A card trick from the time of Shakespeare

The BBC News website has a story about a mathematician who, aided by his son, has worked out the mathematical basis of a card trick recorded in the 1590s. The trick is recorded in the diary of Philip Henslowe, who built and ran The Rose theatre adjacent to The Globe on Southwark’s Bankside.

 The article, together with the link to the problem-solver’s own description of the mathematics involved, can be seen at Weymouth mathematician solves Elizabethan card trick

Mathematics, beyond those things one needs to survive in daily life, was never my enthusiasm. I have friends who are enthralled by such things, but understanding such matters tends to leave me cold. However I do find it interesting that such mathematical processor were used to provide popular entertainment by at very least the later sixteenth century. The fact that mathematical calculation underlies, indeed is essential to, the creation of medieval castles and cathedrals, and significant parts of medieval science, philosophy and mystical theology, as well as the reception of the heritage of the Greco-Roman world is, of course, remarkable and fascinating. Like Philip Henslowe’s card trick it may well be something we take for granted, and not appreciating how skilled our ancestors were. Henslowe must have used mathematics to create and run his theatre. Whether he was interested in the card trick because of its mathematical basis or just as a party piece we do not know, but his record of it makes him and his world that little bit more immediate to us.

Cimabue’s Maestà cleaned and restored

This would have been a very suitable post for the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God on New Year’s Day as it is about one of the very greatest early Italian paintings of the Virgin and Child.

The Art Newspaper has a fascinating article about the cleaning and restoration of La Maestà, painted by Cimabue about 1280 for a friary church in Pisa which was plundered by the French in the Napoleonic period and is now in the Louvre. Newly restored it will be the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Louvre in coming months that investigates and re-evaluates Cimabue’s place in the development of Italian art.

The cleaning is a revelation as the before and after photographs show. Instead of the sombre tones which dominated the painting now it glows with warm colour, a rich blue and an exuberant rose, and radiates, for all its statuesque pose a calm joyfulness that had for years, maybe centuries, been hidden by varnish.

The illustrated article can be viewed at Was Cimabue the true father of the Italian Renaissance? New restoration reveals pivotal innovations

Carmina Burana

Happy New Year and may I wish all good things in 2025 to my readers.

Given the current state of the world and the uncertainties of one sort or another in so many countries and institutions we need our wits about us as we negotiate the path ahead.

It was certainly not consciously, and I doubt if it was unconsciously with that in mind either, but over Christmas I sought out on the Internet the 1975 production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. This was made to mark the composer’s eightieth birthday. Ponnelle worked closely with Orff to realise his vision of a combination of music, dance, and movement. This is a much more effective way of presenting the piece than a concert version, however well or beautifully sung.

It was my introduction to Carmina Burana and I vividly remember seeing it on television when it was new and it remained in my memory. 

It can be seen at Orff’s Carmina Burana: the 1975 Jean-Pierre Ponelle TV production (with English subtitles)

The varieties of Fortuna, with her ever turning wheel, lies at the heart of Carmina Burana, and it is a fact of life, both public and private, that we forget at our peril.

Having replayed this several times and thoroughly enjoyed it with its verve and style

I then found that there is a second costumed film version with singers and dancers which was made in 1996. It can be seen at Carl Orff: Carmina Burana (Daniel Nazareth) 1996

This is very similar in many ways to the Ponnelle version, but is a film using locations for some scenes rather than being entirely studio based gives it a different feel. There is however very clear artistic homage in it to the earlier version.

The opening sequence and its reprise at the conclusion is perhaps less satisfactory than the rest of the film although one can see what the intention was of those who made it. Don’t let them put you off the rest of this visually striking and very entertaining production.

The rustic fertility rite in the second section brought to my mind a passage in that outstanding historian Norman Cohn’s Europe’s Inner Demons where he provides a critique of the highly individualistic ideas of the nineteenth century French historian Jules Michelet about ‘alternative religion’ in the medieval centuries.

Watching both of these versions made me wonder if they could be seen as “Montaillou - The Musical” or “Breughal: The Musical”?

That led me to pose the question to myself, and to my readers: Is your vision of the middle ages “Braveheart” or “Carmina Burana”, “Game of Thrones” or Boccaccio and Chaucer?

Whatever your answer enjoy these two splendidly joyful and splendidly earthy versions of Carmina Burana, its Goliard humour and its immensely tuneful score.