sturm!and!drang$movement!

Transcription

1 Introduction** The$man$that$hath$no$music$in$himself,$Nor$is$not$mov d$with$concord$of$sweet$sounds,$ is$fit$for$treasons,$stratagems,$and$spoils.$ The*Merchant*of*Venice,*Act*v,*Scene*1.* The deep relationship between the arts, and especially between music and painting 1 bynomeansbeginswithwassilykandinsky(1866@1944). 2 TheGerman polymath Athanasius Kircher 3 wrote about the possibility of visualising a musical language based on an analogy between tone and colour, in his Musurgia$ Universalisof Furthermore, in 1725 the French Jesuit monk Father Louis BertrandCastel 4 devisedtheocularharpsichord;aneccentriccontraptionconsisting ofsixtysmallcolouredglasspanes,eachwithacurtainthatopenedwhenakeywas struck. Castel thought of colour@music as akin to the lost language of paradise, in which evenadeaflistenercouldenjoymusic. 5 SirIsaacNewton sanalogybetween the 7notesofthemusicalscaleandthe7coloursofthecolourscale 6 wasasource of inspiration for Castel et$ al, in terms of what Baudelaire later referred to as a DoctrineofCorrespondences. 7 Thereiscertainlyadeeplinkbetweenmusicandpainting 8 In theoretical terms, Phillip Otto Runge (1777@1810), a man with a mystical, pantheistic frame of mind 9 paved the way for that Wagnerian concept, the gesamtkunstwerk. 10 $In his work, Runge attempted to express notions of harmony through symbolism of colour and form. Achieving the gesamtkunstwerk was a commonaspirationforgermanromanticartists. Intheyearofhisdeath, 11 Rungepublished Die$Farbenkugel $(TheColourSphere)in which he describes a three dimensional schematic sphere for organising all conceivablecoloursaccordingtohue,brightnessandsaturation.itwastheresultof yearsofresearchandcorrespondencewithjohannwolfgangvongoethe. 12 1Page27ConcerningtheSpiritualinArt,WassilyKandinsky,Dover,NewYork,USA,2000 2WassilyKandinsky(1866@1944)Russianpainterandtheorist;pioneerofabstraction 3AthanasiusKircher(1601@80)GermanJesuitscholarandpolymathwhopublishedaround40works 4LouisBertrandCastel(1688@1757)Frenchmathematician,devotedtomathematics&natural philosophy 5TheScaleandtheSpectrum,JamesPeel,Issue22,Summer2006(Article) 6Page19 PaulKlee@PaintingMusic HajoDuchting,Prestel,Munich,2002 7ThePoetryFoundation,KathrynOliverMills,poetryfoundation.org(Article) 8Page44Eye@Music,Kandinsky,KleeandallthatJazz, SimonShaw@Miller,PallantHouse,Chichester, TheArtBulletin,RobertWBerger,Volume58,No.2,June1976(Article) 10AGesamtkunstwerk(translatedastotalworkofart,idealworkofart,universalartwork,synthesis ofthearts,comprehensiveartwork,all@embracingartformortotalartwork 11Rungediedfromtuberculosisattheageof34 12JohannWolfgangvonGoethe(1749@1832)Germanpoet,dramatist,andscholarinvolvedwiththe sturmanddrang$movement

2 Runge s Farbenkugel was adopted 150 years later by the legendary German Bauhausteacher,JohannesItten. 13 InWagner s1852essay, Oper$und$Drama 14 hedescribesthewayinwhichpoetry, musicandthevisualartsshouldcombinetoformwhathecalled theartworkofthe future. These music@dramas were a multi@sensory experience for spectators, delving into many creative and artistic sources, including opera, theatre, music (orchestra), mime and literature. In this sense, Wagner s The Ring Cycle is the paradigmofthegesamtkunstwerk;$ KandinskygreatlyadmiredWagnerandsawhis fusing of music, text and stage into a seamless gesture. 15 In 1861, Charles Baudelaire 16 supportedwagnerandhis theoryofcorrespondences bywritinghow itwouldbesurprisingifamusicaltonecouldnotelicitacolour. 17 Music was founded on balance and harmony for which artists tried to find visual equivalentsintheformandcolouroftheirownpaintings. 18 The French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy 19 explored Baudelaire s theories further: most modern musicians like Debussy create a spiritual impression 20 culminating in his Trois$ Nocturnes, of the 1890s, which encouraged the listener to become immersed in the artist's experience; more specifically J.A.M Whistler s Nocturnes ofthe1870s.inthisexplorationofinstrumentaltonecolour, Debussy treated harmonies and orchestral timbres as the artists treated light and colour. He used chords for their expressive colour effects rather than obeying traditional rules of harmony. Using allusion and understatement, Impressionist music, with suggestion and atmosphere, eschewed the emotional excesses of the Romantic era. Debussy used short melodic motifs the nocturne,$ arabesque and prelude; the equivalent would be the quickly worked small canvases of la$ band$ a$ Manet. $$ To$suggest$is$to$dream. StephenMallarmé. As Debussyisdeeplyconcernedwithspiritualharmony, 21 hismusicaldissonances areunpreparedandunresolved,likethecanvasesoftheimpressionists,prompting theregistraroftheparisconservatoiretochallengethecomposer:"soyouimagine 13JohannesItten(1888@1967)SwissExpressionistpainter,designer,writerandtheoristassociated withthebauhausschool 14 OperaandDrama isabook@lengthessaywrittenbyrichardwagnerin1851,settingouthisideas ontheidealcharacteristicsofoperaasanartform. 15Page82StoryofModernArt,NorbertLynton,Phaidon,London, CharlesPierreBaudelaire(1821@67)Frenchpoetandcritic 17Reflectionon ArtandSynesthesia:InSearchoftheSynestheticExperience bydrhugoheyrman 18Page43Eye@Music,Kandinsky,KleeandallthatJazz, SimonShaw@Miller,PallantHouse,Chichester, ClaudeDebussy(1862@1918)FrenchcomposerandcriticwhocarriedtheideasofImpressionist artandsymbolistpoetryintomusic 20PageP16ConcerningtheSpiritualinArt,WassilyKandinsky,Dover,NewYork,USA, Ibid.

3 thatdissonantchordsdonothavetoberesolved?whatruledoyoufollow?""mon plaisir" 22 Debussyreplied. Debussy ths,chromaticism andparalleldescending7 ths &9 ths dissonanceofarnoldschoenberg. 23 Thetwentiethcenturyhasseentheproliferationofmusicalandartisticlanguages 24 The Lithuanian painter Mikalojus Ciurlionis 25 poses the complex question of whether and to what extent the power of the creative imagination helps the artist perceiveandtransformrealityintoartisticimages.hispaintingsandcompositions were as one. They were trying to interlink and reference each other, stirring up imagesorcreatingharmoniouseffects. 26 Ciurlionis imaginationturnedpolyphony and rhythm into visual symbols, prompting the French writer Remain Rolland to hailtheartistas ChristopherColumbusofthenewcontinentofthespirit. 27 Thenaturalresultofthisstrivingisthatthevariousartsare drawing together. TheyarefindinginMusicthebestteacher. 28 substantially atonal dissonant musical system. Scriabin was influenced by synaesthesia, 29 Circle of Fifths influenced by Theosophy, was Scriabin s attempt to intensify musical tone by corresponding use of colour 30 whilst striking a chord with the young Kandinsky. In Alexander Scriabin s Prometheus: The$ Poem$ of$ Fire of 1910, thetoplineisfor luce acolourorganwhichflushesascreeninamannerakinto Alexander Rimington s Colour Organ of 1895 from which we can paint with instantaneous effect upon the screen the colours being at will combined into one chord,orcompoundtintuponitssurface Page291DebussybyEdwardLockspeiser,TheTablet,InternationalCatholicNewsWeekly 23ArnoldSchoenbergArnoldSchoenberg(1874@1951)Austrian@bornAmericancomposerandmusic theoristwhosemajorcontributiontomodernismwasthedevelopmentofatonalityandserialism 24Page29Eye@Music,Kandinsky,KleeandallthatJazz, SimonShaw@Miller,PallantHouse,Chichester, MikalojusKonstantinasCiurlionis(1875@1911)wasaLithuanianpainter,composerandwriter 26www.ciurlionis.net/articles/sepetis.htm 27Page21TheOceanicFeelingRevisited,WilliamBParsons,OxfordUniversityPress,NewYork, Page20ConcerningtheSpiritualinArt,WassilyKandinsky,Dover,NewYork,USA, Scriabinwasatheosophistwhohaddiscoveredhissynestheticabilityataconcertinthecompany ofrimsky@korsakovwhentheybothagreedthatthepieceindmajorappearedyellow. 30Page51ConcerningtheSpiritualinArt,WassilyKandinsky,Dover,NewYork,USA, TheScaleandtheSpectrum,JamesPeel,Issue22,Summer2006(Article)

4 The mood among the was that music and art were closely aligned, whichisahelpfulinsightintounderstandingtheworkofthesepioneersofabstract art. 32 With the explosion of isms during the first quarter of the twentieth century, Europeanartisticcircles witnessedtheadventandpracticeofabstractpaintingat thebeginningofthe20thcenturyasthetranslationofmusic. 33 Withintheclimate of the shows of Scriabin and the pure painters Wassily Kandinsky, Frank Kupka, 34 Piet Mondrian 35 and Kazimir Malevich 36 took thiscorrespondencebetweentheartstoanewlevel. However, Patricia Railing, 37 in her 2005 essay Why$ Abstract$ Painting$ isn t$ Music conteststhat theirpaintingswerenotmusic,norweretheypaintingmusic.rather, they claimed that painting s colours have an effect on the human being just as music s tones do. 38 This, I will argue, is a moot point, given the complexity of Kandinsky seitherinnateorcontrived condition ofsynaesthesia. The Futurist artist Luigi Russolo s 39 manifesto The$ Art$ of$ Noises$ 1913 journeyed further into the realms of striving for an abstract pictorial equivalent, for, among other things, a musical chord. Also the Futurists sound machines, called Intonarumori 40, provided the backdrop for their musical happenings, a form of experimental,surrealmusicaltheatre,somewherebetweentheitalianoperaoftheir homelandandthecabaretvoltaire. 41 The Delaunays, 42 with their colour@sound analogies of harmony and rhythm, developed simultaneity and light, sound synchronism and Grapheme, or colour@ graphemic synaesthesia. 43 This naturally chimed with Kandinsky; most notably 32Whatareyoulookingat?WillGompertz(AudioSeries):Kandinsky/Orphism/BlueRider 33PatriciaRailing,PhilosophyNow,AbstractArt&Music,onlinearticle, TheCzechartistFrankKupkaexploredthe kineticdimension plussynestheticandtheosophical ideas* 35PietMondrian(1872@1944)Dutchpainter,co@founderofDeStijlandoriginatorofNeo@Plasticism 36KazimirMalevich(1878@1935)RussianpainterandfounderoftheSuprematistmovement 37PatriciaRailinghaspublishedwidelyonearly20thcenturyabstractart.Sheisdirectorof Artists.Bookworkswhichpublishesartists booksandwritingsoftheearly20thcentury 38PatriciaRailing,PhilosophyNow,AbstractArt&Music,onlinearticle, LuigiRussolo(1885@1947)ItalianFuturistpainter,composerandauthorofthemanifestoArtof Noises 40IntonarumoriareagroupofexperimentalmusicalinstrumentsbuiltandinventedbytheItalian FuturistLuigiRussolobetween1910and CabaretVoltaire,anightclubinZurich,Switzerland,foundedbyHugoBallasacabaretforartistic andpoliticalpurposes.eventsatthecabaretprovedpivotalinthefoundingoftheanarchicart movementdada 42FrenchpainterRobertDelaunay(1885@1941)wasoneofthefoundermembersofOrphism, togetherwithhiswifesoniadelaunay@terk(1885@1979) 43Onecommonformofsynaesthesiainwhichlettersornumbersareperceivedasinherently coloured

5 Sonia Turk s 2 metre long accordion folded book 44 in which simultaneous colours evoke the movement of train travel as a continuum or flux (a path also being exploredbythefrenchphilosopherbergson 45 atthetime),androbertdelaunay s 1914watercolourillustrationinwhichArthurRimbaud 46 assignscolourstothefive vowelsofthealphabettocolourhis1873poem A$Season$in$Hell. 47 Simultaneity,as pioneeredbythedelaunaysandf.kupka,sawexperimentationwithmulti@sensory disksinsimultaneousmotion,chimingwiththetuitionofe.ptudor@hart 48 interms ofthecorrespondencesbetweencolourandmusicaltones,leadingto synchrony. Delaunay was trying to make a picture that vibrated with harmony and tone, not unlikeapieceofmusic,whichwastheaimoforphism,alludedtointhemovement s namesake,thegreekpoetandmusicianorpheus. 49 OnedayImustbeabletoimprovisefreelyonthekeyboardofcolours 50 Paul*Klee Intermsofhisinvestigationsintothesynaestheticandtheabstract,Kandinskywas arguablymost intune withhissoulmatepaulklee. 51 LikeKandinsky,Kleewasan accomplishedmusician;infactaconcertviolinist.heexploredmusicalnotation,the treble clef, stave, structural rhythms, and linear counterpoint, using the word polyphonic, as per Futurists. Through his love of opera, or the combined experience, Klee built upon Wagner s concept of thegesamtkunstwerk and, in his ownwords studiedthetonalvaluesfoundinmusic. 52 However,unlikeKandinsky with his penchant for the contemporary composer Arnold Schoenberg, 53 Klee admiredthegreatcomposersoftheeighteenthcentury,mostnotablyj.sbachand Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Klee s expectations from a work of art were that it should present pictorial harmony, which he viewed as equilibrium of movement and counter@movement. 54 This is relevant because pictorial harmony can obviouslybelinkedtomusical harmony collaborationwithBlaiseCendrars;callingtheircreation"thefirstsimultaneousbook," Delaunay@TerkandCendrarsdrewontheartistictheoryofsimultaneity,espousedbytheartist's husband,thepainterrobertdelaunay,andmodernpoets.( 45Henri@LouisBergson(1859@1941)exploredthetheoryoftimeasafluxoracontinuum.Atthecore ofhisphilosophyishistheoryof duration 46ArthurRimbaud(1854@91)Frenchpoet,knownforhiscollectionofSymbolistprosepoems 47Source:InventingAbstraction,1910@1925:HowaRadicalIdeaChangedModernArt,Leah Dickerman,MuseumofModernArt, ErnestPercyvalTudor@Hart(1873@1955)Canadianpaintingprofessor 49Page153Whatareyoulookingat?150YearsofModernArtintheBlinkofanEye,WillGompertz, Viking,PenguinGroup,London, Page112Eye@Music,Kandinsky,KleeandallthatJazz, SimonShaw@Miller,PallantHouse, Chichester, PaulKlee(1879@1940)wasaSwisspainter,residentinGermany1906@33.HejoinedKandinsky s DerBlaueReitergroupin1912andlatertaughtattheBauhaus(1920@31) 52Page18 PaulKlee@PaintingMusic HajoDuchting,Prestel,Munich, ArnoldSchoenberg(1874@1951)Austrian@bornAmericancomposerandmusictheoristwhose majorcontributiontomodernismwasthedevelopmentofatonalityandserialism 54www.bauhaus.de

6 Kleedevisedacolourtheoryinwhichhestartswiththesixcoloursoftherainbow andexplainsthisnaturalphenomenonbyarelatedcircledividedintosixparts.the relationship between the colours in the circle results from two different kinds of movement: a circular movement around the edge and a straight one within the diameterofthecircle,whichhereferstoas pendularmovement. Fromthecircular form,hederivesatriangleofprimarycolours,whichhesubsequentlyexpandsinto an elemental star including the non@colours black and white. This relationship of colours is symbolic of the relationship of musical notes. Hence, in Klee s work, his useofcolourreferencesspecificnotes,e.g.inworkssuchas Polyphony of1908. As a teacher, it was Johannes Itten who exerted the greatest influence on the students of the Bauhaus. 55 From 1919 to 1922 he taught the basics of material characteristics, composition and colour. His student Bible, The$ Art$ of$ Colour, describes his Colour Sphere of 12 colours and their correspondences. Itten attempts to represent sound as a dreamlike ringing, such as in his BluishRGreen$ Sound$ of Collectively the Bauhaus teachings of Kandinsky, Klee and Itten encouraged a synaesthesia of the arts, via Itten s pioneering adoption of the neo@ Zoroastrianreligion Mazdaznan aphysical,spiritualandmentalworkout. 56 An extrapolation of Itten s theories became contemporary, in@depth investigations intosolipsism 57 andtheosophy, 58 notleastthosemadebywassilykandinskyduring hisspellatthebauhaus.thusadualinterestinthesynaestheticandthespiritualled to abeliefintheprimacyofthespiritualandalongingfortheinterpenetrationof thearts; 59 oneofthechieftenetsofkandinsky sder$blaue$reiter$ 60 $Group. Josef Matthias Hauer 61 in discussion with Itten, shared an interest in the synaesthetic agreement between colours and musical tones, developing, independent of and a year or two before Arnold Schoenberg, a method for composing with all 12 notes of the chromatic scale. But, it is felt that Kandinsky wentfurther. 62 In 1922, Kandinsky s Bauhaus course on artistic design included colour classes to explore the psychological effects of colour; an investigation into Synaesthesia throughcertainsoundsandemotionsinrelationtoparticularcolours.furthermore, Kandinskyattemptedtorendermusicgraphically,throughtranscription. 55BauhausSchoolofappliedartsestablishedbyWalterGropiusinWeimarin JohannesIttenwhotaughtattheBauhaus,insistedonshavenheads,crimsonrobesandcolonic irrigation.thenazisproscribedmazdazmanfrom1935,abanthatremainedingermanyuntil Theviewortheorythattheselfisallthatcanbeknowntoexist 58PhilosophymaintainingthataknowledgeofGodmaybeachievedthroughspiritualecstasy 59Page76AboutModernArt,CriticalEssays1949@96,DavidSylvester,Chatto&Windus,London, DerBlaueReitergroupofGermanExpressionistpaintersformedin1911inMunich 61JosefMatthiasHauer(1883@1959)Austriancomposerandmusictheoristwhopre@empts Schoenberg smethodforcomposingwithall12notesofthechromaticscale 62Page311Art&Illusion,E.HGombrich,Phaidon,London,1995

7 Stemming from this, Kandinsky, Macke 63 & Marc 64 discussed by letter, the correspondence between musical dissonances, notes and sparking a dialoguewiththethendarlingofdissonance,arnoldschoenberg. I am certain that our own modern harmony is not to be found in the geometric way, but rather in the anti@geometric, anti@logical way. And this way is that of dissonances in art, in painting, therefore, just as much as in music. And today s dissonanceinpaintingandmusicismerelytheconsonanceof tomorrow. 65 Kandinsky*in*a*letter*to*Schoenberg,*January*1911* * 63AugusteMacke(1887@1914)OneoftheleadingmembersoftheGermanExpressionistgroupDer BlaueReiter 64FranzMarc(1880@1916)GermanExpressionistpainterandprintmaker;foundingmemberofDer BlaueReiter 65Source:PatriciaRailing,PhilosophyNow,AbstractArt&Music,onlinearticle,2005