Music

Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition (1874)

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The Russ­ian com­pos­er Mod­est Mus­sorgsky (1839–1881) wins my ‘coolest composer’s name’ award, with hon­ourable men­tion to Ger­man com­pos­er Engel­bert Humperdinck (1854–1921) who of course is not to be con­fused with mel­low British pop singer Arnold Dorsey who used Engel­bert Humperdinck as a stage name. Mus­sorgsky was one of the “The Mighty Five” along­side Mily Bal­akirev, César Cui, Alexan­der Borodin, and (anoth­er con­tender for the cool name award) Niko­lai Rim­sky-Kor­sakov. Togeth­er, these five fash­ioned a dis­tinct nation­al style of Russ­ian clas­si­cal music in the sec­ond half of the 19ᵗʰ cen­tu­ry.

Mussorgsky’s works were inspired by Russ­ian his­to­ry and folk­lore, such as his opera Boris Godunov (about the Tsar who ruled Rus­sia between 1598 and 1605), Night on Bald Moun­tain (a series of com­po­si­tions inspired by Russ­ian lit­er­ary works and leg­ends), and Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion. This lat­ter piece is a piano suite in ten move­ments, writ­ten in 1874, and inspired by an exhi­bi­tion of works by archi­tect and painter Vik­tor Hart­mann at the Impe­r­i­al Acad­e­my of Arts in Saint Peters­burg. Hart­mann was as devot­ed as Mus­sorgsky to mak­ing intrin­si­cal­ly Russ­ian art and the two had become firm friends. Each move­ment of the suite is based on an indi­vid­ual art­work.

Art crit­ic Vladimir Stasov described the piece as Mus­sorgsky “rov­ing through the exhi­bi­tion, now leisure­ly, now briskly in order to come close to a pic­ture that had attract­ed his atten­tion, and at times sad­ly, think­ing of his depart­ed friend.”

The com­po­si­tion has become a show­piece for vir­tu­oso pianists, but has also became wide­ly known from orches­tra­tions and arrange­ments pro­duced by oth­er com­posers, such as Mau­rice Rav­el’s 1922 adap­ta­tion for orches­tra. The excerpt below is the open­ing prom­e­nade from the Rav­el ver­sion, as played by the Nation­al Youth Orches­tra at Carnegie Hall, New York. This is anoth­er tune where I say “I bet you know it…”.

Inci­den­tal­ly, prog rock trio Emer­son Lake and Palmer did a ver­sion of Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion, just as they did a ver­sion of anoth­er blog top­ic here, Aaron Copland’s Fan­fare for the Com­mon Man.

Mod­est Mus­sorgsky
Art

John Everett Millais’ Ophelia (1851)

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If you were to choose any British art gallery to walk into today, you would be sure to find one or more paint­ings by one or more artists belong­ing to the Pre-Raphaelite Broth­er­hood. The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of Eng­lish painters, poets, and art crit­ics, found­ed in 1848 by William Hol­man Hunt, John Everett Mil­lais, Dante Gabriel Ros­set­ti, and oth­ers, who sought to reform art and return it to the glo­ry days, as they saw it, of Ital­ian fif­teenth cen­tu­ry art. That peri­od of art, so-called Quat­tro­cen­to art, was char­ac­terised by abun­dant detail, colour and com­plex­i­ty; in the fol­low­ing cen­tu­ry, how­ev­er, artists – such as Raphael – were seen by the group as hav­ing a cor­rupt­ing influ­ence on art, ush­er­ing in the unnat­ur­al and stylised art of Man­ner­ism. Parmigianino’s Madon­na With The Long Neck (1540) is often used as an exam­ple of Man­ner­ism play­ing fast and loose with prop­er per­spec­tive, as I’m sure you can see.

Parmi­gian­i­no’s Madon­na With The Long Neck (1540)

Today, we’re look­ing at a clas­sic of the Pre-Raphaelites, name­ly Ophe­lia, the 1852 paint­ing by British artist Sir John Everett Mil­lais (and held in Tate Britain). Ophe­lia is of course a char­ac­ter from Shake­speare’s Ham­let, a Dan­ish noble­woman dri­ven mad by her love for Prince Ham­let and who ulti­mate­ly drowns in despair. Her drown­ing is not usu­al­ly seen onstage in the play, but mere­ly report­ed by Queen Gertrude who tells the audi­ence that Ophe­lia, out of her mind with grief, has fall­en from a wil­low tree over­hang­ing a brook. She lies in the water singing songs, as if unaware of her dan­ger (“inca­pable of her own dis­tress”), her clothes, trap­ping air and allow­ing her to stay afloat for a while (“Her clothes spread wide, / And, mer­maid-like, awhile they bore her up.”). But even­tu­al­ly, “her gar­ments, heavy with their drink, / Pul­l’d the poor wretch from her melo­di­ous lay” down “to mud­dy death”.

Mil­lais paints Ophe­lia in a pose with open arms and upward gaze in the man­ner of saints or mar­tyrs (they did love a trag­ic woman, the Pre-Raphs). In keep­ing with the tenets of the Pre-Raphaelites, he has used bright colours, with lots of detailed flo­ra and fideli­ty to nature. Despite its nom­i­nal Dan­ish set­ting, the land­scape has actu­al­ly come to be seen as quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Eng­lish (Ophe­lia was paint­ed along the banks of the Hogsmill Riv­er near Tol­worth in Sur­rey). The flow­ers shown float­ing on the riv­er were cho­sen to cor­re­spond with Shake­speare’s descrip­tion of Ophe­li­a’s gar­land.

Fun fact: at one point, Mil­lais had paint­ed a water vole pad­dling away near Ophe­lia, but changed his mind (prob­a­bly cor­rect­ly) after an acquain­tance mis­took it for a hare or rab­bit. Although ful­ly paint­ed over, a rough sketch of it still exists in a cor­ner of the can­vas hid­den by the frame, appar­ent­ly.

Mil­lais’ Ophe­lia (1851)
Music

The Jackson Five’s I Want You Back (1969)

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It was Gladys Knight who first made a call to leg­endary Motown founder Berry Gordy to tell him about an excit­ing new act she had over­heard from her dress­ing room on the sec­ond floor of the Regal The­ater, Chica­go. Gordy nev­er returned that call but a short time late Motown was approached again, this time by Bob­by Tay­lor of Bob­by Tay­lor and the Van­cou­vers who told A&R Vice Pres­i­dent Ralph Seltzer about this sen­sa­tion­al act that had opened for them at the High Chap­ar­ral club. So it came to pass that the Jack­son Five – for it was they – went to Detroit to audi­tion for Motown, and Gordy signed them up right away.

In Octo­ber 1969, the Jack­son Five’s first nation­al sin­gle, I Want You Back, was released, and became their first num­ber one hit on 30ᵗʰ Jan­u­ary 1970. It was per­formed on the band’s first tele­vi­sion appear­ances on Diana Ross’s The Hol­ly­wood Palace and on their mile­stone per­for­mance of 14ᵗʰ Decem­ber 1969, on The Ed Sul­li­van Show.

The song was writ­ten and pro­duced by the pro­duc­tion team known as The Cor­po­ra­tion, com­pris­ing Motown chief Berry Gordy him­self, Fred­die Per­ren, Alphon­so Mizell, and Deke Richards. Orig­i­nal­ly con­sid­ered for Gladys Knight & the Pips and lat­er for Diana Ross, the song was re-worked to suit its main lead vocal being per­formed by a tween, the then-11-year-old Michael Jack­son. Here’s Jack­ie Jackson’s mem­o­ry of the event:

“I remem­ber going into the Motown stu­dio and hear­ing the track com­ing through the big stu­dio mon­i­tors right in our face,” says Jack­ie Jack­son. “It was slam­ming. The intro was so strong. Berry always taught us to have a strong intro to get people’s atten­tion right away. And I remem­ber the Cor­po­ra­tion teach­ing us the song. Michael picked it up so fast; it was easy to learn for all of us. They kept chang­ing it here and there for the bet­ter. We told them it was great, but the next day Fred­die and Fonce added more things to it. They want­ed to make it per­fect. Michael did these ad-libs at the end of the song. They didn’t teach him that; he just made up his own stuff.”

And “slam­ming”, it cer­tain­ly was: an exu­ber­ant pop mas­ter­piece that remains one of my favourite all-time songs. It’s joy­ful — even if it is about a lover who is ruing his hasti­ness in drop­ping his girl! Enjoy the whole pack­age here: the glo­ri­ous cos­tumes, the boys’ volu­mi­nous Afros, the well-rehearsed dance moves, and of course the genius of Michael Jack­son man­i­fest­ed at a pre­co­cious­ly young age. Record­ed in the Goin’ Back To Indi­ana TV spe­cial in 1971.

The Jack­son Five

 

Literature

Mark Twain’s Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn (1884)

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Samuel Lang­horne Clemens (1835–1910) was of course the great Amer­i­can writer and humourist bet­ter known by the pseu­do­nym Mark Twain, and laud­ed as the father of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture. His nov­els include The Adven­tures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn (1884) as well as A Con­necti­cut Yan­kee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) and Pud­d’n­head Wil­son (1894). The lat­ter nov­el I had on my book­shelf as a boy although I must admit I don’t remem­ber read­ing it; Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn, on the oth­er hand, was a sta­ple of my gen­er­a­tion that every­one read.

Clemens used a litany of pen names: before “Mark Twain” he had writ­ten as “Thomas Jef­fer­son Snod­grass”, “Sieur Louis de Con­te”, “John Snook” and even just “Josh”. There are a num­ber of com­pet­ing the­o­ries about the pseu­do­nym he con­clu­sive­ly decid­ed to adopt, my favourite being the river­boat call from his days work­ing on steam­boats: “by the mark, twain” (refer­ring to sound­ing a depth of two fath­oms, which was just safe enough for a steam­boat trav­el­ling down the Mis­sis­sip­pi). How­ev­er, anoth­er the­o­ry talks about his keep­ing a reg­u­lar tab open at his local saloon and call­ing the bar­tender to “mark twain” on the black­board, and I get the impres­sion that he enjoyed the spec­u­la­tion and nev­er con­clu­sive­ly con­firmed one or the oth­er.

He was raised in Han­ni­bal, Mis­souri, which lat­er pro­vid­ed the set­ting for both Tom Sawyer and Huck­le­ber­ry Finn. In his ear­ly years he worked as a print­er and type­set­ter, and then, as men­tioned, a river­boat pilot on the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er, before head­ing west to join his broth­er Ori­on in Neva­da to spec­u­late unsuc­cess­ful­ly in var­i­ous min­ing enter­pris­es. Final­ly, he turned to jour­nal­ism and writ­ing which soon won him suc­cess and praise from his crit­ics and peers, and led him to his true voca­tion.

Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn is writ­ten through­out in ver­nac­u­lar Eng­lish and told in the first per­son by Huck­le­ber­ry “Huck” Finn. The book comes across as an authen­tic por­tray­al of boy­hood and it is awash with colour­ful descrip­tions of peo­ple and places along the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er. Set in a South­ern ante­bel­lum soci­ety marked by the preva­lent prac­tice of slav­ery and its asso­ci­at­ed soci­etal norms, it often makes for uncom­fort­able read­ing, but at the same time it is a scathing satire against the entrenched atti­tudes of those days. The nov­el explores themes of race and iden­ti­ty long before that was a phrase, but also what it means to be free and civilised in the chang­ing land­scape of Amer­i­ca.

Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn, 1st edi­tion
Mark Twain
Film, TV, and Theatre

Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek (1966)

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In the last blog, I wrote about Thomas More’s Utopia and the more gen­er­al area of utopi­an fic­tion and it occurs to me that this week’s top­ic, Gene Roddenberry’s sem­i­nal TV series Star Trek, itself falls square­ly into the genre of utopi­an fic­tion, albeit a far future one in which human­i­ty, hav­ing con­quered the stars, has also con­quered those quaint old divi­sions that char­ac­terised 1960s Amer­i­ca. The Enterprise’s crew of star sailors includes a Russ­ian, a Japan­ese and a black woman and no-one bats an eye­lid because it’s the 23rd cen­tu­ry and the Cold War, Hiroshi­ma, and racial seg­re­ga­tion are all mark­ers of a dis­tant past.

Star Trek first debuted in the US on 8th Sep­tem­ber 1966 but here in the UK it wasn’t until 12th July 1969 (just eight days before the Apol­lo 11 mis­sion to the moon) that this soon-to-be-huge pop-cul­ture phe­nom­e­non began air­ing on BBC One. It must have been a few years lat­er when it came upon my radar because I have no mem­o­ry of a black-and-white ver­sion and it wasn’t until about 1974 that we got a colour tel­ly. But boy, how they cap­i­talised on that new colour medi­um: bright gold, blue and red tunics abound­ed aboard the USS Enter­prise, whilst the numer­ous plan­ets they beamed down to, and aliens they encoun­tered, were also cap­tured in glo­ri­ous tech­ni­colour.

The con­cepts were mind-blow­ing­ly imag­i­na­tive, the sound effects reas­sur­ing­ly futur­is­tic (the back­ground com­put­er chat­ter on the bridge, the sound of a com­mu­ni­ca­tor flip­ping open, the swoosh of the auto­mat­ic doors, the fir­ing pf phasers, the mech­a­nisms of the trans­porter in full beam), and the sets were…well, lim­it­ed by the peri­od shall we say, but full marks for imag­i­na­tion.

The Enter­prise, as every­one knows, was a space explo­ration star­ship on a mis­sion to “explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civil­i­sa­tions; to bold­ly go where no man has gone before”. Led by the Cap­tain James T Kirk, First Offi­cer Spock and Chief Med­ical Offi­cer Leonard “Bones” McCoy, the crew also includ­ed lieu­tenants Sulu and Uhu­ra, ensign Chekov and of course, on the engi­neer­ing deck and respon­si­ble for all things engi­neer­ing (includ­ing beam­ing, shields, di-lithi­um crys­tals, and giv­ing her as much as he dare), was Mont­gomery “Scot­ty” Scott.

It spawned an immense­ly suc­cess­ful fran­chise, of course, with some­thing like eleven spin-off TV series and numer­ous fea­ture films, but it’s the orig­i­nal series that will always be the true Star Trek to me. Their week­ly mis­sions had me rapt from the moment Kirk kicked off each episode with an excerpt from his Captain’s Log, and below, for the sake of nos­tal­gia, are the open­ing and clos­ing cred­its of this icon­ic TV series.

Kirk and Spock
Literature

Thomas More’s Utopia (1516)

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Peo­ple are apt, these days, to con­sid­er mod­ern life rub­bish and that we’re liv­ing in a qua­si-dystopi­an soci­ety run by fools and cow­ards and spi­ralling towards dis­as­ter. Fair enough; it would be pollyan­nish of me to dis­abuse them of that notion, giv­en the real­i­ties of the world, but let me quick­ly pro­vide a crumb of com­fort by point­ing out that at least we’re still able to enjoy life’s lit­tle plea­sures like this blog. And we can at least dream of how it might have been, how we might have been led by philoso­pher-kings in a just and ide­al soci­ety enjoy­ing a gold­en age. A utopia, if you will…

I don’t know if there ever has been a real-life utopia, but it’s per­haps unlike­ly, giv­en that there have been so many imag­in­ings of one, dat­ing back to 370BC when Pla­to described the attrib­ut­es of a per­fect state in The Repub­lic (and from where we get the term and idea of the “philoso­pher-king”). I sup­pose bright sparks have been lec­tur­ing their com­rades on how things should be done for as long as humans have lived togeth­er, but the writ­ten form — utopi­an lit­er­a­ture — gets prop­er­ly kicked off with Sir Thomas More’s word-coin­ing book Utopia pub­lished in 1516.

Thomas More (1478–1535) was the not­ed Renais­sance human­ist who was at var­i­ous times lawyer, judge, states­man, philoso­pher, author, and Lord High Chan­cel­lor of Eng­land under Hen­ry VIII. Quite the achiev­er, and he is even a saint now, since being canon­ised in 1935 as a mar­tyr (hav­ing been exe­cut­ed as a result of fail­ing to acknowl­edge Hen­ry as supreme head of the Church of Eng­land).

“Utopia” is derived from the Greek pre­fix ou-, mean­ing “not”, and topos, “place” – so, “no place” or “nowhere”. Inter­est­ing­ly, More had ini­tial­ly toyed with nam­ing his fic­tion­al state by the Latin equiv­a­lent of “no place” — Nusqua­ma — so we might today have been talk­ing about Orwell’s 1984, for exam­ple, as a dys­nusquami­an nov­el!

In any event, More’s vision inspired many oth­ers to describe their own ver­sions of an ide­al utopi­an soci­ety, includ­ing Fran­cis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) (see what he did there?), H G Wells’ A Mod­ern Utopia (1905), and Aldous Huxley’s utopi­an coun­ter­part to his decid­ed­ly dystopi­an Brave New World, name­ly Island (1962). Well, we can keep imag­in­ing…

Sir Thomas More
Music

Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales Of Hoffman (1880)

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Ger­man author E T A Hoff­mann (1776–1822) was one of the major writ­ers of the Roman­tic move­ment and his sto­ries of fan­ta­sy and Goth­ic hor­ror high­ly influ­enced 19th-cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture. For exam­ple, Tchaikovsky’s bal­let The Nut­crack­er is based on Hoffman’s novel­la The Nut­crack­er and the Mouse King, while Delibes’ 1870 bal­let Cop­pélia is based on the short sto­ry, The Sand­man. Inci­den­tal­ly, this excerpt from the lat­ter sto­ry, describ­ing that folk­loric char­ac­ter the Sand­man, amply illus­trates that the term ‘Goth­ic hor­ror’ is no exag­ger­a­tion (in bygone ages we didn’t half spin some hor­rif­ic tales for our young, eh?):

“Most curi­ous to know more of this Sand­man and his par­tic­u­lar con­nec­tion with chil­dren, I at last asked the old woman who looked after my youngest sis­ter what sort of man he was. “Eh, Nat­ty,” said she, “don’t you know that yet? He is a wicked man, who comes to chil­dren when they won’t go to bed, and throws a hand­ful of sand into their eyes, so that they start out bleed­ing from their heads. He puts their eyes in a bag and car­ries them to the cres­cent moon to feed his own chil­dren, who sit in the nest up there. They have crooked beaks like owls so that they can pick up the eyes of naughty human chil­dren.”

The Sand­man (and two oth­er of Hoff­man’s tales, Coun­cil­lor Kre­spel and The Lost Reflec­tion) also inspired the sub­ject of today’s blog, the opéra fan­tas­tique by French com­pos­er Jacques Offen­bach, The Tales of Hoff­man. Offen­bach (1819–1880) was already a famous com­pos­er of around 100 operettas, such as Orpheus in the Under­world (1858) and La Belle Hélène (1864), when he col­lab­o­rat­ed with Jules Bar­bi­er to bring The Tales of Hoff­man to the stage. It proved to be his final work: know­ing he was dying, he wrote to impre­sario Léon Car­val­ho:

“Hâtez-vous de mon­ter mon opéra. Il ne me reste plus longtemps à vivre et mon seul désir est d’as­sis­ter à la pre­mière” (“Hur­ry up and stage my opera. I have not much time left, and my only wish is to attend the open­ing night”)

But it wasn’t to be: Offen­bach died in Octo­ber 1880, four months before the opera’s premiere…nevertheless, his work entered the stan­dard reper­to­ry and is a pop­u­lar piece to this day. Here, lis­ten to Anna Netre­bko and Elī­na Garanča sing the sopra­no and mez­zo-sopra­no duet, the Bar­carolle (Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour) from Act III. You either know it or you think you don’t know it…but you’ll know it!

Jacques Offen­bach
Music

Franz Gruber’s Silent Night (1818)

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It’s Christ­mas time and once again, like many of you, my fam­i­ly and I enjoyed a can­dlelit car­ol ser­vice at our local church. I do like this event each year; it marks the arrival of Christ­mas-prop­er and is the time when you can pause from the mer­ry-go-round that is Christ­mas-in-prac­tice and just enjoy the moment. Car­ols such as O Come All Ye Faith­ful and Hark, The Her­ald Angels Sing are ide­al for a packed church with a rous­ing organ (who doesn’t enjoy blast­ing out those barn­storm­ing Vic­to­ri­an lines such as “Lo, he abhors not the Virgin’s womb” and “Hail th’incarnate Deity”?). The car­ol that I want to write about today, on the oth­er hand, is bet­ter suit­ed to a far more reserved affair: Silent Night is made for hushed tones and a gen­tle accom­pa­ni­ment, and for me is the very epit­o­me of the reflec­tive ele­ment of the sea­son.

The sto­ry goes that the car­ol was first per­formed on the evening of Christ­mas Eve in 1818, in St Nicholas Church, Obern­dorf, in present-day Aus­tria. The young Catholic priest at the church, Joseph Mohr, found him­self in a bit of a pick­le when the church organ became inca­pac­i­tat­ed just before that evening’s Christ­mas Mass ser­vice (in the man­ner of boil­ers break­ing down at just this wrong time of year, I sup­pose). Think­ing on his feet, he remem­bered that he had writ­ten a nice poem a few years before called Stille Nacht, and won­dered if local school­mas­ter and organ­ist Franz Gru­ber might set its six stan­zas to music for gui­tar.

Gru­ber read­i­ly agreed to step into the breach and wrote a melody there and then — and that night, the two men sang Stille Nacht for the first time at the church’s Christ­mas Mass, with Mohr play­ing gui­tar and the choir repeat­ing the last two lines of each verse. Accord­ing to Gru­ber, the organ builder who ser­viced the instru­ment at the Obern­dorf church, was so enam­oured of the song that he took the com­po­si­tion home with him to the Ziller­tal val­ley in the Tyrol where he shared it with musi­cal friends. From there, two trav­el­ling fam­i­lies of folk singers, the Strassers and the Rain­ers, includ­ed the tune in their shows, and its pop­u­lar­i­ty spread all over Europe.

Rain­er fam­i­ly

It’s a very mov­ing and hum­bling song; as a tes­ta­ment to its glob­al pop­u­lar­i­ty, it was sung by troops dur­ing the famous Christ­mas truce of World War I, per­haps because it was the one tune that was famil­iar to all of them. How poignant the words must have seemed at that par­tic­u­lar moment!

Ger­man lyricsEng­lish lyrics
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles schläft; ein­sam wacht
Nur das traute hochheilige Paar.
Hold­er Knabe im lock­i­gen Haar,
Schlaf in himm­lis­ch­er Ruh!
Schlaf in himm­lis­ch­er Ruh!Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Hirten erst kundgemacht
Durch der Engel Hal­lelu­ja,
Tönt es laut von fern und nah:
Christ, der Ret­ter ist da!
Christ, der Ret­ter ist da!Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Gottes Sohn, o wie lacht
Lieb’ aus deinem göt­tlichen Mund,
Da uns schlägt die ret­tende Stund’.
Christ, in dein­er Geburt!
Christ, in dein­er Geburt!		Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon vir­gin moth­er and child!
Holy infant, so ten­der and mild,
Sleep in heav­en­ly peace!
Sleep in heav­en­ly peace!Silent night! Holy night!
Shep­herds quake at the sight!
Glo­ries stream from heav­en afar,
Heav­en­ly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ the Sav­iour is born!
Christ the Sav­iour is born!Silent night! Holy night!
Son of God, love’s pure light
Radi­ant beams from thy holy face
With the dawn of redeem­ing grace,
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth!
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth!

Here is a ren­di­tion by the Span­ish sopra­nos Montser­rat Cabal­lé and her daugh­ter Montser­rat Martí. Mer­ry Christ­mas!

Franz Gru­ber
Music

Dire Straits’ Sultans Of Swing (1978)

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As well as writ­ing about art and cul­ture, your blog­ger has also been known to wield a mean gui­tar (by “mean”, I mean “aver­age”) and, although fame failed to beck­on after the van­i­ty-fund­ed release of the damn fine album Sara­ban­da by The Mavis Trains in 1999, I still know my approx­i­mate way around a fret­board and con­tin­ue to play from time to time in the com­fort of my home. Recent­ly, for a bit of fun, I videoed myself per­form­ing an acoustic ver­sion of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, to mild­ly amuse some select­ed friends. As a result, I was chal­lenged by the son of one of those friends to have a go at that Dire Straits’ clas­sic, Sul­tans Of Swing.

I sus­pect, giv­en Mark Knopfler’s obvi­ous tech­ni­cal prowess, that the chal­lenge was deliv­ered with some­thing of an inter­nal chuck­le and the thought “good luck with that!”. And so, the ensu­ing weeks have seen me watch­ing online tuto­ri­als, scru­ti­n­is­ing line after line of tab­la­ture, and furi­ous­ly prac­tic­ing with a view to bam­boo­zling my imag­ined detrac­tors’ assump­tion of fail­ure. Curse them, and curse Mark Knopfler’s super-fast dex­ter­i­ty and total com­mand of his instru­ment!

In all seri­ous­ness though, Hugo (for it was he), Sul­tans Of Swing is a great shout; it’s a tremen­dous song. It was inspired appar­ent­ly by a real-life encounter with a jazz band in an almost emp­ty pub in Dept­ford on a rainy night in 1977. Amused by the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the band’s non­de­script and shab­by appear­ance (I’m imag­in­ing Chas and Dave types) with their grandiose name (“we are the Sul­tans of Swing!”), Knopfler began to pen what would become his band’s debut sin­gle in the fol­low­ing year.

Knopfler wrote the song on a Nation­al Steel gui­tar (a spe­cial kind of res­onator gui­tar used by the Blues­men of old before the days of elec­tron­ic ampli­fi­ca­tion) but it wasn’t until he played it on a Stra­to­cast­er that the song took on the vibran­cy with which we asso­ciate with it today: “It just came alive as soon as I played it on that ’61 Strat … the new chord changes just pre­sent­ed them­selves and fell into place”.  It cer­tain­ly came alive: let’s hear it again in all its glo­ry, below.

Dire Straits
Art

Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding Feast At Cana (1563)

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Great art comes in many shapes and sizes, from por­trait minia­tures right up to mon­u­men­tal can­vas­es depict­ing epic scenes with casts of thou­sands. Today we’re going to look at an exam­ple of the lat­ter, one which hangs in the Lou­vre and deserves to have the same-sized crowd of admir­ers that per­pet­u­al­ly gath­er around the Mona Lisa there (and per­haps it does usu­al­ly, but I do have a mem­o­ry of being able to admire it unmo­lest­ed by oth­er peo­ple and able to take in its con­sid­er­able fea­tures). It’s Pao­lo Veronese’s The Wed­ding Feast at Cana (Nozze di Cana, 1562–1563), depict­ing the bib­li­cal sto­ry of the Wed­ding at Cana, in which Jesus mirac­u­lous­ly con­verts water into wine, thus jus­ti­fy­ing his invi­ta­tion sev­er­al times over.

It’s a whop­ping 6.77 m × 9.94 m and indeed as such it’s the largest paint­ing in the Lou­vre. Veronese exe­cut­ed his paint­ing slap-bang in the mid­dle of the peri­od in art known as the Man­ner­ist age (c.1520‑c.1600), in which there was a ten­den­cy of artists to take the ideals of the High Renais­sance (1490–1527) — pro­por­tion, bal­ance, ide­al beau­ty – and exag­ger­ate them such that arrange­ments of human fig­ures have an unnat­ur­al rather than a real­is­tic feel to them. It’s as if artists felt that every­thing that could be achieved had already been achieved by the likes of Da Vin­ci, Raphael and Michelan­ge­lo, and they need­ed a dif­fer­ent approach.

The can­vas was orig­i­nal­ly hung in the San Geor­gio Monastery in Venice, until Napoleon’s sol­diers nicked it as war booty in 1797. It depicts a crowd­ed ban­quet scene in the sump­tu­ous style char­ac­ter­is­tic of 16th cen­tu­ry Venet­ian soci­ety but framed in the Gre­co-Roman archi­tec­tur­al style of clas­si­cal antiq­ui­ty. There are 130 human fig­ures dressed fash­ion­ably in Occi­den­tal and Ori­en­tal cos­tume alla Tur­ca, and there are indi­ca­tions that we are post-feast, with guests sat­ed and await­ing the wine ser­vice.

In the fore­ground are musi­cians play­ing stringed instru­ments of the late Renais­sance, with leg­end hav­ing it that the musi­cian in the white tunic is a depic­tion of Veronese him­self and the oth­er musi­cians mod­elled on fel­low artists Jacopo Bas­sano, Tin­toret­to and Tit­ian. Behind the musi­cians are seat­ed Jesus of Nazareth, the Vir­gin Mary, and sev­er­al apos­tles. Amongst the wed­ding guests are depict­ed many his­tor­i­cal per­son­ages from Veronese’s day, such as Mary I of Eng­land, Holy Roman Emper­or Charles V, and Suleiman the Mag­nif­i­cent. There are so many quirky ele­ments to dis­cov­er– a lit­tle dog on the table here, a lady pick­ing her teeth there, a dwarf hold­ing a bright green par­rot – that to do so could take up some con­sid­er­able time.

Here are some details (click on them to enlarge), with the whole mas­ter­piece in its entire­ty below.

 

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