Monthly Archives: February 2012

Une éminence grise: Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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Cardinal de Richelieu, by Philippe de Champaigne *

* Philippe de Champaigne (26 May 1602 – 12 August 1674)

Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac (9 September 1585 – 4 December 1642) is probably the best example of an éminence grise, the name given persons who stand behind the official ruler, and ensure his or her success.  Richelieu was a clergyman, a noble and a statesman.  He became a public figure when he was elected one of the representatives of the clergy of Poitou to the States General of 1614.[i]  He became Secretary of State in 1616, six years after Henri IV was assassinated by François Ravaillac.

Marie de Médicis

In 1610, when her husband Henri IV was assassinated, Marie de Médicis or Marie de’ Medici (26 April 1575 – 4 July 1642), a potentially powerful widow, could have ruled France.  The future Louis XIII (27 September 1601 – 14 May 1643) was only nine when his father was killed.  But the French did not like Marie.  She was not very intelligent and there was something vulgar about her: “[t]he queen feuded with Henri’s mistresses in language that shocked French courtiers.” (Wikipedia)

Marie’s main mistake was to befriend the corrupt Concini family, nipping in the bud her chances to govern and leaving room for the then bishop and brilliant Richelieu to enter into the service of Louis XIII and become the chief architect of absolutism.

Cardinal de Richelieu, by Philippe de Champaigne (c.1640)

Absolute Monarchy: one king, one language, one religion

As for Richelieu, he would centralize France and establish absolutism as firmly as he could.   Put in a nutshell, absolutism required the people of France to have one king, to speak one language, and to practice the same religion.  Between 1624 until his death in 1642, Armand Jean du Plessis did achieve the three goals he had set as his objective.

Louis XIII

In theory, Richelieu was nothing more than King Louis XIII‘s chief minister but, in reality, he was king regent and extremely powerful.  Louis de Bourbon was a reluctant and unlikely king and therefore needed Richelieu, which goes a long way in explaining the authority afforded Richelieu.  The relationship between the king and his chief minister was well nigh symbiotic.  In other words, Marie’s intellectual deficiencies and Louis’s inability to rule were ideal circumstances for a bright young Bishop to become a ruler.

Louis XIII was not cut out to be an absolute ruler.  Louis liked to go hunting and he and his minions gathered in his hunting lodge at Versailles.  He was a homosexual and, as I recently discovered, he was also a composer, as was Frederick the Great.

On the Day of the Dupes (November 10, 1630), when the rumour circulated that Richelieu had been killed, Louis XIII took his chief minister to his hunting lodge in Versailles.  According to Britannica, “[a]fter initially agreeing to the cardinal’s dismissal, the king recovered and chose to support Richelieu against the wishes of his mother, his wife, and his confessor.”[ii]  Marie was sent to Blois and Richelieu started to rule unopposed, as did his successor Jules Mazarin, the chief minister from December 5, 1642 until March 9, 1661.

La Fronde

The Fronde, a revolt which began in 1635, at the time of the Franco-Spanish War, was the acid test that confirmed absolutism as exercised by Richelieu/Louis XIII.  The Fronde opposed, on the one hand, the people (les parlements) and the king, and, on the other hand, the nobility and the king, or his chief minister.  Frondeurs actually entered Louis XIV’s bedroom at the Louvre when he was a child.  As a result, Louis XIV’s advisors were “bourgeois” who lived upstairs at Versailles which, as I have mentioned recently, fully explains their being called, le conseil d’en haut.  Here “en haut” meant upstairs.

One language

We have named the three conditions demanded by absolutism: one king, one language and one religion.  I will write about these goals, but not in the order I just used.  We will begin with the linguistic condition.  All of France had to speack and spoke French.

Well, in this regard, we owe the creation of the Académie-Française (1635) to Richelieu.  Very early in the century, Catherine de Vivonne or Madame de Rambouillet, born in Rome, opened her salon.  The people who gathered in her chambre bleue, including aristocrats and Richelieu himself, were by an large honnêtes hommes, a term which as I have written in an earlier blog does not mean honest men.  Honest men would be called hommes honnêtes.  Not only would l’honnête homme speak French, but he would speak it well. 

L‘honnête homme is the perfect gentleman.  He has Italian roots in that he embodies Baldassare Castiglione‘s courtier.  Castiglione is the author of Il Libro del Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier), published in 1528.  During his stay at the Court of Urbino, in what is now Italy, Castiglione observed an “art,” the art of being a courtier, an “honnête homme,” but not necessarily an aristocratic honnête homme.  Aristocrats had to learn honnêteté.

In the salons, one spoke well, hence the creation of the above-mentioned Académie-Française whose mission it would be to regulate the French language.  The French court and courtiers would have to be as civilized as persons attending salons, but the court could not be “précieuse.”  The movement known as La Préciosité was an instance of what Jean Cocteau described as “not knowing just how far one can go too far.”  Chairs are chairs and an armchair, an armchair or fauteuil (fautei).  Neither are “les commodités de la conversation.” 

Ironically, Jean Cocteau’s famous phrase about audacity summarizes l’honnêteté.  An honnête homme knew how far he could go too far.  “Avoir du tact, c’est savoir jusqu’où on peut aller trop loin.” or “Being tactful in audacity is knowing how far one can go to far.” (Jean Cocteau [5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963]).  What a quotation!

The Edict of Nantes, 1598

One Religion

Under Richelieu, being a protestant was a major disadvantage.  One could pay a price.  So despite the Edict of Nantes, promulgated under Henri IV, in 1598, and dictating tolerance towards Huguenots, Richelieu, our éminence grise, but rouge, given his red garments, brought Louis XIII to La Rochelle when it was besieged, in 1627-1628.  That year, some twenty-two thousand Huguenots were starved to death.  Out of a population of twenty-seven thousand Huguenots, five thousand survived.

“[Richelieu] believed that their [the Huguenots] right under the Edict of Nantes to maintain armed fortresses weakened the king’s position at home and abroad. Protestant rebellions in 1625 and 1627 persuaded the cardinal of the need for a direct confrontation.”[iii]  The British tried to rescue the starving Huguenots, but were defeated.

So the Edict of Nantes was revoked long before its official revocation by Louis XIV, on 18 October 1685.

One King

The centralization of France, absolute monarchy in this case, also demanded that France have but one king.  This takes us to La Fronde.  Various grands seigneurs, dukes who had owned large portions of France, resented being disempowered, which was a requirement of absolutism as designed by Richelieu and put into pratice by his chosen successor, Jules Mazarin (1602–1661), born Giulio Raimondo Mazzarino.

La Fronde des nobles was severely repressed.  No one was drawn and quartered by four horses racing respectively east, west, north and south, which had been Ravaillac’s fate, Henri IV’s assassin.  But the story of Cinq-Mars (pronounced: Mar), whose father was a friend of Richelieu, illustrates how ruthlessly Richelieu made everyone in France march to the beat of one drummer.

Henri Coiffier de Ruzé, Marquis de Cinq-Mars (1620 – September 12, 1642)  became Louis XIII’s lover and told Louis XIII that Richelieu should be executed.  Cinq-Mars had a powerful supporter in Gaston de France, Henri IV’s and Marie de Médicis’s son and Louis XIII’s brother.  The conspiracy failed and it would appear that Cinq-Mars’s family did not believe Richelieu would have young Cinq-Mars beheaded.  At any rate, they did not hire a good executioner and the head took forever to fall.  This type of torture led to the invention of the guillotine.

Not only was Richelieu pitiless, but he insisted on being transported to Lyons where the executions took place, lying on his death-bed.  He wanted to be a witness to 22 year-old Cinq-Mars’s execution.  François-Auguste de Thou (Paris c. 1607 – Lyon 12 septembre 1642), not a conspirator, but one who knew about the conspiracy and did not tell, was also executed on that day.  As for Gaston de France, or Gaston d’Orléans, he lost his claim to the throne of France.

Conclusion

So, to conclude, Richelieu

  • was the main architect of French absolute monarchy: one language, one religion and one king;
  • he was or seemed an éminence grise, the man behind Louis XIII;
  • he ruled France as though he was the king, which makes him look like an impostor, yet he wasn’t.

In other words, Richelieu ruled, but if he did rule, it was because he could not be king.  He had no claim to the throne of France, nor did his successor, Mazarin.  Both were chief ministers, except that Richelieu was, if not a crowned king, the ruler of France.  And if he was, though unofficially, king of France, it is because circumstances created a breech in an otherwise impenetrable world.  As mentioned above, his relationship with Louis XIII was all but symbiotic.  They were two in one.

There have been several éminences grises. Wikipedia gives a long list of éminences grises.  But Richelieu was no ordinary éminence grise.  There is always more to tell…

 * Henri Motte (1846-1922), peintre historique (Siège de La Rochelle)

(please click on the picture to enarge it and on the titles to hear the music)

____________________

[i] J. H. Shennan. “France.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 28 Feb. 2012. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/215768/France>.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

Belaud the Cat’s Suite

28 Tuesday Feb 2012

Posted by in Sharing, The Human Condition

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Belaud

Belaud the Cat

 

This is me, Belaud, her cat, sitting on a chair.  Today, she’s totally out of it.  I’m around being good, but that’s not enough for her.  So, I decided that a cat of my lineage could write down a few lines.  She’s such a poor speller that I can do much better.

This is the entrance to the kitchen

Would you believe this woman insisted that the little diamonds on the floor be lined up with the middle of the sink’s area?  She likes things to be lined up properly.

0141

Her studio & my bedroom

Here, below, we have her side of my room.  She does watercolours in this room. There’s no justice, I have to share my own room.  She has obligations!  I might have to phone my lawyer or contact the League of Cats. Yes there is a League of Cats.  

 

Here I am, resting.  Napping is very important.  Would you believe we have two French-Canadian catalognes.  The woven blankets are “catalognes.”  I showed her pictures of Carl Laarson’s house where there are “catalognes” used as carpeting.

View of the kitchen from the dining-room

So there we are looking at the dining-room. There is no way we could sell this apartment without staging it. It’s cluttered. She’s turned an antique washstand into a small bar.  There is a lovely antique table in the kitchen, but I can’t show it. It’s beautiful but it’s cluttered.

The dining-room

Immediately below is a view of the dining-room. The bottles? She makes sure we look as though we had everything. It’s the same with bathroom towels. You never know, she says, someone could drop in.

Beyond the dining-room is her office.  She has left that big hand bag of hers in the middle of the place. I should also tell you that our blue armoire is about to move to a better place. This, she says, is where I want to put my grand-mother’s “love seat.”

002

The cat & sink

This is me again trying to get some water from the tap, but the tap does not drip.  That I should be subjected to such torture is totally unacceptable. She once lived in Normandy where she had a large sink. So we have one large sink.


 The Living-Room

The living-room has just appeared. It’s huge, but she did not remove the throw from my LOUIS-PHILIPPE.  I am calling my lawyer. I should tell you that I object to our having a television in the living-room. It’s the wires. Fortunately, she has a friend who is an engineer and very tidy. He’s part Russian and part Ukrainian.

001

007

The master bedroom

She did not photograph the master bedroom and its ensuite. Is she thinking of operating a Bed & Breakfast. I keep telling her to move to that room so mine would be entirely mine.

005

Daniel Barenboim plays Mendelssohn (3 February 1809 – 4 November 1847)
Songs without Words, Op. 30, No. 1

137-21

© Micheline Walker
28 February 2012
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art by Micheline Walker

A Watercolour painting, by Micheline

26 Sunday Feb 2012

Posted by in Art

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Artist: Micheline Walker

Since I am learning to do new things, such as putting photographs of my paintings in my computer, I thought I would blog about it.

Painting flowers and so-called “nature morte” are my personal favourites as an artist, but lately my main artistic activity has been to recite the names of the various colours contained in the little tubes of paint.

I realize it is difficult to tell, but the above painting shows hibiscus flowers. For me flowers are like an idea which I develop.

Technically, this is a watercolour painting with little touches of tempera.  I used heavy acid-free “paper.”  In fact, the paper is cotton.

Short of a name, this small painting has a number: 186, given by the camera.

So let this be a very short blog.  I hope you enjoy the painting.

 (please click on the title to hear the music)
February 26, 2012

Gustav Leonhardt: a tribute to a Dutch master

25 Saturday Feb 2012

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 Gustav Leonhardt

Gustav Leonhardt gave his last recital on December 12th, in Paris, and died on January 16th, 2012 at his home, in Amsterdam, aged 83.  

In France’s Le nouvel Observateur (16 January 2012), one can read that

Avec Gustav Leonhardt le “grand style” s’est éteint.

My best translation of this headline is that with the death of Gustav Leonhardt the “grand style” has died.  Éteindre means to extinguish or to turn off as in turning off the lights.  On éteint la lumière, but on s’éteint (one dies).

Gustav Leonhardt died at his home, a seventeenth-century house, in Amsterdam. After he gave his last recital in Paris, on December 12, 2011, he told Olivier Mantei, director of the Bouffes du Nord:

« C’était mon dernier concert, parce que je vais mourir, je suis content de l’avoir fait ici, car j’aime bien cette salle. »* 
 

*This was my last concert because I’m going to die, I’m glad this was the last place I played, as I like this hall. 

Christian Merlin, in “Le messager de Bach,” Le Figaro.

Lady Standing at the Virginal (c. 1672-1673), Johannes Vermeer (click on picture to enlarge it)

Biographical notes

Born in 1928, Gustav Leonardt, harpsichordist, organist, conductor and gifted teacher, studied at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis from 1947 to 1950.  He gave his first concert in Vienna in 1950 and played JS Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of the Fugue).  He remained in Vienna where he studied musicology and taught the harpsichord at the Vienna Academy of Music (1925 – 1955).  As of 1954, he was professor of harpsichord at the Amsterdam Conservatory.

« Le grand style »

Gustav Leonhardt was a gentleman.  In fact he was the very embodiment of “l’honnête homme,” refined, elegant and restrained: an aristocrat.  These adjectives could also be used to describe the manner in which he played the harpsichord.  But one would have to add that Monsieur Leonhardt had a profound understanding of music, which is very rare.  Hearing him play the harpsichord was a spell-binding experience.  This is perhaps the effect “le grand style” has on a listener.

JS Bach and Magdalena: Gustav Leonhardt as actor

Gustav Leonhardt was particularly fond of Bach and edited JS Bach Die Kunst der Fuge (BWV 1080) or The Art of the Fugue and also edited pieces by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck  (April or May, 1562 – Amsterdam, 16 October 1621).  Moreover, Monsieur Leonhardt was an actor.  He played the role of Bach in the “Diary of Anna Magdalena Bach” (1967),  Anna Magdalena was Bach’s second wife and a fine musician.  However, Gustav Leonhardt never completed his project, the recording of all of Bach’s cantatas.

The Leonhardt’s Baroque Ensemble and the Leonhardt Consort

At the moment, it is quite common to think of harpsichordists as soloists, but that is a bit of a misconception.  For instance, Mr Leonhardt’s Baroque Ensemble collaborated with Alfred Deller, the famed British counter-tenor.  The Leonhardt Baroque Ensemble and Mr Deller recorded JS Bach’s Cantatas BWV 54 and BWV 170.  Other than Mr Leonhardt, members of the Ensemble were Mr Leonhardt’s wife Marie and Eduard Melkus (violons), Alice Hoffelner (viola) and her husband, the celebrated cellist Count Nikolaus de la Fontaine und d’Harnoncourt-Unverzagt or Nikolaus Harnoncourt.  Later, he formed the Leonhardt Consort.

As I was Browsing the internet in search of information on Monsieur Leonhardt, I found the names of composers who had written for the harpsichord, or one of the “virginals.” 

Johann Sebastian Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Heinrich Biber, John Blow, Georg Böhm, William Byrd, André Campra, Francois Couperin, Louis Couperin, John Dowland, Jacques Duphly, Antoine Forqueray, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Johann Jakob Froberger, Orlando Gibbons, André Grétry, George Frideric Handel, Jacques-Martin Hotteterre, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Claudio Monteverdi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Georg Muffat, Johann Pachelbel, Henry Purcell, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Christian Ritter, Johann Rosenmuller, Domenico Scarlatti, Agostino Steffani, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, Georg Philipp Telemann, Manuel Valls, Antonio Vivaldi, and Matthias Weckmann.

In memoriam

So I will read these names aloud in memory of Gustav Leonhardt who is among the persons who helped give my life a meaning.  Afterwards, I might go and play a few “tombeaux,” in memoriam pieces as they were often called during the Baroque era.  The Couperins composed many tombeaux (plural for tombeau: coffin). The word “consolation” was also used, especially in the seventeenth century.  *And rose, she lived as roses live, / A morning’s sigh  [my rewriting].

*Et rose elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses,
L’espace d’un matin.

Malherbe, Consolation à M. Du Périer (1598)

 (please click on the titles to hear the music)

February 25th, 2012

The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book

24 Friday Feb 2012

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Young Lady seated at the virginal, Johannes Vermeer

Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer (1632 – December 1675), Dutch

The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book

The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, an early 17th-century English manuscript for keyboard music, is yet another compendium of musical pieces that combine the pieces of several composers.  As I have mentioned in others blogs, a compendium is a monument to a period of music.  The Fiztwilliam is named after library antiquarian Viscount FitzWilliam who bequeathed the manuscript collection to Cambridge University, in 1816.  It is now preserved in the Fitzwilliam Museum, at Cambridge.

An Elizabethan Compendium

However, we tend to associate the Fiztwilliam with Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603, Queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death.  Elizabeth I did not marry.  In fact, the FitzWilliam was first entitled Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book.  But Elizabeth, who died in 1603, never owned a copy of the book.  Elizabeth I was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, a  music lover, as was her father, and a learned woman.  She was fond of dancing: the galliard, in particular.

Galliard

Francis Tregian the Younger or William Byrd

The Fiztwilliam Virginal Manuscript contains an impressive 297 pieces and one blank page numbered 298. It was probably compiled by Francis Tregian the Younger, a recusant and amateur musician.  Recusants were persons who refused to attend Anglican services.  Tregian may indeed have copied the pieces, but if he did, he stopped in 1618, the year of his death.  The Fitzwilliam contains pieces composed between 1562 and 1612.  The manuscript is also attributed to William Byrd.  So its origin is disputed.

“Virginal” as a generic term

I should indicate that the word “virginal” is often used to designate the clavichord, the harpsichord, and other plucked instruments.  Among these “virginals,” the quietest is the clavichord.  The virginal and the clavichord are rectangular instruments, but the harpsichord resembles grand pianos.  However some are upright instruments higher than the highest upright pianos.

Late Composers

Pianists do play Couperin, Scarlatti, Handel, Bach and other composers who were active before the piano was developed.  For instance, J. S. Bach’s keyboard music was composed for the harpsichord or the organ.  The famed Goldberg Variations were written for a two-keyboard harpsichord.  Although he composed for the piano, some of Mozart’s compositions can be played on the harpsichord.

Composers represented in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book

The FitzWilliam (now called Fitzwilliam) contains pieces by composers who are relatively unknown to pianists: Doctor John Bull, Ferdinando Richardson, Giles Farnaby, John Munday, Peter Philips, Thomas Morley, William Byrd and a few anonymous composers.

Specifically, pieces and composers featured in the Fitzwilliam are the Galiarda, the Galliardo, the Pavana, the Fantasia, the Maske, the Corranto, the Gigge, Variations, Preludes, a few liturgical pieces with a title such as “Barafostus’ Dreame,” ” Pakington’s Pownde,” “Ladye Riche,” “Put Up Thy Dagger Jemy,” the “New Sa-Hoo,” “Quadlings Delight,”  “The Ghost,” “The Earle of Oxford’s Marche,” by William Byrd, “Lachrymae Pavan,” by John Dowland (arranged by Giles Farnaby) and others.

Performers

So the “virginals” required their own composers, but it could also be said that they required and still require their own performers.  When pianists try to play a “virginal,” usually the harpsichord,they can no longer bite into the keys and have to execute the ornaments in a different manner than on the piano.  The two instruments are keyboard instruments, but one “touches” the virginal and related instruments and “plays” the piano.

Other Collections

There are other collections of music for the virginal, such as collections compiled by composers:  Will Forster’s Virginal Book, Clement Matchett’s Virginal Book, Anne Cromwell’s Virginal Book, and the famous Parthenia or the Maydenhead of the first musicke that ever was printed for the Virginalls, printed in 1612.

Parthenia, 1612

(please click on the title to hear pieces from the Fitzwilliam)
 
February 24, 2012

More on Boëthius & rising to someone’s defense

23 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by in Literature, Music, Sharing

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The Yale, the Aberdeen Bestiary

Aberdeen Bestiary

More on Boëthius

Surfing the net in search of appropriate pictures and music for Boëthius, I was surprised to find that he had many admirers.

Among the material I discovered on You Tube is a German-language account of his death.  I have put a link to this website at the very bottom of this post.  It provides a more detailed account of his life than mine. 

For instance, I did not mention that Boëthius was accused of treason when and perhaps because he rose to the defense of ex-consul Cæcina Decius Faustus Albinus who had just been accused of treasonous correspondence with Justin I, the Byzantine emperor.  Boëthius pointed out that if Albinus could be accused of treason, so could he, which is precisely what happened. 

Rising to someone’s defense

So poor Boëthius learned, for the duration of his imprisonment, that one does not question the judgment of the “great.” Given his rank and the nature of his position, it could be that Boëthius believed he was at liberty to defend Albinus.  But the nature of his position also allowed communication between Boëthius and Justin I.  Boëthius was an accomplished Hellenist.   

We are now better protected against false accusations, but the fact remains that  rising to the defense of an unjustly accused person is  dangerous, which may explain why so many of us will not help victims of an injustice.  By and large, people in high places will not lift a finger to help a person who is the victim of an injustice 

Émile Zola: the Dreyfus affair

When Émile Zola published his: “J’accuse” in an effort to help Dreyfus, an army captain falsely accused of treason, he [Zola] was tried and convicted but managed to flee to England.  The traitor was Charles Marie Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy (16 December 1847 – 21 May 1923) who never had to face punitive measures. 

And it goes on and on.  This morning, I posted a short message on President Obama’s Facebook page and was immediately deluged with mostly unsavoury mail.  When President Bush discovered the US was facing a financial collapse, averted by TARP, I lost a third of my pension fund.  President Bush was bailed out by the Democrats and my situation has improved, but I thank God and Lady Fortune for the fact that Barack Obama was elected President of the United States and that I was born in a country that has social programs.              

Finally I thank Boëthius for writing The Consolation of Philosophy (524 ce).  He could not avoid torture and death but he reminded us that the scenario is always the same: from ashes to ashes.  And he also reminded us that life which sometimes brings the worst can also bring the best.  It can be ornamented.  

The above picture has both nothing and everything to do with this blog.  It is a thing of beauty, naïve beauty, and therefore a small pleasure.  When I receive unsavoury messages, I turn to beauty wherein I find a temporary refuge.  Marcus Aurelius looked upon his soul as his best refuge.  It could be that my soul is also my best refuge, but I need a guardian angel as I struggle to reach it.

How does a blogger say to her readers that she is there for them? 

    

Der Tod des Boëthius (524 n. Chr.)
Bourbon Louis XIII  (1601–1643 ): Ballet de la Merlaison
(please click on titles to listen)

February 22, 2012

 

On Boëthius: The Consolation of Philosophy

21 Tuesday Feb 2012

Posted by in Literature, Music

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Boethius, detail of a miniature from a Boethius manuscript, 12th century; in the Cambridge University Library, England (MS li.3.12(D))

Between the Hundred Years’ War, famine and the Black death, France lost half Its Population and it took them a full century to recover.  How did they cope?  This Question leads us to Boëthius and the concept of the Wheel of Fortune.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius (480–524 or 525 AD), was a “Roman scholar, Christian philosopher, and statesman.”[i]  Among other things, Boëthius was an accomplished theorist of music which he introduced in the Quadrivium.[ii]  He and particularly Cassiodorus are the architects of an educational system that lasted from the sixth century until the Renaissance and remains a reference.

Born in Rome, to a Patrician family, a Christian, the son of a consul, a senator and consul, the father of two consuls, and the descendant of emperors, Boëthius rose to great heights.  In fact, in 1520, Boëthius became magister officiorum (head of all the government and court services) to Theodoric the Great (454 – August 30, 526), a king of the Ostrogoths (471–526), who also made himself king of Italy (493–526) and later became a viceroy of the Eastern Roman Empire.  However, Theodoric the Great had espoused Arianism, a doctrine, later declared heretical, according to which Christ is a finite creature.

There truly does not seem to be any justification for Boëthius’s fall from grace.  Yet, in 1524, Boëthius and ex-consul Caecina Decius Faustus Albinus were suddenly accused of treasonous correspondence with to Justin I, the Byzantine emperor (518 to 527).  Boëthius was tried, pronounced guilty and condemned to death by Theodoric the Great.  Other reasons were brought to bear, such as the use of magic, but it seems Theodoric had simply grown fearful of Boëthius who was an accomplished Hellenist, and whose official capacities may indeed have led to his meeting Justin I (c. 450 – 1 August 527).

Theodoric the Great

Boëthius very much bemoaned his fate:

“Happy is that death which thrusts not itself upon men in their pleasant years, yet comes to them at the oft-repeated cry of their sorrow. Sad is it how death turns away from the unhappy with so deaf an ear, and will not close, cruel, the eyes that weep. Is it to trust to FORTUNE’S fickle bounty, and while yet she smiled upon me, the hour of gloom had well-nigh overwhelmed my head. Now has the cloud put off its alluring face, wherefore without scruple my life drags out its wearying delays. ‘Why, O my friends, did ye so often puff me up, telling me that I was fortunate ? For he that is fallen low did never firmly stand.”

Boethius and Philosophy, oil on canvas, by Mattia Preti,* 17th century.

THe Consolation of Philosophy

However, while he was a prisoner, Boëthius wrote his most famous and lasting work: The Consolation of Philosophy (1524).  In this work, one of the “Great Works,”  Lady Philosophy does at times appease Boëthius.

*Mattia Preti (Italian)

Allow me to quote Britannica:

“Philosophy, personified as a woman, converts the prisoner Boethius to the Platonic notion of Good and so nurses him back to the recollection that, despite the apparent injustice of his enforced exile, there does exist a summum bonum (“highest good”), which “strongly and sweetly” controls and orders the universe. Fortune and misfortune must be subordinate to that central Providence, and the real existence of evil is excluded.[iv]

The Wheel of Fortune

Moreover, although Boëthius did not invent the idea of a Wheel of Fortune, in his Consolation of Philosophy (524), he nevertheless wrote about Lady Fortune.

I know how Fortune is ever most friendly and alluring to those whom she strives to deceive, until she overwhelms them with grief beyond bearing, by deserting them when least expected. … Are you trying to stay the force of her turning wheel? Ah! dull-witted mortal, if Fortune begin to stay still, she is no longer Fortune.

Faith and Fate

Recourse to fate, i.e. the Wheel of Fortune, may seem totally unphilosophical, but the Rota fortuna was often alluded to by medieval writers and depicted by the artists of that period and in fact it has never fully left our collective unconcious.  Many of us fear inescapable destiny.  The Wheel of Fortune depicts the unavoidable, or “the hand one is dealt.”

Besides, although a concept such as the Wheel of Fortune may seem totally unacceptable to believers, it was not so condemnable as one may first think and it retains validity.  For instance, there can be no doubt that alluding to the whims of Lady Fortune is/was a better recourse than scapegoating.  During epidemics of the plague and the Black Death (1448-1450), a pandemic, communities often rounded up the Jews and burned them at the stake.

As for faith itself, in the face of a pandemic, many may have doubted the existence of a good God.  Yet, faith may also have been sustenance to victims of the plague.  For Christians, there was a God who was a good God, and, after death, victims of the plague would forever live in His Paradise.  So both faith and fate may have helped the dying.  The dying were the victims of fickle Fortune, which meant they could not escape their catastrophic circumstances, but they were going to Paradise.

Conclusion

But to return to Boëthius, whom Lady Philosophy could not fully reassure, he was first and foremost Theodoric’s victim and, therefore, a man’s victim, a man who had espoused Arianism (not to be confused with Aryanism) and who feared Boëthius.  So Boëthius was very much a victim.  He had hoped there would be greater unity between the Western and Eastern churches, which could not have pleased Theodoric.

La Fontaine, in “L’Homme et la Couleuvre,” or “The Man and the Serpent” (click on title to see blog), an earlier blog, gave the Serpent superiority over man.  By and large, the worst evil is usually perpetrated by human beings and human institutions, not to mention that human beings tend to close their eyes when fellow human beings are experiencing great distress.

Boëthius imprisoned

Boethius – Top 10 Quotes  (please click on the title to hear the music)
Napoli Aragonese – O tempo bono Ensemble Micrologus Codex Manesse
 

_________________________

[i] James Shiel, “Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 21 Feb. 2012.                                               <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/71328/Anicius-Manlius-Severinus-Boethius>.

[ii] We owe the development of the Medieval to Renaissance curriculum to Boëthius and Cassiodorus.  The Quadrivium included arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.  It followed the Trivium, which included the study of grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

[iii] “Cassiodorus.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 21 Feb. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/98234/Cassiodorus>.

[iv] The Consolation of Philosophy (complete text)

A Voyageur Song: “Mon merle”

20 Monday Feb 2012

Posted by in Folksongs

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Mon merle

Mon merle (My Blackbird)

This song is difficult to translate as the blackbird, le merle, loses first its beak, then an eye, then its head, its neck, its back, its wing and, finally its tail.

In each stanza, the last lost body part is added to the previous loss.  The song grows.

CHORUS:

Comment veux-tu mon merle, mon merle?
Comment veux-tu mon merle chanter?
How do you want my blackbird, my blackbird?
How do you want my blackbird to sing ?
 
1.  Mon merle a perdu son bec. (2) its beak
(My blackbird has lost its beak.)
Un bec, deux becs, trois becs, marlo. one…, two… three…, marlo
CHORUS
 
2.  Mon merle a perdu son œil. (2) its eye: un œil (plural: yeux)
(My blackbird has lost its eye.)
Un œil, deux yeux, trois yeux,
Un bec, deux becs, trois becs, marlo.
CHORUS
 
3.  Mon merle a perdu sa tête. (2) its head
(My blackbird has lost its head.)
Une tête, deux têtes, trois têtes,
Un œil, deux yeux, trois yeux,
Un bec, deux becs, trois becs, marlo.
CHORUS
 
4.  Mon merle a perdu son cou. (2) its neck
(My blackbird has lost its neck.)
Un cou, deux cous, trois cous,
Une tête, deux têtes, trois têtes,
Un œil, deux yeux, trois yeux,
Un bec, deux becs, trois becs, marlo.
CHORUS
 
5.  Mon merle a perdu son dos. (2) its back
(My blackbird has lost its back.)
Un dos, deux dos, trois dos,
Un cou, deux cous, trois cous,
Une tête, deux têtes, trois têtes,
Un œil, deux yeux, trois yeux,
Un bec, deux becs, trois becs, marlo.
CHORUS
 
6. Mon merle a perdu son aile. (2) its wing
(My blackbird has lost its wing.)
Une aile, deux ailes, trois ailes,
Un dos, deux dos, trois dos,
Un cou, deux cous, trois cous,
Une tête, deux têtes, trois têtes,
Un œil, deux yeux, trois yeux,
Un bec, deux becs, trois becs, marlo.
CHORUS
 
7. Mon merle a perdu sa queue. (2)  its tale
(My blackbird has lost its tale.)
Une queue, deux queues, trois queues,
Un dos, deux dos, trois dos,
Un cou, deux cous, trois cous,
Une tête, deux têtes, trois têtes
Un œil, deux yeux, trois yeux,
Un bec, deux becs, trois becs, marlo.
CHORUS
 
 
imagesCAXYWP38
 
 
(please click on the tile to hear the song) 
06 Mon merle 
_________________________
Theodore C. Blegen, Songs of the Voyageurs
(St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1998 [1966])
Université de Moncton, New Brunswick, 30-voice male choir  

The One Hundred Years’ War & the Plague

19 Sunday Feb 2012

Posted by in Art, History, The Human Condition

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Joan of Arc

Painting, c. 1485. An artist's interpretation, since the only known direct portrait has not survived. (Centre Historique des Archives Nationales, Paris, AE II 2490)
Painting, c. 1485. An artist’s interpretation, since the only known direct portrait has not survived. (Centre Historique des Archives Nationales, Paris, AE II 2490) (Photo and caption credit: Wikipedia)

—ooo—

Allow me to reflect on the One Hundred Years’ War (1337-1353) that opposed France and England and their various allies and, at the same time, also to reflect on the Black Death, a pandemics that occurred eleven years after the war began.

La Bataille de La Rochelle, Jean Froissart

La Bataille de La Rochelle,
Jean Froissart

The One Hundred Years’ War

The One Hundred Years’ War was a series of wars. There were periods of peace. Still, between 1337 and 1453, men were killing one another as France fought to oust the English.

The French did oust the English, despite England’s victory at Agincourt, the victory out of which emerged a poet, Charles, Duke of Orléans, and other English victories. But consider the price.

A Pyrrhic Victory

It was a Pyrrhic victory. During part of the years Charles d’Orléans was detained in England, a brave young woman, named Joan of Arc (ca. 1412 – 30 May 1431), without whom Charles VII (22 February 1403 – 22 July 1461) would not have been crowned King of France, in 1429, was betrayed, sold to England by the Burgundians and burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. She has been pronounced a martyr, beatified (1909), and canonized. But recognition did not give her back her most precious possession: her life. Life, short as it is and harsh as it may be.

The Triumph of Death, Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The Triumph of Death, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, ca. 1562 (Museo del Prado) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Black Death: The Plage

The French did oust the English. However, during the One Hundred Years’ War, half the population of France died. Between 1348 and 1350, the Black Death ravaged a large part of Europe. But, if one combines war, famine and the plague, France’s losses were enormous.

Pandemics can be more devastating than wars as they are likely to resurface as epidemics. If you have read my post on the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, you may remember that, in 1416, the Limbourg brothers died of the plague, as did Jean de France who had commissioned his extraordinary Book of Hours in 1410. When they died, the brothers had nearly but not completely carried out their assignment. The Très Riches Heures were completed by Barthélemy van Eyck and Jean Colombe.

The plague killed mercilessly. In some regions of Europe, it snuffed two out of three lives in the space of four days, and the only possible salvation was immediate flight before contamination. There were epidemics of the plague from about the time of the Crusades until the late eighteenth century.

But we need not look back that far, i.e. as far as 1348-1350. The so-called “Spanish Flu” of 1918 killed more individuals than all the battles of World War I combined. I was told that a woman lost three grown sons in the space of twenty-four hours.

Conclusion

We are at the mercy of Lady Fortune who is not always generous. Yet, we lend her a hand. People are still killing one another, regardless of the cost: loss of life, trauma, impoverishment. In fact, let us turn the other cheek, so to speak.

Gustav Mahler (7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) 
« Symphony No. 5 in C-Sharp Minor: IV. Adagietto (Sehr langsam) »
 
Kermis / The Peasant Dance, ca. 1568 Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Netherlandish, ca. 1525/30–1569)

Kermis / The Peasant Dance, ca. 1568
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Netherlandish, ca. 1525/30–1569)

© Micheline Walker
February 19, 2012
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revised
February 23, 2014
 
 
 

Charles d’Orléans: Portrait of an Unlikely Poet

17 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by in History, Literature, Songs

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Charles, Duc d'Orléans

Charles, Duc d’Orléans (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Charles d’Orléans

In a blog entitled “Valentine’s Day: Martyrs and Birds,” I mentioned Charles d’Orléans who helped spread Othon de Grandson‘s FR stories about St Valentine’s Day at the court of France. I put a link to information concerning Charles d’Orléans, as there was no time or space to tell his story.

Charles d’Orléans & the Battle of Agincourt (1415)

Charles d’Orléans (24 November 1394, Paris – 5 January 1465) is a fascinating and intriguing figure.  He became Duke of Orléans at the early age 13, when his father, Louis X, was assassinated by men acting on behalf of the Duke of Burgundy, the opposing faction.

Charles was wounded at the Battle of Agincourt (25 October 1415) and was taken prisoner by Sir Richard Waller. Because he was a “prince du sang,” literally a “prince of the blood,” i.e. a possible heir to the throne of France, the King of England, Henri V, did not want him to return to France. So Charles spent nearly 25 years ‘imprisoned’ in England.

Charles as Prisoner:  the Beginning of a Lasting Friendship

During his imprisonment, he was not behind bars, but housed quite comfortably in various castles.  One of these was Wallingford Castle, a castle that belonged to Sir Richard Waller who had captured him at the Battle of Agincourt, a key moment in the Hundred Years War (1337 to 1453).

Fortunately, a very sincere and long-lasting friendship grew between Sir Waller and the Duke, who, upon his release, was very generous to his friend and jailor. In fact, Sir Richard Waller added the fleur-de-lis to the Waller Coat of Arms. Moreover, Charles was a relatively free ‘prisoner,’ who frequently travelled to London, but never on his own. Yet, he was separated from his family and away from his native country for a very long time. Besides, he must have worried about the future. How could he tell whether or not he would one day return to France?

The Tower of London

The Tower of London (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A poet is born

So Charles whiled away the years of his lengthy captivity writing poems and songs, which, I would suspect, helped him cope with his “longue attente,” to use his own words. It could be said, therefore, that he created for himself a “literary homeland,” and never left it. When he returned to France, he stayed at his castle in Blois and entertained poets. Therefore, I would also suspect our prisoner was rescued by art and that art was his true calling. Charles d’Orléans is an important figure in the history of French literature.

A Son & Future King

But his poems are not his only legacy. At the age of 46, he married Marie de Clèves who was 14 years old. She bore him three children, one of whom would be Louis XII, King of France. Charles was 68 when his son was born. He had turned to poetry, but he was a “prince du sang” (a Prince of the Blood; possible heir to the throne of France), and so was his son.

Charles reçoit l’hommage d’un vassal (click to enlarge)

Hella Haasse

Charles’ best-know poem is En la forêt de longue attente, translated in 1949, as Het Woud der Verwachting, Hella Haasse (2 February 1918 – 29 septembre 2011).  Hella Haasse’s translations of Charles d’Orléans poetry created a revival of Charles’s poetry in France. But Debussy had already set some of Charles’s poems to music he composed.

However, the following poem is the one that lingers in my mind

Le temps a laissé son manteau
De vent, de froidure et de pluie
Et s’est vêtu de broderie,
De soleil luisant, clair et beau.
 

The season removed its coat
Of wind, cold and rain,
And put on embroidery,
Gleaming sunshine, bright and beautiful.

 
Il n’y a bête ni oiseau,
Qu’en son jargon ne chante ou crie:
“Le temps a laissé son manteau!
De vent, de froidure et de pluie.”
 

There is neither animal nor bird
That doesn’t tell in it’s own tongue:
The season removed his coat
of wind, cold and rain

 
Rivière, fontaine et ruisseau
Portent en livrée jolie,
Gouttes d’argent, d’orfèvrerie,
Chacun s’habille de nouveau
Le temps a laissé son manteau.
 

Rivers, fountains and brooks
Wear, as handsome garments,
Silver drops of goldsmith’s work;
Everyone puts on new clothing:
The season removed his coat.

 

So the story of Charles d’Orléans is a story of survival. During his years of exile, he found a refuge in poetry, a “literary homeland.”

Consider his legacy. Yes, his son would be King of France, Louis XII. But I am thinking of his poems and songs. Charles d’Orleans died five hundred years ago, but Charles d’Orléans also lives and he is linked to the lore of St Valentine’s Day.

 
(please click on the titles to hear the music)    
Charles d’Orléans: “Le temps a laissé son manteau,” Michel Polnareff
 
poet: Charles d’Orléans
piece:  “Le temps a laissé son manteau” 
performer: Ernst van Altena
 
© Micheline Walker
17 February 2012
WordPress