The Arts

Brahms and Tchaikovsky: the Violin Concertos

POSTED MAY 14, 2024

May 7 was the birthday* of two of the greatest composers of the Late Romantic Era.  Johannes Brahms and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky were both born on that day - Brahms in 1833 in Hamburg Germany; Tchaikovsky in 1840 in Votkinsk Russia.  Both were composers of majestic symphonies and challenging concertos, with each having his own distinctive style.  Brahms emphasized structure and complexity; Tchaikovsky, emotional expression and orchestral color.**

Both Tchaikovsky and Brahms created Violin Concertos in D Major.  Tchaikovsky's has long been one of my favorites, but I just discovered Brahms' while researching this post.  Both are amazingly beautiful, both are in D Major, and both are among the more challenging pieces for violin.

The Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, was the only concerto for violin composed by Tchaikovsky.  Composed in 1878, it is one of the best-known violin concertos. The concerto was composed in Clarens, Switzerland, where Tchaikovsky was recovering from the fallout of his ill-fated marriage.  The piece opens with an introduction for the orchestra that begins calmly, but soon becomes passionate.  This gives way to the entrance of the soloist, who introduces the first movement’s main melody, one of Tchaikovsky’s most beautiful themes. If you don't begin to love classical music at about the 6:10 mark, well maybe give it another try in a year or two. [Below left]

Brahms too composed just one violin concerto, and, like Tchaikovsky, he composed it in 1878.  Brahms' Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77, is also one of the most beloved and most performed violin concertos.  Brahms had modeled the piece on a work by his idol, Beethoven.  It premiered to mixed reviews because of its difficulty.  In its day, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto had also been accused of unwarranted difficulties, and early audiences often missed its profound content. Brahms placed his concerto in the key of D major, the key of Beethoven’s most renowned violin concerto.***  All of Brahms's concertos end in his Hungarian/Gypsy mode, and "this one is the most uproarious of the lot." [Below right]

Notes

*You may see some references to Tchaikovsky's birthdate as being April 25.  That is because Russia, unlike most of Europe, did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1918.   Pope Gregory XIII introduced what came to be known as the Gregorian (or New Style) Calendar in 1582 because the Julian Calendar (Old Style) then in use had become 11 days out of synch with the solar year.  For some interesting facts about the Gregorian Calendar click here.

**Color is a more informal name for timbre: the way the same note played on different instruments sounds different.  Neat article that starts with Jimi Hendrix's Woodstock performance of the Star Spangled Banner can be found here.

***So, three of the greatest violin concertos in the classical repertoire were composed in the key of D Major.  Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D Major can be heard  here. The emotions associated with specific major and minor keys were described more than two centuries ago.  One of the most influential descriptions of characteristics shared in German-speaking cultures in the late 18th and early 19th century was from from Christian Schubart.  For D Major, he writes (translated): "The key of triumph, of Hallejuahs, of war-cries, of victory-rejoicing. Thus, the inviting symphonies, the marches, holiday songs and heaven-rejoicing choruses are set in this key."  For more on keys and emotions, see Musical Keys and Our Emotions 2/3/2018

Sources: Houston Symphony, Wikipedia, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra

Gothic Europe: St. Denis, Salisbury Cathedral, St. Stephen's, St. Vitus and Milan's Duomo

POSTED APRIL 26, 2024

In this post, we look at five masterpieces of Gothic architecture in five different countries.  They span the entire history of Gothic architecture - from the first structure to employ all of the elements of Gothic architecture to a cathedral six centuries in the making with the final details completed in 1965.

Saint-Denis, France

Located just north of Paris, Saint-Denis is the second most populous suburb of the City of Light.  The Basilica of Saint-Denis is a large former medieval abbey church and present cathedral there. The building is of singular importance historically and architecturally as its choir, completed in 1144, is widely considered the first structure to employ all of the elements of Gothic architecture.  

In the 12th century, the Abbot Suger rebuilt portions of the abbey church using innovative structural and decorative features. In doing so, he created the first truly Gothic building.  In the following century the master-builder Pierre de Montreuil rebuilt the nave and the transepts in the new Rayonnant Gothic style, which became the defining style of the High Gothic period. French architects turned their attention from building cathedral of greater size and height towards bringing greater light into the cathedral interiors and adding more extensive decoration. 

For twelve centuries, except for a few kings of the Merovingian (500–751) and Capetian (987–1328) dynasties, all the French kings—from Dagobert I (reigned 629–639) to Louis XVIII (reigned 1814–24)—as well as their close relatives and a number of their outstanding subjects, were buried in the basilica.  Their tombs were desecrated and removed during the French Revolution, but they were later reassembled in the church and now constitute a remarkable collection of French funerary sculpture. 

Clockwise from the top left: Altar and stained glass windows, exterior, sepulchral sculpture of Catherine de' Medici and Henry II

Salisbury, England

Widely recognized as one of the finest examples of English Gothic Architecture, Salisbury Cathedral is a magnificent building.  Its main body was built between 1220 and 1258 and was completed in 1330.  Among the many superlatives applied to Salisbury Cathedral:  it has the tallest spire in Britain (404 feet); it houses the best preserved of the four surviving original copies of the Magna Carta* (1215); it has the oldest working clock in Europe (1386); it has the largest cathedral cloisters and cathedral close in Britain; the choir (or quire) stalls are the largest and earliest complete set in Britain; the vault is the highest in Britain.

Below from the left: Salisbury Cathedral, interior with vaulted ceiling and columnar arches, sculpture of Bishop Richard Poole who oversaw the early years of the construction of the cathedral.

Note: *The Magna Carta is the foundational document of Anglo-American law. It established the principle that the king is subject to the rule of law and documented the liberties held by “free men,” laying the ground for individual rights.  

Vienna, Austria

The beautiful Saint Stephen's Cathedral is Austria's most important Gothic building.  Located in the heart of Vienna, it has come to be a symbol of the city's identity and synonymous with the reconstruction of the Republic after the Second World War**.  Built between 1304 and 1340 on the ruins of an old Romanesque church, St. Stephen's was expanded several times and its interior changed repeatedly over the centuries.

The church was dedicated to St. Stephen and so was oriented toward the sunrise on his feast day of 26 December in the year that construction began. Built of limestone, the cathedral is 107 meters (351 ft) long, 40 meters (130 ft) wide, and 136 meters (446 ft) tall at its highest point - the Gothic-style Steffl ("Little Stephan") tower, which can be seen all over Vienna.  Even more eye-catching is the cathedral's striking multi-colored roof, made up of 230,000 glazed tiles in ornate chevron patterns and the distinctive double-headed eagle, a symbol of the historic Habsburg dynasty.   The cathedral has 22 bells with the north tower housing the cathedral's famous bell, the Pummerin, one of the largest in the world.  One story has Beethoven discovering the totality of his deafness when he saw birds flying out of St. Stephen's bell tower as a result of the bells' tolling but realized he could not hear the bells.  

The main part of the church contains 18 altars, with more in the various chapels.  The most famous are the High Altar, built over seven years from 1641 to 1647 as part of the first refurbishment of the cathedral in the baroque style, [below center] and the Wiener Neustadt Altar, composed of two triptychs, the upper being four times taller than the lower one. [below right]

The Vienna/Now website has a short video tour of St. Stephen's, which you can find here.

Note: **During World War II, the cathedral was saved from intentional destruction at the hands of retreating German forces when Wehrmacht Captain Gerhard Klinkicht disregarded orders from the city commandant to "fire a hundred shells and reduce it to rubble". On 12 April 1945, civilian looters lit fires in nearby shops as Soviet Army troops entered the city. The winds carried the fire to the cathedral, where it severely damaged the roof, causing it to collapse. Fortunately, protective brick shells built around the pulpit, Frederick III's tomb, and other treasures, minimized damage to the most valuable artworks.  Reconstruction began immediately after the war, with a limited reopening 12 December 1948 and a full reopening 23 April 1952.

Prague, Czechoslovakia

Prague is called “the City of a Hundred Spires” for the numerous church steeples towering into the sky.   Two of the most dominating of those spires [below left] belong to St. Vitus Cathedral.  St. Vitus is the centerpiece of the Prague Castle complex and the nearest thing the country has to a "national church", housing the tombs of several Bohemian Kings and Holy Roman Emperors.   

The current cathedral is the third of a series of religious buildings at the site, all dedicated to St. Vitus.  The first was a Romanesque rotunda founded by none other than "the Good King Wenceslas" of Bohemia.  Construction of the present-day Gothic cathedral of St. Vitus began on 21 November 1344, when the city was elevated to an archbishopric. King John of Bohemia laid the foundation stone for the new building.  

The first master builder was Matthias of Arras, a Frenchman summoned from the Papal Palace in Avignon. Matthias designed the overall layout of the building and many of its components along the lines of French Gothic.  After his death in 1352, 23-year-old Peter Parler assumed the role of master builder.  He completed all of Matthias' plans and then struck out on his own.  Parler's bold and innovative design brought in a unique new synthesis of Gothic elements in architecture. This is best exemplified in the vaults he designed for the choir. The so-called net-vaults have double diagonal ribs that span the width of the choir-bay. The crossing pairs of ribs create a net-like construction, which considerably strengthens the vault. They also give a lively ornamentation to the ceiling, as the interlocking vaulted bays create a dynamic zigzag pattern the length of the cathedral. 

The heart of the cathedral and a masterpiece of Czech Gothic architecture is St. Wenceslas Chapel. This beautifully decorated chapel is dedicated to the patron of the Czechs, St Wenceslas, the "good King Wenceslas" of the Christmas carol. The chapel was built on the former place of Romanesque rotunda where Wenceslas was buried and still keeps the relics of the saint. Peter Parler designed the chapel as requested by Charles IV.  In earlir times, it was the place of coronations.  The lower parts of the walls are decorated with more than 1300 gems, made in Bohemia. The joints between them are covered with gold. The ornate Gothic frescoes on the walls shows the scenes from St Wenceslas’s live and from the Bible. Charles IV is also immortalized as a figure in the painting depicting the Crucifixion. 

St. Vitus is also the home of a stained glass window designed by the famed Czech painter Alphonse Mucha.  Installed in the north nave in 1931,  the window portrays the boy St. Wenceslas with his grandmother St. Ludmila in the center, surrounded by episodes from the lives of Saints Cyril and Methodius who spread Christianity among the Slavs.

Images clockwise from the top left: St. Vitus Cathedral at night, Parler's net vault ceiling, the Stained Glass Window designed by Czech painter Alphonse Mucha, a detail from the window, St. Wencesals Chapel.

Sources: Britannica - 1, Wikipedia, Khan Academy, Travel Digg, Vienna Now, Introducing Vienna, Discover Walks, Annie Hoa, Delve into Europe, Mucha Foundation, flickr, Amazing Czechia, Prague.net, Viaggio Sotta Casa, Crow Canyon Journal

Gothic Europe: Notre Dame, Kölner Dom, and Mont Saint Michel

POSTED APRIL 1, 2024

Gothic architecture flourished in Europe during the Middle Ages.  Originating in northern France in the 12th century, it evolved during the construction of the great churches and cathedrals in the Paris region and then spread across Europe.  It held sway until the 16th century when it was replaced by the Renaissance style of architecture.  

Gothic architecture, despite its name, was not directly developed by the Goths themselves.  The term Gothic was coined by Italian writers of the Renaissance, who attributed the invention (and what to them was the "nonclassical" ugliness) of medieval architecture to the barbarian Gothic tribes that had destroyed the Roman Empire and its classical culture in the 5th century [below].  

The Gothic emerged from the Romanesque (which was distinctive for rounded arches) and relied on a visual style developed in the Islamic world: pointed arches, which could bear more stress than the rounded. Employing this technique could allow walls to stretch even higher than before. Directing the gaze heavenward, the pointed arch helped emphasize the height of naves, and their use drove the development of another key feature of the Gothic: ribbed vaults in the ceiling.

Renaissance writers not withstanding, Gothic structures across Europe are revered for their beauty and as poignant reminders of the Medieval Ages.  We'll look at three of them after briefly examining a few of the actual contributions of the Goths to Europe.

Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris

In a city renowned for its stunning architecture, Notre Dame Cathedral stands out as one of Paris' most recognizable and famous buildings.  Notre Dame Cathedral was constructed between 1163-1345, during a time when architects were pushing technology to its limits in the quest to make a taller building with thinner walls and more windows.  

It is one of the first buildings to use a flying buttress, an arch that extends from the exterior wall to a masonry tower. A quintessential feature of Gothic architecture, the flying buttress helps redistribute the weight of the massive walls, which allows large stained glass windows to be installed.  The original plans for Notre Dame called for much thicker walls to hold up a heavy roof. Several lead architects worked on Notre Dame in the two centuries of construction, and over time they figured out that the way to support Notre Dame's enormous, spectacular stained glass windows and 115-foot (35-meter) ceiling was to add flying buttresses to keep the walls from flopping outward.

Mont Saint Michel

Just off the northern coast of France lies the Mont-Saint-Michel, one of Europe’s most unforgettable sights.  Set in a bay shared by Normandy and Brittany, the mount is visible for many miles.  Rising from the sea, the Benedictine abbey is a reminder of the role that monks and nuns played in preserving Western culture during the Dark Ages.  [sidebar]

The buildings of the Abbey wrap themselves around the point of the rock. They offer a panorama of the technical knowledge of medieval religious architecture, from the Carolingian period (c 750 - 900) to the Gothic.  At the top, the abbey church rests on crypts built into the rocks themselves.  The Abbey of the Mont-Saint-Michel became a renowned center of learning, attracting some of the greatest minds and manuscript illuminators in Europe.

Six Women Artists You Should Know

POSTED MARCH 6, 2024

Since the days of the Italian Renaissance, women have influenced the development of the visual arts.  Defying societal conventions, they have left their mark on the art world.  Here we take a look at six such women artists.

Sources: 14 Famous Female Artists You Need to Know (mymodernmet.com) , Woman at Her Toilette | The Art Institute of Chicago (artic.edu), The Child's Bath | The Art Institute of Chicago (artic.edu), https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/13-women-photographers/, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (University of Oregon), Wikipedia

African-American Composers

POSTED FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Of course, there is no way I could even begin to cover a small fraction of great African-American composers in a single post.  So instead what I've done is select a handful of compositions that I really like, link to a video of a performance of each, and give some background on the music and the composer.

Scott Joplin (1868-1917)

Scott Joplin grew up in a musical family of railway laborers in Texarkana, Arkansas, developing his own musical knowledge with the help of local teachers. While in Texarkana, he formed a vocal quartet and taught mandolin and guitar. During the late 1880s, he left his job as a railroad laborer and traveled the American South as an itinerant musician. He went to Chicago for the World's Fair of 1893, which helped make ragtime a national craze.   He composed more than 40 ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas.

Florence B. Price (1887 - 1953)

Florence Beatrice Price (née Smith) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, one of three children in a mixed-race family.  She was educated at the New England Conservatory of Music and was active in Chicago from 1927 until her death in 1953.  She wrote four symphonies and other large-scale orchestral pieces; concertos for the piano and the violin; two string quartets, and other chamber and instrumental pieces, as well as large-scale choral works, songs and numerous solo organ and piano pieces – including her 1931 Piano Sonata that won the Rodman Wanamaker Contest in Musical Composition.  

In 1933, she made history when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed her Symphony in E minor (Symphony No. 1), making her the first female Black composer to have a symphony performed by a major US orchestra.  The symphony combines the Western symphonic tradition – the influences of composers like Dvořák and Tchaikovsky are apparent – with West-African musical styles. Specifically the ‘Juba Dance’, a pre-cursor to ragtime, which the third movement of the work is built around and named after. 

Notes: 

*The Library of Congress website (of all places) has this explanation of syncopation from a post on the history of Ragtime: "syncopation--the displacing of the beat from its regular and assumed course of meter. Syncopation caused an individual to feel a propulsion, swing, and if played correctly, a musical looseness generally unknown to the public at large."

**"Take My Hand, Precious Lord" was a favorite song of Martin Luther King, Jr., and was played at his funeral.  It was also performed by Beyoncé at the 2015 Grammys.  Some more information on the hymn can be found here.

Sources: Library of Congress, Thomas Andrew Dorsey | Biography, Songs & Father of Gospel Music | Britannica, 10 of Florence Price’s all-time best pieces of music - Classic FM, https://music.unc.edu/module-1-prices-symphony-no-1-in-e-minor/, https://www.britannica.com/art/sonata-form, Wikipedia

Italy, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, and Strauss

POSTED JANUARY 25, 2024

Besides the achievements of its own artists, composers and writers, Italy has, for centuries, inspired the creative works of many from the northern climes of Europe.  

The Northern European Renaissance began around 1430 when artist Jan van Eyck began to borrow the Italian Renaissance techniques of linear perspective, naturalistic observation, and a realistic figurative approach for his paintings. From about 1450, ideas such as humanism began to spread around Europe and resulted in renaissance movements in Germany, France, England, the Netherlands, and Poland. 

In the 17th century, opera was invented in Italy and soon became popular across all of Europe.  By 1650 Italian operas were being performed in France, German-speaking lands, and other European cultural centers. 

In the 18th century, a "Grand Tour" of continental Europe  became a coming-of-age ritual for many of England's well-to-do young men - a final step, as it were, in their education.  The essential place to visit on this Grand Tour was Italy.  In 1744, the British traveler Charles Thompson described himself as "being impatiently desirous of viewing a country so famous in history, which once gave laws to the world; which is at present the greatest school of music and painting, contains the noblest productions of statuary and architecture, and abounds with cabinets of rarities, and collections of all kinds of antiquities..."

The Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century put an end to the Grand Tour, but afterwards travelers returned to the "country of sunshine and warmth, of folksong and dance, and of landscapes from seaside to mountain" for enjoyment as well as artistic inspiration.  J.M.W Turner made three trips to Venice, and his paintings of "La Serenissima" are among his most expressive and luminous works.  Composers also went south and came back inspired by the folk songs and dance music they found there.  In this post we'll look at three well-known composers who produced works informed by their experiences in Italy: Felix Mendelssohn, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss.

Mendelssohn

The Italian Symphony (Symphony No.4 in A Major) is one of Felix Mendelssohn’s most popular and beloved works, and a masterpiece of romantic music. It captures the essence of Italy with its vivid melodies, rich harmonies, and brilliant orchestration. The symphony was inspired by his tour of Italy in 1830-31, where he was captivated by the color and atmosphere of the country. He wrote to his father that Italy was “the supreme joy in life” and to his sister that the symphony would be “the jolliest piece I have ever done.”  Mendelssohn completed the symphony in Berlin in 1833 in response to an invitation for a symphony from the London (now Royal) Philharmonic Society. The symphony’s success, and Mendelssohn’s popularity, influenced the course of British music for the rest of the century.

The symphony has four movements, each evoking a different aspect of Italy. From its unforgettable opening theme, the first movement is lively and cheerful, reflecting the sunny landscapes of Rome and Naples. The second movement is a slow and solemn march, inspired by a religious procession that Mendelssohn witnessed in Naples. The third movement is a graceful minuet, reminiscent of the elegant art and culture of Florence and Venice. The fourth movement is a fiery and energetic salterello, a folk dance from southern Italy and a "cousin" of  which, the tarentella, made its appearance at numerous weddings of my large extended Italian family, including my own.

Tchaikovsky

Italy had a significant impact on the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who developed a lifelong passion for Italian music after studying with an Italian singing instructor, Luigi Piccioli, at age 17. Tchaikovsky incorporated Italian folk songs and street music into some of his compositions, such as the Capriccio Italien, which was inspired by his visit to Rome in 1880. While in the Eternal City, he saw the Carnivale in full swing, and soaked up the Italian folk music and street songs. He incorporates them quite freely in the piece and even makes use of a bugle call that he overheard from his hotel played by an Italian cavalry regiment.  The 15-minute Capriccio Italien opens in a somber mood but high spirits kick in (at about the 5 minute mark in the video below) and it’s hard to resist moving to the piece’s infectious rhythmic energy.  

Tchaikovsky composed Souvenir de Florence, a sextet for strings.  More joyful and exuberant than much of his work, the title reflects his fond memories of Florence, Italy, where he had spent some time working on his opera The Queen of Spades and attending the premiere of his ballet The Sleeping Beauty. However, the music does not explicitly evoke Italian themes or styles, but rather showcases Tchaikovsky’s Romantic and Russian influences.  Although influenced greatly by Italian music, Tchaikovsky remained faithful to his Russian roots, and his music blended the elements of both Russian and Italian traditions, creating a unique and expressive musical language.

Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss followed the well-worn trail south to Italy when he went on a tour funded by his father.  Aus Italien (From Italy) is a tone poem for full orchestra composed in 1886. It was inspired by the composer's visit to Italy in the summer of the same year, where he travelled to Rome, Bologna, Naples, Sorrento, Salerno, and Capri.  After his travels, Strauss returned inspired to create his tone poem. Considered his first step in program music (later to come to fruition in works such as  Also sprach Zarathustra), Aus Italien is a symphonic fantasy in four movements.  

About the first movement, ‘Auf der Campagna,’ Strauss said it was his feelings at seeing the Italian countryside in sunshine, as seen from the Villa d’Este at Tivoli. The sun rises and the world is revealed.  The Brahms-like second movement, ‘In Roms Ruinen', takes us to Rome’s past and its relics.  In the third movement, ‘Am Strande von Sorrent’, we have Strauss’ first attempts at musical pictorialism: the leaves move in the wind, the birds sing, and we have the sound of the sea at his feet as he stands on the shore in Sorrento.  Strauss based the fourth movement on what he thought was a ‘Neapolisches Volksleben’ (Neapolitan folk song) but what turned out to be a song written only 6 years earlier by Luigi Denza, Funiculì, funiculà. Denza sued Strauss and won; Strauss had to pay him a royalty for the use of his in-copyright material.  The song celebrated the opening of the funicular railway at Mount Vesuvius and was undoubtedly familiar to my grandparents all of whom were from that region.  And yes, like the tarantella, this song too was played at all our family weddings.

Sources: The Art Story, Student of History, San Francisco Opera, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Interlude, Britannica, Wikipedia, San Francisco Symphony, U Discover Music, Classic Alex Burns,  Andante Moderato, Ilary Rhind Klange (YouTube Channel)

Postscript

Below left is a video of tarantella dancers.  Below right is Luciano Pavarotti singing Funiculì, funiculà.

Art as Resistance

POSTED JANUARY 2, 2024

Artists from around the world have contested tyranny and subjugation for more than two centuries.  From the Napoleonic Wars in Europe to the Spanish Civil War to the U.S. war in Vietnam to the legacy of colonialism in Africa and elsewhere, artists and writers have stood up for the oppressed.  Today, a long-oppressed people is in danger of having its culture erased.  Among the more than 20,000 killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza are poets, writers and artists.   The art community of Gaza, once a vibrant reflection of Palestinian resilience, is now grappling with the loss of voices crucial to its essence.   

Europe

Particularly relevant and eerily prophetic of the situation in Gaza today are two paintings by the great Spanish artists, Francisco Goya and Pablo Picasso - one depicts the indiscriminate killing of civilians in reprisal for a guerilla attack; the other, the bombardment and complete destruction of a village with the vast majority of the victims women and children.

Colonialism

While Goya and Picasso paint atrocities taking place in their homeland, contemporary artists have produced works depicting the colonial experience, one at the heart of  the Palestinian experience since their many years under colonial rule and military occupation.

Yinka Shonibare was born in London and raised in Nigeria. In a lot of his works, you'll see people dressed in these batik fabrics. These are patterns that people have often considered as generally "African."  In fact, it was inspired by designs in Dutch Indonesia, produced in England and then sold back to West African colonized lands. The history of colonialism has often featured false narratives taught to school children for decades.*  In his sculpture "Scramble for Africa" (2003) [below], Shonibare features the batik fabric design to subtly wake us up to some of the things we don't know about colonialism and to challenge some of the things we think we do.

The Canadian Cree artist Kent Monkman turns the often-state-sanctioned massive-nationalist-narrative painting upside down in "The Scoop" (2018) [below]. The colors and the arrangement of figures mimic the huge paintings, but what's actually happeningis the kidnapping of Indigenous children from their parents and their homes to be taken to residential school where they were cut off from their language, culture and families. 

Palestine

"The world has visited many terrible things on the Palestinian people, none more shameful than robbing them of their basic humanity." - Anthony Bourdain

Occupied Palestine is home to one of the most oppressed and marginalized peoples in the world.  [See "The Hundreds' Year War on Palestine" below**.] Struggling for their very existence as individuals and as a people, art has been a vital element of the Palestinian resistance and an instrument to reaffirm their political existence.  From the traditional painters and writers to the young skateboarders and graffiti artists, they have tried to bring the true story of Palestine to the outside world.  It has not been easy.  Today, even in the face of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Western governments and cultural institutions and social media outlets are trying to silence both them and those who support Palestinian human rights.  [See "Silencing Palestine" below***.]

Here are three works depicting life under the Occupation by Palestinian artists Sliman Mansour, Malak Mattar, and Heba Zagout.

Sliman Mansour

Sliman Mansour is a Palestinian painter, sculptor, author and cartoonist.  Born in 1947, Mansour is considered a leading figure among contemporary Palestinian artists.  Much of his work is seen as a cultural commentary of 20th century Palestinian experience and captures the Palestinian concept of sumud, meaning "steadfastness"or "steadfast perseverance".  The concept emerged among the Palestinian people in the wake the 1967 Six-Day War as a consequence of their oppression and the resistance it inspired.  His paintings which have been exhibited around the world reflect the Palestinian struggle and include images of women in Palestinian traditional costumes and Levantine tree-filled landscapes.  Below is his 1976 painting "Confiscation" referring to the illegal taking of Palestinian land by Israel, a theft that continues to this day.  

Malak Mattar 

One of the most prominent Gen Z Palestinian voices in the artworld, Malak Mattar is a painter, illustrator and author of children's books. Born and raised in Gaza, Mattar’s work reflects the everyday realities of those living there. She was first inspired to create art when she was 13-years-old, to release the negative energy, anxiety and terror that she felt during Israel's 2014 assault on Gaza.  Mattar is known for her bold, impactful colors and powerfully expressionist faces.  Below is her "When Family Is The Only Shelter" painted during the 2021 Israeli invasion of Gaza. 

Heba Zagout

Heba Zagout was a visual artist and fine arts educator whose work frequently centered on themes such as women, the homeland, nature, and the profound bond between mothers and children.  She also depicted scenes from the Old City of  occupied East Jerusalem, the revered Al Aqsa mosque, and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.   One of her most beautiful and famous paintings is "Jerusalem Is My City" [below].

In 2021 Heba Zagout created an artwork entitled "Gaza Peace" [below]. Colored in various shades of black, white and gray, the  painting depicts Gaza as a harmonious and peaceful city decorated with dozens of religious shrines, temples, and churches that, despite being densely packed, seem to beautifully coexist. The artist and mother of four "held a profoundly resilient spirit that often manifested in her artwork through symbols of peace and coexistence."  Tragically she did not live to see her dreams of peace fulfilled.  Heba Zagout and her young son were killed in an Israeli bombing raid on October 13.  In one of her last Instagram posts, Zagout wrote, “looking for happy dreams, clinging to life, love, and hope.” 

Below left is a link to GQ Middle East's tribute to Heba Zagout.  Below right is a link to an Al Jazeera program on Palestinian art as a form of resistance.

Sources: Al Jazeera - 1, CBC, The Guardian, TRT World, GQ Middle East - 1, GQ Middle East - 2, Al Jazeera - 2

Notes

*An excellent corrective for the misinformation taught to students in the United States is Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.  Zinn's ground-braking work focuses on the marginalized and the oppressed as opposed to the elites in power.

**The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: What Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States does for the usual American history narrative here, Rashid Khalidi's The Hundred Years' War on Palestine does for Palestine.  Je'ev Jabotinsky's quote from 1925, “If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must find a garrison for the land, or find a benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf.… Zionism is a colonizing venture and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed forces," summarizes the Palestinian experience in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire since the early 16th century.  This ended after the Turks were defeated in World War I.  Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the establishment of the so-called Palestine Mandate, the British colonial power began implementing its plan of creating a Jewish state on Palestinian land.  As the British - Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has written, "Britain had no moral or political or legal right to promise the land that belonged to the Arabs to another people."   

The Zionist strategy of expelling Palestinians from their land was a slow and deliberate process. According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, Zionist leaders and military commanders met regularly from March 1947 to March 1948, when they finalized plans to ethnically cleanse Palestine.  By early 1948, Zionist forces had captured dozens of villages and cities, displacing thousands of Palestinians, even while the British Mandate was still in effect. In many cases, they carried out organized massacres. The message was simple: Palestinians must leave their land or be killed.  In the Nakba ("catastrophe") of 1948, 15,000 Palestinians were killed and three quarters of a million Palestinians were forced to leave their homes. On May 14, 1948, the state of Israel was created and the Palestinians officially became a stateless people.  Palestine has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967, and Gaza ("the world's largest outdoor prison") has been crippled by a brutal land, sea and air blockade since 2007.

***Silencing Palestine: As a genocide proceeds, the Western world not only sits and watches but also silences voices calling for an end to the violence and oppression.

• An award ceremony for the Palestine-born novelist and essayist Adania Shibli is cancelled by the Frankfurt book fair because of “the war started by Hamas”.  Over 600 writers, academics, and publishing professionals protest the cancellation of the event and call for an end to indiscriminate violence in Gaza.

• A day after Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen signed the open letter condemning Israel's "indiscriminate violence" against Palestinians in Gaza, New York's 92nd Street Y cancelled his scheduled talk there without explanation.

• A cultural center in Berlin has its funding cut and will be shut down after hosting an event from the organization Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East.

• David Velasco, editor of Artforum, a leading art magazine, is fired for signing an open letter calling for “Palestinian liberation and… an end to the killing and harming of all civilians [and] an immediate ceasefire”.

• Social media platforms remove content from, or suspend accounts of, Palestinian activists, journalists and news sites. Instagram adds “Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom” to the bios of Palestinian users. (It later apologizes, claiming a bug in auto-translation.)

• Veteran Bangladeshi photojournalist Shahidul Alam was co-curating a planned photography exhibition in Germany.  The German Biennale for Contemporary Photography drops him after he posts decrying the violence in Gaza.

The Christmas Story through the eyes of the Grand Masters

POSTED DECEMBER 13, 2023

Renaissance and Baroque painters found the Christmas Story to be a source of inspiration for thousands of paintings.  Born in poverty to a teenage mother in an occupied land, Jesus's infancy gave little hint of the great teacher He would become, the ignominious death He would suffer, and the salvation He would bring to the world by that death.  The Christmas season is, ultimately, one of hope.  For what could give us more hope than the birth of a child - which is, in the words of Carl Sandburg, "God's opinion that the world should go on"*

And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.  They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. - Matthew 2:9 - 11

The Adoration of the Magi is a 1619 Baroque painting by the Spanish grand master Diego Velázquez now held in the Museo del Prado. It shows three kings presenting gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh** to the Christ child: Melchior, who kneels in the foreground; Balthazar, who stands behind him wearing a red cape and a lace collar; and Caspar, who appears between the other two.  They represent the three known continents of Jesus' time - Europe, Africa, and Asia. An unidentified young man who stands behind Balthazar is looking on. Kneeling near the Virgin's left shoulder is Saint Joseph. The size and format of the painting indicate that it was made for an altarpiece. 

Velázquez's artwork was a model for the realist and impressionist painters in the 19th century as well as modern artists of the 20th century.  His most famous painting, Las Meninas, like the Adoration of the Magi, resides in Museo del Prado in Madrid.

Note: 

*The complete quote by the American poet Carl Sandburg is "A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.”

**Symbolizing three aspects of Christ's future life: gold representing kingship; frankincense, worship; and myrrh, death and mourning. 

Sources: 10 Most Famous Christmas Paintings - Artst, The Christmas Story Told in 10 Old Master Paintings (artnet.com), https://www.artchive.com/artwork/the-cestello-annunciation-sandro-botticelli-c-1489/, https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.432.html, https://www.ranker.com/list/famous-adoration-of-the-magi-in-art-art/reference, The Guardian, the Bible, Wikipedia

Mozart's Serenades

POSTED NOVEMBER 7, 2023

The serenade is a type of chamber music. Typically calm, light pieces of music, serenades were often composed  in honor of someone or something and often performed during the evening and outdoors.  As one musicologist put it, we can think of serenades as "some of the party music for the day: small ensemble music to be played in the background as your guests talked with their drinks in hand." Serenades were particularly popular with composers in the Classical era, and Mozart created thirteen such compositions, several of which remain mainstays of orchestral repertoires to this day.  His works are among the most famous examples of the serenade from the 18th century.  His serenades contain a multiplicity of movements ranging from four to ten and were often purely instrumental pieces, written for special occasions such as those commissioned for wedding ceremonies. 

The most typical ensemble for a serenade was a wind ensemble augmented with basses and violas: instrumentalists who could stand, since the works were often performed outdoors. Frequently the serenades began and ended with movements of a march-like character—since the instrumentalists often had to march to and from the place of performance. 

Among his best-known serenades are the Haffner Serenade (No.7), the "Gran Partita" (No.10), and  "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" (No. 13), one of Mozart's most famous works. In this post we'll examine in some detail Mozart's boundary-pushing Serenade No. 10 in B-flat major, “Gran Partita”.  Here are links to performances of the Haffner Serenade and "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik":

Mozart Serenade No. 7 for Orchestra in D major, "Haffner Serenade"

"Eine kleine Nachtmusik", Serenade No. 13 in G major

The Haffner Serenade was composed for the July 1776 wedding of Elisabeth Haffner and Franz Xaver Späth, which joined two of the most powerful Salzburg families. "Eine kleine Nachtmusik", Mozart's last serenade, was published posthumously.  The specific occasion, if any, for which  was composed has never been determined.

Serenade No. 10 in B-flat major, “Gran Partita”

The seven movement piece is scored for  two oboes, two clarinets, two basset horns, two bassoons, four horns and a double bass.   Although the choice of these 13 instruments was somewhat unusual, in writing this serenade Mozart was following well-established tradition. During the latter part of the eighteenth century multi-movement works of a predominantly light-hearted, entertaining nature for various combinations of instruments were produced throughout the countries of central Europe. Interchangeably titled “divertimento,” “cassation,” “notturno” or “serenade,”  these works found their origin in the desire for entertaining “background” music for court functions—not as concert works.  With the Serenade in Bb, however, Mozart began to transform works of this genre into genuine concert pieces, albeit ones in which the “outdoor” origin of the musical style remains clearly visible.

Michael Votta's program note at the UM Wind Orchetra website summarizes the work nicely: "After an opening sonata-form movement, the remaining six movements comprise pairs of slow movements, minuets and finales.  One member of each pair tends to show Mozart at his most elegant and compositionally sophisticated while the other tends toward rollicking dance music* more reminiscent of a 'town band” than of the Emperor’s elegant Harmonie**." He notes that the Serenade in B-flat is "a work that truly bridges the gulf between garden party and concert music."

Despite the standing which Mozart’s works occupy in the concert repertoire, the genesis of some of his greatest compositions— including this serenade — remain shrouded in mystery.  Almost no other work of Mozart has been the subject of so many contradictory theories concerning the history of its composition, as the Gran Partita.  It's been thought to be composed, variously, around 1780 for a concert in Munich, in Vienna around end of 1783 or early 1784, and for the occasion of his own wedding in 1782.

Whatever its origin, it is a beautiful piece of music [link below left] that pushed the boundaries of the traditional Harmonie ensemble of Austrian nobility from five, six, or eight musicians to thirteen. [link below right]

*I'm not sure what passed for "rollicking dance music" in the late 18th century but there are definite differences in style among the movements in this beautiful work.  

**Harmonie is a German word that, in the context of the history of music, designates an ensemble of wind instruments (usually about five to eight players) employed by an aristocratic patron, particularly during the Classical era of the 18th century. The Harmonie would be employed for outdoor or recreational music, or as a wind section of an orchestra.

Sources: Interlude, Lumen Learning, UM Wind Orchestra, Sarasota Orchestra, Britannica, Wikipedia

The Greatest Novels Ever Written: Three Lists

POSTED OCTOBER 22, 2023

What makes for a great novel? Among the elements that literature experts tell us "make a novel great" are a compelling story that engages the reader, a good setting that creates a sense of place and time, complex issues that are dealt with in an intelligent way, and diverse and developed characters that have realistic motivations and conflicts.  

For me, a variant on the last element is especially important.  To enjoy a novel or a film or a play or a TV series, I need characters who engage my emotions and with whom I can empathize.   Now, I know that "enjoying" does not make a book "great", but if a work of fiction doesn't have characters that engage you, why bother spending 2, 6, 8, or 10 hours of your life reading or viewing it?

Below are links to three lists of the greatest novels.  The variety of the selections is stunning, and just two novels were in the top dozen on all three lists - One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Several were in the top dozen on two of the three lists: To Kill a Mockingbird, Jane Eyre, and Don Quixote.  Interestingly, the top selection on each list does not even appear in the top dozen of the other lists (Anna Karenina, Pride and Prejudice, In Search of Lost Time).

Smarter, kinder, calmer: why we should read every day (May 12, 2021) 

Magical Realism: Gabriel García Márquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (April 6, 2020)

A 'very premature' 21st century literary canon and PBS viewers choose America's favorite novel  (October 23, 2018)

Mozart's Operas

POSTED OCTOBER 5, 2023

Developing from traditions of staged sung music and drama dating back to the Middle Ages, opera was "born" in Italy around the year 1600.  By the end of the Baroque era (1750), opera had taken all of  Europe by storm "and was a spectacular, expensive affair full of florid arias and ornate stage sets with moving parts".  In other words, much like opera today.

A Night at the Opera - June 29, 2019

The Art of Picasso: Picasso and the Mediterranean

POSTED SEPTEMBER 4, 2023

After World War II, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) returned to his beloved Mediterranean coast from Paris.  In September 1946, he was invited by the curator of the Château Grimaldi - Musée d'Antibes to stay and set up his studio in one of the rooms of the château. He painted some twenty works there, evoking Mediterranean themes, which form part of the museum's collection, now dedicated to Picasso.  Spending his summers on the Mediterranean coast since his arrival in France, Picasso had settled there and had become interested in pottery and ceramics, while continuing to paint, inspired by the landscape and ancient culture that surrounded him.

Speaking about the exhibition "Picasso - The Mediterranean Years", his British-born biographer, John Richardson said, "In a way most of Picasso's life was a Mediterranean period. He was born in Malaga in Spain and from 1918 took a house in Antibes or nearby every summer.  His big stylistic discoveries were almost all made in the south. After three of four months he'd go back to Paris and work on what he'd discovered."  

The "Mediterranean Years" exhibition featured 150 works created by Picasso from 1945 to 1962.  Unfortunately for the exhibit, that excluded his most famous Mediterranean work, Night Fishing at Antibes (below left).  

Picasso was inspired to paint this dream-like scene after observing fisherman in Antibes using acetylene lamps at night to lure fish.  The central figure is a large-headed man spear-fishing off the coast of Antibes.  Two young women to the right of the painting - one on a bicycle enjoying an ice cream -  are watching the action while another fisherman is peering over the side of the boat into the water trying, unsuccessfully it seems, to catch a fish with a line attached to his foot.  The large areas of black contrast with the brighter highlighted fishing scene.

The scale of the painting (nearly 7 ft high and more than 11 ft long) has suggested to some that this is more than just an idyllic beach tableau from an August night in 1939.  The interspersion of black throughout the scene, the almost ritualistic killing of the fish, and the strange moon (?) that may or may not be an ancient symbol of death have suggested to some that the painting reflects the rising political tensions just prior to the outbreak of World War II or perhaps the outcome of the Spanish Civil War.  If so, Night  Fishing at Antibes is nowhere near as directly stated as his more famous Guernica, which was painted two years earlier during the Spanish Civil War. 

Perhaps Night Fishing is just an idyllic summer beach scene.  Or perhaps it is one with a foreboding that this enjoyable personal time will not last.  One of the great things about non-representational art is that it is so open to personal interpretation. 

Although several of his works from the post war period reflect his concerns with war and peace (notably his Peace Doves from the late 40s thru the early 60s) and Massacre in Korea from 1951), most often his sketches and paintings reflected his personal life.  His Portrait of Françoise from 1946 below right is one of the most lyrical of portraits of Françoise Gilot, his partner and muse for nearly a decade and the mother of two of his four children.  Françoise, who died earlier this year at age 101, was an artist in her own right and was the only woman to end her relationship with Picasso.  Unlike his two wives and other mistresses, Françoise Gilot rebuilt her life after she ended the relationship in 1953, almost a decade after it had begun despite an age difference of 40 years. She continued painting and exhibiting her work and wrote books. Her 1964 memoir Life with Picasso was an international best seller.  In 1970, she married Jonas Salk, the American medical researcher who developed the first safe polio vaccine, and lived part of the time in California.  

We'll close this post with Picasso's smallest and largest creations, both from the post-war Mediterranean years.

As he was beginning his ceramics work, Picasso looked to ordinary objects as a ground for his creative experiments.  Engraved pebbles, picked on the beaches of Golfe Juan and Antibes, began to appear in his works.  Below left is a 1949 photograph of Pebble Sculpture,  an etching that Picasso made on a pebble in 1946.  

Below right is Picasso's monumental mural The Fall of Icarus.  Commissioned by UNESCO in 1957 to decorate its Paris headquarters and completed by Picasso in 1958, the mural is immense in size, measuring nearly 100 square meters and comprising 40 wooden panels painted in acrylic. It depicts a beach scene that features several figures. On the center left, a figure is shown to be falling from the sky towards the blue ocean.  The image has been interpreted in various ways, such as a possible depiction of the struggle between good and evil and as a reference to the mythological theme of the fall of Icarus.  Picasso himself maintained that the mural is simply a scene of people bathing.

Sources: Musée Picasso Paris, BBC, Wikipedia, Pablo Ruiz Picasso.net

Mozart and the Symphony

POSTED AUGUST 10, 2023

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) composed 41 symphonies* during his short lifetime.  He wrote his first (Symphony No. 1 in E flat major) when he was about 9 years old.  His last, the magnificent "Jupiter" symphony (Symphony No. 41 in C major), was completed three years before his death and is considered to be one of the greatest ever written.  In the interim, Mozart defined the symphony as we know it today and opened the door to the Romantic era of classical music.  

Bob Dylan: from Bob Dylan to Another Side of Bob Dylan 

POSTED JUNE 2, 2023

Nobel Prize Laureate Bob Dylan turned 82 on May 24.  Over the 60 plus years of his career, Dylan has written more than 500 songs, which have been recorded by more than 2000 artists.   Like troubadours of old, he has been bringing his music and songs to the people - performing (so far) 3,900 concerts for audiences around the world.   I've been to several of these concerts, and you don't go to these performances for his singing talent or for his audience interaction.  You go for the artistry embodied in his lyrics.

Britannica Encyclopedia notes that Dylan has been hailed as the "Shakespeare of his generation" and that he "set the standard for lyric-writing", and the Nobel Committee's 2016 Award Citation praises him for "having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

In early days, besides going to his concerts for the marvelous lyrics - it was like hearing a poem read by the poet who wrote it - you also went to hear his mastery and adaptation of the folk music form, his message of social change and his antiwar sentiments, and to be among fellow travelers in the turbulent 1960's.  Bob Dylan's early albums spoke to me and were part of my coming of age.  Here is a personal look (and look back) at them.

Spring

POSTED MAY 17, 2023

Spring is the time of fertility and rebirth, a time of possibility and hope, a time of celebrations and milestone life events.  A few of the works depicting Spring as seen through the eyes of writers, painters and composers as well as the science behind "spring fever".

Sources: Italian Renaissance.org, Mucha Foundation,

Images and text on this website may be subject to copyright.  Their inclusion on this site is within the fair use doctrine of copyright law.

Mozart's Piano Sonatas

POSTED APRIL 25, 2023

The sonata form is one of the most influential ideas in the history of classical music.  Originating from the Italian word “suonare”, which means, “to sound”, the sonata first appeared in the 16th century to designate a purely instrumental musical piece.  While it continued to evolve during the Baroque period in the works of composers like Bach, Scarlatti, and Handel, it was the Classical Era that defined its form.  Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were at the heart of this development.  The practice of these great Classical masters forms the basis for the description of the sonata form. Their works served both as the model for the form, and as the source for new works conceived in the sonata form itself. 

Sonata form* is a musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation of one or two themes.  A sonata is usually composed for a single instrument - usually piano or violin - or for a small ensemble.  The excellent Beginner's Guide video below left explains the sonata form using a work from Mozart, Piano Sonata No 16 C major.

Over his short life of 35 years, Mozart composed 18 numbered piano sonatas, several sonatas for four hands, 36 violin sonatas, and 17 Church Sonatas, as well as trio sonatas for chamber instruments.  The musicologists at FM Classic note, "As well as sounding great, each sonata offers a little window into the composer's character."  Many of them began as improvisations with the young man sitting down at the piano, experimenting,  and eventually creating a wonderfully inventive musical work. 

Mozart's piano sonatas are considered his best, and K545, Piano Sonata No 16 C major, performed in its entirety below right by pianist-composer Corey Hall is considered one of Mozart's best** piano sonatas,.  Mozart composed Piano Sonata No. 16 in C Major in the summer of 1788, a period in which Mozart displayed almost superhuman productivity.  

In the eight weeks between late June and mid-August of 1788, Mozart completed Piano Sonata No 16 C major, his Trio for piano, violin and cello in E Major, the Trio in C Major, the Sonata for piano and violin in F major and his last three symphonies including his Symphony in C major and nicknamed the “Jupiter”. It was to be Mozart’s final symphony, a towering, innovative masterwork, the greatest symphony ever composed to its time and by any standard one of a handful of greatest symphonies ever composed. 

What is even more stunning is that Mozart managed this compositional feat while under a black cloud of grief, physical ill-health, and mounting financial disaster! 

Mozart's piano sonatas have been characterized as "delicate".  You won't find the passion and emotion of Beethoven here, but Mozart's sonatas have their own marvelous beauty as evidenced by the two performances below - Piano Sonata No. 11 in A Major, composed in Vienna in 1783, and Piano Sonata No. 13 in B flat, composed in Linz at the end of 1783.  

Composed in 1783 and published in 1784, Mozart's famous Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major is also known as Rondo Alla Turk, due to its fiery Turkish finale. Consisting of three movements that are in the key of A major, the sonata has been called by musicologist Alex Burns a "great introduction to the mind of Mozart and his enviable style of the time."  The third movement of Sonata No. 11, the "Rondo alla Turca", or "Turkish March", is often heard on its own and regarded as one of Mozart's best-known piano pieces.   

The LA Phil describes Piano Sonata No.13 in B flat as "a warm and lovely piece, galant*** throughout" and continues, "As is so often the case even in Mozart’s lightest works, there are moments in them which reach beyond mere charm; in the present Sonata these occur in the middle section of the slow movement, when the chromaticism evolves into an intense expressiveness. For the rest, one is content to revel in the sheer loveliness and openness of a splendid gem of a creation."

Notes: 

*Besides being a standalone work with a single instrument (or small ensemble), the sonata form is the standard first movement of nearly all  symphonies.  Apropos of nothing, this reminds me of this description of a symphony from some long-forgotten reference: "In the first movement, the composer shows how brilliant he is; in the second, how emotional he is; in the third, how happy he is; and in the fourth, how glad he is that it is finally over."

**"Best" is often a matter of personal opinion and taste.  The Mozart Project has this to say: "There are a few factors that are typically considered when trying to determine the best Mozart piano sonatas. The first is technical difficulty – some of Mozart’s sonatas are incredibly challenging to play, while others are more manageable. The second is overall quality – some of Mozart’s sonatas are simply better composed than others, and have stood the test of time more effectively."

***In music, galant refers to the style which was fashionable from the 1720s to the 1770s. This movement featured a return to simplicity and immediacy of appeal after the complexity of the late Baroque era - e.g., simpler, more song-like melodies.

Sources: LA Phil, Alex Burns, The Three Best Mozart Piano Sonatas – Mozart Project, Classic fm, Medium, Wikipedia

The art of Picasso: the African Period

POSTED MARCH 28, 2023

In the spring of 1907, Pablo Picasso's visit to a rundown Paris museum with poorly displayed artifacts taken from the continent of Africa would change Western art forever. 

The museum's depressed state almost caused him to leave, but the artifacts there ignited something deep inside 25 year old Pablo Picasso.  

“I forced myself to stay, to examine these masks, all those objects that people had created with a sacred and magical purpose, to serve as intermediaries between them and the unknown and hostile forces that surrounded them, thereby trying to overcome their fears, giving them color and shape. And then I understood what painting really meant. It is not an aesthetic process, it is a form of magic that stands between us and the hostile universe, a means of taking power, imposing a form on our terrors as well as our wishes. The day I understood that, I found my way.” 

Emerging from his Rose Period, Pablo Picasso had been looking for something to inspire his growth as an artist. He found it that day at the Trocadero Museum of Ethnology.  The experience would not only put an end to Picasso's representational artwork but would lead directly to Cubism, the art movement founded by Picasso and Georges Braque.

With Picasso leading the way, African art aesthetics became a source of inspiration for the School of Paris*, which had been searching for new and radical ways of representation. Picasso saw in African figuration a religious depth and ritual purpose that both startled and moved him. Its sophisticated use of flat planes and bold contouring was unlike anything the artist had encountered before.  Unlike Western art, these objects had been created with function, rather than art in mind. While their function varied depending on region and religion, they played (and in many cases, continue to play) an important role in ceremonies and rituals celebrating religion, social status, and rite of passage. 

The masterwork that was the culmination of Picasso's African Period, Les Demoiselles d' Avignon, is considered to be the work that inspired the Cubist movement.  Before Picasso started his African Period, he came into the possession of some ancient Iberian sculptures. In Les Demoiselles d'Avignon the faces of the three women on the left are based on the Iberian sculptures. So as to avoid compositional monotony, Picasso based the faces of the two women on the right on the African totem art, that he had also collected.  

The final oil painting, which stands nearly two and a half meters high and just over two meters wide, depicts five women, possibly brothel workers,  with faceted, angular bodies.  [below left]

Below right are details of the faces of two of the women's faces side-by-side with a Wooden Dan face mask and with a Mbanga mask, Central Pende, Bandundu, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Painted the year after Les Demoiselles, Picasso's Trois Femmes (Three Women) [below left] takes another major step towards Cubism.  The painting shows both a simplification of the human body to basic geometric forms and a novel approach to representing the figure in space. Rather than depicting the figures as independent forms in an open spatial environment, Picasso’s women form an interlocking whole, fitting together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.  It is just a short hop from Trois Femmes to Picasso's clearly Cubist painting of a Girl with a Mandolin [below center]

The Art of Picasso: Cubism (Nov 1, 2022)

Note: *Before World War I, a group of expatriates in Paris created art in the styles of Post-Impressionism, Cubism and Fauvism. The group included artists like Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani and Piet Mondrian. Associated French artists included Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes. Picasso and Matisse have been described as the twin leaders of the so-called School of Paris before the war.

Sources: Smart History, The Collector, PabloPicasso.org, Liquisearch, Wikipedia

Violin Concerto No. 3

Written when the composer was just 19 years old, Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3 is the most popular of his five violin concertos and ranks among the greatest in the classical repertoire.  Mozart composed all of his violin concertos in 1775 while he was Konzertmeister at the Salzburg court, apparently for his fellow-violinist Gaetano Brunetti for performance at court.  After that burst of violin concertos, Mozart showed no interest in string concertos turning his attention to the piano and other instruments.

A performance of this work is below and you can learn more about it here.

Clarinet Concerto in A Major

Invented in 1690 by Johann Christoph Denner, a German instrument maker from Nuremberg, the clarinet was a relatively new instrument in the late 18th century.  Mozart was fascinated by the instrument and composed several works for it prior to this great concerto.  

Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major, widely regarded as the greatest clarinet concerto ever composed, was completed in October 1791, less than two months before the composer's death at the age of just 35.  It was to be his last instrumental work.  

Mozart composed his Clarinet Concerto for his close friend Anton Stadler, who performed the work at the premiere in Prague on October 16, 1791.  In fact, all of Mozart's great works for the instrument – the Clarinet Concerto, the Clarinet Quintet, the Kegelstatt (Skittle Alley) Trio, and the obbligato parts in two arias from La Clemenza Di Tito  – were composed for Stadler, who was the superstar clarinetist of his day. 

A performance of this work is below and you can learn more about it here.

Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major ("Elvira Madigan") 

Mozart was a great pianist, and initially made his name in Vienna as a composer of piano concertos that he wrote for himself to play at public concerts. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major was completed in March 1785 and is one of his best-known and technically demanding concertos.  The concerto belongs to Mozart’s so-called “symphonic piano concertos”.  In his late piano concertos, Mozart developed a style in which the role of the orchestra became increasingly important, with the solo piano “accompanying” the orchestra for long stretches (rather than vice versa). 

The famous second movement was featured in the 1967 Swedish film Elvira Madigan and, as a result, the work became widely known as the Elvira Madigan Concerto.

A performance of the work is below and you can learn more about it here.

Notes: 

*A cadenza is, generically, an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist or soloists, usually in a "free" rhythmic style, and often allowing virtuosic display.  

**The instrument we call a piano has evolved over the centuries since its invention in 1698 by by harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori in Florence.  Mozart wrote his piano music for the historical instrument we now call the fortepiano (or confusingly enough, the pianoforte).  Like the modern piano, the fortepiano can vary the sound volume of each note, depending on the player's touch. The tone of the fortepiano is quite different from that of the modern piano, however, being softer with less "sustain".  Fortepianos also tend to have quite different tone quality in their different registers – slightly buzzing in the bass, "tinkling" in the high treble, and more rounded (closest to the modern piano) in the mid range.   For more on the fortepiano see here.

***This is a superb performance. Don't let the unfortunately placed ad at about the 24th minute distract you from you rlistening pleasure.

Sources: U discover music-1 , Opera Philadelphia, Wikipedia, U discover music - 2, LA Phil, Stark Conductor

The Art of Picasso: the Rose Period

POSTED FEBRUARY 12, 2023

A depressed Pablo Picasso had been traveling between Paris and Spain during the three years following the suicide of his good friend, Carlos Casagemas.   During this time, his Blue Period, Picasso painted monochromatic works of flattened forms with emotional and psychological themes of human misery and alienation in shades of blue and blue-green.  

In 1904, he settled in the Montmartre district of Paris where he made the acquaintance of the bohemian artists and poets who congregated at the Bateau-Lavoir.   In 1904, he also met Fernande Olivier, his first "muse" and his model for more than 60 paintings.  These happy relationships helped Picasso break free from his depressed state, and he changed his style of painting.  Picasso's Rose Period (1904-1906) paintings employ cheerful vivid hues of red, orange, pink and earth tones.  Harlequins, circus performers and clowns appear frequently in the Rose Period and will populate Picasso's paintings at various stages through the rest of his long career. 

His Rose Period style begins to lead a life of its own, in the expressionistic spirit of his time: it's not the subject and its content that matters most, but the painting itself. Picasso goes on to experiment in a style that renders his subjects anonymous, resulting in an artistic matrix of a person, rather than a person.  [Seated Female Nude (1905) below left]. It was Picasso's first step in the direction of abstract art.  

Even more importantly for his developing style was the fluency of line that he was beginning to achieve.  

"Although the painting Family of Acrobats with Monkey (1905) [below center] is quite classical in style, its line is as suggestive as Picasso's later, more abstract work. This subtlety of line is Picasso's unique contribution to expressionism. In general one can say that there is a trade-off between subtlety and expression, and the directness of expressionism seems crude to the classicist. During his career, Picasso would continue to explore how to combine expressionism with classicism, a process for which he laid the basis in his Rose Period."  [pablopicasso.org]

In May 2004, a painting from the Rose Period, "Boy with a Pipe" [below right] became the most expensive painting ever sold at auction when an anonymous buyer purchased it for $104.1 million at a Sotheby auction.  The oil on canvas painting depicts a teenage Parisian boy holding a pipe in his left hand and wearing a garland or wreath of flowers.   The boy apparently hung around Picasso's studio and volunteered to pose for the oil work. Picasso's own comments about the boy were that he was one of the "local types, actors, ladies, gentlemen, delinquents... He stayed there, sometimes the whole day. He watched me work. He loved that." The painting remains in private hands, but has since been surpassed many times over as the most expensive painting ever sold.

The Rose Period marked an important turning point in Picasso's art.  It was the last period in which his paintings are predominantly representational, and it was during the Rose Period that Picasso would begin to develop the unique style that made him the greatest painter of the 20th  century.

Sources: Pablo Picasso's Rose Period, Picasso's Rose Period - Wikipedia  

The Art of Picasso: the Blue Period

POSTED DECEMBER 13, 2022

No other painter has so explicitly used color to express his emotions as Pablo Picasso did during his Blue (1901-1904) and Rose (1904-1906) Periods.  In this post, we examine Picasso's Blue Period.

In his Blue Period, Picasso painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green, flattened forms, and emotional, psychological themes of human misery and alienation related to the work of such artists as Edvard Munch and Paul Gauguin.  These somber works, inspired by Spain but painted in Paris, seemed to reflect his sympathy for the marginalized and poor as well as his own experience of  poverty and instability.  Depicting beggars, street urchins, the old and frail and the blind, they are now some of his most popular works.  

During his Blue Period, Picasso suffered through a bout of depression that was triggered by the suicide of a close friend.   While an art student in Spain, Picasso met another art student, a young Catalan named Carlos Casagemas.  Sharing a studio in Barcelona, the two became the best of friends and, in the summer of 1900, they traveled together to Paris.  While there, Casagemas became infatuated with a woman named Germaine, who unfortunately did not return his affections.  

The painful rejection sent Casagemas into a serious depression. He drank, he used morphine, and he relied even more heavily on the support of his friend Picasso.  Unable to support themselves, the two returned to Spain.  Still pining over Germaine, Casagemas' behavior worsened, and, after a stopover in Barcelona, Casagemas returned to Paris without Picasso.

At the end of a dinner party at l'Hippodrome restaurant in Paris on Feb. 17, 1901, twenty-year-old Carlos Casagemas shot himself in the head. Years later Picasso recalled, "I started painting in blue when I learned of Casagemas's death."

Sources: PabloPicasso.org -1, Art Institute of Chicago, Art in Context, Washington Post, PabloPicasso.org - 2

The Art of Picasso: Cubism

POSTED NOVEMBER 1, 2022

Although Pablo Picasso painted in many different styles, he is most closely associated with Cubism, a movement that he founded with Georges Braque in the early 20th century.  Ground-breaking artists had already begun the move towards non-representational and "modern" art in the preceding decades, and Cezanne, in particular, was an inspiration for the Cubists.  Indeed, Picasso has been credited with the line, "Cezanne is the father of us all."

Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin: The Origins of Modern Art

Cubism, as its name implies, uses geometric shapes and patterns to represent a specific form.  Cubist painters rejected the notion that art should copy nature or that they should adopt the traditional techniques of perspective, modelling, and foreshortening.  They emphasized the two-dimensional aspect of the canvas instead of creating an illusion of depth. This was done by breaking a picture down into its geometric components; almost as if reducing its essence to a series of lines and angles.  By breaking down objects into different planes, the artists showed different points of view at the same time, in the same space, suggesting their three-dimensional form while also pointing to the two-dimensional flatness of the canvas. 

In his early works from his teenage years, Pablo Picasso showed a mastery of the conventional representational art of that time.  As he entered his 20's, he began to embrace eclectic and revolutionary styles that would dominate his long and varied career.  

The untimely death of his close friend Carlos Casagemas triggered a long-lasting depression and soon led to his "Blue Period" between 1901 and 1904.  During this time, he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. Gradually, intrigued by the abundance of unusual characters and the liveliness of Paris, he emerged from this depressive state.  From the fall of 1904 until 1906, his Rose Period, Picasso painted a variety of different people, both beautiful and ugly, young and adult, and returned the artist to the world of slightly transformed, but real forms, dimensions and spaces; paintings were once again filled with life as opposed to the characters of the Blue Period.

The next step in Picasso's artistic development, from 1906 to 1909, was his African Period.  He first encountered archaic African art at the Ethnographic Museum exhibition in Trocadero.  The primitive idols, statues and masks and their generalized form embodied the mighty forces of nature, from which primitive man did not distance himself.  

This African art  appealed to him and the period directly preceded his Cubist phase.  Picasso monumentalized and simplified these shapes, making his characters look like wooden or stone idols. Characters’ faces started to resemble ritual masks. Rough shading on the picturesque planes, reproducing the notches on the African sculptures is another borrowing from the battery of the ancient masters. 

His most famous painting from the African Period and widely considered to be the first example of Cubist painting is Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies from Avignon).  It depicts five naked women composed of flat, splintered planes whose faces were inspired by Iberian sculpture and African masks.   The compressed space they inhabit appears to project forward in jagged shards, while a slice of melon in the still life at the bottom of the composition teeters on an upturned tabletop. 

As Picasso and Braque developed the Cubist methods and features, Cubism evolved.  The early period of Analytical Cubism (1908-1912) featured works that dissected the subject, viewpoint-by-viewpoint, resulting in a fragmentary image of multiple viewpoints and overlapping planes. Other distinguishing features of analytical cubism were a simplified palette of colors and the density of the image at the center of the canvas.  

The next period, called Synthetic Cubism, began c. 1912 when the artists started adding textures and patterns to their paintings, experimenting with collage using newspaper print and patterned paper. Analytical cubism was about breaking down an object (like a bottle) viewpoint-by-viewpoint, into a fragmentary image; whereas synthetic cubism was about flattening out the image and sweeping away the last traces of allusion to three-dimensional space.

Seated Nude (below left) is an example of Analytical Cubism from Picasso's work ; Bowl of Fruit, Violin and Bottle (below right), of Synthetic Cubism.

Though World War I halted much of the Cubist movement in 1914, Picasso carried his distinct style into later phases of his artwork, including Three Musicians from 1921 (below left), Girl Before a Mirror (below right) from 1932, and Guernica from 1937.

Sources: PabloPicasso.Net, Artland, pablo-ruiz-picasso.net -1, pablo-ruiz-picasso.net - 2,  MOMA, Tate -1, Tate -2, Artlex, Eikipedia

Three poems, three takes on getting older

POSTED OCTOBER 10, 2022

I have enjoyed poetry since my high school years.  I have not been doing much reading of it recently, but this year's celebration of the centennial of T.S. Eliot's masterpiece The Waste Land re-awakened in me a desire to read some poetry.  

Unlike my love of art, kickstarted by Monet's Étretat, or my love for classical music, kickstarted by Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, I can't name a specific poem that led me to enjoy poetry so much.  Each reading or re-reading of a poem brings new insights.  This is especially true when re-reading a poem decades after you first encountered it.  Here are three such poems - two that I have always loved and one that I didn't really appreciate until recently.  Age does that to you.

The poems, which, to a greater or lesser extent, all have to do with getting older, were written by the poets while still in their twenties.*  Each poem, as we shall see, has a different take on what getting older would be like.  

T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock has a wistful, resigned flavor.  You know from the opening lines that this is not going to be a pleasant journey.

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets...

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

It's an evening in autumn, a season given to thoughts of change, decay and dying.  Eliot hauntingly images the yellow fog of the night and the yellow smoke from chimneys as a cat that "rubs its back" and "rubs its muzzle" on window-panes before it 

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. 

The aging narrator, J. Alfred Prufrock, is having afternoon tea with a woman, wondering if he has "the strength to force the moment to its crisis?"  He keeps telling himself that there "indeed will be time" for a "hundred visions and revisions" and experiences still to come. But then he acknowledges that he has "measured out my life with coffee spoons" and that he has "seen the moment of my greatness flicker" and has "seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker."  

With all his past experiences and attempts to "squeeze the universe into a ball", he wonders if it was worth it all

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

               “That is not it at all,

               That is not what I meant, at all.”

The poem in its entirety as well as an excellent reading of it (poetry after all is meant to be heard) can be found here.

Andrei Voznesensky's Autumn in Sigulda is more a poem of leave-taking than of aging.  

Hanging out of the train, I

Bid you all good-bye.

Good-bye, Summer:

My time is up.

Sigulda is a beautiful town in Latvia known for its golden autumns, but, in Voznesensky's autumn, already "the woods have shed their leaves, empty and sad today," and "People...are also empty, as we leave behind (We have no choice) Walls, mothers, womankind: So it has always been and will be."  A particular source of Voznesensky's sadness is, of course, a woman that he met there.

In the woods the leaves were already falling

When you ran into me, asked me something.

Your dog was with you: you tugged at his leash and called him,

He tugged the other way:

Thank you for that day.

I came alive: thank you for that September,

For explaining me to myself.

They are leaving on trains going in different directions and likely never to see one another again: "Instead of us this one or that one will come."

Now for the aging part, the looking back on life part.  In what may be my favorite poetic passage, Voznesensky expresses that gratitude that is so much a part of happiness.

Thank you, Life, for having been.

In the shooting gallery,

Where the top score is ten,

I tried to reach a century:

Thank you for letting me make the mistake...

W.H. Auden's translation** of Autumn in Sigulda can be found here.  

Unlike Love Song and Autumn which I liked instantly, it took nearly six decades for me to fully appreciate Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Ulysses.***  The poem opens with the legendary Greek king - aged, idle, and sitting by his "still hearth" - remembering his younger years and not at all resigned to a slow slide towards death.  Ulysses declares:

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees...

He knows his life is far from over, with much still to see and do :

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done

The poem closes with one of the most famous reflections on old age:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The poem in its entirety as well as a reading of it can be found here.

Notes:

*T.S. Eliot wrote The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock when he was 23; Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote Ulysses when he was 24; I am not completely sure when Andrei Voznesensky wrote Autumn in Sigulda but it had already been translated into English and in a collection by the time he was 32.

**Translating poetry must be one of the most difficult tasks imaginable for a translator.  Obviously you need a poet to do the task, but how do you get the connotations and meter and rhyme to be as the original? 

***Ulysses is the Latin name for the Greek king Odysseus. The word "odyssey" has come to mean a journey of epic proportions. The word comes from Homer's epic poem The Odyssey, written in the 8th century BC. The Odyssey speaks of the legendary journey of king Odysseus to return home, to his palace and family, after the Trojan War had ended.  

Sources: Greeka, Wikipedia

The Art of Picasso: War and Peace

POSTED SEPTEMBER 18, 2022

"I stand for life against death. I stand for peace against war!" – Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) was one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century.  Associated with pioneering Cubism, alongside Georges Braque, he also invented collage and made major contributions to Symbolism and Surrealism. He saw himself above all as a painter, yet his sculpture was greatly influential, and he also explored areas as diverse as printmaking and ceramics.  With his bold shapes and characteristic angles, the Spanish artist captured everything "from the horrors of war to the boundless possibilities of the human form."  Even those unfamiliar with modern art can likely identify a few of his best-known paintings.

In the next several posts, we'll examine some aspects of his work.  Today we start with his "war and peace" paintings.

War

War was a defining preoccupation of the artist, whose long lifespan stretched from the Cuban War of Independence (which broke out in 1895, when he was just 14 years old) to the Vietnam War, which ended two years after the artist’s death in 1973.  

Picasso’s early Cubist collages, including "A Bottle and a Newspaper" from 1912 (below left) and "Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar, and Newspaper (below right), incorporate clippings from newspapers that chronicle the accelerating tensions in the Balkans - tensions that would shortly escalate into World War I, one of the most senseless wars in human history.

In his depictions of war, Picasso could be more subtle than Guernica, as in Night Fishing at Antibes, or more blunt, as in Massacre in Korea.  

In the former, the scale of the painting (nearly 7 ft high and more than 11 ft long) has suggested to some that this is more than just an idyllic beach tableau from an August night in 1939.  The interspersion of black throughout the scene, the almost ritualistic killing of the fish and the strange moon that may or may not be an ancient symbol of death have suggested to some that the painting reflects the rising political tensions just prior to the outbreak of World War II.

In the latter, Picasso's stark representation of the Sinch’on massacres during the Korean War, a desperate huddle of three women and five children await imminent execution by a lock-step squad of automatons that encroaches from the right – dreary drones whose smooth cyborg skin and weird weaponry are the stuff of nightmares.  Picasso's work from 1951 is drawn from Francisco Goya's painting The Third of May 1808, which shows Napoleon's soldiers executing Spanish freedom fighters in a similar tableau.

Peace

Born in Spain, Pablo Picasso lived in France - first in Paris and then on the Riviera - for more than 70 years until his death in 1973.  He refused to return to Spain while Franco was alive. And, he stayed in France even after the center of the modern art world had moved from Paris to New York.* 

Picasso was fiercely anti-fascist and antiwar and, especially for a Spaniard of his generation, an anti-racist.  Unsurprisingly, he embarked on several projects and many works celebrating peace and freedom.**  

"War and Peace" was one of Picasso's largest projects, a themed output of hundreds of paintings and preparatory drawings.  The drawing below is also sometimes referred to as Head or Head of a Woman and was just one artwork from this extensive War and Peace series of the early 1950s.  She looks quite a lot like someone you could have seen on the streets of Haight-Ashbury a quarter of a century later.***  

Picasso also produced a series of murals, themed on War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy's novel, for a chapel in Vallauris, Southern France.  His most recognizable "peace" work is, of course, "La Colombe" ("The Dove") [below].  As a symbol of peace, a dove carrying an olive branch  dates back to early Christian times.  Picasso's sketch was chosen as the symbol for the World Peace Council in Paris in 1949 and became a symbol of the peace movement in the post-war years.  

More of Picasso's peace-themed works, accompanied by music, are in the marvelous video below from Coffey Line YouTube channel.

Notes

* Because he was a member of the French Communist party, Pablo Picasso was never allowed to visit the United States.  The fascist wars of the mid-twentieth century, the Spanish Civil War and WWII, led him, like many Europeans of his generation, to become communists.

**Picasso: Peace and Freedom was the name of a major exhibition in 2010 at the Tate Liverpool.  “Picasso: Peace and Freedom” looks at Picasso’s work between 1944, when he joined the French Communist Party, and his death in 1973. It shows him as an artist who recorded the brutality of war and worked through his art, and in his life, for peace.  

***The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury.  One of several songs celebrating this was "San Francisco (Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)."

Sources: The Art Story - 1, CNN, BBC Culture, The Left Bank Café, The Guardian, Peace News