Stream a 24 Hour Playlist of Charles Dickens Stories, Featuring Classic Recordings by Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles & More

Chil­dren, cast off your fin­ger­less mitts and gath­er round the mer­ci­ful­ly cold hearth for some old timey, sea­son­al­ly inap­pro­pri­ate lis­ten­ing.

Spo­ti­fy has pulled togeth­er 67 Charles Dick­ens audio clas­sics into a mas­sive playlist for your sum­mer­time lis­ten­ing enjoy­ment–near­ly 24 hours worth. That should last the long cross-coun­try dri­ve to see grand­ma.

Big goril­las like Oliv­er Twist and Great Expec­ta­tions fig­ure promi­nent­ly. Sir Lau­rence Olivi­er, prepar­ing to step into the part of Mr. Micaw­ber, calls David Cop­per­field “a nov­el which I think must be almost the most famous ever writ­ten.”

Still true half a cen­tu­ry lat­er? Imma­te­r­i­al. Olivier’s use of “I think” and “almost” leaves room enough for a sort of genial, gen­er­al agree­ment.

Some of the intro­duc­tions give unin­ten­tion­al­ly hilar­i­ous added val­ue, such as host Frank Craven’s attempt to con­tex­tu­al­ize a Lux Radio The­ater pre­sen­ta­tion star­ring Orson Welles as Syd­ney Car­ton in A Tale of Two Cities excerpt. The author’s work was often pub­lished in ser­i­al form, he tells lis­ten­ers:

Records tell us of how crowds thronged the wards of New York City to receive news of their favorite hero­ine or hero. For already, the names of Dick­ens’ char­ac­ters were house­hold words, as much, I imag­ine, as Lux Toi­let Soap is a house­hold word through­out Amer­i­ca today, and for very much the same reason–the abil­i­ty to find approval among peo­ple of all kinds of ages and every walk of life, not only among women who are anx­ious to pre­serve their love­li­ness but with every mem­ber of the fam­i­ly, young and old. Lux Toi­let Soap is quick to make friends and to keep them. 

How dis­ap­point­ed the spon­sors must’ve been that in the whole of A Tale of Two Cities, there’s not a sin­gle ref­er­ence to soap. (For the record, Oliv­er Twist has one and David Cop­per­field has two…)

Less­er known treats include Emlyn Williams, a Welsh actor who spent three decades per­form­ing as Dick­ens in a tour­ing solo show, read­ing “Mr. Chops,” a tale of a cir­cus dwarf, ill used by soci­ety. Dick­ens him­self per­formed the sto­ry on his pop­u­lar lec­ture tours. More recent­ly actor Simon Cal­low mined it for a one man show. Stur­dy mate­r­i­al.

The 24-hour playlist (the first one above) will be added to our list of Free Audio Books. If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, grab it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Charles Dick­ens’ Life & Lit­er­ary Works

8+ Hours of Clas­sic Charles Dick­ens Sto­ries Dra­ma­tized, Star­ring Orson Welles, Boris Karloff, Richard Bur­ton & More

Charles Dar­win & Charles Dick­ens’ Four-Hour Work Day: The Case for Why Less Work Can Mean More Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

George Eliot’s Middlemarch Gets Reborn as a 21st Century Web Series: Watch It Online

In 1856, nov­el­ist George Eliot—real name Mary Anne Evans—issued a vicious cri­tique of oth­er women Eng­lish writ­ers in lan­guage we would expect from the most self-sat­is­fied of misog­y­nists, a group of peo­ple with an unqual­i­fied monop­oly on the cul­ture, but who had very lit­tle new to say on the sub­ject. But Eliot cer­tain­ly did, in “Sil­ly Nov­els by Lady Nov­el­ists.” Though she couch­es many of her crit­i­cal obser­va­tions in the con­de­scend­ing vocab­u­lary of a male antag­o­nist, the lan­guage only serves to make her argu­ment more effec­tive. The essay, writes Kathryn Schulz, “does a remark­able num­ber of things deft­ly and all at once.”

Although she is an uncom­mon­ly com­pas­sion­ate writer, Eliot has knife skills when she needs them, and the most obvi­ous thing she does here is chif­fon­ade the chick lit of her day. Yet even while cas­ti­gat­ing some women, she man­ages to cham­pi­on women as a whole. Her chief objec­tion to sil­ly nov­els is that they mis­rep­re­sent women’s real intel­lec­tu­al capac­i­ty; and the chief blame for them, she argues, lies not with their authors but with the ­cul­ture that pro­duced them—through inad­e­quate edu­ca­tion, low expec­ta­tions, patron­iz­ing crit­ics, and fear of the real deal.

The fault, she assert­ed, lies with the gate­keep­ers, the tastemak­ers, the lazy thinkers. Though an accom­plished essay­ist and trans­la­tor, Eliot would only pub­lish her first nov­el in 1859, at the age of 37. But “Sil­ly Nov­els by Lady Nov­el­ists,” writes Schulz, “traces out in neg­a­tive space, the con­tours of a tru­ly great novel”—one that wouldn’t arrive until four­teen years lat­er: Mid­dle­march: a study of provin­cial life. (Read online or down­load in var­i­ous for­mats here.)

The book’s first chap­ter intro­duces Dorothea Brooke, a well-off 19-year old orphan—who, writes Pamela Erens, “has dreams of doing some great work in the world” but gives her life instead to “dry humor­less pedant” Casaubon—with an iron­ic quote from the licen­tious Jacobean play The Maid’s Tragedy: “Since I can do no good because a woman, / Reach con­stant­ly at some­thing that is near it.”

As with the pen name she adopt­ed, Eliot appro­pri­at­ed the armor of a male-dom­i­nat­ed cul­ture to bring into being some of the most stag­ger­ing­ly insight­ful writ­ing of the time, and a bea­con to oth­er great women writ­ers. “What do I think of Mid­dle­march?,” wrote Emi­ly Dick­in­son, “What do I think of glory?—except that in a few instances ‘this mor­tal has already put on immor­tal­i­ty.’” Vir­ginia Woolf pro­nounced the book “one of the few Eng­lish nov­els writ­ten for grown-up peo­ple.” Num­ber twen­ty-one on The Guardian’s list of “The 100 Best Nov­els,” Mid­dle­march, writes Robert McCrum, exerts “an almost hyp­not­ic pow­er over its read­ers…. Today it stands as per­haps the great­est of many great Vic­to­ri­an nov­els.”

Do we have the time or the atten­tion to read Eliot’s sprawl­ing 900-page real­ist epic in the 21st cen­tu­ry? Giv­en that Karl Ove Knaus­gaard’s 3,600 page, six-part auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el, My Strug­gle, is one of the most laud­ed lit­er­ary works of the past few years, per­haps we do. More specif­i­cal­ly, in the lan­guage of many a con­de­scend­ing crit­ic of today, do “Mil­len­ni­als” have the time and atten­tion to read Mid­dle­march? At least a cer­tain con­tin­gent of young read­ers has not only read the nov­el, but has adapt­ed it into a sev­en­ty-episode web dra­ma, Mid­dle­march: The Series—an “attempt worth watch­ing,” writes Rebec­ca Mead at The New York­er, “for its ambi­tion as well as its charm.”

Writ­ten and direct­ed by Yale under­grad­u­ate film stu­dent Rebec­ca Shoptaw, the series stars sev­er­al of Shoptaw’s peers “as stu­dents at Low­ick Col­lege, in the fic­tion­al town of Mid­dle­march, Con­necti­cut,” and it tran­scribes the novel’s form into that most 21st cen­tu­ry of medi­ums, the vlog. You can see the offi­cial teas­er at the top of the post; watch the first episode just above, intro­duc­ing Yale stu­dent Mia Fowler as Dot Brooke; and see the full series, thus far, down below. (The show has already won awards and recog­ni­tion from sev­er­al film fes­ti­vals. See “air dates” and more on its busy Tum­blr page.)

Up to now, notes Mead, Eliot’s fic­tion has resist­ed the kind of treat­ment giv­en to Char­lotte Bron­të and Jane Austen in adap­ta­tions like “a chap­ter book for tweens called Jane Air­head” and the Austen-inspired Brid­get Jones’s Diary and Clue­less (not to men­tion Pride and Prej­u­dice and Zom­bies). And yet, despite the daunt­ing size, scope, and seri­ous­ness of Eliot’s nov­el, Mid­dle­march: the Series con­tin­ues in this tra­di­tion of light-heart­ed, pop-cul­tur­al mod­ern­iza­tions, using the same device as the award-win­ning Austen vlog adap­ta­tion The Lizzie Ben­net Diaries and Bron­të vlog adap­ta­tion “The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Jane Eyre.”

Though it is “an impos­si­bly tall order,” writes Mead, “to expect a Web series to approach the nuance of a nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry novel—of the nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry nov­el,” adap­ta­tions like Shoptaw’s don’t even attempt to do this. They express “a win­ning affec­tion” for their source mate­r­i­al, and a sense of how it still informs the very dif­fer­ent gen­der iden­ti­ties and sex­u­al rela­tion­ships of the present. In that sense, it may be use­ful to think of them as, in part, work­ing in a sim­i­lar vein as anoth­er very 21st cen­tu­ry medi­um: fan fic­tion. Would the knives-out crit­ic Eliot approve? Impos­si­ble to say. But I dare say she might admire the ambi­tion, cre­ative impuls­es, and nar­ra­tive inge­nu­ity of Shoptaw and her cast per­haps as much as they admire her great­est work.

via The New York­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Jane Eyre” Adapts Brontë’s Hero­ine for Vlogs, Tum­blr, Twit­ter & Insta­gram

Hear Jane Austen’s Pride and Prej­u­dice as a Free Audio Book 

Read Jane Austen’s Fic­tion Man­u­scripts Free Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

Mark Knopfler Gives a Short Masterclass on His Favorite Guitars & Guitar Sounds

Amer­i­can gui­tar came of age in the fifties, with the blues, folk, coun­try, and jazz play­ing of Mis­sis­sip­pi John Hurt, Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe, Mer­le Travis, Chet Atkins, Wes Mont­gomery, Les Paul, and so many oth­er incred­i­ble play­ers who per­fect­ed the sound of Amer­i­cana before it became insep­a­ra­ble from nos­tal­gia and revival­ism. Though it has usu­al­ly been Chuck Berry who gets—or who took—most of the cred­it for rock and roll, and who is often enough named as a favorite influ­ence of so many UK gui­tar heroes, one star British play­er who made his name a few years lat­er always stuck fast to rock and roll’s deep­est roots. We can hear all of those gold­en age players—Hurt, Tharpe, Travis, Atkins, Mont­gomery, Paul—in Mark Knopfler’s fin­gers, in some of the unlike­li­est hits of the 80s, songs long on style and flashy solos, but also unques­tion­ably root­ed in roots music.

We may not have real­ized until we heard Knopfler’s coun­try records just how much his Dire Straits sound grew out of acoustic music. (“Sul­tans of Swing” was first writ­ten on a Nation­al gui­tar in open tun­ing.) But he is, and has always been, a bril­liant coun­try and coun­try blues player—recording with George Jones, Emmy­lou Har­ris, and Mary Chapin Car­pen­ter and col­lab­o­rat­ing with Chet Atkins on record and on stage.

For Knopfler fans, the joy of slow­ly dis­cov­er­ing the many angles in his play­ing, the many lay­ers of influ­ence and blends of tra­di­tion, con­sti­tutes much of the fun in watch­ing him over the decades. You get an accel­er­at­ed sense of the expe­ri­ence in the short video above, in which he dis­cuss­es his favorite guitars—including the famous red Stra­to­cast­er (“my lust object as a child”) that car­ried him, with match­ing head­bands, through those MTV years.

Hear­ing any beloved play­er talk about his or her gui­tars can be a treat in itself, but with Knopfler, each instru­ment offers an occa­sion to reveal, and effort­less­ly demon­strate, all of the ways his play­ing style devel­oped and incor­po­rat­ed new tech­niques. As much as he learned from end­less prac­tice and from emu­lat­ing his favorite play­ers, he learned from the gui­tars; the tonal­i­ty of the Strat “made me want to write anoth­er way.” He learned from a 1958 Les Paul that one might “get to the end of a song and have noth­ing left to say… but the gui­tar has.” Knopfler nev­er deploys his impec­ca­ble vibra­to, unique fin­ger­pick­ing style, or gor­geous sin­gle notes wails just to show off—they arrive in ser­vice to the emo­tions of the song, and come out of the dis­tinc­tive prop­er­ties of each gui­tar. He may be the most taste­ful, even restrained, of super­star rock gui­tarists.

Not every gui­tarist is as thought­ful about their instru­ments as Knopfler, and few are simul­ta­ne­ous­ly as elo­quent and genial­ly demon­stra­tive of their mas­tery of form and func­tion. The clip at the top comes from the PBS doc­u­men­tary series Sound­break­ing. In the 45-minute doc­u­men­tary, Gui­tar Sto­ries, above, which we’ve fea­tured here before, Knopfler tells the sto­ry of the six gui­tars that shaped his career. The host and inter­view­er is none oth­er than bassist and Dire Straits co-founder John Ill­s­ley, who is as awestruck by Knopfler as any oth­er fan—meaning not that he thinks Knopfler is super­hu­man or god­like, but that the gui­tarist is sim­ply, unpre­ten­tious­ly, and unques­tion­ably, “one of the tru­ly great play­ers,” a des­ig­na­tion that both Ill­s­ley and his for­mer band­mate real­ize can­not be divorced from the tru­ly great instru­ments Knopfler has played.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gui­tar Sto­ries: Mark Knopfler on the Six Gui­tars That Shaped His Career

Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an Plays the Acoustic Gui­tar in Rare Footage, Let­ting Us See His Gui­tar Vir­tu­os­i­ty in Its Purest Form

Hear Jimi Hendrix’s Vir­tu­oso Gui­tar Per­for­mances in Iso­lat­ed Tracks: “Fire,” “Pur­ple Haze,” “Third Stone from the Sun” & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Attempting to Set the World Record for Most Frida Kahlo Lookalikes in One Place: It Happened in Dallas

Fun fact: The Dal­las Muse­um of Art and the Lati­no Cen­ter for Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment cel­e­brat­ed Fri­da Kahlo’s 110th birth­day last week. And the fes­tiv­i­ties were capped off with an attempt to set the Guin­ness World Record for the largest gath­er­ing of peo­ple dressed as Fri­da Kahlo in one space.

Accord­ing to the rules of Fri­da Fest, to par­tic­i­pate in the record attempt, indi­vid­u­als had to pro­vide their own cos­tume, and make sure their cos­tumes includ­ed the fol­low­ing ele­ments:

  • A uni­brow drawn onto the face join­ing the eye­brows. This can be done with make-up or by stick­ing hair.
  • Arti­fi­cial flow­ers worn in the hair, a min­i­mum of three arti­fi­cial flow­ers must be worn.
  • A red or pink shawl.
  • A flower-print­ed dress that extends to below the knees on all sides; the dress must not have any slits up the side.

Notes NPR, there’s “no offi­cial word yet on whether a record was set, but pri­or to Thurs­day, there did­n’t appear to be anoth­er record-hold­er list­ed in the Guin­ness World Records.”

You can see a gallery of 44 pho­tos on the muse­um’s Face­book page. Enjoy.

Pho­to Cour­tesy of Ash­ley Gongo­ra and Kathy Tran — at Dal­las Muse­um of Art.

Pho­to Cour­tesy of Ash­ley Gongo­ra and Kathy Tran — at Dal­las Muse­um of Art.

via Neatora­ma

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fri­da Kahlo Action Fig­ure

1933 Arti­cle on Fri­da Kahlo: “Wife of the Mas­ter Mur­al Painter Glee­ful­ly Dab­bles in Works of Art”

Fri­da Kahlo’s Col­or­ful Clothes Revealed for the First Time & Pho­tographed by Ishi­uchi Miyako

Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera Vis­it Leon Trot­sky in Mex­i­co, 1938

The Artist as Artist’s Mod­el: Au Naturel Por­traits of Fri­da Kahlo Tak­en by Art Patron Julien Levy (1938)

Watch Randy Newman’s Tour of Los Angeles’ Sunset Boulevard, and You’ll Love L.A. Too

“The longer I live here,” a Los Ange­les-based friend recent­ly said, “the more ‘I Love L.A.’ sounds like an uniron­ic trib­ute to this city.” That hit sin­gle by Randy New­man, a singer-song­writer not known for his sim­ple earnest­ness, has pro­duced a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of inter­pre­ta­tions since it came out in 1983, the year before Los Ange­les pre­sent­ed a sun­ny, col­or­ful, for­ward-look­ing image to the world as the host of the Sum­mer Olympic Games. Lis­ten­ers still won­der now what they won­dered back then: when New­man sings the prais­es — lit­er­al­ly — of the likes of Impe­r­i­al High­way, a “big nasty red­head,” Cen­tu­ry Boule­vard, the San­ta Ana winds, and bums on their knees, does he mean it?

“I Love L.A.“ ‘s both smirk­ing and enthu­si­as­tic music video offers a view of New­man’s 1980s Los Ange­les, but fif­teen years lat­er, he starred in an episode of the pub­lic tele­vi­sion series Great Streets that presents a slight­ly more up-to-date, and much more nuanced, pic­ture of the city. In it, the native Ange­leno looks at his birth­place through the lens of the 27-mile Sun­set Boule­vard, Los Ange­les’ most famous street — or, in his own words, “one of those places the movies would’ve had to invent, if it did­n’t already exist.”

His­to­ri­an Leonard Pitt (who appears along­side fig­ures like film­mak­er Alli­son Anders, artist Ed Ruscha, and Doors key­boardist Ray Man­zarek) describes Sun­set as the one place along which you can see “every stra­tum of Los Ange­les in the short­est peri­od of time.” Or as New­man puts it, “Like a lot of the peo­ple who live here, Sun­set is hum­ble and hard-work­ing at the begin­ning,” on its inland end. “Go fur­ther and it gets a lit­tle self-indul­gent and out­ra­geous” before it “straight­ens itself out and grows rich, fat, and respectable.” At its coastal end “it gets real twist­ed, so there’s noth­ing left to do but jump into the Pacif­ic Ocean.”

New­man’s west­ward jour­ney, made in an open-topped con­vert­ible (albeit not “I Love L.A.“ ‘s 1955 Buick) takes him from Union Sta­tion (Amer­i­ca’s last great rail­way ter­mi­nal and the ori­gin point of “L.A.‘s long, long-antic­i­pat­ed sub­way sys­tem”) to Aimee Sem­ple McPher­son­’s Angelus Tem­ple, now-gen­tri­fied neigh­bor­hoods like Sil­ver Lake then only in mid-gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, the hum­ble stu­dio where he laid tracks for some of his biggest records, the cor­ner where D.W. Grif­fith built Intol­er­ance’s ancient Baby­lon set, the sto­ried celebri­ty hide­out of the Chateau Mar­mont, UCLA (“almost my alma mater”), the Lake Shrine Tem­ple of the Self-Real­iza­tion Fel­low­ship, and final­ly to edge of the con­ti­nent.

More recent­ly, Los Ange­les Times archi­tec­ture crit­ic Christo­pher Hawthorne trav­eled the entire­ty of Sun­set Boule­vard again, but on foot and in the oppo­site direc­tion. The east-to-west route, he writes, “offers a way to explore an intrigu­ing notion: that the key to deci­pher­ing con­tem­po­rary Los Ange­les is to focus not on growth and expan­sion, those build­ing blocks of 20th cen­tu­ry South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, but instead on all the ways in which the city is dou­bling back on itself and get­ting denser.” For so much of the city’s his­to­ry, “search­ing for a metaphor to define Sun­set Boule­vard, writ­ers” — or musi­cians or film­mak­ers or any num­ber of oth­er cre­ators besides — “have described it as a riv­er run­ning west and feed­ing into the Pacif­ic. But the riv­er flows the oth­er direc­tion now.”

Los Ange­les has indeed plunged into a thor­ough trans­for­ma­tion since New­man first simul­ta­ne­ous­ly cel­e­brat­ed and sat­i­rized it, but some­thing of the dis­tinc­tive­ly breezy spir­it into which he tapped will always remain. “There‘s some kind of igno­rance L.A. has that I’m proud of. The open car and the red­head and the Beach Boys, the night just cool­ing off after a hot day, you got your arm around some­body,” he said to the Los Ange­les Week­ly a few years after tap­ing his Great Streets tour. ”That sounds real­ly good to me. I can‘t think of any­thing a hell of a lot bet­ter than that.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glenn Gould Gives Us a Tour of Toron­to, His Beloved Home­town (1979)

Charles Bukows­ki Takes You on a Very Strange Tour of Hol­ly­wood

Join Clive James on His Clas­sic Tele­vi­sion Trips to Paris, LA, Tokyo, Rio, Cairo & Beyond

The City in Cin­e­ma Mini-Doc­u­men­taries Reveal the Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, Repo Man, and More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch the World’s Oldest Violin in Action: Marco Rizzi Performs Schumann’s Sonata No. 2 on a 1566 Amati Violin

Most of us are acquaint­ed with the sor­row­ful sound of the world’s small­est vio­lin, but what of the world’s old­est?

The instru­ment in the video above dates back to 1566.

Mean­ing, if it were the patri­arch of a human fam­i­ly, sir­ing musi­cal sons every 20 to 25 years, it would take more than 10 gen­er­a­tions to get to com­pos­er Robert Schu­mann, born in 1810.

And then anoth­er 31 years for Schu­mann to com­pose Sonata No. 2 for Vio­lin and Piano in D minor, Op . 121, the piece vio­lin­ist Mar­co Rizzi–age unknown–coaxes from this love­ly piece of wood.

Were you to peek at the back, you’d see traces of King Charles IX of France’s coat of arms. The Latin mot­to Pietate et Justi­tia–piety and justice–still lingers on its rib.

It was con­struct­ed by the mas­ter cre­ator, Andrea Amati, as part of a large set of stringed instru­ments, of which it is one of four sur­vivors of its size and class.

After leav­ing Charles’ court, the vio­lin spent time in the Hen­ry Hot­tinger col­lec­tion, which was even­tu­al­ly acquired by the Wurl­itzer Com­pa­ny in New York. In 1966, it was donat­ed to Cre­mona, Italy, Amati’s birth­place and home to an inter­na­tion­al school of vio­lin mak­ing.

Ven­er­a­ble unto the point of price­less­ness, from time to time it is tak­en out and played–to won­drous effect–by world class vio­lin­ists. It’s tempt­ing to keep anthro­po­mor­phiz­ing, so as to won­der if it might not pre­fer a for­ev­er home with a gift­ed young musi­cian who would take it out and play it every day. I know what a chil­dren’s author would say on that sub­ject.

You can view Amati’s Charles IX vio­lin in more detail here, but why stop there, when you can also like it on Face­book!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes the Stradi­var­ius Spe­cial? It Was Designed to Sound Like a Female Sopra­no Voice, With Notes Sound­ing Like Vow­els, Says Researcher

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

Watch the Mak­ing of a Hand-Craft­ed Vio­lin, from Start to Fin­ish, in a Beau­ti­ful­ly-Shot Doc­u­men­tary

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine — issue 58 is hot off the press. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Renaissance Knives Had Music Engraved on the Blades; Now Hear the Songs Performed by Modern Singers

Image cour­tesy of The Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um

On any giv­en week­end, in any part of the state where I live, you can find your­self stand­ing in a hall full of knives, if that’s the kind of thing you like to do. It is a very niche kind of expe­ri­ence. Not so in some oth­er weapons expos—like the Arms and Armor gal­leries at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, where every­one, from the most war­like to the staunchest of paci­fists, stands in awe at the intri­cate orna­men­ta­tion and incred­i­bly deft crafts­man­ship on dis­play in the suits of armor, lances, shields, and lots and lots of knives.

We must acknowl­edge in such a space that the worlds of art and of killing for fame and prof­it were nev­er very far apart dur­ing Europe’s late Medieval and Renais­sance peri­ods. Yet we encounter many sim­i­lar arti­sanal instru­ments from the time, just as fine­ly tuned, but made for far less bel­liger­ent pur­pos­es.

As Maya Cor­ry of the Fitzwilliam Muse­um in Cam­bridge—an insti­tu­tion with its own impres­sive arms and armor col­lec­tion—com­ments in the video above (at 2:30), one unusu­al kind of 16th cen­tu­ry knife meant for the table, not the bat­tle­field, offers “insight into that har­mo­nious, audi­ble aspect of fam­i­ly devo­tions,” prayer and song.

From the col­lec­tion of the Fitzwilliam Muse­um, in Cam­bridge. (Johan Oost­er­man )

These knives, which have musi­cal scores engraved in their blades, brought a table togeth­er in singing their prayers, and may have been used to carve the lamb or beef in their “strik­ing bal­ance of dec­o­ra­tive and util­i­tar­i­an func­tion.” At least his­to­ri­ans think such “nota­tion knives,” which date from the ear­ly 1500s, were used at ban­quets. “The sharp, wide steel would have been ide­al for cut­ting and serv­ing meat,” writes Eliza Grace Mar­tin at the WQXR blog, “and the accen­tu­at­ed tip would have made for a per­fect skew­er.” But as Kris­ten Kalber, cura­tor at the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, which hous­es the knives at the top of the post, tells us “din­ers in very grand feasts didn’t cut their own meat.” It’s unlike­ly they would have sung from the bloody knives held by their ser­vants.

The knives’ true pur­pose “remains a mys­tery,” Mar­tin remarks, like many “rit­u­als of the Renais­sance table.”  Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um cura­tor Kirstin Kennedy admits in the video above that “we are not entire­ly sure” what the “splen­did knife” she holds was used for. But we do know that each knife had a dif­fer­ent piece of music on each side, and that a set of them togeth­er con­tained dif­fer­ent har­mo­ny parts in order to turn a room­ful of din­ers into a cho­rus. One set of blades had the grace on one side, with the inscrip­tion, “the bless­ing of the table. May the three-in-one bless that which we are about to eat.” The oth­er side holds the bene­dic­tion, to be sung after the din­ner: “The say­ing of grace. We give thanks to you God for your gen­eros­i­ty.”

Com­mon enough ver­biage for any house­hold in Renais­sance Europe, but when sung, at least by a cho­rus from the Roy­al Col­lege of Music, who recre­at­ed the music and made the record­ings here, the prayers are superbly grace­ful. Above, hear one ver­sion of the Grace and Bene­dic­tion from the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um knives; below, hear a sec­ond ver­sion. You can hear a cap­ti­vat­ing set of choral prayers from the Fitzwilliam Muse­um knives at WQXR’s site, record­ed for the Fitzwilliam’s “Madon­nas & Mir­a­cles” exhib­it. We are as unlike­ly now to encounter singing kitchen knives as we are to run into a horse and rid­er bear­ing 100 pounds of fine­ly-wrought wear­able steel sculp­ture. Such strange arti­facts seem to speak of a strange peo­ple who val­ued beau­ty whether carv­ing up the main course or cut­ting down their ene­mies.

via WQXR/@tedgioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ancient Philo­soph­i­cal Song Recon­struct­ed and Played for the First Time in 1,000 Years

See The Guidon­ian Hand, the Medieval Sys­tem for Read­ing Music, Get Brought Back to Life

Hear the Ear­li­est Known Piece of Poly­phon­ic Music: This Com­po­si­tion, Dat­ing Back to 900 AD, Changed West­ern Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Syd Barrett’s “Effervescing Elephant” Comes to Life in a New Retro-Style Animation

The sto­ry is well known. Syd Bar­rett, spi­ralling into depres­sion, “hal­lu­ci­na­tions, dis­or­ga­nized speech, mem­o­ry laps­es, intense mood swings, and peri­ods of cata­to­nia,” left Pink Floyd in April, 1968, before record­ing two solo albums (The Mad­cap Laughs and Bar­rett) and then fad­ing into obscu­ri­ty. Above you can watch a delight­ful, new ani­ma­tion of “Effer­vesc­ing Ele­phant,” a song Bar­rett first wrote dur­ing his teenage years and record­ed in 1970. The new “retro-style” ani­ma­tion comes from Yoann Her­vo. Below, find anoth­er ani­mat­ed take on “Effer­vesc­ing Ele­phant,” this one from Steve Bobinksi.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Psy­che­del­ic Scenes of Pink Floyd’s Ear­ly Days with Syd Bar­rett, 1967

Short Film Syd Barrett’s First Trip Reveals the Pink Floyd Founder’s Psy­che­del­ic Exper­i­men­ta­tion (1967)

Pink Floyd Per­forms on US Tele­vi­sion for the First Time: Amer­i­can Band­stand, 1967

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.