Imaginary

Visual Arts

Yves Klein, People Begin to Fly (1961)

 

• Hieronymus Bosch, The Cure of Folly (Extraction of the Stone of Madness) (1475-80)
• Diego Velázquez, Arachne (1644-48) (dark side)

Fictional Narratives

All at once, the Thénardier exclaimed:--  "By the way, where's that bread?"  Cosette, according to her custom whenever the Thénardier uplifted her voice, emerged with great haste from beneath the table.  She had completely forgotten the bread. She had recourse to the expedient of children who live in a constant state of fear. She lied.  "Madame, the baker's shop was shut."  "You should have knocked."  "I did knock, Madame."  "Well?"  "He did not open the door."  "I'll find out to-morrow whether that is true," said the Thénardier; "and if you are telling me a lie, I'll lead you a pretty dance. In the meantime, give me back my fifteen-sou piece."  Cosette plunged her hand into the pocket of her apron, and turned green. The fifteen-sou piece was not there.  "Ah, come now," said Madame Thénardier, "did you hear me?"  Cosette turned her pocket inside out; there was nothing in it. What could have become of that money? The unhappy little creature could not find a word to say. She was petrified.  "Have you lost that fifteen-sou piece?" screamed the Thénardier, hoarsely, "or do you want to rob me of it?"  At the same time, she stretched out her arm towards the cat-o'-nine-tails which hung on a nail in the chimney-corner.  This formidable gesture restored to Cosette sufficient strength to shriek:--  "Mercy, Madame, Madame! I will not do so any more!"  The Thénardier took down the whip.  In the meantime, the man in the yellow coat had been fumbling in the fob of his waistcoat, without any one having noticed his movements. Besides, the other travellers were drinking or playing cards, and were not paying attention to anything.  Cosette contracted herself into a ball, with anguish, within the angle of the chimney, endeavoring to gather up and conceal her poor half-nude limbs. The Thénardier raised her arm.  "Pardon me, Madame," said the man, "but just now I caught sight of something which had fallen from this little one's apron pocket, and rolled aside. Perhaps this is it."  At the same time he bent down and seemed to be searching on the floor for a moment.  "Exactly; here it is," he went on, straightening himself up.  And he held out a silver coin to the Thénardier.  "Yes, that's it," said she.  It was not it, for it was a twenty-sou piece; but the Thénardier found it to her advantage. She put the coin in her pocket, and confined herself to casting a fierce glance at the child, accompanied with the remark, "Don't let this ever happen again!"  Cosette returned to what the Thénardier called "her kennel," and her large eyes, which were riveted on the traveller, began to take on an expression such as they had never worn before. Thus far it was only an innocent amazement, but a sort of stupefied confidence was mingled with it. [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Volume II – Cosette; Book Third – Accomplishment of a Promise Made To a Dead Woman, Chapter VIII, The Unpleasantness of Receiving Into One’s House a Poor Man Who May Be a Rich Man.]

. . . these hybrid constructions are not the least interesting for the artist, for the antiquarian, for the historian. They make one feel to what a degree architecture is a primitive thing, by demonstrating (what is also demonstrated by the cyclopean vestiges, the pyramids of Egypt, the gigantic Hindoo pagodas) that the greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation’s effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius; the deposit left by a whole people; the heaps accumulated by centuries; the residue of successive evaporations of human society,—in a word, species of formations. Each wave of time contributes its alluvium, each race deposits its layer on the monument, each individual brings his stone. Thus do the beavers, thus do the bees, thus do men. The great symbol of architecture, Babel, is a hive. 

Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of centuries. Art often undergoes a transformation while they are pending, - pendent opera interrupta_- ; they proceed quietly in accordance with the transformed art. The new art takes the monument where it finds it, incrusts itself there, assimilates it to itself, develops it according to its fancy, and finishes it if it can. The thing is accomplished without trouble, without effort, without reaction,—following a natural and tranquil law. It is a graft which shoots up, a sap which circulates, a vegetation which starts forth anew. Certainly there is matter here for many large volumes, and often the universal history of humanity in the successive engrafting of many arts at many levels, upon the same monument. The man, the artist, the individual, is effaced in these great masses, which lack the name of their author; human intelligence is there summed up and totalized. Time is the architect, the nation is the builder. [Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, or, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), Volume I, Book Third, Chapter I, “Notre-Dame”.]

Novels and books about novels:

• Arthur Phillips, The Tragedy of Arthur (Random House, 2011): writing like Shakespeare.
• Peter Ackroyd, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (Nan A. Talese, 2009).
• Jo Nesbo, Macbeth: A Novel (Hogarth, 2018): “Jo Nesbo Sculpts ‘Macbeth’ Into Shadowy Crime Noir”

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Toumani Diabaté, New Ancient Strings album: Kenyan musician Toumani Diabaté applied contemporary themes, moods and rhythms to an ancient stringed instrument, the Kora. The result is a desert-island disc that brings an ancient tradition into the 20^th and now the 21^st century. In a similar vein are:

• Ballaké Sissoko, “Djourou”
• Boubacar "Badian" Diabaté, “African Guitar Series, Volume 1: Mande Guitar”

Composer Eugène Ysaÿe drew heavily on Bach in composing his six violin sonatas (Op. 27), acknowledging his intent to “represent the evolution of musical techniques and expressions of his time.” In addition to drawing on Bach, he named each of the six sonatas after an influential musical figure. Here are links to performances of all six sonatas by Liebeck, Ehnes, Kremer, He, Zehetmair, Park and Kavakos.

• Sonata No. 1 in G minor, “Joseph Szigeti””
• Sonata No. 2 in A minor, “Jacques Thibaud” 
• Sonata No. 3 in D minor, “Georges Enescu” (here it is in the hands of Maxim Vengerov, a strong candidate for the greatest violinist of the 20th century, despite his all-too-brief career)
• Sonata No. 4 in E minor, “Fritz Kreisler”
• Sonata No. 5 in G major, “Mathieu Crickboom”
• Sonata No. 6 in G major, “Manuel Quiroga”

In his first series of string quartets, Op. 18 (1800) (approx. 140-180 minutes), Ludwig von Beethoven drew heavily on Haydn and Mozart, who had recently developed the string quartet into a staple of classical music. Top recordings of the entire opus are by Budapest String Quartet, 1943-1962; Amadeus Quartet in 1962; Quartetto Italiano in 1972; Lindsay Quartet (1 & 2, 1979) (3 & 4, 1979) (5 & 6, 1979); Alban Berg Quartet in 1981; Takács Quartet in 2004; Tokyo String Quartet in 2007; Quartetto di Cremona (1, 2018) (2 & 3, 2017) (4, 2018) (5, 2018) (6, 2018); Dover Quartet in 2021. Here are links to each of the quartets individually.

• String Quartet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 18/1;
• String Quartet No. 2 in G major, Op. 18/2, "Compliments";
• String Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Op. 18/3;
• String Quartet No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 18/4;
• String Quartet No. 5 in A Major, Op. 18/5; and
• String Quartet No. 6 in B-flat Major, Op. 18/6.

Ernst Krenek’s string quartets:

• String Quartet No. 1, Op. 6 (1921) (modeled after Beethoven’s Op. 131)
• String Quartet No. 2, Op. 8 (1921) (an extension of the first quartet, with influenes from Bartók)
• String Quartet No. 3, Op. 20 (1923)
• String Quartet No. 4, Op. 24 (1923) (inspired by jazz)
• String Quartet No. 5, Op. 65 (1930) (a relatively traditional quartet, for Krenek, in an atmosphere reminiscent of Schubert)
• String Quartet No. 6, Op. 78 (1936) (employing Schoenberg’s twelve-tone techniques)
• String Quartet No. 7, Op. 96 (1944)
• String Quartet No. 8, Op. 233 (1980)

In several of his works, modern Spanish composer Ernesto Halffter (1905-1989) drew upon various influences:

• Rapsodia Portuguesa, for piano & orchestra (1938), influenced by Ravel and incorporating Portuguese folk songs
• Deux Esquisses Symphoniques, influenced by Debussy and documenting “Halffter’s efforts to move beyond the confines of tonality” [Josef Oehrlein]
• Sinfonietta in D Major (1925), following the classical four-movement structure and drawing on the disparate influences of Scarlatti (1700s, Baroque era and style) and Stravinsky (1900s, modern era and style)

Other works:

• Foss, Symphony No. 2, "Symphony of Chorales" (1958), after four Bach cantatas, ## 90, 77-78, 139 and 133
• Chen, Reflet un temps disparu, for erhu & orchestra (2002): drawn from an ancient Chinese melody, “Three Variations on the Plum Blossom”
• Reale, Piano Sonata No. 10, “Sonata Piazzollana” (2010/2019) – drawing on the work of Astor Piazzolla.
• Godowsky: 52 Studies on Chopin's Études, Op. 10; Op. 25 (1894-1914)
• Kurtág: Kurtág's Ghosts
• Boulez, Anthèmes 2 for violin and live electronics (1997): Boulez drew on church music he had heard in his youth.
• Beethoven, 12 Variations on 'Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen', Op. 66 (1796)
• Beethoven: 12 Variations on 'See the conqu'ring hero comes', WoO 45 (1796)

Albums:

• Jimmy Owens applied his musicianship to standard Monk tunes in creating “The Monk Project” album.
• Franz Koglmann, “About Yesterday’s Ezzthetics”
• Stephane Spira and Giovanni Mirabassi, “Improkofiev”
• Noam Weisenberg, “Roads Diverge”: “(Weisenberg) takes the strong foundation of Art Blakey’s groups, the fiery exchanges and swirling overtones of John Zorn and Dave Douglas in Masada, and the gorgeous compositions and soloing of the last Tony Williams quintet and puts his own stamp on it.” [Mark Klafter, Cadence magazine 2019 Annual edition, p. 241.]
• “Modern Art Orchestra Plays Béla Bartók: 15 Hungarian Peasant Songs” (Here are the 15 songs on piano.)
• Párniczky Quartet, “Bartók Electrified”
• Brad Mehldau Trio, “Seymour Reads the Constitution”: seven tracks based on compositions from several musical genres
• RIAS Kammerchor and Capella de la Torre, “Praetorius & Italy”: “The importance of Monteverdi and his Italian contemporaries as models for Praetorius is explored . . .” [David Vickers, Gramophone magazine, November 2021 issue, p. 78.]
• Francisco Fullana, “Bach’s Long Shadow”
• Quartet Ajaton, “Early Music in the Latest Way”

Poetry

Arise to birth with me, my brother.
Give me your hand out of the depths
sown by your sorrows.
You will not return from these stone fastnesses.
You will not emerge from subterranean time.
Your rasping voice will not come back,
nor your pierced eyes rise from their sockets.
Look at me from the depths of the earth,
tiller of fields, weaver, reticent shepherd,
groom of totemic guanacos,
mason high on your treacherous scaffolding,
iceman of Andean tears,
jeweler with crushed fingers,
farmer anxious among his seedlings,
potter wasted among his clays--
bring to the cup of this new life
your ancient buried sorrows.
Show me your blood and your furrow;
say to me: here I was scourged
because a gem was dull or because the earth
failed to give up in time its tithe of corn or stone.
Point out to me the rock on which you stumbled,
the wood they used to crucify your body.
Strike the old flints
to kindle ancient lamps, light up the whips
glued to your wounds throughout the centuries
and light the axes gleaming with your blood.
I come to speak for your dead mouths.
Throughout the earth
let dead lips congregate,
out of the depths spin this long night to me
as if I rode at anchor here with you.
And tell me everything, tell chain by chain,
and link by link, and step by step;
sharpen the knives you kept hidden away,
thrust them into my breast, into my hands,
like a torrent of sunbursts,
an Amazon of buried jaguars,
and leave me cry: hours, days and years,
blind ages, stellar centuries.
And give me silence, give me water, hope.
Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes.
Let bodies cling like magnets to my body.
Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth.
Speak through my speech, and through my blood.

[Pablo Neruda, “Canto XII” from “The Heights of Macchu Picchu”]