a playlist for short 021, joseph cornell
15 tracks · 1 h 1 min
joseph cornell filled his boxes with europe and never went there. this is music for what he put in them: the ballerinas and stars he collected, the records he found, and the jewel box he made for taglioni, whose ice is glass.
open in spotify ↗watch the short ↗william tell overturean 1870 swiss music box
the short opens on a music box. taglioni danced in william tell at the paris opéra in 1829.
la sylphideschneitzhoeffer
the role that made taglioni a star, paris 1832.
casta divamaria callas, live in paris, 1958
bellini wrote it for giuditta pasta, and cornell made a box for her in 1950. a prayer to the moon.
le papillon: valse des rayonsoffenbach
the ballet taglioni choreographed in 1860. cornell made a pantry ballet (for jacques offenbach) in 1942.
swan lake, act 2tchaikovsky
for tamara toumanova, who got a box of her own in 1946.
porto allegrenestor amaral and his continentals
one of the two tracks cornell put under his film rose hobart, from a record he found in a junk shop.
how little we knowlauren bacall
after to have and have not, he made her a penny arcade portrait.
soap bubble boxnits
a song about cornell, named after his soap bubble sets. the first, shown at moma in 1936, had a map of the moon in it.
the toy-box asleepdebussy
a ballet inside a toy box. it opens with the box asleep, like the house in queens while he worked.
since i left youthe avalanches
built from secondhand records: a song about leaving, for a man who never left.
an empty bliss beyond this worldthe caretaker
old ballroom records, looped, leading into a waltz.
valse-fantaisieglinka
written for piano in 1839, in the years taglioni toured russia, where the highwayman stopped her.
the snow is dancingdebussy
his version of the night: she dances on the snow.
arcticterje isungset
played on instruments carved from ice, which melts.
adagio for glass harmonicamozart
glass, played like ice. its ice is glass. it never melts.
