Canadian composer John Beckwith recounts his early days in Victoria, his studies in Toronto with Alberto Guerrero, his first compositions, and his later studies in Paris with the renowned Nadia Boulanger, of whom he offers a comprehensive personal view. This is his memoir's that describes his activities as a writer, university teacher, and more.
The appreciation of early Christian and Byzantine Art as a sublime expression of religious thought and feeling is a comparatively modern phenomenon. Byzantine art is both static and dynamic: static in the sense that once an image was established it was felt that no improvement was necessary; dynamic in the sense that there was never one style and these styles or modes were constantly changing. The story is not only complex in its unravelling but ranges widely over various media: mosaic, wall painting and painted panels, sculpture in marble and ivory, manuscript illumination, gold, silver, and precious stones, jewellery, silk and rich vestments. This is an account by a medieval art-historian.
"Beginning with the coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor of the West in A.D. 800, John Beckwith guides us through the architecture, painting, sculpture, illuminations and ivories of the three great periods of early medieval art. The Ottonian period, perhaps best known for the great center of art and craftsmanship attached to the court, presented an artistic style which had developed from early Christian and Carolingian sources--a style which was the gateway to the great artistic revival in the eleventh and twelfth centuries--the Romanesque period."--Publisher's description