Monday, March 1, 2010

Pottery Night

 
Very few ancient Greek paintings survive yet we have over 100,000 pieces of pottery that tells the story of how they lived, loved, and died.  Ladybug and I discuss this as well as the fact that their idea of beautiful colors were black and red.  Thus, a beautiful woman's face would be black and the water color would be red, yet that was elegant and joyful from their standards.  We don't have a slip to glaze her efforts at Greek pottery.  It's probably just as well, because I find their color mix ghastly.

I explained to her class earlier today that Plato despaired of the new music forms of music that came in later Greek generations.  He hated that the laws of vibration no longer ruled what was beautiful, and that now anything that the human ear found pleasing was considered great music. How horrible it was that now musicians were using chords and harmonics instead of matching the voice with the single note on the instrument!  I laughed as we wondered what Plato would think of our STOMP band made of brooms, folders, tin cans and lots and lots of rhythm.  No doubt, he'd find it horrid. 

It makes me wonder... Is anything real? Or, is most everything opinion?

3 comments:

  1. mom and i learned about monophonic songs and the gregorian chants and things like that when we took music appreciation back in '03. it was interesting to hear the simplicity of the songs back in the time of plato and before. but we never learned about his disdain for "great music" as i would term it.
    mom was wonderful and took the class with me. it was an online class and you know mom with how good she is in classes and studying and all - well she even took the final with me and she got the highest in the class (i got second) we both earned an 'F'

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  2. there is something satisfiying about playing in mud

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  3. For a moment Ivy, I thought you typoed an F? But mom is here reading with me. We love the healthy spinach eggs and were taken back to our pinch pot days.

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