Log24

"Is it a real meadow?"

“Yes, of course.”

Paul Valéry, "Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci,"
La Nouvelle Revue , Paris, Vol. 95 (1895)—

"Regarded thus, the ornamental conception is to the individual arts
what mathematics is to the other sciences. …the objects chosen
and arranged with a view to a particular effect seem as if disengaged
from most of their properties and only reassume them in the effect,
in, that is to say, the mind of the detached spectator. It is thus
by means of an abstraction that the work of art can be constructed,
and is more or less easy to define according as the elements borrowed
from reality for it are more or less complex. Inversely it is by a sort of
induction, by the production of mental images, that all works of art are
appreciated, and this production must equally be more or less active,
more or less tiring, according as it is set in motion by a simple interlacing
on a vase or a broken phrase by Pascal."

— Translated by Thomas McGreevy (Valéry's Selected Writings,
     New Directions, 1950)

Related art —

• Departure dates in "Where Gravity Makes You Float,"
  by Oslo artist Josefine Lyche
• Apollo and Niobe at the Meadow
• "Enter the Matrix" game

"And we may see the meadow in December…."

Little Kay was quite blue, yes nearly black with cold;
but he did not observe it, for she had kissed away
all feeling of cold from his body, and his heart was
a lump of ice. He was dragging along some pointed
flat pieces of ice, which he laid together in all possible
ways, for he wanted to make something with them;
just as we have little flat pieces of wood to make
geometrical figures with, called the Chinese Puzzle.
Kay made all sorts of figures, the most complicated,
for it was an ice-puzzle for the understanding.
In his eyes the figures were extraordinarily beautiful,
and of the utmost importance; for the bit of glass
which was in his eye caused this. He found whole
figures which represented a written word; but he
never could manage to represent just the word
he wanted–that word was "eternity"; and the
Snow Queen had said, "If you can discover that figure,
you shall be your own master, and I will make you
a present of the whole world and a pair of new skates."
But he could not find it out.

— From The Snow Queen , by Hans Christian Andersen

See also the Chinese Puzzle in the previous post.

From the New York Times  obituary of philanthropist
Fred Kavli, who died on Thursday, November 21—

” In 2005, when Mr. Kavli announced that
he planned to start the prizes, he recalled
skiing in the Norwegian mountains as a boy.

‘At times,’ he told a gathering in New York,
‘the whole sky was aflame with the Northern Lights
shifting and dancing across the sky down to the
white-clad mountaintops. In the stillness and
loneliness of the white mountains, I pondered the
universe, the planet, nature and the wonders of
man. I’m still pondering.’ “

“And we may see the meadow in December, icy white
and crystalline….” — Johnny Mercer, lyrics to Lionel
Hampton and Sonny Burke’s “Midnight Sun”

* Lyche

See "Mind of Winter" in this journal.

"And we may see the meadow in December…."

For Emil Artin—

“And we may see
the meadow in December,
icy white and crystalline.”

— Johnny Mercer, “Midnight Sun”

Strange Attractor

Epiphany Star

(See also the star as a
“spider” symbol in the
stories of Fritz Leiber.)

For Heinrich Harrer,
who died today…

Wikipedia on the north face of the Eiger:

“A portion of the upper face is called ‘The White Spider,’ as snow-filled cracks radiating from an ice-field resemble the legs of a spider. Harrer used the name for the title of his book about his successful climb, Die Weisse Spinne (translated… as The White Spider).”

“Connoisseur of Chaos,”
by Wallace Stevens,
from Parts of a World (1942):

III

After all the pretty contrast of life and death
Proves that these opposite things partake of one,
At least that was the theory, when bishops’ books
Resolved the world. We cannot go back to that.
The squirming facts exceed the squamous mind,
If one may say so . And yet relation appears,
A small relation expanding like the shade
Of a cloud on sand, a shape on the side of a hill.

V

The pensive man . . . He sees that eagle float
For which the intricate Alps are a single nest.

Related material:

• Trevanian on “the meadow” in Shibumi,
• Trevanian on “the meadow that tilts up toward the north face” in The Eiger Sanction,
• Johnny Mercer on the meadow (Dec. 18 and 20, 2005), and
• Nine is a Vine, Christmas Eve, 2005.

“Heaven– Where Is It?
  How Do We Get There?”

To air on ABC
Tuesday, Dec. 20
(John Spencer’s birthday)

Fred Stein, 1945

“And we may see
the meadow in December,
icy white and crystalline.”

The Toys Left to right: June Montiero, Barbara Parritt, and Barbara Harris

From the website http://www.history-of-rock.com/toys.htm —

In 1964 they were signed by the Publishing firm Genius, Inc., which teamed them with the songwriting duo Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell…. The writers took a classical finger exercise from Bach and put a Motown bassline to it and “A Lover’s Concerto” was born.

September 1965: “A Lover’s Concerto” on the Dynavoice label went #4 R&B, crossed over to pop charts #2, and also became a #5 hit in England. In 1965 the song sold over a million copies. The Toys began appearing on television shows such as “Shindig!,” “Hullabullo,” and “American Bandstand,”  toured with Gene Pitney, and appeared in the film It’s a Bikini World.

Other sites giving further details on Bach’s Minuet in G:

Search for the sheet music and a rendition of the work at codamusic.com’s Finale Showcase Search Page.

Seeing and hearing the music on this site requires that you download  Coda’s SmartMusic Viewer, and possibly requires that you adjust your browser settings, depending on the operating system you use.

For another look at Bach’s music, along with a midi rendition, you can download Music MasterWorks composing software from the Aspire Software site…

http://www.musicmasterworks.com/.

Then download the midi file of the Minuet in G itself,  “Minuet in G,  BWV841” (M.Lombardi), from the website

http://www.classicalarchives.com/bach.html.

(To do this, right-click on the minuet link and use the “Save Target As” option, if you, like me, are using Internet Explorer with Windows.)

After you have downloaded the midi file of the minuet, use the “File” and “Open” options in Music MasterWorks to display and play the music.

A comparison of these two versions of Bach is instructive for anyone planning to purchase music composition software.   The MasterWorks creates sheet music from its midi file that is quite sophisticated and rather hard to follow, but this music accurately reflects the superior musical performance in the downloaded midi file versus the rendition in the online Finale Showcase file.   The Showcase file is much simpler and easier to read, as the rendition it describes is also quite simple.

The Gentle Rain

For an even simpler version, those of us who were in our salad days in 1965 can consult our memories of The Toys:

How gentle is the rain
That falls softly on the meadow.
Birds high up in the trees
Serenade the clouds with their melodies.

Oh, see there beyond the hill,
The bright colors of the rainbow.
Some magic from above
Made this day for us just to fall in love.

Those of the younger generation with neither the patience nor the taste to seek out the original by Bach may be content with the following site —

A Lover’s Concerto in Venice

To a more mature audience, the picture of a Venetian sunset at the above site (similar to the photo below, from Shunya’s Italy)

will, together with the lyrics of The Toys, suggest that

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven….

This line, addressed to Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” contradicts, to some extent, the statement by Igor Stravinsky in The Poetics of Music (1942, English version 1947) that music does not express anything at all. Stravinsky is buried in Venice.

From  Famous Graves:

Igor Stravinsky,

Venice