The Book of St Albans, One of the Finest Medieval Manuscripts, Gets Digitized and Put Online

This past month, on the eve of the June 22nd feast of St Alban, the library of Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin announced that it had dig­i­tized the “13th cen­tu­ry mas­ter­piece” the Book of St Alban, a rich­ly illus­trat­ed man­u­script that “fea­tures 54 indi­vid­ual works of medieval art and has fas­ci­nat­ed read­ers across the cen­turies, from roy­al­ty to renais­sance schol­ars.”

Cre­at­ed by the Bene­dic­tine monk Matthew Paris, the man­u­script “chron­i­cles the life of St Alban,” notes The Irish Times, “and also out­lines the con­struc­tion of St Alban’s Cathe­dral in Hert­ford­shire.” The text and illus­tra­tions explain the ori­gins of a cult of St. Alban, the first Eng­lish mar­tyr, that began to spring up after his 4th cen­tu­ry death.

Accord­ing to the Ven­er­a­ble Bede, the Eng­lish monk who wrote the Eccle­si­as­ti­cal His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Peo­ple, the mar­tyr­dom of Alban involved a few mirac­u­lous events. Sen­tenced to die for his refusal to renounce Chris­tian­i­ty, Alban sup­pos­ed­ly peti­tioned God to dry up the Riv­er Ver so he could more quick­ly reach the place of his exe­cu­tion.

This mir­a­cle caused Alban’s Roman exe­cu­tion­er to fall to his feet, spon­ta­neous­ly con­vert, and refuse to kill the saint. A sec­ond exe­cu­tion­er stepped in to behead them both, where­upon this man’s eyes popped out of his head. “He who gave the wicked stroke,” writes Bede, “was not per­mit­ted to rejoice over the deceased; for his eyes dropped upon the ground togeth­er with the blessed mar­tyr’s head.”

In the illus­tra­tion of this gris­ly sto­ry (top) from the man­u­script, we see the exe­cu­tion­er hold­ing his eyes in his hand, and Alban’s head appears to have been caught by the hair on a tree branch above. Anoth­er illus­tra­tion, fur­ther up, shows a char­ac­ter named Her­a­clius mak­ing off with Alban’s head.

In a lat­er leg­end, Alban’s head rolled to the bot­tom of Holy­well Hill, and a well sprang from where it came to rest. On the sup­posed site of Alban’s exe­cu­tion now stands St Albans Cathe­dral, once St Albans Abbey, where the Book of St Albans remained for 300 years until Hen­ry VIII dis­solved Britain’s monas­ter­ies in 1539.

The book is writ­ten in both Latin and Anglo-Nor­man French, “which made it acces­si­ble to a wider sec­u­lar audi­ence includ­ing edu­cat­ed noble women,” Trin­i­ty Col­lege’s Caoimhe Ni Lochlainn writes. “It was bor­rowed by noble ladies of the peri­od, includ­ing the King’s sis­ter-in-law Count­ess of Corn­wall, Sanchia of Provence, and oth­ers.”

The man­u­script even­tu­al­ly made its way to Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin in 1661, where it has remained ever since, and where its “most­ly framed nar­ra­tive scenes” have been admired by a select few. Now every­one can access the book and its illus­tra­tions, made with a “tint­ed draw­ing tech­nique,” Lochlainn notes, “where out­lined draw­ings are high­light­ed with col­ored wash­es from a lim­it­ed palette. This tech­nique was dis­tinct­ly Eng­lish, dat­ing back to the Anglo Sax­on art of the 10th cen­tu­ry.”

See all the gris­ly details of this fas­ci­nat­ing arti­fact at Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions, and learn more about the man­u­script in the video just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Has Been Dig­i­tized and Put Online

The Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts of Medieval Europe: A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Joni Mitchell Sings “Both Sides Now” at the Newport Folk Festival: Watch Clips from Her First Full Concert Since 2002

This week­end, the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val made head­lines when it brought out of retire­ment two music leg­ends. Paul Simon returned to the stage and per­formed “Grace­land,” “The Box­er” and “oth­er clas­sics.” But Joni Mitchell stole the show when she per­formed (with a lit­tle help from Bran­di Carlile) “Both Sides Now,” “Big Yel­low Taxi,” “Just Like This Train” and 10 oth­er songs. Mitchell suf­fered a brain aneurysm in 2015, and had­n’t per­formed a full con­cert since 2002. Hence why the show was a big deal.

Get the full back­sto­ry on the New­port per­for­mance over at NPR.

Just Like This Train

Sum­mer­time

Cir­cle Game

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

Joni Mitchell Pub­lish­es a Book of Her Rarely Seen Paint­ings & Poet­ry

Joni Mitchell Sings an Aching­ly Pret­ty Ver­sion of “Both Sides Now” on the Mama Cass TV Show (1969)

See Clas­sic Per­for­mances of Joni Mitchell from the Very Ear­ly Years–Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell (1965/66)

How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Wood­stock,” the Song that Defined the Leg­endary Music Fes­ti­val, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969)

Songs by Joni Mitchell Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers & Vin­tage Movie Posters

When Erik Satie Took a Picture of Debussy & Stravinsky (June 1910)

Erik Satie knew his way around not just the piano but the cam­era as well. This is evi­denced by the image above, a 1911 por­trait of Claude Debussy and Igor Stravin­sky. Described by Christie’s as “an out­stand­ing pho­to­graph of the two com­posers in the library at Debussy’s home,” it was tak­en by Satie at the time when Serge Diaghilev’s Bal­lets Russ­es were per­form­ing Debussy’s Jeux and Stravin­sky’s The Rite of Spring. In the back­ground appears what looks like Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai’s The Great Wave Off Kana­gawa, a work of art “used by Debussy on the front cov­er of the first edi­tion of his sym­phon­ic sketch­es La mer.”

Just above appears anoth­er pic­ture cap­tured in Debussy’s home, this one of Debussy and Satie. “The pho­to was tak­en by Stravin­sky, if my mem­o­ry did­n’t go wrong,” says one com­menter on the r/classicalmusic sub­red­dit. Anoth­er express­es con­fu­sion about the sub­jects them­selves: “I thought they did­n’t like each oth­er?”

One respon­der explains that “they were friends at first, for quite some time, but lat­er their rela­tion­ship got worse.” Debussy’s orches­tra­tion of Satie’s Gymno­pe­dies brought those pieces to promi­nence, but, Satie ulti­mate­ly came to feel that Debussy had been stingy with the fruits of his great suc­cess.

Or so, at any rate, goes one inter­pre­ta­tion of the dis­so­lu­tion of Debussy and Satie’s friend­ship. Dif­fer­ent Red­di­tors con­tribute dif­fer­ent details: one that “every time they met, Satie would praise Rav­el’s music to annoy Debussy,” anoth­er that “Debussy kept a bot­tle of the cheap­est table wine for Satie for when he came over.” It can hard­ly have been easy, even in the best of times, for two of the strongest inno­va­tors in ear­ly-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry music to occu­py the same social space for long stretch­es of time, let alone in com­pa­ny that includ­ed the likes of Rav­el and Stravin­sky. More than a cen­tu­ry lat­er, their artis­tic lega­cies could hard­ly be more assured — as, one faint­ly sens­es when look­ing at these pho­tos, they knew would be the case.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear Debussy Play Debussy’s Most Famous Piece, “Clair de lune” (1913)

Hear the Very First Pieces of Ambi­ent Music, Erik Satie’s Fur­ni­ture Music (Cir­ca 1917)

Watch the 1917 Bal­let “Parade”: Cre­at­ed by Erik Satie, Pablo Picas­so & Jean Cocteau, It Pro­voked a Riot and Inspired the Word “Sur­re­al­ism”

The Night When Char­lie Park­er Played for Igor Stravin­sky (1951)

The Great Wave Off Kana­gawa by Hoku­sai: An Intro­duc­tion to the Icon­ic Japan­ese Wood­block Print in 17 Min­utes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Behold a Book of Color Shades Depicted with Feathers (Circa 1915)

Per­haps the 143 col­ors show­cased in The Bay­er Company’s ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry sam­ple book, Shades on Feath­ers, could be col­lect­ed in the field, but it would involve a lot of trav­el and patience, and the stalk­ing of sev­er­al endan­gered if not down­right extinct avian species.

Far eas­i­er, and much less expen­sive, for milliners, design­ers and dec­o­ra­tors to dye plain white feath­ers  exot­ic shades, fol­low­ing the instruc­tions in the sam­ple book.

Such arti­fi­cial­ly obtained rain­bows owe a lot to William Hen­ry Perkin, a teenage stu­dent of Ger­man chemist August Wil­helm von Hof­mann, who spent East­er vaca­tion of 1856 exper­i­ment­ing with ani­line, an organ­ic base his teacher had ear­li­er dis­cov­ered in coal tar.  Hop­ing to hit on a syn­thet­ic form of qui­nine, he acci­den­tal­ly hit on a solu­tion that col­ored silk a love­ly pur­ple shade — an inad­ver­tent eure­ka moment that ranks right up there with peni­cillin and the pret­zel.

A Sci­ence Muse­um Group pro­file details what hap­pened next:

Perkin named the colour mauve and the dye mau­veine. He decid­ed to try to mar­ket his dis­cov­ery instead of return­ing to col­lege.

On 26 August 1856, the Patent Office grant­ed Perkin a patent for ‘a new colour­ing mat­ter for dye­ing with a lilac or pur­ple colour stuffs of silk, cot­ton, wool, or oth­er mate­ri­als’.

Perk­in’s next step was to inter­est cloth dyers and print­ers in his dis­cov­ery. He had no expe­ri­ence of the tex­tile trade and lit­tle knowl­edge of large-scale chem­i­cal man­u­fac­ture. He cor­re­spond­ed with Robert and John Pullar in Glas­gow, who offered him sup­port. Perk­in’s luck changed towards the end of 1857 when the Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, decid­ed that mauve was the colour to wear. In Jan­u­ary 1858, Queen Vic­to­ria fol­lowed suit, wear­ing mauve to her daughter’s wed­ding.

Cue an explo­sion of dye man­u­fac­tur­ers across Great Britain and Europe, includ­ing Bay­er, pro­duc­er of the feath­er sam­ple book. The sur­vival of this arti­fact is some­what mirac­u­lous giv­en how vul­ner­a­ble antique feath­ers are to envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors, pests, and improp­er stor­age.

(The sam­ple book rec­om­mends clean­ing the feath­ers pri­or to dying in a luke­warm solu­tion of small amounts of olive oil soap and ammo­nia.)

The Sci­ence His­to­ry Insti­tute, own­er of this unusu­al object, esti­mates that the undat­ed book was pro­duced between 1913 and 1918, the year the Migra­to­ry Bird Act Treaty out­lawed the hunt­ing of birds whose feath­ers humans deemed par­tic­u­lar­ly fash­ion­able.

Peruse the Sci­ence His­to­ry Insti­tute of Philadel­phi­a’s dig­i­tized copy of the Shades on Feath­ers sam­ple book here.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Down­load 435 High Res­o­lu­tion Images from John J. Audubon’s The Birds of Amer­i­ca

The Bird­song Project Fea­tures 220 Musi­cians, Actors, Artists & Writ­ers Pay­ing Trib­ute to Birds: Watch Per­for­mances by Yo-Yo Ma, Elvis Costel­lo and Beck

The Bird Library: A Library Built Espe­cial­ly for Our Fine Feath­ered Friends

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Watch Restored Video of the Smashing Pumpkins’ First Televised Performance (1988)

For Gen X’ers who spent their twen­ties scout­ing the cities young peo­ple go to retire, and Mil­len­ni­als who spent their youth danc­ing to N’Sync, TLC, and the Spice Girls, nos­tal­gia for sim­pler times just makes psy­cho­log­i­cal sense. The 1990s was the last decade in which we had a shared set of ref­er­ences, “before the inter­net splin­tered mass cul­ture,” Sadie Dingfelder writes at The Wash­ing­ton Post. “In the 90s, every­one lis­tened to the same one or two radio sta­tions in their city that played all the Top 40 hits, span­ning all kinds of gen­res,” says DJ Matt Bail­er.

This means that every­one who heard “No Scrubs” enough times to sing each note also heard the Smash­ing Pump­kins’ biggest hits, and learned to love them equal­ly. It means that we could love the music of Bil­ly Cor­gan with­out being sub­ject­ed to the ter­ri­ble opin­ions of Bil­ly Cor­gan. As the baby-faced singer/songwriter aged, he has become, in his own words, a “bit­ter con­trar­i­an,” “car­ni­val bark­er,” and “class‑A heel,” he says, ref­er­enc­ing his lat­er career in pro­fes­sion­al wrestling.

The assess­ment may seem mild con­sid­er­ing Cor­gan’s appear­ances on Alex Jones’ Infowars and his embrace of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Behav­ior he calls schtick has actu­al con­se­quences in the world. Has it hurt his career? “If I kept my mouth shut,” he admits in dis­cussing the band’s 2018 reunion, “we’d be play­ing a lot big­ger venues and we would be a lot more suc­cess­ful, and we’d be in some­body’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.” Love or hate Cor­gan, Smash­ing Pump­kins as a unit earned their place in rock and roll his­to­ry.

The Pump­kins exud­ed mys­tery from the start, with their sub­lime, fuzzed-out psy­che­del­ic melodies and huge, dis­tort­ed cho­rus­es. Lat­er came the dream­like videos and opaque, impas­sive rock star egos. They did­n’t just make it big in the 90s, they were essen­tial to its sound, one they invent­ed even before the decade dawned. See a young, cheru­bic Cor­gan and band debut above on The Pulse, a Chica­go pub­lic access music show, in 1988, in a video and audio upscal­ing and remas­ter.

It was their first tele­vised appear­ance, drum­mer Jim­my Cham­ber­lain had just joined, and they were booked for a seg­ment for local bands called “The Base­ment Jam” after send­ing in their demo tape. The show’s pro­duc­er Lou Hinkhouse intro­duces the TV gig, sum­ming up his feel­ings at that time: “None of us that day real­ly knew for sure, but we knew they were on to some­thing.… they’re about to define a new sound for a new gen­er­a­tion.” How right he was. See the track­list for the most­ly-unfa­mil­iar songs in the set just below.

1. There lt Goes 1:54 2. She-7:37 3. Under Your Spell -11:47 4. My Eter­ni­ty -17:06 5. Bleed 26:44 6. Noth­ing And Every­thing — 32:10 7. Jen­nifer Ever 42:14 8. Death Of A Mind (Sun) — 49:03 9. Spite­face — 55:44

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Nir­vana Per­form as an Open­ing Band, Two Years Before Their Break­out Album Nev­er­mind (1989)

Bil­ly Cor­gan Per­forms an 8+ Hour Ambi­ent Inter­pre­ta­tion of Her­man Hesse’s Sid­dhartha

The 120 Min­utes Archive Com­piles Clips & Playlists from 956 Episodes of MTV’s Alter­na­tive Music Show (1986–2013)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Is There Life After Death?: Michio Kaku, Bill Nye, Sam Harris & More Explore One of Life’s Biggest Questions

We should prob­a­bly not look to sci­ence to have cher­ished beliefs con­firmed. As sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing of the world has pro­gressed over the cen­turies, it has brought on a loss of humans’ sta­tus as priv­i­leged beings at the cen­ter of the uni­verse whose task is to sub­due and con­quer nature. (The stub­born per­sis­tence of those atti­tudes among the pow­er­ful has not served the species well.) We are not spe­cial, but we are still respon­si­ble, we have learned — maybe total­ly respon­si­ble for our lives on this plan­et. The meth­ods of sci­ence do not lend them­selves to sooth­ing exis­ten­tial anx­i­ety.

But what about the most cher­ished, and like­ly ancient, of human beliefs: faith in an after­life?  Ideas of an under­world, or heav­en, or hell have ani­mat­ed human cul­ture since its ear­li­est ori­gins. There is no soci­ety in the world where we will not find some belief in an after­life exist­ing com­fort­ably along­side life’s most mun­dane events. Is it a harm­ful idea? Is there any real evi­dence to sup­port it? And which ver­sion of an after­life — if such a thing exist­ed — should we believe?

Such ques­tions stack up. Answers in forms sci­ence can rec­on­cile seem dimin­ish­ing­ly few. Nonethe­less, as we see in the Big Think video above, sci­en­tists, sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tors, and sci­ence enthu­si­asts are will­ing to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty, or impos­si­bil­i­ty, of con­tin­u­ing after death. We begin with NASA astronomer Michelle Thaller, who ref­er­ences Ein­stein’s the­o­ry of the uni­verse as ful­ly com­plete, “so every point in the past and every point in the future are just as real as the point of time you feel your­self in right now.” Time spreads out in a land­scape, each moment already mapped and sur­veyed.

When a close friend died, Ein­stein wrote a let­ter to his friend’s wife explain­ing, “Your hus­band, my friend, is just over the next hill. He’s still there” — in a the­o­ret­i­cal sense. It may not have been the com­fort she was look­ing for. The hope of an after­life is that we’ll see our loved ones again, some­thing Ein­stein’s solu­tion does not allow. Sam Har­ris — who has leaned into the mys­ti­cal prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion while pulling it from its reli­gious con­text — admits that death is a “dark mys­tery.” When peo­ple die, “there’s just the sheer not know­ing what hap­pened to them. And into this void, reli­gion comes rush­ing with a very con­sol­ing sto­ry, say­ing noth­ing hap­pened them; they’re in a bet­ter place and you’re going to meet up with them after.”

The sto­ry isn’t always so con­sol­ing, depend­ing on how puni­tive the reli­gion, but it does offer an expla­na­tion and sense of cer­tain­ty in the face of “sheer not know­ing.” The human mind does not tol­er­ate uncer­tain­ty par­tic­u­lar­ly well. Death feels like the great­est unknown of all. (Har­ris’ argu­ment par­al­lels that of anthro­pol­o­gist Pas­cal Boy­er on the ori­gin of all reli­gions.) But the phe­nom­e­non of death is not unknown to us. We are sur­round­ed by it dai­ly, from the plants and ani­mals we con­sume to the pets we sad­ly let go when their lifes­pans end. Do we keep our­selves up won­der­ing what hap­pened to these beings? Maybe our spir­i­tu­al or reli­gious beliefs aren’t always about death.…

“In the Old Tes­ta­ment there isn’t real­ly any sort of view of the after­life,” says Rob Bell, a spir­i­tu­al teacher (and the only talk­ing head here not aligned with a sci­en­tif­ic insti­tu­tion or ratio­nal­ist move­ment). “This idea that the whole thing is about when you die is not real­ly the way that lots of peo­ple have thought about it.” For many reli­gious prac­ti­tion­ers, the idea of eter­nal life means “liv­ing in har­mo­ny with the divine right now.” For many, this “right now” — this very moment and each one we expe­ri­ence after it — is eter­nal. See more views of the after­life above from sci­ence edu­ca­tors like Bill Nye and sci­en­tists like Michio Kaku, who says the kind of after­lives we’ve only seen in sci­ence fic­tion — “dig­i­tal and genet­ic immor­tal­i­ty” — “are with­in reach.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Nick Cave’s Beau­ti­ful Let­ter About Grief

Richard Feyn­man on Reli­gion, Sci­ence, the Search for Truth & Our Will­ing­ness to Live with Doubt

Michio Kaku & Bri­an Green Explain String The­o­ry in a Nut­shell: Ele­gant Expla­na­tions of an Ele­gant The­o­ry

Philoso­pher Sam Har­ris Leads You Through a 26-Minute Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Free Documentaries from Spain Let You Watch the Traditional Making of Wine, Cheese, Churros, Honey & More

The Span­ish film­mak­er Euge­nio Mon­es­ma has ded­i­cat­ed his life to cap­tur­ing the tra­di­tions of his home­land and its sur­round­ing areas. He began his career by first tak­ing up a Super‑8 cam­era at age 25 back in the nine­teen-sev­en­ties, and in the decades since, his mis­sion has tak­en him to the fur­thest cor­ners of Spain and beyond in search of ever-old­er ways to pre­serve in detail. This places his work in the tra­di­tion of the anthro­po­log­i­cal or ethno­graph­ic doc­u­men­tary. But in a still-uncon­ven­tion­al move in his field, he’s unit­ed the old with the new by cre­at­ing his own Youtube chan­nel on which to make his doc­u­men­taries free to watch around the world.

Launched in 2020, Mon­es­ma’s chan­nel has become a sur­pris­ing hit. At the top of the post you can watch its most pop­u­lar video, his short 1997 doc­u­men­tary on the mak­ing of combs from ani­mal horns — which, as of this writ­ing, has racked up near­ly 8.5 mil­lion views. This hap­pens to be one of the pro­duc­tions that took him beyond Spain’s bor­ders, if only just: to the French vil­lage of Lespar­rou, specif­i­cal­ly, which main­tained its small horn comb fac­to­ries until the end of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.

Their process is nar­rat­ed in the immac­u­late Span­ish dic­tion of Mon­es­ma him­self, but you can also take your pick of sub­ti­tles in more than a dozen oth­er lan­guages. Oth­er of his doc­u­men­taries that have become pop­u­lar on Youtube include doc­u­men­taries on the tra­di­tion­al mak­ing of cheesesilk, wine, pot­tery, hon­ey and wax, knives, and leather.

Many of these videos run under twen­ty min­utes; some reach near­ly fea­ture length. All of them sat­is­fy a desire, which now seems wide­ly felt among view­ers of Youtube, to wit­ness thor­ough­ly ana­log process­es that have been in use, chang­ing and evolv­ing only grad­u­al­ly, for long stretch­es of his­to­ry.

And the fact that the things made so often look deli­cious cer­tain­ly does­n’t make Mon­es­ma’s work less com­pelling: take, for exam­ple, the arti­sanal chur­ros of Pam­plon­a’s Chur­rería de la Mañue­ta, whose appeal is sure­ly uni­ver­sal. In Korea, where I live, the past decade has a fad for chur­ros elab­o­rate­ly coat­ed and topped with col­ors and fla­vors unknown to tra­di­tion, and I’d be lying if I said I was­n’t curi­ous what Mon­es­ma would have to say about it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

How Kore­an Things Are Made: Watch Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos Show­ing the Mak­ing of Tra­di­tion­al Clothes, Teapots, Bud­dhist Instru­ments & More

A 13th-Cen­tu­ry Cook­book Fea­tur­ing 475 Recipes from Moor­ish Spain Gets Pub­lished in a New Trans­lat­ed Edi­tion

The Roman Roads of Spain & Por­tu­gal Visu­al­ized as a Sub­way Map: Ancient His­to­ry Meets Mod­ern Graph­ic Design

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Give Duke Ellington the Pulitzer Prize He Was Denied in 1965

Image by Louis Panas­sié, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Duke Elling­ton has been com­mem­o­rat­ed in a vari­ety of forms: stat­ues, murals, schools, and even Unit­ed States com­mem­o­ra­tive stamps and coins. In his life­time he received a star on the Hol­ly­wood Walk of Fame, a Gram­my Life­time Achieve­ment, a Pres­i­den­tial Medal of Free­dom, and a Légion d’hon­neur. His posthu­mous hon­ors even include a Spe­cial Pulitzer Prize award­ed in 1999, the cen­ten­ni­al year of his birth. 34 years ear­li­er, in 1965, he’d been named for–but ulti­mate­ly denied–a reg­u­lar Pulitzer Prize for Music, a deci­sion his appre­ci­a­tors are now try­ing to reverse.

“The jury that judged the entrants that year decid­ed to do some­thing dif­fer­ent,” writes jazz crit­ic Ted Gioia. “They rec­om­mend­ed giv­ing the hon­or to Duke Elling­ton for the ‘vital­i­ty and orig­i­nal­i­ty of his total pro­duc­tiv­i­ty’ over the course of more than forty years.” This broke from tra­di­tion in that the Pulitzer Prize for Music usu­al­ly hon­ors a sin­gle work: in 1945 it went to Aaron Cop­land for his bal­let Appalachi­an Spring; in 1958 it went to Samuel Bar­ber for his opera Vanes­sa; in 1960 it went to Elliott Carter for his Sec­ond String Quar­tet.

Alas, “the Pulitzer Board refused to accept the deci­sion of the jury, and decid­ed it would be bet­ter to give out no award, rather than hon­or Duke Elling­ton. Two mem­bers of the three-per­son judg­ing pan­el, Winthrop Sargeant and Robert Eyer, resigned in the after­math.” Elling­ton, for his part, react­ed to this unfor­tu­nate devel­op­ment with char­ac­ter­is­tic equa­nim­i­ty: “Fate is being kind to me,” he told the press. “Fate doesn’t want me to be famous too young” — to which Gioia adds that “he was 66 years old at the time, and in the final decade of his life.”

In an effort to retroac­tive­ly award Elling­ton his Pulitzer Prize for Music, Gioia has has launched an online peti­tion. If you sign it, you’ll join the likes of John Adams, Michael Dir­da, Steve Reich, and Gene Wein­garten, all Pulitzer win­ners them­selves, as well as oth­er lumi­nar­ies and enthu­si­asts who’ve voiced their sup­port — near­ly 9,000 of them as of this writ­ing. “We assume that Pulitzers are award­ed to work that qual­i­fies as for the ages, that push­es the enve­lope, that sug­gests not just clev­er­ness but genius,” writes the New York Times’ John McWhort­er. “There can be no doubt that Ellington’s cor­pus fits that def­i­n­i­tion.”

Revers­ing the com­mit­tee deci­sion of 1965, Gioia writes, would enhance “the pres­tige and legit­i­ma­cy of the Pulitzer — and every award needs that nowa­days, when many have grown skep­ti­cal about our lead­ing prizes.” What’s more, “it’s the prop­er thing for the music — because every time gen­uine artistry is rec­og­nized it sets an exam­ple for the present gen­er­a­tion, and lays a foun­da­tion for the future.” In recent decades, the aes­thet­ic range of Pulitzer-hon­ored music has widened con­sid­er­ably: McWhort­er points as an exam­ple to 2018’s win­ner, Kendrick Lamar’s album Damn. It could be that, as far as Elling­ton is con­cerned, it’s tak­en the rest of us 57 years to catch up with him. Sign the peti­tion here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Such Sweet Thun­der: Duke Elling­ton & Bil­ly Strayhorn’s Musi­cal Trib­ute to Shake­speare (1957)

Duke Ellington’s Sym­pho­ny in Black, Star­ring a 19-Year-old Bil­lie Hol­i­day in Her First Filmed Per­for­mance

Decon­struct­ing Ste­vie Wonder’s Ode to Jazz and His Hero Duke Elling­ton: A Great Break­down of “Sir Duke”

How Old School Records Were Made, From Start to Fin­ish: A 1937 Video Fea­tur­ing Duke Elling­ton

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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