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Dorothea Tanning, Pounding Strong, 1981

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John Katsikarelis  __  Do Me a Wrong

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Can’t resist the calling of Scriabin’s music

Scriabin - Piano Sonata no. 5

“I call you to life, oh mysterious forces! / Drowned in the obscure depths / Of the creative spirit, timid / Shadows of life, to you I bring audacity!” so reads the epigraph to this sonata, which was the turning point of his creative vision. Scriabin’s early style came out of Romanticism, influences from Chopin and Liszt, of course with a Russian style. Though even with his fourth sonata we see him moving toward the “outer limits” of Romanticism with constant modulation and expressive chromaticism. Not only that, but a reduction of the sonata; instead of the traditional multi movement structure, here is one single movement, and despite it’s tight structure, the work feels free flowing. The fifth sonata shows the cumulation of his aesthetics from mysticism to his own chromesthesia: passionate, ecstatic atonality built around his often used “mystic chord”. The sonata is a new sound world, where darkness and uncertainty are positives, and the work is a constant flow of energy. This has been a long favorite of mine, and maybe I’ve been too gushy or liberal with the adjectives. It’s really a work that speaks for itself anyway. It’s as electric today as it was when I ‘discovered’ it back in high school.

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Mednter - Sonata in e minor, “Night Wind”

What are you wailing about, night wind, what are you bemoaning with such fury? What does your strange voice mean, now indistinct and plaintive, now loud? In a language intelligible to the heart you speak of torment past understanding, and you moan and at times stir up frenzied sounds in the heart!

Oh, do not sing those fearful songs about primeval native Chaos! How avidly the world of the soul at night listens to its favourite story! It strains to burst out of the mortal breast and longs to merge with the Infinite … Oh, do not wake the sleeping tempests; beneath them Chaos stirs!

So reads the poem by Fyodor Tyutchev that Medtner used as an epigraph for this titanic sonata. It really does capture the spirit; the work is in two large movements, and like Liszt’s sonata in b minor, it is comprised of a handful of main melodies and motifs which undergo thematic transformation. The melodies are rich, but are also interwoven in a very complex and dense texture, where several lines are playing over each other at the same time. It is a difficult sonata to perform and a difficult one to listen to first time around, and so it is not often performed [however it has seemed to gain a resurgence of popularity recently]. It was dedicated to Rachmaninoff, who in turn dedicated his fourth piano concerto to Medtner. Despite it’s more “conservative” sound, the radical Parsi British composer Kaikhosru Sorabji declared it the greatest sonata of the 20th century. It is one of my personal favorites, with great build ups, climaxes, full of spirit, bells, nostalgia, and mystery. When I went to school at Loyola, I would take long walks along the lakefront, and one night, where a full moon shown through dense clouds and heavy winds pushed dramatically along the water surface, I listened to this piece and was almost in a trance, walking through the night, street lights and cars wiping away raindrops, the lake water smashing against the pier like a thrashing monster. The moon, the cold, the dark.

Movements:

1. Introduzione. Allegro

2. Allegro molto sfrentamente

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Walpurgisnacht

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Ref: Pink Floyd - the endless river. ...didn't think I was going to like this, but it's hooked me good, and line, and sinker . And I found these words of H.G. Wells from Tono-Bungay seemed to fit how I felt when i listened to this music: 'And now behind us is blue mystery and the phantom flash of unseen lights, and presently even these are gone, and I and my destroyer tear out to the unknown across a great grey space. We tear into the great spaces of the future and the turbines fall to talking in unfamiliar tongues. Out to the open we go, to windy freedom and trackless ways. Light after light goes down. England and the Kingdom, Britain and the Empire, the old prides and the old devotions, glide abeam, astern, sink down upon the horizon, pass—pass. The river passes—London passes, England passes...'

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M8 // Lagoon Nebula

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M16 // Eagle Nebula

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Ralph Eugene Meatyard / c. 1960 / Sources : #1-4 / #5 / #6 / #7 / #8 / #9

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Body Glyph - Polina Sirosh and Oliver Halsman Rosenberg http://www.bodyglyph.com/ http://bodyglyph.tumblr.com/ https://www.behance.net/polina_sirosh/wip http://oliverhalsmanrosenberg.blogspot.com/ https://instagram.com/oliver_halsman_rosenberg/

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Albert von Keller - ’The Tomb of Böcklin’

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“While words and intellectual concepts can only ever be signposts pointing to the true nature of reality, which is quite beyond them, nevertheless the complex interlinked conceptual structure of the teachings is in itself brilliant and beautiful, like a many faceted crystal whose every facet flawlessly reflects and refers to every other. But please remember that the only way to look into the heart of that crystal is to look into oneself. Dzogchen ["Great Perfection”] is not just something to be studied; the Way of Light is there to be travelled. ‘As a bee seeks nectar from all kinds of flowers, seek teachings everywhere. Like a deer that finds a quiet place to graze, seek seclusion to digest all you have gathered. Like a lion, live completely free of all fear. And, finally, like a madman, beyond all limits, go wherever you please.’ [A Tantra of Dzogchen]“ - Chogyal Namkhai Norbu The Crystal and the Way of Light: Sutra, Tantra, and Dzogchen http://amzn.to/1DhtGut Image Credit: Marita Tathariel Svensson

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