Star Wars as Silent Film

in Film, Sci Fi | July 6th, 2011

You know George Lucas’ clas­sic, The Empire Strikes Back. Now roll it back a good 60 years and imag­ine the silent ver­sion. It works unex­pect­ed­ly well.

H/T to @wesalwan. And don’t miss many land­mark silent films in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. Chap­lin, ear­ly Hitch­cock, Fritz Lang, the first sci-fi and west­ern films — they’re all there. Find them at the bot­tom of the page…

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

James Baldwin: Witty, Fiery in Berkeley, 1979

in History, Literature | July 6th, 2011

Hot on the heels of Inde­pen­dence Day, here’s a chance to lis­ten to one of Amer­i­ca’s best writ­ers declar­ing his own form of Inde­pen­dence — a free­dom from some of the more trou­bling assump­tions embed­ded in the Eng­lish lan­guage. Start­ing with a dry, mild ques­tion­ing of phras­es like “black as night,” “black-heart­ed,” and “black as sin,” Bald­win turns quick­ly to a cri­tique of the name of the civ­il rights move­ment itself, which he sug­gests would be more accu­rate­ly described as a slave rebel­lion.

The log­ic and elo­quence with which Bald­win makes his case is much bet­ter savored than explained. Enjoy the clip, and espe­cial­ly make sure not to miss his remarks on Huck Finn at minute 3:00, or the love­ly descrip­tion of Mal­colm X at about minute 5:00. And, to be sure, we’ll add this to our col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Great Cul­tur­al Icons Talk Civ­il Rights

Mal­colm X at Oxford, 1964

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Pong, 1969: A Milestone in Video Game History

in History, Technology | July 5th, 2011

The world’s first video game, OXO, was invent­ed in 1952. As the title sug­gests, it was sim­ple tic-tac-toe, and you could only play it on the EDSAC com­put­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge. (Watch it in action here.) The fun did­n’t real­ly get start­ed until the late 1960’s, when Robert Baer, Bill Har­ri­son and Bill Rusch devel­oped a ping pong game you could play on your tele­vi­sion. The above video shows Baer and Har­ri­son play­ing the game on the “brown box” — the pro­to­type for the com­put­er con­soles that would make the 70s and 80s such won­der­ful, seden­tary decades to be a child.

via Matthias Rasch­er

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

The Harvard Classics: A Free, Digital Collection

in Harvard, History, Literature, Philosophy | July 5th, 2011

Dur­ing his days as Har­vard’s influ­en­tial pres­i­dent, Charles W. Eliot made a fre­quent asser­tion: If you were to spend just 15 min­utes a day read­ing the right books, a quan­ti­ty that could fit on a five foot shelf, you could give your­self a prop­er lib­er­al edu­ca­tion. The pub­lish­er P. F. Col­lier and Son loved the idea and asked Eliot to assem­ble the right col­lec­tion of works. The result wasa 51-vol­ume series pub­lished in 1909 called Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf. Lat­er it would sim­ply be called The Har­vard Clas­sics.

You can still buy an old set off of eBay for $399. But, just as eas­i­ly, you can head to the Inter­net Archive and Project Guten­berg, which have cen­tral­ized links to every text includ­ed in The Har­vard Clas­sics (Wealth of Nations, Ori­gin of Species, Plutarch’s Lives, the list goes on below). Please note that the pre­vi­ous two links won’t give you access to the actu­al anno­tat­ed Har­vard Clas­sics texts edit­ed by Eliot him­self. But if you want just that, you can always click here and get dig­i­tal scans of the true Har­vard Clas­sics. Please note that the first two vol­umes appear at the bot­tom of the page. And, in case you want to deep­en your lib­er­al edu­ca­tion yet fur­ther, don’t for­get to check out our col­lec­tion 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. Also spend some time with these oth­er resources: 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices and 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

A big h/t to @eugenephoto

Texts in the Har­vard Clas­sics col­lec­tion (cour­tesy of Wikipedia):

Vol. 1: FRANKLIN, WOOLMAN, PENN
His Auto­bi­og­ra­phy, by Ben­jamin Franklin
The Jour­nal of John Wool­man, by John Wool­man (1774 and sub­se­quent edi­tions)
Fruits of Soli­tude, by William Penn
Vol. 2. PLATO, EPICTETUS, MARCUS AURELIUS
The Apol­o­gy, Phae­do, and Crito, by Pla­to
The Gold­en Say­ings, by Epicte­tus
The Med­i­ta­tions, by Mar­cus Aure­lius
Vol. 3. BACON, MILTON’S PROSE, THOS. BROWNE
Essays, Civ­il and Moral, and New Atlantis, by Fran­cis Bacon
Are­opagit­i­ca and Trac­tate of Edu­ca­tion, by John Mil­ton
Reli­gio Medici, by Sir Thomas Browne
Vol. 4. COMPLETE POEMS IN ENGLISH, MILTON
Com­plete poems writ­ten in Eng­lish, by John Mil­ton
Vol. 5. ESSAYS AND ENGLISH TRAITS, EMERSON
Essays and Eng­lish Traits, by Ralph Wal­do Emer­son
Vol. 6. POEMS AND SONGS, BURNS
Poems and songs, by Robert Burns
Vol. 7. CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE, IMITATIONS OF CHRIST
The Con­fes­sions, by Saint Augus­tine
The Imi­ta­tion of Christ, by Thomas á Kem­p­is
Vol. 8. NINE GREEK DRAMAS
Agamem­non, The Liba­tion Bear­ers, The Furies, and Prometheus Bound, by Aeschy­lus
Oedi­pus the King and Antigone, by Sopho­cles
Hip­poly­tus and The Bac­chae, by Euripi­des
The Frogs, by Aristo­phanes
Vol. 9. LETTERS AND TREATISES OF CICERO AND PLINY
On Friend­ship, On Old Age, and let­ters, by Cicero
Let­ters, by Pliny the Younger
Vol. 10. WEALTH OF NATIONS, ADAM SMITH
The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
Vol. 11. ORIGIN OF SPECIES, DARWIN
The Ori­gin of Species, by Charles Dar­win
Vol. 12. PLUTARCH’S LIVES
Lives, by Plutarch
Vol. 13. AENEID, VIRGIL
Aeneid, by Vir­gil
Vol. 14. DON QUIXOTE, PART 1, CERVANTES
Don Quixote, part 1, by Cer­vantes
Vol. 15. PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, DONNE & HERBERT, BUNYAN, WALTON
The Pil­grim’s Progress, by John Bun­yan
The Lives of Donne and Her­bert, by Iza­ak Wal­ton
Vol. 16. THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS
Sto­ries from the Thou­sand and One Nights
Vol. 17. FOLKLORE AND FABLE, AESOP, GRIMM, ANDERSON
Fables, by Aesop
Chil­dren’s and House­hold Tales, by Jacob and Wil­helm Grimm
Tales, by Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen
Vol. 18. MODERN ENGLISH DRAMA
All for Love, by John Dry­den
The School for Scan­dal, by Richard Brins­ley Sheri­dan
She Stoops to Con­quer, by Oliv­er Gold­smith
The Cen­ci, by Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley
A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon, by Robert Brown­ing
Man­fred, by Lord Byron
Vol. 19. FAUST, EGMONT, ETC. DOCTOR FAUSTUS, GOETHE, MARLOWE
Faust, part 1, Egmont, and Her­mann and Dorothea, by Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe
Dr. Faus­tus, by Christo­pher Mar­lowe
Vol. 20. THE DIVINE COMEDY, DANTE
The Divine Com­e­dy, by Dante Alighieri
Vol. 21. I PROMESSI SPOSI, MANZONI
I Promes­si Sposi, by Alessan­dro Man­zoni
Vol. 22. THE ODYSSEY, HOMER
The Odyssey, by Homer
Vol. 23. TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST, DANA
Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Hen­ry Dana, Jr.
Vol. 24. ON THE SUBLIME, FRENCH REVOLUTION, ETC., BURKE
On Taste, On the Sub­lime and Beau­ti­ful, Reflec­tions on the French Rev­o­lu­tion, and A Let­ter to a Noble Lord, by Edmund Burke
Vol. 25. AUTOBIOGRAPHY, ETC., ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES, J.S. MILL, T. CARLYLE
Auto­bi­og­ra­phy and On Lib­er­ty, by John Stu­art Mill
Char­ac­ter­is­tics, Inau­gur­al Address at Edin­burgh, and Sir Wal­ter Scott, by Thomas Car­lyle
Vol. 26. CONTINENTAL DRAMA
Life is a Dream, by Pedro Calderón de la Bar­ca
Polyeucte, by Pierre Corneille
Phè­dre, by Jean Racine
Tartuffe, by Molière
Min­na von Barn­helm, by Got­thold Ephraim Less­ing
William Tell, by Friedrich von Schiller
Vol. 27. ENGLISH ESSAYS: SIDNEY TO MACAULAY
Vol. 28. ESSAYS: ENGLISH AND AMERICAN
Vol. 29. VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE, DARWIN
The Voy­age of the Bea­gle, by Charles Dar­win
Vol. 30. FARADAY, HELMHOLTZ, KELVIN, NEWCOMB, ETC
The Forces of Mat­ter and The Chem­i­cal His­to­ry of a Can­dle, by Michael Fara­day
On the Con­ser­va­tion of Force and Ice and Glac­i­ers, by Her­mann von Helmholtz
The Wave The­o­ry of Light and The Tides, by Lord Kelvin
The Extent of the Uni­verse, by Simon New­comb
Geo­graph­i­cal Evo­lu­tion, by Sir Archibald Geikie
Vol. 31. AUTOBIOGRAPHY, BENVENUTO CELLINI
The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Ben­venu­to Celli­ni
Vol. 32. LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS
Essays, by Michel Eyquem de Mon­taigne
Mon­taigne and What is a Clas­sic?, by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
The Poet­ry of the Celtic Races, by Ernest Renan
The Edu­ca­tion of the Human Race, by Got­thold Ephraim Less­ing
Let­ters upon the Aes­thet­ic Edu­ca­tion of Man, by Friedrich von Schiller
Fun­da­men­tal Prin­ci­ples of the Meta­physic of Morals, by Immanuel Kant
Byron and Goethe, by Giuseppe Mazz­i­ni
Vol. 33. VOYAGES AND TRAVELS
An account of Egypt from The His­to­ries, by Herodotus
Ger­many, by Tac­i­tus
Sir Fran­cis Drake Revived, by Philip Nichols
Sir Fran­cis Drake’s Famous Voy­age Round the World, by Fran­cis Pret­ty
Drake’s Great Arma­da, by Cap­tain Wal­ter Bigges
Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s Voy­age to New­found­land, by Edward Haies
The Dis­cov­ery of Guiana, by Sir Wal­ter Raleigh
Vol. 34. FRENCH AND ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS, DESCARTES, VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, HOBBES
Dis­course on Method, by René Descartes
Let­ters on the Eng­lish, by Voltaire
On the Inequal­i­ty among Mankind and Pro­fes­sion of Faith of a Savo­yard Vic­ar, by Jean Jacques Rousseau
Of Man, Being the First Part of Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes
Vol. 35. CHRONICLE AND ROMANCE, FROISSART, MALORY, HOLINSHEAD
Chron­i­cles, by Jean Frois­sart
The Holy Grail, by Sir Thomas Mal­o­ry
A Descrip­tion of Eliz­a­bethan Eng­land, by William Har­ri­son
Vol. 36. MACHIAVELLI, MORE, LUTHER
The Prince, by Nic­colò Machi­avel­li
The Life of Sir Thomas More, by William Rop­er
Utopia, by Sir Thomas More
The Nine­ty-Five The­ses, To the Chris­t­ian Nobil­i­ty of the Ger­man Nation, and On the Free­dom of a Chris­t­ian, by Mar­tin Luther
Vol. 37. LOCKE, BERKELEY, HUME
Some Thoughts Con­cern­ing Edu­ca­tion, by John Locke
Three Dia­logues Between Hylas and Philo­nous in Oppo­si­tion to Scep­tics and Athe­ists, by George Berke­ley
An Enquiry Con­cern­ing Human Under­stand­ing, by David Hume
Vol. 38. HARVEY, JENNER, LISTER, PASTEUR
The Oath of Hip­pocrates
Jour­neys in Diverse Places, by Ambroise Paré
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Ani­mals, by William Har­vey
The Three Orig­i­nal Pub­li­ca­tions on Vac­ci­na­tion Against Small­pox, by Edward Jen­ner
The Con­ta­gious­ness of Puer­per­al Fever, by Oliv­er Wen­dell Holmes
On the Anti­sep­tic Prin­ci­ple of the Prac­tice of Surgery, by Joseph Lis­ter
Sci­en­tif­ic papers, by Louis Pas­teur
Sci­en­tif­ic papers, by Charles Lyell
Vol. 39. FAMOUS PREFACES
Vol. 40. ENGLISH POETRY 1: CHAUCER TO GRAY
Vol. 41. ENGLISH POETRY 2: COLLINS TO FITZGERALD
Vol. 42. ENGLISH POETRY 3: TENNYSON TO WHITMAN
Vol. 43. AMERICAN HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS
Vol. 44. SACRED WRITINGS 1
Con­fu­cian: The say­ings of Con­fu­cius
Hebrew: Job, Psalms, and Eccle­si­astes
Chris­t­ian I: Luke and Acts
Vol. 45. SACRED WRITINGS 2
Chris­t­ian II: Corinthi­ans I and II and hymns
Bud­dhist: Writ­ings
Hin­du: The Bha­gavad-Gita
Mohammedan: Chap­ters from the Koran
Vol. 46. ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 1
Edward the Sec­ond, by Christo­pher Mar­lowe
Ham­let, King Lear, Mac­beth, and The Tem­pest, by William Shake­speare
Vol. 47. ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 2
The Shoe­mak­er’s Hol­i­day, by Thomas Dekker
The Alchemist, by Ben Jon­son
Phi­laster, by Beau­mont and Fletch­er
The Duchess of Mal­fi, by John Web­ster
A New Way to Pay Old Debts, by Philip Massinger
Vol. 48. THOUGHTS AND MINOR WORKS, PASCAL
Thoughts, let­ters, and minor works, by Blaise Pas­cal
Vol. 49. EPIC AND SAGA
Beowulf
The Song of Roland
The Destruc­tion of Dá Der­ga’s Hos­tel
The Sto­ry of the Vol­sungs and Niblungs
Vol. 50. INTRODUCTION, READER’S GUIDE, INDEXES
Vol. 51. LECTURES
The last vol­ume con­tains six­ty lec­tures intro­duc­ing and sum­ma­riz­ing the cov­ered fields: his­to­ry, poet­ry, nat­ur­al sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, biog­ra­phy, prose fic­tion, crit­i­cism and the essay, edu­ca­tion, polit­i­cal sci­ence, dra­ma, trav­el­ogues, and reli­gion.

A Firework’s Point of View

in Life, Video - Science | July 4th, 2011

The Texas-based artist and video­g­ra­ph­er Jere­mi­ah War­ren mount­ed a wide angle lens cam­era on some fire­works to give us the fire­works’ angle on their own brief, bright tra­jec­to­ry. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the very cool two-minute video — equal parts Strangelove, Pyn­chon, and ver­ti­go — went viral over the week­end.

For more infor­ma­tion about War­ren’s cam­era set-up, check out his Flickr page.

Hap­py Fourth!

via Tara McGin­ley

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Remembering Ernest Hemingway, Fifty Years After His Death

in Literature | July 2nd, 2011

Today is the 50th anniver­sary of the death of Ernest Hem­ing­way. In remem­brance, we bring you the writer’s own voice from 1954, read­ing his Nobel Prize accep­tance speech at a radio sta­tion in Havana, Cuba. Hem­ing­way’s influ­ence on Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture was pro­found, both for the orig­i­nal­i­ty of his prose and the trag­ic alien­ation of his heroes. One of the most beau­ti­ful and fre­quent­ly quot­ed exam­ples of Hem­ing­way’s style is the open­ing para­graph of A Farewell to Arms:

In the late sum­mer of that year we lived in a house in a vil­lage that looked across the riv­er and the plain to the moun­tains. In the bed of the riv­er there were peb­bles and boul­ders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swift­ly mov­ing and blue in the chan­nels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised pow­dered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell ear­ly that year and we saw the troops march­ing along the road and the dust ris­ing and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the sol­diers march­ing and after­ward the road bare and white except for the leaves.

“Hem­ing­way’s appre­ci­a­tion of the aes­thet­ic qual­i­ties of the phys­i­cal world is impor­tant,” wrote Robert Penn War­ren in 1949, “but a pecu­liar poignan­cy is implic­it in the ren­der­ing of those qual­i­ties; the beau­ty of the phys­i­cal world is a back­ground for the human predica­ment, and the very rel­ish­ing of the beau­ty is mere­ly a kind of des­per­ate and momen­tary com­pen­sa­tion pos­si­ble in the midst of the predica­ment.” That predica­ment, wrote War­ren, “in a world with­out super­nat­ur­al sanc­tions, in the God-aban­doned world of moder­ni­ty,” is man’s full con­scious­ness of his own impend­ing anni­hi­la­tion. Here is a stark pas­sage from “A Clean, Well-Light­ed Place”:

What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a noth­ing he knew too well. It was all a noth­ing and a man was noth­ing too. It was only that and light was all it need­ed and a cer­tain clean­li­ness and order. Some lived in it and nev­er felt it but he knew it was all nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy king­dom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our dai­ly nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliv­er us from nada; pues nada. Hail noth­ing full of noth­ing, noth­ing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shin­ing steam pres­sure cof­fee machine.
“What’s yours?” asked the bar­man.
“Nada.”

Caught in an exis­ten­tial cul-de-sac, Hem­ing­way’s char­ac­ters find mean­ing through adher­ence to what War­ren called the Hem­ing­way Code: “His heroes are not defeat­ed except upon their own terms. They are not squeal­ers, welch­ers, com­pro­mis­ers, or cow­ards, and when they con­front defeat they real­ize that the stance they take, the sto­ic endurance, the stiff upper lip mean a kind of vic­to­ry. Defeat­ed upon their own terms, some of them have even court­ed their defeat; and cer­tain­ly they have main­tained, even in the prac­ti­cal defeat, an ide­al of them­selves.”

Fifty years ago today, after endur­ing years of declin­ing health, Ernest Hem­ing­way met death upon his own terms. Look­ing back on it in 1999, Joyce Car­ol Oates wrote: “Hem­ing­way’s death by sui­cide in 1961, in a beau­ti­ful and iso­lat­ed Ketchum, Ida­ho, would seem to have brought him full cir­cle: back to the Amer­i­ca he had repu­di­at­ed as a young man, and to the method of sui­cide his father had cho­sen, a gun. To know the cir­cum­stances of the last years of Hem­ing­way’s life, how­ev­er, his phys­i­cal and men­tal suf­fer­ing, is to won­der that the belea­guered man endured as long as he did. His lega­cy to lit­er­a­ture, apart from the dis­tinct works of art attached to his name, is a pris­tine and imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able prose style and a vision of mankind in which life and art are affirmed despite all odds.”

Splitscreen: A Love Story

in Film | June 30th, 2011

The Nokia Short 2011 com­pe­ti­tion wrapped up this week­end at the Edin­burgh Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, and the jury gave the first prize to Splitscreen: A Love Sto­ry. Shot with a Nokia N8 mobile phone and a hand-held dol­ly (watch the “mak­ing of” video here), the film ele­gant­ly weaves togeth­er scenes from Paris and New York. A syn­chro­nized tale of two great cities. Then, it all comes togeth­er in Lon­don. Kudos to direc­tor JW Grif­fiths, and don’t miss his orig­i­nal pitch.

via Curios­i­ty­Counts

Beatles, Friends & Family: Photos by Linda McCartney

in Art, Music | June 29th, 2011

In 1967, a young Lin­da East­man went to Lon­don to pho­to­graph the “Swing­ing Six­ties” and snagged exclu­sive pho­tos of The Rolling Stones, Eric Clap­ton and Jimi Hen­drix. In the midst of it all, she met Paul McCart­ney, and when the two mar­ried in 1969, she had a fixed place with­in rock ‘n rol­l’s inner cir­cle.

Dur­ing the com­ing decades, she took over 200,000 images. Yes, that means many more pho­tographs of rock stars and artists. But the empha­sis also shift­ed inward, to a new domes­tic life with Paul and their chil­dren — Heather, Mary, Stel­la, and James. Years lat­er, as Paul pre­pares to mar­ry again, the pho­to­graph­ic work of Lin­da McCart­ney (1941–1998) has been pub­lished in a 288-page ret­ro­spec­tive vol­ume called Lin­da McCart­ney: Life in Pho­tographs. It fea­tures a for­ward by Paul and some com­men­tary by Annie Lei­bovitz. An impres­sive sam­pling of Lin­da McCart­ney’s work can be pre­viewed on this web site.

Fantastic BBC Footage of J.R.R. Tolkien in 1968

in Literature | June 28th, 2011

The high points of this doc­u­men­tary on the great J.R.R. Tolkien, from the BBC Series In Their Own Words: British Nov­el­ists, are the moments that ful­fill the promise of the series’ title. Skip over the dis­tract­ing “man on the street” inter­views and long pans of the land­scape, meant per­haps to invoke Mid­dle Earth. In fact, you can skip over every scene that isn’t just the author’s mag­nif­i­cent talk­ing head.

Start at minute 2:49, where he describes first writ­ing the immor­tal words “In a hole in the ground there lived a hob­bit.” The anec­dote should inspire belea­guered grad­u­ate stu­dents and teach­ers every­where: He came up with the line while grad­ing exams.

We also loved Tolkien’s con­fes­sion about trees, start­ing at the 7:00 minute mark: “I should have liked to make con­tact with a tree and find out how it feels about things.”

You can watch the doc­u­men­tary on YouTube in two parts. The first part is above, the sec­ond here. The mate­r­i­al also appears in our col­lec­tion of 250 Cul­tur­al Icons.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Talk­ing Lit­er­a­ture with Great British Nov­el­ists

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” for Eight Pianos

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | June 28th, 2011

This fan­tas­tic ren­di­tion of Wag­n­er’s “Ride of the Valkyries” was record­ed at the tenth anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion of the pres­ti­gious Ver­bier Fes­ti­val, and fea­tures eight of the world’s most respect­ed pianists — Evge­ny Kissin, Lang Lang, Emanuel Ax, Leif Ove And­snes, Claude Frank, Mikhail Plet­nev, Staffan Sche­ja, and James Levine. It’s just one of many stel­lar per­for­mances avail­able on this very well-regard­ed con­cert dvd.

Give the piece a lis­ten, espe­cial­ly if you’ve ever con­sid­ered “Valkyries” too over­bear­ing. The all-piano arrange­ment does full jus­tice to the music’s pow­er, while also reliev­ing some of its bom­bast. A def­i­nite win­ner. H/T @brainpicker

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Clas­si­cal Music: A His­to­ry Accord­ing to YouTube

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant!

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.