Imaginary

Visual Arts

• Paul Klee, Refuge (1930)

Film and Stage

• The Dresser, a film about an assistant to a once-great Shakesperean actor, who tries to keep his boss going. The 2015 remake garnered equally high critical acclaim
• Little Girl (La Pivellina): an abandoned two-year-old girl “demands, and expects, protection,” and she gets it

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Compositions:

• Raga Durga, a Hindustani classical raag for late evening: performances by Nikhil Banerjee, Imrat Khan and Amjad Ali Khan
• Balada, Cello Concerto No. 2 (2001)
• Bax, Oboe Quintet (1922)
• Weinberg, Trio for flute, viola and harp, Op. 127 (1979): 1. Crochet = 63; 2. Crochet = 48; 3 Dotted Crochet = 92.
• John Garth (1721-1810), Six Concertos for the Violincello, Op. 1: Concerto No. 1 in D major; No. 2 in B-flat Major; No. 3 in A Major; No. 4 in B flat major ; No. 5 in D minor (1. Adagio; 2. Adagio - Affettuoso; 3. Allegro moderato); No. 6 in G Major – the cello evokes a parental figure.
• Elcock, Haven: Fantasia on a Theme of J.S. Bach, Op. 4
• Ernest John Moeran, Violin Sonata in E Minor (1923)
• James Dashow, Messages from Ortigia (2002): Ortigia is a small island, near Sicily, which was transformed into a natural fortress.
• Johan Kvandal, String Trio, Op. 12 (1950) (approx. 23’), evokes a sense of serious concern, as do the works by Mortensen and Palmar Johansen, below.
• Finn Mortensen, String Trio, Op. 3 (1950) (approx. 18’)
• Bertil Palmar Johansen, Ricercare for String Trio, (1996) (approx. 17’)

Tu Nokwe is a South African singer whose style is well-described as affirmative and energetic. Her subject matter is about everyday concerns, as suggested by the title and cover photograph of her album “African Child” (2002) (72’). “Initially teaching music to township kids in her family's Amajika Youth and Children's Art Project, she eventually traveled to London and New York, where she took lessons at the famous Manhattan School of Music. Realizing that her true potential was at home, she returned to South Africa, carried on working in the youth project, and started gathering material for an album of her own material.” Here is a link to her playlists.

Albums:

• Wilder, “Lullabies and Nightsongs”
• Nadia Shpachenko (pianist) – Lewis Spratlan (composer), “Invasion: Music and Art for Ukraine” (2022): “As she watched in horror her home city of Kharkiv (and the rest of Ukraine) being destroyed and civilians being murdered every day, Shpachenko tried to come up with ways to express her feelings of utter despair and anger, as well as hope and resilience, through her music making. In addition to performing fundraising concerts featuring music by Ukrainian composers, she decided to put together a new album to support Ukraine humanitarian aid.”
• Imee Ooi, Protection & Good Fortune

Music: songs and other short pieces

• Nawang Khechog, Tibet for Peace Sanctuary
• “Nothing’s Gonna Harm You,” from “Sweeney Todd”
• Paul Simon, “St. Judy’s Comet”
• Yungchen Lhamo, “Refuge Prayer”
• Hugo Wolf, “Ihr jungen Leute, die ihr zieht ins Feld” (You Young Men Who Go Off to War), from Italienisches Liederbruch (No. 16) (1892)
• Franz Schubert (composer), Der Vater mit dem Kind (The Father with His Child), D. 906 (1827) (lyrics)

From the dark side:

• Sérgio Assad, Clarice Assad & Third Coast Percussion, “The Orphan”

Fictional Narratives

On waking up, Cosette had run to get her shoe. In it she had found the gold piece. It was not a Napoleon; it was one of those perfectly new twenty-franc pieces of the Restoration, on whose effigy the little Prussian queue had replaced the laurel wreath. Cosette was dazzled. Her destiny began to intoxicate her. She did not know what a gold piece was; she had never seen one; she hid it quickly in her pocket, as though she had stolen it. Still, she felt that it really was hers; she guessed whence her gift had come, but the joy which she experienced was full of fear. She was happy; above all she was stupefied. Such magnificent and beautiful things did not appear real. The doll frightened her, the gold piece frightened her. She trembled vaguely in the presence of this magnificence. The stranger alone did not frighten her. On the contrary, he reassured her. Ever since the preceding evening, amid all her amazement, even in her sleep, she had been thinking in her little childish mind of that man who seemed to be so poor and so sad, and who was so rich and so kind. Everything had changed for her since she had met that good man in the forest. Cosette, less happy than the most insignificant swallow of heaven, had never known what it was to take refuge under a mother's shadow and under a wing. For the last five years, that is to say, as far back as her memory ran, the poor child had shivered and trembled. She had always been exposed completely naked to the sharp wind of adversity; now it seemed to her she was clothed. Formerly her soul had seemed cold, now it was warm. Cosette was no longer afraid of the Thénardier. She was no longer alone; there was some one there. [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Volume II – Cosette; Book Third – Accomplishment of a Promise Made To a Dead Woman, Chapter IX, Thénardier and His Manouvres.]

Novels:

• Maylis de Kerangal, Eastbound: A Novel (Archipelago, 2023): “. . . Aliocha encounters a Westerner who is traveling in first class. Hélène is a 35-year-old Frenchwoman who has impulsively gone AWOL herself. She’s fleeing her lover, a Russian émigré whom she had met in Paris . . .”