Just as colonial history and power structures persist beneath the surface of contemporary Australia, the source material persists beneath superimposed targets, floor plans and topographical lines. This dissonant dialectic, this cacophonic counterpoint between the European utopia below and the Noongar commentary above, is the engine driving the whirring gears of the whole exhibition.
What better way to wile away a winter’s hour than to feast on the music of spring? Even if one might sometimes wish for less warmth, more fire, in this program of Italian Baroque monodies, ground basses and chamber music, the proof is in the pudding. And what fine fare it is.
The Queen’s Six, now in their refreshed line‑up with altos Elisabeth Paul and Tom Lilburn replacing the original countertenors, bring to this repertoire the seamless blend you’d expect from singers who share not merely a concert platform but a postcode within Windsor Castle’s walls.
Since Thomas Blood was pardoned by the king for trying to make off with the Crown Jewels, it seems a small imposture to act tourist and cross the Liberties in…
Having heard the tales of Huguenots and Dumas’ fictional Count imprisoned there, we sail from Vieux-Port to Château d’If, that brittle limestone white against the blue.
Where Eden, Caldew and smooth Petteril meet, sits England’s northmost city: Cumbrian Carlisle. The Scottish border’s close; while within reach, The Solway Firth, the Pennines and the Lakes. A border…
Rosen insisted that to understand music in particular, and art and literature in general, one must take a historicist viewpoint, as well as engaging with it on many levels simultaneously.
The democratising and destructive nature of 12-tone music, whereby the selected tone row is both liberating and tyrannical, and its relationship to architecture, literature, and the visual arts, has long fascinated me. And, conceptually speaking, the Gesamtkunstwerk that is the Christian cathedral and its sonorous rites.
One could imagine a Piranesi of the page constructing sonnets like carceri to shore against their ruins – and ours.
Nolan brings to them the same concentration one brings to a page of Celan: nothing is throwaway, everything is load-bearing...