Monthly Archives: July 2022

Music

Richard Wagner’s Ride Of The Valkyries (1870)

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There’s noth­ing quite as Ger­man­ic as a Wag­n­er opera, and noth­ing quite as epic as his mag­num opus, Der Ring des Nibelun­gen (The Ring of the Nibelung). The full cycle of the four parts of The Ring lasts fif­teen hours and although prag­ma­tism these days gen­er­al­ly means that just one of the parts is per­formed, I do like the idea of watch­ing it in its entire­ty. A bit like read­ing Proust’s In Search Of Lost Time in its 1.2 mil­lion word entire­ty (see my blog on that here). Nei­ther chal­lenge have I yet under­tak­en, I should say, but back in 1876, it must have been some spec­ta­cle to have attend­ed the famous Bayreuth Fes­ti­val, when the full cycle was per­formed for the first time, over four days: Das Rhein­gold (The Rhine­gold), Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried, and Göt­ter­däm­merung (Twi­light of the Gods)

The opera is loose­ly based on char­ac­ters from Ger­man­ic and Norse hero­ic leg­end and cen­tres around the epony­mous mag­ic ring that grants domin­ion over the world and how it is fought over by gen­er­a­tions of gods, heroes and myth­i­cal crea­tures, until the final cat­a­clysm at the end of the Göt­ter­däm­merung. The com­plex­i­ty of the epic tale is matched by the increas­ing com­plex­i­ty of the music as it pro­gress­es, and Wag­n­er wrote for such a gar­gan­tu­an orches­tra that a spe­cial pur­pose-built the­atre was built at Bayreuth.

The piece that we all know is the Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walküre, con­tain­ing that rous­ing leit­mo­tif as the Valkyrie sis­ters of Norse mythol­o­gy (“choosers of the slain”) trans­port the fall­en heroes to Val­hal­la. The music was used in Apoc­a­lypse Now (1979) where it was played on heli­copter-mount­ed loud­speak­ers dur­ing the Amer­i­can assault on Viet­cong-con­trolled vil­lages. And just recent­ly, in the excel­lent and grit­ti­ly hon­est TV doc­u­men­tary film, Our Falk­lands War: A Front­line Sto­ry, it was revealed that it was sim­i­lar­ly played loud­ly over the tan­noy as 2 Para were get­ting into the land­ing craft in prepa­ra­tion for their first assault on the Falk­land Islands.

Here’s a ver­sion from the BBC Proms, best enjoyed from a sofa rather than a land­ing craft.

Cesare Viazzi, Ride of the Valkyries (1906)

 

Art

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Ceiling (1512)

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Well, I sup­pose it had to hap­pen soon­er or lat­er, what with the Cre­ation of Adam being astride the top of these blogs week in, week out: it’s time to look at that apex preda­tor of the Renais­sance art world, and num­ber one cause of vis­i­tors’ neck strain, the Sis­tine Chapel. No vis­it to Rome is com­plete with­out it, and per­haps no blog on the sub­lime can afford to omit it.

First, a whis­tle-stop his­to­ry tour: Sis­tine Chapel 101, if you like. Meet Pope Six­tus IV, pope between 1471 and 1484:

Pope Six­tus IV

It was Six­tus (adjec­tive “Sis­tine” in case you need that mansplained) who com­mis­sioned the build­ing of the chapel, which was com­plet­ed in 1481 and has served ever since as the Pope’s offi­cial res­i­dence. Six­tus is also known for found­ing the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion, but that’s anoth­er sto­ry, let’s stick with the chapel. He arranged for a team of painters (not Michelan­ge­lo yet — he comes lat­er — but includ­ing two oth­er famous names, Bot­ti­cel­li and Ghirlan­diao) to cre­ate a series of fres­coes on the walls, depict­ing the lives of Moses and Jesus.

Fast for­ward to 1508 and Pope Julius II is in charge (Julius was a rel­a­tive of Six­tus: nepo­tism was anoth­er of Sixtus’s strong suits):

Pope Julius II

Julius com­mis­sioned Michelan­ge­lo to com­plete the dec­o­ra­tion of the chapel by paint­ing the ceil­ing, which he com­plet­ed four years lat­er in 1512. This was a project that changed the course of West­ern art and is right­ly regard­ed as one of the crown­ing artis­tic accom­plish­ments of human civil­i­sa­tion. Replete with bib­li­cal scenes,  sto­ries and char­ac­ters, the ceil­ing is a riotous col­lec­tion of limbs and draperies, at first glance, and indeed a pho­to of the ceil­ing does­n’t real­ly do it jus­tice — but giv­en time to appre­ci­ate (whilst not bump­ing into fel­low tourists), it is an artis­tic tour de force that war­rants its fame. Click on these images to expand; the first to spot the Cre­ation of Adam wins a prize…