Tag: BBC Radio 3

Murder in Trieste

I intermittently catch the BBC Radio 3 cultural program “The Essay”, and are often surprised by its content, but it actually took an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine to alert me to these episodes (still available as I write on Sounds) about the circumstances surrounding the 1768 murder in Trieste of Johann Joachim Winckelmann – considered to be one of the first practitioners of what we would now call art history and archaeology. I say that, but it is more. The cultural historian, Seán Williams, is also telling the wider narrative of a celebrity “gay life” (and death) during the Enlightenment – what could be done and what not, where and with whom – and how it has been interpreted in the afterlife, both in respect to Winckelmann but in the myth building around cultural icons.

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) by Anton Raphael Mengs ca. 1777 (The Met object ID 437067)

Winckelmann interests me. He turns up in this blog post, in which I touch upon newer research and reconstruction methods in polychromy that supports the view that the artifacts of antiquity were very colorful indeed; running counter to the monochromatic orthodoxy which had first arisen during the Renaissance but the certainty about which began to crack during the Neoclassical period of the 18th century – a cultural movement and time of which Winckelmann was a “mover and shaker”. Under nearer scrutiny, traces of pigment were being observed for the first time on objects, and even Winckelmann (albeit belatedly) changed his stance. But, by the 20th century, and for whatever reason – racism, the aesthetic of fascism it has been suggested – all the scholarship and practical methodology of the 18th century was being rejected in favor of the marble white, purity narrative, and prevails still in the contemporary consciousness. The latter is hardly surprising when the artifacts and fragments on display in the museums of the world mostly have very little pigment remaining, and labels are not always explanatory.

As I say, Johann Joachim Winckelmann interested me anyway, but Sean Williams’ radio essay has added an extra dimension. (Here, in his own words, a short accompanying text.)

Riding the Waves

Much has been said and written about Virginia Woolf’s 1931 novel The Waves, and as the 90th anniversary of its publication approaches, BBC Radio 3 featured on Sunday (& perhaps only available for a limited time) a programme focusing on the musical, lyrical attributes of this, perhaps her moodiest, most experimental work.

To begin with, I was intrigued by Woolf’s novel having been the inspiration behind Steve Harley’s “Riding the Waves” from 1978. That was a long time ago, and listening to it now there is a familiarity; whether because of a recognisable turn of phrase or the rhythms of Cockney Rebel I am not sure – a definite Woolf connection I remember absolutely not.

Riding the Waves, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel

As Harley readily admits, he takes the words out of Woolf’s mouth, or rather from the pages of her novel, but it is a warm tribute to a long dead female writer who quite obviously touched the soul of a young vagabond minstrel in the wayward 70s.

Different is Max Richter’s composition XVI. The Waves: Tuesday (from Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works, Deutsche Grammophon, 2015) that brought to an end Wayne McGregor’s 2015 ballet “Woolf Works” for The Royal Ballet. A beautiful contemporary piece that fuses elements from the classical with electronic acoustics to capture the essence of the novel – and Virginia Woolf’s life. Listen well; imagine the ebb and flow of tides, the waters lapping and seeping through sand and upon rocks, clouds scuttling across the sky above. Just like the characters in her novel as they traverse time, waves are forever in motion – rising and falling, drawing near and receding into the distance. Becoming but a memory of their former self … only to reassemble and reemerge again. A haunting reminder of time past and the promise of rebirth. Richter’s musical meditation re-imagines the rhythm of nature and life.

XVI. The Waves: Tuesday

And the prologue? Tuesday. Written in her famous hand on the upper right hand corner of that final note; known to touch even the most hardened amongst us. Beautifully spoken by Gillian Anderson, perhaps capturing the sonorous quality of Woolf’s voice that also has its place in legend.