art

[pianistimo]

after reviewing the thread about composers (known and unknown by us now) around 1799, i found some old notes about artists that lived during the time too.

just for interest, here's the site to find paintings by jaques louis david (images)
www.asds.org/2001/jaques.htm

did you know that david was very active in the french revolution and took part in good activities and bad.  he was popular among a group of extremists called the montagnards and purposed the inventory of the national treasury, making him one of the founders of the louve!  in 1797 he met napoleon bonaparte and all the way until 1815 was his official painter!  very beautiful paintings.

feel free to add any interesting artists and artwork to this thread.

[alzado]

Erik Satie comes to mind as a comrade and close friend of the great French painters of Paris during the years from about 1894 to 1925.

One play or opera that Satie composed and produced had Pablo Picasso doing the stage set designs. 

According to one biography I recently read about Satie, some musicians and music critics of his era scorned him because he spent so much time socializing with painters.

Satie's own compositions -- including those in mixed media -- reflect the Surrealist or Dada trends.  As an example of mixed media, he included a short cinema clip in the performance of one of his compositions.

According to one article, the first use of the word "Surrealism" was to describe one of Satie's stage productions.

I am currently playing quite a bit of Satie and enjoy him very much.

Satie was a lifelong close personal friend of Debussy's.  He also knew Ravel quite well.

Although Satie took a stance very critical of impressionism, and stated that he despised it, in all truth his earlier compositions did much to influence Debussy and Ravel.  And these compositions, ironically, contain elements of what came to be called impressionism.

[pianistimo]

thanks for the information!  i didn't know much about satie, so this is good to read.  will look into more.

[bernhard]

Here are three interesting quotes about art I came across this week:

"All good things things como by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy." (Norman Maclean  - A River Runs Through It).

"Art is that human activity which consists in one man's consciously conveying to others, by certain external signs, the feelings he has experienced, and in others being infected by those feelings and also experiencing them." (Leo Tolstoy - What is Art?)


“The purpose of art is to remind us that there are an infinite number of options that we haven't even considered yet." (Richard Powers)

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

thanks for the information!  i didn't know much about satie, so this is good to read.  will look into more.

Satie is also an excellent writer. He wrote a most hilarious book called "Memories of a Mammal"

Here is a sampling of his writing:

What I am

Everyone will tell you I am not a musician. That is correct.
From the very beginning of my career I classes myself a phonometrographer. My work is completely phonometrical. Take my Fils des Étoiles, or my Morceaux en forme de Poire, my En habit de Cheval or my Sarabandes - it is evident that musical ideas played no part whatsoever in their composition. Science is the dominating factor.
Besides, I enjoy measuring a sound much more than hearing it. With my phonometer in my hand, I work happily and with confidence.
What haven't I weighted or measured? I've done all Beethoven, all Verdi, etc. It's fascinating.
The first time I used a phonoscope, I examined a B flat of medium size. I can assure you that I have never seen anything so revolting. I called in my man to show it to him.
On my phono-scales a common or garden F sharp registered 93 kilos. It came out of a fat tenor whom I also weighted.
Do you know how to clean sounds? It's a filthy business. Stretching them out is cleaner; indexing them is a meticulous task and needs good eyesight. Here, we are in the realm of pyrophony.
To write my Pièces Froides, I used a caleidophone recorder. It took seven minutes. I called in my man to let him hear them.
I think I can say that phonology is superior to music. There's more variety in it. The financial return is greater, too. I owe my fortune to it.
At all events, with a motodynamophone, even a rather inexperienced phonometrologist can easily note down more sounds that the most skilled musician in the same time, using the same amount of effort. This is how I have been able to write so much.
And so the future lies with philophony.


Odd corners of my life

The origins of the Saties probably go back to ancient times. Oh yes... I can't confirm anything on this point - but neither can I unconfirm it.
However, I presume that the family was not part of the nobility (nor even the papacy); that its members were good and humble serfs, and that was once an honour and a pleasure (for the serf's overlord, of course). Oh yes...
I don't know what the Saties did in the Hundred Years War; nor have I any information on their attitude and the part they played in the Thirty Years War (one of our loveliest wars).
Let the memory of my ancient ancestors rest in peace. Oh yes...
Let us pass on. I shall come back to this subject later.

As for me, I was born in Honfleur (Calvados), in the Pont-l'Evêque district, on 17 May 1866... So that makes me a quinquagenarian, and I might as well be called that as anything else.
Honfleur is a small town watered by the poetic waves of the Seine and - in complicity - the tumultous ones of the Channel. Its inhabitants (honfleurais) are very polite and very agreeable. Oh yes...
I remained in that city until I was twelve (1878) and then moved to Paris.... My childhood and adolescence were undistinguished - nothing happened worth recording in serious writings. So I shall say nothing of them.
Let us pass on. I shall come back to this subject later.

I'm burning to give you my description here (enumeration of my physical particulars - the ones I can mention decently, that is):... Hair and eyebrowns dark auburn; eyes grey (probably clouded); hair covering forehead; nose long; mouth medium; chin wide; face oval. Height 1 metre 67 centimetres.
The description on this document dates from 1887, the time when I did military service in the 33rd Infantry Regiment at Arras (pas-de-Calais). It would not fit me today.
I'm sorry I can't give you my digital (finger) prints. Oh yes. I don't have them on me, and these special reproductions are not good to look at (they look like Vuillermoz and Laloy combined).
Let us pass on. I shall come back to this subject later.

Following a rather short adolescence, I became an ordinary young man, tolerable but no more. At that moment in my life I began to think and to write music. Oh yes.
Wretched idea!... very wretched idea!
It certainly was, for I lost no time in developing an unpleasant (original) originality, irrelevant, anti-French, unnatural, etc...
Then life became so impossible for me that I resolved to retire to my estates and pass the rest of my days in an ivory tower - or one of some other (metallic) metal.
That is why I acquired a taste for misanthropy; why I nurtured hypochondria; why I became the most (leaden-like) miserable of men. It distressed people to look at me - even through hall-marked gold eye-glasses. Oh yes.
And all this happened to me because of music. That art has done me more harm that good, really: it has made me quarrel with people of quality, most honourable, more-than-distinguished, terribly genteel people.
Let us pass on. I shall come back to this subject later.

As a person, I am neither good nor bad. I waver between the two, so to speak. So I have never really done harm to anyone - nor good, come to that.
All the same, I have plenty of enemies - loyal enemies, of course. Why? For the most part, it is because they don't know me - or only know me second-hand, in short, through hearsay (lies worse than death).
Man can never be perfect. I bear no grudge against them: they are the main victims of their ignorance and short-sightedness.... Poor folk!...
So I am sorry for them.
Let us pass on. I shall come back to this subject later.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Tash]

what i find interesting is looking at art, music, science, philosophy etc all in the one context- like looking at what was going on at exactly the same time in each area as the other and seeing how they relate together. especially in the same countries. i haven't studied this in any detail yet, the interest has only just recently come to me, after realising that you have monteverdi, descartes and rembrandt around at approximately the same time. but very difference countries, so i should go be more specific. i will look more deeply into this in the hols i think...

[pianistimo]

satie was funny.  he and debussy have some remarkable similarities.  seems that they were stretching the borders of music.

i loved the quotes above that, too, bernhard.  you're a philospher and poet yourself.  i kinda wonder how many musicians are truly scientists, though.  it seems they are few and far between, and their music is more 'mechanical.'  but, that's ok.  it's interesting to see how music is like science and probably can be measured today in a way that satie never dreamed.  can you imagine if he lived today? 

[bernhard]

satie was funny.  he and debussy have some remarkable similarities.  seems that they were stretching the borders of music.

i loved the quotes above that, too, bernhard.  you're a philospher and poet yourself.  i kinda wonder how many musicians are truly scientists, though.  it seems they are few and far between, and their music is more 'mechanical.'  but, that's ok.  it's interesting to see how music is like science and probably can be measured today in a way that satie never dreamed.  can you imagine if he lived today? 

Satie was a completely fascinating guy. Google him and read about his love life (yes, he had one! and pretty intense - while it lasted ).

As for music and science, most of it has been done. And it may surprise you that it was all done in 1877 with the publication of the wonderful "On the Sensations of Tone" by Hermann Hemholtz (it is published by Dover). Interestingly enough Helmholtz was not a physicist, but a medical doctor and amateur pianist. Helmholtz is a definitely googable character.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[pianistimo]

i'll look into satie's love life and hemholtz's medical experiments on the piano.  thanks for the good read ideas, bernhard!