Get Low, the movie

A few weeks ago at my annual Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Birthday/Girls' weekend event, a friend brought along the DVD of a short film directed by Aaron Schneider, based on Faulkner's story Two Soldiers. It is a beautiful film, and a number of the scenes in it were shot locally. Turns out that Schneider's latest film is showing at our local independent theatre. Get Low, starring Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Lucas Black and Bill Murray, is a story of an old codger in the 1930s who comes out of his hermit-like existence in order to plan his pre-death funeral party. Terrific movie!
Here is a synopsis and review from MSNBC:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38431937/ns/today-entertainment/

Back to Widor, slowly

As posted previously, I am a fan of big, booming pipe organ pieces, and particularly of the Widor Toccata. Charles-Marie Widor was the organist at St. Sulpice in Paris from 1870 to 1933. My favorite recording of Widor's Toccata is on "The Sounds of York Minster," a CD recorded in York, England. What is notable to me about that recording is the pace of the piece is much slower and deliberate than what is typically heard in performances of this work. I have gone so far as timing the piece by a metronome, and suggesting to Ray (otherwise known here as Organist Extraordinaire), as I handed him the number on a scrap of paper, that he try the Toccata more slowly. But when you are an Organist Extraordinaire, your artistic interpretation (including the meter at which you play pieces) does not necessarily yield to outside influences. Today, almost exactly one year after my first post about Widor's marvelous Toccata, my husband has sent me the following (from Wikipedia), specifically addressing the meter of the piece:

“Widor was pleased with the worldwide renown this single piece afforded him, but he was unhappy with how fast many other organists played it. Widor himself always played the Toccata rather deliberately. Many organists play it at a very fast tempo whereas Widor preferred a more controlled articulation to be involved. He recorded the piece, at St. Sulpice in his eighty-ninth year: the tempo used for the Toccata is quite slow.”

And here's Widor at the keyboard:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8vz1D_L_OE&p=11AADBF440782809&playnext=1&index=27

Reading Henry James in Venice

While I was in Venice, I read Henry James’s novella, The Aspern Papers. Set in Venice and published in 1888, it is narrated by an unnamed American man who is devoted to the memory of a fictional American poet, Jeffrey Aspern. The narrator comes to Venice in search of Aspern’s long-lost papers, which are reportedly in the possession of the lover of Aspern’s youth, now an elderly woman living in Venice. By placing the home of the woman and her niece in a remote, run down palace on a side canal, James introduces readers to the quiet corners and hidden alleyways of Venice, far from the bustle and crowds of San Marco and the Grand Canal. The idea for The Aspern Papers came to James after he heard a story about an American who schemed to obtain letters of Byron and Shelley, and who became entangled in a marriage offer in exchange for the letters.
James wrote The Aspern Papers while a guest at Palazzo Barbaro, a home on the Grand Canal just off the Accademia Bridge.

James was frequently hosted by the American couple Daniel and Ariana Curtis at Palazzo Barbaro, one of several sites where the American intellectual elite gathered in Venice. The social life that wealthy traveling Americans likely experienced while in Venice in the late nineteenth century would have contrasted starkly to the hermit-like existence James creates in the lives of Juliana Bordereau and her niece Miss Tina in The Aspern Papers.
Here are some pictures I took outside Palazzo Barbaro - the main entrance, decorative grillwork over the door, and even the door knocker. The Palazzo is directly on the Grand Canal, but the rear side of the house, adjacent to the side canal, is a lovely, quiet alcove.