Roman History Books and More

the sabine women in arts

(Roma cont'd)

from Bingley: The Rape of the Sabine Women

romulus and remus illustrations on 'matters arising'

Bingley's found a lot of pictures:

Romulus and Remus

turning 100 at carnegie hall, with new notes

... and this hot from the presses:

Arts / Music (New York Times)
Turning 100 at Carnegie Hall, With New Notes
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
Published: December 12, 2008
Classical music tends to lionize the great composer cut down in youth, but Elliott Carter made a mockery of that trope, with a celebration of his 100th birthday at Carnegie Hall.


Elliott Carter arrived early for Thursday night’s Carnegie Hall concert.
Daniel Barenboim was to play Mr. Carter’s “Interventions.”
Photo: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

a tribute to elliott carter by stephen soderberg

  … the way it all goes along: A tribute to Elliott Carter by Stephen Soderberg

On December 11th, Elliott Carter will turn 100.  In 1971 Aaron Copland said of his friend,

"Most composers hit their stride fairly early. Elliott Carter was an exceptional case. He had reached the age of forty before he began producing music that aroused special attention. Since then, during the past twenty years, he has gradually produced a body of work so original in conception and so imaginative in execution that we can proudly point to it as among the finest examples of musical creation that we in America have -- or that any other country has."

Now, in 2008, it has been sixty years since Carter "began producing music that aroused special attention" -- sixty years creating music that continues to astonish and challenge performers and audiences worldwide.

read on

Image:  Elliot Carter
from The musical languages of Elliott Carter by Charles Rosen. (Washington, DC: Music Division, Research Services, Library of Congress, 1984). Performing Arts Reading Room, Library of Congress.

Happy 10oth Birthday, Elliott Carter!

the conspiracy of gaius julius civilis (the batavian rebellion of 69/70 CE)

One of the tasks the emperor Vespasian has given Marcus Didius Falco for his assignment in Germania (The Iron Hand of Mars by Lindsey Davis, our next read) is to find the fugitive leader of the Batavian Rebellion, Gaius Julius Civilis.  Read the mystery novel and find out what "really" happened to Civilis before he "disappears from history," as it is phrased in one of the articles below.  The whole sorry story as reported in history:

Gaius Julius Civilis
Revolt of the Batavi
both Wikipedia, handle with care
The Batavian revolt at livius.org

Ancient writers:

The History by Tacitus
Cassius Dio Epitome of Book LXIV

The image at right comes from a large canvas titled The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, by Rembrandt, 1662 (Nationalmuseum Stockholm).   It's accompanied by an excellent text.

another entertaining mythology installment by bingley: pyramus and thisbe

Pyramus and Thisbe at Matters Arising

Don't miss the Beatles video!

Image:  Pyramus and Thisbe, from Caxton's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, circa 1480.

More Ovid Illustrations and facsimiles from The Classics Text, Traditions and Interpretations.

coriolanus

Update 2:  Here you can listen to the Coriolan Overture.

Update 1:  Bingley wrote about Coriolanus on About.com:

• Coriolanus Biography
  Bingley's Biography of Coriolanus Who Was Originally Known as Cnaeus Marcius
• Coriolanus
  Plutarch's Biography of Coriolanus and Shakespeare's Coriolanus Play

Last Sunday we went to the opening concert of the 2008/2009 season of the Stamford Symphony Orchestra.  After the National Anthem, the first order of business was the Coriolan Overture by Beethoven (followed by Symphony No. 9 in C major (D.944) – The Great for big as opposed to little and better known to me as Symphony No. 7 – by Schubert;  and the Emperor Concerto No. 5 for Piano & Orchestra in E flat major by Beethoven, soloist Vladimir Feltsman).  The program note for Coriolan says,

No doubt the protagonist’s temperament—iron-willed, passionate, uncompromising and moved to reckless bravery—resonated deeply in Beethoven’s psyche; he saw in Coriolanus a mirror of himself.

a satisfying sunday at the met museum greek & roman galleries and a turner retrospective

… after which we declared ourselves mentally exhausted and headed home.

The new Greek and Roman Galleries are overwhelming!  More Greek than Roman objects though.  It is worthwhile perusing the preceding link down to two YouTube clips;  although the 45 artifacts shown online mostly do not include the ones I especially liked.  But not to despair, I found out that one is allowed to take photos, and on my next visit – all by my little self  – I will take my camera along and do some more reporting here.  I've taken copious notes already, so I will find them easily.  Then there is a mezzanine which displays Etruscan art, with a life-size bronze chariot – the colors in the above photo though are misleading, the chariot has the typical bluish-green patina, and in the current display it is dramatically preceded by two lions who seem to draw it.  The mezzanine also holds the amazing Greek and Roman Study Collection, containing 3,500 objects!   There are no labels;  instead there are computer screens along the wall where one can call up each item.  The windows of the Etruscan Art gallery overlook the central court of the galleries, the former fountain court, which older residents of the area may remember as the Fountain Court Café with the reflecting pool.

metropolitan museum chooses new director

Arts / Art & Design

Met Chooses Tapestries Curator to Lead Museum

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: September 10, 2008

Thomas P. Campbell is slated to succeed Philippe de Montebello as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ending months of fervid speculation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art reached into its ranks on Tuesday and chose Thomas P. Campbell, the 46-year-old British-born tapestries curator, to succeed Philippe de Montebello as director and chief executive.

Photo: The Metropolitian Museum of Art

berkshire mountains in early september, and the clark art institute

On Labor Day we took a couple of days off and drove to our favorite haunt, the Brook Farm Inn at Lenox, Mass., in the Berkshire Mountains, where I have been a guest for over 25 years.  And in perfect weather!

We spent most of one day at our favorite museum, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, better known as "The Clark."  This year's summer exhibit is Like Breath on Glass, "the first exhibition to examine 'painting softly,' a distinctive approach to painting exemplified in works by James McNeill Whistler and George Inness," as well as  others "emulating" Whistler, including Edward Steichen whom I only was aware of as photographer until now.

“Paint should not be applied thick. It should be like breath on the surface of a pane of glass.”
James McNeill Whistler

musicians and the power of old age: elliott carter and charles rosen

They may be a bit shaky in the legs, but there is nothing wrong with their mental and creative faculties!  Elliott Carter, the centenarian, has composed works as intricate as ever over the last few years, and Charles Rosen at 81 is still playing Carter's complex pieces here at the Carterfest at Tanglewood this week, including the Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano (with Ursula Oppens on the harpsichord) which he helped premiere in 1961.  And they are both accessible:  Carter sits mostly in the audience, and Rosen is not averse to having a casual conversation with a concertgoer.

I found two excellent related articles in the NYT archive, one by Mr. Rosen himself:

metamorphoses comic strip: things change

Bingley found this comic strip: Things Change | The Metamorphoses Comic.

Enjoy!

harbison's symphony #5, orpheus and eurydice

Since we have been blogging mythology, a related subject to Orpheus and Eurydice (I leave it to Robert in his new blog, Matters Arising, to develop fully):

John Harbison's Symphony No. 5 premiered with the BSO on April 17 and 18 at Symphony Hall in Boston. Friday night it had its first Tanglewood performance.  It's the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in the underworld, a story of loss. The work is set for mezzo-soprano, baritone and orchestra, and uses three poems: Czeslaw Milosz' "Orpheus and Eurydice" (baritone), Louise Glück's "Relic," focusing on Eurydice (mezzo-soprano), and Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnet to Orpheus II, 13 (b0th).  (The Milosz and Glück poems are not available online.)

infernal opera: zimmermann's "die soldaten" at the park avenue armory

A review in Sunday's New Yorker issue (the one with the by now infamous satirical Obama cover), “Die Soldaten” at the Armory by Alex Ross, brought me back to the heyday of the Cologne (Germany) Opera from the late 1950s into the mid-1960s under Oscar Fritz Schuh.  Die Soldaten (The Soldiers) by Bernd Alois Zimmermann was commissioned by the Cologne Opera and saw its very first performance there in 1965, and it was something almost totally new at the time for us and extremely exciting!  We were surrounded by sound!  A new use of operatic voices!  I saw/heard it three times, as people from out of town wanted to see it, including one night of free tickets with friends from the then also famous Baden-Baden Radio station, with a memorable and very boozy party afterward …

phaethon and the heliades

The next story in the Metamorphoses comes at the end of Book 1 and is continued through almost the whole of the first half of Book 2. (picture of amber by Hannes Grobe, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 licence).

A 1635 painting by Giovanni da San Giovanni, aka Giovanni Mannozzi, shows Apollo and Phaethon talking together.  It is now in the Uffizi gallery but their site doesn't show it.  A painting from around the same time by Poussin also shows the meeting between Helios and Phaethon (now in Berlin's Gemäldegalerie, but doesn't appear to be on their website).

where the book cover of 'cicero the patriot' comes from: read the book and enjoy the pictures

I discovered where the book cover of Cicero The Patriot comes from:

Comic History of Rome Table 10, Cicero denouncing Cataline
click on image to enlarge

sunday cello music in the woods

This morning we went to the local Arboretum to listen to chamber music in the woods (well, not quite the woods but on a patio surrounded by lawn and trees). It was a bit warm, but there was a lovely breeze …

Cellist Laura Usiskin, a graduate student at Yale School of Music and studying with the venerable Aldo Parisot, treated us to a selection from Johann Sebastian Bach's Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello.

pan and syrinx

The story Mercury tells to lull Argus to sleep is the story of Pan and Syrinx. It is your basic "unwilling nymph transformed into vegetation" story, so there isn't a lot of variety in artistic portrayals. The main source of variety lies in how few garments the nymph is wearing and how much trouble she is having with them. Nymphs seem to have heard of clothes, but they haven't really grasped the idea and are very prone to what I believe is known as wardrobe malfunction.

The 1759 picture by Boucher (below left), now in London's National Gallery, shows the beginning of the story with Pan spying on Syrinx and another nymph. The painting by Jean François de Troy (1722-4) and now in Los Angeles's Getty Center (below right) is similar to the two paintings further below.

   

io and argus

Ovid's next story is about Jupiter's pursuit of Io, and Juno's attempt to foil it with the help of Argus. (Thumbnail of peacock feathers under Creative Commons Attribution 1.0, photographed by Aaron Logan via wikipedia).

This 1532 picture (right) by Corregio, now in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, starts off the story with Io being seduced by Jupiter in the form of a cloud. The seduction is also portrayed by Sir John Hoppner in his 1785 painting. Hoppner's sitter for Io is believed to be the famous Lady Hamilton, mistress of Nelson and wife of Sir William Hamilton, the British ambassador to Naples and collector of antiquities from Pompeii.

Lambert Sustris shows Jupiter and Io (still in human form) but Juno has seen them while in Lastman's 1681 painting in London's National Gallery Io is now in the form of a heifer, not that that stops Juno from asking for her. Juno then entrusts Io to Argus, a scene painted by Aert Schouman in this 1738 painting from the Dordrechts Museum.  Unusually Victor Honoré Janssens took as his subject Inachus's recognition of Io in her new form.

ovid in exile as art

Ovid in his Poems of Exile (The Tristia, Ex Ponto, and Ibis with a hyper-linked in-depth index – A.S. Kline's Poetry In Translation) describes his domicile of exile as bleak and desolate.  In fact, Tomi at the Black Sea (Wikipdia, handle with care) was a Greek colony dating back to 500 BCE, with amphitheatre and all.  But he also writes about the Scythians in an ethnographic way.  I found two paintings online associated with Ovid in his exile, today's Romanian Constanţa, covering both aspects:

Ovid Banished from Rome (painting - oil on canvas) by William Turner, 1838, (in a private collection), on Wikimedia Commons, shows a Greek city.