The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is a 30 acre (12 hectare) sculpture garden created by landscape architect and theorist Charles Jencks and his wife, Maggie Keswick Jencks, on Maggie's land and their home together, Portrack House, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. Like much of Jencks' work, the garden is inspired by modern cosmology.
The garden is inspired by science and mathematics, with sculptures and landscaping on these themes, such as black holes and fractals.[ citation needed ] The garden is not abundant with plants, but sets mathematical formulae and scientific phenomena in a setting which elegantly combines natural features and artificial symmetry and curves. It is probably unique among gardens, drawing comparisons with a similarly abstract garden in Scotland, Little Sparta.
The garden is private but usually opens for only six hours on two days [1] each year for 1500 ticket holders through the Scotland's Gardens programme and raises money for Maggie's Centres, a cancer care charity named for Maggie Keswick Jencks, the late wife of Charles Jencks. [2]
The garden is the subject of an orchestral composition by American composer, Michael Gandolfi, which he composed for a joint commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center. The piece was subsequently recorded by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra conducted by Robert Spano, and nominated for "Best Contemporary Classical Composition" at the 2009 Grammy Awards.
Louise Penny uses The Garden of Cosmic Speculation as an important plot device in her tenth Inspector Gamache mystery, The Long Way Home (St. Martin Press, 2014). [3]
Cameron Jace makes creative use of The Garden of Cosmic Speculation in his fictional novel titled Circus, which is the third installment of his Insanity series. In the book, Jace uses many facts when referring to 'public' knowledge of the garden (per character conversation), but changed the name of the designer to better fit into the story's plot line.
Einojuhani Rautavaara was a Finnish composer of classical music. Among the most notable Finnish composers since Jean Sibelius (1865–1957), Rautavaara wrote a great number of works spanning various styles. These include eight symphonies, nine operas and twelve concertos, as well as numerous vocal and chamber works. Having written early works using 12-tone serial techniques, his later music may be described as neo-romantic and mystical. His major works include his first piano concerto (1969), Cantus Arcticus (1972) and his seventh symphony, Angel of Light (1994).
The Scottish Parliament Building is the home of the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, within the UNESCO World Heritage Site in central Edinburgh. Construction of the building commenced in June 1999 and the Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) held their first debate in the new building on 7 September 2004. The formal opening by Queen Elizabeth II took place on 9 October 2004. Enric Miralles, the Catalan architect who designed the building, died before its completion.
National Galleries Scotland: Modern is part of National Galleries Scotland, which is based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Modern houses the collection of modern and contemporary art dating from about 1900 to the present in two buildings, Modern One and Modern Two, that face each other on Belford Road to the west of the city centre.
Charles Alexander Jencks was an American cultural theorist, landscape designer, architectural historian, and co-founder of the Maggie's Cancer Care Centres. He published over thirty books and became famous in the 1980s as a theorist of postmodernism. Jencks devoted time to landform architecture, especially in Scotland. These landscapes include the Garden of Cosmic Speculation and earthworks at Jupiter Artland outside Edinburgh. His continuing project Crawick Multiverse, commissioned by the Duke of Buccleuch, opened in 2015 near Sanquhar.
Maggie's centres are a network of drop-in centres across the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, which aim to help anyone who has been affected by cancer. They are not intended as a replacement for conventional cancer therapy, but as a caring environment that can provide support, information and practical advice. They are located near, but are detached from, existing NHS hospitals.
The National Wallace Monument is a 67 m (220 ft) tower on the shoulder of the Abbey Craig, a hilltop overlooking Stirling in Scotland. It commemorates Sir William Wallace, a 13th- and 14th-century Scottish hero.
The Keswick family are a business dynasty of Scottish origin associated with the Far East region since 1855 and in particular the conglomerate Jardine Matheson.
George Walter Selwyn Lloyd was a British composer.
Michael James Gandolfi is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He chairs the composition department at the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC).
Behzad Ranjbaran is a Persian composer, known for his virtuosic concertos and colorful orchestral music. Ranjbaran's music draws from his cultural roots, incorporating Persian musical modes and rhythms.
The Symphony No. 2, Op. 40 by Malcolm Arnold is a symphony dating from 1953. Arnold composed the symphony on commission from the Bournemouth Winter Garden's Society. He dedicated the score to the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and conductor Charles Groves, who premiered the work on 25 May 1953.
Jencks could refer to:
Lyell Richard Cresswell was a New Zealand composer of contemporary classical music. He was the younger brother of philosopher Max Cresswell. Cresswell studied in Wellington, Toronto, Aberdeen and Utrecht and lived and worked in Edinburgh from 1985 on. Although he lived more than half his life away from New Zealand, he regarded himself as a New Zealander.
The Star of Caledonia, also called the Gretna Landmark, is a planned sculpture designed by Cecil Balmond, Charles Jencks and Andy Goldsworthy. It is to be located near Gretna, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, close to the England-Scotland border. The sculpture was approved on 27 February 2013. The project is being promoted by the Gretna Landmark Trust.
Crawick Multiverse is a land art project by the landscape architect and designer Charles Jencks near Sanquhar, Dumfries and Galloway. It opened to the public on 21 June 2015. The project is located on the site of a former open cast coal mine and covers approximately 55 acres, making it the largest of Jencks's works in Britain. Nine 'landforms' make up the Crawick Multiverse. Like Jencks's other work, including the nearby Garden of Cosmic Speculation, these represent ideas from modern cosmology. Unlike the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, the Crawick Multiverse landforms use stone, in the style of the megalithic monuments. These include the 'North-South Line', a 400 meter long stone avenue flanked by over 300 boulders, and two stone circles on top of mounds representing the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. In total, over 2000 boulders have been used in the project. Jencks has described it as "A cosmic landscape worthy of the ancients."
Gardening in Scotland, the design of planned spaces set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature in Scotland began in the Middle Ages.
Six Gentlemen is a landscape painting by the Yuan dynasty Chinese artist Ni Zan (1301–1374). The work portrays six trees along a riverbank, a metaphor for the principled seclusion of virtuous gentlemen in an era of violent upheaval and foreign occupation. As the first of Ni Zan’s paintings to demonstrate the stark, minimalist style for which he is known, Six Gentlemen marked a turning point in his artistic career. He would frequently return to its subject matter in later years, producing many subsequent works of nearly identical composition and style.
Stephen Goss is a Welsh composer, guitarist and academic. His compositional output includes orchestral and choral works, chamber music, and solo pieces. His music draws freely on a number of styles and genres. He is particularly known for his guitar music, which is widely performed and recorded.
Margaret Keswick Jencks was a Scottish writer, artist and garden designer who co-founded Maggie's Centres with her husband Charles Jencks.
The works of Herbert Maryon (1874–1965) were made in a variety of mediums. They were intended to be decorative, functional, or commemorative, and were primarily made during the first four decades of the twentieth century, a span that marked the first half of Maryon's career. In addition to being a sculptor and a goldsmith, Maryon was also an archaeologist, conservator, author, and authority on ancient metalwork—he saw his career as an artist carry him through the Second World War; a second career as a conservator at the British Museum brought him note for his work on the finds from the Sutton Hoo ship-burial.
55°07′47″N3°39′57″W / 55.12978°N 3.66583°W
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