Cimarosa:

1749-1801, Italian composer of the Neapolitan school, wrote over 80 operas most of which are comedies, his most famous work was Il matrimonio segreto (1792);. He also wrote instrumental works & church music.  Based in Naples, but spent some of his career in various other parts of Italy, composing for the opera houses of Rome, Venice, Florence & elsewhere. He was engaged by the empress of Russia Catherine the Great as her court composer and conductor (1787-91).  In his later years, on returning to Naples, he backed the losing side in the struggle against the monarchy, was imprisoned & exiled, died in Venice.

 

Corot and Tiepolo, Mozart, Cimarosa:

Painters of the middle & late Summer, Corot (1796-1867) & Tiepolo (1727-1804 ), or musicians likewise Mozart (1756-91) & Cimarosa (1749-1801), these artists still feel the Form within them, naturally.  They produce art without strain, quickly & with confidence.

 

Rembrandt or Bach:

These 2 great masters represent the high Summer achievement of the Faustian Culture, in painting & music.  Rembrandt (1606-79) brings oil painting to its final highest fruition in the early phase of Summer.  Music comes later with Bach (1685-1750) during the middle Summer phase.  Spengler always argued that music developed later then painting in Faustian Culture .

 

Marees (unable to complete any of his great schemes):

see above page 290

 

Leibl (his late pictures):

“Leibl could not bring himself to let his late pictures go, and worked over them again and again to such an extent that they became cold and hard.”  Research does not corroborate this.  Spengler may have confused Leibl with Marees (which the above quote does aptly describe).

 

Cezanne (unfinished work): * see EndNote <A>

Cézanne rarely signed his works. He told his mother that finishing things was a goal for imbeciles.  No other artist has created so many 'unfinished' works.   When modern artists like Cézanne (or Monet and Degas) started leaving their paintings in an ambiguous & random state in the late 19th century, the bourgeoisie were shocked.  Where were the immaculately detailed meadows full of identifiable flowers, the clinically exact nudes & historically accurate costumes they had come to expect?  In seems Cezanne aimed at the non finite work: the artist deliberately stopped working before the painting was finished in order to create an effect.  Modern works that attempt non finito effects can be radical, because it may be impossible to know how the gaps would have been filled. The earliest modern pictures where the imagined process of completion is uncertain are found in Cézanne’s late landscapes.  He was dissatisfied with some of these late works.  They are all in some sense experiments.

 

Renoir (unfinished work): * see EndNote<B>

1841-1919, French artist, leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style, inspired by the modern painters Pissarro & Manet.  After a series of rejections by the Salon juries, he joined forces with Monet, Sisley, Pissarro & others to mount the first Impressionist exhibition (1874) in which he displayed 6 paintings.  The response to the exhibition was largely unfavourable but Renoir's work was comparatively well received & that same year, 2 of his works were shown with Durand-Ruel in London.  His art is notable for its vibrant light & saturated colour, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions.  The female nude was one of his primary subjects.   Characteristic of the Impressionist style, he suggested details of a scene through freely brushed touches of colour, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.  His initial paintings show the influence of the colourist Delacroix and the luminosity of Corot.  He also admired the realism of Courbet & Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a colour.  He also admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement.  The Impressionists use of quick brush strokes and bright colours was criticized by some critics who felt it left their paintings looking unfinished & sloppy.  Indeed the very name “Impressionist” is derived from a critical review of their initial show (1874) and refers to the paintings ‘impressionistic’ nature, implying that the works were unfinished.  

 

Manet (Shooting of. the Emperor Maximilian): * see EndNote<C>

The Execution of Emperor Maximilian is a series of paintings by Manet, 1867-69, depicting the execution by firing squad of Emperor Maximilian I (June 1867) following the collapse of the Second Mexican Empire.  Manet produced 3 large oil paintings, a smaller oil sketch & a lithograph of the same subject.  Manet supported the Republican cause.  He was inspired to start work on a painting, having been heavily influenced by Goya's The Third of May 1808.  The final work, painted in 1868–1869, is signed by Manet in the lower left corner & bears the date of Maximilian's execution in 1867.

 

Goya (Shootings of the 3rd of May): * see EndNote<D>

painting completed in 1814; Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808 in the Peninsular War. Along with its companion piece of the same size, The Second of May 1808 (or The Charge of the Mamelukes), it was commissioned by the provisional government of Spain at Goya's suggestion.  The painting's content, presentation & emotional force secure its status as a ground breaking, archetypal image of the horrors of war.  Although it draws on many sources from both high and popular art, the work marks a clear break from convention.  Diverging from the traditions of Christian art and traditional depictions of war, it has no distinct precedent, and is acknowledged as one of the first paintings of the modern era.  It inspired a host of imitators including Manet & Picasso.

 

Bach, Haydn, Mozart (routine masterpieces):

These 3 great masters, their lives spanning the 18th century (1685 to 1809), represent the apogee of the music of the classical age, the perfection of the Form language during the middle Summer phase. 

 

Wagner (creative struggle):

A great deal of Richard Wagner’s “struggle” stemmed from his turbulent personal life which often resembled a storm. He was frequently without regular employment.  He was usually in debt & once had to flee town to escape creditors.  He was a serial philanderer; his wife eventually left him.  In 1849 he was exiled from Germany for supporting revolutionary ideals.  Likewise as a composer, nothing came easy.  His first attempt at writing his own libretto, Rienzi, was staged in Paris in 1839; it was unsuccessful, Wagner failed to gain a footing & Rienzi, was rejected.  Yet 3 years later, in Dresden it was applauded.  More success came in 1843 with The Flying Dutchman & in 1845 he produced Tannhäuser.  While not a failure, its success did not match Dutchman.  The world of opera was not yet ready for Wagner.  He produced Lohengrin while in exile for his political activities.  He was unable to find a sponsor but with the help of Lizt it was performed with success in 1850.  There follows a decade of work but few productions made it to stage.  In 1859 disaster struck. In Paris he secured the production of Tannhäuser.  A great deal of money was invested as well as time, rehearsals, scenery & costumes.  Performed in 1861, the premier was sabotaged by a powerful clique who disliked Wagner.  The opera was withdrawn.  In 1861 he settled in Vienna, where Tristan und Isolde was initially accepted, but then abandoned after 57 rehearsals (owing to the incompetence of the tenor).  Again 4 years later it was successfully staged in Munich.  The rest of Wagner’s life was spent working on his masterpiece,  This project (The Ring of the Nibelung) was a gigantic undertaking.  Wagner wrote the opera over the course of 26 years, from 1848 to 1874.  Not only did he write all the music, he also produced the libretto.  The first Ring cycle opened the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876.  Here he finally enjoy sustained success, with the music as well as the building of the great opera house in Bayreuth.

 

Wagner, Manet (deep relationship): *

Manet broke from traditional academic painting styles & accepted subjects.  He denies the viewer the traditional comforts of realistic recognition.  Instead he explores colours and “visual sensations” in much the same way as a child, discovering the world for the first time, free of academic conventions or rules.  Manet reduces his painting to symbols.  He uses a single brushstroke to represent the fleeting clouds in the sky. 

 

Wagner likewise broke away from the music schools & conventions of his day.  He reacted against the accepted structures, the accustomed harmonies & sounds his audience expected.  His extreme chromaticism & quickly shifting tonal centres greatly influenced western music.  He worked to produce a completely new form, his revolutionary "total work of art"- a synthesise of the poetic, visual, musical & dramatic arts.  He uses his leitmotif as a symbol in this new form. 

 

Baudelaire (relationship between Wagner & Manet): * see EndNote<E>

Baudelaire was a poet whose work evokes atmosphere.  Notable in some of his poetry is the use of imagery in the sense of smell and of fragrances, used to evoke feelings of nostalgia and past intimacy.  He also developed the use of sounds to create atmosphere and “symbols” (images that take on an expanded function within the poem).  Manet’s work is less about pictorial reality then its power to evoke or suggest or bring forth feelings in the viewer.  He can evoke an image of stillness or strength or solitude with a few brush strokes.  Likewise Wagner can evoke great emotions (sorrow, anger) with a few bars of his leitmotif.  It is this common ground which resonated with Baudelaire.

Baudelaire was a great advocate of modernity.  For Baudelaire artists needed to embrace the present, break away from their narrow circle.  Genius grows out of the curiosity of the child, not accepted conventions.   He knew Wagner’s music & admired Wagner’s idea of total art work & his use of the leitmotif.  He would come to idolize Wagner & wrote to him:

            “I had a feeling of pride and joy in understanding, in being possessed, in being overwhelmed, a truly sensual pleasure like that of rising in the                     air."

In 1861 he published an important critical essay on Wagner.  His writings contributed to the elevation of Wagner and to the cult of Wagnerism that swept Europe in the following decades. 

 

Manet & Baudelaire were extremely close & became constant companions from 1855.  Baudelaire would accompany Manet on daily sketching trips & they often met socially. He lent Baudelaire money & looked after his affairs.  Baudelaire praised the modernity of Manet's subject matter: "almost all our originality comes from the stamp that 'time' imprints upon our feelings."  In 1859 Baudelaire composed a provocative essay on in art criticism, “Le Peintre de la vie moderne” (“The Painter of Modern Life”).  This essay was a prophetic statement of the main elements of the Impressionist vision & style a decade before the actual emergence of that school