Fragonard: The Return of the Drove

D and I have been enjoying explorations of the many fine art museums in our area. I enjoy taking photos (only where permitted) to document my experience with certain works of art that move and delight me. The photo series also show how I tend to experience art, starting with a wide perspective, then focusing in on layers and details. I always read the museum placards, and photograph them, too.

Since I have a fine collection of these photo essays, I'll post some of them here. The accompanying texts are copied from my photos of the placards. 

On a recent visit to the Worcester Art Museum, I was delighted to find a work by one of my favorite artists, French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806). This painting, The Return of the Drove, inspires all sorts of memories of my farm childhood, but beyond that, it is a work full of stories.  Take a closer look:

This just took my breath away

“Write while the heat is in you”

“Write while the heat is in you. When the farmer burns a hole in his yoke he carries the hot iron quickly from the fire to the wood for every moment it is less effectual to penetrate pierce it. It must be used instantly or it is useless The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”

—From the Journal of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), February 10, 1852.

An Unexpected Treat

A few weeks ago on the way home from somewhere or other, I stopped by a little dead-end street that looks out over a section of a small river. It’s a good place to see ducks and other birds. I saw a ten-point buck here once.

On this day, as I pulled into the little parking area, I could see movement down on the water… ducks! And oh, it was a pair of my favorite ducks:

“A more practical and vital science”

“We read the English poets; we study botany and zoology and geology, lean and dry as they are; and it is rare that we get a new suggestion. It is ebb-tide with the scientific reports, Professor ______ in the chair. We would fain know something more about these animals and stones and trees around us. We are ready to skin the animals alive to come at them. Our scientific names convey a very partial information only; they suggest certain thoughts only. It does not occur to me that there are other names for most of these objects, given by a people who stood between me and them, who had better senses than our race. How little I know of that arbor-vitae when I have learned only what science can tell me! It is but a word. It is not a tree of life. But there are twenty words for the tree and its different parts which the Indian gave, which are not in our botanies, which imply a more practical and vital science. He used it every day. He was well acquainted with its wood, and its bark, and its leaves. No science does more than arrange what knowledge we have of any class of objects. But, generally speaking, how much more conversant was the Indian with any wild animal or plant than we are, and in his language is implied all that intimacy, as much as ours is expressed in our language. How many words in his language about a moose, or birch bark, and the like!”

—From the Journal of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), March 5, 1858.

CONCORA Bach Festival Opens This Weekend

Join CONCORA over three weekends in March, as Bach’s glorious Mass in B Minor is explored in preparation for CONCORA’s performance with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra on March 30, 2014 at 4:00 PM at Immanuel Congregational Church in Hartford.

The public performance of the Mass in B Minor marks Maestro Richard Coffey’s final concert with CONCORA, as he steps down as Artistic Director after 40 years.

According to Maestro Coffey, “The Mass in B Minor represents the culmination of the entire life’s work of J.S. Bach. Within it there is poignancy, contemplation, architectural splendor and unbridled joy all delivered by the hands and voices of choruses, soloists, and large orchestra.”

CONCORA’s Bach Festival offers two Saturdays, each with a morning lecture and a Community Sing, led by Maestro Coffey, lunch, and an open CONCORA rehearsal from 1:00 to 4:00 PM, with light refreshments. Three Sunday afternoons will feature special guests: Dr. Julianne Baird, soprano; Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, mezzo-soprano; and Dr. Christoph Wolff, eminent Bach scholar.

More information, and a registration form, may be found at www.concora.org.

By the way, the figure shown at the top of this post is Bach's famous, and beloved monogram. It is composed (heh) of his initials, JSB, superimposed in mirror image, and crowned. Here it is in expanded format:

 See?

The Morning After

This little essay is going to sound like a rant, and to some extent, it is. But more than that, it’s a question: Why?

OK, two questions.

Am I the only one?

Up Close and Personal

A few weeks ago as I worked in my office, I stretched and took a look out the office window into the back yard. Here’s what I saw:

Elusive Grey Ghost

Several weeks ago, while scanning for Horned Larks and Snow Buntings in my meadow, I spotted what I thought was a Grey Ghost – a male Northern Harrier – away in the back of the meadow, where brush and grasses have been left standing, off to the left of this photo: 

Way back here:

I had caught the startling flash of white underwing from a bird that dipped and wheeled low over the russet remains of meadowsweet, asters, and goldenrod. On several return trips, I again saw the white wings, rising and falling, but never near enough to see entire, and no path allowed me closer access.

More recently, as I was studying the lights and contrasts of frost and foliage during a particularly cold period, the white wings rose again and brought the bird close enough for me to see it easily …. Yes, there it was, a Grey Ghost, a male Northern Harrier.

Who Was Here?

How I See Winter

In my meadow:

“To put my world in order”

“I would feel dead if I didn't have the ability periodically to put my world in order with a poem. I think to be inarticulate is a great suffering, and is especially so to anyone who has a certain knack for poetry.”

—American poet Richard Wilbur (b. 1921).

“The world knows not”

Wind from the Sea

Andrew Wyeth, American , 1917-2009

Tempera on hardboard, 1947

National Gallery, Washington DC

Image ©2014 Quodlibet All rights reserved

Every man has his secret sorrows, which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold when he is only sad.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet (1807-1882)

More images of this evocative painting by Andrew Wyeth:

“What we call wildness”

Red-tailed Hawk (juvenile)

© Quodlibet. All rights reserved

“What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own. The hen-hawk shuns the farmer, but it seeks the friendly shelter and support of the pine. It will not consent to walk in the barn-yard, but it loves to soar above the clouds. It has its own way and is beautiful, when we would fain subject it to our will. So any surpassing work of art is strange and wild to the mass of men, as genius itself. No hawk that soars and steals our poultry is wilder than genius, and none is more persecuted or above persecution. It can never be poet laureate, to say ‘Pretty Poll’ and ‘Polly want a cracker’.”

—From the Journal of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), February 16, 1859.

Micro-Management?

From an old Ann Landers column:

Dear Ann: I'm a 16 year old teenager who is a nervous wreck from getting yelled at. All I hear from morning to night is; stop being mean to your brother, get off the phone, hang up your clothes, do your homework, and clean your room! What can I do to get them off my case??”

Ann Landers: Stop being mean to your brother, get off the phone, hang up your clothes, do your homework, and clean your room!

“Who Killed Cock Robin?”

Who Killed Cock Robin?

 Anonymous

This is an anonymous English poem, dating perhaps to the 15th century or earlier. I include it here solely for its ornithological references and interesting language. Read it aloud, noting how one must adjust modern pronunciations (“thrush”) to older forms (“throosh”) to render the rhymes.

Chihuly: Blue and Beyond Blue

Blue and Beyond Blue
Dale Chilhuly (American, b. 1941)
New Britain Museum of American Art

Image ©2014 Quodlibet All rights reserved

This interesting piece, Blue and Beyond Blue, by American artist Dale Chihuly (b.1941) was installed at the New Britain Museum of American Art several years ago. The piece actually hangs on the vertical; I took this photo at an angle so as to avoid any peripheral objects. Well, I like it better  this way.

It's about time I recorded my impressions of this impressive piece.

“The blue livery of winter’s band”

Blue Jay in my yard this morning. It was 3˚F.

“To make a perfect winter day like this, you must have a clear, sparkling air, with a sheen from the snow, sufficient cold, little or no wind; and the warmth must come directly from the sun. It must not be a thawing warmth. The tension of nature must not be relaxed. The earth must be resonant if bare, and you hear the lisping tinkle of chickadees from time to time and the unrelenting cold-steel scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself; in the blue livery of winter’s band. It is like a flourish of trumpets to the winter sky. There is no hint of incubation in the jay’s scream. Like the creak of a cart-wheel. There is no cushion for sounds now.”

—From the Journal of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), February 12, 1854.

“The crow, the goose, the eagle carry my quill”

“My Journal is that of me which else would spill over and run to waste, gleanings from the field which in action I reap. I must not live for it, but in it for the gods. They are my correspondent, to whom daily I send off this sheet postpaid. I am clerk in their counting-room, and at evening transfer the account from my day-book to ledger. It is as a leaf which hangs over my head in the path. I bend the twig and write my prayers on it; then letting it go, the bough springs up and shows the scrawl to heaven. As if it were not kept shut in my desk, but were as public a leaf as any in nature. It is papyrus by the riverside; it is vellum in the pastures; it is parchment on the hills. I find it everywhere as free as the leaves which troop along the lanes in autumn. The crow, the goose, the eagle carry my quill, and the wind blows the leaves as far as I go. Or, if my imagination does not soar, but gropes in slime and mud, then I write with a reed.”

—From the Journal of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), February 8, 1841.

“I must be taken as I have been made”

I never got around to posting my usual small commemoration yesterday, February 7, the anniversary of Dickens’ birth. But because the concept of success and failure has been much on my mind these past two days, I offer this, from Great Expectations:

“So, I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.”

―Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Great Expectations

How I Keep My Head Together

Today was one of those fractured days. I woke up with a stunning headache, which lingered until 9am. Circumstances over which I had no control required that I compose and send an important message several weeks earlier than I had intended to; that took fully an hour and a half. The “arrival window” when the person was expected to arrive to repair the cooktop was shifted unexpectedly by three hours (earlier!), and I had to scramble to rearrange the rest of my day’s schedule and clean up the place where he had to work. Unexpected communications from colleagues required that I spend time to resolve problems A, B, and C and try to head off problems D, E, and F. Another hour or more. More time gone while the repair person was here and tried to explain away the mistakes he made last time. The results of the stove repair have created problem G that I will need to address in the near future. 

And of course on days like these, I am more apt to trip, spill things, crack my knee on the corbel under the counter, break a fingernail, and step on the cat. All of which happened.

Now, it’s approaching 4pm and I have accomplished nothing except the most rudimentary tasks. 

Fortunately, as I blundered through the day, I found little pieces of beauty and interest to keep my head from exploding:

“Shall not the scholar sit up late?”

Scholar with his Books.
Oil on canvas (1671) by
Gerbrand van den Eekhout (1621-1674).

“If the woodchopper rises early, shall not the scholar sit up late?”

 —From the Journal of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), February 6, 1842.

“Music's most serene dominions”

To a Singer

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

My soul is an enchanted boat,

Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside a helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
It seems to float ever, forever,
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound.

Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions
In music's most serene dominions;
Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.
And we sail on, away, afar,

Without a course, without a star,
But by the instinct of sweet music driven;
Till through Elysian garden islets
By thee, most beautiful of pilots,
Where never mortal pinnace glided,

The boat of my desire is guided;
Realms where the air we breathe is love,
Which in the winds on the waves doth move,
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.

In the Choir (Organist at the Gloucester Cathedral). Oil on canvas (1901) by Edwin Austin Abbey (1852- 1911), American painter working in England. New Britain Museum of American Art. Photographs ©2013 by Quodlibet. All rights reserved.

“To Music, To Becalm His Fever”

To Music, To Becalm His Fever

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

Angel with Lute (Detail, fresco, ca.1480)
Melozzo da Forlì (c. 1438-1494)

Charm me asleep, and melt me so

  With thy delicious numbers,

That, being ravish’d, hence I go

  Away in easy slumbers.

      Ease my sick head,

      And make my bed,

  Thou power that canst sever

      From me this ill,

      And quickly still,

      Though thou not kill

        My fever.

Thou sweetly canst convert the same

  From a consuming fire

Into a gentle licking flame,

  And make it thus expire.

      Then make me weep

      My pains asleep;

And give me such reposes

      That I, poor I,

      May think thereby

      I live and die

        ‘Mongst roses.

Fall on me like the silent dew,

  Or like those maiden showers

Which, by the peep of day, do strew

  A baptism o’er the flowers.

      Melt, melt my pains

      With thy soft strains;

That, having ease me given,

      With full delight

      I leave this light,

      And take my flight

        For Heaven.

CONCORA Presents Great Music of the Russian Orthodox Tradition

Later this month, CONCORA will present a full-length concert of great sacred choral works from the Orthodox tradition in the acoustically-resplendent Church of St. Thomas the Apostle in West Hartford, CT. 

This “Eclectic All-Night Vigil” (or Vespers), conducted by Richard Coffey, will feature the fifteen traditional sacred texts identified with Vespers, selected from works by a number of composers, including Georgy Sviridov, Pavel Chesnokov, Alexander Kastalsky, Alexandre Gretchaninoff, Arvo Pärt, and of course, Sergei Rachmaninoff.

CONCORA

Great Music of the Russian Orthodox Tradition

Richard Coffey, Artistic Director, conducting

Saturday, February 22, 2014, 7:30 PM

St. Thomas the Apostle Roman Catholic Church

872 Farmington Avenue, West Hartford

Snow date: Monday, February 24 at 7:30 PM

TICKETS

$45 Preferred seating

$25 General admission

$10 Students

FOR TICKETS CALL

860-293-0567

or visit www.concora.org

It Snowed Today

An eerie sense of cautious quiet

On a recent (unexpected) trip to Amherst-Hadley, I stopped in at the Honeypot, a great birding area with wide open fields, river, wooded edges, and plenty of habitat for winter birds. It’s a beautiful place:

“Almost impossible to discover”

“Returning about 5 P. M. across the Depot Field, I scare up from the ground a flock of about twenty birds, which fly low, making a short circuit to another part of the field.”

That’s Henry David Thoreau, writing in his journal on March 24, 1858. But I could have written the same passage a few days ago, changing just a few words:

“Returning about 1 P. M. across the South Meadow, I noted a flock of about twenty birds, which fly low, making a short circuit to another part of the field.”

What were they, Thoreau wondered? I recognized them the moment I saw them. I stopped in the little dirt lot next to the farm stand (closed for the winter), and positioned the truck so I could get some short cell-phone videos:

Handsome Fellow

We had a significant snowfall last night (at least eight inches), and today the birds are up close to the feeders. A handsome White-throated Sparrow was just outside the window; I can’t resist posting his portrait, with variations:

“The russet dress of nature”

This afternoon, when I was supposed to be working, instead I was browsing through Thoreau on Birds, a lovely collection of excerpts about from Thoreau’s Journals, arranged taxonomically and enhanced by snippets of information and commentary by Helen Cruickshank, who compiled the excerpts. (McGraw-Hill, ©1964)

I delighted in this excerpt about meadowlarks:

Honeypot Harrier

In December I traveled to Amherst-Hadley on family business, and, as I always do when I’m there during daylight, I made time to do a little birding in the beautifully preserved and managed agricultural areas in the region. My favorite fields offer fabulous raptor shows (Gyrfalcon!!) sparrow stravaganzas, and more.

Today I was lucky enough to get prime views of a juvenile Northern Harrier on the hunt. First the video, then a few stills and words of appreciation:

“Away goes the great wheeling, rambling flock”

“I see a large flock of snow buntings on the railroad causeway. Their wings are white above next the body, but black or dark beyond and on the back. This produces that regular black and white effect when they fly past you.”

—From the Journal of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), February 1, 1857.

Thoreau wrote about snow buntings elsewhere in his Journal; see excerpts below. His descriptions of their colors and  flight (offered below) are exactly correct, as you can see in these photos and videos, which I made several days ago in my meadow.