Maurice Ravel (1875-1933): Pavane pour une infante défunte

The light is dying. 

 Is the evening, 

Is the night for mourning?

     

 -Lily H.

Franz von Stucke, "Evening Star" (ca. 1911)

on view at the Frye Art Museum through February 2014

Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937):   Pavane pour une infante défunt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6A96yQO82I

"We are but skin about a wind, with muscles clenched against mortality. We sleep in a long reproachful dust against ourselves. We are full to the gorge with our own names for misery. Life, the pastures in which the night feeds and prunes the cud that nourishes us to despair."     -Djuna Barnes, Nightwood

Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999): Canconeta pour violon et orchestre a cordes

le coucher du soleil avant l'apparition des etoiles dans la nuit immense que constitue le dome du ciel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA_sf6mPyCo

Devenu aveugle à l'âge de trois ans, à la suite d'une diphtérie, Joaquín Rodrigo commence ses études musicales en Espagne avecFrancisco Antich, Enrique Goma et Eduardo Lopez Chavarri. Il se rend ensuite à Paris où il suit les cours de Paul Dukas à la Schola Cantorum de 1927 à 1931. Il fréquente alors le milieu musical parisien, rencontre Maurice Ravel et Manuel de Falla et compose le Concierto de Aranjuez pour guitare et orchestre.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joaqu%C3%ADn_Rodrigo

God forgives those who invent what they need.

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this

 year's  fashions 

even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no 

comfortable place in any political group. 

*

There are no stars tonight

But those of memory.

(Hart Crane)

*

La Strada

Giulietta Masina

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkWLoDxBaiY

"Lost in the Stars,"

 title of a play by Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill (1949) based on the novel Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Patton

Nocturne en noir et or

James Whistler, Nocturne en noir et or (la fusee qui tombe), 1875.  Detroit Institute of Arts.