Music, culture, and ahhhhht

I'm glad I got a chance to go 'round the Edward Hopper exhibit of iconic American images. It's nice to see them in the flesh, to view and almost feel the texture of the work, but otherwise, it's less exciting than you might think it would be. Because you've already seen the image, or derivatives of the image, so many times in other media, even though you know, intellectually, that you are standing in front of the progenitor image, your emotional response automatically translates as "old hat." Still, his images of people's solitude were uniquely compelling. I also liked the part of the exhibit that compared his house models between the paintings and photographs of what they look like now. Neat, and a little sad (some major deterioration).

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What is, "culture, anyway? Some (dictionary.com) would define it as an "acquaintance with and taste in fine arts, humanities, and broad aspects of science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills." But, how to consume this, "culture"? Wouldn't taking in of art and music be define as an act of consuming, "culture"?

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The 1,626? concert at the National Gallery reminded me of why I stopped going to those concerts, except for certain performers of interest. The atrium is a delightful and beautiful place to sit and listen to music, but unfortunately, most instruments echo rather unbecomingly off the stone hall's vaulted ceilings and the character of the sound is more muddled than would be acceptable in less exalted (and free!) venues. Still, the acoustics are kind to woodwinds and the human voice, so the chamber group that played, featuring flute, clarinet, and oboe, among others, was a nice chance to get back to this most pleasurable activity. The program was an interesting mix of all musical eras, spanning baroque to contemporary. Having the Carter piece interplayed between the Vivaldi and the Mozart was almost a bad musical joke. The audience was visibly relieved to be back in the land of tonality, even after the astonishing and virtuosic performance. Sitting there, consuming musical fine art, pondering artists' performance and program choices, I felt very civilized and slightly knowledgeable; both extremely pleasurable feelings! Oh - plus, you know, fun.