Musicians crack melodic code within Da Vinci chapel
3 May 2007
The Globe and Mail
A Scottish church featured in the bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code has revealed another mystery hidden in secret code for almost 600 years.
A father and son who became fascinated by symbols carved into the chapel's arches say they have deciphered a musical score encrypted in them.
Thomas Mitchell, a 75-year-old musician and ex-Royal Air Force code-breaker, and his composer and pianist son Stuart described the piece as “frozen music.”
“The music has been frozen in time by symbolism,” Mr. Mitchell said on his website TJMitchell.com, which details the 27-year project to crack the chapel's code.
“It was only a matter of time before the symbolism began to thaw out and begin to make sense to scientific and musical perception,” he said.
The 15th-century Rosslyn Chapel, about 11 kilometres south of Edinburgh, featured in the last part of Dan Brown's popular novel, which has been turned into a Hollywood film.
Stuart Mitchell said he and his father were intrigued by 13 intricately carved angel musicians on the arches of the chapel and by 213 carved cubes depicting geometric-type patterns.
“They are of such exquisite detail and so beautiful that we thought there must be a message here,” he said.
Years of research led the Mitchells to an ancient musical system called cymatics, or Chladni patterns, which are formed by sound waves at specific pitches.
The two men matched each of the patterns on the carved cubes to a Chladni pitch, and were finally able to unlock the melody.
The Mitchells have called the piece The Rosslyn Motet and added words from a contemporary hymn to complete it.
They have also scheduled a world premiere at a concert in the chapel on May 18, when four singers will be accompanied by eight musicians playing the piece on medieval instruments.
Simon Beattie of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust said he was delighted to have the medieval mystery finally solved, and was intrigued by the music itself.
“It's not something you would want to put on in the car and listen to, but it's certainly an interesting piece of music,” he said.
“It's got a good medieval sound to it.”
Thursday, May 03, 2007
The Mona Lisa's identity unveiled?
The Mona Lisa's identity unveiled?
3 May 2007
Asian News International
For centuries her smile has intrigued her admirers, who have never quite been able to answer one question - just who was Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa? Now, a historian believes that he has finally been able to unveil the identity of the lady in question, if not the reason behind her smile.
Historian Giuseppe Pallanti, the author of the book "Mona Lisa's Story," has identified Mona Lisa as Lisa Gherardini, a member of a minor noble family.
Pallanti has also found that Gherardini, born in an old Florentine house that was originally used as a workshop by wool artisans, was a neighbour of the man who would eventually immortalise her - Leonardo da Vinci.
According to the historian, Gherardini was born on June 15, 1479, in a locality that wasn't very nice. Her house stood a few hundred feet from the Medieval bridge Ponte Vecchio, in a dark alley known as Via Sguazza.
"It wasn't a really nice place to live. Rain water and sewage stagnated just in front of the house," Discovery News quoted Pallanti, as saying.
Pallanti found evidence of Mona Lisa's birthplace in a 1480 tax declaration by Giovanbattista Corbinelli, the owner of the building that her family rented.
"Corbinelli wrote that the previous year he had turned two workshops used by wool artisans into two small houses. He gave one to his nephew, and rented the other to Anton Maria Gherardini and Lucrezia Del Caccia for 16 fiorins per year," Pallanti said.
And like the location she lived in, Mona Lisa's life wasn't all that smooth-sailing too, insists Pallanti.
"Mona Lisa did exist indeed. My new findings reveal that she lived a very ordinary life, always struggling to live in a decent house," Pallanti said.
Based on the newly discovered archival documents, the historian believes that Mona Lisa's family fell on hard times when she was around 15, even forcing them to sub-rent the house of the merchant Leonardo Busini in the Santa Croce quarter.
"With my great uneasiness I'm renting half of my house to Anton Maria Gherardini, because they have no house. We agreed that this accommodation won't last more than three years," Busini wrote in a tax declaration found by Pallanti.
And while this may seem unfortunate, it seems that the family's change of address brought them into close contact with the Da Vinci family.
"What is interesting about this new accommodation is that Leonardo's father -- a local notary, Ser Piero da Vinci -- and Lisa's family were neighbors. Ser Piero lived just across the street in Via Ghibellina," Pallanti said.
A year later in 1495, at the age of 16 Mona Lisa would shift houses once again when married wealthy Florentine silk merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, who was 14 years her senior, and had been a widower for a year.
And though Mona Lisa's new home, located in present day San Lorenzo market quarter, was a step up from her previous home, its locality left much to be desired, being a favourite haunt of prostitutes.
It was in this house, that Mona Lisa gave birth to five children: Piero, Andrea, Giocondo, Camilla and Marietta.
Based on Mona Lisa's hubby del Giocondo's will, Pallanti had earlier found that Da Vinci's father and her husband knew each other, since the document was signed by the notary Ser Piero.
"In the document, Francesco asked his younger daughter, Marietta, to take care of his 'beloved wife,' Lisa. Marietta, who had become a nun, brought her ill mother to the nearby convent of Sant'Orsola," Pallanti said.
Pallanti also found a church archive know as "Book of the Dead," which states that Mona Lisa died four years after her husband's death, and was buried in Sant'Orsola.
"My research confirms that Lisa Gherardini and the Mona Lisa were one and the same. We might never solve the mystery behind her smile, but now we know that she had a modest childhood and a rather ordinardy life," Pallanti said.
Pallanti's search of Mona Lisa's true identity, which has taken him 25-years to complete, supports a claim first made in 1550 by Giorgio Vasari, who stated in his work, "Lives of the Artists," that Lisa Gherardini Del Giocondo as the subject of the portrait.
3 May 2007
Asian News International
For centuries her smile has intrigued her admirers, who have never quite been able to answer one question - just who was Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa? Now, a historian believes that he has finally been able to unveil the identity of the lady in question, if not the reason behind her smile.
Historian Giuseppe Pallanti, the author of the book "Mona Lisa's Story," has identified Mona Lisa as Lisa Gherardini, a member of a minor noble family.
Pallanti has also found that Gherardini, born in an old Florentine house that was originally used as a workshop by wool artisans, was a neighbour of the man who would eventually immortalise her - Leonardo da Vinci.
According to the historian, Gherardini was born on June 15, 1479, in a locality that wasn't very nice. Her house stood a few hundred feet from the Medieval bridge Ponte Vecchio, in a dark alley known as Via Sguazza.
"It wasn't a really nice place to live. Rain water and sewage stagnated just in front of the house," Discovery News quoted Pallanti, as saying.
Pallanti found evidence of Mona Lisa's birthplace in a 1480 tax declaration by Giovanbattista Corbinelli, the owner of the building that her family rented.
"Corbinelli wrote that the previous year he had turned two workshops used by wool artisans into two small houses. He gave one to his nephew, and rented the other to Anton Maria Gherardini and Lucrezia Del Caccia for 16 fiorins per year," Pallanti said.
And like the location she lived in, Mona Lisa's life wasn't all that smooth-sailing too, insists Pallanti.
"Mona Lisa did exist indeed. My new findings reveal that she lived a very ordinary life, always struggling to live in a decent house," Pallanti said.
Based on the newly discovered archival documents, the historian believes that Mona Lisa's family fell on hard times when she was around 15, even forcing them to sub-rent the house of the merchant Leonardo Busini in the Santa Croce quarter.
"With my great uneasiness I'm renting half of my house to Anton Maria Gherardini, because they have no house. We agreed that this accommodation won't last more than three years," Busini wrote in a tax declaration found by Pallanti.
And while this may seem unfortunate, it seems that the family's change of address brought them into close contact with the Da Vinci family.
"What is interesting about this new accommodation is that Leonardo's father -- a local notary, Ser Piero da Vinci -- and Lisa's family were neighbors. Ser Piero lived just across the street in Via Ghibellina," Pallanti said.
A year later in 1495, at the age of 16 Mona Lisa would shift houses once again when married wealthy Florentine silk merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, who was 14 years her senior, and had been a widower for a year.
And though Mona Lisa's new home, located in present day San Lorenzo market quarter, was a step up from her previous home, its locality left much to be desired, being a favourite haunt of prostitutes.
It was in this house, that Mona Lisa gave birth to five children: Piero, Andrea, Giocondo, Camilla and Marietta.
Based on Mona Lisa's hubby del Giocondo's will, Pallanti had earlier found that Da Vinci's father and her husband knew each other, since the document was signed by the notary Ser Piero.
"In the document, Francesco asked his younger daughter, Marietta, to take care of his 'beloved wife,' Lisa. Marietta, who had become a nun, brought her ill mother to the nearby convent of Sant'Orsola," Pallanti said.
Pallanti also found a church archive know as "Book of the Dead," which states that Mona Lisa died four years after her husband's death, and was buried in Sant'Orsola.
"My research confirms that Lisa Gherardini and the Mona Lisa were one and the same. We might never solve the mystery behind her smile, but now we know that she had a modest childhood and a rather ordinardy life," Pallanti said.
Pallanti's search of Mona Lisa's true identity, which has taken him 25-years to complete, supports a claim first made in 1550 by Giorgio Vasari, who stated in his work, "Lives of the Artists," that Lisa Gherardini Del Giocondo as the subject of the portrait.
Gumeracha Medieval Fair
Leap into the Middle Ages
246 words
4 May 2007
The Advertiser
THE clash of armour, the thwack of arrows, the skirl of the pipes - all these sounds will be heard at Gumeracha this weekend as South Australia's medieval contingent gather for their annual fair. Details of the fair can be found at http://www.medieval.gumeracha.com.au.
All the usual is there, including maps, event timetables, ideas for costumes, and links to accommodation and transport information.
Information on the Gumeracha area itself can be found at http://www.gumeracha.com.au/. If your trip to the fair leads you to want to further explore the world of the Middle Ages, the web can provide plenty of exciting information.
Try a search for images of illuminated alphabets and you'll find some beautiful graphics you can use for your desktop background or to spice up a presentation or invitation.
If you would like to get more involved, the Society for Creative Anachronism has designated the Adelaide area The Barony of Innilgard of the Kingdom of Lochac.
Unlike their medieval counterparts, they have a webpage, at http://www.sca.org.au/innilgard/ .
For more scholarly research, a good place to start is Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval) which will not only provide you with a good starting point, but with an excellent list of links to specialist sites.
* SA Internet Association executive secretary Kitty Davis can be contacted through www.saia.asn.au
246 words
4 May 2007
The Advertiser
THE clash of armour, the thwack of arrows, the skirl of the pipes - all these sounds will be heard at Gumeracha this weekend as South Australia's medieval contingent gather for their annual fair. Details of the fair can be found at http://www.medieval.gumeracha.com.au.
All the usual is there, including maps, event timetables, ideas for costumes, and links to accommodation and transport information.
Information on the Gumeracha area itself can be found at http://www.gumeracha.com.au/. If your trip to the fair leads you to want to further explore the world of the Middle Ages, the web can provide plenty of exciting information.
Try a search for images of illuminated alphabets and you'll find some beautiful graphics you can use for your desktop background or to spice up a presentation or invitation.
If you would like to get more involved, the Society for Creative Anachronism has designated the Adelaide area The Barony of Innilgard of the Kingdom of Lochac.
Unlike their medieval counterparts, they have a webpage, at http://www.sca.org.au/innilgard/ .
For more scholarly research, a good place to start is Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval) which will not only provide you with a good starting point, but with an excellent list of links to specialist sites.
* SA Internet Association executive secretary Kitty Davis can be contacted through www.saia.asn.au
Return to the Middle Ages (Column from Princeton newspaper)
Return to the Middle Ages
By Soleine Leprince
The Daily Princetonian
3 May 2007
Two of my professors this semester described the Middle Ages as a period of decay. Each time they did, I was annoyed because I find the history of the Middle Ages truly fascinating. The Middle Ages does not consist only of the Black Death, violence, Joan of Arc and Robin Hood. It is not at all a period of linear decay; in fact, it laid the foundations of our modern world. I believe its history also holds the key to understanding several contemporary issues.
It is a shame that the Middle Ages are rarely talked about in America (at least outside the history department) - Columbus' "discovery" itself was possible only because of progress made during the Middle Ages. Great improvements in ships, clocks and the introduction of the compass gave birth to the Age of Exploration.
The term "Middle Ages" is quite misleading. It was coined during the 15th century by Flavio Biondo. Before, history was often divided into six ages, to recall God's creation of the world in six days. The term "Middle Ages," however, implies the flawed idea of 1,000 useless years of stagnation stuck between Antiquity and the Renaissance.
The foundations of modern states were built during this time. During the High Middle Ages, a period of steady growth between the 11th and the 14th centuries, the kings of England, France and Spain consolidated their power. In particular, the Hundred Years War, from 1337 to 1453, forced the kingdoms of France and Britain to develop their administrative and financial institutions. The rediscovery of Roman law and Greek philosophy led to early theories on sovereignty: The king is emperor in his kingdom.
It is quite interesting that Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter '80's theories insist so much on the role of networks in our contemporary world because networks definitely characterized the Middle Ages. The organization of the kingdoms rested upon networks of kinships and vassals. The medieval issue of state centralization versus decentralization has also returned in modern debates.
Even our conception of the family was influenced by the Middle Ages. Marriage was progressively institutionalized and became a sacrament during the 11th century. Piety increased starting from the 7th century with the cult of the Virgin Mary and the saints as well as pilgrimages. Christianization contributed to increase the power of aristocrats sincing they often build churches and monasteries on their own lands.
By Soleine Leprince
The Daily Princetonian
3 May 2007
Two of my professors this semester described the Middle Ages as a period of decay. Each time they did, I was annoyed because I find the history of the Middle Ages truly fascinating. The Middle Ages does not consist only of the Black Death, violence, Joan of Arc and Robin Hood. It is not at all a period of linear decay; in fact, it laid the foundations of our modern world. I believe its history also holds the key to understanding several contemporary issues.
It is a shame that the Middle Ages are rarely talked about in America (at least outside the history department) - Columbus' "discovery" itself was possible only because of progress made during the Middle Ages. Great improvements in ships, clocks and the introduction of the compass gave birth to the Age of Exploration.
The term "Middle Ages" is quite misleading. It was coined during the 15th century by Flavio Biondo. Before, history was often divided into six ages, to recall God's creation of the world in six days. The term "Middle Ages," however, implies the flawed idea of 1,000 useless years of stagnation stuck between Antiquity and the Renaissance.
The foundations of modern states were built during this time. During the High Middle Ages, a period of steady growth between the 11th and the 14th centuries, the kings of England, France and Spain consolidated their power. In particular, the Hundred Years War, from 1337 to 1453, forced the kingdoms of France and Britain to develop their administrative and financial institutions. The rediscovery of Roman law and Greek philosophy led to early theories on sovereignty: The king is emperor in his kingdom.
It is quite interesting that Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter '80's theories insist so much on the role of networks in our contemporary world because networks definitely characterized the Middle Ages. The organization of the kingdoms rested upon networks of kinships and vassals. The medieval issue of state centralization versus decentralization has also returned in modern debates.
Even our conception of the family was influenced by the Middle Ages. Marriage was progressively institutionalized and became a sacrament during the 11th century. Piety increased starting from the 7th century with the cult of the Virgin Mary and the saints as well as pilgrimages. Christianization contributed to increase the power of aristocrats sincing they often build churches and monasteries on their own lands.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Medieval Conference at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CONFERENCE TO EXPLORE COLORFUL FACETS OF LIFE IN 15TH-CENTURY ENGLAND
30 April 2007
US Fed News
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign issued the following news release:
Scholars will gather at the University of Illinois for a conference that will explore some of the spicier aspects of 15th-century England, including saints, sexualities, sieges and sins.
The event, which is open to the public and requires a registration fee, is scheduled for May 6 through 8 in the Illini Union, 1401 W. Green St., Urbana, and in the Levis Faculty Center, 919 W. Illinois St., Urbana. It is held every three years on the Illinois campus.
Sponsors are the U. of I. Program in Medieval Studies and the department of English.
Co-organizers, both from the U. of I., are Robert Barrett, professor of English, and Michael Myers, lecturer in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. They have received strong support from Anne D. Hedeman, professor of art history at Illinois and director of the U. of I. Medieval Studies Program
Titles of papers to be delivered include "English Cuisine and Other Poisons," "Sin Without Sanctions?" and "Aliens and Other Outsiders in Later Medieval Bristol."
The keynote speaker is Pamela King, professor of medieval studies at the University of Bristol in England. Her talk is about rhetoric and English urban culture."
According to Barrett, all of the papers will deal "in one way or another" with the culture of 15th-century England.
"We don't have a theme more specific than that because we want to foster a cross-discipline conversation, just as the previous conferences have done."
Even so, the topic of urban life "does seem to have organically emerged as a cross-panel focus," Barrett said.
According to Hedeman, medieval studies are doing quite well in the United States and at Illinois.
Nationally, there are approximately 90 programs, centers and regional associations dedicated to medieval studies, she said, and Illinois' program in its sixth year, "has already established rich research associations internationally, building on ongoing research collaborations between individual members of the program and their colleagues abroad."
From 1999 to 2004, Illinois belonged to a "productive exchange" with medieval programs in Paris and Poitiers.
And for the past four years, Illinois' medieval studies program has been involved in a research collaboration through the World Wide Universities Network, "which has brought us into a relationship with such well known medieval studies programs as those at the University of York and Leeds, the universities of Manchester and Bristol, and, on the continent, at Utrecht."
"Because of the WUN exchange, seven Illinois graduate students have received funding to do research and work individually with internationally renowned scholars abroad," Hedeman said, and nine students from abroad have come to work with members of our group."
Hedeman said that Illinois faculty members are also involved in diverse research projects with colleagues at WUN universities.
Interest in "things medieval" also is growing with Illinois' undergraduates, Hedeman said, noting that this year, five students contacted her about wanting to minor in medieval studies.
Later this spring, she and her colleagues will submit a proposal to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to establish a minor in medieval studies at Illinois.
Hedeman can be contacted at ahedeman@uiuc.edu and 217-333-7103.
30 April 2007
US Fed News
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign issued the following news release:
Scholars will gather at the University of Illinois for a conference that will explore some of the spicier aspects of 15th-century England, including saints, sexualities, sieges and sins.
The event, which is open to the public and requires a registration fee, is scheduled for May 6 through 8 in the Illini Union, 1401 W. Green St., Urbana, and in the Levis Faculty Center, 919 W. Illinois St., Urbana. It is held every three years on the Illinois campus.
Sponsors are the U. of I. Program in Medieval Studies and the department of English.
Co-organizers, both from the U. of I., are Robert Barrett, professor of English, and Michael Myers, lecturer in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. They have received strong support from Anne D. Hedeman, professor of art history at Illinois and director of the U. of I. Medieval Studies Program
Titles of papers to be delivered include "English Cuisine and Other Poisons," "Sin Without Sanctions?" and "Aliens and Other Outsiders in Later Medieval Bristol."
The keynote speaker is Pamela King, professor of medieval studies at the University of Bristol in England. Her talk is about rhetoric and English urban culture."
According to Barrett, all of the papers will deal "in one way or another" with the culture of 15th-century England.
"We don't have a theme more specific than that because we want to foster a cross-discipline conversation, just as the previous conferences have done."
Even so, the topic of urban life "does seem to have organically emerged as a cross-panel focus," Barrett said.
According to Hedeman, medieval studies are doing quite well in the United States and at Illinois.
Nationally, there are approximately 90 programs, centers and regional associations dedicated to medieval studies, she said, and Illinois' program in its sixth year, "has already established rich research associations internationally, building on ongoing research collaborations between individual members of the program and their colleagues abroad."
From 1999 to 2004, Illinois belonged to a "productive exchange" with medieval programs in Paris and Poitiers.
And for the past four years, Illinois' medieval studies program has been involved in a research collaboration through the World Wide Universities Network, "which has brought us into a relationship with such well known medieval studies programs as those at the University of York and Leeds, the universities of Manchester and Bristol, and, on the continent, at Utrecht."
"Because of the WUN exchange, seven Illinois graduate students have received funding to do research and work individually with internationally renowned scholars abroad," Hedeman said, and nine students from abroad have come to work with members of our group."
Hedeman said that Illinois faculty members are also involved in diverse research projects with colleagues at WUN universities.
Interest in "things medieval" also is growing with Illinois' undergraduates, Hedeman said, noting that this year, five students contacted her about wanting to minor in medieval studies.
Later this spring, she and her colleagues will submit a proposal to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to establish a minor in medieval studies at Illinois.
Hedeman can be contacted at ahedeman@uiuc.edu and 217-333-7103.
Review of Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe.
In and out of court - Thirteenth-century history
By Nancy Goldstone.
28 April 2007
The Economist
To get an idea of Nancy Goldstone's book, think of chess, multi-dimensional chess. It is about Europe in the 13th century. On one side is Henry III, son of John (Magna Carta), struggling with uppity barons and hankering after bits of France. Opposite is Louis VIII, then Louis IX, manoeuvring to expand their Frankish kingdom. On a third side are the holy Roman emperors (neither holy nor Roman, explains Ms Goldstone), rulers of Germany and Sicily and busy invading Italy where, on a fourth side, sit successive popes. On other sides (well, we said it's complicated chess) are all the petty kings and dukes, owing fealty, swapping sides, hawking their offspring in marriages of alliance and trying not to get swallowed up. Throw in the last of the crusades, and you have the beginnings.
Ms Goldstone finds a thread through all this in the careers of four women, the daughters of a minor king, Raymond of Provence, and his wife, Beatrice of Savoy. These two, together with Beatrice's powerful Savoyard brothers, were canny operators. Between them they married all four girls into the royal families of France and England: Marguerite, the eldest, to Louis IX; the next, Eleanor, to Henry III; and Sanchia and Beatrice to brothers of these monarchs: Richard of Cornwall and Charles of Anjou. Not to be outdone, each brother then went on to become a king himself, of Germany and Sicily respectively, the Holy Roman Empire having by then been split.
Initially, these women—children really, brides of 12, 13 and 16—were merely pawns in the larger geopolitical game. But once they became the mothers of sons, they soon matched, and overmatched, their husbands. Marguerite accompanied her husband on his disastrous first crusade, and shrewdly avoided his second; Eleanor and her uncles dominated Henry III's court; Beatrice personally raised the funds for her husband's invasion of Sicily. Only Sanchia stayed in the background.
In fact it wasn't so much the husbands they had to watch as each other and their mothers-in-law. The book is full of political women, including Isabella of Angoulême, the mother of Henry III, who threw all the pots and pans out of the window after a feast at which she had been forced to give precedence to an inferior. Ms Goldstone is always good on the theatricality of the age, the language of ceremony and spectacle, gifts and feasts. She is alert to the calculation in a silk cloak, the spin in a street hung with tapestries and the collateral in jewels.
She is good too at keeping her story clear and fast (though Shakespeare in two and half minutes sometimes comes to mind). She steers her readers deftly from court to court, nudging us, like a good hostess, with names and connections as she goes, and lightening the informational load with dry humour. When Damietta in Egypt falls easily to Louis IX's crusading army, it was “only a matter of singing a Te Deum”, she says, and the place was “captured for France and the Church in a single morning”.
With so much war and diplomacy to cover, it seems churlish to wish that she might have paused a bit longer over certain ideas: for example, the mindset behind Louis IX's attempt at holy politics. But then it would have been a different kind of book.
Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe.
By Nancy Goldstone.
28 April 2007
The Economist
To get an idea of Nancy Goldstone's book, think of chess, multi-dimensional chess. It is about Europe in the 13th century. On one side is Henry III, son of John (Magna Carta), struggling with uppity barons and hankering after bits of France. Opposite is Louis VIII, then Louis IX, manoeuvring to expand their Frankish kingdom. On a third side are the holy Roman emperors (neither holy nor Roman, explains Ms Goldstone), rulers of Germany and Sicily and busy invading Italy where, on a fourth side, sit successive popes. On other sides (well, we said it's complicated chess) are all the petty kings and dukes, owing fealty, swapping sides, hawking their offspring in marriages of alliance and trying not to get swallowed up. Throw in the last of the crusades, and you have the beginnings.
Ms Goldstone finds a thread through all this in the careers of four women, the daughters of a minor king, Raymond of Provence, and his wife, Beatrice of Savoy. These two, together with Beatrice's powerful Savoyard brothers, were canny operators. Between them they married all four girls into the royal families of France and England: Marguerite, the eldest, to Louis IX; the next, Eleanor, to Henry III; and Sanchia and Beatrice to brothers of these monarchs: Richard of Cornwall and Charles of Anjou. Not to be outdone, each brother then went on to become a king himself, of Germany and Sicily respectively, the Holy Roman Empire having by then been split.
Initially, these women—children really, brides of 12, 13 and 16—were merely pawns in the larger geopolitical game. But once they became the mothers of sons, they soon matched, and overmatched, their husbands. Marguerite accompanied her husband on his disastrous first crusade, and shrewdly avoided his second; Eleanor and her uncles dominated Henry III's court; Beatrice personally raised the funds for her husband's invasion of Sicily. Only Sanchia stayed in the background.
In fact it wasn't so much the husbands they had to watch as each other and their mothers-in-law. The book is full of political women, including Isabella of Angoulême, the mother of Henry III, who threw all the pots and pans out of the window after a feast at which she had been forced to give precedence to an inferior. Ms Goldstone is always good on the theatricality of the age, the language of ceremony and spectacle, gifts and feasts. She is alert to the calculation in a silk cloak, the spin in a street hung with tapestries and the collateral in jewels.
She is good too at keeping her story clear and fast (though Shakespeare in two and half minutes sometimes comes to mind). She steers her readers deftly from court to court, nudging us, like a good hostess, with names and connections as she goes, and lightening the informational load with dry humour. When Damietta in Egypt falls easily to Louis IX's crusading army, it was “only a matter of singing a Te Deum”, she says, and the place was “captured for France and the Church in a single morning”.
With so much war and diplomacy to cover, it seems churlish to wish that she might have paused a bit longer over certain ideas: for example, the mindset behind Louis IX's attempt at holy politics. But then it would have been a different kind of book.
Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe.
Review of recent books on the Prophet Muhammad
Balancing the Prophet Four books about Muhammad shed as much light on the authors - and their convictions - as they do on the man himself.
By KAREN ARMSTRONG
28 April 2007
Financial Times
Ever since the Crusades, people in the west have seen the Prophet Muhammad as a sinister figure. During the 12th century, Christians were fighting brutal holy wars against Muslims, even though Jesus had told his followers to love their enemies, not to exterminate them. The scholar monks of Europe stigmatised Muhammad as a cruel warlord who established the false religion of Islam by the sword. They also, with ill-concealed envy, berated him as a lecher and sexual pervert at a time when the popes were attempting to impose celibacy on the reluctant clergy. Our Islamophobia became entwined with our chronic anti-Semitism; Jews and Muslims, the victims of the crusaders, became the shadow self of Europe, the enemies of decent civilisation and the opposite of "us".
Our suspicion of Islam is alive and well. Indeed, understandably perhaps, it has hardened as a result of terrorist atrocities apparently committed in its name. Yet despite the religious rhetoric, these terrorists are motivated by politics rather than religion. Like "fundamentalists" in other traditions, their ideology is deliberately and defiantly unorthodox. Until the 1950s, no major Muslim thinker had made holy war a central pillar of Islam. The Muslim ideologues Abu ala Mawdudi (1903-79) and Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), among the first to do so, knew they were proposing a controversial innovation. They believed it was justified by the current political emergency.
The criminal activities of terrorists have given the old western prejudice a new lease of life. People often seem eager to believe the worst about Muhammad, are reluctant to put his life in its historical perspective and assume the Jewish and Christian traditions lack the flaws they attribute to Islam. This entrenched hostility informs Robert Spencer's misnamed biography The Truth about Muhammad, subtitled Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion.
Spencer has studied Islam for 20 years, largely, it seems, to prove that it is an evil, inherently violent religion. He is a hero of the American right and author of the US bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam. Like any book written in hatred, his new work is a depressing read. Spencer makes no attempt to explain the historical, political, economic and spiritual circumstances of 7th- century Arabia, without which it is impossible to understand the complexities of Muhammad's life. Consequently he makes basic and bad mistakes of fact. Even more damaging, he deliberately manipulates the evidence.
The traditions of any religion are multifarious. It is easy, therefore, to quote so selectively that the main thrust of the faith is distorted. But Spencer is not interested in balance. He picks out only those aspects of Islamic tradition that support his thesis. For example, he cites only passages from the Koran that are hostile to Jews and Christians and does not mention the numerous verses that insist on the continuity of Islam with the People of the Book: "Say to them: We believe what you believe; your God and our God is one."
Islam has a far better record than either Christianity or Judaism of appreciating other faiths. In Muslim Spain, relations between the three religions of Abraham were uniquely harmonious in medieval Europe. The Christian Byzantines had forbidden Jews from residing in Jerusalem, but when Caliph Umar conquered the city in AD638, he invited them to return and was hailed as the precursor of the Messiah. Spencer doesn't refer to this. Jewish-Muslim relations certainly have declined as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but this departs from centuries of peaceful and often positive co- existence. When discussing Muhammad's war with Mecca, Spencer never cites the Koran's condemnation of all warfare as an "awesome evil", its prohibition of aggression or its insistence that only self- defence justifies armed conflict. He ignores the Koranic emphasis on the primacy of forgiveness and peaceful negotiation: the second the enemy asks for peace, Muslims must lay down their arms and accept any terms offered, however disadvantageous. There is no mention of Muhammad's non-violent campaign that ended the conflict.
People would be offended by an account of Judaism that dwelled exclusively on Joshua's massacres and never mentioned Rabbi Hillel's Golden Rule, or a description of Christianity based on the bellicose Book of Revelation that failed to cite the Sermon on the Mount. But the widespread ignorance about Islam in the west makes many vulnerable to Spencer's polemic; he is telling them what they are predisposed to hear. His book is a gift to extremists who can use it to "prove" to those Muslims who have been alienated by events in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq that the west is incurably hostile to their faith.
Eliot Weinberger is a poet whose interest in Islam began at the time of the first Gulf war. His slim volume, Muhammad, is also a selective anthology about the Prophet. His avowed aim is to "give a small sense of the awe surrounding this historical and sacred figure, at a time of the demonisation of the Muslim world in much of the media". Many of the passages he quotes are indeed mystical and beautiful, but others are likely to confirm some readers in their prejudice. Without knowing their provenance, how can we respond to such statements as "He said that he who plays chess is like one who has dyed his hand in the blood of a pig" or "Filling the stomach with pus is better than stuffing the brain with poetry"?
It is difficult to see how selecting only these dubious traditions as examples could advance mutual understanding. The second section of this anthology is devoted to anecdotes about Muhammad's wives that smack of prurient gossip. Western readers need historical perspective to understand the significance of the Prophet's domestic arrangements, his respect for his wives, and the free and forthright way in which they approached him. Equally eccentric are the stories cited by Weinberger to describe miracles attributed to the Prophet: the Koran makes it clear that Muhammad did not perform miracles and insists that he was an ordinary human being, with no divine powers.
It is, therefore, a relief to turn to Barnaby Rogerson's more balanced and nuanced account of early Muslim history in The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad. Rogerson is a travel writer by trade; his explanation of the Sunni/Shia divide is theologically simplistic, but his account of the rashidun, the first four "rightly guided" caliphs who succeeded the Prophet, is historically sound, accessible and clears up many western misconceptions about this crucial period.
Rogerson makes it clear, for example, that the wars of conquest and the establishment of the Islamic empire after Muhammad's death were not inspired by religious ideology but by pragmatic politics. The idea that Islam should conquer the world was alien to the Koran and there was no attempt to convert Jews or Christians. Islam was for the Arabs, the sons of Ishmael, as Judaism was for the descendants of Isaac and Christianity for the followers of Jesus.
Rogerson also shows that Muslim tradition is multi-layered and many-faceted. The early historians regularly gave two or three variant accounts of an incident in the life of the Prophet; readers were expected to make up their own minds.
Similarly, there are at least four contrasting and sometimes conflicting versions of the Exodus story in the Hebrew Bible, and in the New Testament the four evangelists interpret the life of Jesus quite differently. To choose one tradition and ignore the rest - as Weinberger and Spencer do - is distorting.
Professor Tariq Ramadan has studied Islam at the University of Geneva and al-Azhar University in Cairo and is currently senior research fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford. The Messenger is easily the most scholarly and knowledgeable of these four biographies of Muhammad, but it is also practical and relevant, drawing lessons from the Prophet's life that are crucial for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Ramadan makes it clear, for example, that Muhammad did not shun non-Muslims as "unbelievers" but from the beginning co-operated with them in the pursuit of the common good. Islam was not a closed system at variance with other traditions. Muhammad insisted that relations between the different groups must be egalitarian. Even warfare must not obviate the primary duty of justice and respect.
When the Muslims were forced to leave Mecca because they were persecuted by the Meccan establishment, Ramadan shows, they had to adapt to the alien customs of their new home in Medina, where, for example, women enjoyed more freedom than in Mecca. The hijrah ("migration") was a test of intelligence; the emigrants had to recognise that some of their customs were cultural rather than Islamic, and had to learn foreign practices.
Ramadan also makes it clear that, in the Koran, jihad was not synonymous with "holy war". The verb jihada should rather be translated: "making an effort". The first time the word is used in the Koran, it signified a "resistance to oppression" (25:26) that was intellectual and spiritual rather than militant. Muslims were required to oppose the lies and terror of those who were motivated solely by self-interest; they had to be patient and enduring. Only after the hijrah, when they encountered the enmity of Mecca, did the word jihad take connotations of self-defence and armed resistance in the face of military aggression. Even so, in mainstream Muslim tradition, the greatest jihad was not warfare but reform of one's own society and heart; as Muhammad explained to one of his companions, the true jihad was an inner struggle against egotism.
The Koran teaches that, while warfare must be avoided whenever possible, it is sometimes necessary to resist humanity's natural propensity to expansionism and oppression, which all too often seeks to obliterate the diversity and religious pluralism that is God's will. If they do wage war, Muslims must behave ethically. "Do not kill women, children and old people," Abu Bakr, the first caliph, commanded his troops. "Do not commit treacherous actions. Do not burn houses and cornfields." Muslims must be especially careful not to destroy monasteries where Christian monks served God in prayer.
Ramadan could have devoted more time to such contentious issues as the veiling of women, polygamy and Muhammad's treatment of some (though by no means all) of the Jewish tribes of Medina. But his account restores the balance that is so often lacking in western narratives. Muhammad was not a belligerent warrior. Ramadan shows that he constantly emphasised the importance of "gentleness" (ar- rafiq), "tolerance" (al-ana) and clemency (al-hilm).
It will be interesting to see how The Messenger is received. Ramadan is clearly addressing issues that inspire some Muslims to distort their religion. Western people often complain that they never hear from "moderate" Muslims, but when such Muslims do speak out they are frequently dismissed as apologists and hagiographers. Until we all learn to approach one another with generosity and respect, we cannot hope for peace.
Karen Armstrong is the author of "Muhammad: Prophet For Our Time".
By KAREN ARMSTRONG
28 April 2007
Financial Times
Ever since the Crusades, people in the west have seen the Prophet Muhammad as a sinister figure. During the 12th century, Christians were fighting brutal holy wars against Muslims, even though Jesus had told his followers to love their enemies, not to exterminate them. The scholar monks of Europe stigmatised Muhammad as a cruel warlord who established the false religion of Islam by the sword. They also, with ill-concealed envy, berated him as a lecher and sexual pervert at a time when the popes were attempting to impose celibacy on the reluctant clergy. Our Islamophobia became entwined with our chronic anti-Semitism; Jews and Muslims, the victims of the crusaders, became the shadow self of Europe, the enemies of decent civilisation and the opposite of "us".
Our suspicion of Islam is alive and well. Indeed, understandably perhaps, it has hardened as a result of terrorist atrocities apparently committed in its name. Yet despite the religious rhetoric, these terrorists are motivated by politics rather than religion. Like "fundamentalists" in other traditions, their ideology is deliberately and defiantly unorthodox. Until the 1950s, no major Muslim thinker had made holy war a central pillar of Islam. The Muslim ideologues Abu ala Mawdudi (1903-79) and Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), among the first to do so, knew they were proposing a controversial innovation. They believed it was justified by the current political emergency.
The criminal activities of terrorists have given the old western prejudice a new lease of life. People often seem eager to believe the worst about Muhammad, are reluctant to put his life in its historical perspective and assume the Jewish and Christian traditions lack the flaws they attribute to Islam. This entrenched hostility informs Robert Spencer's misnamed biography The Truth about Muhammad, subtitled Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion.
Spencer has studied Islam for 20 years, largely, it seems, to prove that it is an evil, inherently violent religion. He is a hero of the American right and author of the US bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam. Like any book written in hatred, his new work is a depressing read. Spencer makes no attempt to explain the historical, political, economic and spiritual circumstances of 7th- century Arabia, without which it is impossible to understand the complexities of Muhammad's life. Consequently he makes basic and bad mistakes of fact. Even more damaging, he deliberately manipulates the evidence.
The traditions of any religion are multifarious. It is easy, therefore, to quote so selectively that the main thrust of the faith is distorted. But Spencer is not interested in balance. He picks out only those aspects of Islamic tradition that support his thesis. For example, he cites only passages from the Koran that are hostile to Jews and Christians and does not mention the numerous verses that insist on the continuity of Islam with the People of the Book: "Say to them: We believe what you believe; your God and our God is one."
Islam has a far better record than either Christianity or Judaism of appreciating other faiths. In Muslim Spain, relations between the three religions of Abraham were uniquely harmonious in medieval Europe. The Christian Byzantines had forbidden Jews from residing in Jerusalem, but when Caliph Umar conquered the city in AD638, he invited them to return and was hailed as the precursor of the Messiah. Spencer doesn't refer to this. Jewish-Muslim relations certainly have declined as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but this departs from centuries of peaceful and often positive co- existence. When discussing Muhammad's war with Mecca, Spencer never cites the Koran's condemnation of all warfare as an "awesome evil", its prohibition of aggression or its insistence that only self- defence justifies armed conflict. He ignores the Koranic emphasis on the primacy of forgiveness and peaceful negotiation: the second the enemy asks for peace, Muslims must lay down their arms and accept any terms offered, however disadvantageous. There is no mention of Muhammad's non-violent campaign that ended the conflict.
People would be offended by an account of Judaism that dwelled exclusively on Joshua's massacres and never mentioned Rabbi Hillel's Golden Rule, or a description of Christianity based on the bellicose Book of Revelation that failed to cite the Sermon on the Mount. But the widespread ignorance about Islam in the west makes many vulnerable to Spencer's polemic; he is telling them what they are predisposed to hear. His book is a gift to extremists who can use it to "prove" to those Muslims who have been alienated by events in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq that the west is incurably hostile to their faith.
Eliot Weinberger is a poet whose interest in Islam began at the time of the first Gulf war. His slim volume, Muhammad, is also a selective anthology about the Prophet. His avowed aim is to "give a small sense of the awe surrounding this historical and sacred figure, at a time of the demonisation of the Muslim world in much of the media". Many of the passages he quotes are indeed mystical and beautiful, but others are likely to confirm some readers in their prejudice. Without knowing their provenance, how can we respond to such statements as "He said that he who plays chess is like one who has dyed his hand in the blood of a pig" or "Filling the stomach with pus is better than stuffing the brain with poetry"?
It is difficult to see how selecting only these dubious traditions as examples could advance mutual understanding. The second section of this anthology is devoted to anecdotes about Muhammad's wives that smack of prurient gossip. Western readers need historical perspective to understand the significance of the Prophet's domestic arrangements, his respect for his wives, and the free and forthright way in which they approached him. Equally eccentric are the stories cited by Weinberger to describe miracles attributed to the Prophet: the Koran makes it clear that Muhammad did not perform miracles and insists that he was an ordinary human being, with no divine powers.
It is, therefore, a relief to turn to Barnaby Rogerson's more balanced and nuanced account of early Muslim history in The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad. Rogerson is a travel writer by trade; his explanation of the Sunni/Shia divide is theologically simplistic, but his account of the rashidun, the first four "rightly guided" caliphs who succeeded the Prophet, is historically sound, accessible and clears up many western misconceptions about this crucial period.
Rogerson makes it clear, for example, that the wars of conquest and the establishment of the Islamic empire after Muhammad's death were not inspired by religious ideology but by pragmatic politics. The idea that Islam should conquer the world was alien to the Koran and there was no attempt to convert Jews or Christians. Islam was for the Arabs, the sons of Ishmael, as Judaism was for the descendants of Isaac and Christianity for the followers of Jesus.
Rogerson also shows that Muslim tradition is multi-layered and many-faceted. The early historians regularly gave two or three variant accounts of an incident in the life of the Prophet; readers were expected to make up their own minds.
Similarly, there are at least four contrasting and sometimes conflicting versions of the Exodus story in the Hebrew Bible, and in the New Testament the four evangelists interpret the life of Jesus quite differently. To choose one tradition and ignore the rest - as Weinberger and Spencer do - is distorting.
Professor Tariq Ramadan has studied Islam at the University of Geneva and al-Azhar University in Cairo and is currently senior research fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford. The Messenger is easily the most scholarly and knowledgeable of these four biographies of Muhammad, but it is also practical and relevant, drawing lessons from the Prophet's life that are crucial for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Ramadan makes it clear, for example, that Muhammad did not shun non-Muslims as "unbelievers" but from the beginning co-operated with them in the pursuit of the common good. Islam was not a closed system at variance with other traditions. Muhammad insisted that relations between the different groups must be egalitarian. Even warfare must not obviate the primary duty of justice and respect.
When the Muslims were forced to leave Mecca because they were persecuted by the Meccan establishment, Ramadan shows, they had to adapt to the alien customs of their new home in Medina, where, for example, women enjoyed more freedom than in Mecca. The hijrah ("migration") was a test of intelligence; the emigrants had to recognise that some of their customs were cultural rather than Islamic, and had to learn foreign practices.
Ramadan also makes it clear that, in the Koran, jihad was not synonymous with "holy war". The verb jihada should rather be translated: "making an effort". The first time the word is used in the Koran, it signified a "resistance to oppression" (25:26) that was intellectual and spiritual rather than militant. Muslims were required to oppose the lies and terror of those who were motivated solely by self-interest; they had to be patient and enduring. Only after the hijrah, when they encountered the enmity of Mecca, did the word jihad take connotations of self-defence and armed resistance in the face of military aggression. Even so, in mainstream Muslim tradition, the greatest jihad was not warfare but reform of one's own society and heart; as Muhammad explained to one of his companions, the true jihad was an inner struggle against egotism.
The Koran teaches that, while warfare must be avoided whenever possible, it is sometimes necessary to resist humanity's natural propensity to expansionism and oppression, which all too often seeks to obliterate the diversity and religious pluralism that is God's will. If they do wage war, Muslims must behave ethically. "Do not kill women, children and old people," Abu Bakr, the first caliph, commanded his troops. "Do not commit treacherous actions. Do not burn houses and cornfields." Muslims must be especially careful not to destroy monasteries where Christian monks served God in prayer.
Ramadan could have devoted more time to such contentious issues as the veiling of women, polygamy and Muhammad's treatment of some (though by no means all) of the Jewish tribes of Medina. But his account restores the balance that is so often lacking in western narratives. Muhammad was not a belligerent warrior. Ramadan shows that he constantly emphasised the importance of "gentleness" (ar- rafiq), "tolerance" (al-ana) and clemency (al-hilm).
It will be interesting to see how The Messenger is received. Ramadan is clearly addressing issues that inspire some Muslims to distort their religion. Western people often complain that they never hear from "moderate" Muslims, but when such Muslims do speak out they are frequently dismissed as apologists and hagiographers. Until we all learn to approach one another with generosity and respect, we cannot hope for peace.
Karen Armstrong is the author of "Muhammad: Prophet For Our Time".
Revealed: Bedfordshire's best kept secret history
Revealed: Bedfordshire's best kept secret history
1 May 2007
Leighton Buzzard Observer
AN archaeological site lying just south of Leighton, near the canal at Grove, has been described as "the most important and extensive manorial and monastic excavation of the 20th century".
You can learn all about it by joining the Leighton Buzzard and District Archaeological and Historical Society for a talk entitled "La Grava: Bedfordshire's Best Kept Secret", by Evelyn Baker.
Visitors are welcome at the group's next meeting at the Duncombe Drive Centre, Leighton, on Wednesday May 9. It starts at 8pm.
Evelyn Baker will explain that the site had prehistoric beginnings and became a high status site in Anglo-Saxon and probably Viking times. During the Medieval period this Royal manor was converted to a prestigious priory. Royal Ladies of the Manor lived there during the Wars with France.
Grove priory underwent several rebuilds before it was reduced to a simple farmhouse and was finally devoured by a sand quarry.
Over 100 hundred buildings, many thousands of finds and exceptional documentation have allowed unusually complete analysis over more than 30 years of this remarkable site, with a fascinating story to tell.
Further details from the Hon Secretary Bernard Jones on (01525) 376550.
1 May 2007
Leighton Buzzard Observer
AN archaeological site lying just south of Leighton, near the canal at Grove, has been described as "the most important and extensive manorial and monastic excavation of the 20th century".
You can learn all about it by joining the Leighton Buzzard and District Archaeological and Historical Society for a talk entitled "La Grava: Bedfordshire's Best Kept Secret", by Evelyn Baker.
Visitors are welcome at the group's next meeting at the Duncombe Drive Centre, Leighton, on Wednesday May 9. It starts at 8pm.
Evelyn Baker will explain that the site had prehistoric beginnings and became a high status site in Anglo-Saxon and probably Viking times. During the Medieval period this Royal manor was converted to a prestigious priory. Royal Ladies of the Manor lived there during the Wars with France.
Grove priory underwent several rebuilds before it was reduced to a simple farmhouse and was finally devoured by a sand quarry.
Over 100 hundred buildings, many thousands of finds and exceptional documentation have allowed unusually complete analysis over more than 30 years of this remarkable site, with a fascinating story to tell.
Further details from the Hon Secretary Bernard Jones on (01525) 376550.
Visualizing The Depths Of 'Tristan'
Visualizing The Depths Of 'Tristan'
By MATTHEW GUREWITSCH
29 April 2007
The New York Times
STAGING Wagner's ''Tristan und Isolde'' is a notoriously treacherous proposition. A man and a woman are seized by a forbidden passion, are discovered and pay with their lives. That's it -- for three long acts, running four hours, give or take. Wagner thought of his cosmic rhapsody of love that kills not as a story set to music, but as ''deeds of music made visible.''
''My worst 'Tristan' experiences have been when a director has decided to give characters something to do, no matter what,'' Esa-Pekka Salonen, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, said on a recent visit to New York. ''I remember a production with a woman hanging laundry in the second act.'' This would be while the adulterers are spending a night of rapture discussing fine points of philosophy.
The case for a bare-bones ''Tristan'' in concert form is not hard to make. Yet when Mr. Salonen decided to program the opera with his orchestra (it was to be his first full-length foray into Wagner), he went a very different route. The evolving '' 'Tristan' Project'' -- unveiled at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in December 2004 -- does consist in part of a concert performance. But overhead, dwarfing the performers, a simultaneous video symphony unfolds, composed by the artist Bill Viola.
There's plenty to see: seascapes and forests, inspired by Wagner's settings; invented purification rituals; earthly bodies and their celestial doubles, spiraling through floods and conflagrations. Footage shot on a hand-held camcorder gives way to set pieces filmed with the heavy artillery of a Hollywood blockbuster. For the third act, the wide screen rotates 90 degrees, to momentous effect. Time is elastic. Sometimes it runs backward, and water falls up.
To most who have seen ''The 'Tristan' Project,'' it is the Viola ''Tristan,'' and it is major. (For the record, the director Peter Sellars is prominently credited as artistic collaborator.) It has already played Paris in two consecutive seasons and a reprise this spring in Los Angeles. Now comes the New York premiere, presented at Avery Fisher Hall on Wednesday and Saturday as part of the Lincoln Center series Great Performers.
'' 'Tristan' shows the whole range of what I do,'' Mr. Viola said recently from his home in Long Beach, Calif. ''It became a crossroads in my life and work. I've always been drawn to primal stories about the human quest to achieve liberation, about striving for something beyond ourselves. So my first decision was to create a parallel image world, shifting between concrete reality and a highly symbolic state, designed to exist in the inner dimension where Wagner's music takes place. It's about the movement of human consciousness.''
Love and death are opera's bread and butter; ''Tristan'' is on another plane entirely. The true story is not love as we know it but a yearning for the infinite, never to be fulfilled. (Wagner had been reading Schopenhauer.) Whole books have been written on the implications of the so-called ''Tristan'' chord. But the story, based on medieval Celtic legend, has been stripped down to nearly nothing -- just enough to provide an intelligible point of reference for the music.
As usual, Wagner set his own libretto. Shortly after completing the score, he called ''Tristan'' ''was furchtbares!'': something dreadful, terrifying. ''I am afraid the opera will be banned,'' he continued, ''unless a poor performance turns it all into a joke. Only mediocre performances can save me! Really good ones would drive people mad.'' The impact of ''Tristan'' was as profound as its creator predicted, not only on music but also on the visual arts, literature, psychology, even film.
The score of ''Tristan'' has a way of making any theatrical reality look cardboard, which may explain the impulse on the part of opera companies to reach beyond the usual suspects. In 1987, the Los Angeles Opera reeled in the British artist David Hockney, no novice at what he called ''painting the stage.'' Mr. Hockney's decor, in ravishing color, has shown remarkable staying power; San Francisco Opera revived it last October. (The original director was Jonathan Miller at his most contemptuous. Several others, including Mr. Hockney, have been in charge of the revivals.)
Mr. Hockney's sets took the libretto and its medieval setting at face value. ''We made a storybook out of 'Tristan,' '' the artist said recently from Yorkshire, England where he was at work on a landscape he described as the most ambitious painting he has ever done. ''It's rather stuffy opera. Not much happens till right at the end. You've usually got big singers with big voices who can't move much. So where do you put the movement? In the light. There was constant movement in light.''
The production was an important experiment in the theatrical use of Vari-Lite, an automated pan-and-tilt system originally developed for rock concerts. In Mr. Hockney's hands, the moving lamps washed the stage in ravishing jewel tones, but the noise they made disturbed the singers and not a few of the patrons. Mr. Hockney, whose hearing is not the best, didn't mind.
How well Mr. Hockney's effects have held up is an open question. Though whisper-quiet Vari-Lite systems have since been designed, all revivals of the Hockney ''Tristan'' -- including one directed by the artist -- have reverted, wholly or for the most part, to conventional stage lighting, with uneven results.
''Lighting costs a lot of money in the theater,'' Mr. Hockney said. ''To put in cues takes a lot of time. If they revive something, they give you no time. Don't I know. I didn't even go to Houston when they revived 'Tristan' there. I didn't want to see it. If someone else lit it, it's not much to do with me.''
Twenty years on, he recalled the final tableau with keen enthusiasm. ''Remember the dawn? The whole cliff went dark, then you had bright light on the cyclorama. A dawn. A transcendental dawn, just at that last chord where the music lifts you up.''
Untried technology was at the heart of another landmark ''Tristan'' last year, when the Staatsoper in Berlin invited the star architects Herzog & de Meuron to design their first theater set. The curtain rose on what looked like a movie screen floating between broad bands of black masking above and below. Through the letterbox aperture, the audience saw a narrow walk space, backed by a concave surface of glowing white.
That surface was in fact a rubber membrane stretched across a walk-in pressure chamber. As air was sucked from the chamber, the membrane took on the imprint of solid objects concealed within: ship's tackle in Act 1, steps and arches of a slowly crumbling villa in Act 2, a living double of Tristan himself in Act 3. The effect was quietly astonishing: a world willing itself into existence, then dissolving before one's eyes. If decor is all too often the director's tabula rasa, here the situation was reversed. To judge by the unfocused stage action, the director, Stefan Bachmann, left the singers to fend for themselves, and it fell to the set designers to fathom the depths of Wagner's mystery.
''We didn't want to use projections, which are just light describing a fading, flickering reality,'' Jacques Herzog said recently from his office in Basel, Switzerland, discussing how the membrane made objects seem both ghostly and very physical. ''The intention was to let shapes emerge from the void, so you never really know what's real or not real. It was really interesting to think through what reality could be on the stage and what its limits are. We could do something there we couldn't in our architecture.''
For all the mystique of ''Tristan,'' a full-time theater designer would probably approach the piece as business as usual. For the newcomers Herzog & de Meuron, as for Mr. Hockney and Mr. Viola before them, ''Tristan'' became an obsession -- and taught them a harsh lesson in creative efficiency.
''It cost me a lot of money to do the operas I did, because I spent so long on them,'' Mr. Hockney said. ''They don't pay much. Theater is an ephemeral art. It's just performance, which is now, always now -- very different from painting. I'm not going to stop doing what I'm doing now. Nevertheless, I loved working in musical theater. But I wouldn't do it anymore.''
Asked where he stood on these matters, Mr. Herzog laughed. ''I would never do another opera for money! You couldn't! We had an assistant working on 'Tristan' full time for more than a year. Not even counting my own time, I couldn't even calculate what this project cost us. It has to be something besides money that draws you. 'Tristan' was an important learning process. I wouldn't want to have missed it.''
In case the Viola ''Tristan'' gives impresarios any bright ideas, they should know that the artist won't play. ''I'm not thinking about repeating this experience for quite a while,'' Mr. Viola said. '' 'Tristan' almost sank the ship! It took two years of my life. It stressed out my family beyond belief. The budget we had wasn't going to carry us through. We went into debt for it. But it was like a toboggan ride. You just hold on and keep going.''
By MATTHEW GUREWITSCH
29 April 2007
The New York Times
STAGING Wagner's ''Tristan und Isolde'' is a notoriously treacherous proposition. A man and a woman are seized by a forbidden passion, are discovered and pay with their lives. That's it -- for three long acts, running four hours, give or take. Wagner thought of his cosmic rhapsody of love that kills not as a story set to music, but as ''deeds of music made visible.''
''My worst 'Tristan' experiences have been when a director has decided to give characters something to do, no matter what,'' Esa-Pekka Salonen, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, said on a recent visit to New York. ''I remember a production with a woman hanging laundry in the second act.'' This would be while the adulterers are spending a night of rapture discussing fine points of philosophy.
The case for a bare-bones ''Tristan'' in concert form is not hard to make. Yet when Mr. Salonen decided to program the opera with his orchestra (it was to be his first full-length foray into Wagner), he went a very different route. The evolving '' 'Tristan' Project'' -- unveiled at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in December 2004 -- does consist in part of a concert performance. But overhead, dwarfing the performers, a simultaneous video symphony unfolds, composed by the artist Bill Viola.
There's plenty to see: seascapes and forests, inspired by Wagner's settings; invented purification rituals; earthly bodies and their celestial doubles, spiraling through floods and conflagrations. Footage shot on a hand-held camcorder gives way to set pieces filmed with the heavy artillery of a Hollywood blockbuster. For the third act, the wide screen rotates 90 degrees, to momentous effect. Time is elastic. Sometimes it runs backward, and water falls up.
To most who have seen ''The 'Tristan' Project,'' it is the Viola ''Tristan,'' and it is major. (For the record, the director Peter Sellars is prominently credited as artistic collaborator.) It has already played Paris in two consecutive seasons and a reprise this spring in Los Angeles. Now comes the New York premiere, presented at Avery Fisher Hall on Wednesday and Saturday as part of the Lincoln Center series Great Performers.
'' 'Tristan' shows the whole range of what I do,'' Mr. Viola said recently from his home in Long Beach, Calif. ''It became a crossroads in my life and work. I've always been drawn to primal stories about the human quest to achieve liberation, about striving for something beyond ourselves. So my first decision was to create a parallel image world, shifting between concrete reality and a highly symbolic state, designed to exist in the inner dimension where Wagner's music takes place. It's about the movement of human consciousness.''
Love and death are opera's bread and butter; ''Tristan'' is on another plane entirely. The true story is not love as we know it but a yearning for the infinite, never to be fulfilled. (Wagner had been reading Schopenhauer.) Whole books have been written on the implications of the so-called ''Tristan'' chord. But the story, based on medieval Celtic legend, has been stripped down to nearly nothing -- just enough to provide an intelligible point of reference for the music.
As usual, Wagner set his own libretto. Shortly after completing the score, he called ''Tristan'' ''was furchtbares!'': something dreadful, terrifying. ''I am afraid the opera will be banned,'' he continued, ''unless a poor performance turns it all into a joke. Only mediocre performances can save me! Really good ones would drive people mad.'' The impact of ''Tristan'' was as profound as its creator predicted, not only on music but also on the visual arts, literature, psychology, even film.
The score of ''Tristan'' has a way of making any theatrical reality look cardboard, which may explain the impulse on the part of opera companies to reach beyond the usual suspects. In 1987, the Los Angeles Opera reeled in the British artist David Hockney, no novice at what he called ''painting the stage.'' Mr. Hockney's decor, in ravishing color, has shown remarkable staying power; San Francisco Opera revived it last October. (The original director was Jonathan Miller at his most contemptuous. Several others, including Mr. Hockney, have been in charge of the revivals.)
Mr. Hockney's sets took the libretto and its medieval setting at face value. ''We made a storybook out of 'Tristan,' '' the artist said recently from Yorkshire, England where he was at work on a landscape he described as the most ambitious painting he has ever done. ''It's rather stuffy opera. Not much happens till right at the end. You've usually got big singers with big voices who can't move much. So where do you put the movement? In the light. There was constant movement in light.''
The production was an important experiment in the theatrical use of Vari-Lite, an automated pan-and-tilt system originally developed for rock concerts. In Mr. Hockney's hands, the moving lamps washed the stage in ravishing jewel tones, but the noise they made disturbed the singers and not a few of the patrons. Mr. Hockney, whose hearing is not the best, didn't mind.
How well Mr. Hockney's effects have held up is an open question. Though whisper-quiet Vari-Lite systems have since been designed, all revivals of the Hockney ''Tristan'' -- including one directed by the artist -- have reverted, wholly or for the most part, to conventional stage lighting, with uneven results.
''Lighting costs a lot of money in the theater,'' Mr. Hockney said. ''To put in cues takes a lot of time. If they revive something, they give you no time. Don't I know. I didn't even go to Houston when they revived 'Tristan' there. I didn't want to see it. If someone else lit it, it's not much to do with me.''
Twenty years on, he recalled the final tableau with keen enthusiasm. ''Remember the dawn? The whole cliff went dark, then you had bright light on the cyclorama. A dawn. A transcendental dawn, just at that last chord where the music lifts you up.''
Untried technology was at the heart of another landmark ''Tristan'' last year, when the Staatsoper in Berlin invited the star architects Herzog & de Meuron to design their first theater set. The curtain rose on what looked like a movie screen floating between broad bands of black masking above and below. Through the letterbox aperture, the audience saw a narrow walk space, backed by a concave surface of glowing white.
That surface was in fact a rubber membrane stretched across a walk-in pressure chamber. As air was sucked from the chamber, the membrane took on the imprint of solid objects concealed within: ship's tackle in Act 1, steps and arches of a slowly crumbling villa in Act 2, a living double of Tristan himself in Act 3. The effect was quietly astonishing: a world willing itself into existence, then dissolving before one's eyes. If decor is all too often the director's tabula rasa, here the situation was reversed. To judge by the unfocused stage action, the director, Stefan Bachmann, left the singers to fend for themselves, and it fell to the set designers to fathom the depths of Wagner's mystery.
''We didn't want to use projections, which are just light describing a fading, flickering reality,'' Jacques Herzog said recently from his office in Basel, Switzerland, discussing how the membrane made objects seem both ghostly and very physical. ''The intention was to let shapes emerge from the void, so you never really know what's real or not real. It was really interesting to think through what reality could be on the stage and what its limits are. We could do something there we couldn't in our architecture.''
For all the mystique of ''Tristan,'' a full-time theater designer would probably approach the piece as business as usual. For the newcomers Herzog & de Meuron, as for Mr. Hockney and Mr. Viola before them, ''Tristan'' became an obsession -- and taught them a harsh lesson in creative efficiency.
''It cost me a lot of money to do the operas I did, because I spent so long on them,'' Mr. Hockney said. ''They don't pay much. Theater is an ephemeral art. It's just performance, which is now, always now -- very different from painting. I'm not going to stop doing what I'm doing now. Nevertheless, I loved working in musical theater. But I wouldn't do it anymore.''
Asked where he stood on these matters, Mr. Herzog laughed. ''I would never do another opera for money! You couldn't! We had an assistant working on 'Tristan' full time for more than a year. Not even counting my own time, I couldn't even calculate what this project cost us. It has to be something besides money that draws you. 'Tristan' was an important learning process. I wouldn't want to have missed it.''
In case the Viola ''Tristan'' gives impresarios any bright ideas, they should know that the artist won't play. ''I'm not thinking about repeating this experience for quite a while,'' Mr. Viola said. '' 'Tristan' almost sank the ship! It took two years of my life. It stressed out my family beyond belief. The budget we had wasn't going to carry us through. We went into debt for it. But it was like a toboggan ride. You just hold on and keep going.''
Glastonbury Abbey
'Pious fraud to attract visitors'
26 April 2007
Central Somerset Gazette
The part that Glastonbury Abbey played in medieval England is portrayed in a new book just published.
Medievalism - The Middle Ages In Modern England, by Michael Alexander, is published by the Yale University Press.
The book is hailed as the first account of the medieval revival as a whole.
It cites Glastonbury Abbey's legend that it is the site of the burial place for King Arthur and Guinevere as being almost accepted as a "pious fraud to attract visitors to a holy place".
If the legend was just a medieval "spin" to increase the coffers of Glastonbury Abbey by visiting pilgrims, it certainly worked.
Even today many visitors are attracted to the Abbey by its links with the Arthurian legends.
The book is published almost exactly 100 years after Glastonbury Abbey was returned to the church.
Glastonbury Abbey - before its destruction by Henry VIII in the dissolution of the monasteries - was the largest and most influential church in Britain, bigger than Westminster or Canterbury, and long believed to be the oldest Christian foundation in the British Isles.
From the middle of the 16th century the building was systematically levelled, statues were smashed and the library was burned. The building was razed to the ground with such thoroughness that even its floorplan and overall dimensions became lost.
After several centuries of being in private hands and suffering so much desolation, the Abbey was returned to church care 100 years ago.
A prospective MP, one Ernest Jardine, made the initial purchase at auction for the sum of £30,000.
This sum - huge in 1907 - was then raised by public subscription in a little over 18 months and the Abbey handed over to the Church.
Glastonbury Abbey celebrates the centenary with a service of celebration planned at the Abbey on Saturday, May 26, at 3.30 pm.
And from May 1 to May 31 the Abbey will have a Centenary Exhibition open daily from 9.30 am until 6pm.
Entitled The Bishop, The MP And The Local Gentry, the exhibition will show papers and documents relating to the people involved in the 1907 purchase and telling the story of what happened.
26 April 2007
Central Somerset Gazette
The part that Glastonbury Abbey played in medieval England is portrayed in a new book just published.
Medievalism - The Middle Ages In Modern England, by Michael Alexander, is published by the Yale University Press.
The book is hailed as the first account of the medieval revival as a whole.
It cites Glastonbury Abbey's legend that it is the site of the burial place for King Arthur and Guinevere as being almost accepted as a "pious fraud to attract visitors to a holy place".
If the legend was just a medieval "spin" to increase the coffers of Glastonbury Abbey by visiting pilgrims, it certainly worked.
Even today many visitors are attracted to the Abbey by its links with the Arthurian legends.
The book is published almost exactly 100 years after Glastonbury Abbey was returned to the church.
Glastonbury Abbey - before its destruction by Henry VIII in the dissolution of the monasteries - was the largest and most influential church in Britain, bigger than Westminster or Canterbury, and long believed to be the oldest Christian foundation in the British Isles.
From the middle of the 16th century the building was systematically levelled, statues were smashed and the library was burned. The building was razed to the ground with such thoroughness that even its floorplan and overall dimensions became lost.
After several centuries of being in private hands and suffering so much desolation, the Abbey was returned to church care 100 years ago.
A prospective MP, one Ernest Jardine, made the initial purchase at auction for the sum of £30,000.
This sum - huge in 1907 - was then raised by public subscription in a little over 18 months and the Abbey handed over to the Church.
Glastonbury Abbey celebrates the centenary with a service of celebration planned at the Abbey on Saturday, May 26, at 3.30 pm.
And from May 1 to May 31 the Abbey will have a Centenary Exhibition open daily from 9.30 am until 6pm.
Entitled The Bishop, The MP And The Local Gentry, the exhibition will show papers and documents relating to the people involved in the 1907 purchase and telling the story of what happened.
Experts finally lift the lid on coffin mystery
Experts finally lift the lid on coffin mystery
26 April 2007
The Northern Echo
MEDIEVAL social-climbers were the key to a coffin lid mystery that has baffled archaeologists for 30 years.The coffin lids at the centre of the puzzle, which are going on show for the first time, were excavated from Wharram Percy, a deserted medieval village near Malton, in the late 1970s.They were used in a churchyard burial of a family of three, believed to have taken place between 1060 and 1160.But they were made of an unusual limestone called Coral Rag - the only time the stone has been found on the site and more associated with Roman cemeteries than Anglo-Saxon England. Now experts have discovered the coffin lids were taken from Roman graves as a status symbol and are 800 years older than was believed.English Heritage curator Susan Harrison said: "The re-use of Roman grave lids has been known before, but to find a family group like this is extremely rare."Perhaps the lids were re-used because they were nearby and handy.
But these graves are from an elite family group, perhaps the founders of the stone church, and to re-use Roman sarcophagi was considered prestigious."It would have made a political point, establishing the family's status."She added: "Although the use of Coral Rag is largely absent at Wharram, it is used in Roman burials in York and we also know there was Roman occupation of the Wharram site."One of the grave covers features a large carved crucifix, but the original design and tooling points to Roman times."The slabs were discovered during Britain's longest archaeological dig from 1950 to 1990.Short of clues, the slabs were recorded and re-buried without their true nature known. But experts have taken a fresh look at the drawings, photographs and notes made at the time, along with the geology of stones from the site.The objects were also re-excavated last year - and it was found that the coffins had entombed Romans up to 800 years before.The relics can be seen by the public, along with items from Middleham castle, at the EH store in Helmsley, which is normally off-limits.Visitors must book in advance through the Tourist Information Centre, in Helmsley Castle Visitor Centre, telephone 01439-770173. Tours take place at 11am, 1pm and 3pm on May 30, June 27, July 25, August 22 and September 26.
26 April 2007
The Northern Echo
MEDIEVAL social-climbers were the key to a coffin lid mystery that has baffled archaeologists for 30 years.The coffin lids at the centre of the puzzle, which are going on show for the first time, were excavated from Wharram Percy, a deserted medieval village near Malton, in the late 1970s.They were used in a churchyard burial of a family of three, believed to have taken place between 1060 and 1160.But they were made of an unusual limestone called Coral Rag - the only time the stone has been found on the site and more associated with Roman cemeteries than Anglo-Saxon England. Now experts have discovered the coffin lids were taken from Roman graves as a status symbol and are 800 years older than was believed.English Heritage curator Susan Harrison said: "The re-use of Roman grave lids has been known before, but to find a family group like this is extremely rare."Perhaps the lids were re-used because they were nearby and handy.
But these graves are from an elite family group, perhaps the founders of the stone church, and to re-use Roman sarcophagi was considered prestigious."It would have made a political point, establishing the family's status."She added: "Although the use of Coral Rag is largely absent at Wharram, it is used in Roman burials in York and we also know there was Roman occupation of the Wharram site."One of the grave covers features a large carved crucifix, but the original design and tooling points to Roman times."The slabs were discovered during Britain's longest archaeological dig from 1950 to 1990.Short of clues, the slabs were recorded and re-buried without their true nature known. But experts have taken a fresh look at the drawings, photographs and notes made at the time, along with the geology of stones from the site.The objects were also re-excavated last year - and it was found that the coffins had entombed Romans up to 800 years before.The relics can be seen by the public, along with items from Middleham castle, at the EH store in Helmsley, which is normally off-limits.Visitors must book in advance through the Tourist Information Centre, in Helmsley Castle Visitor Centre, telephone 01439-770173. Tours take place at 11am, 1pm and 3pm on May 30, June 27, July 25, August 22 and September 26.
New Book - The History of Rothwell Castle and Medieval Life
Castle under siege
24 April 2007
Wakefield Express
GHOSTS of the past will rise again thanks to Rothwell and District Historical Society's latest book.
The History of Rothwell Castle and Medieval Life has just hit the bookshelves and is the result of more than five years of research.
The book takes a detailed look at the castle, tracing the influence the occupants had on Rothwell folk as their village became a great hunting park, attracting royal visitors.
Society member Audrey Rains said: "We're delighted that the book is finally on sale. When we first sat down as a group, staring at a blank piece of paper, it all seemed very daunting.
"But as we focused on a chapter each, it became slightly easier. That process has also made it easier for readers - it is not an academic book, but one which everyone can sit down to enjoy."
Simon Bulmer, chairman of the Rothwell Castle project, said: "The project was first mooted in 1999. It was discussed with the then leader of Leeds City Council, Brian Walker, and the idea for the book grew from there.
"We started with the Domesday Book, which is the earliest written record of Rothwell. We have also been able to paint a picture of Rothwell before this date from bronze age archaeological finds."
"One of the main things we wanted to prove, or disprove, was the legend about John O'Gaunt slaying the last wild boar in England."
So did society members manage to find a factual basis behind the wild boar tale, or do its roots remain firmly in folklore?
The only way to find out for yourselves will be to read the book - copies are on sale at Stephen Ward Photography, Rothwell, and Beechwood News, Woodlesford, priced at £5. Books are also available from the society, contact them via e-mail at rothwellhistory@btinternet.com
24 April 2007
Wakefield Express
GHOSTS of the past will rise again thanks to Rothwell and District Historical Society's latest book.
The History of Rothwell Castle and Medieval Life has just hit the bookshelves and is the result of more than five years of research.
The book takes a detailed look at the castle, tracing the influence the occupants had on Rothwell folk as their village became a great hunting park, attracting royal visitors.
Society member Audrey Rains said: "We're delighted that the book is finally on sale. When we first sat down as a group, staring at a blank piece of paper, it all seemed very daunting.
"But as we focused on a chapter each, it became slightly easier. That process has also made it easier for readers - it is not an academic book, but one which everyone can sit down to enjoy."
Simon Bulmer, chairman of the Rothwell Castle project, said: "The project was first mooted in 1999. It was discussed with the then leader of Leeds City Council, Brian Walker, and the idea for the book grew from there.
"We started with the Domesday Book, which is the earliest written record of Rothwell. We have also been able to paint a picture of Rothwell before this date from bronze age archaeological finds."
"One of the main things we wanted to prove, or disprove, was the legend about John O'Gaunt slaying the last wild boar in England."
So did society members manage to find a factual basis behind the wild boar tale, or do its roots remain firmly in folklore?
The only way to find out for yourselves will be to read the book - copies are on sale at Stephen Ward Photography, Rothwell, and Beechwood News, Woodlesford, priced at £5. Books are also available from the society, contact them via e-mail at rothwellhistory@btinternet.com
Call it green medieval
Call it green medieval
James Thorner
25 April 2007
St. Petersburg Times
Anyone familiar with Celebration near Orlando or Seaside in the Panhandle knows Florida's a hothouse for traditional neighborhood design, the push to replace suburban sprawl with tight, walkable communities.
But while most traditionalists reach back to the early 20th century for their front-porch-and-picket-fence models, Bruce White seeks inspiration in 12th century Germany for a project he envisions called Sky in North Florida.
Sprawl isn't exactly a problem in rural Calhoun County, population 13,200, about an hour west of Tallahassee. It's there that White bought a 571-acre former gladiolus farm. He plans to cluster Sky's 600 homes in European-style hamlets and attach garden plots to each. Homeowners would own and maintain 150 to 200 more acres of pasture, crop land and orchards.
"I want people, when they come to the property, to feel they're on a huge farm," White said.
White's medieval prototype development will come with such modern luxuries as tennis courts, a spa, coffee shops and the latest in high-tech energy efficiency.
"My mom is Bavarian. I grew up visiting her village in Germany. Until I was 25, I just got a lot of exposure to that type of architecture," said White, a real estate investor embarking on his first large development. "That medieval layout works. It's been time tested."
Traditional neighborhood design, also known as new urbanism, has grown in popularity as home buyers grew weary of killer commutes, gas-hogging shopping trips and bar-the-door unneighborliness. Local examples of the design include West Park Village near Tampa and Longleaf in Pasco County.
Lest you think Sky is White's personal flight of fancy, he's lined up an all-star team to build the thing. His business partner is Jacksonville-area architect Julia Starr Sanford. The partners commissioned a site plan from Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., a Miami planner that has championed new urbanism in more than 300 projects.
In what's perhaps the biggest vote of confidence, Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp recently awarded the project a $1.8-million Florida renewable energy technologies grant. Florida State University engineers will design and test ways to deliver power and water to Sky at about a quarter of the typical energy costs.
"Hopefully we can get them off the electrical grid altogether," said David Cartes, professor of mechanical engineering at FSU.
But will Sky sell? The knock against such new design developments is that homes end up being pricey and the streetscapes sterile and imitative.
Seaside, the quaint Panhandle community where homes reach $3-million, was the location for The Truman Show. The movie portrayed a man who doesn't know his seemingly perfect town is actually a television set and his neighbors are actors.
Sky risks drawing similar comparisons: Sanford, the architect, has moonlighted as a movie set designer. Her work appeared in such films as The Legend of Bagger Vance, My Cousin Vinny and Radio.
Frank Starkey groans at The Stepford Wives comparisons. Starkey is an architect and developer of Pasco's Longleaf.
While admitting there's a fine line between solid traditional and insubstantial gingerbread, new urbanist experiments can't help looking freshly scrubbed until they put on a little age.
"The old neighborhoods had a 100-year head-start," Starkey said. "It's impossible to create Hyde Park overnight without it looking like you pretended."
To sell homes for about $200,000 to $600,000, White plans to tap a customer base he calls "cultural creatives." They're the estimated 60-million Americans willing to pay a premium for green products.
The flaw of some recently built traditional neighborhood designs is that close-packed streets offer too little space for residents to "decompress," White said. It's a deficiency he hopes to correct with Sky's Hansel & Gretel fields, farms and forests.
The project, largely self-financed, is scheduled to break ground in early 2008 and take 10 years to complete.
James Thorner can be reached at (813) 226-3313 or thorner@sptimes.com.
Energy highlights
Energy-efficient technology incorporated into the Sky development:
- Geothermal loops that circulate water through underground pipelines to produce water using the Earth's natural heat. Hot water would be piped to all the homes within each pod.
- Centralized chillers to cool homes and solar panels to heat them.
- A wastewater treatment facility that protects groundwater by using aerobic treatment units.
James Thorner
25 April 2007
St. Petersburg Times
Anyone familiar with Celebration near Orlando or Seaside in the Panhandle knows Florida's a hothouse for traditional neighborhood design, the push to replace suburban sprawl with tight, walkable communities.
But while most traditionalists reach back to the early 20th century for their front-porch-and-picket-fence models, Bruce White seeks inspiration in 12th century Germany for a project he envisions called Sky in North Florida.
Sprawl isn't exactly a problem in rural Calhoun County, population 13,200, about an hour west of Tallahassee. It's there that White bought a 571-acre former gladiolus farm. He plans to cluster Sky's 600 homes in European-style hamlets and attach garden plots to each. Homeowners would own and maintain 150 to 200 more acres of pasture, crop land and orchards.
"I want people, when they come to the property, to feel they're on a huge farm," White said.
White's medieval prototype development will come with such modern luxuries as tennis courts, a spa, coffee shops and the latest in high-tech energy efficiency.
"My mom is Bavarian. I grew up visiting her village in Germany. Until I was 25, I just got a lot of exposure to that type of architecture," said White, a real estate investor embarking on his first large development. "That medieval layout works. It's been time tested."
Traditional neighborhood design, also known as new urbanism, has grown in popularity as home buyers grew weary of killer commutes, gas-hogging shopping trips and bar-the-door unneighborliness. Local examples of the design include West Park Village near Tampa and Longleaf in Pasco County.
Lest you think Sky is White's personal flight of fancy, he's lined up an all-star team to build the thing. His business partner is Jacksonville-area architect Julia Starr Sanford. The partners commissioned a site plan from Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., a Miami planner that has championed new urbanism in more than 300 projects.
In what's perhaps the biggest vote of confidence, Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp recently awarded the project a $1.8-million Florida renewable energy technologies grant. Florida State University engineers will design and test ways to deliver power and water to Sky at about a quarter of the typical energy costs.
"Hopefully we can get them off the electrical grid altogether," said David Cartes, professor of mechanical engineering at FSU.
But will Sky sell? The knock against such new design developments is that homes end up being pricey and the streetscapes sterile and imitative.
Seaside, the quaint Panhandle community where homes reach $3-million, was the location for The Truman Show. The movie portrayed a man who doesn't know his seemingly perfect town is actually a television set and his neighbors are actors.
Sky risks drawing similar comparisons: Sanford, the architect, has moonlighted as a movie set designer. Her work appeared in such films as The Legend of Bagger Vance, My Cousin Vinny and Radio.
Frank Starkey groans at The Stepford Wives comparisons. Starkey is an architect and developer of Pasco's Longleaf.
While admitting there's a fine line between solid traditional and insubstantial gingerbread, new urbanist experiments can't help looking freshly scrubbed until they put on a little age.
"The old neighborhoods had a 100-year head-start," Starkey said. "It's impossible to create Hyde Park overnight without it looking like you pretended."
To sell homes for about $200,000 to $600,000, White plans to tap a customer base he calls "cultural creatives." They're the estimated 60-million Americans willing to pay a premium for green products.
The flaw of some recently built traditional neighborhood designs is that close-packed streets offer too little space for residents to "decompress," White said. It's a deficiency he hopes to correct with Sky's Hansel & Gretel fields, farms and forests.
The project, largely self-financed, is scheduled to break ground in early 2008 and take 10 years to complete.
James Thorner can be reached at (813) 226-3313 or thorner@sptimes.com.
Energy highlights
Energy-efficient technology incorporated into the Sky development:
- Geothermal loops that circulate water through underground pipelines to produce water using the Earth's natural heat. Hot water would be piped to all the homes within each pod.
- Centralized chillers to cool homes and solar panels to heat them.
- A wastewater treatment facility that protects groundwater by using aerobic treatment units.
Conference of Byzantinists held at Queens College, New York
Conference of Byzantinists held at Queens College, New York
24 April 2007
Athens News Agency
The achievements, influence, art, institutions and philosophy of Byzantium were presented and analyzed in the 1st Kallinikeion Conference of Byzantinists held at Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY). The conference was organized by the Center for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at Queens College on the occasion of the recent donation by the Kallinikeion Foundation for the founding of a Byzantine Studies Department. Archbishop Demetrios of America addressed the conference, which was attended by distinguished professors from American universities and heads of Byzantine departments at museums and cultural institutions.
Professor Angela Constantinides Hero, who taught in Queens College from 1978 until 1992, was the honored guest in recognition of her substantial contribution to Byzantine Studies. Also participating in the conference were Helen C. Evans, Curator of Early Christian and Byzantine Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Alice-Mary Talbot, Director of Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks.
24 April 2007
Athens News Agency
The achievements, influence, art, institutions and philosophy of Byzantium were presented and analyzed in the 1st Kallinikeion Conference of Byzantinists held at Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY). The conference was organized by the Center for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at Queens College on the occasion of the recent donation by the Kallinikeion Foundation for the founding of a Byzantine Studies Department. Archbishop Demetrios of America addressed the conference, which was attended by distinguished professors from American universities and heads of Byzantine departments at museums and cultural institutions.
Professor Angela Constantinides Hero, who taught in Queens College from 1978 until 1992, was the honored guest in recognition of her substantial contribution to Byzantine Studies. Also participating in the conference were Helen C. Evans, Curator of Early Christian and Byzantine Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Alice-Mary Talbot, Director of Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks.
Farleigh Hungerford Castle - events
Knights of fun on castle trail
26 April 2007
Standard & Guardian
There will be a medieval knight's trail for children at Farleigh Hungerford Castle from May 28 to June 3.
Families will have the chance to roam the castle in search of the missing knights and squires who have been invited to the queen's banquet.
Those who collect the names of all the missing medieval knights will be rewarded with a prize.
The event is one of a host of medieval themed days at the castle throughout the summer months.
On the weekend of June 23 to 24 there will be a chance to experience the sport of kings with falconry at the castle.
Each day visitors can enjoy three demonstrations of owls, hawks and falcons in flight.
Explanations will be given on how the birds were used in the Middle Ages.
On August 18 and 19 the castle will be holding a medieval life day, where visitors can step back in time as the Hungerford family takes residence in the 1370s.
There will be medieval combat demonstrations, opportunities to learn how medieval coins were made in the mint, period cookery lessons and sword fighting.
There will also be a chance for visitors to have a go at archery.
For more information about the events visit www.english-heritage.org.uk/farleighhungerford or telephone 0870 333 1183.
26 April 2007
Standard & Guardian
There will be a medieval knight's trail for children at Farleigh Hungerford Castle from May 28 to June 3.
Families will have the chance to roam the castle in search of the missing knights and squires who have been invited to the queen's banquet.
Those who collect the names of all the missing medieval knights will be rewarded with a prize.
The event is one of a host of medieval themed days at the castle throughout the summer months.
On the weekend of June 23 to 24 there will be a chance to experience the sport of kings with falconry at the castle.
Each day visitors can enjoy three demonstrations of owls, hawks and falcons in flight.
Explanations will be given on how the birds were used in the Middle Ages.
On August 18 and 19 the castle will be holding a medieval life day, where visitors can step back in time as the Hungerford family takes residence in the 1370s.
There will be medieval combat demonstrations, opportunities to learn how medieval coins were made in the mint, period cookery lessons and sword fighting.
There will also be a chance for visitors to have a go at archery.
For more information about the events visit www.english-heritage.org.uk/farleighhungerford or telephone 0870 333 1183.
Renaissance masterpiece from Florence opens U.S. tour in Atlanta
Renaissance masterpiece from Florence opens U.S. tour in Atlanta
By GIOVANNA DELL'ORTO
26 April 2007
Associated Press Newswires
Adam is slowly rising from the rocky outcrop, weakly supporting himself on his right arm as God the creator pulls him up by the left hand. A beautiful, flowing Eve rises near them while a curious owl, perched in a fruit tree, looks down and tiny lizards slither below.
This is no mystical, otherworldly rendition of Genesis. Rather, this sculpted panel is a gripping narrative meant to serve as a bible for the poor and illiterate who would understand its main character -- not a forbidding God, but man.
As such, this panel and the nine others of Lorenzo Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise," created between 1425 and 1452 for one set of doors in Florence's Baptistery, are the hinges of a pivotal moment in the history of Western art.
Here, and in the masterpieces around them in Florence's cathedral square, the Renaissance was born, rounding out the hieratic spiritualism of the Middle Ages with a newly asserted belief in humanity.
American audiences have a unique chance to see the Genesis panel and two others from the doors beginning April 28 at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The show will then travel to Chicago and New York before returning to Italy, never to be moved again.
"Everything came down from this. Man became the center of the universe," said Patrizio Osticresi, administrator of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, the private institution born more than 700 years to oversee the building of Florence's cathedral and that now manages its conservation.
The bronze 31-square-inch panels in the Baptistery eastern doors, weighing about 200 pounds (90.7 kilograms) each, have been under restoration for more than 25 years, after being damaged by nearly 600 years of open-air exposure in Florence's cathedral square and by floods that engulfed much of the city in 1966.
Once their restoration is complete, possibly in 2008, they will be fitted back into the frames and will never move again from the Opera museum. Since the 1990s, copies have been installed in the Baptistery.
All panels tell Old Testament stories and the three in Atlanta portray the creation of Adam and Eve, the brotherly disputes of Jacob and Esau, and the battle of David and Goliath, all in astonishingly minute, realistic detail.
Instead of stylized figures set against a flat background of medieval art, Ghiberti's characters wriggle out into three dimensions to inhabit a real world seen through a scientifically correct perspective.
In the David panel, the hero is pushing down on his sword with all his strength as the blade is about to sever the fallen giant's head. A fleeing soldier gazes back at the slaying, frozen in a look of incredulity and horror amid the general fray.
The panels, each mingling several episodes of the main story, come alive in the lifelike plasticity of the figures. The farthest images, such as Eve spellbound by the serpent or David returning to Jerusalem with Goliath's head, are barely etched in the gilded bronze, while the ones closest to the viewer, such as Adam and Eve fleeing paradise, are sculpted almost in the round.
Ghiberti had something for all his Renaissance audiences, said curator Gary Radke, from children attracted to the small animals, palm trees and big crowd scenes to scholars whose latest scientific advances -- such as perspective -- he incorporated.
Michelangelo was a great admirer of Ghiberti's work, and said the doors truly were "gates to paradise" because of their beauty, and not only because of the Baptistery's message of salvation.
Today's viewers can similarly appreciate the naturalism and the individuality of each figure, which Ghiberti captured in the movement of a foot, the tilt of a head. A section of the show also focuses on the restoration.
The partnership with the Opera scores another high-profile success for the High Museum, which is in its first year of hosting collections from the Louvre Museum in Paris. In exchange for the three panels and other smaller sculptures from the doors' frame, the High paid about $200,000 (euro147,500) to help the Opera restore an early Renaissance silver altar.
After the show closes in Atlanta on July 15, it will travel to The Art Institute in Chicago from July 28-Oct. 13 and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from Oct. 20 to Jan. 13, 2008.
------
On the Net:
http://www.high.org
http://www.operaduomo.firenze.it
By GIOVANNA DELL'ORTO
26 April 2007
Associated Press Newswires
Adam is slowly rising from the rocky outcrop, weakly supporting himself on his right arm as God the creator pulls him up by the left hand. A beautiful, flowing Eve rises near them while a curious owl, perched in a fruit tree, looks down and tiny lizards slither below.
This is no mystical, otherworldly rendition of Genesis. Rather, this sculpted panel is a gripping narrative meant to serve as a bible for the poor and illiterate who would understand its main character -- not a forbidding God, but man.
As such, this panel and the nine others of Lorenzo Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise," created between 1425 and 1452 for one set of doors in Florence's Baptistery, are the hinges of a pivotal moment in the history of Western art.
Here, and in the masterpieces around them in Florence's cathedral square, the Renaissance was born, rounding out the hieratic spiritualism of the Middle Ages with a newly asserted belief in humanity.
American audiences have a unique chance to see the Genesis panel and two others from the doors beginning April 28 at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The show will then travel to Chicago and New York before returning to Italy, never to be moved again.
"Everything came down from this. Man became the center of the universe," said Patrizio Osticresi, administrator of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, the private institution born more than 700 years to oversee the building of Florence's cathedral and that now manages its conservation.
The bronze 31-square-inch panels in the Baptistery eastern doors, weighing about 200 pounds (90.7 kilograms) each, have been under restoration for more than 25 years, after being damaged by nearly 600 years of open-air exposure in Florence's cathedral square and by floods that engulfed much of the city in 1966.
Once their restoration is complete, possibly in 2008, they will be fitted back into the frames and will never move again from the Opera museum. Since the 1990s, copies have been installed in the Baptistery.
All panels tell Old Testament stories and the three in Atlanta portray the creation of Adam and Eve, the brotherly disputes of Jacob and Esau, and the battle of David and Goliath, all in astonishingly minute, realistic detail.
Instead of stylized figures set against a flat background of medieval art, Ghiberti's characters wriggle out into three dimensions to inhabit a real world seen through a scientifically correct perspective.
In the David panel, the hero is pushing down on his sword with all his strength as the blade is about to sever the fallen giant's head. A fleeing soldier gazes back at the slaying, frozen in a look of incredulity and horror amid the general fray.
The panels, each mingling several episodes of the main story, come alive in the lifelike plasticity of the figures. The farthest images, such as Eve spellbound by the serpent or David returning to Jerusalem with Goliath's head, are barely etched in the gilded bronze, while the ones closest to the viewer, such as Adam and Eve fleeing paradise, are sculpted almost in the round.
Ghiberti had something for all his Renaissance audiences, said curator Gary Radke, from children attracted to the small animals, palm trees and big crowd scenes to scholars whose latest scientific advances -- such as perspective -- he incorporated.
Michelangelo was a great admirer of Ghiberti's work, and said the doors truly were "gates to paradise" because of their beauty, and not only because of the Baptistery's message of salvation.
Today's viewers can similarly appreciate the naturalism and the individuality of each figure, which Ghiberti captured in the movement of a foot, the tilt of a head. A section of the show also focuses on the restoration.
The partnership with the Opera scores another high-profile success for the High Museum, which is in its first year of hosting collections from the Louvre Museum in Paris. In exchange for the three panels and other smaller sculptures from the doors' frame, the High paid about $200,000 (euro147,500) to help the Opera restore an early Renaissance silver altar.
After the show closes in Atlanta on July 15, it will travel to The Art Institute in Chicago from July 28-Oct. 13 and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from Oct. 20 to Jan. 13, 2008.
------
On the Net:
http://www.high.org
http://www.operaduomo.firenze.it
Taking a musical trip back in time
Taking a musical trip back in time
27 April 2007
Bath Chronicle
An extraordinary evening which will be part early music concert and part lecture takes place in Bath tomorrow night.
The lecture at the BRLSI in Queen Square explores the way in which our knowledge of music from the Middle Ages contributes to our understanding of who we are today.
The evening features musical examples from the 12th to the 15th centuries including songs which originate from prisons, the church, European cities and from the royal courts.
The evening is in the hands of husband and wife musicians Uri Smilanski who is an Israeli and Katherine Hawnt who was born in England.
The couple now live in Salisbury.
Uri, who is currently engaged in PH.D studies at Exeter University, will speak on the theme of 'listening to the past' and take listeners on an exploration of why incorporating past cultures into our current one can and should be done in a meaningful way.
Soprano Katherine will sing and Uri will play a variety of period instruments, including recorder.
Katherine was a choral scholar at Kings College London before going to Basle where she studied with some of Europe's leading experts in the field and later with others including Emma Kirkby and Andreas Scholl.
She performs regularly throughout Europe with a number of groups. She also directs her group Le Basile which specialises in 14th and 15th century music.
Uri is well known in Israel as a performer both on recorder and viola de gamba.
He taught recorder at the Petach Tikva conservatorie before studying in Basle from where he graduated with honours in 2005.
He too performs worldwide and co directs Le Basile with his wife.
The lecture begins at 7.15 for 7.30pm tomorrow. Tickets cost just £5.
Looking ahead to Sunday May 6 at the Wiltshire Music Centre, there is more early music when Sophie Yates performs Elizabethan music on the virginal.
This is a rare chance to hear the virginal - it looks like a clavichord but makes a sound like a small harpsichord - played live, though in Elizabethan times most homes of any substance would not have been without the instrument.
Queen Elizabeth sought solace in its entrancing sounds as a way to 'shun melancholy'.
Sophie Yates' programme includes pieces by Philips, Gibbons and Byrd but centres around the music of John Bull a composer whose music requires considerable virtuosity yet offers a vivid insight into the colour and intrigue of England's Golden Age.
Tickets cost £13.
For more information and to book tickets telephone 01225 860110.
27 April 2007
Bath Chronicle
An extraordinary evening which will be part early music concert and part lecture takes place in Bath tomorrow night.
The lecture at the BRLSI in Queen Square explores the way in which our knowledge of music from the Middle Ages contributes to our understanding of who we are today.
The evening features musical examples from the 12th to the 15th centuries including songs which originate from prisons, the church, European cities and from the royal courts.
The evening is in the hands of husband and wife musicians Uri Smilanski who is an Israeli and Katherine Hawnt who was born in England.
The couple now live in Salisbury.
Uri, who is currently engaged in PH.D studies at Exeter University, will speak on the theme of 'listening to the past' and take listeners on an exploration of why incorporating past cultures into our current one can and should be done in a meaningful way.
Soprano Katherine will sing and Uri will play a variety of period instruments, including recorder.
Katherine was a choral scholar at Kings College London before going to Basle where she studied with some of Europe's leading experts in the field and later with others including Emma Kirkby and Andreas Scholl.
She performs regularly throughout Europe with a number of groups. She also directs her group Le Basile which specialises in 14th and 15th century music.
Uri is well known in Israel as a performer both on recorder and viola de gamba.
He taught recorder at the Petach Tikva conservatorie before studying in Basle from where he graduated with honours in 2005.
He too performs worldwide and co directs Le Basile with his wife.
The lecture begins at 7.15 for 7.30pm tomorrow. Tickets cost just £5.
Looking ahead to Sunday May 6 at the Wiltshire Music Centre, there is more early music when Sophie Yates performs Elizabethan music on the virginal.
This is a rare chance to hear the virginal - it looks like a clavichord but makes a sound like a small harpsichord - played live, though in Elizabethan times most homes of any substance would not have been without the instrument.
Queen Elizabeth sought solace in its entrancing sounds as a way to 'shun melancholy'.
Sophie Yates' programme includes pieces by Philips, Gibbons and Byrd but centres around the music of John Bull a composer whose music requires considerable virtuosity yet offers a vivid insight into the colour and intrigue of England's Golden Age.
Tickets cost £13.
For more information and to book tickets telephone 01225 860110.
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