Modernist

The Crystal Goblet, or why Printing Should Be Invisible

Rodrigo Galindez — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 05:01:29 +0000

Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favourite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in colour. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine.

For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain.

This is an excerpt of a lecture that Beatrice Warde gave to the British Typographers Guild, in October 1930. The full text can be read here.

Manifesto of Futurism

Rodrigo Galindez — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 04:37:05 +0000

We had stayed up all night, my friends and I, under hanging mosque lamps with domes of filigreed brass, domes starred like our spirits, shining like them with the prisoned radiance of electric hearts. For hours we had trampled our atavistic ennui into rich oriental rugs, arguing up to the last confines of logic and blackening many reams of paper with our frenzied scribbling.

An immense pride was buoying us up, because we felt ourselves alone at that hour, alone, awake, and on our feet, like proud beacons or forward sentries against an army of hostile stars glaring down at us from their celestial encampments. Alone with stokers feeding the hellish fires of great ships, alone with the black spectres who grope in the red-hot bellies of locomotives launched on their crazy courses, alone with drunkards reeling like wounded birds along the city walls.

Etliche Klassik-Stars der Deutschen Grammophon unterstützen den Moderator und erklären in kurzen Wortbeiträgen ihre Spezialthemen. Manchmal ist das furchtbar misslungen. Wenige deutsche Zuhörer werden verstehen, was der Pianist Lang Lang meint, wenn er das Konzert so erklärt: “Du (als Solist) bist der Striker in einem Football Team. Und Du hast einen Dirigenten, der den Ball kontrolliert und zu Dir weitergibt oder wirft.” Dass der Dirigent Christian Thielemann zum Thema “Taktstock” noch einmal mit der alten Geschichte von Lullys tödlicher Fußverletzung um die Ecke kommt, wird dagegen nur denjenigen langweilen, der eigentlich sowieso schon zu viel weiß, um zur Zielgruppe von 99 x Klassik zu gehören.

Was hier hätte entstehen können, wenn man die Auswahl der beteiligten Prominenten nicht nach der Berühmtheit und dem Marketingwert vorgenommen hätte, sondern nach der Bereitschaft, sich auf ein klingendes Lexikon-Projekt wirklich einzulassen und einen Begriff nicht nur zu erläutern, sondern ihn auch zu vorzuführen, das zeigen Anne Sofie von Otters Erläuterungen der Register einer Stimme und in idealer Weise auch Andreas Scholls gesungene Demonstrationen der Begriffe “Vibrato” und “Verzierungen”. Auch von der gelungenen Auswahl der Musikbeispiele, die das Erklärte meistens sinnfällig illustrieren, wird der Klassik-Einsteiger profitieren. Wenn Anne Sofie von Otter und Magdalena Kožená unmittelbar nacheinander mit “Oh del mio dolce amor” aus Glucks Oper Paride ed Elena zu hören sind, erklärt das viel besser, was das spezifische Timbre einer Stimme ist, als ellenlange Texte das je könnten.

99 x Klassik ersetzt kein gutes Musiklexikon wie den Atlas Musik aus dem DTV-Verlag. Aber bequemer und unterhaltsamer als hier kann man sich als Klassik-Neuling die wichtigsten Grundbegriffe vermutlich kaum aneignen. Darum: Sehr empfehlenswert!

Testing elements

Rodrigo Galindez — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 04:30:04 +0000

Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

The Futurist Manifesto

We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.

Three Intellectuals in Politics

To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on?

Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color.

Hello world!

Rodrigo Galindez — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 04:00:21 +0000

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!