Cloister at Salisbury Cathedral.

Cloister of Saint Trophimus, in Arles, France

Cloister of Abbaye de Fontenay, in Marmagne, Côte-d'Or, France

Cloister of Hōryū-ji, in Nara, Japan.

The partially ruined cloisters of Oronsay Priory.

A cloister (from Latin claustrum, "enclosure") is a rectangular open space surrounded by covered walks or open galleries, with open arcades on the inner side, running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a cathedral or church, commonly against a warm southern flank,^[1] usually indicates that it is (or once was) part of a monastic foundation, "forming a continuous and solid architectural barrier... that effectively separates the world of the monks from that of the serfs and workmen, whose lives and works went on outside and around the cloister."^[2]

Cloistered (or claustral) life is also another name for the life of a monk or nun in the enclosed religious orders; the modern English term enclosure is used in contemporary Catholic church law^[3] to mean cloistered, and cloister is sometimes used as a metonymic synonym for monastery.^[4]

Historically, the early medieval cloister had several antecedents, the peristyle court of the Greco-Roman domus, the atrium and its expanded version that served as forecourt to early Christian basilicas, and certain semi-galleried courts attached to the flanks of early Syrian churches.^[5] Walter Horn suggests that the earliest coenobitic communities, which were established in Egypt by Saint Pachomius, did not result in cloister construction, as there were no lay serfs attached to the community of monks, thus no separation within the walled community was required; Horn finds the earliest prototypical cloisters in some exceptional^[6] late fifth-century monastic churches in southern Syria, such as the Convent of Saints Sergios and Bacchos, at Umm-is-Surab (AD 489), and the colonnaded forecourt of the convent of Id-Dêr,^[7] but nothing similar appeared in the semieremitic Irish monasteries' clustered roundhouses nor in the earliest Benedictine collective communities of the West.

One of the earliest visual representations of the claustral plan is the Carolingian plan of St. Gall, a copy made at Reichenau of a scheme worked out at the two reforming synods held at Aachen, 816 and 817. Though cloisters served functions of quiet meditation or a study garden, the uses of the surrounding buildings in the St. Gall plan, each entered only through the covered porches, show how central the cloister was to the communal life: on the eastern side stood the calefactoria or warming room, the sole heated space, with above it the dormitory; on the south side the refectory, with above it the vestiarium ("vestiary"); on the west side the cellar for wines and beer with above it the larder.

In the time of Charlemagne the requirements of a separate monastic community within an extended and scattered manorial estate created this "monastery within a monastery" in the form of the locked cloister, an architectural solution allowing the monks to perform their sacred tasks apart from the distractions of laymen and servants.^[8] Horn offers as early examples Abbot Gundeland's "Altenmünster" of Lorsch abbey (765-74), as revealed in the excavations by Frederich Behn;^[9] Lorsch was adapted without substantial alteration from a Frankish nobleman's villa rustica, in a tradition unbroken from late Roman times. Another early cloister, that of the abbey of Saint-Riquier (790-99), took a triangular shape, with chapels at the corners, in conscious representation of the Trinity.^[10] A square cloister sited against the flank of the abbey church were built at Inden (816) and the abbey of St. Wandrille at Fontenelle (823-33). At Fulda, a new cloister (819) was sited to the liturgical west of the church "in the Roman manner"^[11] familiar from the forecourt of Old St. Peter's Basilica because it would be closer to the relics.

The hortus conclusus or "enclosed garden" of medieval times, whether secular or claustral, featured the essential well at the center, from which four paths divided the space into quadrants.

The largest cloister in the world (12,000 m²/130,000 sq ft) is at the Certosa di Padula near Salerno in southern Italy.

See also[link]

• Peristyle
• Quadrangle (architecture)
• Siheyuan

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cloisters

Notes[link]

External links[link]

Look up cloister in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Photographs of cloisters in Spain, Portugal and England
• The Code of Canon Law, cf canons 667 ff.
• New Advent Encyclopaedia III ff. on "Nuns, properly so called
• "Cloister" in the New Advent encyclopaedia
• New Advent Encyclopaedia on "Religious Life
• Photos and information on cloisters in France, Italy and Spain
• "Order of the Stick" comic describing the spell "Cloister"

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (March 2012)

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier (1933)
Born	(1887-10-06)October 6, 1887 La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
Died	August 27, 1965(1965-08-27) (aged 77) Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France
Nationality	Swiss / French (from 1930)
Work
Buildings	Villa Savoye, France Notre Dame du Haut, France Buildings in Chandigarh, India

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier (French pronunciation: [lə kɔʁbyzje]; October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), was an architect, designer, urbanist,and writer, famous for being one of the pioneers of what is now called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout Europe, India and America.

He was a pioneer in studies of modern high design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities.

Le Corbusier adopted his pseudonym in the 1920s, allegedly deriving it in part from the name of a distant ancestor, "Lecorbésier."

He was awarded the Frank P. Brown Medal in 1961.

Life[link]

Early life and education, 1887–1913[link]

He was born as Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a small city in Neuchâtel canton in north-western Switzerland, in the Jura mountains, just 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) across the border from France. He attended a kindergarten that used Fröbelian methods.

Young Jeanneret was attracted to the visual arts and studied at the La-Chaux-de-Fonds Art School under Charles L'Eplattenier, who had studied in Budapest and Paris. His architecture teacher in the Art School was the architect René Chapallaz, who had a large influence on Le Corbusier's earliest houses.

In his early years he would frequently escape the somewhat provincial atmosphere of his hometown by traveling around Europe. About 1907, he traveled to Paris, where he found work in the office of Auguste Perret, the French pioneer of reinforced concrete. In 1908, He studied architecture in Vienna with Josef Hoffmann. Between October 1910 and March 1911, he worked near Berlin for the renowned architect Peter Behrens, where he might have met Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. He became fluent in German. Both of these experiences would prove influential in his later career.

Later in 1911, he journeyed to the Balkans and visited Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, filling sketchbooks with renderings of what he saw, including many famous sketches of the Parthenon, whose forms he would later praise in his work Vers une architecture (1923) ("Towards an Architecture," but usually translated into English as "Towards a new Architecture").

Early career: the villas, 1914–1930[link]

Le Corbusier taught at his old school in La-Chaux-de-Fonds during World War I, not returning to Paris until the war was over. During these four years in Switzerland, he worked on theoretical architectural studies using modern techniques.^[1] Among these was his project for the Domino House (1914–1915). This model proposed an open floor plan consisting of concrete slabs supported by a minimal number of thin, reinforced concrete columns around the edges, with a stairway providing access to each level on one side of the floor plan.

This design became the foundation for most of his architecture for the next ten years. Soon he would begin his own architectural practice with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret (1896–1967), a partnership that would last until the 1950s, with an interruption in the WWII years, due to Le Corbusier's ambivalent position towards the Vichy regime.

In 1918, Le Corbusier met the Cubist painter Amédée Ozenfant, in whom he recognised a kindred spirit. Ozenfant encouraged him to paint, and the two began a period of collaboration. Rejecting Cubism as irrational and "romantic," the pair jointly published their manifesto, Après le cubisme and established a new artistic movement, Purism. Ozenfant and Le Corbusier established the Purist journal L'Esprit nouveau. He was good friends with the Cubist artist Fernand Léger.

Pseudonym adopted, 1920[link]

In the first issue of the journal, in 1920, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret adopted Le Corbusier, an altered form of his maternal grandfather's name, "Lecorbésier", as a pseudonym, reflecting his belief that anyone could reinvent themselves. Adopting a single name to identify oneself was in vogue by artists in many fields during that era, especially among those in Paris.

Between 1918 and 1922, Le Corbusier built nothing, concentrating his efforts on Purist theory and painting. In 1922, Le Corbusier and his cousin Jeanneret opened a studio in Paris at 35 rue de Sèvres.^[1]

His theoretical studies soon advanced into several different single-family house models. Among these was the Maison "Citrohan", a pun on the name of the French Citroën automaker, for the modern industrial methods and materials Le Corbusier advocated using for the house. Here, Le Corbusier proposed a three-floor structure, with a double-height living room, bedrooms on the second floor, and a kitchen on the third floor. The roof would be occupied by a sun terrace. On the exterior Le Corbusier installed a stairway to provide second-floor access from ground level. Here, as in other projects from this period, he also designed the façades to include large expanses of uninterrupted banks of windows. The house used a rectangular plan, with exterior walls that were not filled by windows, left as white, stuccoed spaces. Le Corbusier and Jeanneret left the interior aesthetically spare, with any movable furniture made of tubular metal frames. Light fixtures usually comprised single, bare bulbs. Interior walls also were left white. Between 1922 and 1927, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret designed many of these private houses for clients around Paris. In Boulogne-sur-Seine and the 16th arrondissement of Paris, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret designed and built the Villa Lipschitz, Maison Cook (see William Edwards Cook), Maison Planeix, and the Maison La Roche/Albert Jeanneret, which now houses the Fondation Le Corbusier.

Personal relationships[link]

While returning in 1929 from South America to Europe, Le Corbusier met entertainer and actress Josephine Baker on board the ocean liner Lutétia. Le Corbusier made several nude sketches of Baker. Soon after his return to France, Le Corbusier married Yvonne Gallis, a dressmaker and fashion model. She died in 1957. Le Corbusier also had a long extramarital affair with Swedish-American heiress Marguerite Tjader Harris.

Le Corbusier took French citizenship in 1930.^[1]

Portrait on Swiss ten francs banknote

Forays into urbanism[link]

For a number of years French officials had been unsuccessful in dealing with the squalor of the growing Parisian slums, and Le Corbusier sought efficient ways to house large numbers of people in response to the urban housing crisis. He believed that his new, modern architectural forms would provide a new organizational solution that would raise the quality of life for the lower classes. His Immeubles Villas (1922) was such a project that called for large blocks of cell-like individual apartments stacked one on top of the other, with plans that included a living room, bedrooms and kitchen, as well as a garden terrace.

Not merely content with designs for a few housing blocks, soon Le Corbusier moved into studies for entire cities. In 1922, he presented his scheme for a "Contemporary City" for three million inhabitants (Ville Contemporaine). The centerpiece of this plan was the group of sixty-story, cruciform skyscrapers; steel-framed office buildings encased in huge curtain walls of glass. These skyscrapers were set within large, rectangular park-like green spaces. At the center was a huge transportation hub, that on different levels included depots for buses and trains, as well as highway intersections, and at the top, an airport. He had the fanciful notion that commercial airliners would land between the huge skyscrapers. Le Corbusier segregated pedestrian circulation paths from the roadways and glorified the use of the automobile as a means of transportation. As one moved out from the central skyscrapers, smaller low-story, zigzag apartment blocks (set far back from the street amid green space), housed the inhabitants. Le Corbusier hoped that politically-minded industrialists in France would lead the way with their efficient Taylorist and Fordist strategies adopted from American industrial models to reorganize society. As Norma Evenson has put it, "the proposed city appeared to some an audacious and compelling vision of a brave new world, and to others a frigid megalomaniacally scaled negation of the familiar urban ambient."^[2]

In this new industrial spirit, Le Corbusier contributed to a new journal called L'Esprit Nouveau that advocated the use of modern industrial techniques and strategies to transform society into a more efficient environment with a higher standard of living on all socioeconomic levels. He forcefully argued that this transformation was necessary to avoid the spectre of revolution that would otherwise shake society. His dictum, "Architecture or Revolution," developed in his articles in this journal, became his rallying cry for the book Vers une architecture (Toward an Architecture, previously mistranslated into English as Towards a New Architecture), which comprised selected articles he contributed to L'Esprit Nouveau between 1920 and 1923. In this book, Le Corbusier followed the influence of Walter Gropius and reprinted several photographs of North American factories and grain elevators.^[3]

Theoretical urban schemes continued to occupy Le Corbusier. He exhibited his "Plan Voisin," sponsored by another famous automobile manufacturer, in 1925. In it, he proposed to bulldoze most of central Paris north of the Seine, and replace it with his sixty-story cruciform towers from the Contemporary City, placed in an orthogonal street grid and park-like green space. His scheme was met with criticism and scorn from French politicians and industrialists, although they were favorable to the ideas of Taylorism and Fordism underlying Le Corbusier designs. Nonetheless, it did provoke discussion concerning how to deal with the cramped, dirty conditions that enveloped much of the city.

In the 1930s, Le Corbusier expanded and reformulated his ideas on urbanism, eventually publishing them in La Ville radieuse (The Radiant City) of 1935. Perhaps the most significant difference between the Contemporary City and the Radiant City is that the latter abandons the class-based stratification of the former; housing is now assigned according to family size, not economic position.^[4] Some have read dark overtones into The Radiant City: from the "astonishingly beautiful assemblage of buildings" that was Stockholm, for example, Le Corbusier saw only “frightening chaos and saddening monotony.”^[5] He dreamed of "cleaning and purging" the city, bringing "a calm and powerful architecture"—referring to steel, plate glass, and reinforced concrete. Though Le Corbusier's designs for Stockholm did not succeed, later architects took his ideas and partly "destroyed" the city with them.^[5]

High Court in Chandigarh, India

La Ville radieuse also marks Le Corbusier's increasing dissatisfaction with capitalism and his turn to the right-wing syndicalism of Hubert Lagardelle. During the Vichy regime, Le Corbusier received a position on a planning committee and made designs for Algiers and other cities. The central government ultimately rejected his plans, and after 1942 Le Corbusier withdrew from political activity.^[6]

After World War II, Le Corbusier attempted to realize his urban planning schemes on a small scale by constructing a series of "unités" (the housing block unit of the Radiant City) around France. The most famous of these was the Unité d'Habitation of Marseilles (1946–1952). In the 1950s, a unique opportunity to translate the Radiant City on a grand scale presented itself in the construction of the Union Territory Chandigarh, the new capital for the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana and the first planned city in India. Le Corbusier designed many administration buildings including a courthouse, parliament building and a university. He also designed the general layout of the city dividing it into sectors. Le Corbusier was brought on to develop the plan of Albert Mayer.

The cabin where he spent his last years in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin

Death[link]

Against his doctor's orders, on August 27, 1965, Le Corbusier went for a swim in the Mediterranean Sea at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France. His body was found by bathers and he was pronounced dead at 11 a.m. It was assumed that he may have suffered a heart attack. His death rites took place at the courtyard of the Louvre Palace on September 1, 1965 under the direction of writer and thinker André Malraux, who was at the time France's Minister of Culture. He was buried alongside his wife in the grave he had designated at Roquebrune.

Le Corbusier's death had a strong impact on the cultural and political world. Homages were paid worldwide and even some of Le Corbusier's worst artistic enemies, such as the painter Salvador Dalí, recognised his importance (Dalí sent a floral tribute). The President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson said: "His influence was universal and his works are invested with a permanent quality possessed by those of very few artists in our history". The Soviet Union added, "Modern architecture has lost its greatest master". Japanese TV channels decided to broadcast, simultaneously to the ceremony, his Museum in Tokyo, in what was at the time a unique media homage.

Visitors may find his grave site in the cemetery above Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in between Menton and Monaco in southern France.

The Fondation Le Corbusier (or FLC) functions as his official Estate.^[7] The U.S. copyright representative for the Fondation Le Corbusier is the Artists Rights Society.^[8]

Ideas[link]

Five points of architecture[link]

It was Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye (1929–1931) that most succinctly summed up his five points of architecture that he had elucidated in the journal L'Esprit Nouveau and his book Vers une architecture, which he had been developing throughout the 1920s. First, Le Corbusier lifted the bulk of the structure off the ground, supporting it by pilotis – reinforced concrete stilts. These pilotis, in providing the structural support for the house, allowed him to elucidate his next two points: a free façade, meaning non-supporting walls that could be designed as the architect wished, and an open floor plan, meaning that the floor space was free to be configured into rooms without concern for supporting walls. The second floor of the Villa Savoye includes long strips of ribbon windows that allow unencumbered views of the large surrounding yard, and which constitute the fourth point of his system. The fifth point was the roof garden to compensate for the green area consumed by the building and replacing it on the roof. A ramp rising from ground level to the third floor roof terrace allows for an architectural promenade through the structure. The white tubular railing recalls the industrial "ocean-liner" aesthetic that Le Corbusier much admired. As if to put an exclamation mark after Le Corbusier's homage to modern industry, the driveway around the ground floor, with its semicircular path, measures the exact turning radius of a 1927 Citroën automobile.

The Modulor[link]

Le Corbusier explicitly used the golden ratio in his Modulor system for the scale of architectural proportion. He saw this system as a continuation of the long tradition of Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man", the work of Leon Battista Alberti, and others who used the proportions of the human body to improve the appearance and function of architecture. In addition to the golden ratio, Le Corbusier based the system on human measurements, Fibonacci numbers, and the double unit.

He took Leonardo's suggestion of the golden ratio in human proportions to an extreme: he sectioned his model human body's height at the navel with the two sections in golden ratio, then subdivided those sections in golden ratio at the knees and throat; he used these golden ratio proportions in the Modulor system.

Le Corbusier's 1927 Villa Stein in Garches exemplified the Modulor system's application. The villa's rectangular ground plan, elevation, and inner structure closely approximate golden rectangles.^[9]

Le Corbusier placed systems of harmony and proportion at the centre of his design philosophy, and his faith in the mathematical order of the universe was closely bound to the golden section and the Fibonacci series, which he described as "rhythms apparent to the eye and clear in their relations with one another. And these rhythms are at the very root of human activities. They resound in Man by an organic inevitability, the same fine inevitability which causes the tracing out of the Golden Section by children, old men, savages, and the learned."^[10]

The Open Hand[link]

The Open Hand Monument in Chandigarh, India

The Open Hand (La Main Ouverte) is a recurring motif in Le Corbusier's architecture, a sign for him of "peace and reconciliation. It is open to give and open to receive." The largest of the many Open Hand sculptures that Le Corbusier created is a 28 meter high version in Chandigarh, India.

Furniture[link]

Corbusier said: "Chairs are architecture, sofas are bourgeois."

Le Corbusier began experimenting with furniture design in 1928 after inviting the architect, Charlotte Perriand, to join his studio. His cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, also collaborated on many of the designs. Before the arrival of Perriand, Le Corbusier relied on ready-made furniture to furnish his projects, such as the simple pieces manufactured by Thonet, the company that manufactured his designs in the 1930s.

In 1928, Le Corbusier and Perriand began to put the expectations for furniture Le Corbusier outlined in his 1925 book L'Art Décoratif d'aujourd'hui into practice. In the book he defined three different furniture types: type-needs, type-furniture, and human-limb objects. He defined human-limb objects as: "Extensions of our limbs and adapted to human functions that are type-needs and type-functions, therefore type-objects and type-furniture. The human-limb object is a docile servant. A good servant is discreet and self-effacing in order to leave his master free. Certainly, works of art are tools, beautiful tools. And long live the good taste manifested by choice, subtlety, proportion, and harmony".

The first results of the collaboration were three chrome-plated tubular steel chairs designed for two of his projects, The Maison la Roche in Paris and a pavilion for Barbara and Henry Church. The line of furniture was expanded for Le Corbusier's 1929 Salon d'Automne installation, Equipment for the Home.

The most famous of these chairs are the now-iconic LC-1, LC-2, LC-3, and LC-4, originally titled "Basculant" (LC-1), "Fauteuil grand confort, petit modèle" (LC-2, "great comfort sofa, small model"), "Fauteil grand confort, grand modèle" (LC-3, "great comfort sofa, large model"), and "Chaise longue" (LC-4, "Long chair", English: "chaise lounge").^[11] The LC-2 and LC-3 are more colloquially referred to as the petit confort and grand confort (abbreviation of full title, and due to respective sizes). The LC-2 (and similar LC-3) have been featured in a variety of media, notably the Maxell "blown away" advertisement.^[12]

In the year 1964, while Le Corbusier was still alive, Cassina S.p.A. of Milan acquired the exclusive worldwide rights to manufacture his furniture designs. Today many copies exist, but Cassina is still the only manufacturer authorized by the Fondation Le Corbusier; see US page.

Politics[link]

In the 1930s, Le Corbusier associated with Georges Valois and Hubert Lagardelle and briefly edited the syndicalist journal Prélude. In 1934, he lectured in Rome on architecture, by invitation of Benito Mussolini. He sought out a position in urban planning in the Vichy regime and received an appointment on a committee studying urbanism. He drew up plans for the redesign of Algiers in which he criticized the perceived differences in living standards between Europeans and Africans in the city, describing a situation in which "the civilised live like rats in holes" yet "the barbarians live in solitude, in well-being."^[13] These and plans for the redesign of other cities were ultimately ignored. After this defeat, Le Corbusier largely eschewed politics.

Although the politics of Lagardelle and Valois included elements of fascism, anti-semitism, and ultra-nationalism, Le Corbusier's own affiliation with these movements remains uncertain. In La Ville radieuse, he conceives an essentially apolitical society, in which the bureaucracy of economic administration effectively replaces the state.^[14]

Le Corbusier was heavily indebted to the thought of the 19th-century French utopians Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier. There is a noteworthy resemblance between the concept of the unité and Fourier's phalanstery.^[15] From Fourier, Le Corbusier adopted at least in part his notion of administrative, rather than political, government.

Criticisms[link]

Since his death, Le Corbusier's contribution has been hotly contested, as the architecture values and its accompanying aspects within modern architecture vary, both between different schools of thought and among practicing architects.^[16] At the level of building, his later works expressed a complex understanding of modernity's impact, yet his urban designs have drawn scorn from critics.

Technological historian and architecture critic Lewis Mumford wrote in Yesterday's City of Tomorrow that the extravagant heights of Le Corbusier's skyscrapers had no reason for existence apart from the fact that they had become technological possibilities. The open spaces in his central areas had no reason for existence either, Mumford wrote, since on the scale he imagined there was no motive during the business day for pedestrian circulation in the office quarter. By "mating utilitarian and financial image of the skyscraper city to the romantic image of the organic environment, Le Corbusier had, in fact, produced a sterile hybrid."

The public housing projects influenced by his ideas are seen by some as having had the effect of isolating poor communities in monolithic high-rises and breaking the social ties integral to a community's development. One of his most influential detractors has been Jane Jacobs, who delivered a scathing critique of Le Corbusier's urban design theories in her seminal work The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Influence[link]

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Le Corbusier was at his most influential in the sphere of urban planning, and was a founding member of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM).

Gustavo Capanema Palace, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).

One of the first to realize how the automobile would change human agglomerations, Le Corbusier described the city of the future as consisting of large apartment buildings isolated in a park-like setting on pilotis. Le Corbusier's theories were adopted by the builders of public housing in Western Europe and the United States. For the design of the buildings themselves, Le Corbusier criticized any effort at ornamentation. The large spartan structures in cities, but not 'of' cities, have been widely criticized for being boring and unfriendly to pedestrians.

Throughout the years, many architects worked for Le Corbusier in his studio, and a number of them became notable in their own right, including painter-architect Nadir Afonso, who absorbed Le Corbusier's ideas into his own aesthetics theory. Lúcio Costa's city plan of Brasília and the industrial city of Zlín planned by František Lydie Gahura in the Czech Republic are notable plans based on his ideas, while the architect himself produced the plan for Chandigarh in India. Le Corbusier's thinking also had profound effects on the philosophy of city planning and architecture in the Soviet Union, particularly in the Constructivist era.

Le Corbusier was heavily influenced by problems he saw in industrial cities at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. He thought that industrial housing techniques led to crowding, dirtiness, and a lack of a moral landscape. He was a leader of the modernist movement to create better living conditions and a better society through housing concepts. Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities of Tomorrow heavily influenced Le Corbusier and his contemporaries.

Le Corbusier also harmonized and lent credence to the idea of space as a set of destinations which mankind moved between, more or less continuously. He was therefore able to give credence and credibility to the automobile (as a transporter); and most importantly to freeways in urban spaces. His philosophies were useful to urban real estate development interests in the American Post World War II period because they justified and lent architectural and intellectual support to the desire to destroy traditional urban space for high density high profit urban concentration, both commercial and residential. Le Corbusier’s ideas also sanctioned further destruction of traditional urban spaces to build freeways that connected this new urbanism to low density, low cost (and highly profitable), suburban and rural locales which were free to be developed as middle class single-family (dormitory) housing.

Notably missing from this scheme of movement were connectivity between isolated urban villages created for lower-middle and working classes and other destination points in Le Corbusier's plan: suburban and rural areas, and urban commercial centers. This was because as designed, the freeways traveled over, at, or beneath grade levels of the living spaces of the urban poor (one modern example: the Cabrini–Green housing project in Chicago). Such projects and their areas, having no freeway exit ramps, cut-off by freeway rights-of-way, became isolated from jobs and services concentrated at Le Corbusier’s nodal transportation end points. As jobs increasingly moved to the suburban end points of the freeways, urban village dwellers found themselves without convenient freeway access points in their communities and without public mass transit connectivity that could economically reach suburban job centers.

Very late in the Post-War period, suburban job centers found this to be such a critical problem (labor shortages) that they, on their own, began sponsoring urban-to-suburban shuttle bus services between urban villages and suburban job centers, to fill working class and lower-middle class jobs which had gone wanting, and which did not normally pay the wages that car ownership required.

Le Corbusier deliberately created a myth about himself and was revered in his lifetime, and after death, by a generation of followers who believed Le Corbusier was a prophet who could do no wrong. But in the 1950s the first doubts began to appear, notably in some essays by his greatest admirers such as James Stirling and Colin Rowe, who denounced as catastrophic his ideas on the city. Later critics revealed his technical incompetence as an architect. In his book Armée du Salut, Brian Brace Taylor went into great detail about Le Corbusier's Machiavellian activities to create this commission for himself, his many ill-judged design decisions about building technologies, and the sometimes absurd solutions he then proposed.

Fondation Le Corbusier[link]

The Fondation Le Corbusier is a private foundation and archive honoring the work of architect Le Corbusier (1887–1965). It operates Maison La Roche, a museum located in the 16th arrondissement at 8-10, square du Dr Blanche, Paris, France, which is open daily except Sunday. As of June 2008, the Maison La Roche is temporarily closed for renovation.

The Fondation Le Corbusier was established in 1968. It now owns Maison La Roche and Maison Jeanneret (which form the foundation's headquarters), as well as the apartment occupied by Le Corbusier from 1933-1965 at rue Nungesser et Coli in Paris 16e, and the "Small House" he built for his parents in Corseaux on the shores of Lac Leman (1924).

Maison La Roche and Maison Jeanneret (1923–24), also known as the La Roche-Jeanneret house, is a pair of semi-detached houses that was Corbusier's third commission in Paris. They are laid out at right angles to each other, with iron, concrete, and blank, white facades setting off a curved two-story gallery space. Maison La Roche is now a museum containing about 8,000 original drawings, studies and plans by Le Corbusier (in collaboration with Pierre Jeanneret from 1922–1940), as well as about 450 of his paintings, about 30 enamels, about 200 other works on paper, and a sizable collection of written and photographic archives. It describes itself as the world's largest collection of Le Corbusier drawings, studies, and plans.^[17][18]

Major buildings and projects[link]

Ronchamp Chapel

National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, Japan

Centre Le Corbusier (Heidi Weber Museum) in Zurich-Seefeld (Zürichhorn)

Palace of Justice, Chandigarh

Assembly building, Chandigarh, India

Secretariat building, Chandigarh, India

• 1905: Villa Fallet, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
• 1908: Stotzer House, 6, Chemin de Pouillerel, la Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.
• 1912: Villa Jeanneret-Perret, La Chaux-de-Fonds
• 1916: Villa Schwob, La Chaux-de-Fonds
• 1922: Villa Besnus (Ker-Ka-Ré), Vaucresson, Paris, France
• 1922: Ozenfant House and Studio, Vaucresson, Paris. ( much altered.)
• 1923: Villa La Roche/Villa Jeanneret, Paris
• 1924: Pavillon de L'Esprit Nouveau, Paris (destroyed)
• 1924: Quartiers Modernes Frugès, Pessac, France
• 1925: Villa Jeanneret, Paris
• 1926: Villa Cook, Boulogne-sur-Seine, France
• 1926: Villa Ternisien, 5, Allee des Pins, Boulogne-sur-Seine, Paris. ( Block of apartments built over the house.)
• 1927: Villa Stein, Garches, Paris.
• 1927: Pleinex House, 24, Bis Boulevard Massena, Paris 13e.
• 1927: Villas at Weissenhof Estate, Stuttgart, Germany
• 1928: Villa Savoye, Poissy-sur-Seine, France View on the map
• 1929: Cité du Refuge, Armée du Salut, Paris, France
• 1930: Pavillon Suisse, Cité Universitaire, Paris
• 1930: Maison Errazuriz, Chile
• 1930: Las Nubes, house of Uruguayan novelist Enrique Amorim (Salto, Uruguay)
• 1931: Palace of the Soviets, Moscow, USSR (project)
• 1931: Immeuble Clarté (fr), Geneva, Switzerland View on the map
• 1933: Tsentrosoyuz, Moscow, USSR
• 1936: Palace of Ministry of National Education and Public Health, Rio de Janeiro (as a consultant to Lucio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer and others)
• 1938: The "Cartesian" sky-scraper (project)
• 1945: Usine Claude et Duval, Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, France
• 1947–1952: Unité d'Habitation, Marseille, France View on the map
• 1948: Curutchet House, La Plata, Argentina
• 1949–1952: United Nations headquarters, New York City (Consultant)
• 1950–1954: Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, France View on the map
• 1951: Cabanon de vacances, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin
• 1951: Maisons Jaoul, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
• 1951: Mill Owners' Association Building, villa Sarabhai and villa Schodan, Ahmedabad, India
• 1952: Unité d'Habitation of Nantes-Rezé, Nantes, France View on the map
• 1952–1959: Buildings in Chandigarh, India
  • 1952: Palace of Justice (Chandigarh)
  • 1952: Museum and Gallery of Art (Chandigarh)
  • 1953: Secretariat Building (Chandigarh)
  • 1953: Governor's Palace (Chandigarh)
  • 1955: Palace of Assembly (Chandigarh)
  • 1956: Shodan House
  • 1959: Government College of Art (GCA) and the Chandigarh College of Architecture(CCA) (Chandigarh)
• 1956: Museum at Ahmedabad, Ahmedabad, India
• 1956: Saddam Hussein Gymnasium, Baghdad, Iraq
• 1957: Unité d'Habitation of Briey en Forêt, France
• 1957: National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
• 1957: Maison du Brésil, Cité Universitaire, Paris
• 1957–1960: Sainte Marie de La Tourette, near Lyon, France (with Iannis Xenakis)
• 1957: Unité d'Habitation of Berlin-Charlottenburg, Flatowallee 16, Berlin View on the map
• 1957: Unité d'Habitation of Meaux, France
• 1958: Philips Pavilion, Brussels, Belgium (with Iannis Xenakis) (destroyed) at the 1958 World Expositon
• 1961: Center for Electronic Calculus, Olivetti, Milan, Italy
• 1961: Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
• 1963: House of Man, Zurich, Switzerland
• 1964–1969: Firminy-Vert
  • 1964: Unité d'Habitation of Firminy, France
  • 1966: Stadium Firminy-Vert
  • 1965: Maison de la culture de Firminy-Vert
  • 1969: Church of Saint-Pierre, Firminy, France (built posthumously and completed under José Oubrerie's guidance in 2006)
• 1967: Heidi Weber Museum (Centre Le Corbusier), Zurich, Switzerland

Major written works[link]

• 1918: Après le cubisme (After Cubism), with Amédée Ozenfant
• 1923: Vers une architecture (Towards an Architecture) (frequently mistranslated as "Towards a New Architecture")
• 1925: Urbanisme (Urbanism)
• 1925: La Peinture moderne (Modern Painting), with Amédée Ozenfant
• 1925: L'Art décoratif d'aujourd'hui (The Decorative Arts of Today)
• 1931: Premier clavier de couleurs (First Color Keyboard)
• 1935: Aircraft
• 1935: La Ville radieuse (The Radiant City)
• 1942: Charte d'Athènes (Athens Charter)
• 1943: Entretien avec les étudiants des écoles d'architecture (A Conversation with Architecture Students)
• 1945: Les Trios éstablishments Humains (The Three Human Establishments)
• 1948: Le Modulor (The Modulor)
• 1953: Le Poeme de l'Angle Droit (The Poem of the Right Angle)
• 1955: Le Modulor 2 (The Modulor 2)
• 1959: Deuxième clavier de couleurs (Second Colour Keyboard)
• 1966: Le Voyage d'Orient (The Voyage to the East)

Quotations[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Le Corbusier

• "You employ stone, wood, and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces: that is construction. Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good. I am happy and I say: 'This is beautiful.' That is Architecture. Art enters in..." (Vers une architecture, 1923)
• "Architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light."
• "Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep."
• "The house is a machine for living in." (Vers une architecture, 1923)
• "It is a question of building which is at the root of the social unrest of today: architecture or revolution." (Vers une architecture, 1923)
• "Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new kind of plan, both for the house and the city." (Vers une architecture, 1923)
• "The 'Styles' are a lie." (Vers une architecture, 1923)
• "Architecture or revolution. Revolution can be avoided." (Vers une architecture, 1923)

Memorials[link]

Le Corbusier's portrait was featured on the 10 Swiss francs banknote, pictured with his distinctive eyeglasses.

The following place-names carry his name:

• Place Le Corbusier, Paris, near the site of his atelier on the Rue de Sèvres.
• Le Corbusier Boulevard, Laval, Quebec, Canada.
• Place Le Corbusier in his hometown of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.
• Le Corbusier Street in the partido of Malvinas Argentinas, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina.
• Le Corbusier Street in Le Village Parisien of Brossard, Quebec, Canada.
• Le Corbusier Promenade, a promenade along the water at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.
• Le Corbusier Museum, Sector- 8 Chandigarh, India.

See also[link]

Design portal

• Category:Le Corbusier buildings – articles
• Modernism

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Curtis, William J.R. "Le Corbusier. Ideas and Forms", Phaidon, 1994, ISBN 978-0-7148-2790-2
• Jencks, Charles. "Le Corbusier and the Continual Revolution in Architecture", The Monacelli Press, 2000, ISBN 978-1-58093-077-2
• Nicholas Fox Weber, Le Corbusier: A Life, Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, ISBN 0-375-41043-0
• Marco Venturi, Le Corbusier Algiers Plans, research available on planum.net
• Sampò, Luca, Le Maisons Jaoul di Le Corbusier. La petite maison e la città contemporanea, FrancoAngeli, Milano 2010.
• Behrens, Roy R. (2005). COOK BOOK: Gertrude Stein, William Cook and Le Corbusier. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books. ISBN 0-9713244-1-7.
• Naïma Jornod and Jean-Pierre Jornod, Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret), catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, Skira, 2005, ISBN 88-7624-203-1
• Eliel, Carol S. (2002). L'Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918 - 1925. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-6727-8
• Frampton, Kenneth. (2001). Le Corbusier. London, Thames and Hudson.
• H. Allen Brooks: Le Corbusier's Formative Years: Charles-Edouard Jeanneret at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Paperback Edition, University of Chicago Press, 1999, ISBN 0-226-07582-6
• Von Moos, Stanislaus. (2009). Le Corbusier: Elements of A Synthesis. Rotterdam, 010 Publishers.

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Le Corbusier

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Le Corbusier

• Fondation Le Corbusier - Official site
• Le Corbusier - Free DWG
• Le Corbusier and Villa Cook
• Reflections on Brutalist Architecture in East London
• Podcast: Kenneth Frampton on Le Corbusier
• Images of the Ministry of National Education and Public Health, Rio de Janeiro
• Le Corbusier's projects in a map
• The Shape Of Things That Came: Tim Benton's Analysis Of Le Corbusier's Audacious Designs
• Le Corbusier in Artfacts.Net
• Corbusier's Working Lifestyle: 'Working with Corbusier'
• Video: Sector 1 Chandigarh, India
• Artists Rights Society, Le Corbusier's U.S. Copyright Representatives
• Model for the Villa Chimanbhai
• Proportional Systems in the architecture of Le Corbusier

lez:Ле Корбюзье

Portrait of Glazunov by Ilya Repin, 1887

Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov^[1] (10 August^[2] 1865 – 21 March 1936) was a Russian composer of the late Russian Romantic period, music teacher and conductor. He served as director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory between 1905 and 1928 and was also instrumental in the reorganization of the institute into the Petrograd Conservatory, then the Leningrad Conservatory, following the Bolshevik Revolution. He continued heading the Conservatory until 1930, though he had left the Soviet Union in 1928 and did not return.^[3] The best known student under his tenure during the early Soviet years was Dmitri Shostakovich.

Glazunov was significant in that he successfully reconciled nationalism and cosmopolitanism in Russian music. While he was the direct successor to Balakirev's nationalism, he tended more towards Borodin's epic grandeur while absorbing a number of other influences. These included Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestral virtuosity, Tchaikovsky's lyricism and Taneyev's contrapuntal skill. His weaknesses were a streak of academicism which sometimes overpowered his inspiration and an eclecticism which could sap the ultimate stamp of originality from his music. Younger composers such as Prokofiev and Shostakovich eventually considered his music old-fashioned while also admitting he remained a composer with an imposing reputation and a stabilizing influence in a time of transition and turmoil.^[4]

Biography[link]

Prodigy[link]

Glazunov was born in Saint Petersburg, the son of a wealthy publisher. He began studying piano at age of nine and began composing at 11. Mily Balakirev, former leader of the nationalist group "The Five", recognized Glazunov's talent and brought his work to the attention of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. "Casually Balakirev once brought me the composition of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old high-school student, Sasha Glazunov", Rimsky-Korsakov remembered. "It was an orchestral score written in childish fashion. The boy's talent was indubitably clear."^[5] Balakirev introduced him to Rimsky-Korsakov shortly afterwards, in December 1879. Rimsky-Korsakov premiered this work in 1882, when Glazunov was 16. Borodin and Stasov, among others, lavishly praised both the work and its composer.

Rimsky-Korsakov taught Glazunov as a private student.^[6] "His musical development progressed not by the day, but literally by the hour", Rimsky-Korsakov wrote.^[6] The nature of their relationship also changed. By the spring of 1881, Rimsky-Korsakov considered Glazunov more of a junior colleague than a student.^[7] While part of this development may have been from Rimsky-Korsakov's need to find a spiritual replacement for Modest Mussorgsky, who had died that March, it may have also been from observing his progress on the first of Glazunov's eight symphonies.^[7]

Mentored by Belyayev[link]

Portrait of Mitrofan Belyayev by Ilya Repin (1886)

More important than this praise was that among the work's admirers was a wealthy timber merchant and amateur musician, Mitrofan Belyayev. Belyayev was introduced to Glazunov's music by Anatoly Lyadov^[8] and would take a keen interest in the teenager's musical future,^[9] then extend that interest to an entire group of nationalist composers.^[8] Belyayev took Glazunov on a trip to Western Europe in 1884. Glazunov met Liszt in Weimar, where Glazunov's First Symphony was performed.^[3]

Also in 1884, Belyayev rented out a hall and hired an orchestra to play Glazunov's First Symphony plus an orchestral suite Glazunov had just composed.^[10] Buoyed by the success of the rehearsal, Belyayev decided the following season to give a public concert of works by Glazunov and other composers.^[11] This project grew into the Russian Symphony Concerts, which were inaugurated during the 1886–1887 season.^[12]

In 1885 Belyayev started his own publishing house in Leipzig, Germany, initially publishing music by Glazunov, Lyadov, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin at his own expense. Young composers started appealing for his help. To help select from their offerings, Belyayev asked Glazunov to serve with Rimsky-Korsakov and Lyadov on an advisory council.^[13] The group of composers that formed eventually became known at the Belyayev Circle.^[8]

Fame[link]

Glazunov soon enjoyed international acclaim. Nevertheless, he experienced a creative crisis in 1890–1891. He came out of this period with a new maturity. During the 1890s he wrote three symphonies, two string quartets and the ballet Raymonda. By the time he was elected director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1905, he was at the height of his creative powers. His best works from this period are considered his Eighth Symphony and Violin Concerto. This was also the time of his greatest international acclaim. He conducted the last of the Russian Historical Concerts in Paris on 17 May 1907 and received honorary Doctor of Music degrees from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. There were also cycles of all-Glazunov concerts in Saint Petersburg and Moscow to celebrate his 25th anniversary as a composer.^[14]

Conductor[link]

Glazunov made his conducting debut in 1888. The following year, he conducted his Second Symphony in Paris at the World Exhibition.^[3] He was appointed conductor for the Russian Symphony Concerts in 1896. In March of that year he conducted the posthumous premiere of Tchaikovsky's student overture The Storm.^[15] In 1897, he led the disastrous premiere of Rachmaninoff's Symphony No 1. The composer's wife later claimed that Glazunov seemed to be drunk at the time. While this assertion cannot be confirmed, it is not implausible for a man who, according to Shostakovich, kept a bottle of alcohol hidden behind his desk and sipped it through a tube during lessons.^[16]

Drunk or not, Glazunov had insufficient rehearsal time with the symphony and, while he loved the art of conducting, he never fully mastered it.^[3] From time to time he conducted his own compositions, especially the ballet Raymonda, even though he may have known he had no talent for it. He would sometimes joke, "You can criticize my compositions, but you can't deny that I am a good conductor and a remarkable conservatory Director."^[17]

Despite the hardships he suffered during World War I and the ensuing Russian Civil War, Glazunov remained active as a conductor. He conducted concerts in factories, clubs and Red Army posts. He played a prominent part in the Russian observation in 1927 of the centenary of Beethoven's death, as both speaker and conductor. After he left Russia, he conducted an evening of his works in Paris in 1928. This was followed by engagements in Portugal, Spain, France, England, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Netherlands, and the United States.^[18]

Conservatory[link]

In 1899, Glazunov became a professor at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. In the wake of the 1905 Russian Revolution and firing, then re-hiring of Rimsky-Korsakov that year, Glazunov became its director. He remained so until the revolutionary events of 1917, which culminated on 7 November. His Piano Concerto No. 2 in B minor, Op. 100, which he conducted, was premiered at the first concert held in Petrograd after that date.^[19] After the end of World War I, he was instrumental in the reorganization of the Conservatory—this may, in fact, have been the main reason he waited so long to go into exile.^[17] During his tenure he worked tirelessly to improve the curriculum, raise the standards for students and staff, as well as defend the institute's dignity and autonomy. Among his achievements were an opera studio and a students' philharmonic orchestra.^[3]

Glazunov showed paternal concern for the welfare of needy students, such as Dmitri Shostakovich and Nathan Milstein. He also personally examined hundreds of students at the end of each academic year, writing brief comments on each.^[3] Unfortunately, according to Shostakovich's comments in Testimony, Glazunov's alcoholism may have progressed to the point that he could not give a lesson while sober. Glazunov taught only chamber music by the time Shostakovich was a student. Glazunov sat at his desk, not interrupting the music being played during class. He spoke quietly and briefly, his comments becoming less distinct and briefer toward the end of the lesson.^[20]

While Glazunov's sobriety could be questioned, his prestige was not. Because of his reputation, the Conservatory received special status among institutions of higher learning in the aftermath of the October Revolution. Glazunov established a sound working relationship with the Bolshevik regime, especially with Anatoly Lunacharsky, the minister of education. Nevertheless, Glazunov's conservatism was attacked within the Conservatory. Increasingly, professors demanded more progressive methods, and students wanted greater rights. Glazunov saw these demands as both destructive and unjust. Tired of the Conservatory, he took advantage of the opportunity to go abroad in 1928 for the Schubert centenary celebrations in Vienna. He did not return. Maximilian Steinberg ran the Conservatory in his absence until Glazunov finally resigned in 1930.^[14]

Exile[link]

Glazunov toured Europe and the United States in 1928, ^[21] and settled in Paris by 1929. He always claimed that the reason for his continued absence from Russia was "ill health"; this enabled him to remain a respected composer in the Soviet Union, unlike Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff, who had left for other reasons. In 1929, he conducted an orchestra of Parisian musicians in the first complete electrical recording of The Seasons. In 1934, he wrote his Saxophone Concerto, a virtuoso and lyrical work for the alto saxophone.^[22]

Married life[link]

In 1929, at age 64, Glazunov married the 54-year-old Olga Nikolayevna Gavrilova (1875–1968).^[23] The previous year, Olga's daughter Elena Gavrilova had been the soloist in the first Paris performance of his Piano Concerto No. 2 in B major, Op. 100.^[24] He subsequently adopted Elena (she is sometimes referred to as his stepdaughter), and she then used the name Elena Glazunova. In 1928, Elena had married the pianist Sergei Tarnowsky, who managed Glazunov's professional and business affairs in Paris, such as negotiating his United States appearances with Sol Hurok.^[25] Elena later appeared as Elena Gunther-Glazunova after her second marriage, to Herbert Gunther (1906–1978).^[19]

Death[link]

Glazunov died in Neuilly-sur-Seine (near Paris) at the age of 70 in 1936. The announcement of his death shocked many. They had long associated Glazunov with the music of the past rather than of the present, so they thought he had already been dead for many years.^[26]

In 1972 his remains were reinterred in Leningrad.^[27]

Works and influence[link]

Phenomenal memory[link]

Glazunov was acknowledged as a great prodigy in his field and, with the help of his mentor and friend Rimsky-Korsakov, finished some of Alexander Borodin's great works, the most famous being the Third Symphony and the opera Prince Igor, including the popular Polovtsian Dances. He reconstructed the overture from memory, having heard it played on the piano only once. Shostakovich reports, however, that Glazunov told him when drunk that his "reconstruction" of Borodin's overture was actually original work; Glazunov chose to give full credit to Borodin for the composition which he, Glazunov, wrote. Glazunov's ability to perfectly mimic Borodin's style is a tribute to his musical creativity. His giving the credit to Borodin, Shostakovich felt, said much for Glazunov's character. "It doesn't happen often that a man composes excellent music for another composer and doesn't advertise it (to talk while drinking doesn't count). It's usually the other way around—a man steals an idea or even a considerable piece of music and passes it off as his own."^[28]

Shostakovich mentioned in Testimony that there were many similar stories about Glazunov's memory. One of the more famous ones, he recalled, was when Sergei Taneyev came to Saint Petersburg with a new symphony. The person whom Taneyev was visiting hid the teenage Glazunov in the next room. Taneyev played his symphony on the piano for the host. The other guests praised and congratulated him. The host then told Taneyev, "I'd like you to meet a talented young man. He's also written a symphony." He brought Glazunov in from the next room. The host said, "Sasha, show your symphony to our dear guest." Glazunov sat down at the piano and played Taneyev's symphony from beginning to end, after hearing it only once and through a closed door.^[29]

Age did not weaken Glazunov's memory. Another story Shostakovich relayed was of an "eternal student" applying to enter the composition department at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. The applicant played a piano sonata he had written. Glazunov listened. When the applicant had finished, Glazunov said, "If I'm not mistaken, you applied a few years ago. Then, in another sonata, you had quite a good secondary theme." Glazunov sat down at the keyboard and played a large segment of the old sonata. "The secondary theme was rubbish, of course", Shostakovich said, "but the effect was enormous."^[30]

Compositions[link]

Alexander Glazunov

	Chant du ménestrel, Op. 71 Performed by the Skidmore College Orchestra. Courtesy of Musopen
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Glazunov's most popular works nowadays are his ballets The Seasons and Raymonda, some of his later symphonies, particularly the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth, the Polonaise from Les Sylphides, and his two Concert Waltzes. His Violin Concerto, which was a favorite vehicle for Jascha Heifetz, is still sometimes played and recorded. His last work, the Saxophone Concerto (1934), showed his ability to adapt to Western fashions in music at that time. The earlier rebellions of the experimental, serialist and minimalist movements passed him by and he never shied away from the polished manner he had perfected at the turn of the century.

Glazunov's musical development was paradoxical. He was adopted as an idol by nationalist composers who had been largely self-taught and, apart from Rimsky-Korsakov, deeply distrustful of academic technique. Glazunov's first two symphonies could be seen as an anthology of nationalist techniques as practiced by Balakirev and Borodin; the same could be said for his symphonic poem Stenka Razin with its use of the folk song "Volga Boatmen" and orientalist practices much like those employed by The Five. By his early 20's he realized the polemic battles between academicism and nationalism were no longer valid. Although he based his compositions on Russian popular music, Glazunov's technical mastery allowed him to write in a sophisticated, cultured idiom. With his Third Symphony, he consciously attempted to internationalize his music in a manner similar to Tchaikovsky, to whom the piece is dedicated.^[31]

The Third Symphony was a transitional work. Glazunov admitted its composition caused him a great deal of trouble. With the Fourth Symphony, he came into his mature style. Dedicated to Anton Rubinstein, the Fourth was written as a deliberately cosmopolitan work by a Russian looking outward to the West, yet it remained unmistakably Russian in tone.^[32] He continued to synthesize nationalist tradition and Western technique in the Fifth Symphony.^[33] By the time Glazunov wrote his Seventh Symphony, his duties at the Conservatory had slowed his rate of composition.^[34] After his Eighth Symphony, his heavy drinking may have started taking a toll on his creativity, as well. He sketched one movement of a Ninth Symphony but left the work unfinished.^[35]

Glazunov wrote three ballets; eight symphonies and many other orchestral works; five concertos (2 for piano; 1 for violin; 1 for cello; 1 for saxophone); seven string quartets; two piano sonatas and other piano pieces; miscellaneous instrumental pieces; and some songs. He worked together with the choreographer Michel Fokine to create the ballet Les Sylphides. It was a collection of piano works by Frédéric Chopin, orchestrated by Glazunov. He was also given the opportunity by Serge Diaghilev to write music to The Firebird after Lyadov had failed to do so. Glazunov refused. Eventually, Diaghilev sought out the then-unknown Igor Stravinsky, who wrote the music.^[36]

Ironically, both Glazunov and Rachmaninoff, whose first symphony Glazunov supposedly had conducted so poorly at its premiere (according to the composer), were considered "old-fashioned" in their later years. In recent years, Glazunov's musical gifts have been more fully appreciated, thanks to extensive recordings of his complete orchestral works.

Glazunov and Stravinsky[link]

In his Chronicle, Stravinsky admitted that, as a young man, he greatly admired Glazunov's perfection of musical form, purity of counterpoint and ease and assurance of his writing. At 15, Stravinsky transcribed one of Glazunov's string quartets for piano solo.^[37] He also deliberately modeled his Symphony in E-flat, Op. 1, on Glazunov's symphonies, which were then in vogue.^[38] He used Glazunov's Eighth Symphony, Op. 83, which was written in the same key as his, as a pattern on which to base corrections to his symphony.^[39]

This attitude changed over time. In his Memoirs Stravinsky called Glazunov one of the most disagreeable men he had ever met, adding that the only bad omen he had experienced about the initial (private) performance of his symphony was Glazunov having come to him afterwards saying, "Very nice, very nice." Later, Stravinsky amended his recollection of this incident, adding that when Glazunov passed him in the aisle after the performance, he told Stravinsky, "Rather heavy instrumentation for such music."^[40][41]

For his part, Glazunov was not supportive of the modern direction Stravinsky's music took. He was not alone in this prejudice—their mutual teacher Rimsky-Korsakov was as profoundly conservative by the end of his life, wedded to the academic process he helped instill at the Conservatory. Unlike Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov was not anxious about the potential dead-end Russian music might take by following academia strictly, nor did he share Rimsky-Korsakov's grudging respect for new ideas and techniques.^[42]

Chances are that Glazunov treated Stravinsky with reserve, certainly not with open rudeness.^[42] His opinion of Stravinsky's music in the presence of others was another matter. At the performance of Feu d'artifice (Fireworks), he reportedly made the comment, "Kein talent, nur Dissonanz" ("no talent, just dissonance"). (Also in the audience was Sergei Diaghilev, who on the strength of this music sought out the young composer for the Ballets Russes.)^[43] Glazunov eventually considered Stravinsky merely an expert orchestrator. In 1912 he told Vladimir Telyakovsky, "Petrushka is not music, but is excellently and skillfully orchestrated."^[44]

In 1962, when Stravinsky returned to the Soviet Union to celebrate his 80th birthday, he visited the Leningrad conservatory and, according to his associate Robert Craft, moaned and said "Glazunov!" when he saw a photograph of the composer on display.

Glazunov and modernism[link]

Igor Stravinsky was not the only composer whose modernist tendencies Glazunov disliked. Shostakovich mentioned Glazunov's attacks against the "recherché cacophonists"—the elder composer's term for the newer generation of Western composers, beginning with Debussy. When Franz Schreker's opera Der ferne Klang was staged in Leningrad, Glazunov pronounced the opera "Schreckliche Musik!" He also may have wondered occasionally whether he had played a role in spawning musical chaos. Once, while looking a score of Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, he commented, "It's orchestrated with great taste.... And he knows his work.... Could it be that Rimsky and I influenced the orchestration of all these contemporary degenerates?"^[45]

To Glazunov's credit, however, even after he had consigned a piece of music to be "cacophonic", he did not stop listening to it. Instead, he would continue listening in an effort to comprehend it. He "penetrated" Wagner's music in this way; he understood nothing about Die Walküre the first time he heard it—or the second, third, or fourth. On the tenth hearing, he finally understood the opera and liked it very much. When Shostakovich was one of his students, Glazunov was attempting to do the same with Richard Strauss's Salome—"getting used to it, penetrating it, studying it", Shostakovich said.^[46]

Glazunov and Shostakovich[link]

Shostakovich entered the Petrograd Conservatory at age 13, becoming the youngest student there. He studied piano with Leonid Nikolayev and composition with Rimsky-Korsakov's son-in-law Maximilian Steinberg. He proved to be a disciplined, hard-working student. Glazunov may have recognized in Shostakovich an echo of his younger self. He carefully monitored his progress in Steinberg's class and, in awarding him his doctorate, recommended Shostakovich for a higher degree which normally would have led to a professorship. Due to his family's financial hardship, Shostakovich was not able to take advantage of this opportunity.^[47] Glazunov also arranged for the premiere of Shostakovich's First Symphony, which took place on 12 March 1926 with the Leningrad Philharmonic under Nikolai Malko.^[48] This was 44 years after Glazunov's First Symphony had first been presented in the same hall.^[49] In another instance of déjà vu with Glazunov's early life, the symphony caused almost as much of a sensation as the appearance of the young Shostakovich on the stage awkwardly taking his bow.^[48]

Because of Glazunov's bouts of heavy drinking, he found the ban on the official sale of wine and vodka by the Bolskeviks a particular hardship. However, he learned Shostakovich's father had access to spirit alcohol, which was strictly rationed. One of Shostakovich's more onerous tasks became relaying requests between Glazunov and his father. He found this troubling for two reasons. First, the requests could place his father in mortal danger, particularly since it was impossible to tell whom the Bolsheviks would decide to shoot as an example to others. Second, he did not wish anyone to attribute his success at the Conservatory to bribery.^[50]

Glazunov and the Conservatory[link]

Dmitri Shostakovich admitted that while there was much about Glazunov that he found incomprehensible, even laughable, Glazunov willingly sacrificed his time, his peace of mind and his creativity for the Conservatory. He spent practically all his time there. He became calm and firm in dealing with the authorities. When asked before the Revolution how many Jews were enrolled, Glazunov sent the reply, "We don't keep count here."^[51] In 1922, the government decided to give Glazunov living conditions that would facilitate his creativity and be commensurate with his achievements. Glazunov, who had lost a tremendous amount of weight and was living as hard a life as many in that time, asked instead that the government send firewood to the Conservatory so the students could study more easily. The firewood was delivered.^[52]

He gave away a tremendous amount of his salary to needy students out of compassion for them. He wrote countless letters of recommendation, writing what he really thought about the person and giving praise with justification. Sometimes he went to government officials to plead their case. Jewish musicians knew he would see the authorities to get them permission to live in Petrograd. Thanks to him, Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein and Mischa Elman, among others, were able to come and study.^[53] Shostakovich claimed Glazunov never asked these musicians to play for him; he felt everyone had a right to live where they pleased and art would not suffer as a result. Most importantly to Shostakovich, Glazunov did not call attention to his efforts in this regard. "He didn't demonstrate his high principles when it came to small and pathetic people. He saved this for more important people and more important incidents."^[54]

Sources[link]

• Ossovsky, Alexander, Aleksandr Konstantinovich Glazunov: His life and creative work; Sanct-Petersburg, Alexander Siloti Concerts Publishing House, 1907.
• Figes, Orlando, Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002). ISBN 0-8050-5783-8 (hc.).
• Huth, Andrew, Notes for Warner 61434, Glazunov: Symphony No. 5; The Seasons; Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by José Serebrier.
• Huth, Andrew, Notes for Warner 61939, Glazunov: Symphony No. 8; Raymonda; Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by José Serebrier.
• Huth, Andrew, Notes for Warner 63236, Glazunov: Symphonies Nos. 4 and 7; Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by José Serebrier.
• MacDonald, Ian, The New Shostakovich (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990). ISBN 1-55553-089-3.* Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai, Letoppis Moyey Muzykalnoy Zhizni (Saint Petersburg, 1909), published in English as My Musical Life (New York: Knopf, 1925, 3rd ed. 1942). ISBN n/a.
• Norris, Geoffrey and Marina Frolova-Walker, "Glazunov, Aleksandr Konstantinovich" in New Grove
• Schwarz, Boris, "Glazunov, Aleksandr Konstantinovich" in New Grove
• Taylor, Philip, Notes for Chandos 9751, Glazunov: Symphony No. 1, "Slavyanskaya"; Violin Concerto; Julie Krasko, violin; Russian State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Valery Polyansky.
• Volkov, Solomon, tr. Bouis, Antonina W., Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (New York: The Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1995). ISBN 0-02-874052-1.
• Volkov, Solomon, tr. Bouis, Antonina W., Saint Petersburg: A Cultural History (New York: Harper & Row, 1979). ISBN 0-06-014476-9.
• Walsh, Stephen, Stravinsky, A Creative Spring: Russia and France, 1882–1934 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999). ISBN 0-679-41484-3.
• White, Eric Walter, Stravinsky: The Man and His Works (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966). Library of Congress Card Captalog Number 66-27667.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Alexander Glazunov

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Glazunov, Alexander Constantinovich.

• More Complete List of Works
• Free scores by Alexander Glazunov at the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores at the Mutopia Project
• Chant du ménestrel, Op. 71 recording from Musopen.
• Quinteto AMIZADE first recording of Glazunov's original Oriental Reverie.