Photoblog: Architecture of the City of London, or, What I've seen on my ramblings...

Hello Reader,

I have been VERY BUSY the last few weeks, so I must apologise for the lack of post.
However, this means I have seen lots of interesting things, it just means that sadly I haven't had the time to write about them. I very much enjoyed the Manet exhibition at the Royal Academy, so much so that I bought the catalogue. Lots of gorgeous portraits that I would otherwise have never seen. I was hoping to write a post about it, but I fear I won't have the time. However I do have time to share with you some shots I've been taking of various things I've seen in the past few weeks.

As you may know, I've recently started a traineeship in the City of London, and it is a WONDERFUL place to work if you like architecture. There are quirky bits of it EVERYWHERE. From 12th Century churches, to the more famous works of Wren and Hawksmoor, not forgetting the shiny new towers springing up everywhere and even including nice little details on shops and banks. I am often distracted by buildings, and am surprised I haven't walked into many people from looking up all the time. I am very lucky to have a quite decent camera on my phone, so, if I can, I try and capture as many of these details as I can. What I really like about the city is the juxtaposition of the old and the new. Within tiny tiny spaces, one can see something that was built within the last ten years towering above something that, in its day (so probably hundreds of yeasr ago) may have been the tallest building for miles! It's exciting, and if you can't see it for yourself, then allow me...

 CHURCHES

Temple Church

Temple Church

St Stephen Walbrook

St Stephen Walbrook [by Christopher Wren]

St Anne and St Agnes

  

ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS

The Entrance to Drapers' Hall

VIEWS

You can just about see the Tower of London in the distance...

TALL TOWERS

 

and thus brings us to the end of my tour... tune in again for [no doubt] more photos of bits of Architecture that i've spotted on my travels!

Thanks for reading

Jennifer

Jen's beginners guide to architecture. Part I: The orders, or HOW I LOVE COLUMNS

Hello reader,

On the suggestion of one of my most avid readers, my good friend food-blogger Highball Emy, i have decided to do my very own beginners guide to architecture. I have to thank Emy for the idea, as she knows how prone I am to get carried away by exciting buildings. She was one of the people who had to put up with me going ON about columns as i learnt about them at uni and then got very excitable as i was then able to explain away the craziness and eccentricity of the architecture of the Cambridge colleges we walked past on our way to dinner.

Clare College, Cambridge

Clare College, Cambridge

So, in my own way, I will try and guide you through one of my favourite things so that in future you might understand one of my gushing rants about a new [or more likely, really old] building I've just discovered. 

  
PART I:  COLUMNS

Before I start, I just thought I would give you a wee diagram so that you know what I'm talking about when I say things like CAPITAL or FLUTING. First thing I learned when I started studying architecture is that there are SO MANY really WEIRD names for bits of architecture, and they are REALLY hard to remember. So I won't bore you with things like this:

What even IS a modilion? 

I'll just tell you the main bits you need to know, and any other extras that I think might be interesting. 

So, columns. They come in all shapes and sizes, but adhere to 3 main types. These types are called orders and the main ones are the DORIC, IONIC and CORINTHIAN. 

You may be thinking - Why on earth do they have these ridiculous names, and how on earth will I remember which one is which? Well this is where my favourite Roman comes into play. 

Vitruvius was a Roman architect and engineer during the time of Augustus. He's SUPER IMPORTANT because he wrote, not one, but Ten Books on Architecture- De Architectura. These ten books, in addition to being the earliest surviving treatise on architecture, tell us a great deal about Classical architecture, written during the time it was being built- in other words, REALLY REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT TO ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY!!! 

But why do we need to know about him? Well, in his 3rd and 4th books he describes the orders and how they were "invented". I use the term invented loosely here, Vitruvius spins some fairly elaborate tales in order to give us a reason for these columns being the way they are. They are probably complete canis excrementum*, excuse my Latin, but they do help you to distinguish the three types, and they do make some sense. Let me show you what I mean: 

The Doric Order

According to Vitruvius, this order was named after a temple built by Dorus, the King of the Peloponnesus, which "happened" to be in the Doric order. Subsequently all temples in the surrounding area [Achaea] had temples built in that same style, and so when the Athenians rocked up [read: invaded] and saw these temples, they in turn began to set up temples in the same style, calling them "Doric" as they had first seen them built by the Dorians. 

Ok. Cool. So far, so Doric. But why does it LOOK the way it does? I'll continue...
The Athenians [being Greek] wanted to create their temple in a more symmetrical and "ordered" fashion, so they set out to give the column a set of standardized proportions. Vitruvius says that they measured the length of a man's foot [1ft] and compared it with his height [6ft] and therefore gave the column a width to height ratio of 1:6 i.e the height of the column must be 6 times the length of the width of the base.  
At a ratio of 1:6 the Doric is the stoutest order, hence Vitruvius' tale of it being based upon the proportions of a man. This is also in fitting with its capital [see diagram!]. Of the 3 main orders, the Doric has the plainest capital, because it is a masculine order. It can often be found in military buildings, mints and strongholds, or on the bottom storey of a building, as being the stoutest, it is also the "strongest". 

The Ionic Order

Vitruvius' description of the Ionic is far less complicated [and less dull- you thought what I wrote was bad, I heavily condensed the real deal, just for you!]. He claims that Athenians [the guys that just created the Doric order] wanted to build a temple to the Goddess Diana, but they thought that the Doric order, because it was based on the proportions of a MAN, would be too manly and therefore unsuitable. UH-OH, dilemna!  
They solved this problem by creating a new order based on the proportions of a woman. They measured the foot and height of a woman and TA-DAH the proportion of the Ionic order was formed. Vitruvius explains the extra adornments of the Ionic order as dressing it like a woman, with a base in the place of her shoes, the volutes [the "scroll" like elements in the capital] like curls of hair, and the flutes [see diagram!] like folds in her robes. This one is usually really easy to spot because of the big volutes on the capital, and is frequently used in interiors, and in "intellectual" type buildings such as libraries and museums e.g. The British Museum

The Corinthian Order
The Corinthian column has the most slender proportions of the three, in "imitation of the slenderness of a maiden". Vitruvius tells a tragic story to explain the appearance of the capital. A young girl from Corinth, [of marriageable age i.e. a VIRGIN] became ill and died before she could be married. After she was buried her nurse collected up her things and put them in a basket on top of her tomb. This basket just HAPPENED to be placed on the root of an acanthus plant, and so when spring came the stalks and leaves grew up over the basket. At this time an architect just HAPPENED to be passing by [a lot of coincidences here, EY VIRTRUVIUS?] and was pleasantly surprised by it, having never seen anything like it before, and so felt he OBVIOUSLY had to design a column after it for the Corinthians- thus inventing the Corinthian order with appropriate proportions to suit a virginal maid i.e. tall and slender. The Corinthian has the most ornamental capital of the three, which fits in with Vitruvius' identification of it with a pretty, delicate young girl. 

Ok. Now I've told you about the 3 order its time for a fun game of GUESS THE ORDER [I do this to EVERYONE who I've ever tried to teach the different orders to. My mum is an expert now and she gets really excited when she gets them right. Its quite cute].

1. I LOVE this building. It even has statues of Inigo Jones and Palladio either side.
WHOOPS that was a bit of a clue.

2.  Some of you will know this building VERY well. But WHAT ORDER IS IT?

3. This "monument" is unfinished and pays homage to an original in another country...

4. Played a starring role in the recent adaptation of Les Mis and ALSO in the 2012 Olympics!

5. Not to be confused with the Parthenon!

Extra points of you guess the NAME of the building. I said GUESS, not Google. Let's not spoil the fun! A hint is that all of the buildings are in the UK except ONE, and they are all places I have visited [all photos are my own!].

Answers in my next post!

Hope you've enjoyed this guide, and I hope it hasn't been too boring or heavy. Do let me know so I can make Part 2 even better!

Thanks for reading

Jennifer




P.S Disclaimer: I am aware that some of the things I've said in this post aren't completely precise. I hope no one will be offended by my somewhat crude generalisations. I didn't want to make it too boring for you to read, after-all, this is a blog and not an essay, and is no place for pedantry!

World book day!

Hey Readers!

Who says world book day is just for children? NOT ME!
I've been at work in the library ALL DAY and not read a single book today! That is so so sad 
:(

But as it's world book day, and I do LOVE books. Today people have been talking on twitter about their favourite books. I can never do that. I find it impossible to list my "all time favourite" things. My favourite things change all the time, depending on what mood I'm in. Also I find it really difficult to rate things in order, especially when some things are so different- how do you compare books of completely different genres or writing styles? And how can you measure your level of enjoyment? Impossible and not worth worrying about. 

So instead I thought I would share with you 3 books I can read again and again. I don't frequently read books twice. I rarely buy books as I work in a library and am saving up money at the moment, and I also try to read as many books as possible, as there are SO MANY books I want to read and so little time. So it seems illogical to read a book I've already read when I could be reading another one. HOWEVER, there are some books which are SO GOOD, which I enjoy so much, and which never seem to get boring, that I can read them over and over again. Here they are:

1. Bridget Jones Diary by Helen Fielding
Oh. My. GOODNESS I LOVE THIS BOOK. This book, for me, is the equivalent of a mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows on top- fun, comforting, like a big hug EXACTLY when you need it. Jones is HUMAN and HILARIOUS and has the ability to always make me feel better at times in life when I feel like I have majorly messed up or embarrassed myself.  If you haven't read it yet, seriously, do yourself a favour and READ IT. I don't even know why you haven't already.

2. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Someone at school recommended this to me whilst we were studying Atwood's better-known, The Handmaid's Tale as part of our English Literature A-Level. I borrowed it from the library the next day, and in two days I had finished it. Now it usually takes me a few weeks to finish a book, one week if I REALLY like it and have a lot of train journeys that week [I mostly read on public transport]. But I've never read anything that quickly. This book is compelling. It is structured in such a way that it flits between two narratives- the "present" which appears to be in a post-apocalyptic wasteland version of earth, and "past" which gradually unravels the series of events which lead up to the disaster which caused earth to transform into the world the protagonist inhabits in the present. Like The Handmaid's Tale it is a dystopian novel, a genre which I quite enjoy, like science-fiction but seemingly more grounded in reality- as if it had the potential to happen- you can see clear parallels in the world we live in. It's scary, but it makes you think, and I think a good book should do just that.

3. Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
Ok. I have to confess. I have only read this once. BUT, it was so so good, that I know it is one I will revisit! Ian McEwan is one of my favourite authors and I have read almost all of his books that are available to borrow from the Library consortium. With Sweet Tooth, I really enjoyed his creation of the sense of time and place. I haven't read many books [possibly any!] set in London during the Cold War, and I think McEwan captured the greyness and sense of thick tension perfectly in this. What I really love about reading a McEwan novel is that you really get to inhabit the head-space of the protagonist and this intimacy means you gain a very in-depth view of their interactions and relationships with other characters, something I find fascinating. However, what REALLY struck me with Sweet Tooth was the utter PERFECTION of the ending. That may sound like an exaggeration, but I can tell you, I am rarely fully satisfied with the ending of a novel. Many are lazy, many are rushed, many leave me with several unanswered questions, leaving me frustrated or wanting more. But the ending to this novel is AMAZING and definitely the best, or at least most satisfying I've read so far. If you haven't read it yet, I urge you to give it a go. It's worth it for the ending alone.

And with that I shall end this World Book Day edition of A Life in Arts!

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer

Baroque! From Bernini to Bow Bells.

Hello Reader!

After a short absence I am back! I am afraid it has been a while since my last post, I have recently started a new traineeship with the very exciting City of London Festival and have been very busy of late, so have sadly had little time to tend to my blogging needs. However I am very happy in my new post. I have spent the last few weeks learning lots of things about how the festival is organised and part of that has included visiting lots of STUNNING churches in the City of London, which are used as venues for many of the classical concerts in the festival's programme. 

This has been complete heaven for me.

 Two of my most favourite things ever ever are live classical music [see blog post 2!] and ARCHITECTURE, and so to be able to spend mornings, or afternoons walking around the square mile, round corners and down tiny passageways and roads of the main thoroughfares to suddenly be confronted by great spires, peeking between two office blocks, or eatery chains, is just wonderful. In so many cases, if you didn't know the church was there, you would miss it, as a considerable amount are hidden from the outside, but from the inside are stunning. One that really had a strong impact on me was St Mary at Hill [another aspect I love about these churches is their crazy names- St Andrew by the Wardrobe is my favourite mad name so far!]. I am not going to try and explain why, I think I will just show you, and give you the location so you can googlemap this baby and check it out for yourself!

Another thing I am really enjoying about being a part of the festival is that, by helping out at our Free Winter Concerts, I get to watch them! I feel so lucky to get to spend one lunch-break every week listening to live music, from a wide variety of composers and genres. So far I have heard a Beethoven Piano recital, Jazz singers and the City of London Sinfonia performing works by British composers including Walton, Purcell and Finzi. I KNOW I've already banged on about how much I love live music, but seriously these concerts are GREAT. They are free, in architectural gems, and the music is really wonderful.
For a different way to spend your lunch break and to see what's coming up soon,  click HERE to see the rest of the free winter concert programme. It's a really good taster of what's to come in the summer and it is making me SUPER excited for the Festival to start!

Now enough about what I've been up to job-wise.

As I've been a bit behind with writing posts, and there is quite a lot I have wanted to write about, I thought I would try something different in this weeks post. As I don't have time to write a full blog post for each item (especially judging by how many words I usually end up dedicating to one topic... whoops!) I am going to try out brief summaries, or, "What I'm up to", and perhaps pick one to focus in on a little bit more. Let me know what you think. If we like it, maybe it'll stick.

What I'm Listening to: Finzi: In Years Defaced, Prelude, and Romance for String Orchestra. [Recording by the City of London Sinfonia under Richard Hickox on the Chandos label]. The Prelude was one of the pieces performed in the lunchtime concert last Wednesday by the City of London Sinfonia, and it reminded me of how much I love Finzi. Finzi's Five Bagatelles [in particular the 4th and 5th] were some of the very few pieces I actually enjoyed playing for my final Clarinet exams as I felt they had character and were playful and jolly, not merely exercises for showing off fingerwork or virtuosic scalic passages *cough cough* yes, I'm looking at you Mozart Clarinet Concerto. In short, they were fun, not just hard-work  This CD shows Finzi's more romantic side and, although it is quite gushy, I think is charming, and for me conjures up images of pastoral idyllicism. A very English composer indeed. 

What I'm reading: I started reading The Borgias by Christopher Hibbert, but I'm afraid I can't say I enjoyed it very much, so I stopped reading it. I don't tend to get on very well with history books, or historic fiction that feels a bit like  it's just one thing after the other in a sort of "this-man-did-this-and-then-this-man-did-this-and-this-man-didn't-like-this-man-so-he-did-this". Notice the focus on man. History is often far too male dominated for my liking, and this book was very much from the male perspective. Now I'm getting back into music, I have started reading Why Music Moves Us by Jeanette Bicknell. It's an academic study, looking into how past civilisations and philosophers have treated the link between music and the emotions, and how it effects our behaviour and why. Should be interesting, I hope!


What I'm Watching: Baroque! From St Peter to St Paul's. I LOVE Waldemar Januszczak. I think his programmes are BRILLIANT and this is no exception! It charts the rise of the Baroque from its origins in the Catholic Counter Reformation (taking me back to the paper I studied in final year on Bernini and Borromini) and of course ROME, throughout Europe, to Britain, where he sees it manifest in none other than the fabulous City churches of Wren and Hawksmoor that I was gushing about at the beginning of this post. How apt! It is still sitting on I-player, but not for much longer so I URGE you to watch it. And if I haven't convinced you yet, here are some snaps of FABULOUS Baroque things that I took when I went to Rome myself...

The ceiling of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane by Francesco Borromini

The Ecstasy of St Theresa by Bernini in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria 

The ceiling of Sant'Ignazio by Andrea Pozzo

What I'm visiting: In the last few weeks I've been lucky enough to see both the Light Show at the Hayward and Barocci at the National Gallery. I hope to write separate posts dedicated to each of these, but we'll see.

What have you been up to?

Hope you've enjoyed this post. Let me know what you think!

Thanks for reading again,

Jennifer

Amongst Heroes or; Painters of Cornish Life [not Manet]

Hello Reader,

Last weekend I swam against the tide and went, not to the exhibition that everyone is talking about  [Manet, ofc!] but to somewhere I had never been before to see paintings I had never seen before. I went to 2 Temple Place, London, to see Amongst Heroes: The Artist Working in Cornwall.

What a pleasant surprise I had! The art I saw, and the striking building it was exhibited within, were so beautiful and interesting to look at, I felt compelled to spread the word about them. Despite being a stones throw away from the Courtauld Gallery, and therefore also quite close to the National Gallery, I had never before heard of, or visited, 2 Temple Place before this weekend and I feel like I've been missing out on a hidden gem. So I am writing this to encourage you to take a visit so you don't miss out either!

Although I was not milling amongst the Manets this weekend, I still witnessed The Painting of Modern Life [apologies for the poor T.J Clark related pun], but instead of the environs of Paris, I was transported to the seas and ports of Cornwall and the other coastal towns that the artists of Cornwall portrayed. The first painting, Pocking Fish, St Ives Harbour by Gwendoline Margaret Hopton [which can be seen here thanks to the BBC Your Paintings projects], surprised me in its similarities to the paintings of Manet. Like Manet, Hopton paints the people of St Ives going about their daily business. The subject matter is not grand, it is merely life, the people are not posed in artificial, forced postures, or assuming personalities outside of their own existence. This work is an observation, a study in harbour life. The soft, dappled brushwork also reminded me of Manet's treatment of foliage and water in his paintings, except here, the colour palette is muted to suit the earthy, dank tones of the working harbour. For me, the highlight, and lasting impression of this painting is the figure in the red jumper just off-centre. As well as enhancing and bringing out the other brown tones in the painting, this jumper draws your eyes away from the almost pastel, blocky row of houses in the backround, to the real subject of the painting, the fish. Furthermore, this tiny blot of red lifts what could otherwise turn into a solemn, grey image of workers into an image of life.

On an adjacent wall is a painting that contrasts in several ways to its precursor, and was one of my favourite in the exhibition. Line Fishing Season by Charles Walter Simpson (1918) [click here to see, thanks to Your Paintings] is lively, noisy, animated and very bright, thanks to its liberal application of thick, impasto white paint, in stark contrast to Manet's notable use of black. The previous painting seems almost docile in comparison to this scene of flurrying seagulls, whose wings in various stages of flying, landing and eating allow for a variety of different planes of diagonal grey, blue and white tones to intersect the horizontality of the landscape of sand and coastal buildings and consequently create a very busy image, full of movement. The lack of real focal point means that our eye is never allowed to rest in one place, darting around the canvas and adding to the sense of commotion. In this painting, by Simpson [1885-1971] who was a bird painter, I really enjoyed how the blue-grey colour of the gulls wings contrasted with the pink, fleshy tones of the rays washed up onto the shore, and how their rendering in thick impasto paint really enhances both the boldness of the white paint and the depiction of flesh and feather. Above all, I enjoyed how these contrasts create noise and energy, two words that one would not think to associate with still, two-dimensional painting.

On another wall were some beautiful little studies of fisher-woman in watercolour, no bigger than a postcard. One, by Maria Tuke Sainsbury, was very dark, showing one figure in a domestic setting, with the figure portrayed very close in the foreground. This intimacy of setting and composition reminded me of dutch genre paintings. At this point in the exhibition I had viewed only 4 paintings, and yet already I had seen such a wide variety of subject matter, size, style, medium and composition. I was impressed and awed at a very early stage!

The next painting which really amazed and impressed me was Franz Muller-Gossen's Lowestoft Fishing Boat at Sundown. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find an image of it, but hopefully my explanation will be enough to convince you of its beauty and the power of the artists skill. Although, in an exhibition of paintings I obviously knew it wasn't, from a distance I was almost convinced that this image was a photograph. As I edged closer, light began to reflect off the shiny oily surface, giving away its true medium and unveiling more of its beauty to me. I could stare at this painting for hours. It is not a big painting, less than a metre wide and not much taller than a foot high, but its impact stretches far beyond the size of the canvas. There is a very wide range of colours and contrasting tones used in this image. The colours of the sea are very vivid and saturated; greens and turquoises, with blues so dark they appear almost black, the crests of waves picked out by small touches of white. Although the waves don't appear to be rough, the colours alone give the sea a stormy and tumultuous mood, that is diffused only slightly by the delicate foam surrounding the edges of the boat. Interestingly, the mood and palette of the sky is somewhat calmer, with soft greys infused with light blues, peaches and burnt umber tones giving an atmosphere of warmth and serenity. What I felt was really powerful about this image was the way the boat, as well as being the main subject of the piece, is used as a clever compositional device to bring two highly contrasting areas, the sea and the sky, together in a single visual unit. By leaning the boat to one side, the sail creates a diagonal which, as well as slicing through both the sea and the sky, unites them and creates a very strong balance that is satisfying to the eye and to the mind.

Home on the Morning Tide by Reginald Aspinwall (c.1886) [click here to see, thanks to Your Paintings] is one of the smallest, if not the smallest painting in the whole exhibition. It was also one of my favourites. This painting employs a palette of very pale blues and greys and uses different painting techniques, such as using the end of the brush to scratch paint of the surface to create the texture of gentle ripples on the surface of the water. This painting oozes calm, not only through the gentle colours and textures, but more forcefully (if calm can be forced upon you?) through the strong, undisrupted horizontality of the piece, which directly contrasts the dramatic composition of the piece I just discussed. This tiny canvas shows four sails dotted along the horizon against a touch a dappled cloud. It is like a procession, in the way that the four boats follow each other, in a straight line in an almost regimented fashion. It is dignified without being flashy, and sparse without appearing bleak. It is still, despite the fact it portrays moving vehicles, and quiet, despite the fact that paintings do not make noise anyway. It is a simple and beautiful observation and a joy to spend time with. 

Finally, The Setting Sun by Adrian Stokes (1909)  [click here to see, thanks to Your Paintings]. Essentially it is two cows watching a sunset. It's the kind of painting that gives you the sort of feeling of sighing into a sofa with a comforting cup of tea. It's warm, quite literally from the blazing orange of the setting sun which illumiantes the whole painting, and the subject matter, the two cows, is "heart-warming". It feels nostalgic and some may say it is a little sentimental. But it makes me feel happy to look at it in a "great-big-hug-in-a-canvas" kind of way and I don't think that is a bad thing. 
Art can be enjoyed on so many levels. Everyone communicates and engages with art in their own very personal way, and that is what interests me so much about it. The fact that one work of art can solicit such a diverse range of responses and levels of engagement is an amazing thing and clearly demonstrates how images are such powerful tools of communication.

Before I end this post, I just want to say thank you to Your Paintings, without which I wouldn't have been able to provide you with images to accompany my text. Your Paintings is a new fantastic online tool, by which you can view paintings in National collections across the UK. However, even thought I have provided the links in my blog for some of the images, I do hope that, if you can, you go and see the exhibition as it is free to get in and, as I heard someone say whilst looking at one of the paintings on display, there really is no comparison with seeing a painting in the flesh to an image in a book or on a computer screen. Size, light, the impression of the colours upon the eye, and, something that I really enjoy in paintings, the texture of the paint upon the surface are things which the enjoyment of is heightened so much so by experiencing in person. Plus, as I have already said, the surroundings are FABULOUS! You would be crazy to miss it.

I realise I've only really talked in detail about a selection of pictures at the exhibition. I decided halfway through writing that I had so much to say regarding both the paintings and the building that I'd split the post into two. So that's all for now, folks. But I hope to be back soon to gush about the, frankly, BEAUTIFUL architecture and design of 2 Temple Place, as I feel that is half the attraction of the place. 

If I have convinced you to take a visit, and I hope I have, for more details on opening times and location etc., their website can be found here.

Thanks for reading, again

Jennifer


p.s. I piece of music I feel would really go well with this exhibition is Vaughan Williams 1st Symphony: A Sea Symphony. The recording I have is performed by the LSO and Chorus under Andre Previn. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Love of an Orchestra; or, Just how much I adore live music

Dear Reader,

I am still reading Jane Eyre, and I love it, but it means I will be referring to you all as "reader" for the foreseeable future. As for the title of the post, for those of you who have missed the pop culture reference this week, it is from the second album of one of my favourite bands, Noah and the Whale, who are set to be releasing a 4th album soon. YAY!

Today's blog post is brought to you from Emmanuel College, Cambridge. It is an unexpected and impromptu [and therefore hopefully, but unlikely knowing me, short] post, following last nights Sunday Recital of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, Op. 132 (1825) by the frankly wonderful Smith Quartet in the Old Library.

The Clock Tower in Emmanuel front court last night

I love Beethoven.
I was trying to work out when I first discovered Beethoven and, thinking about it, Beethoven has been in my life for has long as music has. I first started learning music at the age of 5, with class recorder lessons in school, and my dad teaching me to play piano at home. I have very fond memories of both of these musical experiences, but it was in those recorder lessons I first experienced Beethoven. Yes, it was in a very crude arrangement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, which was not designed for recorder ensemble, and is probably not the optimum way to experience it, but what I do remember is that I thoroughly enjoyed playing it. It's melody is rousing and joyful [hence, "Ode to Joy"!] and perfect for encouraging young children to play an instrument. Evidently it worked, as I went on to play the clarinet, and "End of the Century" was my favourite track on Playstation 1's Dancing Stage EuroMix Dance-Mat game. Yes, that too originates from Beethoven's 9th! 

At secondary school I studied music at GCSE, AS and A-level, and Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto in C Minor featured as one of my set works at AS level. As with a handful of my literature set texts, and the set jazz works that I studied for AS level music, the intense and repeated nit-picking of these works often lead me to tire of, detest, or just become plain bored with them. Not so with the Beethoven. This piano concerto was his first in a minor key and it is, forgive me father for I have sinned in using a dreadful cliché, an emotional roller-coaster  At times as brooding as Mr Darcy in a thunderstorm [Happy 200th Anniversary btw], and in other parts delicate as drops of light rain onto petals, the diversity of dynamics, texture and emotional impact are something I still, after many many plays, find very fulfilling and satisfying to listen to. This was something I was reminded of by the performance last night and something I wanted to attempt to explain as I have a tendency to say how much I love Beethoven, but never to justify that claim, and I hope by doing so to encourage those who may not otherwise choose to listen to his works, to just give it a try!

This is not going to be a review of the performance. Sadly I don't go to enough live performances to be able to write such a piece, nor to I consider myself a connoisseur on such matters. Plus, I play a wind instrument, so know very little of the idiosyncrasies of the string family, but it's something I would like to learn more about. No, what I want to write is about how this performance reminded me of just how much I love live music, and why. 

Live music puts the "live" into "alive".
This is a very lame way of summing up something I find very difficult to describe without reverting to cliché. But I'll try. Sometimes music can be dark, as in Shostakovich's String Quartet No.8 in C minor. Sometimes music can be incredibly melancholy and can move you to tears, as in Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, or songs on the death of children. Sometimes music can even be so gut-wrenchingly beautiful that you feel close to the experience of heart-break just listening to it, as I often feel with Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto. But, however dark, depressing or heart-breaking music can be, the fact that it makes you feel, the fact that it has the potential to rouse you out of passive listening, into active feeling and participating is something very powerful indeed. It reminds you not only of the human potential to feel such a wide range of emotions, but beyond that, the skill of composers to communicate their own emotions through the language of musical notation, and beyond even that, the skill of musicians to interpret that with their own personal nuances, so that every time it is performed the listener is treated to something new and individual, through those idiosyncrasies and personal touches that performance permits.

Back to Beethoven.

In last night's performance of  Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15 I heard expressed musically, a very diverse range of emotions, some providing themes for whole movements, others mere fleeting moments, but that made an equally lasting impression upon me. Now, having never heard this piece before, and being without notepad at the time of listening, I am unable to say which movements these excerpts refer to. But I hope you will understand me nevertheless. 

In a quartet in which much of it seemed to be in counterpoint, a section which stood out for me due to its striking contrast in texture was a lovely segment in homophony. This means that all 4 instruments played the same rhythm, moving from one note to the next at the same rate, but in harmony, creating chords. This section was a little slower than previous sections and felt very smooth and warm, with some very pleasing harmonies and chord progressions. It came as a sort of relaxing "sigh" amidst the counterpoint, which in its nature has lots of different and contrasting harmonies going on at the same time and can be fast paced and complicated to listen to at times.
Beethoven is very good at creating rousing melodies, and this is something that was also apparent in the string quartet, especially in the short tutti sections, where all 4 parts play exactly the same. These parts were often marcato (meaning stressed, so like a less "short and detached" version of staccato) and loud! I find sections like this to be uplifting, but not cheesy, in the way that Jupiter from the Planets (by Gustav Holst) has the potential to be.
In addition to these moments musicaux there were episodes of sprightly, spring-time joy, with the highest melodic snatches almost emulating the trills of birdsong, so bright I couldn't help but break into a wide grin. But there were also moments of frantic agitation, where all players gathered pace in a frenzied headstrong dash towards the climax of not only the movement, but the entire quartet, towards the end of the final movement.


People experience music in different ways. I have a friend who sees different keys, in music, as different colours. I don't hear music, I listen to it. Perhaps I even feel music because, as opposed to experiencing it as a range of tones or sounds, I translate passages as being different emotions. To be given the opportunity to savour such a wide range of emotions, through their translation into a variety of combinations of contrasting rhythms, textures, harmonies, tempos, dynamics and more, in less than an hour is something that can be overwhelming, but is an experience which I am so glad to have because it makes me happy in a way which I don't think I could ever fully explain. And in listening to a performance live, that experience is heightened, by the atmosphere of the room, the fact you can almost feel the vibrations of sound in the air, the acoustics, and the way that you can see the musicians interact with each other to keep time and maintain the connection that is fundamental to the expressing of the work of someone who died almost 200 years ago, but whose emotions can be understood by us years later thanks to the language which, to me, is just as important as the spoken word- music. 


I miss studying music, and I must apologise because, as you can probably tell, I haven't written about music for a long time and this piece was not at all researched, I just wrote what I thought, and therefore there are probably a bucketful of embarrassing errors. But please do tell me of them, because I like to learn from my mistakes! I'd like to get back into the swing of writing about music, because I listen to music everyday and its something I really enjoy. 

I am currently really enjoying Tchaikovsky's ballet music and also Justin Timberlake's new single, Suit and Tie.

Sorry for rambling on a bit, again!

I hope to write a post on ACTUAL ART sometime soon, so watch this space

Thanks for reading!

Jennifer

Reader, I blogged!

Reader, I have finally started my blog!

My first New Years Resolution was to finally start publishing blog entries that I've been brainstorming and drafting since I had the idea to start a blog at the beginning of December. Sadly, this means that a few of my ideas for blog posts are now a little "out-of-date" (e.g. a review of a wonderful play I saw at Ovalhouse called Unbroken Line. Luckily for you, the friend who took me to see it has written a great review that can be found here). But it's never too late, and here I am.

I love reading.
I've been lucky enough to be surrounded by books my whole life.

A TINY section of my Bookshelf. I have WAY too many Art books to fit in one photo!

My mum was a Librarian and so as a child I went to the library on a regular basis and was quite an ambitious reader [I remember trying to read Great Expectations at the age of 9. I didn't get very far but I remember pressing the cover up to the car window on the way to school to show off to the people outside. LOOK. I AM ONLY 9 AND I AM READING THIS BIG BOOK. Funnily enough I actually hate Dickens, especially since being forced to study it at GCSE and have never read anything by him since!]

I started working at the Library myself as Saturday job whilst still at sixth form [obviously studying English Lit!] and, despite graduating from uni in summer, I still work there now.

Working at the library is part of what inspired me to write this blog. I really missed reading novels at uni. My course (I studied History of Art) was very intense and I had too many other academic books that I needed to read. Doing a degree taught me that no matter how much you've read, you have never read enough! This was reinforced by going back to work at the library. Being around shelves and shelves of books everyday, and everyday discovering new books and new authors that you've never heard of and suddenly want to try, it made me realise that I would never be able to read them all in my lifetime. That made me really sad, but it also made me realise that I definitely wouldn't be able to read as many as I wanted if I stood there moping about it!

So, since I've started reading again I am trying to read a diverse selection of books, but also read some classics, as I used to be dead set against them and have come to realise that, like cliches, they are probably classics for a reason! 
This brings me to my second New Years Resolution- to read Jane Eyre [hence the, admittedly, lame blog title. You will also learn that I have an AWFUL sense of humour!] I have wanted to read it for AGES but never got round to.  So far I am enjoying it, but I am not very far in, so watch this space. Hopefully I'll have something more interesting to say when I've finished it. 

I realise this post is getting q.lengthy. I will apologise NOW for I do have a tendency to ramble; I am not very good at being succinct! So, I'll finish with 3 facts about me and what else you can expect from this blog:


1. The last 3 books I read were: 

• Julius by Daphne du Maurier. 4/5  Rebecca is on my shelf waiting to be read after I finish the Bronte!
•  The Radleys by Matt Haig. I don't normally read "Vampire" books, I have no intention to EVER read a Twilight novel, but this one handled the theme in an original way. 3.5/ 5.
• Damage by Josephine Hart

2. My favourite author is Ian McEwan. However, I am very inquisitve and, as I've said, I love to learn new things and explore new genres all the time, and therefore my tastes are always changing- I could never get a tattoo as I'd probably hate it 5 years down the line! I used to be completely enthralled by the Pre-Raphaelites but recently visited that exhibition at the Tate Britain and have become disenchanted with them. Still not sure if it was just teh exhibition that did that. I could write a whole blog post on that exhibition. Maybe I should. I'm rambling again...

3. I am passionate about Art and Music. This blog will also feature posts on Art Exhibitions I visit, [and as I am lucky enough to live in London, there *should* be plenty of those!] Music, Theatre and Art in general. 


Please tune in again for more!
Thanks for reading

Jen