pushing through the membrane of each slow second
Into the next, happened
Only as if it could not happen,
As if it was not happening. How often
Did the phone ring there in my empty room,
You hearing the ring in your receiver—-
At both ends the fading memory
Of a telephone ringing, in a brain
As if already dead. I count
How often you walked to the phone-booth
At the bottom of St George’s terrace.
You are there whenever I look, just turning
Out of Fitzroy Road, crossing over
Between the heaped up banks of dirty sugar.
In your long black coat,
With your plait coiled up at the back of your hair
You walk unable to move, or wake, and are
Already nobody walking
Walking by the railings under Primrose Hill
Towards the phone booth that can never be reached.
Before midnight. After midnight. Again.
Again. Again. And, near dawn, again.
At what position of the hands on my watch-face
Did your last attempt,
Already deeply past
My being able to hear it, shake the pillow
Of that empty bed? A last time
Lightly touch at my books, and my papers?
By the time I got there my phone was asleep.
The pillow innocent. My room slept,
Already filled with the snowlit morning light.
I lit my fire. I had got out my papers.
And I had started to write when the telephone
Jerked awake, in a jabbering alarm,
Remembering everything. It recovered in my hand.
Then a voice like a selected weapon
Or a measured injection,
Coolly delivered its four words
Deep into my ear: ‘Your wife is dead.’
and
Discovered in the British library 47 years after the death of his wife Sylvia Plath, here is Ted Hughes' "Last Letter" poem to Plath, read by Dave Stewart.
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