#ARNOLD BAX

[lesser-known-composers]

A lovely piece by Arnold Bax (1883-1953) - String Quartet in E Major, "Cathaleen-ni-Hoolihan" ·

Maggini Quartet

[jacquesbonhomie]

Arnold Bax - ‘November Woods’ - Tone Poem for Orchestra

[pushingthewave]

In this week's column, I talk about the nonsense of ranking creative artists, neglected English music and the cover reveal for More Life as a Dog.

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in Irish History | 8 November:

1847 – Birth of author of Dracula, Bram Stoker, in Dublin. 1887 – Birth of Sir Arnold Bax, composer, writer and Hibernophile. 1901 – Death of James Agnew. Born in Ballycastle, Co Antrim, he was an Australian politician, who was Premier of Tasmania from 1886 to 2281887. 1920 – An IRA column mounted an ambush at Grange, Co Limerick; four British soldiers were killed when their lorry was fired on.…

[byneddiedingo]

John Howard Davies and Robert Newton in Oliver Twist (David Lean, 1948)

Cast: Robert Newton, Alec Guinness, Kay Walsh, John Howard Davies, Francis L. Sullivan, Henry Stephenson, Mary Clare, Anthony Newley. Screenplay: David Lean, Stanley Haynes, based on a novel by Charles Dickens. Cinematography: Guy Greene. Art direction: John Bryan. Film editing: Jack Harris. Music: Arnold Bax.

After George Cukor's 1935 David Copperfield, this is my favorite adaptation of Dickens for film or TV. What Lean does right is to treat the Dickens book as a fable, not a novel. A novel takes its characters seriously as human beings; a fable sees them as embodiments of good and evil. And there's plenty of evil on display in Oliver Twist, from the brute evil of Bill Sikes (Robert Newton) to the venal evil of Fagin (Alec Guinness) to the stupid evil of Mr. Bumble (Francis L. Sullivan) and Mrs. Corney (Mary Clare). Oliver (John Howard Davies) is innocently good, whereas Mr. Brownlow (Henry Stephenson) is a man of good will. Nancy (Kay Walsh) and, to a lesser extent, the Artful Dodger (Anthony Newley) are potentially good people who have been corrupted by evil. The performers are all beautifully cast, especially Davies as Oliver: He's just real-looking enough in the role that he doesn't become saccharine, the way some prettier Olivers do. This is Lean in what I think of as his great period, when he was making beautifully filmed movies with just the right measure of sentiment: Brief Encounter (1945) and Great Expectations (1946) in addition to this one. But he would be bit by the epic bug while working on The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and its success would betray him into bigger but not necessarily better movies: Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and the rest of his later oeuvre would have the same attention to visual detail that make his early movies so rich, but they seem to me chilly in comparison. Here he benefits not only from a perfect cast, but also from Guy Green's photography of John Bryan's set designs. There are probably few more terrifying scenes in movies than Sikes's murder of Nancy, which sends Sikes's dog (one of the most impressive performances by an animal in movies) into a frenzy. Running it a close second is Sikes's death, seen from a vertiginous rooftop angle. We don't actually see the death, but only the swift tautening of the rope as he plunges, punctuated by a sudden snap. The film is not as well known in America as in Great Britain: Guinness's portrayal of Fagin elicited charges of anti-Semitism, especially since the film appeared so soon after the world learned about the Holocaust. Guinness doesn't play to Jewish stereotypes, but Fagin's absurdly exaggerated nose (which makeup artist Stuart Freeborn copied from George Cruikshank's illustrations for the novel) does evoke some of the caricatures in the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer. The film was edited to remove some of the shots of Fagin in profile, and was held from release in the United States until 1951. 

[leftprohans]

"Tintagel", by Arnold Bax (1883-1953)

[masayoshi-kawaharablr]

バックス: 冬の伝説　第1楽章［ナクソス・クラシック・キュレーション #ファンタジー］／Arnold, Bax: Winter Legends ...

[xylophonetangerine]

Forget about that stupid rat—the works of Arnold Bax, Sergei Prokofiev, Guccio Gucci, Hank Williams and Joseph Stalin are now in the public domain in Europe (excl. Belarus and Spain).

[carmenvicinanza]

Glenda Jackson

Glenda Jackson è l’attrice britannica che ha vinto due volte l’Oscar come protagonista, per il suo ruolo in Donne in amore nel 1971 e Un tocco di classe, nel 1974.

Nella sua carriera è stata anche insignita del Tony Award alla miglior attrice protagonista in un’opera teatrale, di due Premi Emmy, due Premi BAFTA e un Golden Globe. 

Nata a Birkenhead, vicino a Liverpool, il 9 maggio 1936, in una famiglia della working class, dopo aver iniziato a studiare danza da ragazzina, aveva capito presto che la sua vocazione era la recitazione.

Diplomata alla Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, poco più che ventenne aveva debuttato in teatro nel 1957. Per i successivi sei anni si è alternata sul palco come attrice e fuori come responsabile di scena nei teatri di tutta l’Inghilterra.

Dopo il debutto cinematografico nel film The Extra Day del 1956, è stata nella Royal Shakespeare Company diretta da Peter Brook in molti lavori, incluso il Marat/Sade di Peter Weiss, in cui aveva il ruolo di Charlotte Corday, bissato anche nella versione cinematografica del 1967.

Ha avuto una parte in This Sporting Life di Lindsay Anderson, uno dei film manifesto del Free Cinema, ma è diventata una star internazionale, grazie anche all’incontro con Ken Russell, che l’aveva scelta come protagonista di Donne in amore del 1969, interpretazione che le è valsa il suo primo Oscar.

Con Russell ha anche girato L’altra faccia dell’amore ed è apparsa in un cameo in The Boy Friend.

Negli anni Settanta è stata una delle attrici più richieste, è stata protagonista in Domenica maledetta domenica di John Schlesinger, film fondamentale del cinema britannico di quegli anni, in Maria Stuarda Regina di Scozia ha interpretato Elisabetta I, ha recitato in opere di rottura come la trasposizione cinematografica de Le serve di Jean Genet in coppia con Susannah York, è stata la protagonista di Una romantica donna inglese, accanto a Helmut Berger e Michael Caine.

Il regista statunitense Melvin Frank l’ha voluta come protagonista di Un tocco di classe del 1973, che le è valso il suo secondo Oscar alla migliore attrice protagonista. Glenda Jackson non si è presentata a nessuna delle due cerimonie di premiazione, facendosi sostituire dall’attrice Juliet Mills nel 1971 e dal regista Melvin Frank nel 1974.

Il suo ultimo film prima di un lungo ritiro, The Secret Life of Arnold Bax, è del 1992.

L’impegno politico che ha accompagnato ogni sua scelta è culminato nel 1992 con la sua elezione a deputata laburista alla Camera dei Comuni, carica che ha coperto fino al 2015, anni durante i quali è stata anche sottosegretaria ai trasporti.

Per la sua strenua opposizione all’intervento in Iraq, era stata posta ai margini del partito laburista all’epoca al governo con Tony Blair, leader nei confronti del quale è stata sempre avversa. Sono rimaste memorabili anche le sue parole alla morte di Margaret Thatcher, la cui ideologia aveva definito fatta di “avidità, egoismo, nessuna cura per i più deboli, gomiti taglienti e ginocchia affilate“.

Nell’ottobre del 2016 è tornata a recitare, dopo venticinque anni di assenza, interpretando Lear in una produzione di Re Lear in scena per due mesi all’Old Vic di Londra. Un’interpretazione, che le era valsa una candidatura al Laurence Olivier Award alla miglior attrice nel 2017.

Nel 2018 è tornata a calcare le scene di New York dopo 30 anni di assenza per interpretare “A” nella prima produzione di Broadway del dramma di Edward Albee Tre donne alte; performance che le ha fatto vincere il Tony Award alla miglior attrice protagonista in un’opera teatrale.

Nel 2019 ha interpretato di nuovo Re Lear a Broadway per la regia di Sam Gold ed è tornata a recitare in televisione nel film Elizabeth Is Missing grazie al quale ha vinto il British Academy Television Award per la miglior attrice nel 2020.

L’ultimo film in cui ha recitato è stato The Great Escaper del 2022, accanto a Michael Caine, diretto da Oliver Parker, il racconto della toccante storia vera di un veterano del D-Day.

È morta a Londra il 15 giugno 2023, aveva 87 anni.

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 11.8

Beer Birthdays

Edward George Bremer (1897)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Chris Connor; jazz singer (1927)

Richard Curtis; English screenwriter (1956)

Edmund Halley; English astronomer, mathematician (1656)

Gretchen Mol; model, actor (1972)

Alfre Woodard; actor (1952)

Famous Birthdays

Christiaan Barnard; South African surgeon (1922)

Arnold Bax; English composer (1883)

Robert Bulwer-Lytton; English poet (1831)

Milton Bradley, toymaker (1836)

Larry Burnett; singer-songwriter, guitarist (1951)

Don Byron; clarinet player (1958)

Dorothy Day; editor, activist (1897)

Charles Demuth; artist (1883)

Sarah Fielding; English author (1710)

Joe Flynn; actor (1924)

Leif Garrett; actor, pop singer (1961)

Mary Hart; television show host (1950)

Christie Hefner; publisher (1952)

Kazuo Ishiguro; Japanese-British novelist (1954)

Rickie Lee Jones; singer (1954)

Jack Kilby; physicist (1923)

Ed Kranepool; New York Mets (1944)

Norman Lloyd; actor (1914)

Walter Mirsch; film producer (1921)

Margaret Mitchell; writer (1900)

Barbara Catharina Mjödh; Finnish poet (1783)

John Musker; animator (1953)

Michael Nyqvist; Swedish actor (1960)

Patti Page; country singer (1927)

Parker Posey; actress (1968)

Marie Prevost; actor (1898)

Gordon Ramsey; celebrity chef (1966)

Tara Reid; actor (1975)

Bonnie Riatt; rock guitarist, singer (1949)

Minnie Ripperton; singer (1947)

Esther Rolle; actress (1920)

Morley Safer; television journalist (1931)

Bram Stoker; Irish writer (1847)

Robert Strauss; actor (1913)

SZA; singer-songwriter (1990)

Courtney Thorne-Smith; actor (1967)

Zara Whites; Dutch porn actor (1968)

Roy Wood; English singer-songwriter, guitarist (1946)

[earhartsease]

youtube is losing its fucking mind - we were looking for Tintagel by Arnold Bax (British classical composer) and got this utter nonsense

[lesser-known-composers]

Arnold Bax (1883-1953) - Quintet for harp and strings (1919)

Ensemble: Mobius

[msamba]

BBC Radio 4 - Song for Belper

BBC Radio 4 – Song for Belper

The wonderful history of pop songs and music commissioned by town councils around Britain. Britain has a revered canon of Great Music inspired by particular places and composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton, Arnold Bax and others. Music performed live across the centuries and evoking parts of the British Isles in the imagination of millions around the world through recordings. Then…

[zero-zoxx-international]

Tintagel, 2004 by J.G.Wind - Oil on canvas, inspired by the tone poem of Arnold Bax

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in Irish History | 8 November:

#OTD in Irish History | 8 November:

1847 – Birth of author of Dracula, Bram Stoker, in Dublin. 1887 – Birth of Sir Arnold Bax, composer, writer and Hibernophile. 1901 – Death of James Agnew. Born in Ballycastle, Co Antrim, he was an Australian politician, who was Premier of Tasmania from 1886 to 1887. 1920 – An IRA column mounted an ambush at Grange, Co Limerick; four British soldiers were killed when their lorry was fired on. The…

[larapeteira]

Now That’s What I Call Mozart!

The thing that’s probably taken the most time in putting together these ragbag selections of musical scraps from Mozart in the Jungle, is coming up with a title to collect them under. In the end, if it succeeds in communicating anything it’s that they will be entirely whimsical, subjective, and reliant on wordplay.

S1E1 ‘Pilot’: Overture to a Picaresque Comedy

As with any pilot, the main work of this episode is to set the scene, the characters, and the key themes and tones of the narrative. In Mozart in the Jungle much of this depends on music, so the episode also introduces some frameworks for its use and the kind of musical references it draws on (classical and popular, in a range of settings). With apologies to Arnold Bax for stealing his title, these come together to give an overall flavour of the affectionate and playful irreverence which lies ahead. What follows are some of my highlights:

The episode opens with Hailey teaching an oboe lesson, but later we see her (and separately, Cynthia) hot-footing it out of the New York Symphony’s performance to play in the ensemble of a Broadway show: Styx: Oedipus Rocks!. It’s a glitzy parody of jukebox musicals (Oedipus blinds himself with cartoonish golden lightning bolts to the strains of ‘Come sail away’), but not necessarily a scathing one.

I don’t think that the series finds its understanding of creativity in making glibly cynical judgements about the value of different forms of musical expression. Not least because it seems unlikely when one of the creators/executive producers, Alex Timbers, has a well-established career in musical theatre. Both Hailey and Cynthia, though at different career stages, have to compile their incomes from multiple sources, yes, but is the show a beggar’s opera to them? Their enjoyment in playing suggests it’s more than just a simple question of staking out conflict between financial interests and creative ones. Looking ahead in the series then, precarity is a symptom of a musician’s existence and living by their wits is a source of the narrative’s picaresque elements. 

Cynthia’s riff on the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra is neither a tuneful nor explicit (except in the other sense) musical reference. However, its homage to Britten, and Bernstein is an enjoyable, and witty, mechanism for exploring the meaning of ensembles, Cynthia’s character, and framing the mentoring dynamic of her relationship with Hailey.  

Lizzie and ‘Let’s get Bizet!’: I’ll be honest, I’d stand up and fight for the pun alone on this particular character introduction. Still, I also like how Escamillo’s aria ‘Votre toast’ could function as a synoptic overture for the subsequent scenes at the party.

En garde! allons! allons! Ah! Toreador, en garde! Toreador, Toreador! Et songe bien, oui, songe en combattant Qu'un oeil noir te regarde, Et que l'amour t'attend, Toreador, L'amour t'attend!

En garde! Let’s go! Let’s go! Ah! Toreador, en garde! Toreador, Toreador! And dream away, yes, fighting dream on, That dark looks follow you, And, yes, that love awaits, Toreador, yes, love it waits for you!

In one stanza we can read the irony of Hailey’s thwarted attempt to sleep in order to realise her dreams, the duel between creativity and competition/performance of the game of ‘Showdown’, and Alex and Hailey’s continued flirtation - all dancing between farce and plainer drama.

Alex’s unexpected arrival at the party is heralded by the first appearance of what comes to be Hailey’s theme throughout the series: Mozart’s ‘Oboe Concerto in C Major’. The episode touches on the first movement (allegro aperto) in this and another moment, but it comes into its own with the third movement (allegretto) in the last act. Believing she’s missed her opportunity to audition for the orchestra, Hailey takes her only chance to play on that stage and for her own enjoyment. Or so she thinks: Rodrigo’s attention is drawn by her playing and so the rondo of this movement establishes the enmeshed creative and romantic orbits which will drive the series.

Just before Hailey starts this movement, she plays a tentatively ambitious not quite final note, regretful and hopeful all at once. We absorb its reverberations in the Symphony’s hall with her for a couple of seconds before she springs into action and the sound of the rest of the orchestra starts to fill in around her. Mozart in the Jungle is done tuning up. Now, play on!