Hear Igor Stravinsky’s Symphonies & Ballets in a Complete, 32-Hour, Chronological Playlist

in Music | October 18th, 2016

Those who know the work of Igor Stravin­sky will be famil­iar with the recep­tion the Russ­ian composer’s The Rite of Spring received dur­ing its first per­for­mance in Paris in 1913. The typ­i­cal descrip­tion for what hap­pened is that the bal­let caused a “riot,” though giv­en our usu­al asso­ci­a­tions with that word, it hard­ly seems like the appro­pri­ate term. As The Telegraph’s Ivan Hewett notes, the respons­es, though bemused and irate, were gen­teel by most stan­dards of civ­il unrest. But there was vio­lence and the threat of vio­lence.

Accord­ing to a mem­ber of the orches­tra, “many a gentleman’s shiny top hat or soft fedo­ra was igno­min­ious­ly pulled down by an oppo­nent over his eyes and ears, and canes were bran­dished like men­ac­ing imple­ments of com­bat all over the the­atre.” What could cause such a scan­dal? Hear­ing the piece, above, it’s per­haps not obvi­ous why “peo­ple start­ed to whis­per and joke almost imme­di­ate­ly.” Both Stravin­sky and Russ­ian bal­let impre­sario Sergei Diaghilev sought to pro­voke the audi­ence, but both were tak­en aback by the vehe­mence of the reac­tions. As audi­ence mem­bers began to shout, “I left the hall in a rage,” Stravin­sky lat­er wrote. “I have nev­er again been that angry.”

Of course, the music alone, with­out Vaslav Nijinsky’s chore­og­ra­phy, only gives us half the sto­ry. Onstage, writes Hewitt, “there’s no sign that any of the crea­tures in the Rite of Spring has a soul, and there’s cer­tain­ly no sense of a rec­og­niz­able human cul­ture. The dancers are like automa­ta.” And yet, Stravin­sky seems to have intend­ed his music to alien­ate lis­ten­ers as well: “there are sim­ply no regions for soul-search­ing,” he said, “in The Rite of Spring.” It’s a com­ment that suc­cinct­ly sums up the composer’s icon­o­clasm and defi­ance of sacred musi­cal norms.

Stravinsky’s first bal­let, 1910’s The Fire­bird, fol­lowed Debussy in recu­per­at­ing the so-called “Devil’s Inter­val,” a tonal fig­ure avoid­ed for hun­dreds of years in reli­gious music for its sin­is­ter sound. But The Fire­bird’s exot­ic beau­ty charmed audi­ences, as did his next bal­let Petrush­ka.  And despite the Rite of Spring con­tro­ver­sy, many of Stravinsky’s sym­phonies are quite tra­di­tion­al next to the avant-gardism of his peers. His ten­den­cies of “regres­sion and restau­ra­tion,” writes clas­si­cal site CMUSE, “an amal­gam of the archa­ic and the mod­ern,” caused Theodor Adorno to describe Stravin­sky as schiz­o­phrenic in Phi­los­o­phy of Mod­ern Music.

Unlike his mod­ernist rival Arnold Schoen­berg, Stravin­sky is “in the same cat­e­go­ry as T.S. Eliot, as both were well-versed in literary/musical tra­di­tion and well aware of the cur­rent avant-garde move­ments, but main­tained quite a con­ser­v­a­tive approach to nov­el­ty.” Stravinsky’s con­ser­v­a­tive mod­ernism had a pro­found effect on anoth­er form of 20th cen­tu­ry music that looked both back­ward and for­ward: jazz. Artists like Char­lie Park­er paid trib­ute to him, and the com­pos­er very much appre­ci­at­ed it. “This cat,” said Park­er, “he’s kind of cool, you know.”

In the chrono­log­i­cal playlist above from Ulysses Clas­si­cal, hear the ear­ly sym­phonies and sonatas that inspired Diaghilev to hire him as the Bal­lets Russ­es first com­pos­er, and many of the bal­lets that enraged the Parisian elite, delight­ed Char­lie Park­er, and repelled Adorno. And find out why, as CMUSE argues, Stravin­sky may be “the great­est com­pos­er of the 20th cen­tu­ry.”

The playlist runs 32 hours. If you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, down­load it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

Stravinsky’s “Ille­gal” Arrange­ment of “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner” (1944)

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

Watch a 27-Year-Old Glenn Gould Play Bach & Put His Musical Genius on Display (1959)

in Music | October 17th, 2016

Glenn Gould died young, in 1982 at the age of 50, but the Cana­di­an clas­si­cal pianist made great con­tri­bu­tions to the world of music in his short life. He did it in part by start­ing young — so young, in fact, that he first felt the vibra­tions of music played for him while still in the womb by his moth­er. She’d decid­ed even then to raise a suc­cess­ful musi­cian, and her plan sure­ly worked bet­ter than she could ever have expect­ed. Young Glenn had per­fect pitch, learned to read notes before he learned to read words, entered Toron­to’s Roy­al Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music at age ten, and grew into the very arche­typ­al image of a musi­cal genius: eccen­tric and often dif­fi­cult, but pos­sessed of almost oth­er­world­ly skill and dis­tinc­tive­ness.

Those qual­i­ties came out nowhere more clear­ly than in Gould’s rela­tion­ship with the music of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach, whom he described as “beyond a doubt the great­est archi­tect of sound who ever lived.” Even lis­ten­ers only casu­al­ly acquaint­ed with Gould’s work will know his record­ings of Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, the first of which, record­ed in 1955, shot him to star­dom and became one of the best-sell­ing clas­si­cal albums of all time.

Four years after that, the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da doc­u­men­tary Off the Record, just above, cap­tured his play­ing on film in the clips at the top of the post. “When Gould is not on tour or record­ing,” he spends most of his time at his retreat, a cot­tage on the Shore of Lake Sim­coe 90 miles north of Toron­to. Here he works on the piano he favors above all oth­ers for prac­tic­ing: a 70-year-old Chick­er­ing with a res­o­nant, harp­si­chord qual­i­ty recall­ing the instru­ments of the time of Bach.”

There, in that cot­tage in the small com­mu­ni­ty of Upter­grove, we see the 27-year-old Gould play Bach’s Par­ti­ta No. 2, vocal­iz­ing along with the dis­tinc­tive mix of force­ful­ness and del­i­ca­cy issu­ing from the instru­ment that he nev­er chose, but mas­tered to a degree few had before or have since. “His ambi­tion,” the nar­ra­tor says, “is to make enough mon­ey by the time he is 35 to retire from the con­cert stage and devote him­self to com­pos­ing.” In fact Gould put live per­for­mance behind him just five years lat­er in order to pur­sue with more focus his own kind of pianis­tic per­fec­tion, which he con­tin­ued to do for the rest of his life.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Glenn Gould Per­form His Last Great Stu­dio Record­ing of Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions (1981)

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

Glenn Gould Offers a Strik­ing­ly Uncon­ven­tion­al Inter­pre­ta­tion of 1806 Beethoven Com­po­si­tion

The Art of Fugue: Gould Plays Bach

Glenn Gould Gives Us a Tour of Toron­to, His Beloved Home­town (1979)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch Helen Keller & Teacher Annie Sullivan Demonstrate How Helen Learned to Speak (1930)

in Education, History, Life | October 17th, 2016

Know­ing the trans­for­ma­tive effect an inspired teacher can have on an “unreach­able” stu­dent, one can only hope that geog­ra­phy and luck will con­spire to bring the two togeth­er at an ear­ly point in the child’s devel­op­ment.

Helen Keller, author, activist, and poster girl for sur­mount­ing near-impos­si­ble odds, cer­tain­ly lucked out in the teacher depart­ment. Ren­dered deaf and blind by a fever con­tract­ed at 19 months, Keller earned a rep­u­ta­tion as a holy ter­ror in a fam­i­ly ill-equipped to under­stand what her wild rages might sig­ni­fy.

Her well-con­nect­ed par­ents con­sult­ed var­i­ous experts, includ­ing soon-to-be-friend, inven­tor Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell, a trail that ulti­mate­ly led to the Perkins School for the Blind and the 20-year-old Annie Sul­li­van.

With­in a few short months of her arrival at the Keller fam­i­ly home, Sul­li­van led the near­ly-sev­en-year-old Keller to her famous break­through at the water pump.

In a more con­ven­tion­al arrange­ment, the stu­dent would even­tu­al­ly leave her teacher for fur­ther edu­ca­tion­al pur­suits, but Keller depend­ed on Sul­li­van to trans­late oth­er teach­ers’ lec­tures and class­room inter­ac­tions. Sul­li­van accom­pa­nied her to Perkins School for the Blind, the Wright-Huma­son School for the Deaf, the Cam­bridge School for Young Ladies, and final­ly Rad­cliffe Col­lege, where Keller earned her BA.

The unusu­al bound­aries of their teacher-stu­dent bond meant Keller lived with Sul­li­van and her hus­band in their For­est Hills home, a move that has­tened the marriage’s unof­fi­cial but per­ma­nent end, accord­ing to Sullivan’s biog­ra­ph­er, Kim Nielsen. It like­ly thwart­ed Keller’s sin­gle attempt at romance, with her tem­po­rary sec­re­tary, writer Peter Fagan, too.

For bet­ter and worse, their lives were for­ev­er entwined, each made more extra­or­di­nary by the pres­ence of the oth­er.

Their appear­ance in the 1930 Vita­phone news­reel, above, high­lights the manda­to­ry phys­i­cal close­ness they shared, as they demon­strate the process by which Keller learned to speak. Hav­ing learned to com­mu­ni­cate via let­ters Sul­li­van fin­ger spelled into her palm, Keller placed her fin­gers against Sullivan’s lips, throat and nose, to feel­ing the vibra­tions made when these famil­iar let­ters were spo­ken aloud.

Sul­li­van died six years after the news­reel was filmed, at which point, Pol­ly Thom­son, orig­i­nal­ly engaged as the ladies’ house­keep­er, took over, serv­ing as Keller’s inter­preter and trav­el­ing com­pan­ion for the next twen­ty years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Helen Keller Had Impec­ca­ble Hand­writ­ing: See a Col­lec­tion of Her Child­hood Let­ters

Helen Keller Speaks About Her Great­est Regret — Nev­er Mas­ter­ing Speech

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

“A Glo­ri­ous Hour”: Helen Keller Describes The Ecsta­sy of Feel­ing Beethoven’s Ninth Played on the Radio (1924)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain Performs Great Covers of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” & More

in Comedy, Music | October 17th, 2016

To the very end of his life, no less an author­i­ty on good musi­cal vibes than George Har­ri­son praised and played the ukulele, inter­pret­ing many clas­sic tunes on the instru­ment, pen­ning an enthu­si­as­tic endorse­ment, and sup­pos­ed­ly buy­ing ukes in bulk to give away at his home in Hawaii. As Har­ri­son rec­og­nized, there is some­thing spe­cial about the role of the ukulele in west­ern pop, and that has been true since Hawai­ian music explod­ed onto the main­land in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry.

So there’s no rea­son why the ukulele shouldn’t be a seri­ous inter­preter of mod­ern hits from Nir­vana, Talk­ing Heads, The Who, David Bowie, etc. And also no rea­son those inter­pre­ta­tions shouldn’t be played on stages like the Roy­al Albert Hall by men and women in for­mal wear, befit­ting the seri­ous­ness with which they take the cheer­ful-sound­ing instru­ment. The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain is so seri­ous, in fact, that they filed and won a law­suit last year against an alleged copy­cat group in Ger­many, claim­ing their “rep­u­ta­tion as per­form­ers” and “inter­na­tion­al and celebri­ty fan base” were at stake.

Indeed, the UOGB isn’t shy about self-pro­mo­tion, describ­ing them­selves as “a nation­al insti­tu­tion.” But despite their thor­ough­go­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ism, their act is still in good fun. (They also, with humor, note they “are often blamed for the cur­rent Ukulele revival which is sweep­ing the globe.”) And the orchestra’s rep­u­ta­tion is more than well-earned. Their site fea­tures quotes from lumi­nar­ies like Bowie and Bri­an Eno, and endorse­ments from NME and the Finan­cial Times, who apt­ly describe them as “both hilar­i­ous and heart­felt.” Their win­ning stage ban­ter gives way to stun­ning ren­di­tions of pop­u­lar songs that all of the members—including at times a dou­ble bass play­er who goes by the name “David Bowie”—sing in har­mo­ny. (They per­form their take on “Pin­ball Wiz­ard,” below, entire­ly acapel­la.)

In per­for­mances of “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” at the top,” “Psy­cho Killer,” fur­ther down, and, just below, “Life on Mars” the orches­tra not only demon­strates how much great musi­cal com­e­dy depends upon great musi­cian­ship, they also show the incred­i­ble range of the diminu­tive Poly­ne­sian instru­ment. That’s espe­cial­ly the case in their act of Bowie “pla­gia­rism,” in which six uke play­ers pick out del­i­cate, clas­si­cal gui­tar-like arpeg­gios in the vers­es, then strum reg­gae-like per­cus­sive attacks under the com­plex vocal har­monies in the cho­rus.

The sev­enth mem­ber on stage plays an acoustic bass guitar—the only con­ces­sion to an addi­tion­al rhythm instru­ment, but even in these four anthemic rock songs, you won’t bemoan the lack of drums. As The New York Times remarks, the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain “extracts more than seems human­ly pos­si­ble from so small and so mod­est an instru­ment.” See them play a ver­sion of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly theme at our pre­vi­ous post, and see many more videos and live per­for­mances at the orchestra’s YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ukulele Orches­tra Per­forms Ennio Morricone’s Icon­ic West­ern Theme Song, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.” And It’s Pret­ty Bril­liant.

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele, With Words and Music

Musi­cians Re-Imag­ine the Com­plete Song­book of the Bea­t­les on the Ukulele

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

The History of Europe: 5,000 Years Animated in a Timelapse Map

in History, Maps | October 14th, 2016

If you’re an Open Cul­ture old timer, you know the work of EmperorTigerstar–a Youtu­ber who spe­cial­izes (to quote myself) “in doc­u­ment­ing the unfold­ing of world his­tor­i­cal events by stitch­ing togeth­er hun­dreds of maps into time­lapse films”. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his “map ani­ma­tions” of the U.S. Civ­il War (1861–1865), World War I (1914–1918), and World War II (1939–1945) and also the His­to­ry of Rome. This week, the map ani­ma­tor released The His­to­ry of Europe: Every Year. In ten min­utes, he takes us from The Minoan civ­i­liza­tion that arose on the Greek island of Crete (3650 to 1400 BC), down to our mod­ern times. About 5,000 years of his­to­ry gets cov­ered before you can boil a pot of pas­ta. Enjoy.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rise & Fall of the Romans: Every Year Shown in a Time­lapse Map Ani­ma­tion (753 BC ‑1479 AD)

Ani­mat­ed Map Lets You Watch the Unfold­ing of Every Day of the U.S. Civ­il War (1861–1865)

Watch World War I Unfold in a 6 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1914 to 1918

Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945

Hear Raymond Chandler & Ian Fleming–Two Masters of Suspense–Talk with One Another in Rare 1958 Audio

in Literature, Radio | October 14th, 2016

In the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, the red-blood­ed read­ing man in Amer­i­ca and Britain each had a char­ac­ter on whom he could rely to have vivid, in their sep­a­rate ways exot­ic, and on a cer­tain lev­el some­how relat­able adven­tures on the page: Philip Mar­lowe in the for­mer, and James Bond in the lat­ter. Ray­mond Chan­dler’s luck­less Los Ange­les pri­vate detec­tive and Ian Flem­ing’s always impec­ca­bly kit­ted-out agent on Her Majesty’s Secret Ser­vice would seem at first to have lit­tle in com­mon, but when their cre­ators got togeth­er on the BBC’s Third Pro­gramme in 1958, they had a lot to talk about.

Chan­dler, two decades Flem­ing’s senior and then in the final year of his life, had seen bet­ter days. “This once-hand­some man was, at the age of 66, a wreck,” says the announc­er in a pref­ace to this 1988 re-broad­cast, “depressed, alco­holic, writ­ten out. But he was lion­ized, and one of his new friends was Ian Flem­ing, whose Bond nov­els he’d been the first to appre­ci­ate. He reviewed Dia­monds Are For­ev­er in the Sun­day Times, pro­vid­ing the kind of seri­ous crit­i­cism he want­ed him­self, and in 1956, in a let­ter to Flem­ing, Chan­dler said, ‘I did not think that I did quite do you jus­tice in my review of your book, because any­one who writes as dash­ing­ly as you ought, I think, to try for a lit­tle high­er grade.”

This mix of praise and crit­i­cism from the elder writer invig­o­rat­ed Flem­ing, who prompt­ly redou­bled his efforts in Bond­craft. Two years lat­er, osten­si­bly to pro­mote his sev­enth nov­el (and, it turned out, his last) Play­back, the Lon­don-raised Chan­dler joined Flem­ing on the air to talk about British and Amer­i­can thrillers. “In Amer­i­ca, a thriller or mys­tery sto­ry writer is slight­ly below the salt,” com­plains Chan­dler, who’d pre­ced­ed this morn­ing record­ing ses­sion with whisky. “You can write a very lousy, long his­tor­i­cal nov­el full of sex and it can be a best­seller, it can be treat­ed respect­ful­ly. But a very good thriller writer who writes far, far bet­ter just gets a lit­tle para­graph — that’s all.”

The two go on to dis­cuss where they get their mate­r­i­al, how to write vil­lains (“I don’t think I ever in my own mind think any­body is a vil­lain,” says Chan­dler when Flem­ing brings up the dif­fi­cul­ty of cre­at­ing such char­ac­ters), the emer­gence of heroes (Flem­ing first intend­ed Bond as “a sort of blank instru­ment wield­ed by a gov­ern­ment depart­ment”), the secrets of lit­er­ary pro­duc­tiv­i­ty (Flem­ing took two months off in Jamaica from his Sun­day Times job each year to write anoth­er book), the mechan­ics of gang­land killings, and whether they have any­body they per­son­al­ly want to shoot (Chan­dler does, reply­ing only that “I just thought they’d be bet­ter dead,” when Flem­ing asks why).

And what, at bot­tom, does Dia­monds Are For­ev­er’s kind of writ­ing and The Big Sleep’s kind of writ­ing real­ly have in com­mon? “We both like mak­ing fun­ny jokes,” says Flem­ing. Toward the end of this broad­cast, now the sole extant record­ing of Chan­dler’s voice, the cre­ator of Philip Mar­lowe leaves us with some wise words in addi­tion: “A solemn thriller is real­ly rather a bore.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray­mond Chandler’s Ten Com­mand­ments for Writ­ing a Detec­tive Nov­el

Ray­mond Chan­dler Denounces Strangers on a Train in Sharply-Word­ed Let­ter to Alfred Hitch­cock

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

Watch Ray­mond Chandler’s Long-Unno­ticed Cameo in Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty

James Bond: 50 Years in Film (and a Big Blu-Ray Release)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Best Commercial Ever? James Brown Sells Miso Soup (1992)

in Film, Food & Drink, Music, Television, Travel | October 14th, 2016

Most stars are under­stand­ably choosy about what prod­ucts, if any, they’re will­ing to endorse. Seri­ous artists are mind­ful about their rep­u­ta­tions.

The late great God­fa­ther of Soul James Brown lent his prodi­gious tal­ents to McDon­alds (for a price), but it’s worth not­ing that most of the heavy lift­ing was done by a cast of unknowns play­ing tick­et hold­ers for­ti­fy­ing them­selves before a hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed con­cert. Brown arrives at the end, to bedaz­zle every­one in the restau­rant with his fan­cy foot­work, sequined suit, and sheer prox­im­i­ty.

Clear­ly, the Hard­est Work­ing Man in Show Busi­ness had stan­dards.

(Since his death in 2006, his hits have been used to sell ath­let­ic wear, gin, beer, and pork ten­der­loin, proof that these things are hard­er to con­trol from beyond the grave.)

Japan­ese tele­vi­sion is one are­na where many West­ern celebri­ties are will­ing to relax their usu­al poli­cies. The prospect of an enor­mous pay­check for so lit­tle work is hard to beat, though in the age of Youtube, there’s a far greater like­li­hood that their core fans will see the results.

Youtube was not a con­cern in 1992, when Brown filmed the above 15-sec­ond spot for Nissin Cup Noo­dles. No one can accuse him of phon­ing it in. He dances, lip synchs soup-cen­tric Japan­ese lyrics to the tune of Sex Machine, and even—in a longer ver­sion on a kitchen set—pours boil­ing water into the cup, just like mil­lions of bud­get-con­scious artists and stu­dents the world over.

What he doesn’t do is “bite and smile,” a sta­ple of com­mer­cial act­ing. He rais­es a fork­ful of prod­uct to his mouth with an oblig­ing grin, but doesn’t ingest so much as a noo­dle.

For that, we must turn to for­mer body­builder and Gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, who sup­ple­ment­ed his movie career as Nissin Cup Noo­dles’ pre­vi­ous Japan­ese TV pitch­man. Not only did he con­sent to fun­ny cos­tumes, he pile dri­ves that ramen like a World Record in Com­pet­i­tive Eat­ing depends on it. None of that clown­ing for Brown!

Read­ers, we invite you to con­tribute to our schol­ar­ship of West­ern celebs’ Japan­ese TV com­mer­cials in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Brown Gives You Danc­ing Lessons: From The Funky Chick­en to The Booga­loo

David Bowie Sells Ice Cream, Sake, Coke & Water: Watch His TV Com­mer­cials from the 1960s Through 2013

Jim Henson’s Vio­lent Wilkins Cof­fee Com­mer­cials (1957–1961)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize in Literature for Creating “New Poetic Expressions within the Great American Song Tradition”

in Literature, Music | October 13th, 2016

Image cour­tesy of The Nobel Prize’s Twit­ter stream.

His apoc­a­lyp­tic poet­ry plucks images and forms from the blues, the Bible, the Beats, Sym­bol­ists, William Blake, T.S. Eliot, and a bal­ladeer tra­di­tion dat­ing from medieval French and Eng­lish min­strel­sy to Appalachi­an set­tle­ment to Woody Guthrie, his first muse. His nar­ra­tive voice shifts from work to work as he has ful­ly embod­ied var­i­ous Amer­i­can char­ac­ters for over half a century—folk trou­ba­dour, rock and roll trick­ster, earnest coun­try croon­er, evan­ge­list, weary blues­man, star­ry-eyed jazz singer. “There is no sys­tem­at­ic way of ana­lyz­ing Dylan’s song lyrics or poems,” writes Julia Call­away at the Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies blog; “they span more than five decades of his­tor­i­cal con­text and musi­cal style. But per­haps one of the most inter­est­ing sides of Dylan is how he uses lan­guage and his lyrics to project cer­tain iden­ti­ties, includ­ing folksinger and protest-musi­cian.”

Dylan began in that tra­di­tion with songs like “The Times They Are A‑Changin’” and “A Hard Rains A‑Gonna Fall”—pick­ing up Guthrie’s inflec­tions and man­ner­isms in bal­lads much more sophis­ti­cat­ed than they seemed at first lis­ten. “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” is a “sev­en minute epic,” writes Rolling Stone, “that warns against a com­ing apoc­a­lypse while cat­a­loging hor­rif­ic visions—gun-toting chil­dren, a tree drip­ping blood—with the wide-eyed fer­vor of John the Rev­e­la­tor.” The song “began life as a poem, which Dylan like­ly banged out on a type­writer owned by his bud­dy… Wavy Gravy.” Dylan has been ambiva­lent about whether or not we should call him a poet, but this is how so much of his work took shape—banged out on type­writ­ers in New York apartments—as poet­ry set to music. “Every line in [A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall] is actu­al­ly the start of a whole song,” said Dylan, “but when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn’t have enough time alive to write all those songs, so I put all I could into this one.”

After over five decades of lyrics packed with allu­sion and dense­ly woven themes and mean­ings, Dylan has had time to write those songs—several more apoc­a­lyp­tic epics set to a few chords on the acoustic gui­tar. “There are some nov­els, some trilo­gies, in fact, with less actu­al con­tent than Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watch­tow­er,’” says the Nerd­writer in the analy­sis of that cryp­tic John Wes­ley Hard­ing song above. One could say the same about cer­tain songs that appear on near­ly every Dylan record, like the 11-minute “Des­o­la­tion Row,” below. Amid only a few mis­steps, Dylan has released album after album, decade after decade, that show­case his unpar­al­leled word­craft in var­i­ous song forms. And some of his finest work has appeared only in recent years, when it seems his career might have come to a close. Despite some mixed reac­tions—and some con­cern for Philip Roth—most peo­ple have respond­ed to news this morn­ing of his win for the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture with a decid­ed, “yes, of course.”

Dylan’s recog­ni­tion by the Nobel Com­mit­tee val­i­dates not only the song­writer him­self, but the form he embraced and shaped. As per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Swedish Acad­e­my Sara Danius remarked in her announce­ment, Dylan “cre­at­ed new poet­ic expres­sions with­in the Amer­i­can song tra­di­tion.”  The award rep­re­sents “a recog­ni­tion of the whole tra­di­tion that Bob Dylan rep­re­sents,” says crit­ic David Had­ju, “so it’s part­ly a retroac­tive award for Robert John­son and Hank Williams and Smokey Robin­son and the Bea­t­les. It should have been tak­en seri­ous­ly as an art form a long time ago.” One could argue that Amer­i­can song has already been tak­en as seri­ous­ly as any art form, but that it isn’t lit­er­a­ture.

Sev­er­al peo­ple have done so. As New York Times writer Hiroko Tabuchi put it, “this might be a dis­ap­point­ing day for book­sellers and pub­lish­ers.” Hard­ly. Not only does Dylan have a mem­oir out, Chron­i­cles: Vol­ume One, the first of a planned tril­o­gy, but we may also find renewed appre­ci­a­tion for his first book, 1966’s Taran­tu­la. Dylan’s songs and draw­ings have been turned into pic­ture books, pub­lished in col­lec­tions, and pored over in biog­ra­phy after biog­ra­phy, com­men­tary after com­men­tary. And next month, Dylan him­self will release The Lyrics: Since 1962, a com­pre­hen­sive, defin­i­tive col­lec­tion of the song­writer’s lyrics, com­plete with expert anno­ta­tions. You can pre-order a copy here.

The lit­er­ary out­put by and about Dylan should keep book­sellers busy for many months after this announce­ment. But Dylan’s is pri­mar­i­ly a liv­ing, bardic tra­di­tion, lest we for­get that all lit­er­a­ture began as song. So con­grat­u­la­tions to Dylan and for per­haps long-over­due recog­ni­tion of Amer­i­can songcraft as a gen­uine­ly lit­er­ary art form.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Young Bob Dylan, Before Releas­ing His First Album, Tell Amaz­ing Tales About Grow­ing Up in a Car­ni­val

Hear Bob Dylan’s Unedit­ed & Bewil­der­ing Inter­view With Nat Hentoff for Play­boy Mag­a­zine (1965)

The Reli­gions of Bob Dylan: From Deliv­er­ing Evan­gel­i­cal Ser­mons to Singing Hava Nag­i­la With Har­ry Dean Stan­ton

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

Goethe’s Colorful & Abstract Illustrations for His 1810 Treatise, Theory of Colors: Scans of the First Edition

in Art, Books, History, Science | October 13th, 2016

The great Jew­ish philoso­pher Baruch Spin­oza, it is said, drew his con­cep­tions of god and the uni­verse from his work as an opti­cian, grind­ing lens­es day after day. He lived a life sin­gu­lar­ly devot­ed to glass, in which his “evenings to evenings are equal.” So wrote Jorge Luis Borges in a poet­ic appre­ci­a­tion of Spin­oza, of which he lat­er com­ment­ed, “[Spin­oza] is pol­ish­ing crys­tal lens­es and is pol­ish­ing a rather vast crys­tal phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse. I think we might con­sid­er those tasks par­al­lel. Spin­oza is pol­ish­ing his lens­es, Spin­oza is pol­ish­ing vast dia­monds, his ethics.”

The pol­ish­ing of lens­es, and work in optics gen­er­al­ly, has a long philo­soph­i­cal pedi­gree, from the exper­i­ments of Renais­sance artists and schol­ars, to the nat­ur­al philoso­phers of the Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion who made their own micro­scopes and pon­dered the nature of light. Over a cen­tu­ry after Spinoza’s birth, poly­math artist and thinker Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe pub­lished his great work on optics, just one of many direc­tions he turned his gaze. Unlike Spin­oza, Goethe had lit­tle use for con­cepts of divin­i­ty or for sys­tem­at­ic think­ing.

But unlike many free­think­ing aris­to­crat­ic dilet­tantes who were a fix­ture of his age, Goethe–-writes poet Philip Brant­i­ng­ham—“was a uni­ver­sal genius, one of those tal­ents whose works tran­scend race, nation, lan­guage-and even time.” It’s a dat­ed con­cept, for sure, but when we think of genius in the old Roman­tic sense, we most often think of Goethe, as a poet, philoso­pher, and sci­en­tist. When he turned his atten­tion to optics and the sci­ence of col­or, Goethe refut­ed the the­o­ries of New­ton and cre­at­ed some endur­ing sci­en­tif­ic art, which would lat­er inspire philo­soph­i­cal icon­o­clasts like Wittgen­stein and expres­sion­ist painters like Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky.

We’ve fea­tured Goethe’s most impor­tant sci­en­tif­ic work, Zur Far­ben­lehre (The­o­ry of Col­ors), in a pre­vi­ous post. Now we can bring you the supe­ri­or images above, from a first edi­tion scan at Stockholm’s Hager­stromer Med­ical Library, who host a col­lec­tion of scanned illus­tra­tions from dozens of first edi­tions of nat­u­ral­ist texts. The col­lec­tion spans a once sup­pressed phys­i­ol­o­gy text by Descartes—anoth­er optics the­o­rist—to Rachel Carson’s 1962 Silent Spring, the book that “launched the mod­ern con­ser­va­tion­ist move­ment.” In-between, find scans of illus­tra­tions and pho­tographs from the works of Carl Lin­naeus, Charles Dar­win, Louis Pas­teur, and dozens of oth­er nat­ur­al philoso­phers and sci­en­tists who made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to med­ical sci­ence.

In the case of Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors (1810), we get a high-qual­i­ty look at the images in what the author him­self con­sid­ered his best work. “Known as a fierce attack on Newton’s demon­stra­tion that white light is com­pos­ite,” writes the Hager­stromer Library, “Goethe’s colour the­o­ry remains an epochmak­ing work.” Goethe’s illus­tra­tions came direct­ly from “a large num­ber of obser­va­tions of sub­jec­tive colour-per­cep­tions, record­ed with all the exact­ness of a sci­en­tist and the keen insight of an artist.” It’s part­ly the bridg­ing of sci­ences and the arts—of Enlight­en­ment and Romanticism—that has made Goethe such a remark­able fig­ure in Euro­pean intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry. But as many of the fine­ly illus­trat­ed, care­ful­ly observed texts at the Hager­stromer Med­ical Library show, he wasn’t alone in that regard.

In addi­tion to these clas­sic texts, the Hager­stromer also hosts the Wun­derkam­mer, an eclec­tic archive of (often quite bizarre) nat­u­ral­ist images and illus­tra­tions from the 16th to the 20th cen­turies. One MetaFil­ter user describes the col­lec­tion thus:

Wun­derkam­mer is a col­lec­tion of high res­o­lu­tion images from old books in the Hagströmer Med­ical Library. Some of my favorites are sea anemones, nerve cells, roost­er chas­ing off a mon­ster, 16th Cen­tu­ry eye surgery, mus­cles and bones of the hand and arm, ele­phant-head­ed humanoid and cup­ping. It can also be browsed by tag, bro­ken up into sub­ject (e.g. beast), emo­tion (e.g. strange), tech­nique (e.g. chro­molith­o­g­ra­phy) and era (e.g. 18th Cen­tu­ry).

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 100,000+ Images From The His­to­ry of Med­i­cine, All Free Cour­tesy of The Well­come Library

Old Book Illus­tra­tions: Free Archive Lets You Down­load Beau­ti­ful Images From the Gold­en Age of Book Illus­tra­tion

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

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

How to Break Open a Big Wheel of Parmesan Cheese: A Delightful, 15-Minute Primer

in Food & Drink | October 13th, 2016

It takes a year to age a wheel of fine parme­san cheese. And about 4 min­utes, of good hard work, to break it open. Above, cheese expert Car­lo Guf­fan­ti walks us through the process. The first inci­sion comes at the 3 minute mark. Var­i­ous knives come into play. Until we reach the sev­en minute mark, when the wheel of cheese final­ly breaks open. All the while, Guf­fan­ti talks about the cheese as if it’s a liv­ing, breath­ing per­son with voli­tion and feel­ings. Maybe that’s what hap­pens when you spend your life mak­ing fine cheeses. Or, maybe he’s just trans­lat­ing Ital­ian expres­sions direct­ly into Eng­lish. Either way, it’s endear­ing.

Note: Accord­ing to The Cheese Chan­nel, which pro­duced this video, what we’re actu­al­ly see­ing is “a wheel of Trent­in­grana – a parme­san-style cheese that’s from Trenti­no. The qual­i­ty of Trent­in­grana is tight­ly con­trolled by appel­la­tion law, which states that it can only be made with raw milk from cows graz­ing on pas­tures or hay (silage is banned).” View more of The Cheese Chan­nel’s videos here.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Take UC Berkeley’s Free “Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion 101” Lec­ture Course, Fea­tur­ing a Pan­theon of Sus­tain­able Food Super­stars