Tag Archives: Franz Liszt

small is beautiful: a free man in paris

It was a time when Paris was a city for the young. Students, painters, intellectuals, journalists, grisettes: all were there along with a young German poet who recorded a period of creative ferment between one revolution and the next. …. … Continue reading

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chopin of dissonance: nocturnes on renunciations of reality

For sixteen prolific years in France prior to splitting with George Sand, Chopin had produced an uninterrupted stream of masterpieces on such a consistently brilliant level of craftsmanship and invention that it is well-nigh impossible to talk of a bell … Continue reading

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Sand and Chopin….. etudes of the muse or the ballade of the…vampire

George Sand is often cast as the villain of the piece, though actually, she did wonders for Frederic Chopin by shielding him from the buffetings of the world. Chopin’s connection with Madame Dudevant, the French novelist, better known as “George … Continue reading

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liberated from foursquare classical rhythms

His life was brilliant and brief, much like his masterpieces on the piano. This segment tracks Frederic Chopin in Paris. He had left Poland to spend eight inhospitable months in Vienna before making his way to Paris at he time … Continue reading

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Chopin and the unpredictable mazurka

Chopin’s Polishness went deeper than the color of his passport. From a musical standpoint, in fact, it was of paramount importance because of the way Polish folk music shaped his whole thinking on questions of rhythm and melody. His formal … Continue reading

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the foe of the metronome: Does the right hand not know…

… what the left hand is doing?  Chopin, his life though it was marked by illness, was nonetheless, a success. His life brilliant and brief was much like his masterpieces for the piano. Masterpieces cloaked in the enigma  of his … Continue reading

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SAINT SIMON SAYS: FIND THE FEMALE MESSIAH

In the nineteenth century, when the Saint-Simonians took to mysticism under the leadership of Bathelemy Prosper Enfantin, they began to talk up “the rehabilitation of the flesh” , a principle which inderlay the growing advocacy of free-love in the movement. … Continue reading

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IDOL GOSSIP: FEED YOUR SLEEPLESS HEAD

G.I. Gurdjieff was one of the most important spiritual figures of the 20th century. Controversial and cloaked in mystery, his mythology is as rich as it is questionable. He claimed to have traveled from his native Armenia to the Far … Continue reading

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US AND THEM: THE MADCAP LAUGHS

Henry Fuseli’s painting “The Mandrake” , now lost, struck the aging Horace Walpole as “shockingly mad, madder than ever, quite mad!” But Fuseli would hardly have regarded that as an insult. Much of the time he was trading on madness … Continue reading

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SYMPHONIC BIOGRAPHY & ALGORITHMS OF DISTRESS

Call it the revolution of the cyborg symphonies. Its algorithmic composition. As Duke Ellington said, ”It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing”, but the digital world is getting very close.  ”Cope has been writing software to … Continue reading

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