The architect Léon Krier with a thought experiment in the introduction of his polemic, ‘Architecture: Choice or Fate’: If, one day, for some mysterious reason, all the buildings, settlements, suburbs and structures built after 1945 – especially those commonly called ‘modern’- vanished from the face of the earth, would we mourn their loss? Would the…
Category: List of articles
Mysteries of creation
“All of us, to some extent, borrow from others, from the culture around us. Ideas are in the air, and we may appropriate, often without realizing, the phrases and language of the times. We borrow language itself; we did not invent it. We found it, we grew up into it, though we may use it,…
Reviving the Muse
“Tradition is a succession of successful innovations.” – Pier Carlo Bontempi Who is Bontempi? He is a contemporary architect, like Léon Krier, Quinlan and Francis Terry, Alan Greenberg et al who cultivate new traditional building, based upon older styles and methods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pier_Carlo_Bontempi http://interactive.wttw.com/bontempi/video Everywhere, new architecture which revives older styles is bubbling-up: in America and…
Intention, expression, aesthetics
As music is intentionally a kind of language, meant to share a musical vision (even the most abstract works like some Renaissance polyphony or fugues by J.S. Bach), a vision which is meant to be experienced emotionally, the performance context is defined by expectations of listening where communication is at the centre. We know that…
THE CLASSICAL REVOLUTION Thoughts on new music in the 21st century
Second, revised and expanded edition published by Dover Publications, New York, in 2017 (first edition by the Scarecrow Press / Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham / USA in 2013) Description: The subject matter of ‘The Classical Revolution’ is the current emerging of a new music, which is rooted in premodernist tonal traditions. In painting, figurative realism…