#Morgan Library & Museum

[arthistoryanimalia]

#WatercolorWednesday :

Beatrix Potter (English, 1866-1943)

“Terrapin, probably drawn at London Zoo” c.1905

Watercolor, pen & ink, graphite

Seen at “Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature” exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum

[thepastisalreadywritten]

But recent suggestions about Chopin’s private life collided awkwardly with Poland’s staunchly conservative traditions – and caused some to question whether the story of Chopin that Poles are told from a young age is true.

According to a Swiss radio documentary released in 2020, the composer had relationships with men.

Those relationships were left out of history by successive historians and biographers; a potentially thorny charge in one of Europe’s worst countries for LGBTQ rights.

[blueiscoool]

Lost Chopin Music Uncovered in ‘Thrilling’ Discovery

A curator at a museum in New York City has discovered a previously unknown waltz written by Frédéric Chopin, the first time that a new piece of work by the Polish composer has been found in nearly 100 years.

The waltz, written on a small manuscript measuring about 4 inches by 5 inches, was first discovered by curator Robinson McClellan in 2019, who then sought outside expert help, according to a statement from the Morgan Library & Museum on Monday.

“He found it peculiar that he could not think of any waltzes by Chopin that matched the measures on the page,” reads the statement.

“Chopin famously wrote in ‘small forms,’ but this work, lasting about one minute, is shorter than any other waltz by him,” adds the statement.

“It is nevertheless a complete piece, showing the kind of ‘tightness’ that we expect from a finished work by the composer.”

McClellan asked Chopin expert Jeffrey Kallberg, associate dean for arts and letters at the University of Pennsylvania, to help authenticate the waltz. “Extensive research points to the strong likelihood that the piece is by Chopin,” according to the statement.

This research included analysis by paper conservators who found that the paper and ink match those that Chopin normally used.

The Morgan Library & Museum believes that the fact that the manuscript is so small could mean that it was meant to be a gift that the recipient would have kept in an autograph album.

Chopin was known to sign manuscripts that were gifts, but this one is unsigned, which the museum says suggests that he ultimately decided against giving it away.

“This newly discovered waltz expands our understanding of Chopin as a composer and opens new questions for scholars to consider regarding when he wrote it and for whom it was intended,” said McClellan in the statement.

“To hear this work for the first time will be an exciting moment for everyone in the world of classical piano.”

“Our extensive music collection is defined by handwritten examples of the creative process and it is thrilling to have uncovered a new and unknown work by such a renowned composer,” said Colin B. Bailey, museum director, in the statement.

The discovery of an unknown piece of work by Chopin has not happened since the late 1930s, according to the museum.

The Polish composer was born in 1810 and was best known for solo piano pieces.

Chopin died in Paris, France, at the age of just 39. He’s one of Poland’s most famous sons, and his name adorns the airport serving the capital Warsaw, as well as parks, streets, benches and buildings.

His works and image are ubiquitous across the central European country, and his residences bear unmissable plaques. Busts and statues of his likeness are dotted across several major cities.

Even his heart, preserved in alcohol after his death in 1849 is sealed into a wall of Warsaw’s Holy Cross Church.

But recent suggestions about Chopin’s private life collided awkwardly with Poland’s staunchly conservative traditions – and caused some to question whether the story of Chopin that Poles are told from a young age is true.

According to a Swiss radio documentary released in 2020, the composer had relationships with men, and those relationships were left out of history by successive historians and biographers; a potentially thorny charge in one of Europe’s worst countries for LGBTQ rights.

By Jack Guy.

Chopin - Waltz in A Minor (Discovered in 2024) - Played by Lang Lang

[lionofchaeronea]

Job Rebuked by His Friends, William Blake, 1805

[thinkingimages]

Wolfgang Paalen, Fumage (Smoke Painting) (c. 1938), oil, candle burns and soot on canvas, 10-3/4″ x 16-3/8″; courtesy The Morgan Library & Museum

[power-chords]

HELL YEAH!

[djkerr]

Audiences at last night’s New York premiere of A Christmas Carol at The Morgan Library and Museum, starring the ever-dazzling Skylark Vocal Ensemble and the incomparable Christine Baranski, were moved to tears and gave a full three-minute standing ovation.

📷🎶 @rowanbenedict42 via IG

[coolthingsguyslike]

[thecrankyprofessor]

Hellmouth. Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.945, f. 107r.

Finals week ends today with my two exams, back-to-back. Then Purgatorial grading begins.

[xpuigc-bloc]

The Morgan Library & Museum

Crafting the Ballets Russes

The Robert Owen Lehman Collection

Crafting the Ballets Russes: The Robert Owen Lehman Collection

June 28 through September 22, 2024

Robert Owen Lehman’s extraordinary collection of music manuscripts has been an inspiration to scholars and visitors since it was placed on deposit at the Morgan Library & Museum. Among its many splendid works are deep holdings of early-twentieth-century ballet, including Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird (1910), Petrouchka (1911), and Les Noces (1923); Claude Debussy’s L’après-midi d’un Faune (1912); and Maurice Ravel’s Bolero (1928) and La Valse (1920).

The exhibition opens with the dramatic arrival of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes troupe in Paris in 1909 and goes on to trace its impact across the arts, highlighting the rise of women in leading creative roles. They include Bronislava Nijinska, who in 1921 became the Ballets Russes’ only female choreographer and whose groundbreaking choreography defined Les Noces, Bolero, and other ballets of the era; and Ida Rubinstein, whose riveting stage presence helped establish the Ballets Russes in its first seasons and who came to rival Diaghilev as a patron of music, commissioning Bolero in 1928.

At the core of the exhibition is the creative process that brought these ballets to life. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue address the sketches, drafts, and working copies of the composers, choreographers, and designers, capturing the ways in which they imagined, conceived, and collaborated to kindle works of astonishing originality and ongoing influence.

The exhibition is organized by Robinson McClellan, Assistant Curator of Music Manuscripts and Printed Music.

Crafting the Ballets Russes: The Robert Owen Lehman Collection is supported by the William Randolph Hearst Fund for Scholarly Research and Exhibitions, the Robert Lehman Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Clement C. Moore II, the Lucy Ricciardi Family Exhibition Fund, Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard, Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky, and the Franklin Jasper Walls Lecture Fund. Assistance is provided by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and Hubert and Mireille Goldschmidt.

(L) Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), Firebird, autograph manuscript, piano, extensive revisions, [1910]. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Robert Owen Lehman Collection, on deposit. Used by kind permission of European American Music Distributors Company, sole U.S. and Canadian agent for Schott Music GmbH & Co. KG, Mainz, Germany, publisher and copyright owner.

(R) Léon Bakst (1866–1924), “Firebird and the Prince (Tsarevitch),” poster design for Firebird, 1915. Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Howard D. Rothschild Collection.

#. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York #art #original art #xpuigc

[arthistoryanimalia]

Four cicada brooches, Eastern Germanic, c. 380-500 CE

silver, copper alloy, iron

The Morgan Library & Museum display

“Cicadas symbolized immortality in the ancient world, perhaps because of their seemingly miraculous regeneration after long periods of dormancy. Cicada brooches were worn by women living along the Danube and on the northern shores of the Black Sea. The Goths converted to Christianity in the period after AD 350, and these brooches may have had connotations of spiritual renewal and rebirth.”

#cicadapocalypse #cicadaggedon #cicadamania

[crying-on-the-six]

The Morgan Library & Museum

[kallenchi]

Sketches drawn at the Morgan Library. Image description under cut.

[ID: Six image photo set of sketchbook drawings drawn at the Morgan Library. 1) A gray mannequin bust wearing a golden floral headdress, gold hair coils and a series of necklaces with carnelian, lapis lazuli, and golden beaded chains hanging down the chest, drawn in marker. Written in pencil beneath the drawing, “Study of Queen Puabi’s funerary ensemble ca 2500BC.” 2) A stone carving of a female figure, drawn in yellow and orange marker, and shadows marked in gray. The figure is forward facing with her hands clasped at her abdomen. She wears a long-sleeved dress, hair braided around the top of her head, and bears a smile on her face. Written in pencil beneath the drawing, “Standing Female Figure w/ Clasped Hands - Mesopotamia (2600-2450 BC).” 3) Top half of stone female figure, drawn in pencil. The figure faces front-left three quarters, her right arm and left hand broken off. She bears a neutral expression, voluminous hair tied in a bob, and a woven dress with triangular etchings. The figure’s left side (the viewer’s right) is heavily worn down. Written on the right of the drawing, “Standing female figure Assur Temple 2400BC.” 4) Domed ceiling of the rotunda of the Morgan Library, sketched loosely in pencil. The center of the dome is an octagonal window, divided into eight triangular panes. Branching out from it are a series of repeating scribbled patterns, and mosaic panels featuring cherubs and other classical figures. 5) A casually dressed woman seated front-facing on a bench at the historic library room of the Morgan Library, sketched loosely in pencil. She has straight, medium-length hair, wearing sunglasses resting on her head, a face mask, open cardigan, t shirt, culottes, and closed-toe shoes. Her right hand rests on the side of her face, in the middle of a thought. Behind her is a glass case displaying books, and a wall of bookshelves. Beneath her is a carpeted floor marked by loose scribbles. 6) The fireplace of the Morgan Library historic library room, viewed at a right-facing, three quarter angle. It is drawn in pencil, spanning across one and a half sketchbook pages. The marble fireplace is carved with two Ionian columns to the sides, flanked by two, classical-style, bronze statuettes. Several birch logs fill the firebox. The back of the fireplace is decorated with a relief of a dragon resting atop flames.

End ID]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

October 18 is the Feast Day of St Luke. He appears here at the start of the Gospel that bears his name in the Evangelium of Judith of Flanders (Cantorbéry, 1065). The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, ms M.709, f° 77v, 29,3 × 19,1 cm. :: [Robert Scott Horton]

* * * *

Night Surrender to Praise at Dawn – Nov. 16, 2021

“In the middle of the night I hold hands with trust and surrender to the One who sees without a light… My prayer travels deep into my soul space, into the essence of my being.

Rising from sleep, I raise high the chalice of my life. Dressed in robes of joyful anticipation, I enter this day with an open heart. This is the awakening hour. This is the hour of praise. ‘O medicine of dawn; O healing drink of morning!’ Offering both words and silence, I join in the dance of creation.”

–Macrina Wiederkehr, Seven Sacred Pauses: Living Mindfully Through the Hours of the Day, p. 29 and 47

[alive on all channels]

[doriansdismay]

O 🧍

[didoofcarthage]

Ruins of an Aqueduct with a House Built into One End, attributed to Willem Schellinks

Dutch, 17th century

brush and gray-brown wash on paper

Morgan Library and Museum