Raymond Roussel - Locus Solus (1914)

John Ashbery summarizes Locus Solus thus in his introduction to Michel Foucault's Death and the Labyrinth: "A prominent scientist and inventor, Martial Canterel, has invited a group of colleagues to visit the park of his country estate, Locus Solus. As the group tours the estate, Canterel shows them inventions of ever-increasing complexity and strangeness. Again, exposition is invariably followed by explanation, the cold hysteria of the former giving way to the innumerable ramifications of the latter. After an aerial pile driver which is constructing a mosaic of teeth and a huge glass diamond filled with water in which float a dancing girl, a hairless cat named Khóng-dek-lèn, and the preserved head of Danton, we come to the central and longest passage: a description of eight curious tableaux vivants taking place inside an enormous glass cage. We learn that the actors are actually dead people whom Canterel has revived with 'resurrectine', a fluid of his invention which if injected into a fresh corpse causes it continually to act out the most important incident of its life."

About...
Raymond Roussel
Locus Solus

Book
First Edition 1914 (French)
French or Here
English
Spanish (only chapter 1)

Glenn Gould, The Alchemist

Glenn Gould: The Alchemist. Bruno Monsaingeon (1974) - YouTube

Everything about Glenn Gould is full of meaning since he gives meaning to everything. In this film “The Alchemist”, we see him in several recording sessions in Toronto in 1974. At that time, for European connoisseurs the pianist, who lives in Toronto, is nothing but a distant legend. He stopped playing in concert at thirty-two, ten years previously, and his records are unobtainable in France. Monsaingeon, discovers him in 1966 when he buys a record in Moscow on which is written “Bach Inventions” and the name of the pianist which sounds vaguely familiar to him. It’s a revelation!

The Alchemist, the second part of Monsaingeon’s film, shows Glenn Gould hard at work recording; sparkling with intelligence and with an acute sense of self-mockery, he talks about his relations with the studio and his rejection of the concert, he evokes his fondness for technique which leads him to editing his own records. He does this while juggling between his piano, the editing and mixing tables and even between microphones.

“Recording is the only way I can play music for the public”. (Glenn Gould)

About...

Glenn Gould

Bruno Monsaingeon

China - Nan-Kouan Music

http://youtu.be/UiasF8Afz2g

Tsai Hsiao-Yueh - The Wind In the Sycamores

Courtly Ballads of Southern China

The Nan kuan repertoire was discovered in the West and in France in 1982 through the Dutch sinologist Kristofer Schipper. This discovery was a veritable revelation. Taiwan preserved court music from southern China that had disappear completely from that region and emigrated and took refuge in Taiwan under inexplicable circumstances. This genere has an aristocratic touch that has been maintained in the bourgeoisie of Taiwan and circles of its connoisseurs. This piece is composed of a chamber ensemble of four musicians. Two of them play the pipa and sanxian lutes, a third one a dongxiao vertical flute, and a fourth one an erxian two-strings bowed instrument. According to tradition the musicians sorround the solo female singer who conducts the ensemble with p'ai-pan clappers. Composed of ballads, the repertoires consist of courtly songs.

About Nan kouan music, in french

Robert Burton - The Anatomy Of Melancholy (1621)

Melancholy, the subject of our present discourse, is either in disposition or in habit. In disposition, is that transitoryMelancholy which goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or perturbation of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causes anguish, dulness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing forwardness in us, or a dislike. In which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy, that is dull, sad, sour, lumpish, ill-disposed, solitary, any way moved, or displeased. And from these melancholy dispositions no man living is free, no Stoick, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself; so well-composed, but more or less, some time or other, he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of Mortality… This Melancholy of which we are to treat, is a habit, a serious ailment, a settled humour, as Aurelianus and others call it, not errant, but fixed: and as it was long increasing, so, now being (pleasant or painful) grown to a habit, it will hardly be removed. (Robert Burton)

About...

Robert Burton

The Anatomy Of Melancholy

Book

English

Spanish

Copenhagen Downtown

Downtown (from Copenhagen Sketches)

Jesus Rueda, piano

H. G. Farmer - Two Classical Books On Arabian Music

H. G. Farmer-A History Of Arabian Music

This book traces the history of Arabic Music right from the ‘Days of Idolatry’ to the decline and falls of the Abbasid Dynasty. The social and political factors which determined the general musical culture, the details of the theory and practice of music, and the biographies of all the celebrated people connected with music of the different periods have been dealt with. 

Book

H. G. Farmer-Historical Facts For The Arabian Influence

Book

About Arabian Music

Here and

Here

Medieval Spain 2 - Codex Las Huelgas

The Codex Las Huelgas or Codex Musical de Las Huelgas (E-BUlh) is a music manuscript or codex from c. 1300 which originated in and has remained in the Cistercian convent of Santa María La Real de Las Huelgas in Burgos, in northwestern Spain, then Castile. It was rediscovered in 1904 by two Benedictine monks. The manuscript is written on parchment, with the staves written in red ink with Franconian notation. The bulk of material is written in one hand, however as many as 12 people contributed to it, including corrections and later additions. The manuscript contains 45 monophonic pieces (20 sequences, 5 conductus, 10 Benedicamus tropes) and 141 polyphonic compositions, 1 of which doesn't have music. Most of the music dates from the late 13th century, with some music from the first half of the 13th century (Notre Dame repertory), and a few later additions from the first quarter of the 14th century.Johannes Roderici (Johan Rodrigues) inscribed his name in a number of places in the manuscript. He may have composed a couple of the pieces in the manuscript, as well as being scribe, compiler, and corrector, according to his own inscriptions.

About Facsimile

ChoralWiki

Codex Las Huelgas - Manuscript Facsimile

Very Old Recordings 1: Brahms and Liszt

Brahms - Hungarian Dance No.1 1869

Brahms plays Brahms 1889

Liszt - Valse Oubliée No. 4, S215 no. 4 c1884

Liszt plays Liszt 1886?

Let's Get Lost - The Turbulent Life Of Chet Baker

Let's Get Lost (1988) is an American documentary film about the turbulent life and career of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker written and directed by Bruce Weber.

Henry David Thoreau - Walden, or Life in the Woods

"Walden is a difficult book to read for three reasons: First, it was written by a gifted writer who uses surgically precise language, extended, allegorical metaphors, long and complex paragraphs and sentences, and vivid, detailed, and insightful descriptions. Thoreau does not hesitate to use metaphors, allusions, understatement, hyperbole, personification, irony, satire, metonymy, synecdoche, and oxymorons, and he can shift from a scientific to a transcendental point of view in mid-sentence. Second, its logic is based on a different understanding of life, quite contrary to what most people would call common sense. Ironically, this logic is based on what most people say they believe. Thoreau, recognizing this, fills Walden with sarcasm, paradoxes, and double entendres. He likes to tease, challenge, and even fool his readers. And third, quite often any words would be inadequate at expressing many of Thoreau's non-verbal insights into truth. Thoreau must use non-literal language to express these notions, and the reader must reach out to understand." Ken Kifer

About Walden

Walden Org.

Walden - An annotated edition

R. L. Stevenson on Walden

Book

Walden 1854 (First ed.)
English
Spanish

Tibet - Monks Playing Long Horns at Tikse Monastery

Music of Eternity on the Roof of the World

Dungchen Tibetan Long Horn

About Tibetan Music

Musical Instruments

Medieval Spain 1 - Mozarabic Antiphonary of Leon

The manuscript was copied by Totmundo Abbot in the year 1069, in the leonine monastery of San Cipriano of the County and was dedicated it to Ikila Abbot, who got to be bishop of Leon. In a note in folio 25, one says that in the year was directly copied of another manuscript of the time of the king Wamba 672 . At the moment Cathedral of Leon is in .

The manuscript begins, like is habitual in many Spanish codices of the high average age, with a Cross of Oviedo (in memory, according to the legend, of that it appeared to him to king Pelayo in the battle of Covadonga) and a miniature in which it is seen the cotrack, Totmundo, giving the finished book once, to Ikila Abbot. Totmundo takes on the head the pronoun ille in humility signal. This representation of the delivery of the finished work was also very frequent in the first incunables.

The book contains sung antiphons in the celebrations of the liturgical cycle and the saints. Mozarabic Antiphonary is unique that has arrived to us complete. Of other Mozarabic antiphonaries, like both of Silos, the one of San Juan of the Rock or the one of San Zoilo de Carrión has only conserved small fragments.

The antiphonary presents/displays the musical annotation in Neumas without pentagrama, in visigótica Annotation, and it could not have been deciphered until the moment, in spite of the efforts realized by the musicologists. It contains many illustrations, especially scenes of the life of Jesus. Some letters own interlaces that remember but to the art carolingio that to the visigótico.

Antiphonary of Leon Codex Manuscript

Here

Madagascar - Valiha

Chant in Xitsonga (one of the South African langues) and fuse Valiha-tube harp & Umakweyane (bow musical instrument) to bring a different flavor.

About Valiha

About Malagasy Music

What Ever Happened To Alice?

Alice Liddell was 20 years old when Prince Leopold (the youngest son of Queen Victoria) arrived at Christ Church, as an undergraduate from 1872 until 1876. It is rumoured that there was a romance, but Alice was a ‘commoner’ and a marriage was not allowed. In 1880 Alice married Reginald Hargreaves. Dodgson was not present at her wedding, but did sent her, together with a friend, a present.

She had three sons, of which two died in WWI. She lived until her death at the estate Cuffnells, in Hampshire. It’s amusing to know that Alice called her first son Leopold (Prince Leopold became his godfather) and Leopold called his daughter Alice…

Alice was an educated woman, she painted and moreover lived the life of a land-lady.

In 1928, Alice sold her manuscript of "Alice's Adventures Under Ground", because she needed the money to pay death duties.

In 1932, when she was 80, Alice published her memoirs. She also went to New York because of the centenary of Dodgson’s birth and was made a Doctor in Literature by Columbia University. This was her last engagement on behalf of Wonderland, because at that age she got really exhausted of being ‘Alice in Wonderland’.

Alice died on 15 November 1934.

Drawings by Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll began making up stories about the adventures of a fictional little girl named Alice in order to please three real-life little girls, Lorina, Alice, and Edith Liddell, who were the daughters of his friend and Oxford colleague, Dean Liddell. 

The story goes that Dodgson (Carroll), the three Liddell girls, and Dodgson's friend Reverend Duckworth (parodied as the Duck in Chapter 3) went on a boat trip up the river together on a summer afternoon in 1862. To amuse the little girls, Dodgson began telling silly stories about a pretend Alice, to the delight of the real Alice Liddell sitting in front of him. He continued telling these nonsense stories to the girls on several different occasions, and eventually he wrote them down in manuscript titled Alice's Adventures Underground. 

Finally, in 1865, he published a revised version of this manuscript as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.

Alice Manuscript (Pdf)

Online Manuscript (British Library)

About Carroll Illustrations

Some Questions

Vesterbro Bar

Vesterbro Bar (from Copenhagen Sketches)

Jesus Rueda, piano

Baltasar Gracián - The Art of Worldly Wisdom

Baltasar Gracián

Written over 350 years ago, The Pocket Oracle and the Art of Prudence (The Art of Worldly Wisdom) is a smart collection of 300 witty and thought-provoking aphorisms. From the art of being lucky to the healthy use of caution, these elegant maxims were created as a guide to life, with further suggestions given on cultivating good taste, knowing how to refuse, the foolishness of complaining and the wisdom of controlling one's passions. Baltasar Gracian intended that these ingenious aphorisms would encourage each reader to challenge themselves both in understanding and applying each axiom.

Schopenhauer, who translated the book, observes that there is nothing like it in German, and there is certainly none approaching it in English, and if France or Italy can produce its superior, it is strange that its fame has remained so confined to its native country.

A remarkable best-seller -- a long-lost, 300-year-old book of wisdom on how to live successfully yet responsibly in a society governed by self-interest -- as acute as Machiavelli yet as humanistic and scrupulously moral as Marcus Aurelius.

Ebook here

Spanish

English

Lost

Jesus Rueda - Sombre Seconds (from Invenciones)

Ananda Sukarlan, piano

Come Into The Background!

Antonello da Messina

Patinir

Piranesi

Glosa

Rueda/Garrido-Glosa sobre el Dies Irae

Tomás Garrido, cello

Bali - 'Kecak' Balinese Monkey Chant

http://youtu.be/o0ijs1GggU8

Kecak (Ketjak and Ketjack) is a form of Balinese dance and music drama that developed in the 1930s in Bali. It is performed primarily by men, although by 2006, a few women's kecak groups exist.

Also known as the Ramayana Monkey Chant, the piece, performed by a circle of 150 or more performers wearing checked cloth around their waists, percussively chanting "cak" and throwing up their arms, depicts a battle from the Ramayana. The monkey-like Vanara helped Prince Ramafight the evil King Ravana. Kecak has roots in sanghyang, a trance-inducing exorcism dance.

Athanasius Kircher and Greek Music

Musurgia Universalis (1650) is probably Athanasius Kirchers most famous work. It deals with music from almost every possible aspect: historical, physical, technical, medical, mythological, mathematical and so on. There are articles on musical instruments from different times and cultures, harmonic science, tuning of instruments, acoustics, instrument making, musical theory, the "music" of birds and other animals, tonal systems from antiquity and onwards etc. It also contains some historical documents, as a reproduction of the music to Pindaros' First Pythian Ode (this was declared to be a "falsification" in the 1930's) and a translation of Abraham ben Ghia Hanassis history of Jewish music. The theory and practice of automatic instruments and of a device that could compose music are treated, and so is Tarantism, a disease that was belived to be caused by the sting of the Apulian tarantula, a big spider.

Pindaro First Pythian Ode

Pindaro Music transcription

In his Musurgia Universalis, Kircher published a musicae veteris specimen: the first verses of Pindar Pythian Ode, which he claims to have transcribed from a Ms. of IX century seen in the Basilian monastery of S. Salvatore at Messina. However, the disappearance of this Ms., following the devastation suffered by Messina between 1674 and 1678, has led many Philologists to doubt the good faith of Kircher, and think it as a clever fake work. However, the troubles of Messina fully justify the Ms. disappearance; If anything, one might doubt the music dating it contains. In the other part, Kircher's musical doctrine was remarkable; He also created a gimmick with which everyone could write music in different styles: Pindar Ode is a practical application?

Ebook Here