caro hk's List: THEA 356 aesthetics

• Raymond Murray Schafer (born 18 July 1933) is a Canadian composer, writer, music educator and environmentalist perhaps best known for his World Soundscape Project, concern for acoustic ecology, and his book The Tuning of the World (1977)
• he also coined the term schizophonia in 1977, the splitting of a sound from its source or the condition caused by this split: "We have split the sound from the maker of the sound. Sounds have been torn from their natural sockets and given an amplified and independent existence. Vocal sound, for instance, is no longer tied to a hole in the head but is free to issue from anywhere in the landscape

• After receiving a Licentiate in piano   through the Royal Schools of Music (England) in 1952, he pursued further   studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto,   followed by periods of autodidactic study in Austria and England which   encompassed literature, philosophy, music and journalism. A prolific   composer, he has written works ranging from orchestral compositions   to choral music as well as musical theatre and multi-media ritual.

• the Royal Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto in 1952 to study with John Weinzweig. His casual contact with Marshall McLuhan on campus in that period could arguably be singled out as the most lasting influence on his development.
• His booklets The Book of Noise and The Voices of Tyranny are pleas for anti-noise legislation and urban soundscape improvements through reduction of potentially destructive sounds.
• World Soundscape Project, the most important is The Tuning of the World (1977) where he summarizes his soundscape research, philosophies, and theories. The concept, central to Schafer's thinking, has influenced his composing

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• Hudson trained at the Wimbledon School of Art and has designed for Theatre and Opera worldwide. In 1988 Hudson won the Laurence Olivier Award for the season at the Old Vic Theatre in London. In 1998 Hudson won a Tony for his stage design for The Lion King and in 2000 he received the Critics Design Award. Other awards include the 2001 the Ovation Award and the Hollywood NAACP Award for Best Set Design (Also for The Lion King) At the 2003 Prague Quadrennial Hudson won the Gold Medal for his design of Tamerlano.

   

  Hudson is most famous for his bold use of colour and iconography, originally seen in his Opera work (The Rake’s Progress Lyric Opera Chicago 1992) and later made famous to a wider audience in his design for Disney’s The Lion King.

• George Gershwin (September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist. He wrote most of his vocal and theatrical works in collaboration with his elder brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin. George Gershwin composed songs for both Broadway and the classical concert hall.
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• The jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald recorded many of the Gershwins' songs on her 1959 Gershwin Songbook
• Early in 1937, Gershwin began to complain of blinding headaches and a recurring impression that he was smelling burned rubber. Doctors discovered he had developed a type of cystic malignant brain tumor known as glioblastoma multiforme
• Gershwin had a 10-year affair with composer Kay Swift and frequently consulted her about his music. Oh, Kay was named for her
• Gershwin was influenced by French composers of the early twentieth century.

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• Gershwin’s first published song, “When You Want ‘Em, You Can’t Get ‘Em,” demonstrated innovative new techniques
• he met a young lyricist named Irving Ceaser. Together they composed a number of songs including “Swanee,” which sold more than a million copies.
• Together they wrote many more successful musicals including “Oh Kay!” and “Funny Face”, staring Fred Astaire and his sister Adele. While continuing to compose popular music for the stage, Gershwin began to lead a double life, trying to make his mark as a serious composer.
• After becoming ill while working on a film, he had plans to return to New York to work on writing serious music. He planned a string quartet, a ballet and another opera, but these pieces were never written. At the age of 38, he died of a brain tumo

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• George Gershwin is the hallmark of a native American composer who mixed the traditional orchestral setting with the truly American medium -- Jazz. Gershwin's musical hallmarks, such as Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris and Concerto in F are just the most common of his orchestral works

• Alexander Calder revolutionized the art of sculpture by making movement  one of its main components. Yet his invention of the "mobile" -- a word  coined in 1931 by artist Marcel Duchamp to designate Calder's moving  sculpture -- was only one of Calder's achievements. In his early wire figures  and in his "stabiles," static sculptures in sheet metal, Calder created  innovative works by exploring the aesthetic possibilities of  untraditional materials. As a major contribution to the development of  abstract art, Calder's stabiles and mobiles challenged the prevailing  notion of sculpture as a composition of masses and volumes by proposing a  new definition based on the ideas of open space and transparency. With the  giant stabiles of the latter part of his career, Calder launched a new type  of public sculpture -- one which proved so successful that many of these  works have become landmarks in cities around the globe.

• Goldsworthy regards all his creations as transient, or ephemeral
• "I enjoy the freedom of just using my hands and "found" tools--a sharp stone, the quill of a feather, thorns. I take the opportunities each day offers: if it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blown-over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. Here is where I can learn. 
• Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature."
   
   "The underlying tension of a lot of my art is to try and look through the surface appearance of things. Inevitably, one way of getting beneath the surface is to introduce a hole, a window into what lies below."

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• "At its most successful, my 'touch' looks into the heart of nature; most days I don't even get close. These things are all part of a transient process that I cannot understand unless my touch is also transient-only in this way can the cycle remain unbroken and the process be complete." -Andy Goldsworthy
•  Andy Goldsworthy is an environmental sculptor in which his use of the natural surroundings create an art form. He explores and experiments with various natural materiel such as leaves, grasses, stones, wood, sand, clay, ice, and snow. The seasons and weather determine the materials and the subject matter of his projects. With no preconceived ideas about what he will create, Goldsworthy relies on what nature will give him. Goldsworthy "feels" the energy from nature and transcends that energy into an art form. His transient sculptures contradict the  permanence of art in its historical pretense.
•  Andy Goldsworthy was born in 1956 in Chesire. He studied at Bradford Art College and Preston Polytechnic. Thereafter, he toured the world and experimented with the world's alternating climate and different geographical materials available. In 1986, he moved to Dumfriesshire, Scotland where he maintains his residency.

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