Roman History Books and More

roman paintings

While looking for pictures of Io, I found this slideshow of Roman frescoes from the BBC reporting on an exhibition at the National Museum of Rome. Unfortunately the exhibition has finished, but you can still enjoy these.

apollo and daphne

The story of Daphne and Apollo has been a major inspiration for artists in all media.

For those who don't know what a laurel tree actually looks like, I've included the Wiki Commons picture on the left,  by  Giancarlo Dessi and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 licence.

The National Gallery in London has this picture (right) of Apollo and Daphne by Antonio del Pollaiuolo, probably painted some time in the 1470s. In the 17th century, Nicolas Poussin painted two versions of the story, one now in Munich's Alte Pinakothek was painted in 1625, and the other (far right), now in the Louvre, painted towards the end of his life in 1606-1665.

apollo and python

The earliest telling of the story of Apollo and Python is in the Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo (scroll down to lines 277 to 374). Ovid's re-telling of the story comes after his version of the flood.

This story seems to have inspired artists of the 19th century in particular. The Tate Gallery has an example by Turner (1811)  while the Apollo Gallery in the Louvre has a ceiling by Delacroix showing Apollo slaying the Python (click on the picture to see a larger version). The picture was commissioned in 1850 when the gallery was being restored and painted from 1850 to 1851.  The Louvre's site also has a short video of the gallery, which I haven't actually seen as you need Quick Time to view it. The National Gallery of Canada has Gustave Moreau's treatment of the subject from the early 1880s.

Once again we can bring you a modern video production of the story.

 

pyrrha and deucalion

The theme of Deucalion and Pyrrha repopulating the world by throwing stones over their shoulders has proved popular. The Prado has a painting of this subject by Rubens from c. 1636 (I suggest you use the search term Deucalion as the title), while a few years later Castiglione painted the same subject in 1655, now in Berlin. Dassier included it in a  series of medals on stories from the Metamorphoses produced in 1717. In his painting from around 1542, however, Tintoretto chose to take a look at an earlier point in the story with this picture of Deucalion and Pyrrha Praying Before the Statue of the Goddess Themis (c. 1542) (click on the picture to see a larger version), now in the Galleria Estense in Modena.

The pictures and medals date back to the 16th to very early 18th centuries, but the story still inspires as this video telling the story of Lycaon, the flood, and its aftermath, shows (note: the video begins at the end of the previous story).

the metamorphoses: some general resources

Ovid's "Metamorphoses" has been an inspiration to many artists down the centuries.

Larry A. Brown calls the pages from his site devoted to the "Metamorphoses":

An introduction and commentary with discussion of myths and links to sources and influences in art and literature.

This German high school site has the Latin text, broken down into sections with German, English, and Spanish headings, and copiously illustrated with artworks, mostly but by no means all, prints from early printed editions of  Ovid. In the side panel click on Ovidius Naso Edition, and then scroll down to the index of the 15 books. Those with slower connections may need to be patient.

Not specifically linked to the "Metamorphoses" but with further information about the characters, with citations from ancient sources and illustrations, are: theoi.com and Carlos Parada's Greek Mythology Link.

goethe's italian journey

More from David Derrick's The Toynbee convector, on one of my favorite reads: Goethe’s Italian Journey.

The book itself in translation:  Italian Journey: 1786-1788 (Penguin Classics)

Online, it's available in German only:

• ItaIienische Reise, vol. 1
• Italienische Reise, vol. 2
• Italienische Reise
• Wiedergeburt in Italien

elliott carter still going strong and composing at almost 100

The amazing Elliott Carter, who will be 100 in November:

Music Review

Quintet of Calming Strings and a Rumbling Clarinet

By STEVE SMITH

Published: May 1, 2008

The playful qualities of Elliott Carter’s music outnumbered potential hazards on Tuesday night in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at the Juilliard School.

Jennifer Taylor for The New York Times

The composer Elliott Carter, far right, discussed his new “Clarinet Quintet” with Ara Guzelimian, the dean of the Juilliard School, on Tuesday after the Juilliard String Quartet and the clarinetist Charles Neidich performed the piece.

theoi e-texts library of classics

In connection with yesterday's post on Virgil I discovered this great site:

The Theoi Classical E-Texts Library

"A collection of works from ancient Greek and Roman literature in translation. The theme of the library is classical mythology and so the selection presented consists primarily of ancient poetry (epic, lyric, bucolic, et. al.), drama and prose renditions of myth."

Explore it and enjoy!  Don't miss the Gallery.

what do early romantic composers and jane austen have in common?

According to Christian Knapp, who was the guest conductor this weekend at the Stamford Symphony Orchestra, and discussing Felix Mendelssohn's Symphony #4 (The Italian), the early Romantic composers such as Schubert and Mendelsohn had much in common with Jane Austen: they had the same restrained emotions.  I'm not so sure, on either side, having watched the recent Austen craze on PBS, and listening to the second movement of the above symphony.

All this is by way of a lead-in to today's enjoyable concert.  Christian Knapp did not disappoint, though I may have heard better interpretations of the Mendelssohn in my long life.

before this gets lost in the shuffle: illustrations to ovid's metamorphoses

From The Ovid Project. The text links for the Baur – in German – are next to the plates:

• The Metamorphoses by Ovid. Engravings by Johannes Baur. 1703.
  (A couple of typos:  It should read Verwandelungs Bücher, and the artist is Johann Wilhelm Baur)
• Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished Mythologized and Represented in Figures

Image: Baur Plate 3: Aetas aurea

'the other zenobia' – from judith weingarten's blog

This is too good to pass up:  Judith Weingarten (Zenobia, Empress of the East) blogged another Zenobia:  Treachery in Armenia and the Musical Drama of Johann Adolf Hasse!  Don't omit listening to the aria!

Tacitus, Annals, Book 12.

lauro de bosis and edward sheldon friends of thornton wilder

Thornton Wilder dedication of  The Ides of March reads:

This work is dedicated
to two friends:

LAURO DE BOSIS
Roman poet, who lost his life
marshaling a resistance against
the absolute power of Mussolini;
his aircraft pursued by those of the Duce
plunged into the Tyrrhenian Sea;
and to

EDWARD SHELDON

who though immobile and blind
for over twenty years
was the dispenser of wisdom,
courage, and gaiety
to a large number of people.

more on monasticism

The figures Gibbon particularly draws our attention to in the early history of monasticism are St. Anthony in Egypt and St. Martin in Gaul.

Monasticism seems to have started in Egypt, and we have accounts of some of the monks by  Rufinus and Palladius. Perhaps the most famous of the monks was St. Anthony, a life of whom was written by his contemporary admirer, Athanasius. The Catholic Encylopaedia has a more modern account.

Anthony has been a popular subject for painters: Hieronymus Bosch painted a lurid picture of Anthony's temptation by demons. Another picture on the same subject was painted by Matthias Grünewald as part of the Isenheim Altarpiece, which also contains a more restful picture of Anthony's visit to St. Paul the Hermit.

longtime director of met museum will retire

From the New York Times:

Arts / Art & Design

Longtime Director of Met Museum Will Retire

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: January 8, 2008

Philippe de Montebello, who has led the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 30 years, announced on Tuesday that he planned to retire at the end of the year.

Photo: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Time

on translating fiction

Being bi-lingual and interested in languages and literature, I have or so I like to believe, a fine ear (or eye) for literary translations in the languages I know.  Here is a recent experience:  A short while ago, I read The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross, a history of classical music in and of the 20th century.  Excellent!  Related blog, with musical examples.  The author relates that a number of American musicians/composers have read Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuehn As Told by a Friend. This sent me back to my library to re-read the novel, in the original German, about a composer who makes a Doctor Faustus-like deal with the Devil and eventually sinks into insanity, coinciding with the turmoil of the 1920s in Germany and the rise of Nazism.  The novel is a tour de force in prose, and I wondered how this could actually be translated into English without loosing its impact.  Not very well, I decided, after I had borrowed the above linked 1997 edition, translated by John E. Woods.  As a matter of fact, I could not bring myself reading much of the book, it was too painful.  Somewhere out there, there is a translation authorized by Thomas Mann, but it's out of print. 

The question though is, do translations ever work satisfactorily?

tanglewood music center: così fan tutte in modern garb & slapstick

Every year, the Tanglewood Music Center studies and performs one opera, in the old Theatre building, the only one at Tanglewood that has proper stage facilities and an orchestra pit.  This year it was Così fan tutte under James Levine, and I had secured the ticket early because the theatre is not very big.

But when I was there, I began to wonder, was it worth it?

The director was Ira Siff of La Gran Scena Opera Company, a “travesty group with falsetto ‘divas’ ”.  And so it should not have been much of a surprise that there was a lot of slapstick.  The question though is, how far can one go interpreting a Mozartean dramma giocioso?

classical concerts at tanglewood 2007

Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in July and August, there are concerts in the Tanglewood Shed, mostly with the Boston Symphony playing, some memorable, some not.  So here are my impressions:

Kurt Masur conducting Prokofiev (Symphony No.1, Violin Concerto No.1 with Joshua Bell) and Beethoven (Symphony No,1, and two days later Mozart's last three symphonies, 39, 40, and 41.   Mr. Mazur turned 80 a couple of weeks earlier.  My impression is that the BSO always plays Mozart and Beethoven better under him.  (I didn't like their performing these composer at all when Seiji Ozawa was the orchestra's music director, but it has improved some under Levine.)  In any case, both concerts were great, and Joshua Bell his usual excellent self.

2007 festival of contemporary music – the generation of ‘38

The Festival of Contemporary Music (FCM) at Tanglewood this year had the theme “The Generation of  ‘38,” meaning most of the music performed was by (American) composers born in 1938 or thereabouts.  Almost all of them were present at the festival.  John Harbison, the festival director, is one of them.  (The FCM link above is accompanied by an audio portion describing  a photographic retrospective of the  festival in the Visitors  Center.)

Performers, with the exception of a few professional soloists, were the fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center (TMC),

“ Established in 1940 by former Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director Serge Koussevitzky, the Tanglewood Music Center (TMC) provides a unique, in-depth musical experience for emerging professional musicians of exceptional ability.”

Judith Tick, Consulting Scholar, conducted lively pre-concert talks, often with the composers themselves.

music and other arts in the berkshires this summer

Laptop finally works again ... and another summer in the Berkshires with music and other arts is over.

Greeted by baby finches on the front porch who managed to hide well in the hanging fern plant and weren't fazed at all by the constant traffic of guests, let alone by those sitting and chatting on the porch, I happily settled in familiar surroundings.

pope leo the great and attila the hun

In telling how Pope Leo persuaded Attila not to attack the city of Rome, Gibbon is more sympathetic to later legendary accretions to the story than he usually is: Gibbon Chapter 35

"The apparition of the two apostles of St. Peter and St. Paul, who menaced the barbarian with instant death if he rejected the prayer of their successor, is one of the noblest legends of ecclesiastical tradition. The safety of Rome might deserve the interposition of celestial beings; and some indulgence is due to a fable which has been represented by the pencil of Raphael and the chisel of Algardi."

I have added links to images of the artworks Gibbon is referring to.