A familiarity with the work of Bernard Lassus, the leading French landscape architect, is essential for anyone seriously interested in contemporary landscape experience and design. Now, with this first collection of his writings to be translated into English, the contributions of Lassus can finally be fully appreciated by a wider audience. Perhaps best known for the speculative base that sustains his work and thought, Lassus is an artist whose philosophical concerns precede and determine his design work. For him, attention to the interactive nature of the landscape underlies all projects. He approaches each site in pursuit of the particular opportunities and challenges it presents and is ever mindful of the way in which observers will experience the space. He does not allow experience to be relegated to by-product of design. Instead, as one of his close collaborators explained, for Lassus form is not primary, it is induced from the articulation of intention. The essays in The Landscape Approach afford readers a look into some of Lassus's most important projects--the Butterfly Bridge at Istres, the highway rest area at Nimes-Caissargues, the Park of Duisburg-Nord, the Garden of Returns for the Corderie Royale at Rochefort, and the Tuileries in Paris--and furnish provocative insight into Lassus's unique bonding of theory and practice. As is the case with his garden designs, Bernard Lassus's volume is a true experience. It is sure to become a classic in the field.
A familiarity with the work of Bernard Lassus, the leading French landscape architect, is essential for anyone seriously interested in contemporary landscape experience and design. Now, with this first collection of his writings to be translated into English, the contributions of Lassus can finally be fully appreciated by a wider audience. Perhaps best known for the speculative base that sustains his work and thought, Lassus is an artist whose philosophical concerns precede and determine his design work. For him, attention to the interactive nature of the landscape underlies all projects. He approaches each site in pursuit of the particular opportunities and challenges it presents and is ever mindful of the way in which observers will experience the space. He does not allow experience to be relegated to by-product of design. Instead, as one of his close collaborators explained, for Lassus form is not primary, it is induced from the articulation of intention. The essays in The Landscape Approach afford readers a look into some of Lassus's most important projects--the Butterfly Bridge at Istres, the highway rest area at Nimes-Caissargues, the Park of Duisburg-Nord, the Garden of Returns for the Corderie Royale at Rochefort, and the Tuileries in Paris--and furnish provocative insight into Lassus's unique bonding of theory and practice. As is the case with his garden designs, Bernard Lassus's volume is a true experience. It is sure to become a classic in the field.
The attempt to play music with the styles and instruments of its era--commonly referred to as the early music movement--has become immensely popular in recent years. For instance, Billboard's "Top Classical Albums" of 1993 and 1994 featured Anonymous 4, who sing medieval music, and the best-selling Beethoven recording of 1995 was a period-instruments symphony cycle led by John Eliot Gardiner, who is Deutsche Grammophon's top-selling living conductor. But the movement has generated as much controversy as it has best-selling records, not only about the merits of its results, but also about the validity of its approach. To what degree can we recreate long-lost performing styles? How important are historical period instruments for the performance of a piece? Why should musicians bother with historical information? Are they sacrificing art to scholarship? Now, in Inside Early Music, Bernard D. Sherman has invited many of the leading practitioners to speak out about their passion for early music--why they are attracted to this movement and how it shapes their work. Readers listen in on conversations with conductors Gardiner, William Christie, and Roger Norrington, Peter Phillips of the Tallis Scholars, vocalists Susan Hellauer of Anonymous 4, forte pianist Robert Levin, cellist Anner Bylsma, and many other leading artists. The book is divided into musical eras--Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Classic and Romantic--with each interview focusing on particular composers or styles, touching on heated topics such as the debate over what is "authentic," the value of playing on period instruments, and how to interpret the composer's intentions. Whether debating how to perform Monteverdi's madrigals or comparing Andrew Lawrence-King's Renaissance harp playing to jazz, the performers convey not only a devotion to the spirit of period performance, but the joy of discovery as they struggle to bring the music most truthfully to life. Spurred on by Sherman's probing questions and immense knowledge of the subject, these conversations movingly document the aspirations, growing pains, and emerging maturity of the most exciting movement in contemporary classical performance, allowing each artist's personality and love for his or her craft to shine through. From medieval plainchant to Brahms' orchestral works, Inside Early Music takes readers-whether enthusiasts or detractors-behind the scenes to provide a masterful portrait of early music's controversies, challenges, and rewards.
Like human life, the Catholic or universal Church is lived forward but understood backward. To appreciate the Church's past, however, does not require that we simply repeat it. Using such a framework, this book puts the present period of the Church in vast historical context. It traces how the Church came from the "community of unexpected persons" whom Jesus gathered around himself and was then shaped, over the course of centuries, by human decisions made in the Spirit. The Church's catholicity is seen to involve an ever expanding memory, embracing the immense richness of past and present times, places, and cultures, and at the same time an openness to assimilating, and possibly being transformed by, a future history in which God offers new possibilities. The book thus proposes that the Church's leadership would do well to nurture a renewed eschatological attitude that embraces a genuine openness to the newness and surprise of the future, leaving room not only for continuity but also for the important elements of change and transformation. For, what the Church is, only the entirety of its history will fully reveal.
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