Michael Galasso - Scenes (1984)

The album Scenes (1984) is an original composition for violin written and performed by the American musical director Michael Galasso. The music follows a dense minimalist line, of vibrant airs and automated echoes (achieved on solo violin); an expressive and raw performance with dark nuances of the new age and the neo-classical genre.

tap tap tap! a sad waltz of a wicked dream

dance dance dance! a sad dance of a bad dream

Download

Michael Galasso was an American composer and violinist who wrote mostly - original pieces - for picture films. He worked in many movies including Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) and Chungking Express (1994). In 2009 he was awarded with the César Award for Best Music Written for a Film for the French director Marin Provost’s movie Séraphine.

John Blow - Venus & Adonis

Following the mood of last post I decided to bring up a musical interpretation of Ovid’s myth, John Blow’s Venus and Adonis.

This three-act piece originally presented as a “masque for the entertainment of the King” was written for the court of King Charles II and first performed in Oxford in 1681. It is considered by some to be the “earliest surviving English opera” (source: The New Grove) but its structure with numerous dances and musical interludes resembles a masque while its historical position in the Restoration period as well as its brevity point out a semi-opera.

The libretto has for a long time been attributed to the renowned English dramatist Aphra Behn but recently its authorship has been rejected and the composition finally credited to Anne Kingsmill Finch, Countess of Winchilsea [and maid of honour to the Duchess of York]. The work includes a number of comical scenes like the spelling lesson of the young cupids and the discussion of Venus and Adonis about the “forces” of love. It mocks the fleeting and debauched courtly love, where only "the foolish, ugly and the old" are faithful;

Cupid

     Courtiers, there is no faith in you,

     You change as often as you can:

     Your women they continue true

     But till they see another man.

 (…)

Cupid

     At court I find constant and true

     Only an aged lord or two

The satire becomes even more amusing when we learn that Cupid was played by Lady Mary Tudor, King Charles’ illegitimate daughter (daughter of Davis and the King), and Venus by Mary "Moll" Davis, the King's mistress.

Blow’s composition is in many senses unique and inventive. Even though it shares some of the period’s tendencies, especially those held by the French opera, of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s tragédie-lyrique – as is the case of the Overture and the edifying Prologue, as well as the large display of popular dances such as the Sarabrand and the Gavatt - the piece follows a very innovative composition with no strict order of arias and musical interludes, allowing for a large use of chorus (so much appreciated by the English). Likewise, opposing the period’s tradition of happy endings (in Baroque opera, myths were often rewritten to have happy endings) Blow’s Venus and Adonis ends tragically.

Here you can download Harmonia Mundi’s edition, conducted by René Jacobs.

Do you believe in love at first sight? – a journal (1)

Peter Paul Rubens - Venus & Adonis (detail) ca. 1635

"Once, when Venus’ son [Eros] was kissing her, his quiver dangling down, a jutting arrow, unbeknown, had grazed her breast. She pushed the boy away. In fact the wound was deeper than it seemed, though unperceived at first. [And she became] enraptured by the beauty of a man [Adonis]." (Ovid, Metamorphoses 10. 525 ff; trans. Melville)

Eros appears in ancient Greek sources under several guises. In the earliest sources, such as the cosmogonies and the Eleusinian mysteries, he is referred as being one of the primordial gods coming into existence right after the advent of Chaos, Gaia and Tartarus. In other myths he is the son of Aphrodite and in later works, appears as a blindfolded child (signifying the blindness of love) which is the precursor to the famous chubby Cupid of Renaissance paintings.

According to the myth in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, one day Cupid accidentally pierces her mother with one of his arrows making Venus fall in love with the first person she sees, the young and handsome Adonis.

Ah, and that’s how love chances! Love always happens at first sight. Love always comes at first glance. It can take seconds or years but, every time, its threads are cast at the first baffled stare. As if we just opened our eyes to the world for the first time, ever being shut until the moment the lid is lifted and the design [creation] unveiled.

Forces are difficult to fathom, moving us on erected filaments, guided on silver strings. Gently tossed and flung into shades and beams of silhouettes we don’t descry. The hesitant steps, the modest smiles, the timid look under the dark shade of hair. Two young outsiders in an innocent game of tag. 

“A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous” 

- Ingrid Bergman

Then suddenly it happens, just like a spell, just like magic, two people speaking a dialect only they tell, a mute vibrating language of rhythms and pulsations.

The realm mutates.

Sea and air gush its blue, overflowing their shades above the frame [sketch, skeleton]. Rosy-red blurs of movement and yellow drops of fate. Colours shine brighter, music sounds louder, lips move faster, words mute… and everything motionless. Blood rushes, the heat rises my crown and everything breathes. Everything lives. 

Paolo Veronese - Venus and Adonis 1582

Ventura ventura space people

After many years of cracked and debauched anime series and illustrious mangas, I finally decided to watch Urusei Yatsura!  ---------- ventura ventura space people

Urusei Yatsura (うる星やつら) is the mind-creation of the celebrated female mangaka Rumiko Takahashi (author of Inuyasha and Ranma ½) and one of the most beloved animated series to ever have been broadcasted on Japanese television. This renowned comedy series was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Sunday from 1978 to 1987, later adapted into a successful anime TV series (produced by Kitty Films and broadcast on Fuji Television affiliates) from 1981 to 1986. It produced over 195 TV episodes, 6 movies, 9 OVAs and went on to become one of Japan's most influential animated television comedies.

Urusei Yatsura tells the story of a tempestuous (hey, it’s a pun!) relationship between an unlucky lecherous high school student – Ataru Moriboshi - and a hyper-jealous and sensual demon girl from outer-space – Lum - who find their way between a series of misadventures, always escorted by the constant appearance of a bulky backing of super-weird and supreme bizarre characters to spice things up!  - an array of envious folklore spirits and wild aliens from distant galaxies!

Moriboshi Ataru, the most unlucky person in the world, failed womanizer and a loser for life (“I should never had him” – says his mother every now and then) is chosen as the random computer selected opponent to face an Oni (an alien race) invasion to conquer Earth. In order to save the world Ataru must win in an alternate version of the game of tag (which in Japan is called "the game of the Oni"); Ataru is challenged to grab the horns of an oni-girl called Lum - a sexy tiger-skin-bikini attired alien full of sex-appeal and a challenging temper - in a ten-day race. A misunderstanding leads Lum (for her own thrill) to believe that Ataru is in love and wishing to marry her. The boy, with no other option after building up a colossal debt to the Space Taxi Union, is forced to accept the strange alien at his house - and so the story begins.

The series includes a lot of parody of the science-fiction genre (with a lot of clichés and exaggerated situations). Rumiko forms a fusion of a highly physical slapstick comedy with a non-sense humour of absurd situations, attractive characters and tacky puns inspiring many of today’s ecchi comedies like Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou and Love Hina which borrowed many features like the violent and jealous Hannya oni-type girl. But more than just a sci-fi parody, Urusei Yatsura is a home to everything that can make up for a good laugh, everything from television clichés, pop culture and high school life to ancient legends and lore.

The manga received the Shogakukan Manga Award in 1981. 

Urusei Yatsura was also the first major work in which Mamoru Oshii (director of Angel’s Egg and Ghost in the Shell) was involved, and is responsible for bringing him to the spotlight. 

Let’s put weird and weird together and make it even weirder.

I’m thinking about buying the Glénat edition of Urusei Yatsura manga series, but as always “money rules the world” and from the point I’m standing I’m more in the position of being a slave than a ruler.