Sound and Vision - Fra Angelico and Britten

The Annunciation, Fra Angelico (1437-1446)
It's nice to have such a cultured family. My mom loves medieval and early Renaissance painting, especially Fra Angelico, and she passed a lot of that appreciation on to me and my sister, who got her BA in art history. One of my favorite trips we've ever taken together was to the Cloisters in NYC. Not only do my mom and sister love art, but my brother is a music professor, and every once in a while he sends me some of the music he's working on, like the Faure songs I've posted here. He's currently coaching the second of five canticles Benjamin Britten wrote for tenor, countertenor, and piano. The original text for this piece is taken directly from Chester's mystery plays, a cycle of 15th century plays based on biblical texts.

The connection between the Britten piece and the Fra Angelico painting isn't just the concurrence of the art and the text, it's their shared depiction of contact with the supernatural. Everything about the Fra Angelico painting is otherworldly, from the over-sized figures and Gabriel's rainbow wings to the beauty of the painting itself (and, you know, the whole idea of the annunciation to begin with), and Britten's portrayal of the voice of God at the beginning of this piece is almost scarily awe-inspiring.


Britten's Canticle II - Abraham and Issac

Sound and Vision - Blakely and Lambchop

The Emptiness Left by a Denial of the Use for which it was Intended, Colin Blakely
I'm moving to Boise in late January, so I've been thinking about (i.e. dreading) this kind of weather a lot lately. This song by Lambchop (off their recently released Live at XX Merge album) makes me think of how warm and comforting I'd hope the inside of those houses are.

Sound and Vision - Rousseau and XTC

Tropical Forest with Monkeys, Henri Rousseau
Rousseau spent his days off producing paintings like Tropical Forest with Monkeys without any formal training. To me, even an effortless, tossed-off XTC song like "I Bought Myself a Liarbird" seems as gorgeous and handmade as a Rousseau painting. It's from their 1984 album The Big Express, which was a return to their "big drum" sound after 1983's more understated Mummer (which has one of my favorite songs ever, Love on a Farmboy's Wages).

Sound and Vision - De Chirico and Broadcast

Melancholy and Mystery of a Street, Giorgio De Chirico
For me, De Chirico's dreamlike paintings are much more evocative than the abstract still lifes of other surrealists like Tanguey or Dali, and more than just about any band I can think of, Broadcast can make music that sounds like a dream. This song, an homage to a Czech movie called Valerie a týden divu, is one of my favorites from their second album, Haha Sound.


Broadcast - Valerie

Sound and Vision - Bouguereau and Scott Walker

Pieta, Adolphe-William Bouguereau
A few weeks ago I posted a Squarepusher track along with a Tchelitchew painting, and since then I've been thinking of other songs and paintings that go together. Bouguereau's "Pieta" is one of the most intense paintings I've ever seen in person. "Farmer in the City" is from Scott Walker's 1995 album, Tilt. The lyrics are from Pier Paolo Pasolini's poem, "Una tanti dialoghi" ("One of the many epilogues").

Sound and Vision - Tchelitchew and Squarepusher

Interior Landscape, Pavel Tchelitchew
"Dreaded Pestilence" is a song from a long-out-of-print album by Squarepusher (in this case, "Chaos A.D.") called Buzz Caner. As a collection of leftover tracks and sketches, it reminds me of Ovuca's first release, but with a lot more phase shifting and white noise. This brutal track is my favorite. You can download the whole album here.