Followers

Sunday 22 February 2009

TRANSPARENT



Ferreira Gullar





Um instante........... A moment




Aqui me tenho........... Here I got me
Como não me conheço ...........As I do not know me
nem me quis.......... or want to

sem começo ...........without beginig
nem fim........... or end

aqui me tenho........... here I have me
sem mim ...........without me

nada lembro........... I remember anything
nem sei ...........I know nothing

à luz presente ...........to the present light
sou apenas um bicho........... I am only a insect

transparente ...................transparent



Ferreira Gullar is the pen name for José Ribamar Ferreira
(born in São Luís, Maranhão, Brazil on September 10, 1930),
Brazilian poet, playwright, essayist, art critic, and television writer.
In 1959 he formed the "Neo-Concretes" group of poets.

The Neo-Concrete Manifesto of that year by him begins:

We use the term "neo-concrete" to differentiate ourselves from those committed
to non-figurative "geometric" art (neo-plasticism, constructivism, suprematism,
the school of Ulm) and particularly the kind of concrete art that is influenced
by a dangerously acute rationalism. In the light of their artistic experience,
the painters, sculptors, engravers and writers participating
in this first Neo-concrete Exhibition came to the conclusion that it was necessary
to evaluate the theoretical principles on which concrete art has been founded,
none of which offers a rationale for the expressive potential they feel their art contains."
Living in Chile, in 1975, Ferreira Gullar wrote his best known work,
"Poema Sujo" ("Dirty Poem" in English). He was exiled by the Brazilian
dictatorial government that lasted from 1964 to 1985. The poem tells that the persecution to the exiled people was growing, many ones were being found dead
and, thinking in the hypothesis of his death, decided to write his last poem.
He passed months writing this poem with more than two thousand verses,
that brings forth his memories of his infancy and adolescence in São Luís,
Maranhão and the anguishes of being far from his land. Ferreira Gullar
read the poem at Augusto Boal's house in Buenos Aires, in a meeting organized
by Vinicius de Moraes. The reading, recorded on tape, became well known
between Brazilian intellectuals, who try to guarantee Gullar's return to
Brazil Brazil in 1977, where he continued writing to journals and publishing books.









Thursday 19 February 2009

NARCISSUS DANCING

Dansa di Narcìs

Jo i soj neri di amòur
né frut né rosignòul
dut intèir coma un flòur
i brami sensa sen.

Soj levat ienfra li violis
intant ch’a sclariva,
ciantànt un ciant dismintiàt
ta la not vualiva.
Mi soj dit: «Narcìs!»
e un spirt cu’l me vis
al scuriva la erba
cu’l clar dai so ris.

DANZA DI NARCISO.

Io sono nero di amore,
né fanciullo né usignolo,
tutto intero come un fiore,
desidero senza desiderio.

Mi sono alzato tra le viole,
mentre albeggiava,
cantando un canto
dimenticato nella notte uguale.
Mi sono detto: «Narciso!»,
e uno spirito col mio viso oscurava
l’erba al chiarore dei suoi ricci.


(da Suite furlana, II Danze)
____________________
NARCISSUS DANCING
I am black of love
not child, not nightingale,
as a whole flower, I
would not desire
.I got up between the
violas and dawn,
singing a song in
mind the same night.
I said to myself :?
Narcissus?, And spirit
with my face
darkened I ? grass in
light of his curls.
from furlana Suite , Dances II
in english is a free translation

IF NOT FOR THE CAT OR......



If Not for the Cat

by Jack Prelutsky

If not for the cat,
And the scarcity of cheese,
I could be content.

or not for KIDS
for US


Cat, Failing

by Robin Robertson

A figment, a thumbed
maquette of a cat, some
ditched plaything, something
brought in from outside:
his white fur stiff and grey,
coming apart at the seams.
I study the muzzle
of perished rubber, one ear
eaten away, his sour body
lumped like a bean-bag
leaking thinly
into a grim towel. I sit
and watch the light
degrade in his eyes.
He tries and fails
to climb to his chair, shirks
in one corner of the kitchen,
cowed, denatured, ceasing to be
anything like a cat,
and there's a new look
in those eyes
that refuse to meet mine
and it's the shame of  being
found out.  Just that.
And with that
loss of face
his face, I see,
has turned human.

Tuesday 17 February 2009

WHERE I AM WHEN YOU DONT´FIND ME

















FRANZ RAMA
The Naming of Cats
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, or George or Bill Bailey -
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover -
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effableEffanineffableDeep and inscrutable singular Name.


T S Elliot















LAST PICTURE OF HIM WITH LUD






FRANZ IN MOM SHOW
DEDICATE TO HIM


HE DIES IN 2007 , LUDWIG WAS VERRY YOUNG,
HE ALMOST DIED TOO, THE BURIAL WAS IN THE SEA ,
WE SUPPOSE TO BE THE BEST PLACE TO LEAVE FRANZ




THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP

Hogarth Press












Virginia book

Roger rug









invitation






A group of English intellectuals active from the early 1900's until the 1930's, who met for discussion in the Bloomsbury area of London in the early 20th century. The romantic record of the group's members is noteworthy, because they demonstrated a sexual freedom that was ahead of their time. Beginning in 1925, Virginia Woolf had a passionate affair with Vita Sackville-West. In the first flush of romance, Woolf wrote what has become a classic of gay fiction, the experimental fantasy Orlando (1927), which argued that love and passion ignore gender.
Auberon Duckworth; Duncan; Julian; Leonard Woolf. Front Virginia Woolf; Lady Margaret Duckworth; Clive; Vanessa
Others in the Bloomsbury group exhibited similar bisexual tendencies. Although Vanessa Stephen married Clive Bell, the great love of her life was Duncan Grant, who was primarily gay and had been sexually involved with her brother Adrian. During World War I, they lived together at a country estate with David "Bunny" Garnett, who was a lover of both.
Frances Marshall; Quentin; Julian; Duncan; Clive; Beatrice Mayor. In front Roger Fry and Raymond Mortimer
Triangular relationships with a gay twist were common within the Bloomsbury circle. Strachey was gay, but in the early days of Bloomsbury, he proposed marriage to Virginia Stephen (Woolf). In the 1920s, he lived in platonic bliss with surrealist painter Dora Carrington. When they both fell in love with the same man, Carrington married the object of their mutual desire, and the three set up housekeeping together. The cross-dressing Carrington had affairs with women, confiding to a friend that she had "more ecstasy" with female lovers than with men - "and no shame."


Clive Bell; is mistress Mary Hutchins;
Duncan Grant, E. M. Foster









Omega Workshops Ltd
opened to the public at 33 Fitzroy Square
in the heart of London's Bloomsbury.
The workshops incorporated public
showrooms as well as studios,
and were staffed by a business manager,
caretaker and a group of artist assistants.
Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry
were named as Directors. Roger Fry founded
and was the driving force behind the Omega Workshops. Unlike his most obvious
predecessors William Morris and the designers
of the Arts and Crafts Movement,
Fry was not concerned with social reform
or protesting against contemporary machine manufacture,
but wanted to remove what he saw as the false division between
the fine and decorative arts. He was keen to see some of the key ideas
of Post-Impressionism, such as bright colours and bold,
simplified forms, applied to design.

Monday 16 February 2009

LUDWIG NICHT VON BAYERN


ICH BIN DER KÄMPFER ICH
WAR ERLASSEN ZUERST


FINO GATO EM MACAU, DE UMA ATENÇÃO ESPECIAL

Image of a Macanese quasi-feral cat, poised--at attention. © Sepiru Chris, 2009.

Thursday 12 February 2009

MY FIRST LANGUAGE


1

2
I STUDIED SCULPTURE WHIT PHILLIP PAVIA AND HE LIKES HENRY MOORE,

Wednesday 11 February 2009

HANDSOMES ONE´S


MEOW...
from my
hermaphrodite side

Monday 9 February 2009

REBIRTH


From this day forward, Light triumphs as the days grow longer and gives more light.When Mithraism spread to ancient civilised world from Iran, Dec 21st was celebrated as Mithra’s birthday. But in the 4th century AD because of some errors in counting the Leap Year, the birthday of Mithra shifted to Dec 25th. Until that time the birthday of Jesus Christ was celebrated on Jan 6th. But the religion of most of the Romans and the people of many of the European countries was still Mithraism.When Christianity spread, the priests could not stop the practice of celebrating Mithra’s birthday on Dec 25th, so they declared this day as Jesus’s birthday which is still so.In ancient Persia, Yalda festivities were symbolized by the evergreen tree. Young girls wrapped their wishes in silk cloth and hung them on the tree. Eventually, it became a custom to place presents/gifts under the evergreen tree. As late as the 18th century a German learnt of the Yalda tree and created what we now know as the Christmas tree.For decades the entire Iranian nation, particularly Zarthushtis, celebrate Yalda more as the night of the rebirth of the “Sun” than connect it with the birth of Jesus. Yalda also known as Shab-e Cheleh in Persian is celebrated on the eve of the first day of the winter (December 21) in the Iranian calendar, which falls on the Winter Solstice and forty days before the next major Iranian festival "Jashn-e Sadeh (fire festival)". As the longest night of the year, the Eve of Yalda (Shab-e Yalda) is also a turning point, after which the days grow longer. It symbolised the triumph of Light and Goodness over the powers of Darkness. Yalda celebration has great significance in the Iranian calendar. It is the eve of the birth of Mithra, the Sun God, who symbolised light, goodness and strength on earth. Shab-e Yalda is a time of joy. The festival was considered pone of the most important celebrations in ancient Iran and continues to be celebrated to this day, for a period of more than 5000 years. Yalda (yaldā) is a Syriac word meaning birth (NPer. tavvalod and milād are from the same origin). In 3rd century CE, Mithra-worshippers adopted and used the term 'yalda' specifically with reference to the birth of Mithra.

GLOSSOLALIA (English)

Image of the battle with the Jabberwock by English illustrator Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914) from
I have always adored Jabberwocky.

The sounds of the made-up words and the rhythm of the poem reminds me of the whimsy and humour in the world that I otherwise forget too fas--and that disappears like lightning if we don't make beds of whimsical kindling to keep the whimsy blaze alight. 

I grew up listening to nonsense and love creating it to this day. 

Here: Jabberwocky by the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, Oxford Don of Mathematics, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll.


Jabberwocky

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

But then, it gets better. The Nonsense has been translated...

to French, German, Italian and to many other languages... 

This, to me my glossatorial friends, is glossolalia to me...

I hope you enjoy.

GLOSSOLALIA (Français)

(by Frank L. Warrin)

Le Jaseroque

Il brilgue: les tôves lubricilleux
Se gyrent en vrillant dans le guave,
Enmîmés sont les gougebosqueux,
Et le mômerade horsgrave.
Garde-toi du Jaseroque, mon fils!
La gueule qui mord; la griffe qui prend!
Garde-toi de l'oiseau Jube, évite
Le frumieux Band-à-prend.

Son glaive vorpal en mail il va-
T-à la recherche du fauve manscant;
Puis arriveé à l'arbre Té-Té,
Il y reste, réfléchissant.

Pendant qu'il pense, tout uffusé
Le Jaseroque, à l'oeil flambant,
Vient siblant par le bois tullegeais,
Et burbule en venant.

Un deux, un deux, par le milieu,
Le glaive vorpal fait pat-à-pan!
La bête défaite, avec sa tête,
Il rentre gallomphant.

As-tu tué le Jaseroque?
Viens à mon coeur, fils rayonnais!
O jour frabbejeais! Calleau! Callai!
Il cortule dans sa joie.

Il brilgue: les tôves lubricilleux
Se gyrent en vrillant dans le guave,
Enmîmés sont les gougebosqueux,
Et le mômerade horsgrave.

GLOSSOLALIA (Deutsch)

(by Robert Scott)

Der Jammerwoch

Es brillig war. Die schlichte Toven
Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
Und aller-mümsige Burggoven
Die mohmen Räth' ausgraben.

»Bewahre doch vor Jammerwoch!
Die Zähne knirschen, Krallen kratzen!
Bewahr' vor Jubjub-Vogel, vor
Frumiösen Banderschntzchen!«

Er griff sein vorpals Schwertchen zu,
Er suchte lang das manchsan' Ding;
Dann, stehend unterm Tumtum Baum,
Er an-zu-denken-fing.

Als stand er tief in Andacht auf,
Des Jammerwochen's Augen-feuer
Durch tulgen Wald mit Wiffek kam
Ein burbelnd Ungeheuer!

Eins, Zwei! Eins, Zwei! Und durch und durch
Sein vorpals Schwert zerschnifer-schnück,
Da blieb es todt! Er, Kopf in Hand,
Geläumfig zog zurück.

»Und schlugst Du ja den Jammerwoch?
Umarme mich, mien Böhm'sches Kind!
O Freuden-Tag! O Halloo-Schlag!«
Er schortelt froh-gesinnt.

Es brillig war. Die schlichte Toven
Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
Und aller-mümsige Burggoven
Die mohmen Räth' ausgraben.

GLOSSOLALIA (Italiano)

(by Adriana Crespi)

Il Ciarlestrone

Era brillosto, e gli alacridi tossi
succhiellavano scabbi nel pantúle:
Méstili eran tutti i paparossi,
e strombavan musando i tartarocchi.

«Attento al Ciarlestrone, figlio mio!
Fauci che azzannano, fauci che ti artigliano,
attento all'uccel Giuggio e attento ancora
Al fumibondo chiappabana!»

Afferò quello la sua vorpi da lama
a lungo il manson nemico cercò...
Cosí sostò presso l'albero Touton
e riflettendo alquanto dimorò.

E mentre il bellico pensier si trattenea,
il Ciarlestrone con occhiali brage
venne sifflando nella fulgida selva,
sbollentando nella sua avanzata.

Un, due! Un, due! E dentro e dentro
scattò saettante la vorpida lama!
Ei lo lasciò cadavere, e col capo
Se ne venne al ritorno galumpando.

«E hai tu ucciso il Ciarlestrone?
Fra le mie braccia, o raggioso fanciullo!
O giorno fragoroso, Callò, Callài!»
stripetò quello dala gioia.

Era brillosto, e gli alacridi tossi
succhiellavano scabbi nel pantúle:
Méstili eran tutti i paparossi,
e strombavan musando i tartarocchi.

Sunday 8 February 2009

PUNK VERSIONS OF MONKEY


Avant Garde all the Time

About the Host
01.06.09

Punk Versions of Monkey Chants

And other ethnopoetic marvels, including speaking in tongues, throat singers, and sound poetry.





About the Host


About the Poets
Kenneth Goldsmith


Back to Audio Page
k

Saturday 7 February 2009

SONG FROM THE TEMPTATION----


FILL UP AGAIN YOUR PUMPKINS WHIT
ALCOHOL, AND HAND UP THE LARGEST OF THEM
TO ME...SOLLEMN, I WILL LIGTH THE GIANT
COULDS FOR YOU. NOW IN THE NIGHT.IN THE
DEEP BLACK NIGHT...
YOU CANNOT SEE US, NO YOU CANNOT SEE US
BUT YOU ARE OURSELVES...THEREFORE WE
LAUGH SO GUILY WHEN THE SKIES ARE RED AT
DAWN, AT MIDDAY, AND IN THE BLACKEST
NIGTH.
STARS ARE OUR EYES AND THE NEBULAE OUR
BEARDS...WE HAVE PEOPLE´SOULS FOR YOUR
HEARST.WE HIDE OURSELVES AND YOU CANNOT
SEE US, WHICH IS JUST WHAT WE WANT WHEN
THE SIES ARE RED AT DAWN, AT MIDDAY,
AND INTO THE BLASCKEST NIGHT.
OURS TTORCHES STRETCHAWAY WITHOUT END,,,
SILVER, GLOWING RED, PURPLE, VIOLET, GREEN-
BLUE, AND BLACK. WEBEAR THEM IN OUR
DANCE OVER THE SEAS AND THE MOUNTAINS
ACROSS THE BOREDOM OF LIFE.
WE SLEEP AND STARS CIRCLE IN THE GLOOMY
DREAM.WE WAKE AND THE SUNS ASSEMBLE
FOR THE DANCE ACROSS BANKERS AND FOOLS,
WHORES AND DUCHEESSES..




MAX BEKCMANN



-Art is creative for the sake of realization,
not for amusement.. for transfiguration,
not for the sake of play.


-hardly need to abstract things,
for each object is unreal enough already,
so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting

NAIVE, OR ........


In Italy in the 18th and 19th centuries, a popular performer of poetry called the improvvisatore and improvvisatrice could, as prompted, deliver extempore breath-taking sustained ottava rima poems on topics ranging from the glories of Italy to the tragic death of Hector. Byron and the Shelleys heard them in performance and knew personally the improvvisatore Tommaso Sgricci. They responded to performances or reports of them in their own poetry, alluding to the improvvisatori, ventriloquizing them, quoting the favored stanzas. Along with Byron and Shelley, other Romantic poets, later in the period, responded to them as well: Keats, Bryan Procter, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Felicia Hemans, the Coleridge of 1825, and Laetitia Landon all wrote poems with direct or indirect reference to the improvvisatori and to poetry as improvisation? What was it in the poetry of the improvvisatori that the British poets wished to incorporate or translate into their own, written, poems and to what end? One could easily imagine--and indeed I initially surmised--that the English poets were presenting a second-order engagement with spontaneity and experience, a reflective and interpretative one, an instance of Friedrich Schiller's sentimental, rather than naive, poetry, Wordsworth's "emotion recollected in tranquility." In a poem like Hemans's "The Dying Improvisatore," for example, the performer speaks from his death bed, mourning the vanishing of his art and livelihood. Besides, how could one actually write that which by definition vanishes with its very speech and gestures? But, ever since the Romantic period, poets has found ways of "translating" that essential ephemerality into written equivalents. Literary history associates improvisational poetry with Byron's Don Juan, but only as a wonderful aberration, nothing one would define as the poetry of Romanticism. I propose, on the other hand, that the above-mentioned poets, including Byron, attempted to wrest improvisational poetics from the periphery and draw it into the center of Romantic concerns. Other poets and writers of the nineteenth century such as Pushkin in Russia, Thoreau in North America, and Adam Mickiewicz in Poland. have turned to improvisational poetics in their works. And with over a century of experiments in improvisation (such as the "automatic writing" of the Surrealists, the aleatory poetry of John Cage and Jackson Mac Low) and the "theory" to go along with them, it is now possible to describe with a new clarity the Romantic presence of improvisation. Moreover, I shall propose that improvisational poetics may have been defining for "later" British Romanticism. In this paper, therefore, I shall sketch a poetics of Romantic improvisational poetry, some of the formal possibilities chosen by Romantic poets to enact improvisational poetry, and speculate on the link between improvisation and a feminist Romantic poetics. Traditional notions of Romantic lyric, and lyric poetry in general, encourage a definition of the Romantic response to improvisational poetry as sentimental. Unsung as a kind of zeitgeist poetics for the post-Revolutionary era, Schiller's distinctions, in On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, between a poetry of immediacy and one of self-conscious contemplation and recollection became and continues to serve as a paradigm for thinking about poetic possibility during Romanticism and after. Thus although he associates a self-conscious poetry with the world of Romanticism, I nonetheless find Schiller useful for initiating a discussion about the fate of improvisation in Romantic poetry: indeed, improvisational poetry could be said to fulfill the conditions in the present of Schiller's apparently irretrievable naive. The naive, according to Schiller, rejoices in the "living presence of the object," encourages "serene spontaneity" and "the naive of surprise." At times it is difficult to distinguish between childish and child-like innocence. In the naive poem, signifier and signified are one. Schiller, describing Homer as the quintessential naive poet, observes that his method in the similes is juxtaposition, which he carries out in a "heartless" way, without sentiment. Moreover, Homer and other naive poets could be considered negatively capable, losing themselves in the referent. The sentimental (emotion-driven) poet, on the other hand, stands at a distance from such "perfection," dwelling in a state of striving, desiring, and progressing towards what he or she perceives as ideals. Elegiac by temperament, the sentimental poet looks upon the vanished world of the integrated self and nature as something to be mourned but its eventual return in the present in a new more complex form something to be hoped for. Similar to Schiller, in England, Wordsworth, defining poetry as "emotion recollected in tranquility," sums up the conditions of the sentimental. First, "emotion"--that is, affect replaces the referent, is at the basis of it, but emotion itself stands at a remove from the present. Secondly, if the world and the self that produced the emotion define "experience," then poetry not only refers to experience that has already happened, but it appears in the poem as a recollection: the mental recuperation; the "drama of the lyric subject," is privileged over the experience itself. Similarly, third, a tranquil state is preferred over the startled, emotional, state of encounter with the other. (The naive poet, says Schiller, by contrast, "runs wild.") Apparently the predominance of the recollection of "emotion" or affect as a subject for poetry precludes the possibility of a poetry of the referent. When emotion and the drama of the lyric subject flood the poem's landscape, the world itself, including the world of other voices vanishes. It follows that the mistake of looking at improvisation through the category of the sentimental--in the works of Schiller, Wordsworth, and their followers--is the assumption of the originary status of the naive and of improvisation: that either is in some sense "pre"-poetic. Rather a poet of improvisation simply chooses a different emphasis and intention...


na·ive
Variant(s):
or na·ïve
\nä-ˈēv, nī-\
Function:
adjective
Inflected Form(s):
na·iv·er; na·iv·est
Etymology:
French naïve, feminine of naïf, from Old French, inborn, natural, from Latin
nativus native A Sampling of "Naive" Artists
Date:

1654

Friday 6 February 2009

TORQUATO TASSO

Io, ch'altre volte fui nelle amorose
insidie colto,or ben le riconosco,
e le discopro, o giovinetti, a voi.
(from 'Quel labbro che le rose han colorito')

GERUSALEMME DELIVERÁ



.
O heavenly Muse, that not with fading bays Deckest thy brow by the Heliconian spring, But sittest crowned with stars' immortal rays In Heaven, where legions of bright angels sing; Inspire life in my wit, my thoughts upraise, My verse ennoble, and forgive the thing,If fictions light I mix with truth divine, And fill these lines with other praise than thine. (from Jerusalem Delivered)


SORRENTO DA MARE

Torquato play by German dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe sixteenth-century Italian poet, Torquato Tasso. The play was first conceived in Weimar in 1780 but most of it was written during his two years in Italy, beabout the tween 1786 and 1788. From Torquato Tasso (play). For the opera by Donizetti, see Torquato Tasso (opera).

Wednesday 4 February 2009

TWO IMAGES FOR HAIKU LOVERS


cats..wind
black nigth
yellow grey winter in sunset


SURRENDER TO BLAKE


The are painters who belong
to books

Tuesday 3 February 2009

JUST BEFORE DAWN

Image of a the hospital entrance, just before dawn in Campo San Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, Italy. © Sepiru Chris, 2009. Non si levav'ancor l'alba novella

(Public domain music sourced from the Wikimedia Commons)

Claudio Monteverdi (baptised1567-1643) wrote this madrigal when he was the Maestre di Capella at Mantua, about twenty years before he became the Maestre di Capella at the Basilica di San Marco a Venezia. It predates the baroque period by about a decade.

"About ere yet the dawn had come" is from Monteverdi's second book of madrigals, a historical examination of musical styles. 

"About ere yet the dawn had come", "Non si levav'ancor l'alba novella" in Italian, is a madrigal in two parts for five voices, SV 40, with lyrics by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso (1544-1595).

The piece hearkens back to, and is a tribute to, renowned late Renaissance madrigal composer Luca Marenzio's (1533?-1599) "Non vidi mai dopo notturna pioggia" which used the fifth stanza of Francesco Petraca's (1304-1374) Canzoniere "In quelle parte dove Amor mi sprona". (For clarity, yes. Petrarca is called Petrarch in English.)

NEW YEAR SUNSET


Instrumental Music at Sunset
Also named Xunyang Lute and Xunyang in Moonlight, Instrumental Music at Sunset is one of the representative works of ancient Chinese lute music. The author is not known.
Beginning to be popular as early as in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the music's name was first seen in Textual Research of Contemporary Music compiled by Yao Xie (1805-1864) in the Qing dynasty. The original version was made up of six untitled sections and an epilogue. Later it was expanded into a ten-section piece. In the years between 1923 and 1925, this music was adapted by Liu Yaozhang and Zheng Jinwen into concert music of traditional string and woodwind instruments. And the name of the music was changed to the present name - Moonlight of Spring River.
Instrumental Music at Sunset is a melodious lute music that expresses emotions and feelings. Beginning with various techniques of performance, the music depicts a beautiful landscape. The following sections express a profound feeling by employing many techniques of variations, with the embellishing murmuring voices of ripples and oars at opportune moments.
Now this music is included in the repertoire of folk orchestra.

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