Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer. His books and stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work being translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside his native country, his work has received numerous awards, including the World Fantasy Award, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Jerusalem Prize. Murakami's most notable works include A Wild Sheep Chase, Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, 1Q84, he has translated into Japanese English works by writers including Raymond Carver and J. D. Salinger, his fiction, sometimes criticized by Japan's literary establishment as un-Japanese, was influenced by Western writers from Chandler to Vonnegut by way of Brautigan. It is surrealistic and melancholic or fatalistic, marked by a Kafkaesque rendition of the "recurrent themes of alienation and loneliness" he weaves into his narratives. Steven Poole of The Guardian praised Murakami as "among the world's greatest living novelists" for his works and achievements.
Murakami was born in Kyoto, during the post–World War II baby boom and raised in Shukugawa and Kobe. He is an only child, his father was the son of a Buddhist priest, his mother is the daughter of an Osaka merchant. Both taught Japanese literature. Since childhood, Murakami to Kōbō Abe, has been influenced by Western culture Western as well as Russian music and literature, he grew up reading a wide range of works by European and American writers, such as Franz Kafka, Gustave Flaubert, Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Richard Brautigan and Jack Kerouac. These Western influences distinguish Murakami from the majority of other Japanese writers. Murakami studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, his first job was at a record store. Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened a coffee house and jazz bar, Peter Cat, in Kokubunji, which he ran with his wife, from 1974 to 1981; the couple decided not to have children. Murakami is a serious marathon runner and triathlon enthusiast, though he did not start running until he was 33 years old.
On 23 June 1996, he completed his first ultramarathon, a 100 km race around Lake Saroma in Hokkaido, Japan. He discusses his relationship with running in his 2008 memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Murakami began to write fiction when he was 29. "Before that", he said, "I didn't write anything. I was just one of those ordinary people. I was running a jazz club, I didn't create anything at all." He was inspired to write Hear the Wind Sing, while watching a baseball game. In 1978, Murakami was in Jingu Stadium watching a game between the Yakult Swallows and the Hiroshima Carp when Dave Hilton, an American, came to bat. According to an oft-repeated story, in the instant that Hilton hit a double, Murakami realized that he could write a novel, he described the feeling as a "warm sensation". He began writing that night. Murakami worked on Hear the Wind Sing for ten months in brief stretches, during nights, after working days at the bar, he completed the novel and sent it to the only literary contest that would accept a work of that length, winning first prize.
Murakami's initial success with Hear the Wind Sing encouraged him to continue writing. A year he published a sequel, Pinball, 1973. In 1982, he published a critical success. Hear the Wind Sing, Pinball, 1973, A Wild Sheep Chase form the Trilogy of the Rat, centered on the same unnamed narrator and his friend, "the Rat"; the first two novels were not available in English translation outside Japan until 2015, although an English edition, translated by Alfred Birnbaum with extensive notes, had been published by Kodansha as part of a series intended for Japanese students of English. Murakami considers his first two novels to be "immature" and "flimsy", has not been eager to have them translated into English. A Wild Sheep Chase, he says, was "the first book where I could feel a kind of sensation, the joy of telling a story; when you read a good story, you just keep reading. When I write a good story, I just keep writing." In 1985, Murakami wrote Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, a dream-like fantasy that took the magical elements of his work to a new extreme.
Murakami achieved a major breakthrough and national recognition in 1987 with the publication of Norwegian Wood, a nostalgic story of loss and sexuality. It sold millions of copies among young Japanese. Norwegian Wood propelled the known Murakami into the spotlight, he was mobbed at airports and other public places, leading to his departure from Japan in 1986. Murakami traveled through Europe, lived in the United States and now resides in Oiso, with an office in Tokyo. Murakami was a writing fellow at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, Tufts University in Medford and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During this time he wrote West of the Sun and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle fuses the realistic and fantastic and contains elements of physical violence. It is more conscious than his previous work, dealing in part with the difficult topic of war crimes in Manchukuo; the novel won the Yomiuri Prize, awarded by one of Murakami's harshest former critics, Kenzaburō Ōe, who himself won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994.
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Tempo
In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece and is measured in beats per minute. In modern classical compositions, a "metronome mark" in beats per minute may supplement or replace the normal tempo marking, while in modern genres like electronic dance music, tempo will simply be stated in bpm. Tempo may be separated from articulation and meter, or these aspects may be indicated along with tempo, all contributing to the overall texture. While the ability to hold a steady tempo is a vital skill for a musical performer, tempo is changeable. Depending on the genre of a piece of music and the performers' interpretation, a piece may be played with slight tempo rubato or drastic accelerando. In ensembles, the tempo is indicated by a conductor or by one of the instrumentalists, for instance the drummer. While tempo is described or indicated in many different ways, including with a range of words, it is measured in beats per minute.
For example, a tempo of 60 beats per minute signifies one beat per second, while a tempo of 120 beats per minute is twice as rapid, signifying one beat every 0.5 seconds. The note value of a beat will be that indicated by the denominator of the time signature. For instance, in 44 the beat will be a crotchet; this measurement and indication of tempo became popular during the first half of the 19th century, after Johann Nepomuk Maelzel invented the metronome. Beethoven was one of the first composers to use the metronome. Instead of beats per minute, some 20th-century classical composers specify the total playing time for a piece, from which the performer can derive tempo. With the advent of modern electronics, bpm became an precise measure. Music sequencers use the bpm system to denote tempo. In popular music genres such as electronic dance music, accurate knowledge of a tune's bpm is important to DJs for the purposes of beatmatching; the speed of a piece of music can be gauged according to measures per minute or bars per minute, the number of measures of the piece performed in one minute.
This measure is used in ballroom dance music. In different musical contexts, different instrumental musicians, conductors, music directors or other individuals will select the tempo of a song or piece. In a popular music or traditional music group or band, the bandleader or lead singer may select the tempo. In popular and traditional music, whoever is setting the tempo counts out one or two bars in tempo. In some songs or pieces in which a singer or solo instrumentalist begins the work with a solo introduction, the tempo they set will provide the tempo for the group. In an orchestra or concert band, the conductor sets the tempo. In a marching band, the drum major may set the tempo. In a sound recording, in some cases a record producer may set the tempo for a song. In classical music it is customary to describe the tempo of a piece by one or more words, most in Italian, in addition to or instead of a metronome mark in beats per minute. Italian is used because it was the language of most composers during the time these descriptions became commonplace.
Some well-known Italian tempo indications include "Allegro", "Andante" and "Presto". This practice developed during the baroque and classical periods. In the earlier Renaissance music, performers understood most music to flow at a tempo defined by the tactus; the mensural time signature indicated. In the Baroque period, pieces would be given an indication, which might be a tempo marking, or the name of a dance, the latter being an indication both of tempo and of metre. Any musician of the time was expected to know how to interpret these markings based on custom and experience. In some cases, these markings were omitted. For example, the first movement of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 has no tempo or mood indication whatsoever. Despite the increasing number of explicit tempo markings, musicians still observe conventions, expecting a minuet to be at a stately tempo, slower than a Viennese waltz. Genres imply tempos. Thus, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote "In tempo d'un Menuetto" over the first movement of his Piano Sonata Op. 54, though that movement is not a minuet.
Many tempo markings indicate mood and expression. For example and allegro both indicate a speedy execution, but allegro connotes joy. Presto, on the other hand indicates speed. Additional Italian words indicate tempo and mood. For example, the "agitato" in the Allegro agitato of the last movement of George Gershwin's piano concerto in F has both a tempo indication and a mood indication. Composers name movements of compositions after their tempo marking. For instance, the second movement of Samuel Barber's first String Quartet is an Adagio. A particular musical form or genre implies its own tempo, so composers need place no further explanation in the score. Popular music charts use terms such as bossa nova, ballad
Ignaz Moscheles
Isaac Ignaz Moscheles was a Bohemian composer and piano virtuoso, whose career after his early years was based in London, at Leipzig, where he joined his friend and sometime pupil Felix Mendelssohn as Professor of Piano at the Conservatoire. Moscheles was born in Prague to an affluent German-speaking Jewish merchant family, his first name was Isaac. His father was keen for one of his children to become a musician, his hopes fixed on Ignaz's sister, but when she demurred, her piano lessons were transferred to her brother. Ignaz developed an early passion for the piano music of Beethoven, which the Mozartean Bedřich Diviš Weber, his teacher at the Prague Conservatory, attempted to curb, urging him to focus on Bach and Muzio Clementi. After his father’s early death, Moscheles settled in 1808 in Vienna, his abilities were such that he was able to study in the city under Albrechtsberger for counterpoint and theory and Salieri for composition. At this time he changed his first name from'Isaac' to'Ignaz'.
He was one of the leading virtuosi resident in Vienna during the 1814-1815 Congress of Vienna and it was at this time that he wrote his enormously popular virtuosic Alexander Variations, Op. 32, for piano and orchestra, which he played throughout Europe. Here too he became a close friend of Meyerbeer and their extemporized piano-duets were acclaimed. Moscheles was familiar with Hummel and Kalkbrenner. Among the virtuosi of the 1820s, Kalkbrenner, Cramer and Weber were his most famous rivals. While in Vienna Moscheles was able to meet his idol Beethoven, so impressed with the young man's abilities that he entrusted him with the preparation of the piano score of his opera Fidelio, commissioned by his publisher Artaria. At the end of his manuscript, before presenting it to Beethoven, Moscheles wrote the words Fine mit gottes Hülfe. Beethoven appended the words O Mensch, hilf dir selber. Moscheles's good relations with Beethoven were to prove important to both at the end of Beethoven's life. Moscheles was still a practising Jew in Vienna in 1814-15.
His wife notes that he was a member of the congregation in Vienna, that he wrote for the Vienna Jewish community an oratorio celebrating the peace. Throughout his life, like many other musicians of Jewish origin, he remained close to other musicians of similar descent such as Felix Mendelssohn, Anton Rubinstein, Joseph Joachim and Ferdinand Hiller, he remained in contact with patrons of Jewish origin such as the Eskeles family in Vienna, the Leo family in Paris, the Rothschilds in England. He married Charlotte Embden, daughter of a Hamburg Jewish banker and a cousin of Heinrich Heine, in a Hamburg synagogue in 1825. Nonetheless, after he settled in England, Moscheles became a member of the Church of England, his children, two sons and three daughters, were all baptised at birth and he and his wife were baptised in 1832. They were parents to the painters Felix, their second son, Serena Anna Moscheles, their second daughter and wife of Georg Rosen. Rosen was Orientalist like his brother of Friedrich August Rosen, another friend of Mendelssohn, like Moscheles.
His granddaughter Jelka Rosen a painter, married the composer Frederick Delius. Moscheles travelled extensively in Europe as a pianist and conductor settling in London from 1825-1846 where he became co-director of the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1832, he never disavowed his Jewish origins and took his family to visit his relatives in Prague, all of whom had retained their Jewish allegiances. After his Viennese period there followed for Moscheles a sensational series of European concert tours—it was after hearing Moscheles play at Carlsbad that the boy Robert Schumann was fired to become a piano virtuoso himself, but Moscheles found an warm welcome in London, where in 1822 he was awarded an honorary membership of the London Academy of Music. At the end of the year he wrote in his diary'I feel more and more at home in England', he had no hesitation in settling there after his marriage. Moscheles visited most of the great capitals of Europe, making his first appearance in London in 1822, there securing the friendship of Muzio Clementi and Johann Baptist Cramer.
Moscheles was a student of Muzio Clementi. In March 1823 Moscheles paid a long visit to Bath in Somerset and started work on his Piano Concerto No. 4. On an excursion to Bristol, Coleridge says that, "Moscheles delights in the view of the Bristol Channel and adds, "What can be finer than the first view of the Welsh mountains from Clifton? an enchanting panorama? The place to write an adagio; the piano concerto had its first performance, in London, shortly afterwards, on 16 June. Before that however in 1824 he had accepted an invitation to visit Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Berlin to give some lessons to his children Felix and Fanny, his comments on meeting them were: "This is a family. Felix, a boy of fifteen is a phenomenon. What are all prodigies compared with him?... He is a mature artist, his elder sister Fanny is extraordinarily gifted." Shortly afterwards he wrote: "This afternoon... I gave Felix Mendelssohn his first lesson, without losing sight for a moment of the fact that I was sitting next to a master, not a pupil."Thus began a relationship of extraordinary intensity which lasted throughout and beyond Mende
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in classical music, he remains one of the most recognised and influential of all composers, his best-known compositions include 9 symphonies. His career as a composer is conventionally divided into early and late periods. Beethoven was born in Bonn the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire, he displayed his musical talents at an early age and was taught by his father Johann van Beethoven and composer and conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe. At the age of 21 he moved to Vienna, where he began studying composition with Joseph Haydn and gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist, he lived in Vienna until his death. By his late 20s his hearing began to deteriorate and by the last decade of his life he was completely deaf. In 1811 he continued to compose. Beethoven was the grandson of Ludwig van Beethoven, a musician from the town of Mechelen in the Austrian Duchy of Brabant who had moved to Bonn at the age of 21.
Ludwig was employed as a bass singer at the court of the Elector of Cologne rising to become, in 1761, Kapellmeister and thereafter the pre-eminent musician in Bonn. The portrait he commissioned of himself towards the end of his life remained displayed in his grandson's rooms as a talisman of his musical heritage. Ludwig had one son, who worked as a tenor in the same musical establishment and gave keyboard and violin lessons to supplement his income. Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767. Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn. There is no authentic record of the date of his birth; as children of that era were traditionally baptised the day after birth in the Catholic Rhine country, it is known that Beethoven's family and his teacher Johann Albrechtsberger celebrated his birthday on 16 December, most scholars accept 16 December 1770 as his date of birth. Of the seven children born to Johann van Beethoven, only Ludwig, the second-born, two younger brothers survived infancy. Kaspar Anton Karl was born on 8 April 1774, Nikolaus Johann, the youngest, was born on 2 October 1776.
Beethoven's first music teacher was his father. He had other local teachers: the court organist Gilles van den Eeden, Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer, Franz Rovantini. From the outset his tuition regime, which began in his fifth year, was harsh and intensive reducing him to tears, his musical talent was obvious at a young age. Johann, aware of Leopold Mozart's successes in this area, attempted to promote his son as a child prodigy, claiming that Beethoven was six on the posters for his first public performance in March 1778; some time after 1779, Beethoven began his studies with his most important teacher in Bonn, Christian Gottlob Neefe, appointed the Court's Organist in that year. Neefe taught him composition, by March 1783 had helped him write his first published composition: a set of keyboard variations. Beethoven soon began working with Neefe as assistant organist, at first unpaid, as a paid employee of the court chapel conducted by the Kapellmeister Andrea Luchesi, his first three piano sonatas, named "Kurfürst" for their dedication to the Elector Maximilian Friedrich, were published in 1783.
Maximilian Frederick noticed his talent early, subsidised and encouraged the young man's musical studies. Maximilian Frederick's successor as the Elector of Bonn was Maximilian Francis, the youngest son of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, he brought notable changes to Bonn. Echoing changes made in Vienna by his brother Joseph, he introduced reforms based on Enlightenment philosophy, with increased support for education and the arts; the teenage Beethoven was certainly influenced by these changes. He may have been influenced at this time by ideas prominent in freemasonry, as Neefe and others around Beethoven were members of the local chapter of the Order of the Illuminati. In December 1786, Beethoven travelled to Vienna, at his employer's expense, for the first time in the hope of studying with Mozart; the details of their relationship are uncertain, including whether they met. Having learned that his mother was ill, Beethoven returned to Bonn in May 1787, his mother died shortly thereafter, his father lapsed deeper into alcoholism.
As a result, he became responsible for the care of his two younger brothers, spent the next five years in Bonn. He was introduced in these years to several people. Franz Wegeler, a young medical student, intro
Joseph Willibrord Mähler
Joseph Willibrord Mähler was a German painter. His parents were née Vacano, he first served an apprenticeship in Dresden with Anton Graff to become a painter and on, he continued with his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Mähler decided to start a civil career and he became an officer of the secret service Geheime Kabinettskanzlei in Vienna. Now, painting was just a hobby to him. Mähler was introduced to Ludwig van Beethoven by Beethoven's school day friend Stephan von Breuning around 1803. One year already, he painted his first portrait of Beethoven, which shows three quarters of the composer's body in an Arcadian landscape, holding a lyre-guitar in his hand. In the 19th century, this illustration – one of just a few depictions of Beethoven when he was young – became famous due to a lithograph by Josef Kriehuber. Around 1815, Mähler produced a series of portraits showing contemporary Viennese composers; as written in the Allgemeine Musikzeitung in August 1815, "all of them distinguish themselves in a most creditable way through the effectual brush stroke, the descriptive resemblance and the distinctive expression of their soul".
A half length portrait of Beethoven was part of the series. The painter created several versions of this portrait. Beethoven Media related to Joseph Willibrord Mähler at Wikimedia Commons
Piano trio
A piano trio is a group of piano and two other instruments a violin and a cello, or a piece of music written for such a group. It is one of the most common forms found in classical chamber music; the term can refer to a group of musicians who play this repertoire together. Works titled; this was in the three movement form, though some of Haydn's have two movements. Mozart, in five late works, is credited with transforming the accompanied keyboard sonata, in which the optional cello doubles the bass of the keyboard left hand, into the balanced trio which has since been a central form of chamber music. With the early 19th century Beethoven, this genre was felt to be more appropriate to cast in the four movement form. Piano trios that are set in the Sonata tradition share the general concerns of such works for their era, are reflective directly of symphonic practice with individual movements laid out according to the composer's understanding of the sonata form. In the Classical period, home music-making made the piano trio a popular genre for arrangements of other works.
For example, Beethoven transcribed his first two symphonies for piano trio. Thus a large number of works exist for the arrangement of piano and violoncello which are not titled or numbered as piano trios, but which are nonetheless part of the overall genre; these include single movements as well as sets of variations such as Beethoven's Variations on'Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu' Op. 121a and Variations in E flat major Op. 44. After the classical era, works for piano and two instruments continue to be written which are not presented as in the sonata tradition, or are arrangements of other works. Many of these individual works are popular on concert programs, for example Suk's Elegie. For individual articles treating works for piano trio, see Category:Compositions for piano trio; the piano trios of the Classical era, notably those of Haydn, are dominated by the piano part. The violin plays the melody only a certain amount of the time, when it does, is doubled by the piano; the cello part is much subordinated just doubling the bass line in the piano.
It is thought that this practice was quite intentional on Haydn's part and was related to the sonority of the instruments of Haydn's day: the piano was weak and "tinkling" in tone, benefited from the tonal strengthening of other instruments. Mozart's five late trios are felt to mark the assured arrival of the form, attentive to balanced voices and three-part dialogue. Beethoven's trios continued the compositional objectives inaugurated by Mozart; the new idea of equality was never implemented completely. By the mid nineteenth century, all three instruments had been modified to have a powerful sound, each can hold its own in a modern ensemble; the earlier trios are now performed and recorded using authentic instruments, of the kind for which they were written. Such performances restore the sonic balance the composer would have expected, have proven popular; some rather rare combinations of instruments have nonetheless inspired a few outstanding works. Haydn wrote three trios for flute and piano, a combination for which Carl Maria von Weber wrote one work.
Beethoven wrote his Trio in G major, WoO 37 for flute and piano. Mikhail Glinka wrote his Trio pathétique in D minor for Clarinet and Piano, although is performed with a Violin or Cello substituting the Clarinet or the Bassoon, respectively. Francis Poulenc's Trio for oboe and piano op. 43. The Horn-violin-piano trio is exemplified by Brahms' Trio Op. 40 in E flat and György Ligeti's 1982 Trio for Violin and Piano. Trios with clarinet include masterpieces such as Mozart's Kegelstatt Trio and works by Beethoven and Bartók. Ignaz Lachner wrote all of his six piano trios for violin and piano; the jazz trio formation of saxophone and percussion has been taken up as an alternative "piano trio" in the field of contemporary classical music by Trio Accanto who since 1994 have commissioned more than 100 works for this combination. Several other trios have been formed to perform this repertoire. Among the best known of such groups are or have been: Altenberg Trio Maria Baptist Trio Istomin-Stern-Rose Trio, consisting of Eugene Istomin, Isaac Stern and Leonard Rose.
One consisting of Alfred Cortot, Jacques Thibaud and Pablo Casals, earlier in the 20th century The Spivakovsky Trio, consisting of Jascha Spivakovsky, Tossy Spivakovsky and Edmnd Kurtz, earlier in the 20th century The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson trio The Beaux Arts Trio, whose commitment to using the same players in every concert pioneered a new generation of committed groups.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a museum in the Fenway–Kenmore neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts near the Back Bay Fens. It consists of two buildings; the original building, – called Fenway Court during Isabella Stewart Gardner's lifetime – is a Venetian-style palazzo on Fenway built in 1902 and designed by Willard T. Sears; the New Wing building, which sits next to the original building on Evans Way, was completed in 2012 after 2 1/2 years of construction. It was designed by Renzo Piano; the museum houses an art collection of world importance, including significant examples of European and American art, from paintings and sculpture to tapestries and decorative arts. In 1990, thirteen of the museum's works were stolen; the museum was opened in 1903 by Isabella Stewart Gardner, an American art collector and patron of the arts. It is housed in a building designed to emulate a 15th-century Venetian palace, drawing particular inspiration from the Venetian Palazzo Barbaro. Gardner began collecting after she received a large inheritance from her father in 1891.
Her purchase of Vermeer's The Concert at auction in Paris in 1892 was her first major acquisition. In 1894, Bernard Berenson offered his services in helping her acquire a Botticelli. With his help, Gardner became the first American to own a painting by the Renaissance master. Berenson helped acquire nearly 70 works of art for her collection. After her husband John L. Gardner's death in 1898, Isabella Gardner realized their shared dream of building a museum for their treasures, she purchased land in the marshy Fenway area of Boston, hired architect Willard T. Sears to build a museum modeled on the Renaissance palaces of Venice. Gardner was involved in every aspect of the design, leading Sears to quip that he was the structural engineer making Gardner's design possible. After the construction of the building was complete, Gardner spent a year installing her collection in a way that evokes intimate responses to the art, mixing paintings, furniture and objects from different cultures and periods among well-known European paintings and sculpture.
The gallery installations were different than they appear today. The museum opened on January 1, 1903 with a grand celebration featuring a performance by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a menu that included champagne and doughnuts. In 1909 the Museum of Fine Arts moved to its new home close by. During Gardner's lifetime, she welcomed artists and scholars to Fenway Court to draw inspiration from the rich collection and dazzling Venetian setting, including John Singer Sargent, Charles Martin Loeffler, Ruth St. Denis, among others. Gardner occasionally hosted artists' exhibitions within Fenway Court, including one of Anna Coleman Ladd. Today, the museum's contemporary artist-in-residence program, courtyard garden displays and innovative education programs continue Isabella Gardner's legacy; when Gardner died in 1924, her will created an endowment of $1 million and outlined stipulations for the support of the museum, including the charge that her collection be permanently exhibited "for the education and enjoyment of the public forever" according to her aesthetic vision and intent.
Gardner appointed her secretary and the former librarian of the Museum of Fine Arts, Morris Carter as the museum's first director. Carter catalogued the entire collection and wrote Gardner's definitive biography, Isabella Stewart Gardner and Fenway Court. George L. Stout was the second director; the father of modern conservation, Stout ensured the long-term preservation of the collection and historic structure. Rollin Van Nostrand Hadley became the third director in 1964. Leaving with a mixed legacy in 1988, Hadley published several catalogues and articles about the collection during his tenure but disposed of much of the museum's Asian artwork in 1971. Anne Hawley was director from 1989 until 2015; the museum's current director is Peggy Fogelman. In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, a pair of thieves disguised as Boston police officers robbed the museum of thirteen works of art worth an estimated $500 million – the greatest known property theft in history. Among the works was The Concert, one of only 34 known by Vermeer and thought to be the most valuable unrecovered painting at over $200 million.
Missing is The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt's only known seascape. Despite efforts by the FBI, the works have not been recovered; the museum offered a reward of $5 million for information leading to recovery of the art, doubled in May 2017 to $10 million. Empty frames hang in the Dutch Room gallery as placeholders for the missing works; the selection of stolen works puzzled experts. According to the FBI, the stolen artwork was moved through the region and offered for sale in Philadelphia during the early 2000s, they believe the thieves were members of a criminal organization based in the mid-Atlantic and New England. Built to evoke a 15th-century Venetian palace, the museum itself provides an atmospheric setting for Gardner's inventive creation. Gardner hired Willard T. Sears to design the building near the marshy Back Bay Fens to house her growing art collection. Inside the museum, three floors of galleries surround a garden courtyard blooming with life in all seasons, it is a common misconception that the building reconstructed.
It was built from the ground up in Boston out of new materials, incorporating numerous architectural frag
