Tours of Tuscany

Tours of Tuscany
Join this small group tour and immerse yourself in the current of sensation for a week of food, wine and culture in Tuscany.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Sources of Inspiration for '... Arrivi ...Partenze'

Bruce Charles Chatwin ~ (13 May 1940 - 18 January 1989) was a British novelist and travel writer. He would not have considered being a nomadic writer as a career so much as a way of life, and he had hoped his greatest work would be about nomads. He collected a mass of relevant notes, "mammoth, unpublished," that eventually became part of his work on Australian Aborginines, The Songlines. Anatomy of Restlessness was published in 1997 and is a collection of unpublished essays, articles, short stories, and travel tales. This collection spans the twenty years of Bruce Chatwin's career as a writer.


Rainer Maria Rilke ~ (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926) is generally considered the German language's greatest 20th century poet. His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ~ (October 15, 1844 - August 25, 1900) was a German philosopher. His writing included critiques of religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science. His style of writing was distinctive, displaying a fondness for aphorism and paradox. Nietzsche's influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy, notably in existentialism and postmodernism. “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star”

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in neutral Zürich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1920. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature (poetry, art manifestoes, art theory), theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti war politic through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. The movement influenced later styles, movements, and groups including Surrealism, Pop Art and Fluxus.
COMPOSERS

Hildegard von Bingen ~ 1098 – September 17, 1179), was a German magistra and later, abbess. Approximately eighty compositions have survived, which is one of the largest repertoires among medieval composers In addition to music, Hildegard also wrote medical, botanical and geological treatises, and she even invented an alternative alphabet. The text of her writing and compositions reveals Hildegard's use of this form of modified medieval Latin, encompassing many invented, conflated and abridged words. Due to her inventions of words for her lyrics and a constructed script, many conlangers look upon her as a medieval precursor.

Jordi Savall i Bernadet ~ (born 1941, in Igualada, Spain) is a Spanish viol player and composer. He has been one of the major figures in the field of early music since the 1970s, largely responsible for bringing the viol (viola da gamba) back to life on the stage. His repertory ranges from Medieval to Renaissance and Baroque music.

In 1974 he formed the ensemble Hespèrion XX (since 2000 as Hespèrion XXI), together with the soprano Montserrat Figueras (his wife), Lorenzo Alpert and Hopkinson Smith. Hespèrion XX favored a style of interpretation characterised by great musical vitality and at the same time, maximum historical accuracy.

The Llibre Vermell de Montserrat (Catalan for "Red Book of Montserrat") is a collection of late medieval songs. The 14th century manuscript was located at the monastery of Montserrat outside Barcelona in Catalonia.

The manuscript was prepared in approximately 1399. It originally contained 172 double pages, of which 32 have been lost. The title "The Red Book of Montserrat" describes the red binding in which the collection was placed in the nineteenth century. No composer is identified for any of the songs it contains.

The monastery holds the shrine of the Virgin of Montserrat, which was a major site of pilgrimage during the time it was compiled.

Gilbert Bécaud ~ (October 24, 1927 – December 18, 2001) was a French singer, composer and actor, known as Monsieur 100,000 Volts for his energetic performances. His best-known hits are probably "Nathalie" and "Et maintenant".

Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an Academy Award-nominated American composer. Glass was born in Baltimore, Maryland as the son of Jewish migrants from Lithuania. His music is frequently described as minimalist, though he prefers the term theater music. He is considered one of the most influential composers of the late-20th centuryand is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public (apart from precursors such as Kurt Weill and Leonard Bernstein), in creating an accessibility not previously recognised by the broader market. Glass is extremely prolific as a composer; he has written ensemble works, operas, symphonies, concertos, film scores and for the piano. He is a strong supporter of the Tibetan cause. In 1987 he co-founded the Tibet House with Columbia University professor Robert Thurman and the actor Richard Gere. Glass lives in New York and in Nova Scotia.

Arvo Pärt ~ (born September 11, 1935 in Paide), is an Estonian composer, often identified with the school of minimalism and more specifically, that of "mystic minimalism" or "sacred minimalism". He is considered a pioneer of this style, along with contemporaries Henryk Górecki and John Tavener. Arvo Pärt is best known for his choral works. Pärt's musical education began at age 7, while he began attending music school in Rakvere (his family lived there at the time) and by 14 or 15 he was writing his own compositions. While studying composition (with teacher Heino Eller) at the Tallinn Conservatory it was said of him that: "he just seemed to shake his sleeves and notes would fall out". There were very few influences from outside the Soviet Union at this time, just a few illegal tapes and scores. Pärt describes some of his music as tintinnabuli - like the ringing of bells. The music is characterised by simple harmonies, often single unadorned notes, or triad chords which form the basis of western harmony. These are reminiscent of ringing bells, hence the name. Tintinnabuli works are rhythmically simple, and do not change tempo. The influence of early music is clear.

The Golden Gate Quartet is the most successful of all of the African-American gospel music groups who sang in the jubilee quartet style. Founded as the Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet in Norfolk, Virginia in 1934 by A. C. "Eddie" Griffin, Robert "Peg" Ford, Henry Owens, and Bill Johnson, they began as a traditional jubilee quartet, combining the clever arrangements associated with barbershop quartets with rhythms borrowed from the blues and jazz.


AUTHORS

Saint John of the Cross ~ (San Juan de la Cruz) (June 24, 1542 – December 14, 1591) was a major figure in the Catholic Reformation, a Spanish mystic and Carmelite friar born at Fontiveros, a small village near Ávila. He is renowned for his writings; both his poetry and his studies on the growth of the soul are considered the summit of mystical Spanish literature and one of the peaks of all Spanish literature. The third work, Ascent of Mount Carmel is a more systematic study of the ascetical endeavour of a soul looking for perfect union.

Dante Alighieri or simply Dante, (May 14/June 13, 1265 – September 13/14, 1321) was an Italian poet from Florence. His greatest work, the Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy), is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of world literature. The wrathful are purged by walking around in acrid smoke (Cantos XV through XVII). Souls correct themselves by learning how wrath has blinded their vision, impeding their judgment.

António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa (b. June 13, 1888 in Lisbon, Portugal — d. November 30, 1935 in the same city) was a poet and writer. Critic Harold Bloom referred to him in the book The Western Canon as the most representative poet of the twentieth century, along with Pablo Neruda. Pessoa is unique as an author due to the importance of heteronyms in his writing.

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