#the Hermitage of 1970

[soviet-amateurs]

Dancing in front of Matisse in the Hermitage

Photo by Sergei Podgorkov, 1970

[sovietpostcards]

Souvenir card with stamps from the Hermitage museum in Leningrad (1970s)

This folded card has images of the Hermitage museum in Leningrad (St Petersburg). Glued inside are two bits of stock paper with 4 stamps tucked inside. The stamps are from the Spanish Fine Art in the Hermitage series published in 1985. (It's not the full issue, it had 5 stamps.)

Available in my shop for $6 + $9 shipping (registered, by Russian Mail).

Message me if you want to buy this. Currently available items. I combine shipping. How to buy.

[justforbooks]

Alexander Knaifel

Russian composer whose sparse musical landscapes create a spiritual ambience of meditative calm

Alexander Knaifel, who has died aged 80, did not set out to be a composer. As a student in the 1960s, he studied the cello with Mstislav Rostropovich until injury intervened. Then he redirected his energies towards composition, at a time when the Khrushchev thaw could accommodate the musical modernism of the Soviet Union’s second avant-garde period (the first having come in the years around the 1917 revolution).

But the cello retained a significant role in Knaifel’s output. Rostropovich went on to commission and premiere three religious works that reflected both Knaifel’s adoption of Russian Orthodox Christianity around 1970 and his conviction, which appealed to Rostropovich, that experience can be heightened by performers thinking – “silently intoning” – a text as they playe the music.

Chapter Eight – Canticum Canticorum (The Song of Songs, 1993), a work “for church, choirs and cello”, unfolds slowly over the course of an hour. With three a cappella choirs adopting a cross formation in Washington National Cathedral in the US, the premiere was recorded for the Teldec label and released under the title Make Me Drunk With Your Kisses (1995).

The Fiftieth Psalm (1995) is for solo cello. Psalm 50 in the Orthodox numbering is Psalm 51 in the west: Miserere/Have Mercy. With his concern for “playing as if singing”, Knaifel felt that “only Rostropovich could articulate this text”, and his recording of it was released on the ECM label in 2005.

Blazhenstva (1996) is a meditation on the Beatitudes, Jesus Christ’s sermon on the mount. Rostropovich’s last cello student, Ivan Monighetti, later recorded it with Knaifel’s wife, Tatiana Melentieva, as the soprano soloist with the State Hermitage Orchestra from St Petersburg for another ECM release.

That 2008 recording also features Monighetti playing a piece in the modernist style that preceded Knaifel’s more ethereal approach, his Lamento for Solo Cello (1967, revised 1986). Built upon serialist tone rows, and with a striking approach to timbre and performance techniques, it is also highly expressive.

From the same period came his Monody for Female Voice (1968), again written in a modernist style, with modal phrases juxtaposed with glissandi descending in quarter-tones and wide intervals. Premiered by Melentieva, it was written with her crystal-clear tone and extensive vocal range in mind.

Knaifel first made his mark with the opera The Canterville Ghost, given a semi-staged student production in 1966, at the end of his studies at the Leningrad Conservatory. Based upon the humorous ghost story by Oscar Wilde, it was taken up by the Kirov Orchestra under Alexander Gauk in Leningrad in 1974 and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky in London in 1980. A 1990 recording with Michail Jurowski directing the Moscow Forum Theatre, reissued on Brilliant Classics in 2012, brings out the young composer’s confident delivery of musical humour and mastery of orchestration.

In Knaifel’s more ascetic and contemplative works, solo lines and single sustained pitches are spun out over long durations – sometimes over the course of two hours – almost to the point of stasis. In the more minimalist language of what he called his “quiet giants”, he was ahead, among Soviet composers, of either Giya Kancheli or Arvo Pärt, in presenting pared-down content that is rich in spiritual ambience. There is no obvious parallel to Knaifel’s music in the west, although it bears some similarity in style to that of the American composer Morton Feldman.

Of two large-scale works from the 1970s, Knaifel said: “In Jeanne, I discovered the number, in Nika, the word.” He reworked a Joan of Arc ballet into Jeanne, Passion for 13 Instrumental Groups (1978), a work of extreme asceticism drawing on the principle that the universe is built on numbers and proportions with rational and symbolic power, while Nika, 72 Fragments for 17 Performers on Bass Instruments (1974), was the first of his works to use unspoken texts.

Agnus Dei for Four Instrumentalists A Cappella (1985), with a characteristically paradoxical title, is powerful in impact given its sparse musical landscape and the sense of meditation that this creates. It utilises a wide range of literary examples, ranging from the liturgical to quotations from the diary of a young girl, Tanya Savicheva, who died during the siege of Leningrad.

These texts, printed in the score as well as in the audience’s programme notes, are never heard in performance, with the musicians being instructed to “think the text” as they play. Knaifel maintained that the word does not needed to be explicitly stated for the work’s spiritual intention to be understood.

His compositions of the 1990s and beyond increasingly displayed a religious aesthetic and an even more ascetic musical language. Texts both secular and sacred were present, but, in line with the Gnostic tradition, Knaifel asserted that “truth” must be hidden and revealed gradually to the listener in order for it to have validity.

This approach found its fullest and most original expression in In Air Clear and Unseen (1994), for texts by Fyodor Tyutchev, piano and string quartet, with its extremes of register, periods of silence, silent intonation, religious symbolism and virtuosic performance techniques. A recording by the pianist Oleg Malov and the Keller Quartet was released on ECM in 2002.

Knaifel’s opera Alice in Wonderland, premiered in Amsterdam in 2001 with a cast including the baritone Roderick Williams, has a libretto based upon Lewis Carroll’s narrative. But the text is rarely sung, instead being either mimed, or even in a few instances, coded visually, through coloured lights playing on a backdrop on stage.

Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Alexander was the son of Russian-Jewish parents: his father, Aron Knaifel, a violinist, and his mother, Muza Shapiro, a music theory teacher, had been evacuated from Leningrad at the time of the siege. From the Leningrad Central Music School (1950-61) he went on to the Moscow Conservatory, where his cello studies under Rostropovich were ended by a nerve inflammation in his left hand. At the Leningrad Conservatory (1963-67) he studied composition with Boris Aparov, a student of Shostakovich.

In 1979, Knaifel was blacklisted by the Soviet authorities as one of the “Khrennikov Seven”, including Edison Denisov and Sofia Gubaidulina, following the premiere in Cologne of his improvised piece A Prima Vista (1972), attracting the ire of Tikhon Khrennikov, leader of the Union of Composers of the USSR.

Knaifel turned his attention to writing film scores, written in a more conventional idiom. There were 40 in all, including those written for his frequent collaborator, the Russian director Semyon Aranovich.

Working with the composer on preparing a number of written texts for publication led me to appreciate his childlike sense of wonder alongside his warmth and playful sense of humour. This sense of a child’s world was apparent in both the Alice opera and its predecessor, the surrealist song cycle A Silly Horse (1981), of which a recording by Melentieva and Malov was reissued on the Megadisc label in 1997.

Knaifel married Melentieva in 1965. She survives him, along with a daughter and a grandson. 

🔔 Alexander Aronovich Knaifel, composer, born 28 November 1943; died 27 June 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[steliosagapitos]

~ " - A Thousand Cranes - , 1970, by Kayama Matazo (Japanese Nihonga painter of the 20th century, born in Kyoto in 1927. Kayama Matazo was a painter who employed a mixed technique. In 1949, he graduated from the Tokyo University of the Arts with a degree in painting. Around 1960 he traveled, gave exhibitions, and held conferences abroad. Starting in 1950, he participated in expositions of The Association of Young Artists (Shinseisaku gakai), wherein he was awarded four times. From 1958 on, he participated in international expositions of modern Japanese artists. In 1967, he also participated in the exhibition Masterpieces of Modern Japanese Painting at the State Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg and at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. In 1957, he was granted the Young Painters Prize in the Asahi News. In 1973 he was granted the prize for Japanese Art and, in 1980, he received the Prize of the Ministry of Culture. He became a professor at the Tokyo University of the Arts in 1988. Born: September 24, 1927, Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan - Died: April 6, 2004, Tokyo, Japan)." ~

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINTS OF THE DAY (May 4)

The Carthusian Martyrs of London were the monks of the London Charterhouse, the monastery of the Carthusian Order in the city of London who were put to death by the English state.

The method of execution was hanging, disembowelling while still alive, and quartering. Others were imprisoned and left to starve to death.

These 18 Carthusian monks were put to death in England under King Henry VIII between 1535-1540 for maintaining their allegiance to the Pope.

The Carthusians, founded by St. Bruno in 1054, are the strictest and most austere monastic order in the western Church.

They live an austere hermitic life, their ‘monastery’ actually being a number of hermitages built next to each other.

When Henry VIII issued his “Act of Supremacy” declaring that all who refused to take an oath recognizing him as head of the Church of England committed an act of high treason, these 18 Carthusians refused and were sentenced to death.

The first to die were the Carthusian prior of London, John Houghton, and two of his brothers, Robert Lawrence and Augustine Webster, who were hanged, drawn and quartered, on 4 May 1535.

The prior is said to have declared his fidelity to the Catholic Church and forgiven his executioners before dying.

The Carthusians were the first martyrs to die under the reign of Henry VIII.

Two more were killed on June 19 of that year. By 4 August 1540, all 18 had been tortured and killed for refusing to place their allegiance to the king before their allegiance to the Pope.

They were beatified by Pope Leo XIII on 29 December 1886.

John Houghton, Robert Lawrence, and Augustine Webster were canonized by Pope Paul VI on 25 October 1970.

[alightinthelantern]

Tudor City is an apartment complex located on the southern edge of Turtle Bay, on the East Side of Manhattan in New York City, near Turtle Bay's border with Murray Hill. Designed and developed by the Fred F. French Company, it lies on a low cliff, which is east of Second Avenue between 40th and 43rd Streets and overlooks First Avenue. Construction commenced in 1926, making it the first residential skyscraper complex in the world. Tudor City was one of the first, largest, and most important examples of a planned middle-class residential community in New York City. It is named for its Tudor Revival architecture. The complex is a New York City designated landmark district and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The 13-building complex consists of 11 housing cooperatives, one rental apartment building, and one short-term hotel; these buildings collectively house 5,000 people. Most of Tudor City's buildings are arranged around 41st and 43rd Streets, which slope upward east of Second Avenue; the eastern ends of the two streets are connected by Tudor City Place, which crosses over 42nd Street. Two parks flank 42nd Street, and there was once an 18-hole miniature golf course in the southern park. The buildings generally contain stone, brick, and terracotta facades, as well as ornate Tudor-style details. The Fred F. French Company advertised Tudor City heavily, erecting large signs on the roofs of two buildings on 42nd Street, which could be seen from blocks away.

Before Tudor City was constructed, tenements and slums dominated the area. Following the development of the nearby Grand Central Terminal and office buildings during the early 20th century, Fred F. French began planning a residential enclave in Midtown Manhattan. French announced plans for Tudor City in December 1925, and the first 12 structures were completed in phases between October 1927 and late 1930. The section of 42nd Street through Tudor City was widened in the 1950s with the construction of the nearby United Nations headquarters. The final building in the complex, 2 Tudor City Place, was finished in 1956, and the French Company sold the Hotel Tudor in 1963. Harry Helmsley bought most of the remaining buildings in 1970 and resold them in 1984 to Philip Pilevsky and Francis J. Greenburger, who converted most of these structures to co-op apartments.

The complex contains 12 apartment buildings, named Prospect Tower, Tudor Tower, Windsor Tower, Woodstock Tower, Hatfield House, the Manor, the Hermitage, the Cloister, Essex House, Haddon Hall, and Hardwicke Hall; it also includes a hotel, the Hotel Tudor. Woodstock Tower, in the center of the complex, is the tallest tower of the group, and was originally topped by a flèche, a gothic spire. Tudor City's original shops included three restaurants (providing room service for a fee), grocery, liquor, and drug stores, a barber shop, and beauty parlor. Services included a post office, indoor playground, private nursery, maids, laundry and valet service, private guards, garage, a furniture repair and rug cleaning service, and a radio engineer who would repair and connect aerials. Residents published their own magazine, and there were also organizations such as a camera club. The enclave also contained such amenities as an ice-skating rink and tennis courts, in addition to a library, babysitting service, and bowling alley. Prospect Tower and Tudor Tower both contained two rooftop decks, while the Manor contained another roof deck; there was also a water playground for children.

Due to their distinctive architectural style, Tudor City has been heavily featured in television in film. Appearances include The Godfather Part III, Scarface, Taxi Driver, and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy.

[ruou-tot]

Hermitage

Vùng rượu vang Hermitage, quê hương của nho Syrah, một khu vực sản xuất rượu vang với diện tích không quá lớn, chỉ vào khoảng 137 ha đất trồng nho. Không giống với hầu hết các vùng sản xuất rượu vang khác, quy mô và sản lượng của Hermitage không có xu hướng gia tăng.

Tìm hiểu về lịch s�� làm rượu của vùng Hermitage Hermitage là một cái tên được xếp vào danh sách những vườn nho có tuổi đời lớn nhất trên thế giới. Những cây nho đầu tiên của Hermitage đã được trồng vào khoảng 600 TCN bởi những người Hy Lạp cổ đại. Đến đầu những năm 1700, Hermitage đã có những bước tiến đầu tiên trên thị trường thế giới bằng việc các nhà làm vang của vùng đất này bắt đầu xuất khẩu những chai rượu có nguồn gốc từ Hermitage sang Anh. Rượu vang Hermitage là một trong những loại rượu vang yêu thích của Thomas Jefferson, vị Tổng thống thứ ba của Hoa Kỳ.

Thế chiến thứ I đã giáng một đòn rất mạnh vào những vườn nho ở đây, vùng đất được nắm giữ bởi những nhà làm vang tự thân này từ cuối Thế chiến I cho đến thời điểm bắt đầu của các cuộc suy thoái chỉ tồn tại duy nhất 4 cái tên như thế còn hoạt động kinh doanh. Phải đến tận những năm 1970 Hermitage mới thực sự trở thành khu vực sản xuất rượu vang thực thụ.

Nho và những vườn nho ở Hermitage Syrah là giống nho đỏ duy nhất được luật AOC cho phép trồng ở Hermitage. Bên cạnh Syrah, Marsanne và Roussanne là hai giống nho trắng duy nhất được góp mắt trong các vườn nho ở đây. Mặc dù điều này là hợp pháp theo luật AOC nhưng các loại rượu vang trắng sản xuất tại khu vực này thực sự không quá phổ biến.

Theo luật AOC, 15 % là con số lớn nhất trong tỷ lệ pha trộn các loại rượu vang trắng ở Hermitage. Tuy nhiên, hầu hết các nhà sản xuất chỉ sử dụng tối đa là 5 % lượng rượu lên men từ nho Marsanne trong các sản phẩm rượu vang đỏ của họ. Hai giống nho trắng này thường được dùng để sản làm ra rượu vang trắng chát nhiều hơn. Hơn 93% các chai rượu được sinh ra ở Hermitage đều là rượu vang đỏ.

Có thể nói rằng Hermitage thực sự là vùng đất nhỏ, 130 ha đất trồng của nó dường như không có sự thay đổi trong những năm vừa quá. Trên đỉnh ngọn đồi Hermitage nổi tiếng với độ cao 344m so với mực nước biển sẽ là nơi có những vườn nho tốt nhất trên thế giới.

Khí hậu và thời tiết ở Hermitage có tác động như thế nào với việc phát triển những cây nho? Nằm ở phía bắc của vùng rượu vang Rhone Valley, Hermitage nhận được phần khí hậu ôn hoà hơn hẳn so với các khu vực còn lại ở đây. Trung bình mỗi năm các cây nho ở đây nhận được 2100 giờ nắng, lượng mưa khoảng 800mm. Hermitage có lẽ là nơi ấm áp nhất ở Rhone Valley.

Với địa hình đồi núi tự nhiên, hoạt động mạnh mẽ của những cơn gió La Bise đã giảm bớt rất nhiều. Những vườn nho nhận được nhiều gió nhất là vườn nằm trên đỉnh cao nguyên L'home, Maison Blanche và Varogne lieux-dits. Yếu tố gió cũng có những tác động rất lớn đến sự phát triển của những cây nho.

Chúng giúp cho những cây nho quét sạch rất nhiều loại bệnh. Điều thú vị là gió ở Hermitage thường đi cùng với những cơn mưa, có ích trong việc loại bỏ hơi ẩm gây ra bệnh nấm làm chết các gốc nho. Điều này hoàn toàn ngược lại với những cơn gió ở phía nam, thường xuất hiện để báo trước những cơn mưa.

Khám phá phong cách rượu vang của khu vực Hermitage Rượu vang Hermitage thường không được những tín đồ trẻ tuổi yêu thích. Những với những chai rượu Hermitage có vintage sâu, chúng tự tin có sánh ngang với bất cứ loại rượu hảo hạng nào trên thế giới. Rượu Hermitage mang đến hương vị đậm đà với chất rượu rất sánh đặc. Hương vị tannin nổi bật và hương thơm của quả mâm xôi đen tươi dâu đen, đất gia vị, anh đào đen, khoáng chất, ô liu và khói là những thứ khiến người ta ấn tượng ở một chai Hermitage trẻ. Khi chưa phát triển toàn bộ hương vị, phức hợp hương thơm của Hermitage thường không quá phong phú. Thậm chí chúng còn được đánh giá là khá khép kín và khắc khổ, khó uống.

Tuy nhiên, mọi sự kiên nhẫn đều nhận được những kết quả bất ngờ. Sau khi trải qua những giấc ngủ lâu năm trong hầm, dòng vang Pháp thường biến đổi một cách rất kỳ diệu. Chúng thanh lịch và tinh tế, sống động và phong phú. Đây là một trong những loại rượu vang có tuổi đời lâu năm nhất ở Pháp. Các chai vang có hương vị tốt nhất có thể được ủ trong khoảng thời gian lên đến 20, 30 40 năm và có khi còn là nhiều hơn thế.

Thưởng thức một số chai vang đến từ Hermitage

Rượu Vang Ermitage Le Meal: Rượu Vang Ermitage Le Meal: Nồng độ cồn đạt 13,5% và được lên men từ giống nho nổi tiếng nhất cùng tên tuổi Hermitage, Syrah. Chai rượu vang này mang đến tất cả những hương vị đặc trưng của Hermitage theo cách rất đặc biệt và thú vị. Đây là một lựa chọn luôn được các tín đồ rượu vang chào đón.

Rượu vang Crozes Hermitage La Matiniere rượu vang Crozes Hermitage La Matiniere Đến từ nhà làm vang lừng lẫy Ferraton Pere & Fils, chai vang trắng đạt 12,5% ABV này là điển hình cho những gì thanh lịch và tinh tế nhất của rượu vang vùng Hermitage. Giống nho Marsanne chắc chắn sẽ không khiến bạn phải thất vọng.

Bảng giá rượu vang Pháp Hermitage tại Rượu Tốt Bên cạnh hai cái tên kể trên, tại Rượu Tốt, chúng tôi cung cấp rất nhiều những chai vang được nhập khẩu từ Pháp, cụ thể là những chai rượu của vùng đất Hermitage. Bạn sẽ có thể thoải mái lựa chọn những chai vang khác nhau từ phong cách, màu sắc đến chủng loại,… với các đặc điểm hương vị cũng đa dạng không kém. Hãy liên hệ với chúng tôi ngay hôm nay để nhận được những tư vấn cụ thể cũng như hưởng những chương trình ưu đãi hấp dẫn nhất dành cho khách hàng mới.

Một số điểm du lịch nổi tiếng tại Hermitage mà bạn nên biết Không chỉ là vùng đất nổi tiếng với những chai rượu vang cao cấp mà Hermitage còn nổi tiếng với những điểm du lịch hấp dẫn. Một số điểm tham quan mà bạn không nên bỏ lỡ khi đến với vùng đất này:

Là một địa điểm được liệt kê với các sườn đồi bậc thang nổi tiếng, Colline de l'Hermitage cho thấy một số cảnh quan vườn nho tuyệt đẹp nhìn ra sông Rhône. Ngoài ra ở Tain-l'Hermitage, hầm rượu Cave de Tain cung cấp các chuyến tham quan có hướng dẫn viên đến phòng sản xuất, vì vậy bạn có thể tìm hiểu về lịch sử của nó cùng với các kỹ thuật ủ rượu . Và để tìm hiểu thêm về vườn nho, hãy đi theo con đường khám phá giữa những cây nho. Nhờ những tấm biển giải thích, bạn sẽ trở thành chuyên gia về các giống nho khác nhau và những đặc điểm cụ thể đã làm nên danh tiếng thế giới của vườn nho này!

Nếu bạn là người đam mê nghệ thuật, bảo tàng tại Hermitage có rất nhiều thứ thú vị dành cho bạn. Bảo tàng lưu giữ một bộ sưu tập các bức tranh từ Nouvelle École de Paris ở Hôtel des Corubis thế kỷ 16. Những bức tranh của bảo tàng có niên đại từ những năm 1950 và 1960.

Cây cầu dành cho người đi bộ sẽ đưa bạn đến Tournon Sur Rhône ở khu Ardèche, nơi có lâu đài thời Trung cổ và một khu phố cổ. Tournon Sur Rhone là một ngôi làng hấp dẫn với khu vườn trên sườn đồi, từ đó bạn có thể có được tầm nhìn tuyệt vời ra Tournon sur Rhone và Tain l'Hermitage.

Nhà sản xuất sô cô la lừng danh có trụ sở tại Tain-l'Hermitage và các loại bánh kẹo, thanh, nước sốt và bột sô cô la được bán tại cửa hàng của họ ở Avenue du Président-Roosevelt.

#wine #winelover #Vangphap #Hermitage #ruoutot

[silvestromedia]

SAINTS OF THE DAY FOR APRIL 07

Bl. Alexander Rawlins, 1595 A.D. Martyr, missionary, and companion in death with Henry Walpole. Alexander was born in Worcestershire, England, where he was jailed twice for his fervent Catholicism. In 1589 he went to the English seminary in Reims and was ordained there in 1590. Returning to England the following year, Alexander was arrested. He was condemned to death and on April 7, 1595, and along with Henry Walpole was hanged, drawn, and quartered in York, England. He was beatified in 1929.

Bl. Edward Oldcorne, 1606 A.D. English martyr allegedly involved in the Gunpowder Plot. He was born in York, England, and ordained in Rome. In 1587, he became a Jesuit. Returning to England, Edward worked in the Midlands from 1588 to 1606. He was then condemned to death at Worcester for alleged implicitly in the Gunpowder Plot He was beatified in 1929.

St. Henry Walpole, 1558-1595 A.D. Jesuit and one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. He was born in Docking, Norfolk, England, and was educated at Cambridge and Day’s Inn. Converted to Catholicism, he went to Rome where he entered the Jesuits in 1584. Ordained in 1588, Henry was sent to York, England, where he was arrested and martyred. He was beatified in 1929 and canonized in 1970

St. Brynach, 5th century. A Celtic hermit in Wales. He built a hermitage at Carn-Englyi, near Nefyn, Gwynedd. He is identified by some with St. Brannock of Braunton.

St. Celsus. Celsus of Armagh was a layman named Ceallach mac Aedha. He succeeded to the bishopric of Armagh (it was a hereditary See) in 1105 when he was twenty-six, was consecrated bishop, put into effect many reforms in his diocese, and ruled well and effectively. He mediated between warring Irish factions, was a friend of St. Malachy, and ended the hereditary succession to his See by naming Malachy as his successor on his deathbed. He died on April at Ardpatrick, Munster

St. John Baptist de la Salle, Roman Catholic Priest. He founded the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (approved in 1725) and established teacher colleges (Rheims in 1687, Paris in 1699, and Saint-Denis in 1709). He was one of the first to emphasize classroom teaching over individual instruction. He also began teaching in the vernacular instead of in Latin. His schools were formed all over Italy. In 1705, he established a reform school for boys at Dijon. John was named patron of teachers Feastday April 7

[allround-archivism]

Victories … Mitchell in LA, 1967, recording her first album, Song To A Seagull Photograph: Sulfiati Magnuson/Getty Images

Yet by the dawn of the 1970s, the true scope of Mitchell’s “everything” was remarkably vast by any measure. She had full contractual, artistic control of her albums and helped blaze that path for others, including Neil Young. She controlled her own music publishing, which reportedly netted her more than a half-million dollars in royalties (roughly $3.5 million today) before she’d even put her 1971 masterwork “Blue” to tape. Mitchell owned a car and multiple homes at a time when a woman couldn’t even legally get a credit card in her own name. She was an unmarried woman who traveled the world on her own and lived as she wished. She canceled tours she didn’t want to do and disappeared to her coastal Canadian hermitage to read, recuperate, compose songs and be alone. She was a celebrated woman who lived with rare freedom.

...

“Blue” raised the bar heaven-high on first-person confessional songwriting. Yet some bristled at the vulnerability of “Blue,” or perhaps at having to listen to a woman sing about what she thinks, what she wants, how she feels for the better part of an hour. “‘River’ is an extended mea culpa that reeks of self-pity,” Timothy Crouse wrote in Rolling Stone. “I suspect,” Don Heckman surmised in the New York Times, “this will be the most disliked of Miss Mitchell’s recordings, despite the fact that it attempts more and makes greater demands on her talent than any of the others.” Canadian magazine Maclean’s offered guarded praise: “She has always had a unique sense of melody, but she used to play word games; now, apparently on a romantic bummer, she wants to tell us about herself.”

[orthodoxydaily]

Saints&Reading: Tuesday, December 26, 2023

december 13_december 26

St ODILIA/ODILE OF ALSACE ( 720_France)

Odilia, also known as Odile, was born in France in the seventh century. Her father was the Duke of Alsace. When she was still an infant, her parents realized that she was blind. Her father was so angry that he ordered his only child put to death. But Odilia’s mother convinced him to allow Odilia to be raised by nuns.

The nuns raised Odilia with faith and love. They gathered around her on the day of her baptism when she was 12 years old. As the priest blessed her with chrism, her blindness was cured. A legend about this miracle is that the priest then said to her, “Now you will see me in the kingdom of heaven.”

Odilia was welcomed home and began to get to know her family. She was a beautiful young woman, and her father planned for her to marry a rich man. Odilia wanted to become a nun and to live the life she knew so well. Her father again lost his temper and treated her badly until one day he saw her hiding a bowl of food under her cloak as she left the castle. He asked her what she was doing. Odilia explained that she was bringing food to the poor.

Odilia’s father gave her his castle to use as a convent and a place for the hungry and sick to find help. At her request, her father also built a monastery at the foot of the steep hill that led to the castle so that the elderly and lame could be cared for without a long journey uphill. Soon, Odilia’s father also built a large church so that everyone, poor or wealthy, could worship God together.

Odilia died around the year 720. She is the patron saint of anyone with eye problems. St. Odilia teaches us to see the everything we do with eyes of faith and to believe that with the Lord, every thing is possible.

Source: RCL Benzinger_ Saint ressource

ST HERMAN OF ALASKA (1836)

In an obscure corner of what is now Alaska, on an Aleutian island called Spruce, a monk labored from the late 1700’s until his repose in 1837. Braving subzero temperatures, plagues and storms, ill treatment from fellow Russians who resented and misunderstood him, St. Herman lived a life marked by astonishing ascetic labor that gave birth to a deep love and concern for all with whom he came in contact. Strangely, despite the miracles associated with him not only throughout his life but also, after his death, he was all but forgotten after he reposed.

"Thirty years will pass after my death, all those who live now on Spruce Island will be dead, you alone will remain alive, and you will be old and poor; then they will remember me," Father Herman said to his Aleut follower, Ignatius Aliaga. As with other prophecies of the saint, this one too was fulfilled, as in 1867, Bishop Peter of Alaska began a formal investigation into his life. It wasn’t until 1894 that his story became known to the outside world, and then his glorification waited another 76 years, until August 9, 1970.

Born into a merchant family in the diocese of Moscow, St. Herman became a monk when he was still a teenager, first entering the Holy Trinity Sergius Hermitage near Petersburg, then later moving on to venerable Valaam Monastery. The saint grew to love Valaam with his entire being; monks there remembered him singing at the cliros in a pleasant tenor voice, while tears streamed from his eyes. For the rest of his life, St. Herman considered Valaam his spiritual home; indeed, he called his hermitage on Spruce Island “New Valaam.” In a letter to Abbot Nazarius, he once wrote, “Your paternal kindness to my lowliness will not be erased from my heart, neither the terrible impenetrable Siberian wilds, nor its dark forests, nor will the great rivers wash away the memory; neither will rough seas extinguish these feelings. For in my mind I imagine my beloved Valaam and look always at it across the great ocean.”

In the second half of the 1700s, explorers were expanding the boundaries of Russia, and Metropolitan Gabriel asked Valaam’s Elder Nazarius to choose ten men to evangelize the Aleutians. Sadly, after five successful years of founding schools and churches, the head of the mission Archimandrite Ioasaph and his entire entourage drowned. One after another, others working on the mission left, until St. Herman remained alone.

One time, St. Herman was asked, “How do you, Fr. Herman, manage to live alone in the forest, don't you get bored?” He answered “No, I'm not alone there! There is God, and God is everywhere! There are holy angels! How can one be bored with them? With whom is it more pleasant and better to converse, angels or people? Angels, of course!”A modern-day monastic gathers water at St. Herman's Spring on Spruce Island

In addition to conversing with the angels throughout his hours of prayer and worship, St. Herman worked tirelessly. He ate and slept very little and when he slept, he used a bed that was a board, resting his head on a pillow of bricks. All his life, he wore the same simple clothing—a sleeveless deerskin shirt, his cassock and monk’s hat, a faded, patched mantle, and his shoes. In rain and storms, in the midst of winter snow or severe frost, he never changed his garments or added layers for warmth. His physical feats astonished those who knew him; one disciple saw him walking barefoot on a winter’s night, hauling a log that would have been difficult for four men to carry. With his own hands he built his cell and chapel, hauled baskets of kelp from the ocean to fertilize his garden, and in the midst of the labor meticulously kept the monk’s rule of services and prayers.

Tending his own garden and diligently observing his monastic rule didn’t keep St. Herman from reaching out with great love and concern to his Aleutian neighbors. On feast days and Sundays, he would gather them in the chapel next to his cell, and lead them in holy services; the people loved to listen to his spiritual teaching, and would visit him at all hours of the day and night, staying until early morning to absorb his instruction. The local Russian governor Yanovsky recalled, “To my amazement he spoke so powerfully, so sensibly, and argued so convincingly that it now seems to me that no education or earthly wisdom could withstand his words. We conversed every day until midnight, and even later, about the love of God, about eternity, about the salvation of the soul, and about Christian life. His sweet speech poured forth from his lips in an unceasing stream.”

Saint Herman especially loved the Aleutian children, for whom he would bake cookies, and he watched over those who were weak and powerless. He started a school for orphans, tended the sick during a plague that decimated the population, and defended the native Aleuts before the Russian fur traders who were exploiting them. The people began to tell each other of miracles they’d seen. Father Herman would tell someone of a future event and it would come to pass; animals, even bears, would eat from his hands; he placed an icon of the Mother of God in the sand and a tidal wave receded back into the ocean.

People flocked to the elder for counsel and help. Affectionately, the Aleuts began to call him their “North Star,” referring to how his teaching guided and grounded them, or the even more intimate “Apa,” which meant grandfather. Couples with troubled marriages would seek his advice. With meekness, he would reproach people for their lack of sobriety or their cruelty. He himself for years refused any titles of elevation within the church, preferring the simplest designation, “monk.” His letters reflect his simplicity and tender disposition. "Our sins,” he wrote, “do not in the least hinder our Christianity... Sin, to one who loves God, is nothing other than an arrow from the enemy in battle. The vain desires of this world separate us from our homeland; love of them and habit clothe our soul as if in a hideous garment. We who travel on the journey of this life and call on God to help us, ought to divest ourselves of this garment and clothe ourselves in new desires, in a new love of the age to come, and thereby receive knowledge of how near or how far we are from our heavenly homeland.”St. Herman's original grave site on Spruce Island

As the time of St. Herman’s repose drew closer, he began to tell his disciples to prepare, giving them specific instructions about his burial and services. Everything he prophesied related to his death came to pass, exactly as he had foretold, and so it was that on December 13, 1837, he leaned his head on the chest of his disciple Gerasim and reposed. “Glory to Thee, O Lord,” he pronounced with shining face, just before taking his last breath. In various Aleutian towns, people reported seeing a pillar of light, reaching from Spruce Island to the heavens. “St. Herman has left us,” one villager reportedly said.

Fortunately for the Aleuts and all Alaskans, St. Herman hasn’t ever left them. Miracles attributed to his intercessions have happened since his repose and are still happening today. Most Native Alaskans today are still Orthodox, and they honor his memory with prayers and pilgrimages. His relics rest in the Resurrection Church on Kodiak, and Orthodox faithful from all over the world come to venerate them and ask for his prayers.The chapel on Spruce Island

Troparion

O blessed Father Herman of Alaska, North star of Christ's holy Church, The light of your holy life and great deeds, Guides those who follow the Orthodox Way. Together we lift high the Holy Cross You planted firmly in America. Let all behold and glorify Jesus Christ, Singing His Holy Resurrection.

Blessed ascetic of the northern wilds And gracious intercessor for the whole world, Teacher of the Orthodox Faith And good instructor of piety, Adornment of Alaska and joy of all America, Holy Father Herman Pray to Christ God that He save our souls.

Source: Antiochan Christian Archdiocese

EPHESIANS 6:10-17

10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. 14 Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; 16 above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. 17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God;

MATTHEW 10:16-22

16 Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. 17 But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues. 18 You will be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. 19 But when they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak. For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak; 20 for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you. 21 Now brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. 22 And you will be hated by all for My name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved.

[belovedsemi1995]

Mountain Halla

Jeju Island, a fantastic island surrounded by the sea on all sides, and Hallasan Mountain, which stands tall at 1,950m in the middle of the island. This mountain, which means a mountain as high as pulling the Milky Way, has long been called Yeongjusan Mountain because it is inhabited by gods and has been considered one of Korea's Samsinsan Mountain along with Geumgangsan Mountain and Jirisan Mountain. In addition, it was designated and protected as a natural monument in October 1966 as a repository of animals and plants with very high academic value due to various vegetation distributions. Meanwhile, Hallasan Mountain, located in the center of Jeju Island, a young volcanic island of the 4th Cenozoic era, has been active in volcanic eruption until 25,000 years ago, and 368 parasitic volcanoes, Oreum, are distributed around Hallasan Mountain, creating a unique landscape.

Hallasan Mountain's unexplored views include snow-covered Baeknokdam, the dignity of Wangwangneung, hidden waterfalls deep in the valley, and Yeongsilgiam Hermitage, which contains the legend of General Ohbaek, and was designated as a national park in March 1970. Hallasan Mountain has a vertical distribution of plants from temperate to cold climates due to geographical factors rising in the altitude of the North Pacific Ocean and the altitude above sea level and is a treasure trove of ecosystems with 1,800 species of plants and 4,000 species of animals (3,300 species of insects).

[searuss8]

Русский фарфор XVIII-XIX вв. Эрмитаж 1970 г. Russian porcelain of the XV...

[izimbracreenshots]

Color of White Snow by  Anatoli Vasiliev, Sulambek Mamilov, 1970

[gagosiangallery]

Opening Today—Gagosian to Present Paintings by Neil Jenney in New York

Gagosian to Present AMERICAN REALISM TODAY Paintings by Neil Jenney from His Modern Africa and Good Paintings Series

I’m governed by nature. Anything I do, I want it to feel natural. —Neil Jenney NEW YORK, November 9, 2021—Gagosian is pleased to present paintings by Neil Jenney from his recent series Modern Africa (2015–)—a subseries of the New Good Paintings (2015–)—and the preceding series, Good Paintings (1971–2015). Jenney is committed to exploring, and ultimately transcending, realism as both style and philosophy—a project first sparked by the preponderance of Pop-themed Photorealism in late-1960s New York. Having designated his early work “Bad Painting” (a term coined by Marcia Tucker, director of the New Museum, New York, in 1978) and his output after 1970 “Good Painting,” he continues to challenge familiar models of taste and subject matter while pursuing a meticulous and highly idiosyncratic approach to the representation of culture and place. As with proto-Surrealist writer Raymond Roussel’s fanciful travelogue Impressions d’Afrique (Impressions of Africa, 1910), Jenney’s approach to his subject in the paintings on view is rooted in personal imagination, and in Western fantasies about the continent. Although these paintings are landscapes, they eschew sweeping panoramas in favor of more intimate, even introspective scenes. But despite his pictorial restraint, Jenney’s series addresses fundamental conflicts between nature and civilization, and reflects a concern with our deteriorating environment. Modern Africa shows architectural fragments that Jenney characterizes as “utilitarian”—columns, ramps, and stairways—half-submerged in undulating sand dunes. These monumental structures seem to exist in past and future simultaneously, providing both a critical look at the legacies of colonialism and a speculative view of what may lie in wait for humanity should we fail to address climate change. While the shadows and footprints that intrude here and there reveal a continued human presence, no figures are visible, suggesting that Jenney’s envisioned world is incapable of supporting many survivors. Jenney refers to his work as “painted sculpture,” and uses handmade black wooden frames, which he first designed in the early 1970s, to present canvases executed in a crisp, high-contrast style. This device was inspired by the classical Greek notion of viewing a painting as a scene through a window, an idea that he encountered in a Fourth Avenue bookstore. Providing in this way an “architectural foreground” as well as—through their stenciled captions—a guide to title and setting, the frames situate the paintings as objects and interpretations and continue to provide Jenney with what he has described as “the most stimulating prospect” with which he has ever worked. Neil Jenney was born in 1945 in Torrington, Connecticut, and lives and works in New York. Collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk, Denmark; and Tate, London. Solo exhibitions include Paintings and Sculpture 1967–1980, University of California Art Museum, Berkeley (1981, traveled to Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk, Denmark; and Kunsthalle Basel); Collection in Context—Neil Jenney: Natural Rationalism, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1994); and North America, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2007). Jenney’s work has been featured in major group exhibitions and biennials, including the Whitney Biennial (1969, 1973, 1981, and 1987); Representations of America (1977–78, organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco for the Pushkin Museum, Moscow; Hermitage, Saint Petersburg; and Palace of Art, Minsk, Belarus); New Image Painting, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1978); and Bad Painting, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1978). NEIL JENNEY AMERICAN REALISM TODAY Opening reception: Tuesday, November 9, 4–7pm November 9–December 18, 2021 976 Madison Avenue, New York _____ Neil Jenney, Modern Africa #4, 2020–21, oil on canvas, in painted wood artist’s frame, 72 1/4 × 95 1/2 × 3 1/4 inches (183.5 × 242.6 × 8.3 cm) © Neil Jenney. Photo: Rob McKeever

[ofhouses]

Dear friends, for the next three weeks OfHouses will be guest curated by Thomas Daniell. Thomas is Professor of Architectural Theory and Criticism at Kyoto University, Japan. He holds a B.Arch from Victoria University of Wellington, M.Eng from Kyoto University, and Ph.D from RMIT University. From 2011 until 2017, he was Head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Saint Joseph, Macau. In 2017 he was the M+/Design Trust Research Fellow, and in 2019 he was a Research Fellow at the Canadian Center for Architecture. A two-time recipient of publication grants from the Graham Foundation, his books include FOBA: Buildings (Princeton Architectural Press, 2005), After the Crash: Architecture in Post-Bubble Japan (Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), Houses and Gardens of Kyoto (Tuttle, 2010; second edition 2018), Kiyoshi Sey Takeyama + Amorphe (Equal Books, 2011), Kansai 6 (Equal Books, 2011), An Anatomy of Influence (AA Publications, 2018), and The Cosmos of Sei’ichi Shirai (The MIT Press, forthcoming). Thomas Daniell had made a very consistent selection of houses by Toyokazu Watanabe and Monta Mozuna, for which he wrote this short introduction:

Two Kansai Eccentrics

In the early 1970s, three young Japanese architects based in Kansai (encompassing Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe) started to produce experimental house designs in implicit and explicit dialogue with each other, and soon became known as the Three Kansai Eccentrics. One was Tadao Ando, now an international star who needs no introduction, but the other two have remained relatively obscure: Toyokazu Watanabe and Kiko (Monta) Mozuna. Though only Ando was born in Kansai (Watanabe is from Akita, and Mozuna from Hokkaido), their work shared an exuberant, aberrant quality that was welcomed in Kansai, a region known for its vulgar humor and colorful iconoclasm. Rejecting the mainstream emphasis on efficient, utilitarian mass housing, these architects produced freestanding private houses that were aggressively opposed to “easy living.” Mozuna’s most famous work is the Anti-Dwelling Box, a composition of three nested cubes that was designed, almost unbelievably, as a home for his own mother. Watanabe is best known for an extension to his own house that provided sleeping and playing spaces for his children, a forbidding double tower made of bare concrete. He called it the Gaki-no-ya, which means something like “Shed for Little Brats,” though the word gaki can also be translated as “hungry ghost,” a Buddhist term for greedy, dangerous spirits. Indeed, both Watanabe and Mozuna drew upon esoteric Buddhist motifs, mandalas, and “cosmological” principles in their buildings and writings, but the exaggerated mysticism was less than serious, or at least tempered by a surrealist sense of humor. Watanabe was obsessed with dome geometries that he related to female breasts, most infamously in his Oppai House. Mozuna liked to suggest his career was supernaturally guided, which was also his reason for having changed his name more than once. Born Kazuhiro Mozuna, at the age of 18 he was climbing Osorezan (“Fear Mountain,” an active volcano in northern Japan with a pilgrimage temple set in its caldera, considered to be a gate to the afterlife) where – as he tells it – he encountered the ghost of Marilyn Monroe. She introduced herself as MM and told Mozuna he should have the same initials, so he thereupon invented the name Monta, partly in homage to French-Italian singer Yves Montand, and partly because in Japanese it gives the impression of a cheerful, ingenuous child. As a young critic and architect, he was known as Monta Mozuna, but at the age of 35, he awoke one morning to find a white-haired male ghost standing beside his bed, who told him that the name Monta had become an emblem of bad luck inscribed on his forehead. It had to be removed. Deciding that “k” sounds were the most auspicious, Mozuna settled on Kiko for its mysterious, macho nuances (active listening, spiritual cultivation, systematic organization, testicles), but chose to render it in kanji characters so obscure that his request for an official name change was initially rejected, and required a legal appeal before it was approved. He then established an office in Tokyo as Kiko Mozuna, but for a while afterward signed his work Monta Mozuna Kiko. In 1986, he wrote his own death poem (an obscene, anacreontic haiku that was nonetheless deeply Buddhist in sensibility) and predicted that in 2029 there would be a third and final name change to Uchuan Kodaimoso Koji, a posthumous name that translates as something like “Cosmic Hermitage Megalomaniac.” A man who liked to drink too much until liver damage prevented him from drinking at all, he didn’t make it to 2029. Mozuna died in 2001, and Watanabe is now suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, but both of them produced sons who have become architects themselves. To be continued.

(Cover: Monta Mozuna /// Mandala 1 /// 1991. Source: AA Folio XIV - Kojiki of Architecture, London: AA Publications, 1991; Monta Mozuna Archive.)

[barontravelllc]

Looking for peace on the precipice

The Sanctuary of Madonna della Corona sits on an outcropping almost 2,500 feet high overlooking the Adige River Valley in northern Italy, near the city of Verona. Since the Middle Ages, this spot has been a destination for religious pilgrimages. The faithful are drawn no doubt by the views and, perhaps, the dangerous path to get there—enlightenment shouldn't come easy.

Over the centuries, the structure has evolved from a hermitage to a church, first inaugurated in 1530, and eventually to a sanctuary for contemplation and reflection. In the mid-1970s, architect Guido Tisato oversaw a major renovation, including digging out more of the mountain to add additional space. Today, visitors can reach the sanctuary from above via a paved path or from below, on a longer trail, known as the 'Path of Hope,' that ends with a steep staircase zigzagging upward. We think those who manage the climb up may be justified in feeling a little superior.