The Language of Peace

Yesterday evening, Wendy and I took the train to the Frederick P. Rose Hall at Columbus Circle to attend a performance of Orient-Occident: A Dialogue of Cultures by Jordi Savall, part of the Lincoln Center's Great Performers series.

The musical performance at 8:00 p.m. was preceded by a panel discussion moderated by Ara Guzelimian, with Karen Armstrong, Manuel Forcano, Osvaldo Golijov, and Jordi Savall.

Ara Guzelimian is the Dean of the Julliard School http://www.juilliard.edu/.
Karen Armstrong is an author of numerous books on comparative religion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Armstrong
Manuel Forcano is a poet and translator of ancient texts from the Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic.  http://www.lletra.net/en/author/manuel-forcano
Osvaldo Golijov is a composer who writes pieces for the Kronos Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma and the like.  http://www.osvaldogolijov.com/
Jordi Savall is a leading performer of early music and the developer of the Jerusalem project.

No lightweights on this card.

The Irene Diamond Educational Center was packed; we were lucky to find seats.  The discussion centered on the power of music to moderate the conflicts among Jewish, Muslim, and Christian cultures, especially in the ancient city of Jerusalem.  All agreed that the history of relations among the cultures, especially since the Christian crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries and the expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Spain in 1492, has been conflictual, and that relations have grown more strained since the terrorist attack of 9/11.

The panel - and most of the audience - seemed heartened, however, by Jordi Savall’s vision of music - and especially early music - as the language of peace.  Simple melodies, played on simple instruments, he said, speak to the heart.  With music, we cannot lie.

Most of the questions were polite, generally hovering around the question of how to spread this message of hope across cultures, classes and generations.  One man at the rear startled the crowd by asking whether a terrorist would stop to listen to music before launching an attack.  A gasp escaped the audience.  Jordi Savall raised an eyebrow, as if hearing the voice of an old friend from across the room.  He responded calmly to what he termed a ‘demagogic question’.  If all people were free, if everyone received a good education, if justice prevailed across the globe, he said, we would not have to worry about terrorists.

During the question and answer session, Osvaldo Golijov let it be known that his ‘good friend’ Yo-Yo Ma was in attendance.  Heads craned.  As the discussion broke up and we moved to the Allen Room for the performance, we spotted Mr. Ma emerging from the men’s room, and taking his place on line with us to be admitted to the concert hall.

The Allen Room is a spectacular venue.    The stage is set in front of a huge picture window overlooking Columbus Circle, Central Park and the cityscape beyond.  The acoustics are precise and not a sound from the outside finds its way into the theater.

The ensemble, Hesperion XXI, consisted of seven musicians from seven countries playing traditional instruments - and playing them exceedingly well.

As we entered the concert hall, Yo-Yo Ma was questioning Jordi Savall about his rebab, an ancient string instrument played between the legs using a bow.  Dimitri Psonis was tuning the seventy-two strings of his santur while Haig Sarikouyoumdjian warmed up his duduk.  Once the members of the ensemble were satisfied with their tuning and the audience was firmly seated, the concert began with a plaintive Arabic melody - one of those simple songs on a simple instrument Jordi Savall mentioned earlier.  Songs from Armenia, the French middle ages, Sephardic Alexandria, and other equally exotic places and times followed, one more soulful than the next.  The sight of fire engines and police cars gathering outside on 59th Street didn’t seem to matter.

A solo by percussionist David Mayoral drew spontaneous and enthusiastic applause.  Throughout the evening, Mr. Mayoral’s performances on drums, tambors, and tambourines were awe inspiring.  With a few strokes of his fingers he evoked thunderstorms, heartbeats, and other rhythms of nature.  Pierre Hamon showed off a double flute and Gaguik Mouradan enchanted the audience with a solo on the kamancha.

As we rode the elevator from the sixth floor to the lobby, we heard a woman’s voice from the back of the car asking her companion, “You didn’t really like that music did you?”  A man, presumably her husband, replied that some of it was "alright".  “But it was so primitive,” she said.  The couple next to us exchanged knowing smiles as we dispersed into the night, inspired by the music of peace, but knowing that not everyone can yet hear it.

Link to the review of the performance in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/arts/music/04jordi.html?scp=1&sq=jordi&st=cse


The Language of Peace

Where Did Philocetes Get His Bow?

Compared with the modern theater, ancient Greek tragedies employ few props.  Those that are used, however, are crucial: Creusa's basket, Clytemnestra's tapestries, the note in Phaedra's hand.  One of the most storied props in the classical theater is Philoctetes' bow.

According to Diodorus of Sicily, Philoctetes got the bow from Heracles when Philoctetes agreed to light Heracles' funeral pyre:

[4.38.4] Now when Iolaüs had carried out these orders and had withdrawn to a distance to see what would take place, Heracles, having abandoned hope for himself, ascended the pyre and asked each one who came up to him too put torch to the pyre. And when no one had courage to obey him Philoctetes alone was prevailed upon; and he, having received in return for his compliance the gift of the bow and arrows of Heracles, lighted the pyre. And immediately lightning also fell from the heavens and the pyre was wholly consumed.
[Library of History (4.38,4) translated by C.H. Oldfather
 http://www.theoi.com/Text/DiodorusSiculus4B.html#35]

The bow - and its history - are central to the plot of Sophocles' Philoctetes. Soon after they land on Lemnos, Odysseus explains to young Neoptolemus the importance of retrieving the bow - without it, Troy cannot be taken.  A comrade later explains that Odysseus learned this from Helenus, the prophet son of Priam, whom Odysseus had captured.

Gradually won over by Neoptolemus' lying speech, Philoctetes grants Neoptolemus permission to touch the bow, then to hold it.  When he goes into a swoon, he hands the bow over to his new friend, asking him to guard it for him.  Then, consumed by pain, Philoctetes asks Neoptolemus to do for him what he had done for Heracles:

Boy, my good boy, take up this body of mine
and burn it on what they call the Lemnian fire.
I had the resolution once to do this for another,
the son of Zeus, and so obtained the arms
that you now hold.
  Philoctetes 798, David Grene translation

Neoptolemus, of course, does not end Philoctetes' life.  He waits through his sleep, repents his deception, and returns the bow to its owner, much to the chagrin of his captain, Odysseus.

As Neoptolemus and Philoctetes prepare to desert the Greek army for home, the spirit of Heracles intercedes, commanding them to return to Troy - Philoctetes to be healed and to kill Paris with his bow, and Neoptolemus to serve as his companion.

The spirit says that this will be the second time Troy falls to the bow and arrows of Heracles, but we must leave that tale to another time.

Cutting and Pasting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

There is something satisfying about cutting out pictures and pasting them onto things in unexpected ways. Maybe it has something to do with recontextualizing bits of reality in transformative ways. Maybe not.

A exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art titled “Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage,” demonstrates what can be accomplished with a pair of scissors, a pot of paste, a stack of cartes de visite, a set of watercolors and a fanciful imagination. The show features about 45 collages created during the 1860s and ‘70s. All but one were made by women.

The exhibition is introduced with a display of cartes de visite – the Victorian equivalent of calling cards. A carte de visite is a black and white photograph of a person, typically formally dressed and posed, pasted onto a 2 ½ by 4 inch card. People traded them with friends and collected them in albums which were specially designed to hold them. During the 1860s and 1870s, as cardomania swept through Europe and America, the more artistically gifted collectors began painting designs on the album pages surrounding the cards. Some transformed the designs into backgrounds – watercolor landscapes or drawing rooms – onto which cut-out photographs from the cards were strategically placed to create photocollages.


The results are not high art, but they are clever and whimsical, fun to look at. Too bad I don’t have a stack of cartes de visite or the talent to create the watercolor contexts for them, but I do have a pair of scissors, a container of Elmer’s glue, and a drawerful of images that I have collected for my decoupage projects. Maybe there are some pictures in our photo albums that I can use…

The exhibition runs through May 9. Click here to see images from the exhibition.

As I was riding home on the train, it occurred to me that cardomania could catch on again. I would be happy to pass the idea on to Moo if they would give me 1% of the gross revenue.

Here is the Wikipedia article on carte de visite.

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An Opportunity Never To Be Repeated

When we were at the Cloisters a few weeks ago, I saw a page from the Belles Heures of Jean de France. It was accompanied by a notice that the rest of the pages were on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until June 13, 2010. Because the book is currently unbound for “photography and conservation”, all the pages are able to be exhibited individually, “a unique opportunity never to be repeated”, according to the museum’s advertisement.

Yesterday, Good Friday, I took the train into the city, rode the subway to 81St Street and walked across the park to the Museum in search of a once in a lifetime chance to see the entire book in its original.


The exhibition, titled “The Art of Illumination: the Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry”, contains 180 manuscript pages and other artifacts from the Duc’s collection. Each leaf is displayed in an individual glass case in the Robert Lehman wing on the ground floor of the museum.

The displays are grouped in sections: Prayers to the Virgin, the Hours of the Passion [very suitable for Good Friday], Readings from the Gospels, and so on. A few unusual sections – on Heraclius and the True Cross; the Life of St. Catherine of Alexandra; and Diocrès, Bruno, and Carthusians, for example – provide a peek into themes scarcely known today.

I particularly enjoyed two sections, one titled the Suffrages of the Saints, containing depictions of saints in action – including this one of St. Michael the Archangel slaying the devil with a sword – and the other a calendar cycle, listing the feast days of the liturgical year. In the tradition of medieval calendars, the Belles Heures includes two illustrations at the turn of each month: one representing the month’s dominant zodiacal sign and the other portraying a ‘labor’ appropriate for the season. The calendar page for March, for example, includes a depiction of a ram – Aries – and a picture of two men spreading manure at the base of a row of grape vines. The manure apparently did its work because the illustration for September shows the two men  trampling grapes into wine.

When the illustrations from this book are reproduced in modern day books, they are typically enlarged to show the intricate detail of the paintings. Although they are impressive in their enlarged versions, they are even more stunning in their original miniature versions. Squinting through a magnifying glass (thoughtfully provided by the museum) – tracing the fine detail of the pictures– I marveled at the exquisite skill of the artists.

The name with which the Belles Heures is most often associated is Jean de France, Duc de Berry, the wealthy collector of the arts who commissioned it. But in this exhibit, the young artists who executed it receive equal billing. They were three brothers – Herman, Paul, and Jean de Limbourg – who came from the Netherlands into the duke’s service when they were in their late teens and stayed with him until their deaths from the plague in 1416. Little is known of their lives, except through their association with the Duc, but their intelligence, humor and talent are easily recognized in their illustrations.

I suppose the book needs to be sewn together again, but when it is, few people will ever see its illustrations except in reproduction. Too bad that this ‘never to be repeated’ event cannot be repeated every now and again.

The museum’s website contains extensive information about the exhibition.

The Belles Heures is a permanent part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art at the Cloisters.

Glorious Victor Defeated in Battle of Words

When Clytemnestra welcomes Agamemnon back to Argos, she tells the servants to roll out the red carpet for his entrance into the palace.

He balks - for several reasons.

Such delicacies are womanish; not suitable for a soldier used to camp life. He does not want to be fawned over like some eastern potentate. This kind of display is more fitting for a god than a man; and Agamemnon is anxious not to invite divine jealousy. Being mortal, he thinks it dangerous to set foot on fineries. Besides, it is unnecessary. He wants to avoid such foolishness.

Clytemnestra is not to be denied, despite Agamemnon’s resolve to do nothing against his will. She hints that he has spoken from fear.

“What would Priam have done, if he had been victorious?” Clytemnestra asks.

“He probably would have walked on the tapestries,” Agamemnon replies.

“Then why worry about what people might say?” she asks.

“Because the people’s voice is powerful,’ he answers.

She presses on. “Anyone worthy of admiration is the subject of envy.”

Agamemnon has had enough of her combativeness and tells her to give up, but Clytemnestra reminds him that victors can afford to be gracious.

“Does winning mean so much to you?” he asks, walking right into her trap.

"I know you don't have to," she says, "but let me win just this once."

He didn’t stand a chance.

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Who Took Orestes from Argos?

In each of the three versions of the return of Orestes in Greek tragedy, Orestes comes back from Phocis where he was taken as a baby, reunites with his sister Electra and kills his mother Clytemnestra.  Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides give differing accounts of who took him away.

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In Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, Clytemnestra says that she sent him away to trusted friends (913).

Orestes’ nurse, Cilissa, says that she took care of him as a baby, but does not mention how he was taken from her or where he went. When Orestes returns to Mycenae disguised as a Daulian, he tells Clytemnestra that he was sent by a stranger – a Phocian named Strophius – to tell Orestes’ parents that Orestes is dead. He makes a point of saying that he did not know the stranger, nor did the stranger know him. Right before he kills Clytemnestra, Orestes accuses her of throwing him away. She denies it, telling him that she sent him away “to trusted friends”, though she does not name them.

The trusted friend is most likely Strophius because it makes no sense for Orestes to name him unless he knows that Clytemnestra gave the baby to Strophius. He makes such a point about their being strangers to avoid questions that may lead to his identification.

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In Sophocles’ Electra, Electra says that she sent him away to prevent his murder. (1132)

The tutor tells Orestes that he took him from the hands of his sister in order to save him. In conversation with Chrysothemis, Electra says that Clytemnestra accuses her (Electra) of stealing Orestes from her mother’s hands. Later on, thinking that she is holding the ashes of her brother in her hands, Electra recalls the day she stole him in order to save him from being murdered. Orestes went from the hands of his murderous mother, to the hands of Electra, who put him into the hands of the tutor. For a few moments, Electra thinks that Orestes had arrived back into her hands in the form of an urn full of ashes.

Strophius is mentioned once in the Electra. Orestes tells the tutor to pretend that they were sent by the Phocian Phanotheus, who is Clytemnestra and Aegisthus’ best friend. When the tutor presents himself to Clytemnestra he tells her that he was sent by Phanotheus, but when Orestes arrives disguised as a Phocian, he tells Electra that he was sent by ‘Old Strophius’.

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In Euripides' Electra (17) the farmer says that Agamemnon’s ‘ancient servant’ took him away to prevent Aegisthus from killing him. 

The farmer says that the servant gave him to Strophius to bring up in the land of Phocis. When Electra talks with Orestes, who is still pretending to be a stranger, they agree that there is only one person who might recognize him - the old servant of Agamemnon.  When the old servant visits Electra, he mentions a cloth woven by Electra that he wrapped Orestes in to save him from death.  When Electra introduces the servant to Orestes, she affirms that this is the servant who saved Orestes from death.
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The Wild Kingdom Comes to the Cloisters

I’m not sure what I expected from an early music concert by Hesperus at the Cloisters yesterday afternoon, but it certainly was not sensory overload. Perhaps I should have paid closer attention to the title: The Wild Kingdom, A Book of Beasts.

The concert, which consisted of twelve pieces based on texts from medieval bestiaries, was performed in the Fuentidueña Chapel by three members of Hesperus, a narrator and a mime.

The performers created a wild kingdom indeed, conjuring up mermaids, panthers, cranes and unicorns from the etymologies of Isidore of Seville, the music of the papal court at Avignon and the art of mime. The concert’s setting was the stark Romanesque chapel at the Cloisters whose stone walls and high vaulted ceiling amplified every sound and whose sparse decorations – principally a fresco of the Virgin and Child and a crucifix hanging from the ceiling – reinforced the medieval tone.

The musicians – Tina Chancey, Grant Herreid and Tom Zajac – performed on early instruments: recorders, a lyre, a simple drum, and viols. They introduced the performance by introducing their instruments. Mr. Zajac told us that the recorder was invented to teach the birds to sing and Ms. Chancey was delighted to name the parts of animals that composed the drum’s skin and the viol’s strings.

Their performance by itself would have been worth the price of admission and the long trip into the city. Their playing was precise and expressive, evocative of medieval dances and liturgies. This is more or less what I expected, an hour-long concert of early music played by dedicated and talented artists. I was a bit surprised to learn that each piece would be accompanied by a reading from the text of a bestiary, those concoctions of description and folklore that interpreted the Book of Nature for medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews. Owen Sandal’s voice, however, fitted perfectly into the music, making it impossible to know if the music accompanied the reading or the reading accompanied the music.

I was even more surprised – and I confess a bit peeved – when I discovered that each of the pieces would also be mimed by Mark Jaster. I imagined that his performance would distract me from listening to the music that I came to hear. But as he variously became cat and mouse, horse and ape his ballet-like performance became the center of attention – or rather became one center of attention, along with the music, the narrative, the chapel and the sweet smell of the hyacinths blooming in a nearby cloister.

It was almost too much to take in, but because the performance was so well integrated my sensus communis, though challenged, was able to cope. Who would have expected that?

The Fuentidueña Chapel
A great bestiary website
Hesperus