A great & terrible beauty
Apr. 26th, 2014 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yamamanamaI refer to the song by Arctique Circles, not the book. I didn't even know it was a book, kupo.
All right, I promised I'd discuss the standard symphony format when it becomes more relevant. Four movements, fast, slow, scherzo, and fast. Switch the scherzo and slow occasionally. Mahler inverted the format in his 9th, a demented burlesque and peasant's dance contorting itself into a dance of death sandwiched between two slow movements.
It opens with a heartbeat, deranged harping, a theme of hope and a theme of despair, but they're really the same thing in different keys. Mahler had heart problems throughout writing the symphony, and succumbed to endocarditis in 1911, working on his 10th symphony. A year later, Pierrot Lunaire was written. His wife outlived him by 53 years.
I'm not going to explain what a sonata is because you weren't meant to find it in the 9th Symphony.
It's also a really desolate symphony. It's long but not exceptionally so by Mahler's standards, which makes it exceptionally long by any other symphonist's standards. If you're just starting with Mahler, I can think of better places to start. For me, personally, it was the 3rd symphony.
It ends, not with triumph or tragedy, but with resignation.
It was written in 1909, a time of upheaval, Freud and Klimt and Hoffmannsthal. Klimt and Kokoschka both painted Alma, by the way.
This is by Kokoscha. If there's one by Klimt out there, I can't find it. Given what happened in Europe a generation later, I can imagine it being destroyed.
Most people were neutral about being sketched. Which is good, I guess, since I didn't get home until 11 and it being Friday rather than Saturday, it meant I had to delay things until now. I wouldn't want to be overstimulated. Plus I wanted these people to stand still.
I drew this guy who practically begged to be drawn, all dressed up in a bowler hat and suit and tie and black gloves.
a guy in a hood, a guy with a ponytail and beard, a woman who I thought was Hausa/Fulani*, dark lips, tall forehead and narrow face, small nose and didn't do justice to her because she was too far away, a woman with a heart pendant, a woman with 666 written on her hand, the guitarist at Park Street Station.
I wasn't able to draw, for one reason or another, Bluebeard (it was deep blue, he was dressed in a jacket and knit sweater or vest), Pinkhair, a woman with short black hair in a blue dress and black leather jacket, and a blonde woman in a skirt and a leather jacket. Contrast, in other words. But it's very hard to draw portraits when you're sitting down and they're walking down the street, or the other way around.
*This started out as a parenthetical remark that just simply became far too big and graduated to footnote status: but given my track record with Asians and Hungarians, don't quote me on that one. She might be Somali or Sara or anything else. If she's here, it makes sense for her to be Hausa. Hausas are the Jews of Africa. I say that because one of the first links I find is about Hausas poisoning food. There is a conflict because Hausa territory is being invaded by the Sahara. Right now I'm thinking "Boko Haram seems completely unreal and nothing about them makes sense and their goal is completely and utterly absurd" and "wow, there are a lot of people out there who want to see genocide. Or at least people who really hate the Hausa and Fulani. Things like 'they're not even Nigerian' or 'they have a superiority complex'" and after hearing that Boko Haram lured people into a mosque with the call to prayer and massacred them and I'm just wondering just who the fuck these people are. Hausa is an Afro-Asiatic language and Fula is Niger-Congo.
I thought I saw Tiang at Pita but I neglected to say anything about the spiders. She's from Laos, if you're wondering.
A woman with a guitar sang I Will Follow You Into The Dark. Better than the original, I must say. It's funny because I don't think I ever listened to that song all the way through. Someone requested Linkin Park and I'm thinking "Linkin Park is still a thing?" Some guy sang about pot or something. Another guy played the harmonica and guitar at the same time.
If you pardon my drifting further and further away from the point of the entry, the guy who's favorite song was I Will Follow You Into The Dark was talking about change somewhere and I'm thinking "no, I haven't changed at all, though I think I changed how I share my experiences with the world."
burning question: do you ever listen to an album, think "if this is their last album, I'm fine with that," because the end is so perfect? In Rainbows and Song of the Beautiful Wanton make me feel that way.
All right, I promised I'd discuss the standard symphony format when it becomes more relevant. Four movements, fast, slow, scherzo, and fast. Switch the scherzo and slow occasionally. Mahler inverted the format in his 9th, a demented burlesque and peasant's dance contorting itself into a dance of death sandwiched between two slow movements.
It opens with a heartbeat, deranged harping, a theme of hope and a theme of despair, but they're really the same thing in different keys. Mahler had heart problems throughout writing the symphony, and succumbed to endocarditis in 1911, working on his 10th symphony. A year later, Pierrot Lunaire was written. His wife outlived him by 53 years.
I'm not going to explain what a sonata is because you weren't meant to find it in the 9th Symphony.
It's also a really desolate symphony. It's long but not exceptionally so by Mahler's standards, which makes it exceptionally long by any other symphonist's standards. If you're just starting with Mahler, I can think of better places to start. For me, personally, it was the 3rd symphony.
It ends, not with triumph or tragedy, but with resignation.
It was written in 1909, a time of upheaval, Freud and Klimt and Hoffmannsthal. Klimt and Kokoschka both painted Alma, by the way.
This is by Kokoscha. If there's one by Klimt out there, I can't find it. Given what happened in Europe a generation later, I can imagine it being destroyed.
Most people were neutral about being sketched. Which is good, I guess, since I didn't get home until 11 and it being Friday rather than Saturday, it meant I had to delay things until now. I wouldn't want to be overstimulated. Plus I wanted these people to stand still.
I drew this guy who practically begged to be drawn, all dressed up in a bowler hat and suit and tie and black gloves.
a guy in a hood, a guy with a ponytail and beard, a woman who I thought was Hausa/Fulani*, dark lips, tall forehead and narrow face, small nose and didn't do justice to her because she was too far away, a woman with a heart pendant, a woman with 666 written on her hand, the guitarist at Park Street Station.
I wasn't able to draw, for one reason or another, Bluebeard (it was deep blue, he was dressed in a jacket and knit sweater or vest), Pinkhair, a woman with short black hair in a blue dress and black leather jacket, and a blonde woman in a skirt and a leather jacket. Contrast, in other words. But it's very hard to draw portraits when you're sitting down and they're walking down the street, or the other way around.
*This started out as a parenthetical remark that just simply became far too big and graduated to footnote status: but given my track record with Asians and Hungarians, don't quote me on that one. She might be Somali or Sara or anything else. If she's here, it makes sense for her to be Hausa. Hausas are the Jews of Africa. I say that because one of the first links I find is about Hausas poisoning food. There is a conflict because Hausa territory is being invaded by the Sahara. Right now I'm thinking "Boko Haram seems completely unreal and nothing about them makes sense and their goal is completely and utterly absurd" and "wow, there are a lot of people out there who want to see genocide. Or at least people who really hate the Hausa and Fulani. Things like 'they're not even Nigerian' or 'they have a superiority complex'" and after hearing that Boko Haram lured people into a mosque with the call to prayer and massacred them and I'm just wondering just who the fuck these people are. Hausa is an Afro-Asiatic language and Fula is Niger-Congo.
I thought I saw Tiang at Pita but I neglected to say anything about the spiders. She's from Laos, if you're wondering.
A woman with a guitar sang I Will Follow You Into The Dark. Better than the original, I must say. It's funny because I don't think I ever listened to that song all the way through. Someone requested Linkin Park and I'm thinking "Linkin Park is still a thing?" Some guy sang about pot or something. Another guy played the harmonica and guitar at the same time.
If you pardon my drifting further and further away from the point of the entry, the guy who's favorite song was I Will Follow You Into The Dark was talking about change somewhere and I'm thinking "no, I haven't changed at all, though I think I changed how I share my experiences with the world."
burning question: do you ever listen to an album, think "if this is their last album, I'm fine with that," because the end is so perfect? In Rainbows and Song of the Beautiful Wanton make me feel that way.
