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Alvin Ailey, “Revelations” (1960) performed April 28, 2012 [Review]

Posted in Dance, Modern, Reviews with tags , on April 29, 2012 by Nell

 Guide: Modern Dance in America

"I Been 'Buked" from Revelations

DANCE IN PROFILE: Alvin Ailey, Revelations (1960)

A complete performance of Revelations from 1986 is viewable on YouTube here (28 minutes into the video).

With Revelations, dancer-choreographer Alvin Ailey (1931-1989) revolutionized the role of African-Americans in Modern dance and created an enormously successful fusion of widely accessible style and themes and artistic quality. Revelations draws on black vernacular culture (derived from what Ailey called the “blood memories” of his childhood in Texas); spirituals, gospel, and blues music; and the precision and virtuosity of “heroic” Modern dance.

Revelations is the most widely-seen piece in the Modern dance repertoire (seen by over 23 million people, according to this page). The dance has been performed at multiple presidential inauguration galas and cited by Oprah Winfrey as something “every American” owes it to themselves to see. Mattel even produced a Revelations “Barbie” doll based on former Ailey Artistic Director Judith Jameson’s design! There is a wealth of information about this piece at the official Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater website.

“Rocka My Soul,” an exuberant group dance

I was fortunate enough to see Revelations performed live in Boston on April 28, 2012 by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. The company, founded by Ailey in 1958, continues to perform seminal works from Ailey’s repertory as well as the work of contemporary choreographers who continue in his spirit. Robert Battle was appointed Artistic Director of the company in 2011.

It is interesting to note that the original version of Revelations premiered in 1960 utilized six dancers and lasted over an hour, while the current version is performed with more than twice as many dancers and lasts about 40 minutes. Costumes and scenic lighting have also changed over time. The piece currently in performance certainly doesn’t seem dated, as the enormous enthusiasm of the Boston audience attested (which, incidentally, had a strong representation from every age group).

Revelations consists of three sections, each of which contain three or four numbers: first, “Pilgrim of Sorrow” alludes to the atmosphere of oppression in the south and a search for deliverance through spirituality; second, “Take Me to the Water” evokes baptism and a sense of hope and renewal; and third, “Move, Members, Move” consists of exuberant, high-energy numbers conveying church and community.

In addition to the personal love that the composer and his dancers clearly have for the material, the appeal of Revelations can be attributed in part to the combination of the excitement of the gospel music and beautifully composed group dances in numbers such as “Wade in the Water,” [view clip] “Sinner Man,” [view clip] and “You May Run On” [view clip]; the nuanced, controlled, and virtuosic expressions of yearning and aspiration seen in the duet “Fix Me, Jesus” [view clip] and solo “I Wanna Be Ready” [view clip]; and the structural clarity of the sequences of movements and the elegant, simple body shapes–both relaxed and clear–showcased in the opening number, “I Been ‘Buked” [view clip].

There were a number of stand-out moments in the April 28th performance. The delicate male solo “I Wanna Be Ready” [view a video from a 1986 performance] was performed with outstanding control and strength by Michael Francis McBride. The dancer uses the floor of the stage in surprising and captivating ways, alternately defying and giving in to gravity. The dancers propels himself off the floor while never leaving it: laying on the ground he suspends his hips off of the floor, then reaches his torso and legs outwards in a tight V-shape; he stands up, falls back to the floor, then glances back up at heaven. There is a clearly communicated sense of struggle combined with a representation of divinity and strength in the human form, which beautifully articulates the somewhat mournful solo vocal.

In “Wade in the Water,” [view clip] rhythmically propulsive music is paired with steady, determined movements in which the dancers flex and bend their torsos, leaning back and rolling their shoulders, creating a sense of barely contained energy simmering beneath the surface. Large blue cloths rippling along the floor suggest the river in which a baptism is taking place: a not-so-subtle yet effective device, which provides a clear sense a scene. The soaring leaps, spins, and plunges in the male trio “Sinner Man” [view clip] were thrilling, bringing to mind the athleticism of classical ballet.

Throughout, Ailey has the dancers clearly articulate the phrases, gestures, and forms of the music. The dancers are dancing to the musical score, not alongside or against it, and this mimicking of music brought to my mind the choreographed spirituals of Helen Tamiris. However, Ailey was able to achieve a far more substantial and cohesive expression of that music. The dancing in Revelations is both inevitable-seeming yet spontaneous; intuitive yet refined; stemming from personal impressions and experiences yet broadly accessible.

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Merce Cunningham (1919-2009): dancer, choreographer, and interdisciplinary collaborator

Posted in Dance, Modern with tags , , on April 1, 2012 by Nell

 Guide: Modern Dance in America

While many dancer-choreographers of the second generation (such as Jose Limón) continued to develop the traditions and techniques pioneered by the “Big Four” (Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and Hanya Holm), there were some who chose to break away from these ideals and establish new and unorthodox approaches to dance. Several of these young avante-garde choreographers—including Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, and Alwin Nikolais—apprenticed and established their careers in the pioneering dance companies, but eventually struck out on their own to create works that challenged the audience’s expectations and asked the question: “What is art?”

Among the most influential of these radical second generation choreographers was Merce Cunningham. He is said to have single-handedly invented aesthetics and philosophies that set the scene for the postmodern choreographers who would follow him (especially the Judson Church group), as well as new forms of performance art and avante-garde art.

Merce Cunningham in 1973

Merce Cunningham in 1973

Merce Cunningham (1919-2009)

  • Renowned as one of the greatest and most influential choreographers of the 20th century, Cunningham was also an accomplished dancer. He appeared onstage into his 60s.
  • He choreographed a total of over 150 dances and 800 “Events”—performances well suited to unconventional spaces (gyms, armories, etc), which combined elements of dance, scenery, and lighting in unpredictable ways.
  • Cunningham is notable for having impacted artists outside of dance with his progressive approach and through his extensive interdisciplinary collaborations with visual artists (including Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns) and musicians (including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Morton Feldman). His collaborations produced an influential body of work in music and visual art as well as dance.
  • Cunningham was forward-thinking. Late in his career, he experimented with using a computer programs and motion-capture technology to create elements of his dances. Before he died in 2006 he created a “Legacy Plan” outlining how he would like his company to be run and left a thorough archive of digitized information, plans, and films preserving his work.
The Merce Cunningham Dance Company

The Merce Cunningham Dance Company

  • Born in Centralia, Washington in 1919, Cunningham began dancing professionally at 20 years old with the Martha Graham Dance Company after having studied with her at Mills College. He admired and learned from Graham, but wasn’t convinced by certain aspects of her work—particularly the idea that every movement in a dance had to have a “meaning.” He was interested in exploring the mechanics of movement and the possibilities of the art form detached from specific emotional and psychological connotations.
  • His first solo show came in 1944, and he formed the Merce Cunningham Company in 1953. He left the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1945 after having originated several important solo roles with her company (including the preacher in Appalachian Spring).
  • Cunningham based himself in New York amidst a hotbed of avante-garde art and thought, and made a living by performing solo dances and music with his partner composer John Cage around the country. At first, his work was not readily recognized by audiences and critics. From the late ‘50s, some of his works began to picked up by noted companies, including the New York City Ballet, and his company appeared in international venues.
  • By the late ‘60s, his work was no longer considered the cutting edge: the Judson Church group had begun pushing radical experimentation and the question of “what is art?” even further.
Cage and Cunningham

John Cage and Merce Cunningham

Cage and Cunningham

  • Cunningham’s most important ongoing collaboration was with his life partner, John Cage (whom he first met in his late teens, when Cage was playing accompaniment for dance classes in Seattle.) They began working together in 1942.
  • Together, Cage and Cunningham explored a radical new approach to the relationship between dance and music: dance and music co-existed within their pieces, but were not directly coordinated or matched in time and were created independently of each other. (In this interview with Cunningham and Cage from 1981, the two discuss their collaborative methods.)
  • They both used chance procedures in constructing their works—that is, they used unpredictable factors (rolling a dice, tossing coins, etc) to make decisions about certain events within a piece (e.g. sequences of movements).
  • Cunningham’s dances abandoned conventional elements of dance such as narrative, climax, or associations with things other than the movement itself. Similarly, Cage broadened the conception of music to include a wide range of non-instrumental sounds (and even silence itself) and did away with traditional concepts of harmony, melody, form, and instrumentation.
  • Zen Buddhism was one of Cage and Cunningham’s major influences (before there was popular interest in Zen amongst young people in America). They admired Zen’s discipline, ideas about silence and void, and escape from patterns of thought.
  • Their philosophy and approach to the creative process were also influenced by the I Ching, an ancient Chinese text, and the German philosopher Nietzsche.
  • Both Cage and Cunningham wanted to create works in with the audience could become a part of experience—to leave elements of the dance or music open to the personal interpretation of the listener-viewer. Any number of different reactions to his dance were valid, as far as Cunningham was concerned.

Much of the above information is drawn from:

  • Reynolds, Nancy, and Malcolm McCormick. No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century. Yale UP, 2003: pp. 354-370. Print.
  • The official Merce Cunningham Dance Company website.

Recommended Viewing

  • Excerpted performances by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from the 2011 Legacy Tour on YouTube: Second Hand (197o) with music by John Cage and costumes by Jasper Johns. Roaratorio (1983) with music by Cage and decor by Mark Lancaster.
  • Changing Steps (1975) video version directed by Cunningham and Elliot Caplan: part 1 –  part 2
  • Mondays with Merce – a documentary TV show exploring Merce Cunningham’s work and guest choreographers.

ODC/Dance Downtown, March 22, 2012 [Review]

Posted in Dance, Modern, Reviews with tags , on March 28, 2012 by Nell

 Guide: Modern Dance in America

ODC Dance Company

ODC Dance Company

The second program on ODC’s Dance Downtown at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco featured three works choreographed by the three Artistic Directors of the ODC. The San Francisco-based ODC Dance Company was founded in 1971 by Brenda Way, and is now among the leading professional Modern dance companies and training programs on the West Coast. The audience was perhaps the largest and most vocally enthusiastic I’ve seen at a Modern dance performance, testifying to ODC’s popularity within the community.

The program opened with a world premiere: “Cut-Out Guy” by KT Nelson, with an ambient electronic music score by Ben Frost that shifted between thick, driving textures and quiet canvases of sound. This piece featured only the male dancers of the company, clothed simply in shorts and white shirts with sparse backdrops of dark colors (lighting by Dave Robertson), and was inspired by the choreographer’s experiences watching male wrestling teams in her son’s middle and high school (according to her program note). The dance explored tensions between strength and vulnerability, determination and awkwardness, expression and frustration.

The piece featured each of the dancers in turn in a series of duets and solos, and seemed carefully custom-made for the individual styles of movement and body types in the group: at one point a small, agile dancer tucked himself into the frame of a taller dancer and climbed over the larger dancer’s body. A dancer with a balletic quality takes on broad, graceful movements.

A number of unusual kinds of movement were featured extensively in this piece. The predominant leitmotif of the dance: the dancers took courageous, determined leaps then crashed to the floor in a carefully cultivated recklessness (taking the “recovery” out of Doris Humphrey’s famous concept of “fall and recovery”!). Dancers also slid across the floor on slippered feet and sometimes on their knees, scrambling and shifting nervously. They embraced or fought with each other in ambiguous, impersonal moments of intimacy. Overall, the dancers did a wonderful job of living the choreography with strength, grace, and commitment.

“Cut-Out Guy” was the most overall compelling work of the evening, for me, though I felt a lack of  development over the course of the piece. Most of this relatively long dance offered elaborations rather than new discoveries, and based on a first viewing I came out of the piece with roughly the same impression as I had in the first several minutes.

Kimi Okado’s I Look Vacantly Over the Pacific… Though Regret (2011) explored one theme in three movements: lost in translation. The title comes from a Japanese pencil box, and the piece goes on to explore awkward misunderstandings between two cultures. The first movement explored language: the dancers performed word-for-word gestural interpretations of cliche English phrases (“beat around the bush,” “hung out to dry,” etc) from an ESL learning tape. The second movement was a manic interpretation of customary gestures of of greeting and insult. The third explored imported pop culture, with a Japanese interpretation of 1960s surf and psychedelic music as the high-energy score.

The subject was inherently compelling and the choreographer took many risks in making this humorous and bizarre piece. However, the piece fell flat for me: it was self-conscious and overwrought in its attempt to exude quirky satire, and the musical score—a combination of commissioned new music, found music, and speech recordings—felt more hokey than kitschy.

Part of a Longer Story (2006) by ODC’s founder Brenda Way, a dance to Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in D, took a far more lyrical, neo-classical approach than either of the two preceding pieces. It reminded me in many ways of the works of Mark Morris (e.g. Mozart Dances or L’allegro) in that it took historical music as a starting point for creating delicate, charming dances that draw on diverse stylistic influences and are integrated with witty humor.

The relationship between the music and the movement on a micro level was clear in many parts of this dance: the dancers would often visually mimic the contour and gesture of the clarinet soloist’s line. But this didn’t come through on a macro level: the overall clarity of Mozart’s musical form and repetitions of musical phrases were generally not mirrored or responded to in the dance, so the structural clarity of both dance and music were obscured. Brenda Way made an entirely reasonable commitment not to be entirely tied down to the music’s phrase structure, but dancers’ shifts between mirroring and disregarding the music felt almost random.

The center of Part of a Longer Story is a gorgeous, emotionally intense love duet between two dancers—the middle slow movement. The dancers drag, carry, lift, attract, and repel against each other, evoking a myriad of emotional complexities, and the two dancers exuded clarity and intensity. I would have rather watched this without music altogether.

The use of humor in this piece generally lacked the organically infused wit that Mark Morris has often been able to pull off. When a dancer interrupts a sequence of lyrical solos to “shake their booty,” for instance, it lacks spontaneity or necessity. Humor in dance seems incredibly difficult to achieve gracefully, and I feel it has to come from a place that is genuine.

The evening featured masterful dancing by the company and distinctive and mature choreographic visions, but I left the venue craving some of the rigorous structural clarity of Martha Graham’s choreography in which every movement is carefully considered, every turn of the head or lift of the leg is expressive, and every dance is a closed world in which there is exactly as much or as little going on as there needs to be.

Jose Limón, “The Moor’s Pavane” (1949)

Posted in Dance, Modern with tags , , on March 27, 2012 by Nell

 Guide: Modern Dance in America

DANCE IN PROFILE: Jose Limón, The Moor’s Pavane (1949)

Watch the full video of this piece, with the original dancers performing. [YouTube]

With The Moor’s Pavane, Jose Limón compressed Shakespeare’s Othello into a 21-minute, single-movement work featuring Limón himself as Othello along with his close collaborators Betty Jones (Desdemona), Lucas Hoving (Iago), and Pauline Koner (Emilia), with music by Baroque composer Henry Purcell as the score. The title and the style of dance allude to Renaissance court dance (Pavane).

Limón danced with Doris Humphrey‘s group for years before founding the Jose Limón Dance Company in 1946, with Humphrey as co-director, although he continued to be known as a dancer perhaps more than a choreographer because of his commanding onstage presence.

Limón’s dance method continued many of Humphrey’s principles of movement, including “fall and recovery” (see my post on Doris Humphrey) and a balance between weight and weightlessness. The characteristic movements of his dances, as seen in The Moor’s Pavane, follow the gravity of the limbs’ to their natural conclusion, with a combination of upwards movements emphasizing height (e.g. broad leg gestures) while the dancers maintain a grounded stability and a fairly static, upright torso. There is also often parallelism in the dancer’s limbs (arms moving in coordination with legs in opposing directions, for example in turns and circular movements) creating a graceful, broad, and clear effect lacking unresolved tensions.

In the introduction to the film of The Moor’s Pavane, Limón states that he seeks to tell the story of Othello through gesture. Accordingly, the structure of this dance is driven first and foremost by the narrative rather than by an abstract emotional concept or idea about movement itself. The gestures generally appear to focus on the relationships between the four characters, illuminated by their physical relationships and interactions with each other (aggression, tenderness, intimacy, suspicion). The dancers typically face each other, often making eye contact, rather than dancing outwards towards the audience. This format reminds me somewhat of classical ballets (e.g. Tchaikovsky classics), but here the story’s development is at a decidedly faster pace.

Clearly narrative gestures are fluidly interspersed with duets and quartets that bring Renaissance court dance to mind in their tight group coordination and graceful, statue-like poses. The broad skirts of the period costumes obscure much of the two female dancer’s lower-body movements, but by covering the dancer’s bodies in an unnatural way the costumes help to create character, drama, and historical stylistic allusion.

Limón’s dancing—as exemplified by The Moor’s Pavane—emphasized the depiction of emotions, literary inspirations, narrative, character, and is coordinated with music in a clear (but not irritatingly direct) way. It is interesting to contrast Limón’s direction with the path of Merce Cunningham, for example (only about 10 years Limón’s junior), who left the Martha Graham camp to establish a form of dance that broke away traditional concepts of narrative, emotional expression, and the relationship of dance to music in the way that his partner John Cage challenged traditional concepts of music.

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Dance After the Heroic Age: The Second Generation

Posted in Dance, Modern with tags on March 27, 2012 by Nell

 Guide: Modern Dance in America

Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and Hanya Holm, know as the “big four” choreographers of the ‘30s and ‘40s—as well as composer/critic Louis Horst—established training programs for dancers (often the dancers in their own companies, who would perform their work) in or before the mid-‘30s. They distilled and passed on a distinctive set of aesthetic frameworks and pedagogies connected to their personal styles.

Many of the young dancer-choreographers of the next generation were very much under the influence of these masters, and went on to continue or react against this inheritance in a variety of ways.

Some dancer-choreographers of the second generation, by contrast, chose to break away from many aspects of established dance conventions. Merce Cunningham was perhaps the most influential.

Dancers from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds also began to come to the forefront, and choreographers such as Lester Horton and Katherine Dunham began to search for authentic African-American dance styles.

Here are just a few of the many notable choreographers of the second generation:

Lester Horton in his 1929 work "Pueblo Eagle Dance."

Lester Horton in his 1929 work "Pueblo Eagle Dance."

Choreographer: Anna Sokolow (1910-2000)
Background: Studied first with Horst at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater in 1928, and joined Graham’s company in 1930. She quickly formed her own group, the Dance Unit.
Characteristics: She often explored social and economic issues in Modern America as seen from a Marxist standpoint. Satirical tone, tinged with bitterness. Feelings of aggression, despair, isolation. Took great inspiration from jazz and classical music.
Representative work(s): Rooms (1955). Archival rehearsal footage of a solo excerpt from this dance. [YouTube]

Choreographer: Jose Limón (1908-1972)
Background: Danced with Doris Humphrey’s group, who went on to direct the Jose Limón Company after she was unable to perform due to arthritis.
Characteristic themes and movement: Literary subjects, as well explorations of Latin heritage (Limón was Mexican-born), as well as social issues. Lyrical movement, commanding presence, power and charisma as a performer. Created a masculine dance vocabulary depicting noble “man of action” as a fresh alternative to stereotypes of male dancers in ballet.
Representative work(s): The Moor’s Pavane (1949). Full video with the original dancers performing, including Limon. [YouTube]

Choreographer: Lester Horton (1906-1953)
Background: Established his company in Los Angeles, rather than New York. Alvin Ailey and Joyce Trisler were among his pupils.
Characteristic themes and movement: Influences from “exotic” cultures: American Indians, Aztecs, Haitains, and Africans. Created highly theatrical dances he called “choreodrama,” ranging in quality. Company was notable for interracial members at a time when dance groups were still predominantly segregated.
Representative work(s): Salome (1934). No video available.

Katherine Dunham

Katherine Dunham

Choreographer: Katherine Dunham (1909-2006)
Background: Mixture of training in ballet and interpretive dance. First became active in Chicago. Researched dance in the West Indies (1936-7) as an anthropology student at University of Chicago.
Characteristic themes and movement: Lush, colorful dance numbers inspired by the styles she observed in Haiti and Martinique, as well as styles from Cuba, Mexico, and early African-American dance. Her works were acessible and popular on Broadway and in film.
Representative work(s): Clip from film Stormy Weather (1943), with Lena Horn. [YouTube]

A few dancers of note I haven’t delved into here:

  • Jane Dudley
  • Mary O’Donnell
  • Jean Erdman
  • Pearl Lang
  • Eleanor King
  • Sybil Shearer
  • Esther Junger
  • Valerie Bettis
  • Daniel Nagrin (Helen Tamiris’ partner and husband)
  • Pearl Primus

Most of the above information is drawn from:

Reynolds, Nancy, and Malcolm McCormick. No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century. Yale UP, 2003.

Related Posts:

Medieval and Renaissance Music: Why is it Important?

Posted in Medieval, Music, Renaissance with tags , on February 26, 2012 by Nell

Guide: Vocal Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods

Historians often point to the Medieval period as the beginning of the unbroken tradition of notated (written down) Western music that developed into what we now consider “classical” or “art” music. Although the earlier Ancient music of Greece was very important and influential, only a few fragments of Ancient Greek music have survived. The Medieval period lasted from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century (specifically 476 AD) through roughly the 15th century.

It was in Medieval cathedrals and abbeys that explorations of the nature of pitches and rhythms began evolving into what would become the practices of composing and performing standardized much later in the 18th century. Important technical tools such as written musical notation and solfege (a method for sight-singing) also first appeared in the Medieval period. Music with increasingly sophisticated counterpoint–simultaneous melodic lines–began appearing in the 1100s.

Music by Orlando di Lassus

16th c. music by Orlando di Lassus (click to view source)

The following centuries after the Medieval period saw new developments in musical style, and Renaissance style reached its peak during the 16th century with the music of Palestrina and Lassus.

Tastes and ideas eventually changed and composers like Claudio Monteverdi paved the way for the new Baroque style of music, which began in the 17th century.

While there were a lot of different musical styles during the Medieval and Renaissance periods, there was a clear continuity of musical forms and similarities in the way that people composed, performed, and listened to music during this entire period.

Vocal Music

Instrumental music was popular in the Medieval and Renaissance periods in the contexts of out-of-doors dancing, lords’ banquets, town festivals and ceremonies, popular songs, etc. The surviving documentation of instrumental music is unfortunately not very good, partly because music notation from this time isn’t always very specific about what instrument or voice should be performing a musical part. A lot of instrumental dance music was also learned and passed on orally—that is, by ear rather than by writing—so we don’t know exactly what it was like.

Vocal music held an important position in the Catholic church, which was the dominant cultural and political force in Western Europe, and many of the most highly respected composers specialized in vocal music. On the whole, instrumental music wasn’t considered as worthy of development in the church as vocal music was until, arguably, the late 1500s-early 1600s, with the beginning of the Baroque period.

For these reasons, vocal music is a good focus of study to trace important developments in music during the Renaissance and before, although a consideration of instrumental music during this time is important for a complete understanding of the history of music.

Thomas Cole’s “The Course of Empire” (1834-36) [GUIDE]

Posted in Art, Guides, Romantic with tags , , on February 25, 2012 by Nell

The Course of Empire

 Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire (1834-36) is a series of five allegorical paintings depicting the rise and fall of a fantastical civilization.

Cole envisions a prehistoric age in which nature dominates man (The Savage State); an ancient utopia in which people live in balance with nature (The Pastoral State); an era of decadence (Consummation); war and chaos (Destruction); and finally, an uninhabited world in which the ruins of mankind are once again overtaken by nature (Desolation).

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Music Inspired by Art

Nell Shaw Cohen, “The Course of Empire” (2008) Inspired by the paintings of Thomas Cole

Posted in Art, Modern, Music with tags , , , , on February 25, 2012 by Nell

 Guide: Thomas Cole’s “The Course of Empire”

 Guide: Music Inspired by Art

The Course of Empire (2008) is a string quartet by Nell Shaw Cohen inspired by a cycle of five paintings by Thomas Cole (1801-1848) of the same name. Explore these topics to learn more:

  • Inspired by Art – The process of composing music inspired by paintings and how the music and paintings are connected.
  • Musical Styles – Discover connections between music history and the historical narrative of the five paintings.
  • The Mountain Motif – Explore the appearances of a musical motif representing the recurring image of a mountain cliff in Cole’s paintings.

The Course of Empire string quartet was most recently performed in conjunction with an exhibit of the paintings by members of A Far Cry at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA on July 30, 2011 as part of the Inspired by the Land festival, at the opening of the national touring exhibit Painting the American Vision. For more resources on the quartet and the Nell Shaw Cohen’s interpretation of the paintings, read The Boston Globe article on the piece, or visit the New-York Historical Society’s interview with the composer.

Look and Listen

Click the images to view a larger version of each painting. Play the audio below each image to hear a brief excerpt from that movement, or click the link to download a complete mp3 of the piece.

This performance was recorded live at the Peabody Essex Museum on July 30, 2011 by Liza Zurlinden and Ethan Wood, violin; Jason Fisher, viola; Alexei Gonzales, cello. The five movements total slightly over 14 minutes.

I. The Savage State

Download the complete movement

 

II. The Pastoral State


Download the complete movement

 

III. Consummation

Download the complete movement

 

IV. Destruction

Download the complete movement

 

V. Desolation

Download the complete movement

Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School [VIDEO]

Posted in Art, Romantic, Videos with tags , on February 25, 2012 by Nell

 Guide: Thomas Cole’s “The Course of Empire”

Thomas Cole (1801-1848) was an English-born American painter and founder of the Hudson River School—a group of artists in the mid-19th century known for their paintings depicting American scenery and allegorical landscapes. These artists formed an American artistic identity that was connected to, yet distinct from, the European tradition.

The Course of Empire (1834-36) is arguably Cole’s magnum opus and most well-known work. Visit The Course of Empire: Narrative and Context to get an overview of the historical and intellectual currents running through this suite of paintings, then examine each of the five paintings in detail at The Course of Empire: The Paintings.

The Hudson River Valley

Cole and his contemporaries were inspired by the Hudson River Valley region and the scenery they found in the Catskill Mountains; an area that was popular amongst tourists in New York for hiking and sightseeing. Paintings of scenery in this region form a large part of the output of the Hudson River School.

Learn More:

Please note that the below links will take you outside of this website.

  • The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision, by Linda S. Ferber (interviewed in the above videos). A survey of the artists of the Hudson River School, including Cole, and with a focus on the works in the outstanding collection of the New-York Historical Society.
  • Explore Thomas Cole. An online gallery with interactive curated guides to Cole’s paintings, including The Course of Empire.
  • The Thomas Cole National Historic Site. A guide to visiting Thomas Cole’s former home in Catskill, NY, and sites in the area of interest to the Hudson River School painters.

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The Course of Empire: Narrative and Context [VIDEO]

Posted in Art, Romantic, Videos with tags , , on February 25, 2012 by Nell

 Guide: Thomas Cole’s “The Course of Empire”

Scroll below to explore the larger contexts behind Cole’s artistry and the story in The Course of Empire, then examine each of the five paintings in detail.

The Landscape

Thomas Cole is considered one of the first great American landscape painters, and these five paintings are a virtuosic display. His work was strongly influenced by the Romantic ideal of the Sublime wilderness, as well as older European painters such as Claude Lorraine and Nicolas Poussin.

Landscape and its artistic representation was important for America’s national identity in the 19th century, and the fate of the wilderness had spiritual and political resonance for Cole and like-minded artists and intellectuals.

The Story

The five paintings are set in the same place during progressive times of day, each with different moods and weather conditions (the first painting depicts a tumultous cloudscape at dawn; the final painting is tranquil twilight). Cole imbues each view of this landscape with its own emotional state.

Cole’s imaginary civilization looks and acts like an ancient Greek or Roman society, from the wise philosopher sketching geometric diagrams in the dirt in The Pastoral State to the monumental statue of a discus-throwing gladiator in Destruction.

The Allegory

There is the moral of all human tales;
‘Tis but the same rehearsal of the past.
First freedom and then Glory – when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption – barbarism at last.
And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page…

Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-1818)

Empire depicts the complete life cycle of a civilization. In this, Cole was influenced by cyclical theories of history well known to intellectuals in Cole’s time, as well as global and national current events.

The generic Classical setting of Cole’s story lends it a sense of timelessness. The paintings are a universal parable that can be applied to any civilization, and it was seen in the light of current events and trends in Cole’s own time. It can be understood just as easily, and be as powerful, today.

 

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