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We looked inside some of the posts by paulrennie and here's what we found interesting.
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9
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7
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2
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Time Between Posts
10 days ago
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17
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Glass Berio Ravel...orchestral street sounds
Days and Nights in Rocinha (1997), by Philip Glass, is an orchestral composition. Glass describes it thus, Rocinha is a neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro famous for its lively cultural life and especially its “samba school” (Whose appearance is the highpoint of the “Carnival” every year). I often visited Rocinha during the weeks before “Carnival” and have always been moved and delighted by its unique environment. Days and Nights in Rocinha is my musical impression and tribute to this place.
The piece, by Glass, is structured in the style of Bolero (1928) by Ravel. Bolero is probably Ravel's most famous or well-known orchestral piece. Ravel developed Bolero as a structured repetition of an insistent theme, that gradually gets bigger and louder as more of the orchestra join in.
There's a kind of energetic madness in Ravel'swork that is missing in that by Glass. Rocinha remains controlled, and slightly locked-down throughout.
I was thinking if only ot could be a bit more like Ravel, and then I recalled Luciano Berio's (1975) reworking of Boccherini's, Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid (Night Music of the Streets of Madrid) (18C). The Berio combines the different versions of the originals, and provides for a slightly fragmented and layered version.
Charles Ives was a pioneer American modernist in orchestral music, at a time when US musical culture was still pretty under-developed.
America has always done popular music really well…but it took a long time for its serious orchestral music to become something that could stand alongside the German, French, and Italian, traditions in Europe.
The Juilliard School, America’s first conservatory school, was only established in 1905! The school was first set up as the Institute of Musical Art, before being endowed by Augustus Juilliard, and others, during the 1920s.
Ives was the son of a military band instructor and he spent much of his childhood watching parades and listening to marching bands. That’s not so bad. Don’t forget that American marching bands have tunes by JP Souza (1854-1932), the March King.
Anyone who has watched a marching band will understand that, as the band marches up-and-down, it has to turn on itself…that means that, briefly, there is music coming from two directions, at least…that’s a new and exciting noise.
This fragmentation is the same kind if insight as cubism and as understanding that the straight-on view of the the theatre stage is a bit limited…we don’t hear the world symphonically, we here it as fragments that we assemble into a coherent gestalt.
Ives was one of the first people to try and describe this fragmented perception of life, and sound, through music. You get the same thing in the European later Romantics, especially Gustav Mahler…but the Europeans tended to do it with bits of folk song and traditional tunes.
In its original 18C form, the Boccherini is quite formal and stately…it is music to process and promenade by…In Luciano Berio’s new interpretation, the street becomes much more dynamic and messy…that’s great; with bits of tune coming from everywhere.
What I really want is Glass, with more Berio, and a lot more Ravel.
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Unpacking my Library • Modernist Graphic Design in Britain • McLaren + Pritchard • 2024
What a lovely book. Designed so as to perfectly express the ideas represented therein...Slightly amazed to see my name in the index, and to realise that I been a very small part of this great adventure; ongoing. Terrific.
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Things I Like • Enamel Badge • Rennies • 2024
Blue enamel shop badge with anchor trademark, and guilloche wave. Beautifully and traditionally made for us by Gomme, in Birmingham.
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Things I Like • Paper Samples • GF Smith •2024
We received a lovely paper-sample book from GF Smith. The pink and yellow remined me of the Mexican modernist architecture of Louis Barragán. The shape of the book, reminded me of the Schröder House by Gerrit Reitveld, in Holland.
I love the this idea of architecture expressed in the miniature everyday. Perfect.
Communication design as architecture without walls
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Unpacking my Library • Pop-Up • France • 2024
This pop-up book has just arrived. It's a charming series of keep-fit style exercises, animated through paper engineering. Great flat-colour and typographic style too. A really lovely thing by Marion Bataille, and just published. TOP, thumbs-up!
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Unpacking my Library • Lund Humphries • Artmonsky Arts • 2022
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Unpacking my Library • Department Store • MADS Paris • 2024
The department store as mind-palace and inter-action, fun-palace and think-belt (Cedric Price), or proto-Pompidou...Threshold moments and the architecture of experience
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Things I Like • Vintage Hospital Suit • France • c 1950s
Equipements Militaires is stamped onto the metal buttons of the trousers of a vintage blue wool two-piece hospital suit from France. These suits were cut in a loose, unstructured, way and with simple construction.
The jacket has a shawl collar, patch pockets and a tie waist. It is a modern version of the old-style smoking jacket, but without the fancy silk collar. The trousers are wide-leg and tie-waisted.
The suits were made for recovering military casualties in the days before anti-biotics. The blue coloured cloth seems to have been standard for these suits, in both Britain and France.
The thick woolen cloth is woven by Linne-Desmaziere of Houplines, near Lille in northern France. All the suits I've found online have the same cloth, but are made in different places. SSA36 is the pattern number I think.
Here are some pictures of a similar suit, found online from Japan. These pictures are lovely, and show the shape and detail of the suit beautifully...
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Things I Like • Vintage Shirt Labels • France • c1950
Lovely typographic miniatures
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How the World Works in Seven Words...
Ego - Exceptionalism - Entitlement - Enclosure - Exclusion - Extraction - Economy...
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Things I Like • Designer Beer Mats • mid20C
Like a match-box label, a beer mat is a lovely small piece of graphic design...simple in concept and economically printed. Lots of people collect them. I have a few that relate to the posters I like
Above, are mats deriving from the designs of Tom Eckerlsey and Abram Games.
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