The Lamb by Paul Klee

 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum houses some of the finest examples of Modern Art masterpieces in the world.  But it could be filled with its collection of works by Wassily Kandinsky alone.  The original director, Hilla Rebay, encouraged her patron to buy up everything Kandinsky did, and Mr. Guggenheim obliged.  In 1909, Kandinsky was living in Berlin and studying color theory.  At this point, he had painted works that would later define a group of artists, the Blue Rider Group.  But now his painting began to lose all representational aspects.  As an older student, Kandinsky also began writing his remarkable On the Spiritual in Art.  For him, a painter creates a painting to enlighten mankind, not just to touch the eyes, but to taste on the tongue, to sing into the ear, to fill the nose with memory and to vibrate the soul with an inner resonance.

 You see, Kandinsky was a synesthete.  Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which senses overlap, such as when colors provoke experiences on more than a visual level.  Like a word leaving a taste in your mouth, or a sight that makes a sound.  Some synesthetes see numbers in a specific color, etc. etc.  I can see how viewing good art as a synesthete would be as satisfying as good sex to us normal folks.  And I use the terms ‘good art’ and ‘good sex’ loosely, because we all know if neither is good, it doesn’t count as art or sex.

 Speaking of both good art and good sex, Mr. Guggenheim’s niece, Peggy, had an eye for Modern, too.  And she had quite the modern attitude toward sex, as well.  In her autobiography, Out of the Century, she tells of her open marriage with Lawrence Vail and, in the days prior to World War II, of endeavoring to buy one piece of art a day until the Nazis shut Paris down.  Like her uncle, who chose an artist to choose for him, Peggy Guggenheim collected art with Mr. Marcel Duchamp.  Duchamp pointed her toward Cubism and introduced her to what Guillaume Apollinaire had dubbed Surrealism almost twenty years earlier.  She brought to New York works by Picasso and Kandinsky and Ray, as well as pieces by Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dali and Max Ernst (whom she later married). 

Skyscraper costume for Parade by Pablo Picasso (reconstruction)

Between Cubism and Surrealism, there existed Dada.  Defying definitive medium- from pen to canvas to screen to stage to scissors to store boughts- Dada launched many hard-to-define artists.  Perhaps two standout Dada-esque performances can offer the similar sensational responses of the synesthete:  the ballet Parade and the film Entr’acte. 

 Erik Satie wrote the music for both, but both were a collaborative effort by a host of talent.  Parade was performed by Serge Diagheliv’s Ballets Russes, choreographed by Leonide Massine, boasted sets and costumes designed by Picasso, and was written by Jean Cocteau, the title referring to the procession of prostitutes before the customer.  And it was in the program notes for the first performance in 1917 that Apollinaire coined the phrase Surrealism.  Entr’acte was directed by Rene Clair to be shown during the intermission (or entr’acte) of Francis Picabia’s play Relache.  An experimental masterpiece, it also features a procession- this one of a slow motion funeral march in which the participants hop.  And it has our friend Duchamp playing chess with Man Ray.  Plus, an extended glass-bottom upshot of a stocking clad dancer, her petal-like skirts and bloomers blooming like a flower when she jumps and splits.  At one point, she literally sits on your face, from the camera man’s point of view.  I may have made a similar film in the early ‘80’s.

Josephine Baker

 The Bells by Guilluame Apollinaire

                (Alcools: Les Cloches)

 My gipsy beau my lover

Hear the bells above us

We loved passionately

Thinking none could see us

 But we so badly hidden

All the bells in their song

Saw from heights of heaven

And told it everyone

 Tomorrow Cyprien Henry

Marie Ursule Catherine

The baker’s wife her husband

and Gertrude that’s my cousin

 Will smile when I go by them

I won’t know where to hide

You far and I’ll be crying

Perhaps I shall be dying

SUGGESTED VIEWING:

Un Chien Andalou, a film by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel, 1929

Después de muchas semanas sin escribir en el blog, por no tener apenas tiempo, hoy me dispongo a escribir éste artículo sobre pianistas, compositores e intérpretes.

No pretendo hacer un artículo tan genial como los de mi compañero Tetrasquel, solo dar mi opinión sobre ciertas composiciones que he escuchado últimamente, que no por primera vez.

En primer lugar, quiero rajar hablar sobre Richard Clayderman, pianista francés muy reconocido (y escuchado) generalmente entre gente que no tiene ni puta idea de música. Para definir la obra de Clayderman podemos utilizar el término “música de ascensor”, porque no existe un término mas exacto.

A éste pianista se le ocurrió la brillante idea (entre otras cosas) de hacer “versiones” de obras maravillosas de Chopin, Debussy etc., orquestándolas de una manera cutre y muy hortera. Para mas información, véase su album “En su piano sin control. Grandes éxitos”, y no, no es un chiste. El álbum se llama así.

Para demostrar ésto, os dejo su interpretación de la Sonata para piano número 14 (También llamada Quasi una fantasia, Op.27, Nº2, y mal llamada Claro de Luna), de LV Beethoven. Obra que todo el mundo conoce.

ADVERTENCIA: Es de muy mal gusto. SigoPensando no se hace responsable de los efectos derivados de la escucha prolongada de la siguiente interpretación. Si la quiere escuchar, es bajo su responsabilidad.

Ahora la gran pregunta: ¿Cómo es posible que éste hombre vendiese mas de 70 millones de discos?, yo aun no lo entiendo. ¿Por qué la necesidad de orquestar una obra de tal calibre?, ¿Está mejor orquestada?, en fin…

Por si no fuera poco, ha estropeado la obra mas conocida de la Suite Bergamasque de Debussy (ésto es imperdonable). Yo no me atrevo a buscarlo en YouTube, pero os dejo para los mas valientes un link a Spotify para que se os pongan los pelos de punta. Pulsar aquí.

Para compensar el mal trago que habrá pasado el lector tras la escucha de ésta abominable y horrísona interpretación, dejo La Interpretación de Wilhelm Kempff, que es de lo mejor que he escuchado:

La siguiente persona de la quería hablar es de Maksim, un pianista realmente interesante, porque al contrario que Clayderman, sabe interpretar a la perfección obras como la Hungarian Rhapsody nº2 de Liszt, pero también hace barbaridades como orquestar el Revolutionary Etude de Chopin de la peor forma posible.

Veamos un ejemplo de la fantástica -y difícil- interpretación de la obra de Franz Liszt:

Fantástica, ¿verdad?. Además de interpretar genial la obra, Maksim está muy cachondo. Pero mucho mucho.

Ahora veamos, de la mano del mismo artista, la interpretación de Revolutionary Etude, de Chopin. Vayan preparando los oidos:

Sin comentarios…

En breves haré otro artículo recomendando alguna obra de música clásica, pero tranquilos, no habrá sobresaltos.

Un abrazo a todos.

Ajung acasă şi mă dezbrac rînd pe rînd de cojoacele minciunii.

Îmi deşurubez măştile cu grija zilei de mîine. Încet şi blînd să nu cumva să stric vreuna. Pe asta cu mov o plac cel mai mult, ah! mi-e aşa dragă! Ea mă ascunde atît de bine.

Mă aşez în faţa oglinzii şi-mi ating cînd ochii cînd bărbia, cînd urechea cînd umărul. Sunt eu. Trupul reflectat în oglindă sunt eu, dezgolită de ceea ce înseamnă convenţii sociale, de ceea ce înseamnă iluzie, de tot ceea ce alţii proiectează despre mine.

Sunt eu? Eu cine sunt şi unde mă duc şi cum am apărut şi de ce? Şi ce e oglinda asta, care-i treaba cu ea?

Mă doare degeaba, nu?

Tu de cîte ori ai fost sincer? Cu tine însuţi? De cîte ori ţi-ai zis adevărul, fără să fie nevoie să-l ambalezi? Adevărul ăla crud, care frînge, care ucide, care doare ca o tăietură adîncă în carne?

Eu nu ştiu dacă am fost vreodată crudă cu mine…

Sau spune-mi, dacă florile şi-ar dărui oameni, ce bucată ar tăia din ei? (Nichita Stănescu)

Sunt singură şi ascult obsesiv piesa asta şi mă doare fiecare acord care-mi vibrează în laringe, plămîn, degete, buze, ureche…

Uneori nu e nimic. Aşa pur şi simplu.

This is probably one of the first beloved pieces of piano one learns how to play on the piano, since it’s very easy to play. The Gymnopédies, published in Paris starting in 1888, are three piano compositions written by French composer and pianist Erik Satie.

These short, atmospheric pieces are written in 3/4 time, with each sharing a common theme and structure. Collectively, the Gymnopédies are regarded as the precursors to modern ambient music – gentle yet somewhat eccentric pieces which, when composed, defied the classical tradition. For instance, the first few bars feature an alternating progression of two major seventh chords, the first on the subdominant, G, and the second on the tonic, D. This kind of harmony was almost entirely unknown at this time.

The melodies of this and the other two pieces use deliberate, but mild, dissonances against the harmony, producing a piquant, melancholy effect that matches the performance instructions, which are to play each piece “slowly”, “dolorously” or “gravely”.

From the second half of the 20th century on, the Gymnopédies were often erroneously described as part of Satie’s body of furniture music, perhaps due to John Cage’s interpretation of them.

The work was based upon the poetry of J.P. Contamine de Latour (1867–1926), who wrote Les Antiques (“The Ancient”), a poem containing these lines (translated in English from French):

Slanting and shadow-cutting a flickering eddy
Trickled in gusts of gold to the shiny flagstone
Where the ambre atoms in the fire mirroring themselves
Mingled their sarabande to the gymnopaedia

Which exact connotation intended by Contamine in using the word gymnopédie remains uncertain:

• dance – probably, as he mentions it alongside another dance, the saraband(e);
• antiquity – supposedly, given the title of the poem. This however does not yet give a clear picture of how antiquity was perceived in late 19th-century France (see below);
• nudity – maybe, although words like “gymnastique” (gymnastics) and “gymnase” (gymnasium) based on the same Greek word for nudity (γυμνός – “gymnos”) were common in those days, but had lost any reference to nudity;
• warfare (as in Ancient Greece the word indicated a war dance) – probably not; little war-like intent is apparent in the poem;
• religious ceremony/festivity (which was the context of the Ancient gymnopaedia) – probably neither; there seems to be no allusion made to them in the poem.

Una variazione della Gymnopèdie n.1 di Erik Satie, che viene fatta suonare da due synth modulari, il Q119 e il Q960.

Qui, invece, la versione originale per piano, suonata da Aldo Ciccolini:

The words “great” and “greatest” appeared several times during my research into Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), both on the Internet and from books that I own.

Why was I looking for references about her? Because I had come across her name yet one more time, recently, causing me to go over the tipping point, not able to resist getting to know her better.

Last week a friend had given me a book, What to Listen for in Music by the composer of quintessentially American music, Aaron Copland, and in the foreword by Alan Rich was a reminder that Copland had been a pupil of Boulanger.

Leonard Bernstein congratulating Nadia Boulanger, after she became the first woman to conduct the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in a full concert, February, 1962. [Secondary Source]

Most simply put, she can be considered “the greatest” because she was teacher to so many renown composers and performing artists, some of whom were great teachers in their own right—Aaron Copland, for one.

These are some of the American students of Nadia Boulanger:

Although Leonard Bernstein’s name is linked for many reasons with that of Nadia Boulanger, he apparently was not a pupil of hers. But, he was a pupil of a pupil of hers: Walter Piston.

Boulanger, in 1928, rejected as a student one of America’s most important composers, George Gershwin. “What could I give you that you haven’t already got?” she asked him. [Source]

I most recently saw Boulanger’s name while reading Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, by Noël Riley Fitch. Beach was the owner of the famed “Shakespeare & Company” bookshop in Paris to which Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Maddox Ford, Ezra Pound and many other writers of the 1920s and 1930s gravitated, along with musicians and other artists. Several of these musicians and future composers were in Paris because of Nadia Boulanger, thus offering the creative and disciplined influence of these two remarkable women who apparently never met each other. In chapter seven of her book, Fitch offers these anecdotes:

Aaron Copland (1900-1900)

Most of the regular customers of the bookshop were writers, but among them were four composers: Satie, Antheil, Virgil Thomson, and Aaron Copland…Copland, who had joined the lending library [of the bookshop] had time to read [Sylvia’s] books in spite of being worked “terribly hard” by Nadia Boulanger, the great French teacher of musical composition to more than a generation of American composers…Because of Stravinsky, Ravel, Schönberg, Strauss, Satie and the music school of Nadia Boulanger, young American composers went to Europe, particularly Paris, to complete their professional education. In America, musical training was predominantly Germanic and old-fashioned, but in Paris, according to Copland, Boulanger knew “pre-Bach to Post-Stravinsky…cold.”

Although only the names of male composers have entered this narrative so far, Nadia Boulanger was teacher and mentor to a number of women in the field of music. In A History of Classical Music, on which I commented previously, the author, Barrymore Laurence Scherer writes:

Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953)

During [Ruth Crawford's] European travels she was embraced by such pre-eminent musical figures such as Bartók, Honneger, and Nadia Boulanger…Among Nadia Boulanger’s American students were other women who achieved positions of distinction as composers, among them Marion Bauer (1882-1955) and Louise Talma 1906-1996). Bauer…had learned French from her parents; when introduced to Boulanger…in 1906, she offered to give Boulanger English lessons in return for lessons in composition, and thus became Boulanger’s first American student.

But, what was it like to study with Nadia Boulanger; what was so special that the most talented people sought her out? We can get a glimpse from Philip Glass.

Around a year ago I bought the book Writings on Glass: Essays, Interviews, Criticism, edited by Richard Kostelanetz. I have been fascinated with Glass’s music for almost two decades, especially since having viewed and bought the film Koyaanisqatsi, for which he wrote the musical score. The film has no spoken dialog. “In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means ‘crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living’” [Source]

In an early chapter of the book we learn that Glass went to study with Boulanger in 1963, at age 26, because a musical colleague whom he admired had studied with her. Glass had already completed his studies at the Juilliard School of Music.

(Transcribed from an interview by Ev Grimes)

Boulanger wasn’t interested in the music I had written…I started studying first species counterpoint with her again…I studied counterpoint and harmony with her for over two years…

She had a variety of techniques that she was teaching. They included score reading, counterpoint, harmony, figured bass, and analysis…With Boulanger, nothing was theoretical; it was all practical. The rules of harmony she could describe in a few sentences, but you could spend years writing it, because to her the difference between technique and theory was that technique was practice. Harmony is practice, counterpoint is practice—neither is theory…

You took three classes with her a week…[The] Black Thursday class…was a special class…[Y]ou were asked to that class; you couldn’t request it. She put together six or eight students…It would start at nine o’clock and would go till noon. The subject of the class was announced at the beginning, and we rarely accomplished it…When we left the class, we would sit in the café across the street. No one would say anything; we would have our coffee or a beer, then we would part until we got together the next week. No one would say anything [repeated]. It was totally demoralizing in one way. We all knew we were either her best students or her worst students, but none of us knew which ones we were…

One can read more of Nadia Boulanger and her teaching goals and methods from these sources:

List of students and others associated with Nadia Boulanger

[Click!]

Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1:

This is why today I am playing the piano!

For you my readers, here is a special present on this musical day.

Recently I’ve been trying to acquire a habit of morning yoga. I’m getting there. I have only limited experience of yoga practice so I’m using a book for my routines. I suppose it’s more like a glorified stretching session, but I do try to incorporate breathing (hard not to!) and balancing mind and body. Today, as the beautiful fall sun spilled in the window,  I found myself wishing I had a place to do yoga outside.  For me this would mean a private place – I’m too self-conscious to be doing yoga anywhere I thought people could see me! But as I’m inside, I usually like to play a bit of music. I’m sure that strictly speaking you are supposed to practice in silence but for my purposes, I find that gentle relaxing music helps me in that it stops my mind from going on to other things. This morning I chose some Erik Satie, and found it perfect for relaxing, breathing and being in the moment. I’ve tried lots of other music, even some with soothing nature sounds, but this was by far the best. It was too tricky to get a photo of me doing yoga ( I’m fine with that!) so, in honour of Satie’s “Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear” here is a little drawing I did a few years ago.

Erik Satie

Alfred Éric Leslie Satie (Honfleur, Calvados; 17 de mayo de 1866 – París, 1 de julio de 1925) fue un compositor y pianista francés.

Es mejor conocido como Erik Satie (desde su primera composición en 1884, cambió la c francesa final de su nombre por una k inglesa). Aunque en su vida posterior se enorgullecía de siempre publicar su trabajo con su propio nombre, Pedro Luis Martín Olivares señala que hubo un corto período al final de la década de 1880 en que publicó su trabajo con el seudónimo Virginie Lebeau.

Hasta el año de su muerte absolutamente nadie entró en su departamento.

Allí se encontraron, cuidadosamente ordenados en cajas de puros, 4000 rectángulos minúsculos de papel inmaculado sobre los que había caligrafiado, sin enseñárselos nunca a nadie, descripciones meticulosas de paisajes imaginarios, órdenes religiosas inexistentes e instrumentos musicales intocables (como el órgano-ballena voladora), comenta Pedro Luis Martín Olivares.

Sergey Diaghilev circa 1916. From the Dance Collection, NY Public Library / Astor, Lenox & Tilden Foundations ©. Source: Britannica.com

Diaghilev was a man ahead of his time, a visionary capable of bringing together the most talented artists of his generation and nurturing them into creating new collaborative works of art. Had it not been for his vision, the West might never have known of Nijinsky, Stravinsky or Balanchine. The face of dance would have been very different today without his Ballets Russes.

As ballet companies and theatres around the world pay well deserved homage, in various different shapes and forms, to one hundred years of Ballet Russes, Sadler’s Wells decided to focus theirs on Diaghilev’s spirit of collaborative work. Thus, Artistic Director Alistair Spalding commissioned four brand new pieces inspired by or connected in some way to the Ballets Russes at their most influential. Spalding chose four associated artists of Sadler’s Wells – Wayne McGregor (who is also the Royal Ballet’s resident choreographer) Russell Maliphant, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Javier De Frutos – to respond in a variety of ways, collaborating with various designers, dancers and musicians while staying true to their own dance language.

The evening’s opener was McGregor’s Dyad 1909, a ballet for seven dancers to an original score by Ólafur Arnalds. Inspired by the scientific, social and technological developments of Diaghilev’s time, most notably Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to reach the magnetic South Pole, McGregor developed his choreography with the aid of multi-screen video installations depicting machines (by Jane & Louise Wilson), brilliant lighting which suggested the Antartic (by Lucy Carter) and an almost-classical score which fused strings and piano with industrial and electronic sounds, all of these elements nodding to his  backstory.

Dance-wise this was standard McGregor fare. Hyperextended bodies, mobile arms (which at times seemed to mime the operation of machines) and supple contorting backs. More than once I was reminded of last year’s Infra, particularly as the dancers entered and exited to similar stage cues, wearing similar costumes. There were some beautiful, memorable sequences including a pas de deux to the sound of Arnalds’ gorgeous string quartet where McGregor applied classical lines (a cabriolé here, a pirouette there and some rounded soft arms among the lifts) and an ensemble of five dancers moving in unison through a diagonal in a faster-than-light pace. It is not his best piece but it is still one that reminds us how McGregor is a master of controlling the visual impressions he leaves on the audience. His talent is evident but one wishes he would drop his signature off-centered hip and brought in new elements into the mix more often.

Nijinsky's 'Dancer' circa 1917/18. Copyright: Stiftung John Neumeier - Dance Collection © Source: ArtsDesk

Next was Russell Maliphant’s AfterLight, as inspired by a Nijinsky drawing of a dancer (see left). Set to Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes, the choreography builds  on the interplay between light and dancer Daniel Proietto. He moves in circles creating  forms that fuse with the patterns of light and shadow reflected on the floor. Lighting designer Michael Hull’s  brilliant work emphasizes the flowing movement which starts from the dancers’ extremities and propagates to swirls of light surrounding him, in a sea of clouds. This visually stunning live realisation of Nijinsky’s sketch was the most applauded and (at least in my opinion) the most memorable choreography of the evening.

Cherkaoui’s Faun was probably the piece most directly connected to the Ballets Russes and to Nijinsky’s own scandalous version. James O’Hara’s Faun  looked  as if he had been teleported from an Animal Planet documentary: platinum blonde hair, thin limbs, an almost animal quality to his persona. The faun emerges from the shadows morphing from shape to shape, at times lingering in yoga-like poses, at times swiftly moving from one into the next. The stage finally illuminates to reveal the Nymph (Daisy Phillips) in an ethereal forest, the two beings meet and through Cherkaoui’s choreography we see them evolve from two separate bodies into a single one. For all its sensuality and exuberance, there were also moments of sheer athleticism (no doubt inspired by Nijinsky’s legendary skills) and with Nitin Sawhney’s additional music complementing Debussy’s original score, we see beautiful intimate scenes between those two mythical creatures.

The evening closer  – Javier De Frutos’ Eternal Damnation to Sancho and Sanchez – was described in the programme as a “satirical ballet inspired by scenarios of Jean Cocteau“. It involved a deformed Pope, three pregnant muses, an Apollo/priest figure and plenty of explicit sexual images to a litany of the Holy Mary’s last verse (in Spanish). Provocation and controversy were no doubt De Frutos’ biggest drivers (read Ismene Brown’s recent interview with him), but to me his choice of topic seemed too obvious, too easy. No prizes for guessing that graphic images of a Pope having sexual relations with at least three characters under a neon caption which reads “Amuse me!” will provoke the audience. It was a dumbed down way to create an anticlimactic finale and I left wishing that De Frutos would have really amused me instead. Even though Diaghilev had a thing for “le succès de scandale”, he always knew the value of a good ending, and as de Frutos recently noted to Ismene Brown (see above link), one would have the “scandalous” Rite of Spring but this was followed by Balanchine’s beautiful Apollo and the evening would end on a high. Perhaps this piece of Diaghilev wisdom should have been taken into account when planning the order of the programme.

In the Spirit of Diaghilev runs at Sadler’s Wells until the 17th of October. For information and bookings, visit Sadler’s Wells website.

Melodii spre ascultare cu ochii-nchişi. Mie-mi place să mă-ntind  pe covor şi să mă gândesc la lucruri frumoase, cum ar fi zilele de iarnă de la începutul anilor 1990, când primeam mereu nişte biscuiţi cu bezele pe ei, acoperiţi cu glazură de ciocolată.

Uneori mă gândesc la poveşti care-ar putea fi, dar nu sunt. Cum ar fi că într-o seară mă plimbam prin parc la braţ cu un neon.  Nu ştiu sigur despre ce vorbeam, dar îmi zâmbea din când în când din filament. În seara aceea, oamenii nu-şi plimbau câinii prin parc, ci caii. Copacii cădeau din mere. Mă-ntrebam dacă şi neoanele se sinucid.

Mă plimb dezechilibrată pe sârma aceea numită viaţă aflată la 6 metri deasupra nivelului mării.

Sunt o saltimbancă tristă. Îmi place să mă aşez singură pe băncile de pe Regina Elisabeta şi să privesc cum oamenii trăiesc. Şi câteodată aş vrea să se aşeze cineva lângă mine. Şi să tăcem împreună.

Chopin

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNAyKL2GHvA – Étude No.3 in E – Op.10 No.3 (Tristesse)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=825Ekk1u3mQ – Prélude No.15 in D flat – Op.28 No.15 (Raindrop)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGRO05WcNDk – Nocturne No.2 in E flat – Op.9 No.2
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDP5rOTpZBg&feature=fvw – Waltz in C sharp minor – Op.64 No.2

Erik Satie

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxQDOEMQ1hE – Je te veux
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIVp05sEPhE – Gnossiennes
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJzYF8FXmRE – Gymnop dies
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEX_w32AdL8 – Sports et Divertissements (I)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJDq-9ctUnQ – Sports et Divertissements (II)

Maurice Ravel

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpPjN3fIGwc – Valses Nobles et Sentimentales – Pavane pour une infante défunte

Claude Debussy

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKd0VII-l3A – Suite Bergamasque, Clair de lune – 1890
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTZkn4WRDic –  La mer, De l’aube à midi sur la mer – 1905 (I)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep0EhWCJKks – La mer, Jeux des vagues – 1905 (I)

Comment me serais je doutee que tu etais fait a la taille de mon corps meme?

Tu me plais. Quel evenement. Tu me tues. Tu me fais du bien. Deforme-moi jusqu’a la laideur.

J’avais faim. Faim d’infidelites, d’adulteres, de mensonges et de mourir. Depuis toujours.

Qui es tu? Tu me tues.

Ignore me, I’ll love you for it.

foto

You know when you wake up not feeling right, a bit like when you’re about to catch a cold but it doesn’t feel like a bad thing? and all day you hum because no matter what you’re doing your head’s filled with song? and you know how everyone always says that, when it happens, you will know? Well, this is it, I’m head over heels in love with Peter Broderick.

Part 7: The Path to Recovery on his orchestra / instrumental album, Music for Falling from Trees is my favourite. Imagine a more dramatic Erik Satie with strings, or a more sentimental and romantic Do Make Say Think. I actually cried the first time I heard this song. (Granted I was having a bit of a bad day that day but still!) It kind of sounds sweetly familiar, like something my mom would have played to me when I was swimming merrily in her placenta back in ‘88. It also sounds like the ghosts of two lovers, running through the woods in late autumn, with all the leaves falling, running away from the realities of the flesh… I digress.

Peter (we’re on first-name basis now) plays classical piano, violin, and mandolin. The boy’s got skillz, I dig that. He was born on 20 January 1987 in Portland, Oregon, where other equally yummy / fanciable artists such as M. Ward came from. Actually I think the two have collaborated on an album before. But all that is irrelevant. What’s relevant is that Peter is only a year older than me!! and is now currently residing in Berlin, Germay. Not at all far from here. One day I will accidentally run into him somewhere, fall in love, make lots of music and babies together and live happily ever after

I have intentionally made my self extremely familiar with the song “Postcards From Far Away“, a short piano composition by Coldplay on their Prospekt’s March EP.  I love it.  The arrangement with “The Hardest Part” on their Leftrightleftrightleft live album is simply beautiful.  Here is the original:

I was listening to it tonight, when some stuff lodged itself in my head, so I tried to get it out and get it organized…I didn’t do as well I had hoped but here is what I wrote down…not exactly lyrics, but maybe thoughts to accompany:

Love, the mist gathers around your feet
The eerie silence shows the city never truly sleeps.
The fire crackles as I peer out of the open door
I know I cannot, dare not, dare to hope anymore.
Words and greetings, yours, drift round me silently
Shattered memories mingle with our ~ my broken dreams.

I let you go, or darling did you want to leave?
London cold, Vienna, carry thoughts like frost
Black lines crossed, now who? has truly lost.
Greetings fail to weaken an icy cold and,
Fingers tremble when frozen, but finally take hold.
All gone now, no reason to expect reason to provide us hope.

I guess that is what I hear when that song plays.  It truly is a wonderful piece of music…next up, Gnossienne No. 1…

again, another day – no complaints, whatsoever.

i’m beginning to enjoy this lightness. nothing dramatic happened, for better or for worse. everything was just fine. i don’t use that term to conceal any disappointment about anything at all.

these days are getting better. i managed again to fit in time for a different activities – not just work. last night i was immensely inspired by Satie. his pieces are so simple, yet my emotional response to them is quite profound. i’m lucky the pieces are so simple, otherwise i would not have been able to teach myself today. i look forward to playing that piece to him.

the photos – not great, but definitely not terrible. i even had a bit of fun. they don’t look as good as i had hoped, but we’ll keep chugging along.

the music – sounds completely amateurish, but i’m really having fun with it as well. thank goodness for technology.

had a nice chat with him today. the awkwardness is gone now. i still think it will be important for me to express the feelings i was experiencing so strongly last week. i’m not worried about them though, i think we will sort it out just fine. i am really looking forward to seeing him!

“stuffus?”

“hummus?”

This performance expresses intimacy and exploration so well.

http://www.merce.org/

 Galería de The Merce Cunningham Dance Company

John Cage et Merce Cunningham (Centralia, Washington 1919)

 The Ruse of Medusa, 1948

Fuentel The Ruse of Medusa. Black Mountain College 

 Fotos extraídas de artcontemporainmalaquaisien.blogspot.com

A month or so back, whilst killing my brain cells in a data entry temp job, I wrote in my moleskin,

 “Thought of the week: they didn’t have data entry in the 1900s when things were good and pure. Listen to erik satie.”

 I am now working again for the same company before, and so decided to ramble along with this thought as a starting point.

 **

 When I call myself a Modernist (with all the appropriate levels of irony and facetiousness) I am never quite sure if my interest should be manifest as a desire to have lived in the early twentieth century, to recreate the values and hopes of that era (be it in writing or in method), or simply an appreciation of /SLASH/ kinship with a purer time. Probably somewhere in the middle of all of these. Recently, I have experienced a notable slowing down in my life – some might call it growing up – and my current way of thinking is underpinned by the aforementioned appreciation of, and kinship with, a purer time. That is, a slower, less hectic, less demanding, less box-ticking-orientated approach to life. i want out.

 There is something about modernism which seemed to grasp and celebrated the death knell of simplicity, reveling both in the new excitement of a globalizING, technologizING world, and an inseperable appreciation of reality through eyes opened by the new order. Before a success- and commerce-driven experience of the every day kicked into gear, Picasso’s analytical still lives and Kandinsky’s exuberant portrayals of the Russian landscape briefly saw the world as it could have been.

 Something tried to destroy that in the 1940s.

 These works remain for me mementos of a non-day-glo, no-instant-gratification, non-merchandised and, most of all, artisanal rather than theoretical approach to art (let’s just stick with the arts for now, or this subject will get out of hand!). Even the most existential, searing portrayal of life such a Soutine’s poultry, or Giacometti’s Orange on a sideboard are rooted in representation… without wanting to sound old fashioned, I like that. The end of representation seems to me parallel to the end of reality as a lived experience.. Theory’s dominance came in tandem with the rolling out of vicarious living: tv, computer games, internet etc.

 I want out.

 But when I consider the purity of day-to-day life back then, before the internet, pandemic advertising and 24-hour customer service, I feel pangs of jealousy and longing. Currently caught up in the trappings of customer service, a 21^st century buzz-word for Joe-Job aimed at the temporarily unemployed, I continue to ponder the original question. If they didn’t have data entry in the 1900s, what did the multitudes do… well for a start, the world population was significantly smaller, and social stratification was clearer (I won’t touch the ramifications of current population levels here…too big and way out of my point of reference). Now, we are encouraged to pursue our dreams only to find at too late a stage we have gone too far without thinking about the openings available to us. Here I am, a postgraduate from the Courtauld Institute of Art, working in a call centre.

Erik Satie’s piano works remove me from 2009. They place me squarely in the Lapin Agile, or some other such Parisian drinking den crowded with delirium tremens of the highest order. Even Tom Wait’s piano ballads of the 70s feel soothing, sitting me squarely amongst imaginary boho savants and drunken revelers in the Troubadour, LA, CA. Debauchery in both of these cases as a removal from life. What I seem to be desiring is pure removal: pure escapism. This is certainly better than this electric-lit, chalk infused, pinboard- partitioned, break-prohibited cell, alone with my thoughts and my telesale prompts.

 I WANT OUT.

 More recently, a few wonderful bands have sprung up from American backwaters, desperate to escape all of these trappings. Bon iver and Bowerbirds are only the most notable, existing for themselves self-sufficiently as life once was. We’re probably going back further than Modernism now. My point remains intact. I was born at the wrong end of the 20^th century.  

Two works that I have seen in the last few years stand out for me as exemplifications of artistic purity. Monet’s Les Nymphéas at Paris’ Orangerie, and James Turrell’s Deer Shelter at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park… The latter proves that all is not lost, and that conceptual works can still stand up to scrutiny and resemble a real human experience: one looks through a skylight in absentia towards the shifting sky… that’s it. Abstracted reality. Pure form. Pure experience.

Deer Shelter, James Turrell

Les Nymphéas, Claude Monet

 This is how Erik Satie’s music makes me feel, as do such bands/ composers as Susuma Yokota, Christian Fennesz, and the unimpeachable Stars of the Lid. These pure feelings having nothing to do with data entry. They also probably having nothing to do with Modernism… I just want out.