22 July 2018

Night the Third, done

Contrary to the general belief, an artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs! Einstein once said, ‘Our situation cannot be compared to anything in the past. We must radically change our ways of thinking, our methods of action.’ Yet Einstein, who played the violin and had a predilection for Mozart, did not see that the world was standing still, that it was obstinately refusing to change its thinking or actions.
— Edgard Varèse
Basically, the idea is that with everyone striving to be revolutionary, you will be most revolutionary if you try to be ordinary.
— Denise Scott Brown
In not an absolutely white heat, but surely with nearly astonishing dispatch, Scene 11 is now done.

Last year, with Intermezzo II done, I posted about Night the Third, and how my first thoughts (from a long-gone era, as it now feels) grossly over-engineered the Scene.  The story of this small fraction of the ballet, then, has been one of simplification over the years:  in the first place, of its overall structure, and in the second, of its content, which I only this year came to realize would best be served by adaptation to other “points” of the larger score.


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