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William Blake, The Ghost of a Flea
I was fascinated (and entertained) by this discussion of a picture of William Blake’s in Chesterton’s short biography of Blake. It’s not only a highly entertaining read, and a valuable insight into the picture under discussion, but I think it reveals a lot about the artist William Blake, both as painter and poet. As it’s […]
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William Blake and the Romantic Conception of the Individual
In his book The Romantics, Neil King defines Blake as part of the Romantic movement in the following way: Blake was not interested in strict representational ‘correctness’ but was more concerned with bringing out imaginatively what an experience meant to him. In this Blake is characteristically Romantic, believing in the centrality of the imagination, and […]
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David Byrne on Fairie Culture
David Byrne (artist, musician, ex-lead singer of the Talking Heads) discusses fairie culture on his blog: David Byrne Journal: 10.30.06: The Secret Commonwealth. Quote: ‘Yeats claimed that the Irish were better writers than the English because of their belief in Fairie culture — that these irrational roots left the imagination less fettered.’ One can imagine […]
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William Wordsworth and William Blake – Nature and Anti Nature
Reading William Blake and William Wordsworth back-to-back brings to mind the similarities and differences between them. As they are contemporaries, and both are considered key figures in the Romantic movement in poetry, it’s natural to assume that they have much in common. But any close reading of the two reveals a different story. G.K. Chesterton […]
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Mendelssohn’s Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Best Recorded Version
I am enjoying Andre Previn’s version of the complete incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with the London Symphony Orchestra. This seems to be the highest recommendation for anyone looking for the complete orchestral music. The Pengiun Guide To Compact Discs & CDs calls it: ‘[A] wonderfully refreshing complete score. The veiled pianissimo of […]
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G.K. Chesterton on William Blake and Mysticism
I’m reading G.K. Chesteron’s biography of William Blake, and it’s a real treat, full of Chesterton’s unique insights and witticisms. The following quote provides a fresh angle on three of the poets we’ve discussed so far in the Culture Club: Blake, Shakespeare and Yeats. Chesterton is commenting on the fact that William Blake’s father, James […]
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Video: The Beatles Perform Pyramus and Thisbe
Two of my favourite artists, The Beatles and William Shakespeare, combined in an unexpcted way. Here’s the full clip of the fab four performing the Pyramus and Thisbe play-within-a-play from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, on one of the many television shows they did in the early days of Beatlemania (I’m not sure which one). It’s […]
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Heptameters in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Stephen Fry, in his book The Ode Less Travelled, discusses meter in some detail, and provides this interesting angle on the ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ segment of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Nabokov, in his Notes on Prosody, suggests that the hexameter [i.e a six-stress line] is a limit ‘beyond which the metrical line is no longer […]
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Video: Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, Beethoven Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral)
A wonderful performance of all four movements of the Pastoral Symphony. This was recently added to YouTube – I don’t know when the recording was made. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GWMApWKQIY] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMITF0DWJyE] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DmCI1EHQMg] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir9797qNVk0]
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Leonard Bernstein on Why Beethoven is the Greatest
Here’s Bernstein’s rationalisation on why he considered Beethoven the greatest composer who ever lived. It’s from his book The Joy of Music, in the chapter entitled Why Beethoven?, and it’s told in the form of a dialogue between Berstein (L.B.) and an unnamed Lyric Poet (L.P.). After much discussion around the subject of Beethoven’s melody, […]