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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2016 5:34:43 GMT -5
Due to unprecedented demand from around the world, everyone reading ' The Third' is cordially invited to join the complete walk, if not the London Marathon. If you cannot make it in person, how about Hamlet?
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Post by Gerard on Apr 24, 2016 19:13:47 GMT -5
Due to unprecedented demand from around the world, everyone reading ' The Third' is cordially invited to join the complete walk, if not the London Marathon. If you cannot make it in person, how about Hamlet? We would have gone if taken. Did you hear any Mendelssohn or was there the usual negrification?
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Post by ahinton on Apr 25, 2016 1:48:23 GMT -5
Did you hear any Mendelssohn or was there the usual negrification? What on earth is that when it's at home or indeed elsewhere? ("negrification", that is - I already know what Mendelssohn is)...
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Post by Gerard on Apr 25, 2016 4:07:29 GMT -5
Let us couch the question in another form: the music of Mendelssohn is as appropriate as any for watching kc's thirty-seven specially made ten-minute films. But since the '-fifties of the past century England has been beset by a kind of uncouth guitar-twanging which is imported from some hideous trans-Atlantic land and is now worshipped everywhere, even on the B.B.C.'s Third Wireless. It derives ultimately from the jumping of Negro slaves and is everywhere pushed at the jigging mobs of Europe, to keep them "happy". Not at all suitable for Shakespere of course. My only question is whether it would be correct to write "negrofication" or "negrification". The O.E.D. presents neither, but does offer us both "negroism" and "negritude".
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Post by ahinton on Apr 25, 2016 4:58:54 GMT -5
Not at all suitable for Shakespere of course. Shakespe are, please. My only question is whether it would be correct to write "negrofication" or "negrification". And my only answer is "neither", rather along the lines of the old non-sequiturial chestnut "which is correct - 8 and 8 is 15 or 8 and 8 are 15?"...
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2016 11:08:49 GMT -5
If I may address both your questions directly, Gerard: Due to unprecedented demand from around the world, everyone reading ' The Third' is cordially invited to join the complete walk, if not the London Marathon. If you cannot make it in person, how about Hamlet? "We would have gone if taken. Did you hear any Mendelssohn or was there the usual negrification?" No, I did not hear any Mendelssohn yesterday, Gerard, so I looked ' A Midsummer Night's Dream' up on YouTube! YouTube - Shakespeare/Mendelssohn - A Midsummer Night's DreamAs for the usual 'negrification', no, I think that it was most unusual. Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, asked what Shakespeare's plays would have meant to the public when they were first performed. Carefully selected objects shed light on the great issues of the day that preoccupied the public and helped shape the works, and revealed much about the concerns and beliefs of Shakespearean England. In Shakespeare Goes Global, Neil considers how William Shakespeare made the transition from successful playwright to possibly the greatest dramatist the world has known. British Museum - Shakespeare’s legacy: the Robben Island BibleThis explains why I think that it was unusual. Writing for BBC News, Tim Masters reports how the curtain falls on Hamlet's two-year tour of the globe. The final Hamlet was Naeem Hayat (left) rather than Ladi Emeruwa (right), so the final Dane was ethnically of Pakistani rather than Nigerian origin. FT - Home and away: the Globe to Globe Hamlet projectI should perhaps emphasise that I did not complete the complete walk along the South Bank yesterday afternoon. The five plays I did see on screen, however, were King John, Love's Labour's Lost, Julius Caesar, the Scottish play and Hamlet. Kenneth Branagh's 1996 Hamlet was my particular favourite. BFI - Shakespeare on FilmI should have liked you all to have joined me on my walk.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2016 4:27:28 GMT -5
Do they do the Bowdler version there kc? One would think they would with all the little ones swarming around. Since our last discussion I have downloaded several of Bowdler's volumes, and read them with great pleasure. Quite honestly, it is such a joy in life to know that there can be nothing nasty around the corner. We have no objection to corners as such, so long as they are all guaranteed to be happy corners. Does not our membership concur? We got side-tracked by your link to the British Museum to the discovery of a statue lost under the sea for two thousand years: blog.britishmuseum.org/category/defining-beauty-the-body-in-ancient-greek-art/
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Post by ahinton on Apr 26, 2016 4:49:36 GMT -5
Do they do the Bowdler version there kc? One would think they would with all the little ones swarming around. Since our last discussion I have downloaded several of Bowdler's volumes, and read them with great pleasure. Quite honestly, it is such a joy in life to know that there can be nothing nasty around the corner. We have no objection to corners as such, so long as they are all guaranteed to be happy corners. Does not our membership concur? This section of said membership doesn't. That the term "Bowdlerisation" has generally been regarded as a pejorative since it was coined speaks with sufficient eloquence for itself. Would you likewise seek to advocate the sanitising of Beethoven's final five quartets, the Symphonie Fantastique, the Faust legend and all the music that it has inspired, the sixth symphonies of Mahler, Myaskovsky, Prokofiev or Pettersson? Assuming that you might wish to try, how (and, for that matter, why) would you go about trying to mollify operas such as Salome, Elektra, Wozzeck, Lulu, War and Peace and Die Soldaten? Nothing nasty around the corner? All guaranteed happy corners? Life just isn't like that and never has been and, after all, let's not forget that Nielsen righly observed that "music is the sound of life" (which someone once wittily corrupted in reference to Mr Segerstam as "music is the sound of Leif")...
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Post by Deleted on Apr 27, 2016 8:10:15 GMT -5
. . . how . . . would you go about trying to mollify operas such as Salome, Elektra, Wozzeck, Lulu, War and Peace and Die Soldaten? Salome - yes (cut it) Elektra - yes (cut it) Wozzeck - yes (cut it) Lulu - yes (cut it) War and Peace (if you mean Count Толсто́й's novel) yes, cut it. Mollification is very necessary in all these cases. Die Soldaten (I don't know it/them) As may be seen there is a lot of work awaiting the clean-limbed Bowdlers of to-day.
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Post by ahinton on Apr 27, 2016 8:43:24 GMT -5
. . . how . . . would you go about trying to mollify operas such as Salome, Elektra, Wozzeck, Lulu, War and Peace and Die Soldaten? Salome - yes (cut it) Elektra - yes (cut it) Wozzeck - yes (cut it) Lulu - yes (cut it) War and Peace (if you mean Count Толсто́й's novel) yes, cut it. I mean Prokofiev's opera based thereon, of course (since I was referring to operatic scores). But what bits would you cut and why? And why should your editorial excisions be greater than, different to or any more valid than anyone else's? (even assuming that anyone would want to make any cuts in any or all of these great operas in the first place). Have you not also considered the likely negative impact of each such cut on the musical score of each such opera? Apart from any other considerations, the two Strauss works, as well as Wozzeck and Die Soldaten (see below) all come in at well under two hours, so are relatively short already before application of the surgeon's knife. Mollification is very necessary in all these cases But again, why and where? Die Soldaten (I don't know it/them) Then do try to get yourself acquainted with it; it may not be to your taste (indeed it almost certainly won't be) but even Claudio Arrau, the great pianist whose known public repertoire rarely strayed far from the "standard clssics" (if you can forgive tht horrible expression!), declared that, in his view, it was the greatest opera since Salome (more than half a century earlier). As may be seen there is a lot of work awaiting the clean-limbed Bowdlers of to-day What's with all this "claean-limbed" stuff to which you're wont on occasions to make reference? Are you implying your belief that some people do but others don't attend to their ablutions regularly and appropriately and that you accordingly have recourse to this bizarre term for the purpose of seeking to distinguish between those who do and those who don't, even when the context in which you make such reference has nothing whatsoever to do with issues of personal cleanliness? Who in any case are the "Bowdlers" of unhyphenated "today"? - and what business do you suppose that they might have in tinkering with great works of the past by composers no longer alive? It's surely quite bad enough that some of the more vociferous of contemporary professional music critics appear to try to set themselves up as judge and jury without unauthorised pseudo-would-be Bowdlers adding to it by interfering with the rsults of past creative processes! As a parting shot on this one, I might remind you that Rachmaninoff bemoaned in a letter about the original version of his fourth and final piano concerto to its dedicatee Medtner, shortly following its completion, that it was far too long and would need to be performed like the Ring cycle over several days (what nonsense! - although his tongue must have been well into his cheek at the time) and that a distressed Medtner responded by questioning whether music were so bad a thing that the less of it the better?!...
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Post by Deleted on Apr 27, 2016 11:14:54 GMT -5
If I may address your questions directly, Sydney: Do they do the Bowdler version there kc? One would think they would with all the little ones swarming around. Since our last discussion I have downloaded several of Bowdler's volumes, and read them with great pleasure. Quite honestly, it is such a joy in life to know that there can be nothing nasty around the corner. We have no objection to corners as such, so long as they are all guaranteed to be happy corners. Does not our membership concur? We got side-tracked by your link to the British Museum to the discovery of a statue lost under the sea for two thousand years: blog.britishmuseum.org/category/defining-beauty-the-body-in-ancient-greek-art/They don't quite do the Bowdler version of Shakespeare at the Globe, although the idea is not dismissed entirely, with Shakespeare to suit the Globe playground, for example. The idea behind the complete walk was that Shakespeare's Globe screened short ten minute clips of every one of Shakespeare's 37 plays on giant screens along the banks of the Thames, between Tower Bridge and Westminster. The films featured actors delivering their lines in the locations where the plays are set - such as Cleopatra in Egypt, Julius Caesar in the Roman Forum and Hamlet at Elsinore. Among the star names involved in the project were Gemma Arterton, Dominic West, Ruth Wilson, James Norton, Zawe Ashton and Peter Capaldi. So does not our membership concur? No, our membership does not concur. I would go further. I doubt that Sydney concurs even with himself! As for defining beauty, how do you do it?
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Post by ahinton on Apr 27, 2016 11:20:36 GMT -5
You don't if you have any sense!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 28, 2016 0:47:40 GMT -5
Die Soldaten (I don't know it/them) Then do try to get yourself acquainted with it; it may not be to your taste (indeed it almost certainly won't be) but even Claudio Arrau, the great pianist whose known public repertoire rarely strayed far from the "standard clssics" (if you can forgive tht horrible expression!), declared that, in his view, it was the greatest opera since Salome (more than half a century earlier). We are sorry, but it is impossible for war to have a part in any art-work. That disposes not only of Zimmermann but also the greater part of Shakespere in the original. (To say nothing of the "jazzy dancing" what.) Brahms's practice is the only German example we need follow. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Soldaten
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Post by ahinton on Apr 28, 2016 4:57:08 GMT -5
Then do try to get yourself acquainted with it; it may not be to your taste (indeed it almost certainly won't be) but even Claudio Arrau, the great pianist whose known public repertoire rarely strayed far from the "standard classics" (if you can forgive tht horrible expression!), declared that, in his view, it was the greatest opera since Salome (more than half a century earlier). We are sorry, but it is impossible for war to have a part in any art-work. That disposes not only of Zimmermann but also the greater part of Shakespere in the original. (To say nothing of the "jazzy dancing" what.) Brahms's practice is the only German example we need follow. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_SoldatenAgain, Shakespe are, please! "Music" - as I reminded you that Nielsen said (do you doubt him? - if so, on what grounds?) "is the sound of life"; as war has sadly also been a part of life in one form or another ever since the dawn of humanity, for any kind of art or those who appreciate it wilfully to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to it and to its histories would be a head-in-the-sand denial of a part of life and of humanity by acting as though seeking to pretend that it doesn't and didn't exist. Were someone to censor all art that bears any relation to war or that includes or implies any references to war, you might be surprised at how very little with which you would be left. Who would turn Turner's Fighting Temeraire around to face the wall on which it is hung? What of all those so-called "war" or "wartime" symphonies written in the 1930s and 1940s (and I by no means refer only to Vaughan Williams and Shostakovich). And in any case is not some kind of implicit or explicit protest against war and its human consequences something that can be encountered in certain operas? If so, why would you censor such expression? Again, I've no idea who "we" are here so can only assume that you mean "you", but it remains unclear why you should be "sorry". And what has your oft-invoked Brahms to do with the subject? No one could in any case have "followed his example" until he'd set it (even on the assumption that he could be said to have done so) and there's a good many centuries of music that preceded his. Of precisely what in any case do you see "Brahms' example" - whatever that might be - as representative? And why and for what purpose do you single out a "German example" in any case; are you seeking to imply that only German examples need, in your view, to be followed or that, of all possible German ones, Brahms' strikes you as the best? Let us not forget in any case the influence of Brahms upon, among others, Schönberg and Berg, Strauss, Reger, Krenek and, mopre recently and to a lesser or less obvious extent, Zimmermann. I trust that you will refrain in your explanation of his "example" from trotting out any nonsense about Brahms and "absolute music" of which of course there's no such thing; as evidence that such alleged music is of the purely instrumental kind, it's worth bearing in mind that Brahms, in what was a relatively brief creative career, wrote at least as many vocal works as there are days in the year. In an earlier post in which you sought to inveigh against Shakespeare in the original and instead commend Bowdlerised sanitisations of his plays, you seemed to imply a view that other human issues besides just war are somehow "inappropriate" for inclusion or reference in works of art on the grounds that you want only happy and positive things around the corner, or something along those lines; to what extent could such bland and dilute pseudo-Utopian journeyings possibly expect accurately to reflect the cornucopia of ever-changing human life - i.e. the lives of humans of whom some create such works of art? I have no more idea what jazz dance has to do with this subject than I do what Brahms has to do with it!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 28, 2016 10:16:22 GMT -5
The member keeps going on about "life". We (I and our great Oscar) don't see his point, because art and life are unrelated. They are opposites: the organized and the disorganized.
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