Friday 18 July 2014

Composer Blair Thomson Speaks about La Symphonie Rapaillee on A Propos

More than six years ago, the project Douze hommes rapaillés came along. Last month, the impressed project bring twelve singers onstage with the Montreal Symphony for the closing ceremonies of the FrancoFolies Delaware Montréal competition, on June 22. For the occasion, A Propos host Jim Corcoran interviews statesman Thomson, the arranger of the musical organisation versions of those songs that includes the superb poetry of Quebec’s Gaston Miron.

According to Corcoran, “Miron is one among Quebec’s most celebrated, articulate and deeply impressed of latest poets.” Singer-songwriter Gilles Bélanger wrote melodies for Miron’s poems and, those six years agone, he got the concept of getting twelve of them sung by twelve of Quebec’s best singer-songwriters. Louis-Jean Cormier was the arranger and therefore the producer of this initial album, Douze hommes rapaillés.

No one expected this inventive endeavour to be therefore victorious. Volume one and eventually volume 2 went gold. The twelve men performed along to sold-out crowds.

“The success of this project is proof that individuals square measure hungry for subtlety and art,” says Corcoran.

From: CBC Music

Read more on: http://goo.gl/40GKEX

Thursday 22 August 2013

A Propos

A Propos presents a two-part series featuring wonderful guitar-driven songs from Quebec and the French world.  

It is a Canadian radio program that presents French language music for English crowd. Presented by Jim Corcoran, a fluently bilingual Quebec musician, A Propos started in November 1988. For every song he plays, Corcoran prepares and narrates a translation of the lyrics into English for the hearing audience.

The program is at now broadcast on Sunday afternoons on CBC Radio 2, and repeated Saturday nights on CBC Radio One.

Monday 18 February 2013

À propos

Fichoz.hypotheses.org provides a meeting point for those interested in Fichoz databases, be they readers or contributors of new data. Procedures, manuals, instructions, discussions and learning material will be available on-line, as well as direct links to relevant bibliography. On-line material will change fast, new items appear, as well as new versions of old items. Every new user brings new problems, and helps to develop new techniques, to discover or to understand better new concepts and standards. Basically, the published material consists of .pdf files and screenshots.

Fichoz is at the same time a set of rules to build historical databases, and a set of structured thematically wide-ranging databases, from Pompei propaganda paintings to French movies industry of the inter-war period, including among others biographical data of Spanish civil servants of the XVIIIth and XIXth century and a complete list of all ships who sailed French seas in 1787. Some of these databases have been published online, either such as they are, either in a simplified form. 

Fichoz.hypothese.org presents a technical introduction to them all, instructions for connexion to those published, theoretical writings about data processing, a bibliography of works based on Fichoz, tutorials, analysis of debatable issues, etc. Nevertheless,Fichoz.hypothese is not only a meeting point for a community of users. It describes problems poised by historical documentation, possibly one of the most difficult to cut to database standards; it suggests solutions – better said clues – to transform raw data provided by historical documents into structured elements tailored for research and analysis. Many Fichoz principles may be transposed to any other database system, independently of packages and purposes. Fichoz.hypothese must be seen as an incentive to reflexion and a guide based on experience. In no way as a collection of ready-made solutions.

Wednesday 8 August 2012

À Propos

À Propos is a Canadian radio program that presents French language music for English audiences. Host Jim Corcoran is a Quebec musician who includes translations with featured songs. À Propos began in November 1988 and is currently broadcast Saturday nights on CBC Radio One and repeated on Sunday afternoons on CBC Radio 2.

Thursday 9 February 2012

Style (visual arts)

In the visual arts, style is a "...distinctive manner which permits the grouping of works into related categories." or "...any distinctive, and therefore recognizable, way in which an act is performed or an artifact made or ought to be performed and made." It refers to the visual appearance of a work of art that relates it to other works by the same artist or one from the same period, training, location, "school" or art movement.

By changing the way they paint, apply colour, texture, perspective, or the way they see shapes and ideas, the artist establishes a certain set of "rules". If other artists see the rules as valid for themselves they might also apply these characteristics. The works of art then take on that specific "style". An artist may give the style a name such as "Expressionism", or a name may be applied later, as in the case of "abstract art". The names of many styles are the invention of art historians and would not have been understood by the practitioners of those styles. Some originated as terms of derision, including Gothic, Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical.

Monday 17 October 2011

What Is Style?

From the Latin word stylus, "a pointed instrument used for writing." That, according to our glossary entry, is what the word style meant 2,000 years ago. Nowadays, definitions of style point not to the instrument used by the writer but to characteristics of the writing itself:

The way in which something is said, done, expressed, or performed: a style of speech and writing. Narrowly interpreted as those figures that ornament discourse; broadly, as representing a manifestation of the person speaking or writing. All figures of speech fall within the domain of style.

But what does it mean to write "with style"? Is style a quality that writers can add or remove as they please? Is it, perhaps, a gift that only some writers happen to be blessed with? Can a style ever be good or bad, correct or incorrect--or is it more a matter of taste? Is style a kind of decorative sprinkle that's added to a piece of writing--or is it instead an essential ingredient of the writing?

Here, under six broad headings, are some of the diverse ways in which professional writers have responded to these questions. We open with remarks from Henry David Thoreau, an artful stylist who expressed indifference toward style, and conclude with two quotations from novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who insisted that style is all that matters.


Style is Practical

"Who cares what a man’s style is, so it is intelligible, as intelligible as his thought. Literally and really, the style is no more than the stylus, the pen he writes with; and it is not worth scraping and polishing, and gilding, unless it will write his thoughts the better for it. It is something for use, and not to look at."
(Henry David Thoreau)


"People think that I can teach them style. What stuff it all is! Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style."
(Matthew Arnold)
Style Is the Dress of Thoughts

"Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage."
(Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield)


"A man's style should be like his dress. It should be as unobtrusive and should attract as little attention as possible."
(C. E. M. Joad)


"The style is the man himself."
(George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon)


"The old saying of Buffon’s that style is the man himself is as near the truth as we can get--but then most men mistake grammar for style, as they mistake correct spelling for words or schooling for education."
(Samuel Butler)


"When we see a natural style, we are astonished and delighted; for we expected to see an author, and we find a man."
(Blaise Pascal)


"Style is the hallmark of a temperament stamped upon the material at hand."
(Andre Maurois)


"The essence of a sound style is that it cannot be reduced to rules--that it is a living and breathing thing with something of the devilish in it--that it fits its proprietor tightly yet ever so loosely, as his skin fits him. It is, in fact, quite as seriously an integral part of him as that skin is. . . . In brief, a style is always the outward and visible symbol of a man, and cannot be anything else."
(H.L. Mencken)


"You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being."
(Katherine Anne Porter)
Style Is Point of View

"Style is the perfection of a point of view."
(Richard Eberhart)


"Where there is no style, there is in effect no point of view. There is, essentially, no anger, no conviction, no self. Style is opinion, hung washing, the caliber of a bullet, teething beads."
(Alexander Theroux)


"Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward."
(Robert Frost).


Style Is Craftsmanship

"What's important is the way we say it. Art is all about craftsmanship. Others can interpret craftsmanship as style if they wish. Style is what unites memory or recollection, ideology, sentiment, nostalgia, presentiment, to the way we express all that. It's not what we say but how we say it that matters."
(Federico Fellini)


"Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of style."
(Jonathan Swift)


"The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style."
(Robert Louis Stevenson)


"The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off."
(Raymond Chandler)


"The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise."
(Edward Gibbon)


"One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness."
(Gustave Flaubert)

Style Is Substance

"To me style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body. Both go together, they can't be separated."
(Jean-Luc Godard)


"Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are parts of one; style is a thinking out into language."
(Cardinal John Henry Newman)


"In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing."
(Oscar Wilde)


"Style, in its finest sense, is the last acquirement of the educated mind; it is also the most useful. It pervades the whole being."
(Alfred North Whitehead)


"Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man. It is not a dress."
(Wallace Stevens)


"Style and structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash. . . .

"All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. . . . For me 'style' is matter."
(Vladimir Nabokov)

Thursday 18 August 2011

Fashion

Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person. The more technical term, costume, has become so linked in the public eye with the term "fashion" that the more general term "costume" has in popular use mostly been relegated to special senses like fancy dress or masquerade wear, while the term "fashion" means clothing generally, and the study of it. For a broad cross-cultural look at clothing and its place in society, refer to the entries for clothing, costume and fabrics. The remainder of this article deals with clothing fashions in the Western world.