Interesting Art Stories: 74. Frederick the Great Playing the Flute at Sanssouci, Adolph Menzel, ACJ Art Academy

 

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Currently, I am introducing the stories about various artists and their paintings with the title “Interesting Art Stories”.

The 74th story is “Frederick the Great Playing the Flute at Sanssouci” by Adolph Menzel.

Portrait of Adolph Menzel, Giovanni Boldini (1895)

“Frederick the Great Playing the Flute at Sanssouci” or “The Flute Concert” is a history painting in 1852 by the German painter Adolph Menzel. This painting depicts Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, playing the flute at an evening concert at Sanssouci, and is now housed in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

Alte Nationalgalerie

Menzel was one of the most famous and important Realist painters of the 19th century, and was ennobled as Adolph von Menzel in 1898. His works form an important record of life in Prussia at the time, especially the life of Frederick the Great. Sanssouci was the summer palace of Frederick the Great at Potsdam, near Berlin.

Sanssouci Palace

This painting depicts a palace concert where music is being played while Frederick the Great plays the flute on the center stage. In front of him sits his chamber music ensemble, and behind him sits dignitaries and noble ladies as an audience. The focus of this painting is not on the music, but on Frederick the Great and the mood created by the interior design, the furniture, the chandelier, candlelight, and the elaborate dresses of the ladies.

Portrait of Frederick the Great, Johann
Georg Ziesenis (1763)

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The Stories about Art Films: 53. Age of Consent (1969), ACJ Movie Academy

 

Basic Info

Title: Age of Consent

Genre: Biography, Comedy, Drama

Country: United Kingdom, Australia

Language: English

Running time: 106 minutes (Australia), 98 minutes (UK)

Release date: 27 March 1969 (Australia), 15 November 1969 (UK), 8 March 1970 (US)

Staff

Director: Michael Powell

Produced by: Michael Powell, James Mason

Screenplay: Peter Yeldham

Music: Peter Sculthorpe (Australia), Stanley Myers (UK)

Cinematography: Hannes Staudinger

Edited by: Anthony Buckley

Cast

James Mason as Bradley Morahan

Helen Mirren as Cora Ryan

Jack MacGowran as Nat Kelly

Summary

"Age of Consent" is a 1969 romantic comedy-drama film directed by Michael Powell. The film starred James Mason, who co-produced the film with Powell, Helen Mirren, who first starred in a theatrical film, and Jack MacGowran. The screenplay written by Peter Yeldham was based on the 1938 autobiographical novel of the same name by Norman Lindsay, an Australian artist who died the year this film was released.

Movie Review

“A good opportunity to see Helen Mirren”

“Nice film”

“Enjoyable comedy drama from Michael Powell”

“Pleasant surprise”

“Great Michael Powell film”

“Quirky pleasure”

“Life is art, enjoy it while you can”

Interesting stories about the film

1. This is Helen Mirren's first theatrical film in which she played the major leading role.

2. James Mason met his future wife, Clarissa Kaye, in this film.

James Mason

3. Helen Mirren was twenty-four-years-old when this movie was released.

Helen Mirren

4. The storyline of this film includes elements of William Shakespeare’s "The Tempest".

The first page of The Tempest, printed in the
First Folio of 1623

5. This is the first of two Australian cinema movies filmed in Australia that starred English actor James Mason. The second film was "A Dangerous Summer (1982)".

A Dangerous Summer (1982)

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Amedeo Modigliani in Worldwide Museums: 10. The Centre Georges Pompidou

 

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The 10th place I would like to introduce for this week is The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France.

The Centre Georges Pompidou is a cultural complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil, and the Marais. The building was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of Richard Rogers, Su Rogers, Renzo Piano, along with Gianfranco Franchini.

The center has the “Bibliothèque publique d'information”, a vast public library, the “Musée National d'Art Moderne”, the largest museum of modern art in Europe, and “IRCAM (Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique)”, a music and acoustic research center. Because of its location, the center is locally known as “Beaubourg”. 

The center is named after Georges Pompidou, the President of France from 1969 to 1974, who commissioned the establishment of the building, and was officially opened on January 31, 1977 by then President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Since opening in 1977, more than 180 million visitors, including museum visitors, have visited the center.

The works of Modigliani (excluding drawings) currently in the possession of The Centre Georges Pompidou are as follows.

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111. Blues: 2. Origin, ACJ Music Academy

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This week's lecture is “Origin”, the 2nd topic of “Blues”, which is a summary of the contents of “111. Blues: 2. Origin” introduced on November 15th, 2017.

Currently, the exact origin and year of origin of the music now known as blues is difficult to pinpoint, primarily because the associated music style has evolved over a long period of time before it was fully documented as the current blues style.

The earliest blues-like music was a call-and-response style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the form of a specific musical structure, and this music expanded into simple solo songs with emotional content, transforming African slave’s field shouts and field hollers. Many of these blues elements, such as the call-and-response form, can have their origins in African music.

Field holler music was an early form of African American music, described in the 19th century, and field hollers laid the foundations for the blues, spirituals, and ultimately rhythm and blues.

The most important precedent for blues music in America was spiritual, a form of religious song rooted in the camp meetings of the Great Awakening of the early 19th century. Spirituals, in the form of passionate songs, conveyed to listeners a feeling of rootlessness and misery, like the blues. However, unlike blues, spirituals were less concerning the performer but about the general loneliness of mankind. Despite these differences, however, blues and spirituals are so similar that they cannot be easily separated, and perhaps if the term “blues” was used at the time, many spirituals would have been called blues.

The social and economic reasons for the emergence of the blues are not fully known. Blues has evolved from an unaccompanied vocal music of poor black laborers into a variety of styles and sub-genres across the United States, with regional variations. African American work songs were an important precursor of the modern blues, including the songs sung by laborers like stevedores and roustabouts, and the field hollers and shouts of slaves. 

It is difficult to define exactly when the blues first appeared, but it is often mentioned between 1870 and 1900. This period coincides with the transition of agriculture system from slavery to sharecropping and small-scale agricultural production, following the emancipation of the slaves in the southern United States, and the development of the blues was associated with these newly acquired freedoms of the slaves.

One of the major reasons for the lack of data on the origins of the blues is that the wandering tendency of the earliest blues musicians resulted in leaving little or no records of what sort of music they played or where it came from. Blues was generally regarded by the upper- and middle-classes as lower-class music, unsuitable for documentation, study, or enjoyment.

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