Je cueillis un nid dans le squelette du lierre
Un nid doux de mousse champtre et herbe de songe.
Yvan Goll, Tombeau du pre
(I found a nest in the skeleton of the ivy
A soft nest of country moss and dream herb.)
Nids blancs vos oiseaux vont fleurir
.............................................................
Vous volerez, sentiers de plume.
Robert Ganzo, L'oeuvre potique
(White nests your birds will flower
......................................................
You will fly, feather paths)
In one short sentence, Victory Hugo associates the images and being of the function of inhabiting. For Quasimodo he says, the cathedral had been successively "egg, nest, house, country and universe." "One might almost say he had espoused its form the way a snail does the form of its shell. It was his home, his hole, his envelope... He adhered to it, as it were, like a turtle to its carpace. This rugged cathedral was his armour." All of these images were needed to tell how an unfortunate creature assumed the contorted forms of his numerous hiding-places in the corners of this complex structure. In this way, by multiplying his images, the poet makes us aware of the powers of the various refuges. but he immediately adds a sign of moderation to the abundnce of images. "It is useless," he continues, "the warn the reader not to take literally the figures of speech that I am obliged to use here to express the strange, symmetrical, immediate, almost consubstantial flexibility of a man and an edifice."
It is striking that even our homes, where there is light, our consciousness of well-being should call for comparison with animals in their shelters. An example may be found in the following lines by the painter, Vlaminck, who, when he wrote them, was living quietly in the country: "The well-being I feel, seated in front of my fire, while bad weather rages out-of-doors, is entirely animal. A rat in its hole, a rabbit in its burrow, cows in the stable must all feel the same contentment that I feel."
[...]
Already in the world of inanimate objects, extraordinary significance is attached to nests. We want them to be perfect, to bear the mark of a very sure instinct. We ourselves marvel at the instinct, and a nest is generally considered to be one of the marvels of animal life.
Those are some excerpts from The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard who was a French phenomenologist. I wish I could type up the whole chapter for you because it's so beautiful. The book is about how we experience intimate spaces.
I found this nest a few years ago after a storm. There were no nearby trees to return it to. I didn't think there would be a chance for birds to use it again. I thus swiftly (Apus apus) collected it.
A few evenings ago I got to see a performance of Messiaen's Quartet for the end of time (Quatuor pour la fin du temps). It was one of the best musical experiences of my life. It is such a beautiful, fascinating piece and it was incredible to watch it performed live, it is a real technical feat I think. There is a really great essay on it by Alex Ross from his book The Rest is Noise which is about music in the 20th century.
The most ethereally beautiful music of the twentieth century was first heard on a brutally cold January night in 1941, at the Stalag VIIIA prisoner-of-war camp, in Grlitz, Germany. The composer was Olivier Messiaen, the work Quartet for the End of Time. Messiaen wrote most of it after being captured as a French soldier during the German invasion of 1940. The premire took place in an unheated space in Barrack 27. A fellow-inmate drew up a program in Art Nouveau style, to which an official stamp was affixed: Stalag VIIIA 49 geprft [approved]. Sitting in the front rowand shivering along with the prisonerswere the German officers of the camp.
The title does not exaggerate the ambitions of the piece. An inscription in the score supplies a catastrophic image from the Book of Revelation: In homage to the Angel of the Apocalypse, who lifts his hand toward heaven, saying, There shall be time no longer. It is, however, the gentlest apocalypse imaginable. The seven trumpets and other signs of doom arent roaring sound-masses, as in Berliozs Requiem or Mahlers Resurrection Symphony, but fiercely elegant dances, whose rhythms swing along in intricate patterns without ever obeying a regular beat. In the midst of these Second Coming jam sessions are episodes of transfixing serenityin particular, two Louanges, or songs of praise. Each has a drawn-out string melody over pulsing piano chords; each builds toward a luminous climax and then vanishes into silence. The first is marked infinitely slow; the second, tender, ecstatic. Beyond that, words fail.
Last week, the Met Chamber Ensemble, an all-star group from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, played the Quartet at Carnegies Weill Hall. I arrived with some mighty spiritual sounds ringing in my head; earlier that afternoon, at Lincoln Center, Philippe Herreweghe and assorted Franco-Belgian forces had presented Beethovens Missa Solemnis, and the same conductor had led Bachs St. Matthew Passion two nights before. Messiaens quiet answer to the ultimate questions of fear and faith stayed with me the longest, not because he was a greater composer than Bach or Beethoven but because his reply came out of an all-too-modern landscape of legislated inhumanity. In the face of hate, this honestly Christian man did not ask, Why, O Lord? He said, I love you.
The clarinettist Rebecca Rischin has written a captivating book entitled For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet. Her research dispels several long-cherished myths about the 1941 premire. As Messiaen told the story, he and three friends performed under the most trying circumstancesusing dilapidated instruments, including a three-stringed celloand won the hearts of five thousand hardened soldiers. In fact, the instruments, while inferior, were adequate to the task, and the crowd was more like three hundred. In Rischins telling, the Quartet is less a triumph of individual genius and more a collective creation. Messiaen wrote every note, certainly, but the music would never have existed without the collaboration of the prisonersand guardsof Stalag VIIIA.
Rischin lovingly brings to life the other musicianstienne Pasquier, cellist; Henri Akoka, clarinettist; and Jean Le Boulaire, violinistwho played with Messiaen, the pianist at the premire. You can sense something of their personalities in the instrumental parts of the Quartet. Pasquier was a wry, gentle man who might have had a major solo career if he had desired one. Akoka, as vibrant and unpredictable as the Quartets long clarinet solo, Abyss of the Birds, was an Algerian-born Jew who survived the war through blind luck and mad courage. He tried several times to escape, and, in April, 1941, he succeeded: while being transferred from one camp to another by train, he jumped from the top of a fast-moving cattle car, with his clarinet under his arm. Le Boulaire, moody and withdrawn, later abandoned the violin for acting. He took the name Jean Lanier and appeared in New Wave films such as The Soft Skin and Last Year at Marienbad. When Rischin interviewed him, she perceived him to be a bitter, unhappy man, but at the mention of Messiaens Quartet his eyes brightened. Its a jewel thats mine and that will never belong to anyone else, he said.
Then, there was the quasi-angelic figure of Karl-Albert Brll, a music-loving guard at Stalag VIIIA. Excited by the presence of a significant composer, Brll gave Messiaen pencils, erasers, and music paper, and had the composer stationed in an empty barrack so that he could work undisturbed. A guard stood at the door to turn away intruders. After the premire, Brll arranged for Messiaens rapid return to France, conspiring in the forging of documents. A German patriot with anti-Nazi tendencies, he kept a sympathetic watch over Jewish prisoners, repeatedly advising them not to try to escape, because they would be safer in Stalag VIIIA than in Vichy France.
Several decades later, Brll came to Paris and rang at Messiaens door. For reasons that remain obscure, Messiaen declined to see him. Perhaps he didnt remember who Brll was; perhaps he was unable to confront this apparition from the past. He eventually tried to correct his mistake, and sent a message to the man who had made his masterpiece possible. But it was too late: Brll had died, after being run over by a car.
- http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/04/quartet_for_the_2.html
This is one of the movements from the quartet. The build up to 2 minutes 25 takes my breath away.
Here is Messiaen talking about birds in a beautiful documentary about him called The Crystal Liturgy.
And this one is so amusing and sweet!
I seem to be very submerged in French culture lately. Maybe it's something to do with how much I love French girls?! And speaking of which, today I was at work when I realised that a beautiful girl was staring at me from across the floor. I couldn't understand why but when I looked closer I realised that it was the divinely beautiful Feyne smiling at me. Which reminds me that you should go and see her very beautiful Kafka inspired set La Metamorphosi and leave a comment. I had a lovely but far too quick talk with her and her charming travel companion. If it's possible she's even more beautiful in reality.
And speaking of sets, very soon you will see something that Cherry, GoGo and I made for you. I'm really excited about it but I'm trying not to give too much away...
I hope you're all well. Thank you so much for the nice comments and messages as ever :-) xxx
Un nid doux de mousse champtre et herbe de songe.
Yvan Goll, Tombeau du pre
(I found a nest in the skeleton of the ivy
A soft nest of country moss and dream herb.)
Nids blancs vos oiseaux vont fleurir
.............................................................
Vous volerez, sentiers de plume.
Robert Ganzo, L'oeuvre potique
(White nests your birds will flower
......................................................
You will fly, feather paths)
In one short sentence, Victory Hugo associates the images and being of the function of inhabiting. For Quasimodo he says, the cathedral had been successively "egg, nest, house, country and universe." "One might almost say he had espoused its form the way a snail does the form of its shell. It was his home, his hole, his envelope... He adhered to it, as it were, like a turtle to its carpace. This rugged cathedral was his armour." All of these images were needed to tell how an unfortunate creature assumed the contorted forms of his numerous hiding-places in the corners of this complex structure. In this way, by multiplying his images, the poet makes us aware of the powers of the various refuges. but he immediately adds a sign of moderation to the abundnce of images. "It is useless," he continues, "the warn the reader not to take literally the figures of speech that I am obliged to use here to express the strange, symmetrical, immediate, almost consubstantial flexibility of a man and an edifice."
It is striking that even our homes, where there is light, our consciousness of well-being should call for comparison with animals in their shelters. An example may be found in the following lines by the painter, Vlaminck, who, when he wrote them, was living quietly in the country: "The well-being I feel, seated in front of my fire, while bad weather rages out-of-doors, is entirely animal. A rat in its hole, a rabbit in its burrow, cows in the stable must all feel the same contentment that I feel."
[...]
Already in the world of inanimate objects, extraordinary significance is attached to nests. We want them to be perfect, to bear the mark of a very sure instinct. We ourselves marvel at the instinct, and a nest is generally considered to be one of the marvels of animal life.
Those are some excerpts from The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard who was a French phenomenologist. I wish I could type up the whole chapter for you because it's so beautiful. The book is about how we experience intimate spaces.
I found this nest a few years ago after a storm. There were no nearby trees to return it to. I didn't think there would be a chance for birds to use it again. I thus swiftly (Apus apus) collected it.
A few evenings ago I got to see a performance of Messiaen's Quartet for the end of time (Quatuor pour la fin du temps). It was one of the best musical experiences of my life. It is such a beautiful, fascinating piece and it was incredible to watch it performed live, it is a real technical feat I think. There is a really great essay on it by Alex Ross from his book The Rest is Noise which is about music in the 20th century.
The most ethereally beautiful music of the twentieth century was first heard on a brutally cold January night in 1941, at the Stalag VIIIA prisoner-of-war camp, in Grlitz, Germany. The composer was Olivier Messiaen, the work Quartet for the End of Time. Messiaen wrote most of it after being captured as a French soldier during the German invasion of 1940. The premire took place in an unheated space in Barrack 27. A fellow-inmate drew up a program in Art Nouveau style, to which an official stamp was affixed: Stalag VIIIA 49 geprft [approved]. Sitting in the front rowand shivering along with the prisonerswere the German officers of the camp.
The title does not exaggerate the ambitions of the piece. An inscription in the score supplies a catastrophic image from the Book of Revelation: In homage to the Angel of the Apocalypse, who lifts his hand toward heaven, saying, There shall be time no longer. It is, however, the gentlest apocalypse imaginable. The seven trumpets and other signs of doom arent roaring sound-masses, as in Berliozs Requiem or Mahlers Resurrection Symphony, but fiercely elegant dances, whose rhythms swing along in intricate patterns without ever obeying a regular beat. In the midst of these Second Coming jam sessions are episodes of transfixing serenityin particular, two Louanges, or songs of praise. Each has a drawn-out string melody over pulsing piano chords; each builds toward a luminous climax and then vanishes into silence. The first is marked infinitely slow; the second, tender, ecstatic. Beyond that, words fail.
Last week, the Met Chamber Ensemble, an all-star group from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, played the Quartet at Carnegies Weill Hall. I arrived with some mighty spiritual sounds ringing in my head; earlier that afternoon, at Lincoln Center, Philippe Herreweghe and assorted Franco-Belgian forces had presented Beethovens Missa Solemnis, and the same conductor had led Bachs St. Matthew Passion two nights before. Messiaens quiet answer to the ultimate questions of fear and faith stayed with me the longest, not because he was a greater composer than Bach or Beethoven but because his reply came out of an all-too-modern landscape of legislated inhumanity. In the face of hate, this honestly Christian man did not ask, Why, O Lord? He said, I love you.
The clarinettist Rebecca Rischin has written a captivating book entitled For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet. Her research dispels several long-cherished myths about the 1941 premire. As Messiaen told the story, he and three friends performed under the most trying circumstancesusing dilapidated instruments, including a three-stringed celloand won the hearts of five thousand hardened soldiers. In fact, the instruments, while inferior, were adequate to the task, and the crowd was more like three hundred. In Rischins telling, the Quartet is less a triumph of individual genius and more a collective creation. Messiaen wrote every note, certainly, but the music would never have existed without the collaboration of the prisonersand guardsof Stalag VIIIA.
Rischin lovingly brings to life the other musicianstienne Pasquier, cellist; Henri Akoka, clarinettist; and Jean Le Boulaire, violinistwho played with Messiaen, the pianist at the premire. You can sense something of their personalities in the instrumental parts of the Quartet. Pasquier was a wry, gentle man who might have had a major solo career if he had desired one. Akoka, as vibrant and unpredictable as the Quartets long clarinet solo, Abyss of the Birds, was an Algerian-born Jew who survived the war through blind luck and mad courage. He tried several times to escape, and, in April, 1941, he succeeded: while being transferred from one camp to another by train, he jumped from the top of a fast-moving cattle car, with his clarinet under his arm. Le Boulaire, moody and withdrawn, later abandoned the violin for acting. He took the name Jean Lanier and appeared in New Wave films such as The Soft Skin and Last Year at Marienbad. When Rischin interviewed him, she perceived him to be a bitter, unhappy man, but at the mention of Messiaens Quartet his eyes brightened. Its a jewel thats mine and that will never belong to anyone else, he said.
Then, there was the quasi-angelic figure of Karl-Albert Brll, a music-loving guard at Stalag VIIIA. Excited by the presence of a significant composer, Brll gave Messiaen pencils, erasers, and music paper, and had the composer stationed in an empty barrack so that he could work undisturbed. A guard stood at the door to turn away intruders. After the premire, Brll arranged for Messiaens rapid return to France, conspiring in the forging of documents. A German patriot with anti-Nazi tendencies, he kept a sympathetic watch over Jewish prisoners, repeatedly advising them not to try to escape, because they would be safer in Stalag VIIIA than in Vichy France.
Several decades later, Brll came to Paris and rang at Messiaens door. For reasons that remain obscure, Messiaen declined to see him. Perhaps he didnt remember who Brll was; perhaps he was unable to confront this apparition from the past. He eventually tried to correct his mistake, and sent a message to the man who had made his masterpiece possible. But it was too late: Brll had died, after being run over by a car.
- http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/04/quartet_for_the_2.html
This is one of the movements from the quartet. The build up to 2 minutes 25 takes my breath away.
Here is Messiaen talking about birds in a beautiful documentary about him called The Crystal Liturgy.
And this one is so amusing and sweet!
I seem to be very submerged in French culture lately. Maybe it's something to do with how much I love French girls?! And speaking of which, today I was at work when I realised that a beautiful girl was staring at me from across the floor. I couldn't understand why but when I looked closer I realised that it was the divinely beautiful Feyne smiling at me. Which reminds me that you should go and see her very beautiful Kafka inspired set La Metamorphosi and leave a comment. I had a lovely but far too quick talk with her and her charming travel companion. If it's possible she's even more beautiful in reality.
And speaking of sets, very soon you will see something that Cherry, GoGo and I made for you. I'm really excited about it but I'm trying not to give too much away...
I hope you're all well. Thank you so much for the nice comments and messages as ever :-) xxx
VIEW 25 of 46 COMMENTS
I'll have to read and listen through your thoughtful journal later when I've more time and less distraction.