THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, by Igor Stravinsky

What if you went up to 10 people on the street and asked each one, “What is the purpose of art?” Surely, you’d get 10 different answers. Maybe more. We live in an age when art is used for a variety of purposes. We still have art for art’s sake. But there’s also the notion of art as advertising. Or art as a consumer product; “decorative art,” they call it. And, there’s art-as-investment, in which certain artists or certain styles are bought and held like stock certificates.

Amidst all this, it's easy to forget that the original function of art was not to sell a product, decorate a home, or provide retirement income. Or, at least we don’t think it was. Actually, even the notion of deriving pleasure from art may have been secondary to the original purpose, which was to reinforce belief, and provide both instruction and inspiration.

Go back to the beginnings of recorded history, or even before. How many images of gods and goddesses were carved in wood and stone? Sun Gods, Rain Gods, Fertility Goddeses, Gods of War … So many that nearly every museum in the world has at least one of them! In their time, these figures likely stood behind an altar of some sort, where prayers, and food, and sometimes even people were offered up as a sign of reverence.

This tradition continued with the growth of Christianity and the beginnings of the modern church; much of medieval art is devoted to depictions of the life of Jesus. And it was also during the middle ages that some artists - many of them priests -- began to create a new form of religious art - a sort that could entertain the viewer while, at the same time, serve as a means of religious education for the largely illiterate masses. The works of Hieronymous Bosch come to mind.

But the idea that art could be instructive as well as entertaining didn’t end with the Middle Ages. In the 18th-century, the English printer William Hogarth produced a series of engravings - "The Harlot’s Progress,” “Marriage a la Mode,” and “A Rake’s Progress” - that left little doubt about the ultimate fate of the profligate. Hogarth’s works were meant not just to entertain but also to teach people lessons; it’s not surprising that his work can still startle, upset, and even inspire people today. In fact, composer Igor Stravinsky’s visit to an exhibition of Hogarth’s work in the 1940’s inspired his own, RAKE'S PROGRESS. It's an opera that - true to Hogarth’s intent - is as instructive as it is entertaining. It's also the work we'll hear this week on NPR WORLD OF OPERA, in a production from the Aspen Music Festival.

And as usual, 30 minutes before curtain, you can tune in AT THE OPERA with host Lou Santacroce. He’ll talk about the life, times, and work of artist William Hogarth with Professor Robert Paulson. Then, conductor and author Robert Craft will tell us how Hogarth’s work inspired his great friend, Igor Stravinsky, to write “The Rake’s Progress.”

That's all AT THE OPERA, from NPR.



Links: