# Coordinating visual arts with music



## Sonata (Aug 7, 2010)

So, very recently I've become quite interested in exploring the visual arts a little more. It was actually through music that it drew me in. I have been listening to some Debussy and Ravel lately; Impressionistic composers. While browsing some albums online, I found some nice artistic covers....which led me on to the train of thought of Impressionism in art. So I thought I'd check out some of Claude Monet's paintings. Turns out he might be my favorite artist! I've since started to enjoy browsing artwork online: Salvadore Dali, Vincent Vangough, Paul Cezanne. Hoping to hit up an art gallery sometime in the future. Also enjoying looking at some artistic photos, thanks to our *Art Rock* here posting a link to his own photos.

Is there anyone here who combines an indulgence of art and music simultaneously? I know *St. Lukes Guild* is himself and artist and is always listening to something while working, so his input is most welcome. But specifically, does anyone view art online or otherwise whilst listening to classical or other music? Do you have specific artists that coorelate with specific composers or pieces? I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts!


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## MaestroViolinist (May 22, 2012)

Nothing much to do with the original post, but a good joke  : 
Recently a guy in Paris nearly got away with stealing several paintings from the Louvre. However, after planning the crime, breaking in, evading security, getting out and escaping with the goods, he was captured only two blocks away when his Econoline van ran out of gas. When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied:-"I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh."


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Monet does not have _anything_ to do with Debussy when it comes to the technique and the style and the orchestration and the pigment etc. that each of them used. It is a shame that the word "Impressionism" (a visual arts style that depicts the impression of the moment visually with shifting light and colour in paintings) was used to describe the totally different music of Debussy. True "impressionist" music would give an impression of the moment aurally with the musical equivalent of light whatever that may be and it would do this in the same way as an impressionist painting. I have a feeling that true impressionist music would sound _very_ different from anything Debussy wrote.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Interesting subject. I remember a film I saw at Epcot back in the 1990s that featured aerial views of France with music by French composers. I know that some purists suggest that it's better for the visual part of your brain to be essentially blank when you are listening to music, but I never minded displays of this nature. In fact, I enjoyed it so much I've always kept my eyes open for more things like this. (I was greatly disappointed when I bought a copy of The Galileo Project on DVD recently because the Hubble space telescope images were just shown on a screen behind the performers rather than using the whole TV screen as I had anticipated.)

On a related topic - album and CD art has a greater effect on me than I'm often consciously aware of. Many symphonic pieces are indelibly connected in my brain to old album covers. I can't get an image to come over on this, but if you google "Bruckner Symphony 4 Pittsburgh Symphony Capitol LP" you can find one example.

Here's a totally inappropriate CD cover (based on the piece it's supposed to illustrate) that will probably always stay in my mind, too:


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)




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## Sonata (Aug 7, 2010)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Monet does not have _anything_ to do with Debussy when it comes to the technique and the style and the orchestration and the pigment etc. that each of them used. It is a shame that the word "Impressionism" (a visual arts style that depicts the impression of the moment visually with shifting light and colour in paintings) was used to describe the totally different music of Debussy. True "impressionist" music would give an impression of the moment aurally with the musical equivalent of light whatever that may be and it would do this in the same way as an impressionist painting. I have a feeling that true impressionist music would sound _very_ different from anything Debussy wrote.


Well.... I'm quite aware that they don't have a lot to do with one another. It was more a stream of conscious word association sort of thing that led me to Monet, rather than any desire to compare them in any sort of historical or artistic context.


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## Toddlertoddy (Sep 17, 2011)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Monet does not have _anything_ to do with Debussy when it comes to the technique and the style and the orchestration and the pigment etc. that each of them used. It is a shame that the word "Impressionism" (a visual arts style that depicts the impression of the moment visually with shifting light and colour in paintings) was used to describe the totally different music of Debussy. True "impressionist" music would give an impression of the moment aurally with the musical equivalent of light whatever that may be and it would do this in the same way as an impressionist painting. I have a feeling that true impressionist music would sound _very_ different from anything Debussy wrote.


Webern is more analogically related to Impressionism than Debussy because of klangfarbenmelodie


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Toddlertoddy said:


> Webern is more analogically related to Impressionism than Debussy because of klangfarbenmelodie


That's true, but still, music cannot show an image the same way a painting can.


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## Sonata (Aug 7, 2010)

Not, of course, unless you're eating some trippy mushrooms that is.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Sonata said:


> ... Do you have specific artists that coorelate with specific composers or pieces? I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts!


Well these visual artists and composers I often associate with eachother (and their lives overlap).

Delacroix - Berlioz
Chagall - Bloch
Delvaux - Dutilleux
Russell Drysdale - Peter Sculthorpe (Australians)
Dufy - Poulenc
Canaletto - Vivaldi
Goya - Beethoven (but I also strongly associate Beethoven with REmbrandt, but they were not contemporaries)
Fragonard - Boccherini
Roberto Matta - Ginastera

...I can go on. There have been threads similar to this but I don't have time now to find them. I'll be back sometime.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I tend to think of Chuck Close when I listen to JS Bach actually.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Found an old thread similar to this topic:
http://www.talkclassical.com/9111-parallels-between-art-music.html

I looked and my second post in that thread has more comparisons, and some are the same as I just put today.

Some extras:

Debussy - Odilon Redon (his Symbolist side) ; Monet (his 'impressionist' side - although he hated that term)
Bizet - Manet (the realist aspect)
Feldman - some would say Rothko obviously, but what about Persian carpets, which the composer collected, and these reflect that layering and intricacy, delicacy of his music
Sibelius - Munch
Mussorgsky - Ilya Repin
Mozart - Watteau
Copland - Andrew Wyeth


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Delacroix - Berlioz










Definitely.

Chagall - Bloch










Hmmm... Chagall's tough. We have a rather poetic painter who merges elements of Russian and Jewish folk art with European... specifically French Modernist of a rather joyful... colorful ilk with elements of magic realism. I think especially of earlier Stravinsky... especially the Firebird, Petrushka, Le Rossignol, and Renard... but Stravinsky is too much of a chameleon... and far more sophisticated than Chagal. I'll need to think on this one for a while.

Delvaux - Dutilleux










I don't see that link at all. Perhaps Saint-Saëns' _Danse macabre_:lol:

Russell Drysdale - Peter Sculthorpe (Australians)

I'll give you that one. I don't know many Australian artists (beyond Sidney Nolan and Brett Whiteley) nor many Australian composers (beyond Percy Grainger and Carl Vine).

Dufy - Poulenc










I'd probably go with Ibert myself.

*****


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Mozart - Watteau










Perfect choice. Like Mozart, Watteau conveys an air of child-like joy, beauty, and light... which can be mistaken by certain Philistines for a lack of depth or feeling... and yet underneath it all there is ever this intimation of something darker... of transience or mortality.

Canaletto - Vivaldi

Canaletto seem to be the artist of choice for illustrating Vivaldi discs... indeed for the whole of the Italian Baroque... but I think I would go with Tiepolo:


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Bach and Chuck Close?

No... when I think of J.S. Bach this is the art I think of:

http://koeln.arounder.com/en/churches/cologne-cathedral/cologne-cathedral-north-side-of-longitudinal-axis.html

http://koeln.arounder.com/en/churches/cologne-cathedral/cologne-cathedral-nave-surround-nave-partition.html

http://paris.arounder.com/en/churches/sainte-chapelle/sainte-chapelle-01.html

http://paris.arounder.com/en/churches/notre-dame-de-paris/notre-dame-interior.html


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

...does anyone view art online or otherwise whilst listening to classical or other music?

All the time. I'm quite often listening to music while I'm sitting at my computer and browsing through any number of art sites. I don't particularly look to art to correlate with what I am listening to... although there are certainly times when I think of such links. Both one of my studio partners and I have discussed the ideal music we would employ for a one-man show.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Hi Stlukes -

Re Delacroix, that's the image I was thinking of. As well as 'Liberty leading the people' (Berlioz did a famous arrangement of the French national anthem, the Marseillaise). Also to note that Delacroix did a famous portrait of Berlioz and also of Chopin.

Re Delvaux and Dutilleux, I was thinking of his nudes in nocturnal landscapes, and I see them as more typical than the skeleton one you posted. Here is a search on google images of the artist's name only and most of them are nudes, not skeletons. Anyway, the eroitic and poetic aspect of Delvaux mirrors for me things like Dutilleux's cello concerto, inspired by Baudelaire's 'Flowers of Evil.'

Delvaux search

But you mention Stravinsky who is hard to tie to any visual artist for me.

Some extra ones now:

Xenakis - Le Corbusier (an architect, but he also did some sculptures and paintings, but Xenakis worked with him, and there is some correspondence between them generally, I think)
Penderecki - Kathe Kollwitz (her dark themes of 20th century history, esp. the HOlocaust)
Enescu - Tuculescu (the ROmanian painter who fused modern/abstract technique with inspiration from folk arts is a good fit, imo)


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