{"id":20445,"date":"2021-03-15T16:36:38","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T16:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=20445"},"modified":"2025-09-19T23:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T22:23:10","slug":"more-invisible-cities-and-an-invisible-author","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2021\/03\/15\/more-invisible-cities-and-an-invisible-author\/","title":{"rendered":"More Invisible Cities (and an invisible author)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"calvino.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone.<\/p>\n

“But which is the stone that supports the bridge?” Kublai Khan asks.<\/p>\n

“The bridge is not supported by one stone or another,” Marco answers, “but by the line of the arch that they form.”<\/p>\n

Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds: “Why do you speak of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me.”<\/p>\n

Polo answers: “Without stones there is no arch.”<\/p>\n

Italo Calvino<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The new album by A Winged Victory For The Sullen (Adam Wiltzie & Dustin O’Halloran) is a beautiful thing. This was originally a score commissioned for a theatrical staging of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities<\/em>, an adaptation produced by Leo Warner and given its first performance at the Manchester International Festival in 2019. I considered going to the premiere but was disgruntled by the way all the promotional materials for the event\u2014posters, flyers, website\u2014managed to avoid mentioning Calvino even though the work was obviously based on his novel. The author is similarly invisible among the album credits despite being acknowledged on the group’s Bandcamp page<\/a>. I’m always surprised when people do this, especially professionals like the ones who staged the Manchester event, people you know would cause a fuss if they were denied credit for their own work in this manner. “Without stones there is no arch.”<\/p>\n

Anyway, the music is very good, if a little solemn for something derived from a writer whose prose tended to the opposite. The late J\u00f3hann J\u00f3hannsson feels like the ghost at this particular feast. One of J\u00f3hannsson’s final works, Last and First Men<\/em><\/a>, had its premiere at the Manchester International Festival two years before Invisible Cities<\/em>, and the latter’s choral harmonies, muted piano chords and grainy electronic textures situate the compositions very much in the J\u00f3hannsson zone. As with J\u00f3hannsson’s soundtrack albums, I wish some of the pieces were longer. Among the musicians are Robert Hampson\u2014who I’d guess was generating some of those grainy textures\u2014and Hildur Gu\u00f0nad\u00f3ttir whose cello-playing was a feature of many J\u00f3hannsson recordings. Does the music work as a soundtrack for Calvino’s travelogue? A good reason to read the book again.<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Invisible Cities: Miscellanea<\/a>
\n\u2022 Seeing Calvino: Invisible Cities<\/a>
\n\u2022 G\u00e9rard Trignac\u2019s Invisible Cities<\/a>
\n\u2022 Colleen Corradi Brannigan\u2019s Invisible Cities<\/a>
\n\u2022 Le Citt\u00e0 In\/visibili<\/a>
\n\u2022 Mikhail Viesel\u2019s Invisible Cities<\/a>
\n\u2022 Bookmark: Italo Calvino<\/a>
\n\u2022 Crossed destinies revisted<\/a>
\n\u2022 Crossed destinies: when the Quays met Calvino<\/a>
\n\u2022 Tressants: the Calvino Hotel<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone. “But which is the stone that supports the bridge?” Kublai Khan asks. “The bridge is not supported by one stone or another,” Marco answers, “but by the line of the arch that they form.” Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds: “Why do you speak of … Continue reading “More Invisible Cities (and an invisible author)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: More Invisible Cities (and an invisible author)","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,3,46],"tags":[11239,11281,11282,10081,407,7864,11280,2927],"class_list":["post-20445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-music","category-theatre","tag-a-winged-victory-for-the-sullen","tag-adam-wiltzie","tag-dustin-ohalloran","tag-hildur-gudnadottir","tag-italo-calvino","tag-johann-johannsson","tag-leo-warner","tag-robert-hampson"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-5jL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}