Bruch

Ovid Banished from Rome (1838) by English romantic artist J. M. W. Turner

I had the pleasure of attending a performance of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center a few weeks ago. There I was introduced/re-introduced to Max Bruch, when they performed selections from his "Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano, Op. 83 (1909).

Bruch was a German Romantic composer, living up to that title in full measure, writing lush emotive pieces that dare you not to be moved. 

Turner's Fisherman at Sea (1796)

Romantic music had its moment in the Western musical tradition throughout much of the 19th century. Known for its expressiveness, it often drew upon literature, history, nature, or even the essentialness of the human experience as its theme: lofty, yet relatable stuff.

This gorgeous, emotive style owes a lot, surprisingly, to the industrial revolution, which produced instruments capable of a fuller sound and also led to the rise of the middle class. The audience for orchestral music expanded beyond an aristocracy well-schooled in classical musical forms. Writing for the public produced a desire to write music that was more immediately accessible, though technically more complex than what proceeded it.

Turner's Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway (1844)

I love these luxurious, weepy string compositions. I have a feeling that more intellectual music aficionados might scoff at the transparency of the emotional ask on display, the lack of tonal challenge that the music might display. This certainly isn't head-scratching "I can appreciate the statement here" kind of modernism. But it is beautiful, and transcendent, and most importantly, the emotional response affect is earned and warranted, by the sublime accomplishment of the composition.

At a certain sense, classical music (even at the time of its writing) is always somewhat rarefied, yet I was surprised to learn that romantic music was a little more "of the people" than what proceeded it. 

I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes something art, and why something appeals to me. I like things that reach out and grab me immediately, but upon spending more time with them, I grow to love them more, discovering ever richer layers and complexities.

Turner's Chicester Canal (circa 1828)

Here is Bruch's beautiful Kol Nidrei, a piece for cello and orchestra based on Hebrew melodies.

Lips

Via Gone Sugaring

“When it comes down to it, I let them think what they want. If they care enough to bother with what I do, then I’m already better than them anyway.” 

– Marilyn Monroe

Long aware of Marilyn's ability to give good face, I have recently been charmed by her ability to give good quote.

Pop Now

Design by Tina Kalivas, whose work shows that interesting design is alive and well.

I've been thinking a lot about Kurt Andersen's Vanity Fair article, "You Say You Want a Devolution?" which suggests that there has been a stasis in mainstream popular culture over the past twenty years. For example, a person from 1987 would find the appearance and musical taste of a person from 1977 startling; the 70s looked pretty funny by the 80s. The contrast isn't as strong between 1997 and 2007.

Of course it is the type of provocative article designed to be posted on Facebook and debated with inflamed rhetoric (see "Why Women Aren't Funny" in the same publication). But it is an interesting idea nonetheless.

Tina Kalivas

Despite his claim that the articles of popular culture haven't changed much, he rightly points out that the means of distributing them have changed drastically. The internet and smart phones have smashed through so many barriers to access.

Plus, we are no longer limited to the popular culture of our own age. In the movie Hugo, much reference is made to Georges Méliès' movie A Trip to the Moon. I had already watched that silent classic while sitting at my desk in my pajamas. In the not-too-distant past, I would have had to wait a moon for an art-house movie theater to screen it. And if I lived in a city or town without such a theater, I'd have to content myself with stills.

Tina Kalivas

Much recent innovation has come from our access to earlier creative output that we've re-purposed to fit a new age — like shoulder pads and sampled music. To be clear, creative people have always looked to the past and borrowed liberally, but it was less obvious before because the original sources were scarcer and the means of producing culture was less democratic. Pre-internet, only a few could get their output in front of the masses. Now large numbers of people have access to everything and the means to reach everyone.

The other item he touched on was the nostalgia that even the very young have. He suggests that the rapidity of technological change and global uncertainty has made the past comforting; something fixed and cool that we can latch onto. I'm not sure if I completely agree; I think people have always romanticized earlier ages; again, we just have so much access now that we can soak up past artifacts to a consuming degree.

Tina Kalivas

I've nurtured a certain amount of retro-love on this blog. I think it's a product of a lifelong interest in history and a somewhat wistful nature. However, I am sure I am influenced by the zeitgeist as much as anyone else.

In the early 1990s, there was a revival of interest in the 60s, followed by a 70s fetish; the 2000s brought us an 80s and 90s redux. By all rights, we are ready for something new — or to cycle back to the very distant past. Global foment and economic challenges have historically been good for the creative state — creating a catalyst for something to respond to and inspiring a new creativity out of limited resources.

Tina Kalivas

And where does this leave me?

Out shopping for a chair recently, I immediately gravitated to the artisanal and design-oriented shops, desiring something unique to bring into my home. I found that mostly things were out of my price range, but also out of my comfort zone. Innovative, or retro-innovative mid-century pieces were uncomfortable to both my eye and my ass. 

I eventually headed to Crate & Barrel, feeling somewhat guilty for being generic, for having failed to step out of the box, or rather, the crate. But when I got there, I was surprised to find exactly what I wanted. I came to realize that what I was looking for was something quite traditional, with a new or unexpected treatment, a veneer of difference over something essentially conservative. Something old repackaged as something new. I wasn't as interesting as I thought.

I had to laugh. I guess to be ready for an aesthetic revolution, you have to start at home.

Campfire

Via Mondo Blogo

 

Piotr Kowalski

"Cube 5 A" 

1967

"We are born trapped in our own selfish skins, and we open our eyes to the rings of existence around us. The ring right around us, of lovers and spouses and then kids, is easy to encircle, but that is a form of selfishness, too, since the lovers give us love and the kids extend our lives. A handful of saints "love out to the horizon," circle after circle—but at the cost, almost always, of seeing past the circle near at hand, not really being able to love their intimates. Most of the time, we collapse the circles of compassion, don't look at the ones beyond, in order to give the people we love their proper due; we open our eyes to see the wider circles only when new creatures come in, when we realize that we really sit at the center of a Saturn's worth of circles, stretching out from our little campfire to the wolves who wait outside, and ever outward to the unknowable—toward, I don't know, deep-sea fish that live on lava and then beyond toward all existence, where each parrot and every mosquito is, if we could only see it, an individual."

Adam Gopnik, from "Dog Story," The New Yorker

Bloomberg Design and Construction Excellence Commission

The Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing (PATH) building in The Bronx via Inhabit

 

I was walking up Second Avenue the other day. On the corner of 69th Street there was a fenced off piece of nothing. The building had been demolished and an empty lot of dry earth and stone rubble was all that remained. What I noticed first was the light; it's brighter away from the shadows of tall building. A breeze whistled unfettered down the street to ruffle my hair and raise the smell of earth last exposed in the time of Edith Wharton.

What had been there just a few weeks before? I couldn't immediately recall. Two rumpled 19th-century 5-story brick tenement buildings: the type that is ubiquitous (but every day less so) across the east side, upper and lower. One of the store fronts had housed an Italian restaurant closed for over a year. Undoubtedly, a high-rise glass and steel residential building will rise up in its place.

It's sad to think of old buildings where generations have lived being torn down, and yet, it's also sad to think of New York not continuously renewing itself, looking towards the future.

Engine Company 201 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn via Flavorwire

The loss of older buildings is often felt acutely because of the design features ubiquitous in an earlier, more ornate age. Many newer, but not new, buildings seem purely functional, yet not in a cool, stripped down Bauhaus kind of way. Government buildings, often working with tight budgets, have traditionally been among the most soul-dampening.

However, in the past decade, New York's Design and Construction Excellence Initiative (DCE) and subsequent Department of Design and Construction (DDC), have injected a shot of adrenaline into government bids. Mayor Bloomberg first announced the DCE in 2004 and appointed the British architect David J. Burney as design commissioner.

While mindful of the bottom line, Burney made clear that the city values design. Jobs did not automatically go the lowest bidder, but to design firms willing to think both creatively and cost-effectively.

Engine Company 277 in Bushwick, Brooklyn via Flavorwire

One of Burney’s first acts as commissioner was to challenge STV architects to design something exciting for Engine Company 277 in Bushwick. The building subsequently received the 2004 Art Commission Award for Excellence in Design from the Art Commission of the City of New York.

The recession has increased the number of top-notch design firms available to work with the city. Via the DCE, the small budgets and strict requirements endemic to government buildings have inspired not just functional formulaic buildings, but rewarded flexible thinkers who view these challenges as sources of inspiration.

Many of the DCE's projects have targeted station houses, libraries, and other municipal buildings in neighborhoods under served by innovative high profile architects.

The Bronx Museum of the Arts via Flavorwire

Design is sometimes portrayed as the spoiled younger sibling to more substantive pursuits. But good design seems to fulfill quite a primal therapeutic human need, dating back to the vivid sketches on cave walls. Design is an outward expression of our most noble aspects of humanity, and it engages us, and makes us take pride in the spaces we inhabit. The DCE marks an exciting turn in the progression of New York. If we must have new, let's make it our best new.

Two of My Favorite Ladies

Via Tom and Lorenzo

 Christina Hendricks and Vivienne Westwood.

Werk.

Nog

Via Chow

The season of egg nog has ended.

It ushered in December, sipped while jostling elbows under the cracktastic light spectacular at Rolf's bar — New York's most infuriating and magical Christmas spot. Clutching overpriced store-bought egg nog mixed with liquor, us diehards held firm at the bar eyeing potential usurpers with the death stare, avoiding the food, slightly dazed by the profusion of garlands, tchotchkes, and hollow-eyed porcelin dolls hanging from the ceiling. Yet, it's perfect. Standing in a halo of lights and holiday baubles, everything seems right.

Via Jared The NYC Tour Guide

And then a few weeks later, we celebrated at home with home-made egg nog. Egg nog seems to date back to at least 1600s England, where the fresh ingredients of cream and eggs made it a quaff available only to the monied classes. Those with access to fresh dairy promptly mixed it with brandy or Madeira or even sherry. Ancestors of egg nog are posset, a mixture of eggs, milk, and ale or wine, or the egg flip, where similar ingredients are tossed between two glasses until frothy.

But egg nog really hit its stride in the American colonies, where plentiful land meant people of more modest means had access to fresh dairy. Rum, known as grog — started coming into play and things started getting awesome. Rum was part of the Triangular Trade from the Caribbean; so it was more affordable than brandy or other European spirits. Egg-and-grog became egg nog, though some argue the name derives from the word "noggin," a small wooden mug used to serve drinks in taverns. Nog is an old English word for a kind of strong beer (hence noggin). Egg and grog in a noggin? Rum ran a little dry during the Revolutionary War, but the homegrown bourbon was a willing and able substitute.

Via BlissTree

It's been a good run this past month, with egg nog in coffee, egg nog on cozy evenings glazed in brandy; its heft pleasant in the hand. And just as quickly as this indulgence came calling, it is gone again for the year. And the cool calm of January sets in, where a simple hot tea or a bourbon alone calms the spirit with its singularity, its clarity.

The holiday season has a slight mania to it, where every fun event is a bulwark against the harrying craziness of end-of-the-year loose ends threatening to form a choke hold. And so those festive parties and rituals become ever more charged, like the old pagan winter festivals whose burning yule logs warded off the darkness of endless night. The holiday lights gleam bright, we are warmed, and restored, and by the new year, we are recalibrated, free of both stress and indulgence, a calm slate ready for new adventures and new cocktails.

Happy New Year.