Art Music: Cezanne - Music Of His Time

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Cat No: 8558179

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Release Date: 30 September 2005

Label: Naxos - Educational / Naxos Educational

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 636943817926

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: Art Music

Description
Paul Cezanne(1839-1906)Music of His TimeAs styles change, so art history needs labels to describe them. The desire to sort thingsand group them is irresistible, and no sooner do we look at a painting than we startdeciding whether to call it Baroque or Rococo, Romantic or Realist, Cubist orFuturist. The labels are convenient and helpful - except when they becomeconfusing. It seems obvious, for instance, that Post-Impressionism must have comelater than Impressionism, and so in a sense it did. The ideas of Van Gogh andGauguin certainly arose as a reaction to what Monet, Pissarro and others hadachieved in the 1870s. But if we look at the dates of Cezanne, the man generallyregarded as the central Post-Impressionist, we find that he was an exactcontemporary of Monet and Renoir. He even presented his works in Impressionistexhibitions - where they came in for some of the most cruel criticism ever directed atthat group of painters.So would it be right to say that Cezanne was also an Impressionist, at least beforehe became a Post-Impressionist? At this point a discreet refusal to come out with astraight answer is probably the best option. Yes, Cezanne kept a loose connection tosome members of a group that used to meet in the Cafe Guerbois in Paris, includingMonet, Renoir, Sisley, Manet and Degas; yes, he did paint landscapes in the open airusing an avant-garde technique. But no, he was never really one of their number andhe did not share their ideals.Two things in particular mark Cezanne out as very different. First, his interest inpermanence, the underlying structure of things: Cezanne was concerned to conveyform and solidity, whereas the Impressionists were fascinated by the fleeting moment- the way light could be seen to play on a certain scene. Second, modernity. TheImpressionists were thoroughly inclusive when it came to subject matter, and theyhad a particular liking for the symbols of social change. Railways, boating, daytrippers,cafe life, entertainment generally were favoured subjects. Cezanne, bycontrast, blotted the modern world out of his canvases. Everything is traditional,secure, untainted. His landscapes are unpopulated; if there is a viaduct, there is notrain. Monumentality, not topicality, is the aim.But by a nice irony, it was not the modern-minded Impressionists who providedthe essential pathway to Modernism. When Matisse referred to 'the father of us all',and Picasso to 'the mother who protects her children', they both had in mind thesame man: Paul Cezanne.CezanneCezanne was one of those frequent and unenviable figures in the history of the arts,the son who turns out to be a disappointment to a powerful father. The father in thiscase was an importer of felt hats who in 1839, the year of Paul's birth, establishedhimself in Aix-en-Provence, in southern France. Later he raised his station in life bytransforming himself into a successful banker. The son of such a man, he decided,would do well to train for the law. Paul, however, wrote poetr
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