# Compositions as reflections of visual art



## muordieb (Nov 21, 2018)

I hope someone can help me out. I am writing an article on sound and need help with an odd question. Many years ago someone described a movement in music history where composers created pieces as musical representations of visual art (paintings, etc.), and I can not remember the name/title they used. 

Does this sound familiar to anyone?


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

One clue to run down is Georgia O'Keefe's Music Pink and Blue. She was inspired by some group to paint this.

Oops. I got it backwards. Sorry.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Webern's Symphony has long reminded me of a sensitive abstract painting, though not necessarily the one pictured on this video:






I would highly recommend "Paris: The Luminous Years-the Birth of the Modern." Painters, designers, and composers worked very closely together on Sergei Diaghilev 's spectacular ballet productions for many miraculous years, so there was a very close relationship between the arts, with many examples. Unfortunately because of copyright restrictions, one has to put up with a reduced screen and less than ideal sound-or get the DVD if at all possible. I wish that everyone who cared for the arts would see it because of its tremendous educational value and just because it's so fascinating, at least it was to me. The understanding of cubism and other abstract paintings can go along way to help one understand modern and contemporary music:


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Respighi: Three Botticelli Pictures
Martinů: Les Fresques de Piero Della Francesca
Respighi: Church Windows
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition

List goes on a long ways. Name for school or phenomenon? Drawing a blank......


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

muordieb said:


> I hope someone can help me out. I am writing an article on sound and need help with an odd question. Many years ago someone described a movement in music history where composers created pieces as musical representations of visual art (paintings, etc.), and I can not remember the name/title they used.
> 
> Does this sound familiar to anyone?


Could it be Impressionism or is that too obvious? Expressionism could count as well.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

muordieb said:


> I hope someone can help me out. I am writing an article on sound and need help with an odd question. Many years ago someone described a movement in music history where composers created pieces as musical representations of visual art (paintings, etc.), and I can not remember the name/title they used.
> 
> Does this sound familiar to anyone?


Brings to mind synasthaesia as experienced by Scriabin and Messiaen. Its about experiencing different colours as sounds. A particular colour is said to correspond with a particular key. They sought to convey this in their music.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Other way round, but there's Gustav Klimt's Beethovenfriese, which tells the story of the Ninth as described by Wagner? Surprising the work has lasted this long, it was only meant as a temporary exhibit originally!

Last night there was a piece on TV (Grand Designs) on a house in London recently built on a tiny slither of land, supposedly inspired by Erik Satie's eccentric composition Vexations (as in the one where the pianist is instructed to repeat the piece 840 times). I couldn't quite work out the connection, and thought both the concept and the house itself impractical and not entirely devoid of pretentiousness.









Anyway here's a picture of it.

The most obvious example for the original question is Pictures at an Exhibition? Petr Eben's Chagall Windows? Can't think of a name for the movement either, sorry.


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## classical yorkist (Jun 29, 2017)

I would have thought it was Mussorgskys Pictures at an E.xhibition


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## pkoi (Jun 10, 2017)

On the other way around, Kandinsky has paintings like "Fugue", which are obviously influenced by musical forms.


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## Marinera (May 13, 2016)

I would like to know the term for such music if it exists, never came across it though. Morton Feldman composed inspired by artists and their art such as Rothko chapel, also for Philip Guston.










Poulenc composed a short art song cycle Le Travail du Peintre. Melodies in the cycle: I. Pablo Picasso II Marc Chagall III Georges Braque IV Juan Gris V Paul Klee VI Juan Miro VII Jacques Villon.

I know there is more music dedicated to Paul Klee - Hommage a Paul Klee by Sandor Veress, Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee by Gunther Schuller.

Rachmaninov's The Isle of the Dead was inspired by A. Bocklin's painting with the same title.

Dada artists experimented with various art forms, film and also music, if that helps.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Maybe musical *Ekphrasis*? Here is a bit from Wikipedia under "Ekphrasis"......

"There are a number of examples of ekphrasis in music, of which the best known is probably Pictures at an Exhibition, a suite in ten movements (plus a recurring, varied Promenade) composed for piano by the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874, and then very popular in various arrangements for orchestra. The suite is based on real pictures, although as the exhibition was dispersed, most are now unidentified.

The first movement of Three Places in New England by Charles Ives is an ekphrasis of the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial in Boston, sculpted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Ives also wrote a poem inspired by the sculpture as a companion piece to the music. Rachmaninoff's symphonic poem Isle of the Dead is a musical evocation of Böcklin's painting of the same name. King Crimson's song "The Night Watch", with lyrics written by Richard Palmer-James, is an ekphrasis on Rembrandt's painting The Night Watch."


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## classical yorkist (Jun 29, 2017)

Marinera said:


> I would like to know the term for such music if it exists, never came across it though. Morton Feldman composed inspired by artists and their art such as Rothko chapel, also for Philip Guston.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Also, La Mer and Poissons D'or by Debussy were inspired by these Japanese artworks.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

muordieb said:


> I hope someone can help me out. I am writing an article on sound and need help with an odd question. Many years ago someone described a movement in music history where composers created pieces as musical representations of visual art (paintings, etc.), and I can not remember the name/title they used.
> 
> Does this sound familiar to anyone?


Musical Ekphrasis is a phrase used when composers claim to be specifically inspired by a poem or painting, a drama or sculpture, transforming the essence of this art work's features and message into musical language. In other words, it describes music's ability to narrate or portray extramusical realities, that is, to relate to them by way of mimesis or reference.


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

^
^

After looking it up that sounds totally spot on, even though I've never knowingly come across the term before! 

:clap:


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

muordieb said:


> I hope someone can help me out. I am writing an article on sound and need help with an odd question. Many years ago someone described a movement in music history where composers created pieces as musical representations of visual art (paintings, etc.), and I can not remember the name/title they used.
> 
> Does this sound familiar to anyone?


Ever since you posted this I've been trying to think of the name of the famous composer whose music is inspired by visual art, then someone was asking about Tristan Murail and I remembered - it's another spectral composer - Hughes Dufourt. It's a pretty unusual thing as far as I know, I don't think there's a movement which explores music and plastic arts.

Have a listen to Les Hivers, for example. There are pieces « d'après« Pollock and Tiepolo and others. I just found this useful blog article about him, which in turn put me on to a recording of L'origine du monde on YouTube

http://soundproofedblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/dufourt.html


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

try to read something about synesthesia and the composers who had it (Sibelius)

Rachmaninov: The Isle of the Dead, Symphonic poem Op. 29, is inspired by a painting, so is Mussorgsky and his Pictures


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

My best drawing, and I don't think I'll ever top it, about 100 drawings since, and I've come only about 70% close as being this good. "Peace" 8/1-8/4/11.



http://imgur.com/LZoIjMH


And I think it's very reflective of all my compositions:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyUv3y1LKuZfwbOgBiV30dA


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

This wouldn't technically fit your description, but would Symbolism in composition count? Scriabin is called a Symbolist composer and he conceived of his own work as tied very deeply to colour and texture (he had 'synesthesia')


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

> Many years ago someone described a movement in music history where composers created pieces as musical representations of visual art (paintings, etc.), and I can not remember the name/title they used.




Narrative music? Representative music? Impressionism (also an art movement)? Expressionism (ditto)? Minimalism (also an art/architecture movement)? Pointillism (art, as well used to describe Webern's music)? Romanticism? Classicism?

The most obvious art-music "landscape" analogy is Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony.

This is art; art uses symbolism. This includes literature, poetry, painting, and music. All art is concerned with Man's being and identity, his role in the world, and more.

These symbols that art uses are 'triggers' of the human psyche; they are psychically charged with meaning. Music is probably the most effective art which triggers the emotions, as opposed to the mind of Man.

The emotions are different than the mind, and are located in the body, unlike the mind. To get in touch with emotions, one can focus on the body.


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