Thursday, August 28, 2025
The phantastical Quincunx in Plato
In conclusion, Plato’s influence
upon Thomas Browne is multi-faceted. Integral to his hermetic philosophy, the learned doctor found inspiration in Plato’s mystical numerology, Eternal Forms and
archetypes. As a moralist he valued the ancient Greek philosopher’s exhortations on how to live the good and just life. The abundance of allusion to Plato throughout Browne’s literary oeuvre confirms the observation that – ‘There is probably no English writer of the seventeenth century who more habitually avows and exhibits attachment to the Platonic tradition than Browne'. [22]
[1] The Strategy for Truth by Leonard Nathanson pub. Chicago University Press 1967
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
'Galant and Festive' - Mozart Serenades and Violin Concertos
A recent Harmonia Mundi recording (January '25) by the Munich Chamber Orchestra conducted by Enrico Onofri of the Haffner and Posthorn Serenades invites a closer study of Mozart's galant and festive music.
First performed in 1776 the Haffner Serenade (K. 250) is believed to have been composed for the wedding of Elizabeth Haffner, daughter of the wealthy Salzburg businessman Sigismund Haffner. The biggest serenade ever composed by Mozart, as a whole it leans towards an open-air style, and as such is ideal garden-music.' [1] 'The scale and character of the Haffner's maestoso opening makes clear Mozart's view of the grandeur of the occasion: this is the weightiest and most symphonic of Mozart's occasional works'. [2]. The Haffner's two minuets and rondeau are also exemplary of its composer's fondness for dancing.
'A quick summary of the Haffner Serenades 8 movements might run: '(1) rather grand ; (2) a mellifluous Andante with solo violin, suitable for thoughts of marital bliss; (3) a quasi-staunch Minuet with some yearning stretches, much solo violin, and a folksy trio heavy on the horns; (4) a dashing Rondo with solo violin fiddling madly; (5) a syndromatic Menuetto galante; (6) a lilting and lyrical Andante; (7) another Minuet, this one a hearty folk dance with drones here and there and hunting horns in the trio; (8) a long and solemnly beautiful introduction for a dashing and droll Allegro assai finale with episodes of mock-furioso' [3]
Couched within the Haffner Serenade (mov. 2-4) there's a three movement violin concerto, 'a lithe, sparkling tour de force both of composition and execution', [4] which as Swafford notes, intimates conjugal harmony and bliss. Soloist Isabelle Faust has also recorded Mozart's complete Violin Concertos for Harmonia Mundi, reviewed later.
Mozart composed the last of his Salzburg Serenades in 1779. Celebrating the end of the University academic year, the Posthorn Serenade in D major, K. 250 acquired its nickname for featuring a post horn, an instrument more usually heard announcing the arrival of the mail rider or coach. The Posthorn's first movement is close to a sustained fanfare, with festal horns, trumpets and timpani. A surprising and unusual element in this serenade is the inclusion of a lengthy, dark-toned Andantino, its sombre air in keeping with Mozart's characteristic D minor mood which reminds the listener that not all is sweetness and light in this world.
Harmonia Mundi's release of Mozart's Serenades also includes Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in G major, K. 525. Its opening theme is refreshingly performed not as so often in a strident and assertive manner, but with subtle dynamics. The fourth and final movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A little Night music) has been the signature theme of the Radio 4 quiz 'Brain of Britain' since 1953.
* * *
A Harmonia Mundi recording of Mozart's violin concertos by Il Giardio Armonica (The Garden of Harmony) who play 17th/18th-century music on antique instruments, led by Giovanni Antonini and accompanied by soloist Isabelle Faust, reveals new subtleties to what is some of the sweetest and most charming music composed by Mozart in his late teens.
Isabelle Faust's playing throughout these violin concertos is precise, delicately revealing layers of emotion and meaning which might otherwise remain hidden or overlooked by other soloists. In a performing career spanning decades, Faust first came to prominence as a violinist in 1997 when she won the Gramophone Award for "Young Artist of the Year" for her first CD recording of the Sonata for Solo Violin and the Violin Sonata No. 1 of Béla Bartók on Harmonia Mundi.
In many ways Mozart's five violin concertos utilize and outgrow the confines of the style known as Galant to form music in the relatively new Classical style. In contrast to the complexity, religious piety and cosmic awe of much Baroque music Galant music itself was simpler, light-hearted and urbane, and a significant step in the secularization of music during the 18th century.
An early example of Galant music can be heard in Jean-Philippe Rameau's opera-ballet Le Indies Galantes (1735-1736) which is considered to be a quintessential example of the galant style in French Baroque music. Showcasing exoticism, sensuality in particular plays a significant role in Le Indies Galantes. Rameau's music evokes seductive beauty, reflecting the opera-ballet's themes of love, desire, and exoticism.
The musicologist Jan Swafford states of the Adagio of Mozart's Violin Concerto no. 3 in G major, K. 216 -
'For the second movement, the oboes switch to flutes and the strings put on mutes, helping to paint another of Mozart's exquisite misty nocturnes, the violin singing long, beautiful, aria-like melodies. The orchestra part is lavishly developed, supporting the solo with gently throbbing textures'. [5]
True to the archetype of Aquarius, Mozart liked to surprise and even shock his listener. In the last movement of Violin concerto no. 5 in A major, K. 219, considered to be the most dramatic of his five Violin concertos, Mozart surprises his listener, not only introducing a rolling, chromatic theme, evocative of sea-sickness, but also with a vigorous alla Turk theme which takes on a resolute military mood (at 3:31 in Youtube clip below).
Collectively Mozart's Violin Concertos reveal his early mastery of form and structure, along with an uncanny ability to balance tradition with innovation. Jan Swafford succinctly summarizes their place in Western Orchestral music thus-
'We are arriving at the mature eighteenth century concerto, in which the soloist is the leading character and the orchestra is the world he or she lives in, and their relations are intricate. Mozart could always coast on his incomparable gift as a tunesmith, but now he is thinking more about how themes (and non thematical matter as well) function in the architecture of the movement as a whole. Each moment of a movement announces clearly to the listener what it is doing in the form: here is a theme, here is a transition, here is the retransition to the recapitulation. There you have the achievement of the late eighteenth-century, musical syntax on the small scale adding up to architecture on the large scale. The pattern was consistent, well understood by connoisseurs, yet infinitely flexible. This predictability underlying predictability in sonata form, its effectiveness in organizing material no matter how variegated, created a formal model that stayed around for much of the next two centuries.' [6]
See also -
Mozart's last three symphonies
Notes and Bibliography
Saturday, March 15, 2025
Jupiter’s brain in a piece of Cytheridian cheese
The English philosopher-physician Thomas Browne (1605-82) possessed refined senses. Along with his sharp eyesight and acute olfactory sense he also had a keen sense of taste. His notes on cookery in the ancient world, emphasis upon moderation in diet and experiments in cheese-making are all indicative of his interest in food. His notes on coagulation also reveal that he experimented with what is now considered to be a taboo ingredient in cheese-making.
Browne's gastronomical inclinations are evident in 'Notes on the cooking of the ancients' in which he declares his desire to know more about ancient world cuisine while also believing the food of his day to be superior -
'I wish we knew more clearly the aids of the ancients, their sauces, flavours, digestives, tasties, slices, cold meats, and all kinds of pickles. Yet I do not know whether they would have surpassed salted sturgeons’ eggs, anchovy sauce, or our royal pickles'. [1]
By 'aids of the ancients,' Browne is referring to the condiments, seasonings, and preserves used by ancient cultures to enhance the flavour and preservation of their food. These aids would have included garum, a fermented fish sauce used by the Romans, as well as various herbs and spices. Browne's taste-buds however object to herbs and spices infested by insects, and his 'stomach turned' from reading in Apicius-
'I certainly, who think it torture to endure fat gnats and put far from my table cumin seed that is musty with bugs, would have had my stomach turned by the sausages, tripe, morsels and coarse greens of Apicius'.
Apicius was the author of a collection of Roman-era cookery recipes De re culinaria (On Cooking). Compiled in the fifth century CE it consists of ten books which discuss the role of the butcher and gardener in cuisine, pulse and legumes, four-legged animals and seafood. Its recipes catered for wealthy Romans and included exotic ingredients such as flamingo.
Favouring once more modern cuisine to that of antiquity Browne also states in his cookery essay-
'Who would not prefer Bologna sausages to a paste of cuttle-fish and squid, or Spanish olla podrida to Apicius’ mince-meat?
Once more consulting his edition of Apicius he noted- 'We are impatient today of the boned chicken Apicius praises and think it food for the toothless'.
Browne's cookery notes also includes one of the earliest mentions in Western literature of the Persian prophet Zoroaster (circa 7th/6th centuries BCE) the founder of the Persian religious movement of Zoroastrianism, when stating-
'Zoroaster’s dinner in the desert was known to the ancients as starvation, for it consisted of honey and cheese. Yet honey and cheese fill the sausages of Parthia and Numidia'.
Its with typical wit that Browne concludes thus -
'But when Ibycus in Athenaeus says that ambrosia was nine times sweeter than honey, let the palates of heaven keep their sweet, I prefer a fig from Chios'.
An edition of De re culinaria by Apicius printed in 1541 is listed as once in Browne's library. [2] (frontispiece below)
The ancient Greek Athenaeus (late 2nd/early 3rd CE) is another important source of Browne's understanding of ancient world cuisine. In antiquity Naucratis was a bustling Egyptian harbour and a dynamic melting-pot of Greek and Egyptian art and culture. Its also the setting of his Deipnosophistae or 'The Banquet of the Philosophers' in which physicians, gourmets, philosophers, grammarians and parasites discuss topics such as - Baths, Wine, invented words, feasts and music, useless philosophers, precious metals, flatterers, gluttony and drunkenness, hedonism and obesity, women and love, mistresses and courtesans, the cooking of fish and cuisine in general, as well as ships, entertainment, luxury and perfumes. Book seven of Athenaeus's Deipnosophistae focuses on an essential part of the healthy Mediterranean diet, sea food, along with methods of cooking various kinds of fish. In all probability its from his reading of Athenaeus that Browne knew -
'The ancients took great care to keep octopus-head from their tables, while no one in our day would touch it'.
In total the 15 books of 'Banquet of the philosophers' mention almost 800 authors. Over 2,500 separate works in total are cited in it, making it a valuable source of numerous works of Greek literature which otherwise would have been lost. Athenaeus must have been one of Browne's favourite reads for he wrote a short essay in which he displays an uncommon familiarity with the ancient Greek author. A 1612 edition of Athenaeus's Deipnosophistae, or 'The Banquet of the Philosophers' edited by the Swiss philologist Isaac Casaubon is listed as once in Browne's library. [3]
And all his vessels, pails and hammered buckets he used for milking,were brimming full of whey...... Then down he squatted to milk his sheep and bleating goats. And half of the fresh white milk he curdled quickly, set aside in wicker racks to press for cheese. [6]
In the Biblical book of Job (circa 500 BCE) the righteous man who experiences severe trials and afflictions laments to God -
'Remember that you moulded me like clay/Will you now turn me to dust again?/Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese'. [7]
Coagulation
In his notebook observations on coagulation Browne speculates how to make cheese more nutritional - 'Whereby whey & cheese might be made more medical'. In his notes on coagulation, an essential process in cheese-making, he experiments with an ingredient considered taboo today. Its no vulgar titillation to take a closer look at his experiments with breast milk. He expresses clearly his intent to formulate a 'more medical' cheese', and he endeavoured to do so by experimenting with breast-milk. Although knowing that breast milk possesses medical benefits Browne didn't know as we do today, of the health hazards associated with sharing body fluids. He noted -
'Many coagulums there are in nature & though we content our selves in one in the running of milk, yet many will perform the same.... The runnett of cows is strong, for it coagulates the milk, but the runnett of cows as we have tried in several woman's milk will not coagulate the same'. [8]
'Womens milk will not coagulate with common runnet. Trie whether the milk of nurses that are conceived may be runne'.
'September. Tried in Mrs. Livist suspected to bee with child & it coagulated indifferently, butt much better than any other cleere woman & this was tried with disadvantage when the conception must be new....'
His experiment with Mrs. Livist's milk suggests that hormonal changes during pregnancy might have affected its coagulation properties, and he noted that it worked better than milk from other women who weren't pregnant, despite the potential disadvantage of the conception being recent.
'Mrs Kings milk , October 23 (1650) would not runne, but only curdled in small roundles like pin heads, as vinegar will curdle milk'. [9]
He encountered varying degrees of success with different women's milk in his experiments. Mrs. King's milk didn't react as expected, producing small curds instead of coagulating properly. His comparison to vinegar's effect on milk suggests he was trying to understand why this happened.
Sub rosa amore Liddy Mercurius ❤️ et Saturnus