Monday, August 6, 2012

RECAPTURING THE MUSICAL WRIGHTS


In November 2011 David Patterson, a musicologist from Oak Park, Illinois, gave a wonderful keyboard accompanied presentation on the influence of classical music on Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture in the Greatbatch Pavilion of the Darwin D. Martin House.  Wright makes it clear in his autobiography that an appreciation of music was the one great gift he received from his father, but it is a fleeting acknowledgment and the weight of significance in Wright’s formation, according to Wright, falls largely to his mother.
Nevertheless, Wright’s architecture is redolent with musicality and this is nowhere more evident than at Taliesin and Taliesin West where music was an essential part of daily life in the fellowship years (and it continues today in the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture) and in Wisconsin Wright was known to broadcast Beethoven across the valley for the edification of local farmers. It appears that William Cary Wright’s impact on his son, once a mere footnote in history, is about to blossom into tangibility and significance: Through years of research David Patterson has located more than twenty pieces of music composed by Wright’s father and is seeking funding through the Kickstarter program to create the first ever recording of the music of William C. Wright.  If he succeeds we can all hear what Wrightheard his father creating during his childhood and historians and critics of music will be able to determine the quality of the work. If you are interested in helping David succeed

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