Musical Shakespeare

William Shakespeare’s legacy goes even further then we imagined. His influence has spread as far as the soundtrack of our lives, the music that has hit the charts since the fifties of the 20th century to nowadays. 

“ Sweet and noble lad, be not aggrieved!”, “brotherhood for young Christian men!” to be thanked “over and again”: don't they  sound curiously similar in meaning to “Young man, there's no need to feel down” and “It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.” (Young Men’s Christian Association), from the renowned song by The Village People?! Doesn’t “Into the well, I cast a humble pray’r” remind us of Carly Rae’s “I threw a wish in the well”, the first line of “Call Me Maybe”? 

Erik Dridriksen’s Pop Sonnets. Shakespearean spins to your favorite songs. Philadelphia, Quirk Books, 2015, highlights the relationship between Shakespeare and our everyday life. These hundred poems belong to a collection, he explains, whose circulation has been limited to a group of professionals – musicians, songwriters, producers -, who made them the starting point for their compositions. Besides the Bard’s celebrated 154 sonnets first published in 1608, “his complete oeuvre was far larger… These sonnets survived by being passed down orally… In 1743, Sir Kirk de Edin began transcribing these sonnets… His work went largely unnoticed, however, until Columbia record executive Robert Lorre discovered the manuscripts in 1951 and began using the sonnets as the foundation for new singles”, Dridriksen writes in the Introduction. “The volume you hold is a selection of these lesser-known sonnets, along with the titles of the songs they helped spark”. 

Like the more famous older sonnets, this collection is divided in groups according to the theme - love, despair, time and mortality, rogues, rascals and wanton women, and ballads of heroes. The interpreters of the songs they inspired are as varied as Frank Sinatra and The Clash, Will Smith and Johnny Cash, the Beatles and Lorde… 

To read a selection of the sonnets you can visit the Dridriksen's site  or follow his Twitter account, where every Thursday he posts a sonnet inviting the followers to guess which song it was a model for… or you can buy the book, whose cover photo is posted above. 





What? “By” Erik Dridriksen makes you dubious about authorship? And, well, the publisher presents the book as “a collection of 100 classic pop songs reimagined as Shakespearean sonnets”. And you can't find any trace of Sir Kirk de Edin who first transcribed these sonnets, of Columbia record (the actual record label is Columbia records) and Robert Lorre, all mentioned in the Introduction? 

Your doubts are well founded: the sonnets have been “reimagined” by the witty “software engineer, musician, sonneteer and trivia enthusiast” Erik Didriksen who, using syntax, pronouns, lexicon and a poetic form associated to Shakespeare and his age, has created a fun and pleasant work. 

In each sonnet the first two lines and the last two contain key-words, present also in the modern song and a hint for guessing which one it is. 

“Shakespeare’s plays were intended for performance... why do we   believe his sonnets were intended solely for the page?”.                                                      

A visit to the National Gallery, London

When I've had the opportunity to spend whole months in London, visits to the National Gallery were part of my weekly routine. Watching the artworks of the European and world painters was an ever new emotion. 

Credits: National Gallery London 2013 March, by Morio - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons. From Wikipedia.National Gallery

Today, if you want a first approach to the collection of masters from the 13th to the 20th century housed in the gallery in Trafalgar Square, but you're not on the spot, you can take an online tour and explore the paintings A to Z. The names go from Leonardo to a number of artists of the Italian Renaissance, from Caravaggio to the Dutch and to many others. So many that it's useless to try to make a list here.

Needless to say that watching a painting on a computer screen is in no way comparable to the emotion one experiences standing in front of the real artwork. 

Halfway beetwen the internet surfing and the in-presence experience is the film. Next Monday, November 23rd, you'll have the opportunity  to watch Frederick Wiseman's documentary film National Gallery  in streaming. 

Credits: IMDB, Internet Movie Database

When watching a film the spectator is caught as if he was there, in the story. In  fictional films ideas, emotions and feelings are played by actors, here it is the paintings that play ideas and feelings, 

narrate stories and convey meanings and emotions. 

Where to see the film: MYmovies.it. You'll have to register for free and follow the instructions. 
When: 2015, Monday, November 23rd.
Time: 21:00 GMT+1.

Happy holidays, happy 2015

Happy Christmas holidays and happy 2015.

This year you're not going to listen to a Christmas carol, but watch a Big Bang Theory Christmas episode :) :

Look Back in Anger, by John Osborne, 1956

Highlights from Look Back in Anger.

A film version of the play.

Human rights, freedom of the press, freedom of speech: John Milton, Areopagitica, 1644

John Milton (1608-1674) was born into a Puritan family, he supported Cromwell’s government and in 1649 he was appointed Secretary for Foreign Languages (he had studied Latin, Greek, and Italian).

After the fall of Charles I, censorship had been abolished, but it had been soon reintroduced after a number of libels and pamphlets were published, whose content was disturbing also for the Puritans. The Licensing Act, 1643, restored preventive censorship (that is, before) the book was published.

Milton’s argumentations were not accepted at that time, but they would become part of the reflection on the human rights later.

                

Note on the title – "… Areopagitikos [was] a speech written by the Athenian orator Isocrates in the 5th century BC. (The Areopagus is a hill in Athens, the site of real and legendary tribunals, and was the name of a council whose power Isocrates hoped to restore)". From: http://tinyurl.com/b4cajc

Reading from: Areopagitica, 1644

I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how Books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors. For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men [1]. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. ‘Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. […]

As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. […]

Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.

[1] Reference to a Greek myth in which the teeth of a dead dragon, planted in the ground, give birth to great warriors.

A Valentine's Day love song

It's ok for everyone, the English- speaking ones and the French :)

Gallant

From: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gallant

Gallant: "a young man of fashion", a ladies' man, "a man who enjoys being with and giving attention to women", "a man who shows a marked fondness for the company of women or is especially attentive to women".

Epiphany

From: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epiphany

epiph·a·ny

 noun \i-ˈpi-fə-nē\

Epiphany : a Christian festival held on January 6 in honor of the coming of the three kings to the infant Jesus Christ

: a moment in which you suddenly see or understand something in a new or very clear way

plural epiph·a·nies

Full Definition of EPIPHANY

1

capitalized :  January 6 observed as a church festival in commemoration of the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles or in the Eastern Church in commemoration of the baptism of Christ

2

:  an appearance or manifestation especially of a divine being

3

a (1) :  a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something (2) :  an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking (3) :  an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure

b :  a revealing scene or moment

What's in a poem/ 2

The Solitary Reaper, William Wordsworth, 1807.

Henry Bacon, The Peasant Girl, 1883

"Behold her single in the field... Reaping and singing by herself..."

 

"Among the farthest Hebrides"

Flow Gently, Sweet Afton

"Will no one tell me what she sings? - 

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow 

For old, unhappy, far-off things, 

And battles long ago: 

Or is it some humble lay, 

Familiar matter of to-day? 

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, 

That has been, and may be again?" 

What's in a poem

Daffodils, by William Wordsworth, 1804.
Senses, emotions, poetic inspiration: "poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity" (Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 1798, 1800).
The poet lived most of his life in the Lake District.

        Below, Wordsworth's house in Grasmere, Dove Cottage.

Daffodils bloom in early spring. 

Listen to the poem read by a famous English actor, Jeremy Irons.

"A host of golden daffodils"

Happy 2014

The Tempest

A post in progress...

Prospero, former duke of Milan, has been living on a desert island in the Mediterranean with his daughter Miranda since the day his brother Antonio usurped and exiled him.

Prospero is a wizard and he uses magic to provoke a tempest and the apparent sinking of Antonio's accomplice ship, king Alonso, on their way back to Naples from Tunis.

Antonio, the king and his son Ferdinand, his court and the mariners are thrown on different points of the island.
Each character is convinced that the others died, while the king's ship is "safely in harbour". 

Free icons for non-commercial use from: http://sweetclipart.com/ and http://www.clker.com/

On Prospero's arrival the island was inhabited by Caliban, the son of the witch Sycorax, and by a  magical being, Ariel. 

Prospero makes the half-human Caliban his slave and Ariel his magical helper.

Trinculo, a jester at king Alonso's court, on first seeing Caliban says: 

What have we here? a man or a fish? dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient fish- like smell; a kind of not the newest Poor- John. A strange fish!

 But soon he realizes the "fish" is: 

Legged like a man and his fins like arms! Warm o’ my troth! I do now let loose my opinion; hold it no longer: this is no fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt.

The spirit Ariel is invisible to common people, though they can hear his music.  
He helps Prospero in taking his - bloodless - revenge against his usurpers and getting his dukedom back. 
He is painted as a nymph (below).

William Hamilton, Prospero and Ariel, 1797

Or as a spirit with a somewhat animal face, like in Fuseli's painting (below). "On the bat's back I do fly".

Henry Fuseli, Ariel, 1800-1810

  
In William Hogarth's Scene from The Tempest, Ariel is an angel musician (below, left, on top of the rock), while Caliban (below, right) is a poor being, deformed, sentenced to hard labour.

William Hogarth, The Tempest, 1728.

It is Ariel's hypnotic music that guides the young prince and the other shipreck, in small groups, from different points of the island, towards Prospero's cave. 

While Ferdinando is following the path traced by Ariel's music, he meets Miranda. 

She is astonished at the sight of the young man: the only human being she has ever known is her father and she wonders if Ferdinando is of their same species.

The two young ones fall in love at first sight.

Before giving his consent to their wedding, Prospero tries Ferdinando charging him with hard work, that the young man dutifully carries on. 

Happy Christmas and Happy New Year!

An English Christmas song to wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Winter Holidays!

  

Besides the interpretation by the Muppets, the song is just as it sounds, featuring a "true love" presenting his/ her beloved one with an increasing number of weird gifts: a partridge, two turtle doves, three French hens, four calling birds, five golden rings, six geese a-laying, seven swans a-swimming, eight maids a-milking, nine ladies dancing, ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers piping, twelve drummers drumming (the lyrics is here).

I guess these gifts are not your favourites and the whole text may appear surreal, so let's try to make sense of this 250-years-old song and see its connection with Christmas.

A religious interpretation of the symbolical meaning of the gifts can be read in The Voice, a website collecting biblical and theological resources. The article gives a general account on the "twelve days" of Christmas, from the 25th of December to the 5th of January. The cycle closes with the 6th of January, which in many cultures (in Italy, for example) is the day in which gifts are given, especially to the chidren. Then it analyses the twelve figures: the partridge is an image of Jesus Christ, the two turtle doves stand for the Old and the New Testament, etc.

An article on the tradition of Christmas carols (carol= choral song), questioning the previous interpretation, is on the BBC website, which finds the origin of the song in a game played on the Twelfth Night. In this case, the partridge would be the symbol of the devil! An example of "the way in which a popular song can be reworked as a hymn or carol".

Christmas is a celebration of new life. It falls in the days immediately after the winter solstice - in our hemisphere 21st December, with the shortest day and longest night - daytime becoming longer and longer from that date on. It is interesting to know more about other winter festivities with the same character - celebrating the light and new life, feasting, giving gifts, having fun  - held in the same period in other places and times on this page of the BBC.

Beowullf

The LEGO Beowulf video you are going to watch is a fast and fun summary of the epic poem... and yes, all the stuff is made up of colourful LEGO bricks.

Part one 

6th century - The young hero Beowulf comes from Scandinavia to help the Dane king Hrothgar against the attacks of the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills him. 

"Then from the moorland, by misty crags, with God’s wrath laden, Grendel came" 

"Then laughed his heart; for the monster was minded... to sever the soul of each, life from body, since lusty banquet waited his will!"

"... no keenest blade, no farest of falchions fashioned on earth, could harm or hurt that hideous fiend!" 

"To Beowulf now the glory was given..."  

Part two

"Grendel's mother... the death of her son to avenge" 

comes to the hall. Beowulf kills her.

Part three
Fifty years later, Beowulf is king, "old and gray".
He defeats a dragon, but

"The wound began,

which that dragon-of-earth had erst inflicted,

to swell and smart; and soon he found

in his breast was boiling, baleful and deep,

pain of poison"

Celtic Britain

Learn about the Celts and have fun with this BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation)
learning unit about the Celts. 

Click on the link and start the activities.  

21st-Century Creature

Bionics is the branch of scientific research based on the use of "models of living sytems... in order to find new ideas for useful artificial machines" (definition from the Encyclopaedia Britannica online).
An article in today's Excite News refers about a "man" walking and breathing with artificial parts. Actually, the "man" is a robot made up of sophisticated pieces of technology, with a face modelled after a real living person and dressed up with clothes form Harrods, London.
It's interesting to learn about the reaction of the creators at their first sight of their Creature.

"How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips." (Dr. Frankenstein).

"I thought it was rather revolting to be honest," he says. "It was quite a shock to see a face that closely resembles what I see in the mirror every morning on this kind of dystopian looking machine." (Bertolt Meyer).

Ugliness is not the only motive for these reactions. Can you imagine any other?

Punctuation matters!

The 24th of September in the USA every year they celebrate punctuation. Can't believe that? Then visit the site National Punctuation Day. 
There's even a contest on "how punctuaction changed my life"...
Well, seriously, the contest is on "how National Punctuation Day® has affected the way you think about punctuation (or not), and how the holiday has affected your writing (or not)."... that's much the same as changing your life, since the right punctuation can save lives :)
"Let's eat grandma" or "Let's eat, grandma": guess which one the wolf in the story of Little Red Riding Hood would find appropriate.

Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus

A Gothic novel by Mary Shelley, first published 1818. 

Here is a short biography of the writer.

The picture summarises the plot:

But the structure of the novel is more complex:

Caspar David Friedrich, The Sea of Ice, 1823-1824

Friederich's painting has no direct relation to Mary Shelley's novel, but it is a beautiful illustration of the environment in which Captain Walton meets Dr. Frankenstein and the Creature. 

The wanderings of the protagonists can be followed on the map:

A long hunt through Europe and a meeting at the North Pole

Do you love dogs?

Revise the If-clauses with your pet. Watch this veeeery nice clip from BuzzFeed:

Today it's Earth Day!

The Earth Day is celebrated on April 22nd each year to promote awareness of environmental issues. since 1970. The first celebration  represented the culmination of a decade of discussions triggered by Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring (1962). It was conceived by Senator Gaylord Nelson, American environmentalist, and was attended by 20 million Americans. Today it has become the Earth Week, celebrated in approximately 200 countries, with educational activities, conferences, events, encouragement to environmentally sustainable behaviour.

The Earth seen from NASA expedition Apollo 17, 1972

The Earth Day is the first "truly human" celebration according to anthropologist Margaret Mead, since it exceeds the national, ethnic, cultural, religious limits of other celebrations.

Theis year's Earth Day is devoted to Climate Change. The Earth Day Network encourages you to upload your photos to document the changes you detect in your area. 

In our Country, the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations) supports the annual concert for the Earth Day in Milan.

Yet, even if we're not there, we're all here on this - so far - unique Planet and can calabrate the Day raising awareness of global issues like the use of renewable energy sources, the necessity of education to new behaviors ranging from recycling and energy efficiency, to reduction and reuse consumption objects.