Friday, December 2, 2011

Arabesque

An arabesque is a pattern on tapestry for instance that is intricate and interwoven.  Here is one perhaps seminal expression of the pattern and reading about it some this morning I found out that it s a. an Islamic form or from that heritage and there is a "western" form of it that probably is more Moorish and turned up in the Mediterranean costal European societes; Spain, south France, Italy which is even more intricate.
 
While we are thinking of the holidays, and dance - swirls and twirls..well we couldn't resist coming to this.
Debussy, the French composer, wrote a couple pieces called Arabesques in about 1888. We know this because some among us was something of a Debussy studier- a  dissertation area - and his early works, this one below for instance, appealed to us and still does to this day.  Debussy was from  a region in France that had this Moorish influence and he was also taken by Spain and all things Spanish - including of course these so it is no wonderment that he would evoke and invoke a tapestry.

Enjoy.

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