The Sultan Shahriar, convinced of the duplicity and infidelity of all women, vowed to slay each of his wives after the first night. The Sultana Scheherazade, however, saved her life by the expedient of recounting to the Sultan a succession of tales over a period of one thousand one nights. Overcome by curiosity, the monarch […]
Repeat three times a six note rush upwards from the depths of hell in the cellos and basses. Repeat three times church bells descending on octave. Repeat three times the “Dies Irae” (Day of Wrath) sacred chant. First time played by the sacrilegious tubas in slower, steady notes. Third time outrageously fast in the dancing, […]
Being a woman, I am concerned about publishing this work. Would that it lie safely under a golden oak tree and not be endangered by swords of slander which have already been drawn to battle against it. (Barbara Strozzi’s preface to her first book of madrigals) The painter’s idea for one exposed breast a rumor […]
A chromatic descending bass line. Repeated heavy, plodding steps. Continuous sighs as if carrying the cross or carrying the weight of death. The word Crucifixus repeated 12 times by individual voices. Each entrance dissonant, anguished, deliberate, reluctant, reverential. Three repeated notes, then a few notes descending towards earth. A few rising triads of extraordinary pain. […]
Narrator, men’s chorus, orchestra. A fanfare in the trumpets calls us to attention. The narrator’s life-in-death-in-life text set to Schoenberg’s dissonant music. Two later trumpet fanfares call the prisoners to attention each day. At random (it seems) we hear chaotic drum fills, sudden outbursts, plucked and struck strings, rapid repeated notes like verbal jabs. No […]
Sibelius takes long walks in the forest mist. Gallen-Kallela paints a realistic yet mythic Finnish landscape. Miniature trees in the foreground suggest Finland’s forests to come. Brushstrokes like breath or delicate oars cause the lake’s many ripples. In Sibelius’s strings a brooding three note pattern of rising notes, each one louder. They are someone’s footsteps, […]
Josquin’s opening leap of a fourth in the highest voice. We are suddenly looking up. Ave Maria (Hail to Mary). Raphael paints her so beautifully she must be divine. Beauty equals God in the Renaissance. That’s how they interpreted Plato. That’s how they interpreted this world, too. Raphael’s flowers, trees, and distant mountains an exquisitely […]
In Holbein’s painting a brilliantly foreshortened lute. One string is broken, hinting at the discord between Catholic and Protestant faiths. Five million would die in those wars. A generation later, the Catholic John Dowland, the most famous lutenist in history, could not get a job in Queen Elizabeth’s court. When I was a young man […]
Music as fragile as a butterfly and as precise as a matador’s pass. A minor chord, or a chord spiced with dissonance, on a strummed guitar. An English horn weaves what Rodrigo wept in his piano night of lost children.* (Again and again his wife, Victoria, reports.) A solo guitar takes over the lament, adds […]
Please find below a recent interview I did with Atmosphere Press about Tennis Players as Works of Art. How did it feel when you first saw your book cover? Or when you first held your book in your hands? The book cover was beautiful. It consisted of eleven different artworks from eleven of the forty-five […]