September 2016 - Occasional Glimpses of the Sublime

Of course the Beatles had to make an appearance in this blog. Undeniably the most influential bands of the rock era, they took the musical world by storm, having gradually built their reputation over three years from their formation in 1960. They hold a rock-solid place in the hearts of most people of my generation and of many people since. But which song to choose from a canon so replete with the sublime?

I have gone with a song so utterly exemplary of the Beatles sound and feel, from their early heyday, and positively dripping with their youthful exuberance and melodic virtuosity. Written by Lennon and McCartney in the basement of Jane Asher’s parents’ house in Wimpole Street, London; recorded at Abbey Road’s studio two; and released in the UK on 29^th November 1963, it’s I Want To Hold Your Hand. It sold more than a million copies on advanced orders alone, on the back of the success of She Loves You, and became the group’s first US number one, kick-starting the British Invasion of America.

Of all the televised versions of the song (notably on the Ed Sullivan Show, with the famous introduction “Here they are…the Beatles!”), I found this version from the Morecambe and Wise Show in 1964. Played live, it’s absolutely brilliant. Lennon’s and McCartney’s voices are constantly switching between unison and harmony, and there is a wonderful interplay between Lennon’s riffs and George Harrison’s subtle guitar fills. And throughout, of course, they just look so damn good together; it’s a delight to watch.

Niccolò dell’Arca (c. 1435-1440 – 1494) was an Italian Early Renaissance sculptor, about which little is known except for his possession of a sublime skill in the art of sculpture.

His Compianto sul Cristo morto (the Mourning, or Lamentation, of Christ) is a life-size group of six separate terracotta figures lamenting in a semicircle around the dead Christ, in the Sanctuary of Santa Maria della Vita in Bologna. Lamentations were commonly depicted in Renaissance Europe, it being the thirteenth of the Stations of the Cross. Here, the pain of Jesus’s friends, as he is taken down from the cross, could not have been expressed with more intense pathos. Sorrow digs into their faces, forever frozen in anguish.

More than 600 years after they were made, these fragile, now colourless terracotta statues continue to move and surprise visitors to the church who often don’t know about the church’s prized but untrumpeted possession. It’s a universal and timeless grief the figures express. The only peaceful figure of course is that of Christ who looks serenely asleep on a decorative scalloped coverlet. Each of the other figures’ dramatic pathos is intensified by the realism of the facial details.

It’s uncomfortable viewing, of course, due to the nature of the scene, but you know these Renaissance artists; they had a remarkable capacity for depicting pain and suffering, all part and parcel of the concepts embodied in the Christian religion. The anguish is stark, but the cause of the anguish becomes the focus for the Renaissance viewer: the dead Christ and the implications of that death for mankind. Check out the image details to fully appreciate Dell’Arca’s artisanship.