Histoires Du Paysage

In the beginning was the word landscape, and if landscape has ever existed, it was created throught his word - to paraphrase the Gospel of St. John. Or to put it differently, it is not until the 16th century A.D.in several of the Romanic languages, that the wordlandscape comes into use. So it makes sense to assume that before then there existed no concept of landscape in the modern sense of the word, that is as the totality of a region with all its characteristic elemnts, mountains, plains, woods, revers, etc. Evidently, landscape is understood here not in its functional aspect that is to say, neither as a gegraphical region, nor as an area providing pasture or crops nor as a place haveing some specific sacred or other symbolic meaning. But landscape is regarded as rather as part of man's natural surroundings to be perceived visually and hence to form the basis for an aesthetical appreciation and qualification. It was these abstract values of a more modern age, so it seems, that inspired the great Danish composer, Carl Nielsen, when, in the beginning of this century, he transposed into music the sun's daily wandering across the deep-bleu sky of the insular landscape of the Aegean sea.