Arts 2021

The music of Gustav Mahler: bridging the Romantic and Modern eras

Part I - The early period

POSTED JANUARY 19, 2021

"The symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything." - Gustav Mahler

The music of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) is among the most performed in the classical repertoire. Mahler was a bridge between the late Romantic and the Modern eras, and his symphonies are ranked among the greatest ever written. He composed only in the genres of song and symphony - with a close and complex interrelationship between the two. ..READ AND LISTEN

Ennio Morricone's iconic film scores and timeless music

POSTED FEBRUARY 1, 2021

With more than 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as more than 100 classical works, Ennio Morricone (1928-2020) was one of the greatest composers of all time. In 2007, he received the Academy Honorary Award "for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music". His innovative music for the "spaghetti westerns" is perhaps his most recognizable, but he worked in everything from 60s Europop to avant-garde modern classical. READ AND LISTEN

Ennio Morricone: 10 of his greatest compositions

The music of Gustav Mahler: bridging the Romantic and Modern eras

Part II - The middle period

POSTED MARCH 4, 2021

The fusion of song and symphony had been a characteristic of Mahler's early works. In his middle compositional period (1901-1907), a change of style led Mahler to produce three purely instrumental symphonies (No.5, 6, and 7). The Eighth Symphony, marking the end of the middle period, returns to a combination of orchestra and voice. Mahler's middle period was one of concentrated composition with his works free of programmatic content and marked by a fierce dynamism...READ AND LISTEN

Joan Miró, Surrealist pioneer and lifelong experimentalist

P;OSTED FEBRUARY 16, 2021

"The painting rises from the brushstrokes as a poem rises from the words. The meaning comes later."

Joan Miró was a pioneer of Surrealism, a bold experimentalist, and a key contributor to the early-20th-century avant-garde's journey toward abstraction. He taps "into the fundamental essence of creativity, expressing it through colors, images, and objects that beckon and startle." READ MORE

The prolific Georg Telemann

POSTED MARCH 14, 2021

Considered the most important composer in the Germany of his time, Georg Phiipp Telemann was friends with Bach and Handel. Creating 3000 works in every style of the Late Baroque, he was one of the most prolific composers ever. His "Viola Concerto in D Major" and his orchestral suite "Alster Echo" are two gorgeous pieces of Baroque music. READ AND LISTEN

Andrei Tarkovsky: poet of the cinema

POSTED MARCH 28, 2021

Andrei Tarkovsky was the finest Soviet film maker of the mid-twentieth century. Not as well known as his European contemporaries, his films are among the greatest ever made...his unique style and thoughts on art, his first film (Ivan's Childhood), his epic (Andrei Rublev)...READ

Turner in Venice

POSTED APRIL 12, 2021

J.M.W. Turner was a Romantic era landscape painter, watercolorist, and printmaker. To say Turner was ahead of his time is an understatement. His works anticipate the Impressionism of the mid-to-late 19th century and foreshadow the Abstract Expressionism of the 20th century. He visited Venice three times, and the paintings he made of "La Serenissima" are among his most expressive, luminous works. These masterpieces capture the light, the water, the atmosphere of the city and show the evolution of his style, as it became more focused on light and color...READ

The music of Gustav Mahler: bridging the Romantic and Modern eras

Part III - The late period

POSTED APRIL 26, 2021

Gustav Mahler was one of the most renowned conductors of his time, and composing was often a part-time vocation. Much of his composing was done during his summer vacation at a cottage on the shores of Lake Attersee in Austria. His body of work is relatively small, but his compositions are among the greatest in the classical repertoire. As with Beethoven, music experts categorize Mahler's musical development into three periods - early, middle, and late. Mahler's was invited to New York to conduct the Metropolitan Opera and, later, the New York Philharmonic. His late period covers the time from his arrival in New York in late 1907 until his death. He composed three major works, one of which was unfinished at the time of his death and none of which were performed during his lifetime...READ AND LISTEN

Smarter, kinder, calmer: why we should read everyday

POSTED MAY 12, 2021

In the world of tweets, Facebook updates, and YouTube videos, our reading habits may have taken a hit. If so, we are missing out on a really good thing. Personally, I find reading to be one of the most absorbing and relaxing activities of the day. Summer is almost here, and I am looking forward to some relaxing reads on the beach. But of course you can read anytime and anywhere. The benefits and pleasures of reading are many, and research shows that committing part of everyday to reading can make us smarter, kinder and calmer...beach reads, literary fiction... READ

"Idyllic, lyrical, every gentle and peaceful emotion of the heart"

POSTED MAY 23, 2021

A classic 19th century text on the emotions associated with specific musical keys describes the key of G Major thus: "Everything rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion, every tender gratitude for true friendship and faithful love,--in a word every gentle and peaceful emotion of the heart is correctly expressed by this key." Debussy, Bach, Chopin and Vampire Weekend...READ AND LISTEN

The arts and culture of Japan

Calligraphy and Painting (June 7, 2021)

Japan's cultural tradition extends back millennia. Japan has been subject to the sudden influx of new ideas from abroad followed by long periods of minimal contact with the outside world. The Japanese learned to absorb, imitate, and finally assimilate those elements of foreign culture that complemented their aesthetic preferences. This first post on Japanese culture and arts is on two of the most popular forms of artistic expression in Japan - calligraphy and painting...READ

Haiku and Haiga (June 13, 2021)

The arts and culture of Japan: haiku and haiga - June 13 (The Arts) - A post on the closely related arts of haiku and haiga. Haiku is the now well-known poetic form of 3 lines and 17 syllables that developed in Japan centuries ago, while haiga refers to a painting meant to complement a haiku...Bashō, Buson, traditional and modern haiku...READ

Zen, rock gardens and tea ceremonies (June 29, 2021)

Zen Buddhism, which came to Japan from China in the 8th century, teaches that all human beings have the potential to attain enlightenment and emphasizes meditation as the way to achieve this awareness, equanimity, and insight into our true nature. Zen seeped deeply into Japanese culture and is the primary influencer of both the Japanese Tea Ceremony and the Rock Garden...Rikyû's "Seven Secrets of the Way of the Tea", Musō Soseki and the history of the Japnese rock garden, images and how-to's...READ

Music and Theater (July 21 2021)

Traditional Japanese music is an area where the uniqueness of Japanese culture clearly stands out. To Western ears, the music can seem exotic as well as meditative and soothing. The instruments are different, and performance and theater play a much larger role... the history, the instruments, noh and kabuki theater...READ AND LISTEN

Eitoku's "Peafowl" panels from his Flowers and Birds of the Four Seasons series

Mark Rothko's Color Fields

POSTED AUG 4, 2021

Heavily influenced by mythology and philosophy, Mark Rothko's signature style was his Color Field paintings, which employ shimmering bold blocks of color to convey a sense of spirituality. Rothko produced many of these artworks on huge canvases which he hoped would encourage the viewer to become immersed in color...Rothko on art and other subjects...READ

The symphonic poems of Smetana and Dvořák

POSTED AUG 17, 2021

Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák are two of the most famous Czech composers. Reflecting the nationalist sentiments of the nineteenth century, both used elements of Czech folk music and folk tales in their compositions. Particularly well suited for this blend of music and folk lore is the symphonic or tone poem - orchestral music which evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, etc...Smetana's Ma Vlast (My Homeland), Dvorak's In nature's realm, more...READ AND LISTEN

WPA art: a celebration of workers

POSTED SEPTEMBER 6, 2021

FDR's New Deal attempted to get America back on its feet during the Great Depression. The year 1935 was particularly momentous with the passage of the Social Security Act and creation of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). One of the more surprising elements of the WPA was the "project to employ competent, unemployed artists in decorating Federal buildings." The 10,000 artists so commissioned produced works that documented everyday life during the Depression, put a face on the people's struggle and celebrated workers. A sampling of the their efforts - Migrant Mother, the Muses of Music, Dance, and Drama, the Cincinnati Union Terminal murals, more...READ

Frida Kahlo, Feminist and Chicana Icon

POSTED SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

Called "one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century", Frida Kahlo's vividly colored paintings exploring suffering, loss, and female identity made her an international icon of the feminist movement, while her celebration of traditional Mexican culture and her political beliefs made her a hero to the Chicano movement. Kahlo combined realism, surrealism, and fantasy with icons from Mexican culture to create art that some describe as "magical realism"...READ

Frida Kahlo: Feminist and Chicana icon

The legendary murals of Diego Rivera

POSTED OCTOBER 12, 2021

Diego Rivera was the most influential Mexican artist of the 20th century and the inspiration for FDR's WPA arts projects in the 1930's. His works have been called an "idiosyncratic fusion of Renaissance, academic, modernist and indigenous Mexican techniques, styles and motifs." The scale of Rivera's murals appropriately reflect the major themes that he tackles in his art - social inequality; the relationship of nature, industry, and technology; and the history and fate of Mexico...READ

Vaughan Williams: music to heal the soul of a nation

POSTED NOVEMBER 2, 2021

Ralph Vaughan Williams was one of the most important composers of the twentieth century, writing numerous works over sixty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century. He famously said, “The art of music above all arts is the expression of the soul of the nation." His transcendentally beautiful works such as The Lark Ascending, which premiered after WW I, and his Fifth Symphony, written as WW II was raging, captured the heart and healed the soul of the British nation. READ AND LSITEN

Setting the mood: classical music in film

POSTED NOVEMBER 23, 2021

Since the era of silent films, music has played a role in setting mood and creating atmosphere, enhancing what the movie-goer sees on the screen. The themes used have been both originally scored and taken from existing works of music - from the classical to the popular. Scenes from five films that used classical music to great effect along with a performance of the music. READ AND LISTEN

The world's most expensive paintings

POSTED DECEMBER 15, 2021

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the eyes of the super-rich determine what paintings sell for the highest prices. With that proviso...the half-dozen most expensive paintings in the world - 3 by Abstract Expressionists, 2 by Post-Impressionists and 1 by a Renaissance master READ

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