# Music and paintings



## GMMM (Jul 5, 2011)

HI
Does anybody know of any music written for specific paintings (except for Mussorgsky) or illustrations? Or any musical game that compare music and paintings?


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## Lipatti (Oct 9, 2010)

Liszt's _Anées de pèlerinage _ has at least one - _Sposalizio_ from _Deuxième Année_, which is inspired by Raphael's painting _Marriage of the Virgin_. It also happens to be one of my favourites from the entire cycle.

Here it is, as played by Sviatoslav Richter.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Rachmaninov - Isle of the dead (i think it's inspired by the celebrated Bocklin's painting)

Gunther Schuller - Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee, but i think that a lot of composers have a fascination with Klee.
I don't know if it counts, but Billy Strayhorn composed his famous piece Chelsea Bridge with a painting of James McNeill Whistler in mind. And in the jazz field Ornette Coleman put a Jackson Pollock painting on the cover of his album Free jazz.

Oh, i was forgetting of Per Norgard, he composed a lot of his music inspired by the paintings of Adolf Wölfli


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## Il_Penseroso (Nov 20, 2010)

Debussy : L'isle joyeuse (Inspired by a famous Watteau's Painting)

Granados : Goyescas (Inspired by the paintings of Goya)


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Reger: Boecklin suite.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Max von Schillings: Mona Lisa
Martinu: Frescoes of Piero della Francesca
Hindemith: Mathis der Maler
Maxwell-Davies: Klee Pictures
Sandor Veress: Hommage a Paul Klee
Lubos Fiser: 15 Pictures after Dürers Apocalypse (good, very effectful)
Mengelberg: Rembrandt Engravings
Kara Karayev: La Quinta del Sordo, symphony (Goya´s Black Paintings)
Cornelis Dopper: Rembrandt Symphony
Respighi: Trittico Botticelliano
John McCabe: Chagall Windows
Hovhaness: Phantasy on Japanese Woodprints


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

_Guernica_, by Leonardo Balada, is based on Picasso's painting about the Spanish Civil War:


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Mark-Anthony Turnage wrote an orchestral work called Three Screaming Popes (after Francis Bacon, whose paintings were based on Velasquez' portrait of Innocent X).


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Anton Webern's String Quartet from 1905 (not Opus 28) is based on Giovanini Segantini's Becoming-Being-Passing away.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Some interesting parallels here, but the first two of my ones below include some other forms of visual art, not only paintings -

*Brett Dean* (contemporary Australian composer) - His first orchestral work _Beggars and Angels _ (1999) "takes its title from a 1994 exhibition in Potsdam exploring the contrasts between a series of sculptures of beggars and paintings of angels." This exhibition included the sculptures of the composer's wife. Also significant is the fact that Dean worked as a violist in the Berlin Philharmonic for many years before returning to Australia to devote himself full-time to compositon. (Source: an interview with the composer on this website - http://www.sequenza21.com/Dean.html )

*William Walton* - _Scapino, a comedy overture _(1940) was inspired by Jacques Callot's etching of the same title (an image of it can be found on the Wikipedia entry on the composer - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Walton )

*Igor Stravinsky* - One of his few works for string quartet, the _Double Canon (Raoul Dufy in Memoriam)_ (1959) was composed to mark the death of the c20th French painter, who started out as a member of the "Fauvist" group (here it is on youtube - 



 )...


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## Sofronitsky (Jun 12, 2011)

rachmaninoff - prelude op. 32 no. 10

inspired by 'The Return' also by bocklin


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## Il_Penseroso (Nov 20, 2010)

Enjoyed of reading all posts ... forgot to add Stravinsky's opera The Rake's Progress , libretto by Auden and Kallman, based on a set of eight paintings by Hogarth named A Rake's Progress.


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## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition - surprised nobody thought of this one...
Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead
Aldo Forte's Impressionist prints


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

itywltmt said:


> Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition - surprised nobody thought of this one...


Did you read the first post?


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## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

Art Rock said:


> Did you read the first post?


You got me there...


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## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

More music and paintings on my blogs this week, starting with my Tuesday blog:
http://www.talkclassical.com/blogs/itywltmt/305-museum-orchestra-edition.html


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## johnfkavanagh (Sep 9, 2011)

Sid James said:


> Some interesting parallels here, but the first two of my ones below include some other forms of visual art, not only paintings -
> 
> *Brett Dean* (contemporary Australian composer) - His first orchestral work _Beggars and Angels _ (1999) "takes its title from a 1994 exhibition in Potsdam exploring the contrasts between a series of sculptures of beggars and paintings of angels." This exhibition included the sculptures of the composer's wife. Also significant is the fact that Dean worked as a violist in the Berlin Philharmonic for many years before returning to Australia to devote himself full-time to compositon. (Source: an interview with the composer on this website - http://www.sequenza21.com/Dean.html )
> 
> ...


And Walton's Portsmouth Point overture was inspired by Rowlandson's etching of the same name.


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## Norse (May 10, 2010)

Carl Nielsen's 2nd Symphony "The Four Temperaments" was at least partly inspired by a painting he saw in a pub, portraying the four temparements in a comical fashion. But in this case I guess it's more about getting an idea than about 'expressing this particular picture in music'.


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