Music and Modernism, c.

1849-1950
Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950

Edited by

Charlotte de Mille
 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950,
Edited by Charlotte de Mille

This book first published 2011

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2011 by Charlotte de Mille and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-2696-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2696-9

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations .................................................................................... vii

Acknowledgements .................................................................................. xiii

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
Charlotte de Mille

How to Paint a Fugue .................................................................................. 8

Peter Vergo

Part I: Towards New Truth? German Aesthetics and the Claims

of Gesamtkunstwerk

Chapter One............................................................................................... 26
Music, Modernism and the Vienna Secession: Musical Form
in Ver Sacrum (1898-1903)
Diane V. Silverthorne

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 53

Arnold Böcklin and Music: A Case Revisited
Spyros Petritakis

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 81

Seeing Sound – Hearing Colour: The Synaesthetic Experience
in Russian Avant-Garde Art
Isabel Wünsche

Part II: Correspondences: Musical-Visual Language in Late

Nineteenth Century France

Chapter Four ............................................................................................ 108

Courbet, Wagner and the Total Work of Art
James H. Rubin

Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 119

Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague
in the Art and Critical Reception of Henri Fantin-Latour
Corrinne Chong


vi Table of Contents

Part III: Spiritual Harmony? Music and Modernism in Britain

Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 160

Sacred Performance: Two Instances of Musical Architecture
in Cambridge
Ayla Lepine

Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 182

“Turning the earth above a buried memory”: Dismembering
and Remembering Kandinsky
Charlotte de Mille

Part IV: Music and Modern Life

Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 206

Visual Music in Film, 1921-1924: Richter, Eggeling, Ruttman
Malcolm Cook

Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 229

“It don’t mean a thing…”: Jazz, Modernism, and Murals
in New Deal New York
Jody Patterson

Part V: Framing the Modern: Retrospect?

Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 256

Zen and the Art of La Monte Young
Melissa Warak

Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 277

Formalising the Stochastic Cloud: Xenakis and his Machine
for Drawing Music
Olga Touloumi

Bibliography ............................................................................................ 309

Contributors............................................................................................. 335

Index........................................................................................................ 339


 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure I.1 František Kupka, Amorpha: Fugue in Two Colours, 1912, oil on
canvas, 211 x 220 cm, © Prague, Narodni Galerie. ADAGP, Paris
and DACS, London 2010.
Figure I.2 Marsden Hartley, Musical Theme No. 2 (Bach, Préludes et fugues),
1912, oil on canvas, 60.9 x 50.8 cm, Madrid, Museo Thyssen-
Bornemisza, © Witt library, Courtauld Institute of Art.
Figure I.3 Wassily Kandinsky, diagrammatic representation of the transition to
the second subject of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony, © W. Kandinsky, Point and Line to Plane (Munich,
1926); ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2010.
Figure 1.1 Entrance, Secession House, Vienna, 1898. Image: author.
Figure 1.2 Alfred Roller, front cover, Ver Sacrum, January, 1898.
Figure 1.3 Josef Hofmann, musical motif, Ver Sacrum, July, 1898.
Figure 1.4 Repetitive motifs, Ver Sacrum, August, 1898.
Figure 1.5 Joseph Maria Olbrich, “Stiller Tod”, Ver Sacrum July, 1898.
Figure 1.6 “Kleinstadt Idyll”, Ver Sacrum, ©V&A Images/Victoria and Albert
Museum, London.
Figure 1.7 “Siehst du den Stern”, Ver Sacrum, ©V&A Images/Victoria and
Albert Museum, London.
Figure 1.8 “Einsamkeit”, Ver Sacrum, ©V&A Images/Victoria and Albert
Museum, London.
Figure 1.9 “Anacreons Grab”, Ver Sacrum, ©V&A Images/Victoria and Albert
Museum, London.
Figure 2.1 Arnold Böcklin, The Island of the Dead [Toteninsel], 1880, oil on
wood, 73.7 x 121.9 cm, © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Figure 2.2 Emanuel Geibel, Now that the shadows become darker, composed by
Arnold Böcklin, in Henri Mendelsohn, Böcklin (Berlin, 1901), 235.
Figure 2.3 Arnold Böcklin, The Adventurer, 1882, tempera on canvas, 150 x 116
cm, © Witt library, Courtauld Institute of Art.
Figure 3.1 Alexander Scriabin, Prométhée – Le poèmè du feu, 1910, front cover,
detail.
Figure 3.2 Alexander Scriabin, Prométhée – Le poèmè du feu, 1910, opening
page showing “luce” part.
Figure 3.3 Hermann von Helmholtz, O fiziologicheskikh princhinakh muzykal’noi
garmonii (On the Physiological Principles of Musical Harmonies)
(St. Petersburg: A. A. Porokhovshchikov, 1896).
Figure 3.4 Nikolai Kulbin, Studiia impressionistov. Kniga 1-aia (Studio of the
Impressionists. First Book) (St. Petersburg: Izd. Nibutkovsky, 1910).


viii List of Illustrations

Figure 3.5 Mikhail Matyushin, Painterly-Musical Construction, 1917-18, oil on

board, 51 x 63 cm, inv. 155.78, © Greek State Museum of
Contemporary Art – Costakis Collection, Thessaloniki.
Figure 3.6 Mikhail Matyushin, Colour-Sound Charts, Zakonomernos’
izmeniaemosti tsvetovykh sochetanii. Spravochnik po tsvetu, (The
Laws of Changes in Color Combinations: A Handbook of Color),
(Moscow, Leningrad: Gos. Izd. Izobrazitelnykh Iskusstv, 1932), 22.
Figure 4.1 Gustave Courbet, The Sculptor, (self-portrait), 1844, oil on canvas,
55.9 x 41.9cm, private collection, © Witt Library, Courtauld Institute
of Art.
Figure 4.2 Gustave Courbet, The Violincellist, 1847, oil on canvas, 112.4 x 86.7
cm, Portland Art Museum, © Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art.
Figure 5.1 Henri Fantin Latour, Scène première du Rheingold (l'Or du Rhin),
1876, oil on canvas. 116.5 x 79 cm, © Kunsthalle, Hamburger.
Figure 5.2 Henri Fantin Latour, La Prise de Troie: Apparition d'Hector, (H. 30),
c. 1880, lithograph, 32.4 x 39.0 cm, © BNF.
Figure 5.3 Henri Fantin Latour, La Damnation de Faust: Apparition de
Marguerite, (H. 83), 1888, lithograph, 23.2 x 15.3 cm, © BNF.
Figure 5.4 Henri Fantin Latour, Harold: Dans les Montagnes, (H.49), 1884,
lithograph, 43.0 x 29.5 cm, © BNF.
Figure 5.5 Henri Fantin Latour, Manfred et Astarté, (H.107), 1892, lithograph,
30.5 x 39.0 cm, © BNF.
Figure 5.6 Henri Fantin Latour, Évocation d'Erda, (H. 20), 1876, lithograph,
28.5 x 36.0 cm, © BNF.
Figure 5.7 Henri Fantin Latour, Tannhäuser: L'Étoile du Soir (H.48), 1884,
lithograph, 39.7 x 29.7, © BNF.
Figure 6.1 Detail of painted inscription (‘Blessed are the poor in spirit…’), north
aisle, All Saints Church, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, G. F. Bodley (with
Frederick Leach?), c.1870. Image: author.
Figure 6.2 Detail showing painted inscription (‘They shall walk with me in
white’), north east sacristy entrance, All Saints Church, Jesus Lane,
Cambridge, G. F. Bodley (with Frederick Leach?), c.1870. Image:
author.
Figure 6.3 Nave ceiling, Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge, G. F. Bodley,
William Morris, Philip Webb & Frederick Leach, 1866-67. © Jesus
College, Cambridge, with the kind permission of Jesus College,
Cambridge.
Figure 6.4 Detail of nave ceiling (repetition of ‘Vexilla Regis Prodeunt…’),
Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge, G. F. Bodley, William Morris,
Philip Webb & Frederick Leach, 1866-67. Image: author, used with
the kind permission of Jesus College, Cambridge.
Figure 7.1 Vanessa Bell, The String Quartet, 1920, © Estate of Vanessa Bell,
courtesy Henrietta Garnett. Image: Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham.


 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 ix

Figure 7.2 Wassily Kandinsky, Study for Improvisation 7, 1912 - 1913,

woodcut, 31.1 x 24.1cm, © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2010.
Image: Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham.
Figure 8.1 Hans Richter, Rhythmus 21, 1921, white on black reversed to black
on white, © Image courtesy of Kino International.
Figure 8.2 Hans Richter, Rhythmus 21, 1921, white on black reversed to black
on white, © Image courtesy of Kino International.
Figure 8.3 Walther Ruttmann, Opus 1, 1921, geometric triangle, © Image
Entertainment.
Figure 8.4 Walther Ruttmann, Opus 1, 1921, aquatic shape in conflict with
geometric triangle, © Image Entertainment.
Figure 8.5 Walther Ruttmann, Opus 1, 1921, languid organic protrusion, ©
Image Entertainment.
Figure 8.6 Walther Ruttmann, Opus 1, 1921, acquatic shapes caress the
protrusion. © Image Entertainment.
Figure 8.7 Viking Eggeling, Symphonie Diagonal, 1924, gestalt form, © Image
courtesy of Kino International.
Figure 8.8 Viking Eggeling, Symphonie Diagonal, 1924, pan-pipes, © Image
courtesy of Kino International.
Figure 8.9 Viking Eggeling, Symphonie Diagonal, 1924, combs, © Image
courtesy of Kino International.
Figure 8.10 Viking Eggeling, Symphonie Diagonal, 1924, swirls, © Image
courtesy of Kino International.
Figure 9.1 Aaron Doulgas, Aspects of Negro Life: The Negro in an African
Setting, 1934. Oil on canvas, 274.3 x 274.3 cm. © Schomburg Center
for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Harlem.
Figure 9.2 Aaron Doulgas, Aspects of Negro Life: An Idyll of the Deep South,
1934. Oil on canvas, 146.7 x 351.2 cm. © Schomburg Center for
Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Harlem.
Figure 9.3 Aaron Doulgas, Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery through
Reconstruction, 1934. Oil on canvas, 146.7 x 351.2 cm. ©
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York
Public Library, Harlem.
Figure 9.4 Aaron Doulgas, Aspects of Negro Life: Song of the Towers, 1934. Oil
on canvas, 274.3 x 274.3cm. © Schomburg Center for Research in
Black Culture, The NewYork Public Library, Harlem.
Figure 9.5 Stuart Davis. Jackson’s Band, 1913. Pencil on paper, 50.8 x 40.3 cm.
Private collection. © Estate of Stuart Davis/DACS, London/VAGA,
New York 2010.
Figure 9.6 Stuart Davis and Duke Ellington at the opening of Davis’s exhibition
at the Downtown Gallery, New York, 1943. Private collection.
Figure 9.7 Arthur Dove. Swing Music (Louis Armstrong), 1938. Oil and wax
emulsion on canvas, 44.8 x 65.7 cm. Alfred Stieglitz Collection,
1949.540, Art Institute of Chicago. Photography © The Art Institute
of Chicago.


x List of Illustrations

Figure 9.8 Stuart Davis, Mural for Studio B, WNYC, Municipal Broadcasting
Company Radio Station, New York, 1939, oil on canvas, 213.4 x
335.3 cm, Art Commission of the City of New York, on extended
loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © Estate of
Stuart Davis/DACS, London/ VAGA, New York 2010.
Figure 9.9 Stuart Davis, Swing Landscape, mural for the Williamsburg Housing
Project, Brooklyn, 1938, oil on canvas, 220.3 x 400 cm, Photograph
by Michael Cavanagh and Kevin Montague, Copyright 2009, Indiana
University Art Museum, Bloomington, Indiana, #42.1. © Estate of
Stuart Davis/DACS, London/ VAGA, New York 2010.
Figure 9.10 Stuart Davis, Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors—Seventh Avenue Style,
1940. Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 113.98 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of the William H. Lane Foundation and the M. and M. Karolik
Collection, by exchange, 1983.120 Photograph © 2010 Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston. © Estate of Stuart Davis/DACS, London/ VAGA,
New York 2010.
Figure 10.1 A prepared piano by John Cage, after 1938. Source: Rich, American
Pioneers: Ives to Cage and Beyond, 151. © John Cage Trust.
Figure 10.2 Nam June Paik, Klavier Intégral, 1958-1963. Photo © Museum of
Modern Art Ludwig Foundation Vienna, former collection Hahn,
Cologne.
Figure 10.3 Henry Flynt, concert flyer for Young’s Compositions 1961 at
Harvard University, 1961, Source: Flynt, “Young in New York,
1960-62,” © with kind permission of Henry Flynt.
Figure 11.1 Patrick Saint-Jean, UPIC block diagram for Iannis Xenakis © Patrick
Saint-Jean.
Figure 11.2 Iannis Xenakis in Lille (Courtesy of Françoise Xenakis) © Iannis
Xenakis Archives, BnF.
Figure 11.3 Philips Pavilion photograph from Le Corbusier, Le Poème
Électronique Le Corbusier, 1958 © 2010 Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / F.L.C.
Figure 11.4 Front Page from Iannis Xenakis, Musiques Formelles, 1963
© Hermann, www.editions-hermann.fr.
Figure 11.5 Score of Metastaseis, Iannis Xenakis, Musiques Formelles, 1963
© Iannis Xenakis Archives, BnF.
Figure 11.6 Score of Pithoprakta, Iannis Xenakis, Musiques Formelles, 1963
© Iannis Xenakis Archives, BnF.
Figure 11.7 Sketches and diagrams of ruled surfaces from Le Corbusier, Le
Poème Électronique Le Corbusier, 1958 © 2010 Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / F.L.C.
Figure 11.8 Model of Philips Pavilion from Le Corbusier, Le Poème Électronique
Le Corbusier, 1958 © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
/ ADAGP, Paris / F.L.C.
Figure 11.9 Photograph of Philips Pavilion from Le Corbusier, Le Poème
Électronique Le Corbusier, 1958 © 2010 Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / F.L.C.


 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 xi

Figure 11.10 Third page of the score for Mycenae Alpha, 1978 © Iannis Xenakis
Archives, BnF.


 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

No edited volume would be possible without the hard work and

commitment of its contributors. Their good will, flexibility, and patience
with my requests and delays has been instrumental to bringing this book to
fruition. Many of them have their own acknowledgements: to archives,
executors of artists’ estates, and to their current institutions. These are too
many for me to cite here, but I extend my own thanks with theirs in
making this publication possible.
This book would never have been considered were it not for the
enthusiasm and encouragement I received from participants at a Royal
Musical Association conference in March 2008. From that event, Susan
Bagust (RMA) and Janet Snowman (RAM) convinced me to organise a
conference on Music and Modernism at The Courtauld Institute of Art,
where the then Head of Research, Patricia Rubin, and the able forces of
Cynthia de Souza and Ingrid Guiot at the Research Forum made certain of
its success. The continued support of the Research Forum and its new
Head, Caroline Arscott is of enormous benefit, both in allowing me the
opportunity to schedule practice-based music within a research
environment, and for their financial contribution to the image costs of this
volume. The RMA too has been most generous in meeting these
contributions, part-funding the initial conference and providing a further
grant towards images. Beyond the Research Forum, I would like to thank
the Courtauld as a whole for giving me both physical space and time to
prioritise this project. The Courtauld Gallery has been most helpful in
allowing me to programme music relevant to the world class collection it
holds. I cannot underestimate how much I have learnt from testing these
connections in practice. It has been truly enlightening, stimulating and
enjoyable to experience both painting and music in this alternative context.
For this, I also have to thank Henrietta Hine and Joff Whitten in Public
Programmes, and latterly, the London Consortium for Arts and Cultural
Exchange, who provided a small grant for me to further this work.


xiv Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Karin Kyburz of Staff Publications at the

Courtauld who has guided me through the challenges of copyright, to
Carol Koulikourdi of Cambridge Scholar’s Press for inviting me to publish
this volume, and Amanda Miller for her patience in awaiting the
manuscript. Finally, I am indebted to the family and friends who have
watched over the editing process with kindness, encouragement, and some
excellent cooking.


 INTRODUCTION

CHARLOTTE DE MILLE

Do you think music is so different to pictures? …

What is the good of the arts if they’re all interchangeable? What is the
good of the ear if it tells you the same as the eye? Helen’s one aim is to
translate tunes into the language of painting, and pictures into the language
of music. It’s very ingenious, and she says several pretty things in the
process, but what’s to be gained, I’d like to know? Oh its rubbish, radically
false. If Monet’s really Debussy, and Debussy’s really Monet, neither
gentleman is worth his salt.1

When Edward Morgan Forster gave this vehement statement to Margaret

Schlegel, the vivacious elder sister in his fourth published novel,
Howard’s End (1910), the author voiced a problem which was remarkably
conscious of current debate. Reflecting further upon music transposed into
literature verses music as music, Forster’s protagonist holds Richard
Wagner responsible for the “muddling of the arts.”2 That Forster
considered the subject sufficiently widespread to be included in a work of
fiction is telling. Moreover, it was Howard’s End which confirmed its
author as a serious force in modernist literature. But to follow the vein of
Forster’s novel, what is to be gained from embarking on a scholarly study
of exchange between the arts? It is this question which has exercised the
writers in this volume. Whether in marvelling at the works produced by
artists and composers who were convinced by the synaesthetic ideal, or in
uncovering the shrewd manipulation of the forms and expectations of the
other medium in order to appropriate them to differing creative conditions,
each chapter asserts richness and diversity belied by Margaret’s contention
that any such endeavour may be “radically false.”
Of course, this is far from the first volume attentive to intermedia and
nor is artistic exchange restricted to a particular cultural moment, despite
the exclusively nineteenth-century references in Forster’s novel.
Following the early work of Edward Lockspeiser, Peter Vergo has been
quietly insistent in his advocacy for this field of study in a series of
publications spanning thirty years. It is therefore with great pleasure that I


2 Introduction

am able to hand over to him for a lengthier introduction to cross-disciplinary

composition at the turn of the last century. Daniel Albright, Lydia Goehr,
Gabriel Josopovici, Richard Leppert and Simon Shaw-Miller provide
strong support to a subject which continues to attract serious scholarship.
In companion, Andrew Bowie’s extensive work between music and
philosophy is invaluable for its lucid exposition of modernist semiotics;
Carl Dahlhaus’ discussion of “absolute music” key to nineteenth-century
studies of the arts; and Brad Bucknell’s Literary Modernism and Musical
Aesthetics equally indicates the scope of a parallel field of research from a
literary perspective. The authors of this volume share backgrounds in
aesthetics, art and architectural history, film and media studies, and
musicology. Taken as a series of case studies spanning a period from the
1850s to the 1960s, the book traces the emergence, flowering, and
consolidation of correspondence between music and fine art. Periodisation
is consistently problematic, and exponentially difficult the moment one
works across disciplines. For the purposes of this volume, “Modernism”
has been limited to commence with Wagner’s “Art and Revolution”
(1849), and to close with the advent of electronic music. From disparate
examples common themes - critical discourse, formalism, subjectivity,
affect, and sensation – unite to form a cohesive argument not only for the
significance of the interchange of the arts in this period, but, I would
suggest, to cast new light on Modernism itself.
Angus Fletcher in his probing discussion of allegory defines the term
as that which “says one thing and means another”.3 It is useful to bear this
definition in mind when considering the claims or ideals of both musicians
and painters of the modern period. Alexander Scriabin scored a “luce” part
for Prometheus (1910), for which, according to visitors to his studio, he
made a modified organ to play coloured light; comparatively, František
Kupka’s Amorpha, Fugue in Two Colours (1912), orchestrates red and
blue – colours a fifth apart on most colour wheels – to render a visual
equivalent to the relation of tonic and dominant, a basic premise of fugal
structure. Sound is coloured, these works say, just as colour is audible.
Painters recognised the potential in the expressive but non-narrative
quality of instrumental music. Composers rediscovered chromaticism,
making use of microtones which may be most easily understood through
their correspondence to the multitude of densities and shades of colour. By
taking on the qualities of another medium both arts defied expectation: and
through these novel forms and intentions works proclaimed their avant-
garde pretensions. It can be of little surprise then, that critics of modernist
painting and music turned to a shared language to account for the works
they sought to describe. Colour, harmony, line, rhythm, and tone were


 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 3

applied interchangeably, accruing additional meaning as they were applied

outside their usual context. Just as surely as the critical vocabulary
expanded, so too was music increasingly valued for what it said outside
language: what Dahlhaus, following Richard Wagner on Ludwig van
Beethoven, has discussed as being “inaccessible”.4
Wagner found in Beethoven’s music (and the C sharp minor quartet in
particular), an “ideal subject” of “innermost processes”, a transcription of
Beethoven himself that eluded any other means of access to it. Wagner
was not alone in thinking of music in this way. In his seminal study on
consciousness Matter and Memory (1896), philosopher Henri Bergson
contended that if any “image-centre” in the brain existed, then it should be
“like a keyboard, played upon by memories.” Once struck by external
stimuli, this sense organ “executes at once its harmony of a thousand
notes, thus calling forth in a definite order, and at a single moment, a great
multitude of elementary sensations corresponding to all the points of the
sensory centre that are concerned.” What we would today call neurones,
Bergson terms “strings”, ready to “vibrate”.5 Music is the appropriate
metaphor for mental process so integral to our being we are barely able to
trace it. Compare now Wassily Kandinsky’s memorable definition of the
working of his concept of “Inner Need”, the guiding quality for every
profound response to experience: “Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the
hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand
which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.”6
Whether or not Kandinsky was cognisant of Bergson’s earlier description
is a consideration for another place; what is significant in this correspondence
of ideas is the role of musical metaphor to express the affect of
experiences, memories, and works of art. These three descriptions share a
conviction that our response is bodily. Seized by the moment, we are
physically transported, almost in spite of ourselves. Psychologically this
implies a change in the mode of comprehension, from one understood
rationally and in space, to one that takes full account of the subjectivity
and temporality of consciousness. With regard to theories of perception, it
implies a shift from the emphasis on the finished product to interest in the
process of making inherently bound in compositional form.
To a greater or lesser degree, each author has problematised the
structure, value and intention of musical and visual form. Opening the
section which most thoroughly considers the legacy of Wagner’s
gesamtkunstwerk, Diane V. Silverthorne considers formal relations
between music and book design at the Vienna Secession. She offers not
only a prescient reading of the stylistic synonymity of painters, illustrators,
designers and composers, but brings to light their actual joining in the


4 Introduction

publication of art song at the fin de siècle. Silverthorne argues that the
Secessionist journal Ver Sacrum was inherently musical, transposing
musical characteristics to the medium of design. Writing on Arnold
Böcklin, Spyros Petritakis offers a foil to Secessionist concerns. The
chapter excavates the origins of the discussion of music and painting in the
art criticism of a newly unified Germany. For Petritakis, such association
is intimately bound with the forging of a Germanic cultural identity,
understood firstly according to the history of great Germanic composers,
and secondly through a framework of what he terms “mythological
realism”. Placing Böcklin beside the compositional interests of Richard
Strauss, Petritakis considers that both artist and composer offer “an ironic
comment to the Wagnerian world view”. Part One closes with a return to
broadly Wagnerian interests as they were transposed into late nineteenth-
century scientific investigations into synaesthesia. Isabel Wünsche
demonstrates the significance of Hermann von Helmholtz and William
Wundt’s prioritisation of sensory perception for Russian artists Wassily
Kandinsky, Nikolai Kulbin and Mikhail Matyushin in their advocacy of art
as a means to transcendental knowledge. For these artist-theorists, the
unification of sensory perception in a gesamtkunstwerk not only had
extraordinary affective power, but the power to further the evolutionary
progress of those who experienced it.
The second section considers the correspondence of visual art and
music in late nineteenth-century France through the lens of contemporary
criticism. In the first of two case studies, James H. Rubin suggests that
Gustave Courbet hoped to encompass a more-than-visual experience by
evoking, if not music, sound. By returning to the writing of François-
Joseph Fétis and Champfleury (Jules François Felix Fleury-Husson),
Rubin advocates that Courbet and Wagner shared the desire to animate a
totalising and utopian world, whereby Courbet’s landscapes find proximity
with the “‘forest voices’ of Wagner”. Champfleury is central to the second
case study, Corrinne Chong’s multi-faceted essay on the mid nineteenth-
century concept of the vague. Reviewing the correspondence between
auditory sensation, visual perception and formal expression, Chong brings
a wealth of contemporary criticism to light in order to re-assess the critical
reception of artist Henri Fantin-Latour. She argues that Fantin-Latour
developed a unique style that belonged exclusively to the domain of music
in a score of lush and atmospheric lithographs, pastels and paintings that
are unified by a pervasive, vaporous mist. Influenced by Hector Berlioz,
Fantin-Latour sought to simulate what he perceived as music’s vagueness:
a defect which Chong argues only became a virtue when purely instrumental
music was deemed superior by the formalist proponents of absolute music.


 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 5

We remain in the late nineteenth-century for Ayla Lepine’s study of

the aspiration to transformative experience embedded in both architecture
and music. Focusing on two ecclesiastical commissions in Cambridge
undertaken by Gothic Revival architect G. F. Bodley, Lepine’s subjects
combine text, image and sound in site-specific work which invites multi-
sensory perception. Utilising Richard Leppert’s play on “site” and “sight”
in his description of the human body, Lepine is attentive to the “liminal”
quality of sacred spaces as both physical and visionary. If the arts allow us
to glimpse that which is beyond cognition, then for Bodley and his
Ecclesiologist colleagues, it is through artistic endeavour that the reality of
God is best expressed. It is of course the transcendental that determined
Wassily Kandinsky’s canonical Concerning the Spiritual in Art. In the
second chapter of this section, Charlotte de Mille reviews the redefinition
of beauty in this book and others to emphasise a turn to interiorisation at
the heart of Modernism. Continuing the discussion of the relation between
text, image and sound, the chapter offers a comparative analysis of work
by an unlikely combination of German Expressionists and the central
protagonists of the Bloomsbury group, namely Wassily Kandinsky,
Arnold Schönberg, Roger Fry, Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. From
this specific context de Mille considers how structural innovations
rendered spatial, multi-perspectival music, and temporal symphonic
painting. The chapter argues that operating according to possibility rather
than resolution, Modernism involved a radical change in perception that
was fundamental to the re-writing, re-painting, and re-composing of art for
contemporary times.
In Section Four, “Music and Modern Life”, Malcolm Cook and Jody
Patterson discuss the use of music in instances of art forms intended for a
mass audience, cinema and mural, yet in neither case is this art for mere
entertainment. Cook’s detailed exposition of avant-garde films by Hans
Richter, Viking Eggeling and Walther Ruttmann demonstrates just how
engaged each work was with questions of musical form. Distinguishing
medium specific or material analogies between the arts from the
endeavour for synthetic unity, Cook questions the accepted reading of
these film makers. Whereas Richter’s Rhythmus 21 (1921) is often
regarded a less sophisticated experiment than Ruttmann’s Lichtspiel Opus
I (1921), the former exhibits attention to the characteristics of a new
medium in line with Greenbergian Modernism, while the latter arguably
remains closer to the out-moded nineteenth-century search for a synaesthetic
gesamtkunstwerk. For Patterson, the “visual equivalence” of Stuart Davis’
painting to American hot jazz is far from innocent, but tightly bound to the
importance of jazz as an indigenous music appealing to and co-opted by


6 Introduction

the political left during the Great Depression and after as a voice for
democratic change.
The final section considers the waning of Modernism with the advent
of the renowned ad-hoc performances of Fluxus artists and the early
electronic experiments of Iannis Xenakis. For Melissa Warak, the
explicitly multi-media events of La Monte Young and his contemporaries
both operated from within the legacy of modernist debates surrounding
synaesthesia and made significant innovations in the realm of multi-
sensory performance. Warak offers a reading of these visual-musical
activities as a modern type of Zen meditation, where audience and
performers alike entered into universal connectivity with the cosmos as
well as one another. Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music combined light,
abstract images, sound, and physical vibration, harnessing technological
advances and Eastern metaphysics simultaneously. It is the scope of
technological experimentation which underpins the explorations of
composer-architect Xenakis. Olga Touloumi charts the immediate context
of Xenakis’ collaboration with Le Corbusier on the Philips Pavilion as
formative for the composer’s invention of a new compositional tool: the
Unité Polyagogique Informatique du CEMAMu (UPIC). She argues that
not only did the drawing board of UPIC promise to bring design into
musical composition, but also to fulfil a certain synaesthetic promise; to
write sounds and to read traces.
Athough Xenakis’ collaboration with Le Corbusier places him
biographically within an enviable legacy of Modernist artists, there can be
no doubt that the artists of Fluxus regarded Modernism historically: self-
consciously distant from any claim to artistic genius. Yet just as this book
could have argued that Modernism should take account of the rise of
“absolute” music from the beginning of the nineteenth century, so too are
there instances of “late” Modernism, such as Benjamin Britten’s work
from the 1970s. Conceptually, as the series editor to a recent compendium
on Arnold Schönberg commented, “Modernism created its own
precursors; it made the past new, as well as the present.”7 In spite of
radically altered circumstance we continue to operate in its legacy,
whether in working against its limitations or responding to its enthusiasms,
that “present” is reconstructed in each new interjection into Modernist
debate.


 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 7

Notes

1
E.M. Forster, Howard’s End, (London: Penguin, 2000), 33.
2
ibid., 33.
3
Angus Fletcher, Allegory, the theory of a symbolic mode, (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1970), 2.
4
Carl Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, trans. Roger Lustig, (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1989), 133.
5
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory (1896), trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W.
Scott Palmer, (New York: Dover, 2004), 165.
6
Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911), trans. M.T.H. Sadler,
(New York: Dover, 1977), 25.
7
Daniel Albright in C. M. Cross and R.A. Berman, Political and Religious Ideas
in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg, (New York: Garland, 2000), xi.


 HOW TO PAINT A FUGUE

PETER VERGO

I. Praeludium
In 1912, the Czech painter František Kupka, then living in Paris,
showed two epoch-making canvases at the Salon d’Automne. They had
very similar titles: Amorpha: Warm Chromatics and Amorpha: Fugue in
Two Colours (Fig. I.1). These were pictures to which the artist himself
attached particular importance. He even described them as his “painter’s
credo” – not surprising, perhaps, since these two works were undoubtedly
among the most advanced examples of abstract art created anywhere in
Europe at this time. The following year, 1913, Kupka gave an interview to
the Paris correspondent of the New York Times, a writer by the name of
Warshawsky. In the course of that interview the artist declared: “I believe
I can find something between sight and hearing and I can produce a fugue
in colors, as Bach has done in music.”1
The boldness of this statement is breathtaking, with its allusion to “a
fugue in colours”. Kupka simply takes for granted that it is possible to
translate the vocabulary of one art form into the language of another, as if
it were the most self-evident thing in the world – which, quite clearly, it
isn’t. And yet, if we look across a wide range of writings about both the
theory and practice of art, we will find similar assumptions occurring
almost everywhere, in every period and in quite different contexts. For
example, in his often-quoted letter to Matteo de’ Pasti concerning the
completion of the church of S. Francesco in Rimini, Leon Battista Alberti
wrote about the problem of how to reconcile the existing building with his
new design for the façade. The façade, he insists, cannot be integrated with
the dimensions of the nave, because “the widths and heights of the chapels
disturb me”. But he is adamant that the “measures and proportions” of the
pilasters must be respected, since “we want to help that which has been
made and not spoil that which has to be made ... Otherwise, anything that
you change will bring all this music into discord.”2
When Alberti writes about being disturbed by the widths and heights
of the chapels, he evidently means that he finds their proportions
 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 9

aesthetically displeasing. Likewise, the “music” of his newly designed

façade, which he was so anxious to preserve at all costs, depended on
observing the correct proportions: in this case, those of the pilasters. This
idea of music as proportion – and hence as synonymous with order – still
prevailed right up until the Baroque period and beyond. Even in the
Romantic era, the notion of music’s essential orderliness did not entirely
disappear but continued to play an important role in thinking about the
relationship between it and the visual arts.
But by the latter part of the nineteenth century, other ideas about music
began to assume ever-increasing importance. Of these ideas, the most
influential concerned the essentially abstract nature of music and its innately
expressive character – that is, its ability to touch our emotions directly by
means not immediately susceptible of rational explanation. Of course, one
can easily cite numerous examples of music that is not abstract: the kind of
vocal music whose task is to underline or to convey more effectively the
meaning of some poem, text or libretto. Opera, oratorio and song all fall
into this category. But it was immediately obvious that music without
words – non-vocal music – was not meaningless simply because it lacked
any kind of text or narrative. On the contrary, as the nineteenth century
drew towards its close, purely orchestral or instrumental music with its
self-referential tones, its “abstract” patterns of melodic lines and well-
defined formal structures, was increasingly cited as the paradigm of an art
that was immediately expressive, coherent and meaningful without any
dependence on narrative or representation.3
It is easy to see why the idea of an inherently expressive and at the
same time essentially abstract art was of considerable interest to visual
artists, especially those who were increasingly turning away from the
depiction of subject-matter or any kind of representation. And not just
abstract artists or those who, during the early years of the twentieth
century, began toying with the idea of an “entirely new art” that, as the
architect and designer August Endell wrote, would “mean nothing and
represent nothing and remind us of nothing”, but that would “move our
souls as deeply and as powerfully as only the tones of music have hitherto
been capable of doing”.4 Even painters like the Nabi Maurice Denis, who
were certainly not advocating an entirely non-representational style of
painting, drew attention to the purely abstract resources of pictorial art,
while querying the more traditional tasks of painting, regarded primarily
as a means of telling stories or conveying messages of some kind. In his
famous manifesto entitled “Definition of Neo-Traditionism”, published in
1890, Denis reminded his readers of precisely this point when he wrote
10 How to Paint a Fugue

It is important to remember that a painting, before being a war horse, a

nude woman or any other kind of representation, is essentially a flat canvas
covered with colours arranged in a certain order.5

II. Exposition: The “Art” of Fugue

The idea of music as a fundamentally abstract art evidently captured
Kupka’s imagination – scarcely surprising, given that he himself started
experimenting with the possibility of abstract painting during the years
from around 1910 onwards. But that was not his only reason for being
interested in this topic. What intrigued him even more, or so I would
argue, were the formal structures characteristic of music: structures for
which visual art could propose no convincing equivalent.
What music could boast, but what painting seemingly lacked, was the
possibility of exploiting in all sorts of ingenious and inventive ways a
number of ready-made forms and procedures which, from the eighteenth
century onwards, assumed ever-increasing importance for composers of
the Classical and Romantic eras. While some of these forms – for
example, variation form, as used by Beethoven in the slow movement of
his Seventh Symphony or by Brahms in his Haydn Variations– were
relatively fluid, others were more strictly determined in ways that artists
searching for new structuring principles in painting began to regard with
barely disguised envy. Of these ready-made forms, by far the most
significant, sophisticated and intriguing were the sonata and the fugue –
and here, inevitably, one thinks of the quotation from Kupka’s 1912 inter-
view, cited above, in which he declared his ambition to paint “a fugue in
colours, as Bach had done in music”.
Musicians and musicologists will object – as well they might – that,
strictly speaking, a fugue in music is not a form but a procedure: that is, a
way of organising one’s musical material according to well-defined
principles, but which still left composers a considerable degree of freedom
as regards what kind of material and how it should be handled. These
principles were, none the less, not just abstract theoretical propositions
about how music in general ought to be composed; they were clearly
reflected in specific pieces of music which, despite the many differences
of style and approach that might serve to distinguish one from another, had
in common a number of easily recognised characteristics. These, for the
most part, had to do with the juxtapositions (and often repetitions or
adaptations) of certain kinds of melody – which is why visual artists
tended to think of fugue as a form rather than a procedure, since those
 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 11

juxtapositions and repetitions tended to call to mind the shapes and forms
on which pictorial composition depended.
The most important principle that governs the method of fugue
composition is that of canonic imitation: that is, one part or “voice”
imitating another. The first voice enters with a well-defined and hence
easily recognized melody; once that melody is complete, a second voice
enters, imitating the tune that we have just heard. (In order for fugue to
exist at all, it is necessary to have at least two parts or voices, but there
may be more: three, four, even five voices, each imitating its predecessor
in turn until all the voices have entered with either an exact repetition or
some variant of the original melody.) When the first voice has completed
its exposition of the melody, however, it does not fall silent; on the
contrary, it continues to expound further musical material that, in the
majority of cases, is derived from or closely related to the original melody
(the “fugue subject”; in some cases, there may be two or even three
distinct “fugue subjects”, but this additional complexity need not vex us
here). Once all the voices have been heard, there follows a further
development of the same material, which typically will take us through a
succession of increasingly distant keys until finally all the threads of
melody are drawn together again in a final reprise that in some ways
resembles the recapitulation of the opening section of a sonata-form
movement.
Most people tend to associate the term “fugue” with the name of
Johann Sebastian Bach, just as Kupka did. Again, this is scarcely
surprising, since Bach, although he did not actually invent the form of the
fugue, is generally acknowledged to have been its greatest master. Even in
his own lifetime, he was referred to admiringly as “that learned musician”
largely because of his mastery of the complex rules of fugal composition
and of polyphony generally. Perhaps the most striking examples of Bach’s
virtuosity in manipulating – even, to some extent, reinventing – the rules
that governed how a fugue should be composed is his last major,
unfinished keyboard composition entitled Die Kunst der Fuge, The Art of
Fugue which was left unfinished when the composer died in 1750.
Remarkably, every one of its constituent movements – nineteen in all – is
ultimately based on a single musical theme, the simplest and least adorned
version of which is heard at the beginning of the first fugue. But if that
suggests a degree of sameness about the work overall, nothing could be
further from the truth because of Bach’s remarkable facility in varying not
just the shape of the melody but also the structure of the fugue itself with
each new movement. Sometimes he will juxtapose the original melody
with an upside-down version of the same tune, as in the case of the fifth
12 How to Paint a Fugue

movement, Contrapunctus V, where a rhythmically altered variant of the

theme is followed immediately by its inversion. Even more strikingly, in
Contrapunctus IX, four successive statements of an intricate new fugue
subject, itself ultimately derived from the original theme, are followed by
four further statements of the theme itself, here extended by means of very
long note values and treated as a secondary fugue subject in its own right.
These re-statements of the unadorned original theme sound against (or,
rather, in conjunction with) the continuing development of the more
intricate initial fugue subject in the other three voices: a “double fugue”.
Long before the end of this magisterial but uncompleted work, the listener
is convinced that there can be no end or limit (other than the limits
imposed by a composer’s lack of inventiveness or imagination) to the
formal possibilities offered by the method of fugue composition, widely
regarded as the strictest and most demanding – but, in reality, the freest –
of all musical procedures.

III. Development: The “Bach Revival”

Given the esteem he enjoyed in his own lifetime, which included the
favour and patronage of Frederick, King of Prussia, it seems astonishing
that Bach’s reputation was partly lost to sight for half a century or more
after his death. The first milestone in the modern Bach revival was
Mendelssohn’s epoch-making performance of the St Matthew Passion in
Berlin in 1829, which opened the ears of German audiences to the beauty
and expressive power of Bach’s choral music. But there was also the
equally remarkable phenomenon of the early twentieth-century Bach
revival, one of the centres of which was Paris. In an article recalling the
heyday of Symbolism and the origins of the Nabi group, Maurice Denis
remembered how, in the French capital, “Bach was performed to capacity
audiences, while Romantic music was held up to ridicule”.6 This explosion
of interest among an enlightened public may have been partly due to the
passionate advocacy of the eminent Belgian composer César Franck, a
stalwart champion of Bach, while Franck’s pupil Vincent d’Indy became
the director of a school in Paris, the “Schola Cantorum”, founded in 1896,
which was dedicated to the study and performance of early music.
During the first years of the new century, pupils and former members
of the “Schola” founded both a Bach Society and a Handel Society in
Paris; the organist of Gustave Bret’s Société Bach, established in 1904,
was the great Albert Schweitzer, whose famous monograph on Bach first
appeared in French the following year.7 Another major figure in the
Parisian Bach revival was the Polish-born pianist Wanda Landowska. At
 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 13

the Bach Society’s inaugural concert in 1905, Landowska played the

composer’s Concerto in G minor on her specially borrowed Pleyel
harpsichord, one of the first authentic performances in modern times. In
the years that followed, her legendary interpretations of Bach’s keyboard
works helped greatly to increase the popularity of his secular and
instrumental music generally.
Visual artists then living in Paris were, of course, interested in music to
varying degrees (Picasso, for example, stoutly maintained throughout his
life that he knew “nothing whatever” about it), but clearly many painters
responded enthusiastically to the vibrant musical life of the capital and to
the concerts and recitals taking place all around them.8 One of them was
Georges Braque, who paid tribute to Bach not only in his major Cubist
painting entitled Hommage à J. S. Bach (1912) but in at least half a dozen
further paintings, drawings and papiers collés created between 1912 and
1914, all of which make explicit reference to the German composer. At
least some of these works suggest that the painter was intrigued by the
rhyming analogy between Bach’s name and his own: Bach and Braque.
Often the letters B – A – C – H are woven into the pictorial structure,
sometimes accompanied by fragments of notation and other references to
music. In certain instances these written characters, although actually
drawn or painted, have the appearance of being stencilled, a feature typical
of both Picasso’s and Braque’s œuvre of around 1912. On other occasions,
the name Bach forms part of a longer inscription, as in Braque’s oil
painting known as Violon et clarinette. Here, the fragmentary “… mme de
Soire … Bach” calls to mind an advertising poster or a programme printed
to accompany a recital of Bach’s music, lending further support to the
hypothesis that the frequent musical events associated with the Parisian
Bach revival may have played a significant part in drawing Braque’s
attention to the great master of fugue.
Other artists sometimes included equally specific – and, on occasion,
specifically verbal – allusions to Bach as integral components of their
pictorial works. One especially striking example is a work by the American
painter Marsden Hartley, entitled Musical Theme No. 2 (1912; Fig. I.2).
Many of Hartley’s paintings are known to have been inspired by music or
incorporate musical allusions of one kind or another. In this case,
however, the words “Bach Préludes et Fugues” are actually inscribed on
the canvas, as if the artist feared that the musical reference might
otherwise be lost on the uninitiated viewer. Equally telling is the fact that
this work was created in Paris since Hartley’s works done prior to his
arrival there make no allusion to musical subject-matter of this kind. Nor
is it a matter simply of style, even though the restricted range of colours
14 How to Paint a Fugue

and the predominance of geometric elements, consisting mainly of large,

sombrely painted planes of brown and ochre, betray the unmistakable
influence of Parisian Cubism, especially the work of Picasso and Braque.
Hartley could have seen recent works by both artists during his visits to
the legendary apartment on the rue de Fleurus occupied by the poetess
Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo – or, in somewhat greater numbers, at
Kahnweiler’s gallery in Paris. But the verbal allusion to Bach speaks
equally clearly of the Parisian milieu in which the work was created, the
composer’s keyboard works, in particular, being a staple ingredient of the
rich diet regularly offered to consumers of the varied musical delights
available in the French capital.9
Other than this inscription, however, there is nothing in the picture
itself to link it with music. It is certainly not a portrait of Bach nor are
there any identifiable depictions of musical instruments or fragments of
notation. If anything is meant to suggest music, it is rather the painting’s
rigid disposition of abstract rectilinear forms, which Hartley perhaps saw
as the visual counterpart of the strict compositional principles that
governed the structure of Bach’s fugues.

IV. Recapitulation: “A Fugue in Colours”

Hartley’s painting may have been conceived as an abstract and
generalised act of homage to Bach. Or perhaps it was meant as a tribute to
the power of music more generally. However, we must look elsewhere in
order to find artists who attempted quite consciously and literally to
translate the forms and procedures of music into their own – that is, visual
– language. One place to look is among works produced at the Bauhaus in
Weimar (subsequently in Dessau) in Germany during the first decade of
that institution’s existence (1919-1928). The Bauhaus had an extraordinary
knack of attracting musically minded artists as teachers and professors,
Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky
among them. Bach, in particular, was constantly on their minds. Feininger
kept a harmonium in his studio, on which (or so he claimed) he could play
all of Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier by
heart, sometimes practising for between six and eight hours a day.10 This
was evidently no new preoccupation: one of his early humorous drawings,
dating from around 1890, shows the perspiring artist seated at the
keyboard. Its caption reads: “Leo studies Bach fugues”.11 Another drawing
is entitled simply “The Ill-Tempered Clavier”. During the 1920s,
Feininger also composed his own keyboard fugues in emulation of Bach,
several of which were performed by the artist’s son Laurence on the organ
 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 15

of the parish church in the little village of Ost-Deep in Pomerania, a

favourite summer holiday destination. In December 1924 the pianist Willi
Apel included Feininger’s Fugue IX in E minor as part of a recital given in
the Meistersaal of the Weimar Bauhaus.12 The following year, the artist
allowed his Fugue XI to appear in Carl Einstein and Paul Westheim’s
landmark publication Europa-Almanach in a facsimile reproduction.13 But
long before that, he had clearly been immersing himself in the study of
Bach and of fugue. For Christmas 1919, his wife presented him with a
musical score, inscribed “Leo Dear from Julia, 24.12.19”. It was a copy of
Max Ritter’s critical edition of Bach’s The Art of Fugue.14
Johannes Itten was also an accomplished musician and a fine pianist.
Paul Klee’s father, who had been the young Itten’s music teacher,
maintained that the boy could just as soon have turned to music as to
painting for a career. By his own account, Itten could easily sight-read at
the piano a wide range of music including difficult pieces by avant-garde
composers, in addition to the classics: Bach’s Toccata in D minor, the
“Song of the Wood Dove” from Schönberg’s Gurrelieder and works by
the contemporary Viennese composer (and friend of Itten’s) Josef
Matthias Hauer. In a letter to his pupil Anna Höllering, he wrote that he
had been spending whole days in his studio “playing Bach and Hauer on
the magnificent grand piano … Yesterday, I even started composing.”15
The level of musical talent to be found among the staff of the Bauhaus
is truly astonishing, given that the institution, although it had a department
of theatre studies, had no music department as such. Klee was a violinist
of professional standard, who had played with the Berne municipal
orchestra before the First World War; like Itten, he too was obsessed by
Bach, whom he sometimes compared favourably with the famous painters
of his own day. “I play solo sonatas by Bach”, he had written in a brief
diary entry dated 10 November 1897. “What is Böcklin, compared to
them? It makes me smile.”
However, Klee went beyond either Itten or Feininger in seeking a
precise pictorial equivalent for musical forms including the strict
procedures of fugue. His painting Fugue in Red of 1921 exhibits several
easily identified “motifs” which it is tempting to compare to the subjects
and counter-subjects of a fugue composition. These motifs are not only
repeated but also adapted and transformed in various ways which include
extension and diminution, inversion and retrogression, just as in music,
while Klee’s skilful use of transparent washes of colour and subtle
gradations of tone enabled him to exploit the overlapping repetition of
visual forms in a way that immediately recalls the successive entries of the
overlapping “voices” of a fugue in two, three or four parts. And in the
16 How to Paint a Fugue

fourth of the series of lectures he gave at the Weimar Bauhaus in the

winter of 1921-2, he also devised a “graphic transcription” of the fugal
slow movement (marked adagio) from Bach’s Sonata no. 6 in G major for
violin and cembalo, BWV 1019, as a way of impressing upon students his
notion of what he called “visual rhythm”.16
But perhaps the most remarkable instance of an artist trying literally to
translate the forms of music into the language of visual art can be found in
the work of the lesser-known Hungarian-Romanian artist Henrik
Neugeboren. Like Itten, Neugeboren was both a painter and a gifted
pianist, who had studied piano and composition in Berlin with the famous
Italian composer (and editor of Bach’s keyboard works) Ferruccio Busoni.
Neugeboren visited the Bauhaus briefly in the course of 1928, attracted no
doubt by the lively musical life of that institution. He may also have been
drawn there by the presence of artists such as Kandinsky and Klee, both of
whom he greatly admired and who, like Neugeboren himself, were
preoccupied with the relationship between painting and music.
The following year, the school’s house magazine bauhaus published an
article by Neugeboren entitled “A Bach Fugue Depicted”. What it
described was a system of the artist’s own devising, whose aim was to
depict, note for note and measure for measure, four crucial bars (52-55) of
the eighth fugue from Book 1 of Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, a
three-part fugue in the taxing key of Eb minor. The three parts or “voices”
of the fugue were to be represented by three lines on a piece of graph
paper, each drawn in a different-coloured ink. The vertical sides of each
square of the graph denoted two semitones or one whole tone (pitch), the
horizontal sides two quavers or one crotchet (duration).
However, this “graphic representation” was not conceived as a musical
drawing in its own right, as had been the diagrams Klee used in order to
flesh out his lectures or the illustrations from Kandinsky’s Bauhaus
treatise Point and Line to Plane (1926, Fig. I.3) It was, in fact, a first idea
for a sculpture: not just any sculpture, but a monument to Bach. Such a
monument, Neugeboren thought, would be a more fitting tribute to the
composer than what he called all the “familiar trashy figures on pedestals
with their rolls of manuscript paper”.17 At the same time, it was intended
to serve as a more vivid representation of Bach’s music itself. But since he
himself lacked the requisite technical competence, Neugeboren relied
upon two members of the Bauhaus to bring this idea closer to realisation:
Konrad Püschel, a student of László Moholy-Nagy, who produced a
stereometric drawing that showed what such a monument might look like,
and Gerda Marx, who created a small three-dimensional model. Both of
these were illustrated in the 1929 issue of bauhaus magazine that also
 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 17

carried Neugeboren’s article. However, not until after the artist’s death
was a full-scale monument based on his designs executed in steel and sited
in the park adjacent to the municipal hospital in Leverkusen in Germany.
The aim of literally “translating” four bars of a given piece of music
into a work of visual art may strike many readers of this article as
extraordinary. But the idea of transposing music into the medium of
sculpture puts perhaps an even greater strain on one’s credulity. Most
music composed before about 1950 must be listened to in a linear way and
in the intended direction. A Brahms symphony, for example, is meant to
be played forward, not backward, although the same is not necessarily true
of works by later twentieth-century composers such as John Cage and
Earle Brown, who created what became known as aleatoric music:
compositions which allowed the performer a significant measure of choice
about things like where to start, the pitch and duration of notes, even
which way up the score should be read or how many times a particular
pattern of notes should be repeated. But with more conventional music,
only by starting at the beginning and continuing until one comes to the end
(and then stopping, in the words of Lewis Carroll) can one apprehend the
structure of a given piece and the carefully calculated relationships (tonal
or temporal or thematic) that exist between one component part and
another.
It might well be argued that painting does indeed resemble music in
this respect, even though the latter is a more obviously temporal art. When
we contemplate a painting, its underlying structure and the relationship
between its various parts becomes apparent only as the spectator’s eye
traverses the picture surface, following certain carefully pre-determined
paths: an exercise that, once again, demands the expenditure of a certain
amount of time as well as mental effort. But a three-dimensional sculpture
is more like a building than a painting in this respect since there is no
obvious standpoint from which it must be viewed but rather a multiplicity
of possible viewpoints. Moreover, in the case of a free-standing sculpture
such as Neugeboren’s Leverkusen monument, we can even walk around
the piece and view it from behind, something for which there is no real
equivalent in music. What would a fugue sound like if listened to from the
back? We do not know; and, although there are cancrizans and mirror
fugues and other species of fugue that depend crucially on the principles
of inversion or retrograde movement, it is still difficult to imagine what
would constitute the verso of a musical composition apart, of course, from
the other side of the manuscript paper on which it is written. Neugeboren’s
method, for all its advantages in proposing a system of equivalents more
18 How to Paint a Fugue

closely related to the realities of musical perception such as the pitch and
duration of notes, does not really address any of these problems.

V. Coda
But if the medium of sculpture seems to pose more problems than it
solves in confronting the problem of how to translate musical forms and
procedures into the language of visual art, is painting better placed to offer
solutions of various kinds? And, if so, are we convinced by any of the
pictorial solutions proposed by the multitude of paintings whose titles
allude unequivocally to music including, of course, those titles that
specifically mention fugue? Are such paintings really “musical”; and are
any of them really like a fugue in music? Here, the image of the painting
with which we began, Kupka’s Amorpha, springs involuntarily to mind. I
do not mean to suggest that this work was intended as a visual
representation of any particular piece of music. But I do believe that an
understanding of the principles according to which fugues are structured
may help us to grasp the nature of the deliberate choices the artist made in
composing his picture.
Consider, for example, the two large discs or circles which dominate
the painting and which create the illusion of three-dimensional space – that
is, depth –within the picture. As a consequence of this illusion, we “read”
one circle as being placed in front of the other; thus, we allow ourselves to
be persuaded that a certain distance separates them. Is this meant to evoke
the spatial separation of two voices, since in analysing a fugue
musicologists will nearly always specify the musical interval between the
two melodic lines by referring to imitation “at the octave”, “at the fourth”,
“at the fifth”, and so on? For that Kupka’s painting alludes to a fugue in
two parts is beyond all reasonable doubt, the two “voices” being clearly
represented by the spiralling lines, one red, the other blue. (Apart from
red, blue, black and white, there are no other colours in the painting.) Not
only that but, as the two lines criss-cross and overlap, they modify one
another, perhaps calling to mind the way in which the juxtaposition of
melodic lines within a fugue creates consonances and dissonances that
between them determine the overall harmonic structure of the piece. And,
while my use of the word “spiralling” is scarcely exact, since lines within
a painting do not actually move in the way that this verb suggests, few
would deny that there are strong suggestions of movement within the
painting, conveyed principally by the artist’s use of line. Other terms such
as “crossing” and “overlapping” and “interlacing” also appear appropriate
ways of describing what is “going on” within the picture. Since all of these
 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 19

words imply definite kinds of movement, it appears reasonable to

conclude that Kupka deliberately aimed to evoke through this work (and
its title would seem to support this hypothesis) the sense of forward
motion on which not only fugue but, in fact, nearly all music crucially
depends.
The inescapable fact that painting can only suggest or imply movement
by using various kinds of illusion or trickery was one obvious
disadvantage of that art: a drawback to which, in the course of the
eighteenth century alone, writers and critics from Castel to Reynolds to
Diderot had all drawn attention. Thus, any claim that visual art could
successfully imitate the “essentially mobile character of music” was, in the
end, fundamentally flawed.18 But by the early twentieth century, there
existed a new visual medium that, for the first time, offered the possibility
of incorporating the passage of time and hence of genuinely representing
movement rather than merely suggesting it. That new medium was, of
course, film. One of the striking things about the early history of abstract-
experimental film is just how many artists-turned-film-makers tried their
hand at creating “musical” films – and not just “musical” in a general
sense, but films that actually sought once again to emulate specific
musical forms. As I have suggested elsewhere, Viking Eggeling’s
Diagonal Symphony of 1925, for example, seems to be based in a quite
literal fashion on the structure of a sonata-form movement in music.19 By
their use of musical titles, other artists like Hans Richter and Walther
Ruttmann also clearly indicated their determination to exploit what they
saw as the musical properties of film, as in the case of Richter’s Fugue in
Red and Green (1921-3) or the series of silent films that Ruttmann created
during the 1920s, to which he gave the title Opus I, Opus II, etc. But that
is a whole other fascinating story which, to this day, remains woefully
under-researched, the telling of which would far exceed the scope of this
article.20
20 How to Paint a Fugue

Fig. I.2: Marsden Hartley, Musical Theme No. 2 (Bach, Préludes et fugues), 1912,
oil on canvas, 60.9 x 50.8 cm, Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, © Witt
library, Courtauld Institute of Art.
 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 21

Fig. I.3: Wassily Kandinsky, diagrammatic representation of the transition to the

second subject of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, © W.
Kandinsky, Point and Line to Plane (Munich, 1926); ADAGP, Paris and DACS,
London 2010.
22 How to Paint a Fugue

Notes
1
[W. Warshawsky] “‘Orpheism’ Latest of Painting Cults. Paris School, Led by
François Kupka, Holds That Color Affects Senses Like Music,” New York Times,
Sunday, 19 October 1913, sec. 3-4, 4.
2
For discussion of this well-known letter see Peter Vergo, That Divine Order:
Music and the Visual Arts from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century, (London:
Phaidon, 2005), 155-6; Howard Saalman, “Alberti’s Letter to Matteo de’ Pasti
Revisited,” in Cecil L Striker, ed., Architectural Studies in Memory of Richard
Krautheimer, (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1996), 147ff.
3
In this connection, the key 19th-century text is the influential essay by Eduard
Hanslick, On the Beautiful in Music, first published in 1854 and repeatedly
reissued and expanded thereafter; for a modern critical edition of the text, showing
the numerous amendments and revisions Hanslick made in the course of the first
ten editions, see Dietmar Strauß, ed., Eduard Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen,
(Mainz: B. Schott’s Söhne, 1990), vol. 1: Historisch-kritische Ausgabe. It was here
that Hanslick advanced the view that music consisted of nothing more or less than
“sounding forms in motion”; he denied, however, that it could convey specific
ideas or feelings.
4
August Endell, “Formenschönheit und dekorative Kunst”, Dekorative Kunst, 1:2,
(November 1897), 75.
5
“Se rappeler qu’un tableau – avant d’être un cheval de bataille, une femme nue,
ou une quelconque anecdote – est essentiellement une surface plane recouverte de
couleurs en un certain ordre assemblées”, quoted after Maurice Denis, Du
symbolisme au classicisme; Théories. Textes réunis et présentés par Olivier
Revault d’Allonnes, (Paris: Hermann, 1964), 33.
6
“De Gauguin et de van Gogh au classicisme,” first published in L’Occident, May
1909, quoted after Maurice Denis, Du symbolisme au classicisme, (as preceding
note), 117.
7
J. S. Bach, le musicien-poète, (Leipzig, 1905). Schweitzer’s Bach monograph
appeared in an expanded German edition in 1908.
8
See Fernande Olivier, Picasso and his Friends, trans. by Jane Miller, (London:
Heinemann, 1964), 125.
9
For a more extended discussion of Hartley’s relationship to music see my
forthcoming monograph The Music of Painting: Music, Modernism and the Visual
Arts from the Romantics to John Cage, (London: Phaidon, 2010).
10
Letter to Elisabeth Mayer dated 18 May 1918, cited in Florens Deuchler, Lyonel
Feininger. Sein Weg zum Bauhaus-Meister, (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1996), 176.
11
Reproduced in ibid., 175.
12
See Karin von Maur, “Feininger und die Kunst der Fuge,” in Roland März, ed.,
Lyonel Feininger: von Gelmeroda nach Manhattan. Retrospektive der Gemälde
[catalogue of the exhibition shown in Berlin and Munich during 1998-9], (Berlin:
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin/G+H Verlag, 1998), 281.
13
Carl Einstein and Paul Westheim, eds., Europa Almanach: Malerei, Literatur,
Musik …, (Potsdam: Gustav Kiepenheuer, 1925), betw. 88 and 89.
 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 23

14
Joh. Seb. Bachs Kunst der Fuge. Mit in den Notentext eingefügten Analysen und
Bemerkungen, (Leipzig, 1910); see Deuchler, 223 and n. 179. The printed music
contains pencilled fingering in Feininger’s own handwriting.
15
Letter dated 11 November 1919, quoted after Johannes Itten, Werke und
Schriften. Herausgegeben von Willy Rotzler. Werkverzeichnis von Anneliese Itten,
(Zurich: Orell Füssli, 2nd rev. edn. 1978), 68.
16
16 January 1922; see Jürgen Glaesemer, Beiträge zur bildnerischen Formlehre.
Faksimilierte Ausgabe des Originalmanuskripts von Paul Klees erstem
Vortragszyklus am staatlichen Bauhaus Weimar 1921/22, (Basel/Stuttgart:
Schwabe, 1979), vols. 1 (facsimile), 52, and 2 (appendix), 34.
17
H. Neugeboren, “eine bach-fuge im bild”, bauhaus: vierteljahr-zeitschrift für
gestaltung, 3:1, (January 1929), 19.
18
“the essentially mobile character of music …”; for an account of Castel’s
discussion of this topic see my earlier monograph That Divine Order (as n. 2
above), 234ff.
19
Like my discussion of Hartley’s musical paintings alluded to earlier, this topic is
explored in greater depth in my forthcoming monograph The Music of Painting;
see n. 8 above.
20
See, by way of a starting point, the article by Sara Selwood, one of the few
authors to have focused in detail on this topic, entitled “Farblichtmusik und
abstrakter Film”, in Karin von Maur ed., Vom Klang der Bilder: Die Musik in der
Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, (Munich: Prestel, 1985), 414-21.
 PART I:

TOWARDS NEW TRUTH?

GERMAN AESTHETICS AND THE CLAIMS
OF GESAMTKUNSTWERK


 CHAPTER ONE

MUSIC, MODERNISM AND THE VIENNA

SECESSION: MUSICAL FORM IN VER SACRUM
(1898-1903)

DIANE V. SILVERTHORNE

A composition does not require a performance in order to exist. Just as an

imagined sound appears real in the mind, the reading of a score is
sufficient to prove the existence of the composition.1

Unlike the many anecdotes surrounding the Vienna coffeehouse as a

source of the productive transfer of ideas between the various literary,
musical and artistic figures in fin-de-siècle Vienna, and the resulting
forging of modernism across the arts, written evidence of the birth of the
Vienna Secession in a Vienna café has only more recently come to light.
The source for this more recent evidence is to be found in the personal
notebooks of Alfred Roller (1864-1935), designer and founder member of
the Vienna Secession, the group of artists gathered round Gustav Klimt
who formed Austria’s first avant-garde collective of the late-nineteenth
century. Roller is better known for his role as director of stage design
during the celebrated Mahler years at the Vienna Court Opera.2 However,
in the period from 1897, the founding year of the Secession, to 1903, when
he was appointed to this more public position, he also played a series of
pivotal roles in the Vienna Secession.3 Roller was appointed Secession
secretary (Schriftführer) in its formative year. His meticulous notes of
important “protocol” meetings show that they often took place in the café
of the Hotel Victoria.
The notes record significant decisions which resulted in the emergence
of a spectacular series of set pieces from 1898 to promote the art of the
Secession: the construction of the Secession House, the exhibition pavilion
designed by architect Josef Maria Olbrich, and the first of a series of
exhibitions, culminating in the notable Secession “Beethoven” exhibition
of 1902. This exhibition, designed to reflect a single, overarching theme,


 Music, Modernism and the Vienna Secession 27

was devoted not to an artist, but to a musical figure. It was intended to

embody Wagnerian ideas of the Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total work of art”.
Wagner’s ideas were specifically referred to in the 1902 Secession
catalogue for the “Beethoven” exhibition, citing the only theoretical text of
the Leipzig artist, Max Klinger, who also contributed its central art
exhibition, the “Beethoven” monument.4
Whilst this singular event is always referred to in the discourse on the
Vienna Secession as the embodiment of Wagner’s ideas transposed to the
visual arts, it is not the central subject of this chapter. Instead, it is
concerned with the disposition of musical ideas in the Secession art
periodical, Ver Sacrum (Holy Spring), which was published between 1898
and 1903, firstly monthly, and then twice-monthly. Preceding the opening
of the Secession House by eleven months, the first issue of Ver Sacrum
appeared in January 1898.5 Its title was linked to the Roman rite of the
Secessio Plebis, the secession of the younger generation from the older,
ruling authority, to found a new community.6 Ver Sacrum was the first
indicative sign of the new art of the Secession.
In an entry made in June 1897, which records its editorial aims,
Roller’s notebook reveals the birth of the periodical:

[Koloman] Moser suggested publishing an art magazine as an official

organ of the association … its direction: art. Poetry and prose shall not be
excluded if linked with art: possibly illustrated. Among the members are
some thirty who could be relied on when it comes to illustrations, so the
illustrated part is secure.7

From this note, it is clear that the Secession intended to prioritise art and
design above literary or other contributions. No mention was made of
music. So it is perhaps surprising that in December 1901, the Secession
published an entire issue of Ver Sacrum devoted to the Lieder (songs set to
poetry) of eleven contemporary composers.
It has been suggested that in the musically-saturated city of Vienna,
where the Court Opera, designed in monumental, neo-Renaissance style,
occupied a dominant place on the city’s Ringstrasse development of the
late 1860s, the Secession artists were little-interested in musical concerns.8
Nevertheless, this chapter sets out the case for different ways of viewing
the importance of musical ideas to the art and design aesthetics of the
Vienna Secession, in their search for a new language of art which would
reflect the spirit of the modern age.9 Firstly, I briefly consider in what
ways a Wagnerian tendency was reflected in the art of the Vienna
Secession, a group of artists who were concerned with an equal
relationship between the fine and applied arts. Secondly, musical ideas


28 Chapter One

reflected in design forms in a dialectical relationship with other elements

of the graphic arts in the pages of Ver Sacrum are examined. Thirdly, the
mutual responsiveness of music and Jugendstil (youth-style), is evaluated,
before turning to an analysis of the 1901 Lieder issue of Ver Sacrum.10

A Wagnerian Tendency
While the Secession House, designed in Greek temple-form, famously
declared its intent to liberate Vienna’s visual arts from the prevailing
conservatism of its main art institutions in the words, “To every age its art,
to art its freedom”, arguably an even more emblematic motif was situated
above the entrance to the building. The mythic head of the Gorgon
appeared, not once, but three times, in plaster relief (Fig. 1.1). The
encircling snakes of her hair drew together the three main branches of the
visual arts, “painting, architecture and sculpture”, also carved in relief.11
Each art form was to be given equal status, joined together inside the
spaces of the Secession House, to create a greater, united art-work. It may
also be no coincidence that the mask-like faces of the Secession House
gorgons resembled the lyric masks of tragedy and comedy. They appeared
to suggest that the events inside the Secession House were to be theatrical
in their effect.
Such ideas were resonant of music dramatist Richard Wagner’s notions
of the Gesamtkunstwerk in two respects. Firstly, the all-prevailing
importance of myth, (or mythos, as Wagner referred to it), was central to
Wagner’s writings on the “Art-work of the Future”.12 Myth would convey
universal ideas about art which transcended historical convention.
Secondly, the notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk relied on Wagner’s theories
which joined together the three art-forms of music, poetry and
performance, (or dance, as Wagner originally described), in a trinity of the
arts, to create a single, dramatic unity. Wagner’s legacy cast a long
shadow not only over music and the composers who followed him. It also
laid down a challenge to artists in other fields. This is widely recognised in
the use of the epithet of the Gesamtkuntswerk, commonly used in the
writings on fin-de-siècle art and design, both of the period and beyond to
the present day.
This effect, of Wagner’s ideas moving into different spheres, was aptly
described by the Viennese music formalist Heinrich Schenker (1868-
1935), who has more recently been situated within the wider context of
modernist aesthetic debates in fin-de-siècle Vienna.13 Schenker wrote
these words in 1897, the year of the founding of the Secession, and of


 Music, Modernism and the Vienna Secession 29

Gustav Mahler’s appointment as music director to the Vienna Court

Opera:

the figure of Richard Wagner is now beginning to fall apart into a thousand
productive elements. … Each of his own suggestions lives, as it were, a life
of its own, bearing fruit.14

The interior of the Secession House was notably created as mutable space,
using only six slim pillars for support, together with moveable partitions.15
The Secession concern for the reinvention of space was, however, also
exemplified in an earlier example of their art. The first cover of Ver
Sacrum was designed by Alfred Roller (Fig. 1.2). Using the saturated
denseness and richness of red ground to draw attention to surface and
flatness, the mythic promise of renewal, embedded in the name of the
periodical was expressed in distinctively modern style. The rhythmic
placement of each letter invoked a synthesis of form, space and word to
create a decorative statement of greater significance to the developing
aesthetics of the Secession.
The totality of the effect, and the use of lettering as an integral element
of each cover design, showed an appreciation of the importance of the
dialectic between “empty and full spaces”, as art writer and Secession
chronicler, Ludwig Hevesi, acutely observed.16 Inspired by the newness of
form emerging on the cover of this first public statement of artistic intent,
Hevesi, in his turn, used a new critical language to interpret what he saw.
Revealing sensitivity to the use of space and elements of design on the
surface of the page, he wrote of the powerful impact of the saturated
colour of red against an ochre ground, emphasising “the mastery with
which picture and type, empty and full surfaces, are combined”.17
In this, as in other areas of their design world, the artists of the
Secession were interested in using the materials of their art to create
something new, and something greater than the sum of the individual
elements. Roller had created a synthesis of graphic art forms in this
concentrated space: a Gesamtkunstwerk transposed to the two-dimensional
surface of the page. In an article in the July issue of Ver Sacrum, on the
subject of “Book Decoration”, the art writer Wilhelm Schölermann also
described this new relationship between typography and illustration in
terms which were suggestive of the Gesamtkunstwerk.18 He suggested that
“the decorative border [is] at once ornament, decoration, and yet at the
same time a profound allegory of line and colour … which surrounds the
actual work”.19 As if to amplify these ideas, Schölermann’s article was
illustrated by a motif in the style of a musical sign, designed by Secession
architect Josef Hoffmann (Fig. 1.3). The figure is modelled on the treble


30 Chapter One

clef, or perhaps the shape of the scroll and neck of a cello. Such
illustrations appeared to borrow something from musical notation, with its
lack of foreground and background, its adherence to surface, the shaping
of a run of notes on the staves, and musical signs like slurs.

Musical Ideas in Ver Sacrum

In the early issues of Ver Sacrum, the notion of a complete art-work in
concentrated form was exemplified at a series of levels. The artists of the
Secession contributed many small decorative forms to the pages of the
periodical. Rather than simple embellishments to the text, these individual
designs were displayed as art-works in their own right. The Secession had
their own term for these small designs, which they described as
Buchschmuck, or book decoration, a term which implies the notion of
something small, even precious. Each of these contributions was attributed
to the artist who designed it, giving equal standing to the designers of
book decoration, as to the featured poet, writer or artist whose work it
accompanied. This practice, of naming the individual designer, demonstrated
the Secession fascination with these complete art forms, which were
displayed like small calling-cards for their larger scale works, throughout
the early issues. This level of collaboration, between designers and other
contributors, suggests an injunction of Richard Wagner, one of his central
precepts from The Art-work of the Future: “a common impulse toward
dramatic artwork can be at hand only in those who actually enact the work
of art in common… , a fellowship of players”.20
Increasingly, in the first year, the designers created repetitive, rhythmic
frieze-like motifs. These appeared to draw on vestiges of seemingly
familiar forms, yet their appearance and significance were inscrutable
(Fig. 1.4). In a single colour, black or dark red, the designs summoned the
fleeting impression of the sail of a ship, an organic trace, or a strangely
primitive mechanical contraption. Black-and-white used in counterpoint in
this way has a particular effect on the eye. It fools the vision into seeing
background as foreground, and foreground as background, an optical
illusion emphasising flatness and the surface of the page. Like music,
these repetitive, abstract forms progressed through time as well as space.
They became a defining interest of the Secession, who denoted their
importance through the use of the term Flächenkunst, or surface art.
On pages fourteen and fifteen of the September 1898 issue of Ver
Sacrum, Josef Hoffmann’s book decoration describes another essential
element of musical form. It was placed in the centre of two wide columns
of print around which a space was cleared. The space seemed both empty


 Music, Modernism and the Vienna Secession 31

and silent, a pause between the words of the accompanying article and
illustration. Silence is written into the composer’s craft. The pause or
breath between the notes marks time in which the “after-hearing” of the
notes may be heard to decay, or when silence plays its own particular role
within the composition. As the Secession were contriving these new
design forms, and their particular use on the page, Schenker, a contemporary
of Roller and his Secession colleagues, writing on the art of musical
performance, was concerned with the characteristics of silence as well as
sound. To give greater emphasis to the art of silence, Schenker defined
specific terms to describe the pauses between notes: the Atempause,
meaning “breathing space”, and the Notpause, or “rest of necessity”.21 An
Atempause could occur “to clarify mental organisation”; a Notpause was
used when it was necessary to take account of the limitations of the
instrument.22
Similarly, space, deliberately used by the designer as an integral
element of his art, throws the decorative form into relief. This creates an
effect of empty space, or “breathing space”, with active space, enlivened
by the decoration. Space, with other elements of the graphic arts, may also
be used to create an effect for the overall visual design of the page or issue
on the audience or, in this case, the reader. The influential English book-
art designer and theorist, Walter Crane, a favoured artist of the Secession,
whose work was often exhibited in the Secession House, also described
space in the graphic arts as silent. He preferred a decorative motif on the
last page of a book to provide the final, delicate underlining, leaving a last
lingering echo, as he described, rather than the silence of empty space.23
Taking a lead from Roller’s cover, a dialectical relationship between
space, design form and text was commonly created in the pages of Ver
Sacrum. This contrasted with the conventional use of space in the printed
periodical, where standard dimensions were set for columns of text, and
illustrations placed on the page to illustrate the text, rather than as part of
the intended overall aesthetic. In Ver Sacrum, blank, or silent, space was
treated as a material of art in its own right, rather than that which was left-
over between text and the edge of the page.
It is a matter of some debate as to whether musical terms, and the ideas
which they convey, can be transposed to the visual arts and retain an
equivalence of meaning. However, in this period of “intense temporal
compression”, as Carl E. Schorske has described the particular conditions
of cultural production in fin-de-siècle Vienna, modernist ideas which
emerged in the diverse fields of the arts were often characterised by
similar concerns.24 This principle was true of the debates which swirled
round Vienna’s aesthetic circles concerning decoration and ornamentation.


32 Chapter One

Most hotly debated in the fine and applied arts, Secession-style decorative
art, a reaction against the prevailing style of historicism exemplified by the
Ringstrasse, was vilified in its turn by architect and polemicist, Adolf
Loos, a “critical modernist” who wished to break with past styles.25 A
convergence of concerns in music, on the one hand, and the applied arts on
the other, may be found in Schenker’s ideas on the subject of musical
embellishment and, simultaneously, in the theories of designer Rudolf von
Larisch (1856-1934) on ornamental lettering.
The name of Rudolf von Larisch was often bound together with those
of Roller and Hoffmann, as one of the progenitors of modern design. A. S.
Levetus, the respected English art critic, writing in a special edition of The
Studio on “The Art of the Book”, called them “the men of the new
school”, and succinctly described the artistry of von Larisch:

What he aims at is form, configuration and spacing to add rhythm to the

letters themselves, and to harmonise one with another in the building-up of
the word …. Even the simplest of words should be decorative. 26

von Larisch’s writings brought him to the attention of Vienna’s School of

Applied Arts (Kunstgewerbeschule), where he taught with his fellow
professors, Roller, Moser and Hoffman, from the Secession. In his
theories, von Larisch laid down the principles of the integrity of lettering
to foreground, surface and background, as well as negative and positive
space.27 Each letter was to be given equal value in favour of a rhythmic
pacing and spacing, to create a unity of design. In an issue of Ver Sacrum
in 1903, the last year of its publication, von Larisch’s felicitous liberation
of artistic lettering from its former “purity of style” (Stilreinheit), to play a
decorative role in the service of the overall visual effect of the page, was
celebrated by Roller’s design for a calendar.28 The calendar page for
February consisted only of the appropriate lettering, spelling the days of
the week in a newly-invented typeface, printed in metallic ink. Like a
child’s stencil, the letters playfully mutated into the smiling features of
face-like forms.
Schenker’s interests were described in his “theory of organic unity in
the musical work of art”.29 His concerns lay, firstly, in the role of ornament
in performance and, secondly, in the important rapport between
“foreground and background”, in musical formalism.30 Describing a
tendency in Schenker’s ideas which were similar to those of architect
Adolf Loos, Nicholas Cook remarks that Schenker was not against the
notion of ornament in musical performance, but rather criticised the
“overloading of the works … while misinterpreting the essence of melodic
function”.31 Schenker insisted that ornament should be “a manifestation of


 Music, Modernism and the Vienna Secession 33

truth, artistic truth that transcends time and will endure to the end of
time”.32 In other words, as Heribert Esser, in a recent translation of
Schenker’s writings describes, ornament should emanate from “the soul”,
rather than become “mechanical and slavish”.33 Schorske celebrates the
tendency to consider the significance of form in the arts, which was
marked in Schenker’s musical theories, as the advent of a new impulse
which began to erode historical concerns.34
von Larisch, similarly, wished to see the art of lettering pursue a more
spontaneous and (historically) unfettered course, dwelling on the
importance of organic development.35 It is intriguing that von Larisch
enjoyed a close friendship with the composer, Hugo Wolf, described in
Vienna as the “Wagner of the Lied”, whose song was the most musically
distinguished of those included in the 1901 Lieder issue of Ver Sacrum.36
In his discussion of the problematic notion of the influence of
Jugendstil on music, Walter Frisch suggests that “a music that is
responsive to the aesthetics of Jugendstil might be sought most fruitfully
in the realm of song”.37 Song, as he argues, comes closest to fulfilling the
Jugendstil goal of the aestheticisation of life and home. Similarly, the
importance of song in the private spaces of the home was marked by
founding Secession members Olbrich and Hoffmann and Moser, who were
involved in the design of houses, apartments and their music rooms for
wealthy professionals and business patrons in the centre of Vienna, and in
Hohe Warte, the new artists’ colony, which they helped to create.
In the combined dining and music room designed by Olbrich for a Dr
Friedrich Spitzer, an art photographer, in Schleifmühlgasse, for example,
Spitzer’s grand piano was given a special case with a surrounding frame,
an omega curve with clusters of metal and glass flowers.38 The music
room the architect designed in 1899 for coal merchant David Berl, in
Schottenring, featured the names of Beethoven and Wagner in the
decorative wrought-metal doors. The twinned names suggested not only
the importance of the two composers to the musical life of Vienna.
Wagner’s highly influential 1870 “Beethoven” essay gave renewed
significance to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as the first symphonic
synthesis of words and music, and to Beethoven as the progenitor of “the
Art-work of the Future”.39
As Frisch also argues:

the Lied occupies one middle-ground between the apparent specificity of

visual images and the purity of music. The mediator is, of course, the
poetic text, which can swing … toward the more representational and
naturalistic, or toward the more deliberately abstract and ambiguous.40


34 Chapter One

These tendencies may also be observed in the designs of the Secession

artists who contributed to the Lieder issue of Ver Sacrum, as illustrated
below. The publication of this issue occurred at a turning point in the
design style of the Secession, from naturalistic forms towards “the more
deliberately abstract”, or geometric style, which has been widely observed
as a broader tendency in their art. Like Frith, in his discussion on the
existence of a Jugendstil music, I would also ask not what Jugendstil did
for music, but what music did for Jugendstil. To respond to this question
in the context of the Vienna Secession and the graphic arts, the Lieder in
Ver Sacrum are now examined.

Songs in Ver Sacrum

Only three pieces of music were printed in Ver Sacrum before the 1901
Lieder issue. The August issue of 1898 opened onto the first of these, a
song by the Austrian composer Joseph Reiter (1862-1939), set to a poem
by Stefan Millow. Entitled “Stiller Tod”, (Silent Death), it inferred,
paradoxically, silence and endless time at the heart of the song. (Fig. 1.5)
It was framed by a design of Joseph Maria Olbrich, which drew on the
simplified form of a harp or lyre, and a curvilinear device, resonant of the
bass clef symbol. The musical notation was somewhat transformed by the
design and spatial elements of the page.
It was not simply a piece of sheet music, reproduced, for their readers
to play in their homes, but rather a complete design using musical notation
as an integrated element of the whole. The archaic and simplified shape of
Olbrich’s design was suggestive of the mythology of Apollo, the god of
the rational and civilised, controlling within its frame, the untrammelled,
Dionysian impulse of music.41 The image hovers between various states,
the present and the mythic past, between the spaces of the page, and
domestic spaces of performance.
While there is nothing to suggest a connection between the poet
Millow and the overall editorial control of the periodical, which was then
in the hands of Alfred Roller, it is serendipitous that Roller was in close
correspondence with the son of the poet, Max von Millenkovitch-Morold,
(Max von Morold) a writer and librettist, about the editorial principles of
Ver Sacrum in its first year of publication.42 There were many connections
between von Morold and important figures in the fields of music and
opera in Vienna. Through his writings and published books, von Morold
was associated with composers Anton Bruckner; Franz Liszt, Wagner’s
mentor and father-in-law; Hugo Wolf, and Richard and Cosima Wagner.
This last contact culminated in a slim volume, Richard Wagner in Wien,


 Music, Modernism and the Vienna Secession 35

published in 1938.43 Such behind the scenes connections between lesser-

known figures, bridging the worlds of design, art, literature and music,
provide further support for the shaping of modernism in fin-de-siècle
Vienna, shown by Edward Timms as a series of overlapping circles of
creative interaction, centred on a leading progenitor.44
The appearance of Lieder in fin-de-siècle art periodicals was not an
unusual occurrence. A useful point of comparison with Ver Sacrum and its
aesthetic principles is the art and literary periodical PAN, published in
Berlin from 1895-1900, which has sometimes been seen as its model.
Produced quarterly, its large-format pages and high-quality cream art
paper provided calm, spacious and well controlled ground for literature,
poetry and sometimes music. Its style was defined by an unhurried
approach to its content, often taking three or four pages for one,
unembellished contribution. This allowed the texts to breath as if they
were being exhibited for their own sake. As art historian Julius Meier-
Graefe, its first editor, described, the name PAN was “to indicate
joyousness in the spirit of the Greek god, and the manifold arts to which
the members were to devote themselves”.45 On the first page of the second
issue, in 1896, the periodical’s devotion to Nietzschean ideas was
exemplified by the publication of Nietzsche’s Lied, “die junge Fischerin”
(1865). The music was reproduced in spacious style, without added
decoration. Like sheet-music, the page was available for immediate
transfer to the music stand and domestic performance.
In their turn, the sinuous line and symbolist sentiment of fin-de-siècle
artists were also an attraction for the publishers of classical sheet music,
who were commonly invited to create the graphic art works to adorn the
covers. The Swiss decorative artist Eugène Grasset designed a fairy-like
creature, printed in a soft wash of pastels, who uses her wand to summon
stars and the spirits of the skies, for the front cover of “Enchantment”, a
series of songs by Jules Massenet published in 1890.46 In 1902, German
artist Fritz Erler, the designer of the first cover for the periodical, Jugend,
also designed the cover for the eight “Waldseligkeit” (Woodland Happiness)
Lieder by Richard Strauss. Max Klinger had earlier notably created a cycle
of extraordinary lithographs, the “Brahms Fantasy”, as a personal tribute
to the composer. 47 These drawings were not intended simply to illustrate
Brahms’ music. Klinger used his celebrated graphic art skills to expand
the musical meaning, a synthesis of poetry and music, through a visual
interpretation evoking the spirit and meaning of both. An engraving of
Klinger was also used in 1895 to illustrate the cover of published sheet
music of Brahms’ songs, a symbolist evocation of a knight rescuing a


36 Chapter One

damsel from a dragon, drawn from the words of one of the Brahms’
compositions.48
Many of these song-sheet covers used a rather literal graphic
interpretation of the title, while others suggest a synthesis of music, poetry
and graphic art which are worthy of analysis in their own right, although
this lies beyond the scope of this chapter. Hovering somewhere between
the medium of illustrated sheet-music, and the fin-de-siècle art periodical,
in December, 1901, Ver Sacrum became a song-book.

The Lieder Issue of Ver Sacrum

By 1901, Ver Sacrum had been reduced in size, although it retained its
distinctive square form. This smaller format seemed to encourage an
increasing emphasis on a single subject, such as a complete issue devoted
to the decorative settings of Rilke’s playlets. The December 1901 issue,
entirely devoted to the publication of Lieder composed or arranged by
living musicians, was exceptional in the life of Ver Sacrum and possibly
amongst other art periodicals of its time.49 Each Lied was given an
individual decorative frame. The Secession designers did not draw their
designs in isolation, but rather designed for each individual song,
demonstrating an understanding of, and appreciation for, the music as well
as the poetry. It is worth remembering that as students in the Gymnasium,
or high school, they would have received a musical education to a high
standard as a matter of course.
Trevor Fawcett, writing in 1976 on fin-de-siècle art periodicals,
reflected on the singular design characteristics of Ver Sacrum. He noted its
“complex message of design”, realised through the art of “through-
composition”.50 The term, through-composition, has a particular meaning
in music. In most definitions, Wagner’s music dramas, “with their large
scale continuous structures and motivic cross references”, are described as
the archetypal examples of through-composition in operatic form.51 All
eleven songs in the Lieder issue were through-composed, as opposed to
strophic in form. Elsewhere, I have argued that this issue exemplified this
art transposed to the graphic field. It was through-composed in black and
silver metallic ink throughout; the disposition of colour tones and the use
of space lent the issue its “continuous structure”.52
It is likely that the Lieder issue was conceived as a Christmas gift for
its readers to enjoy, both visually and aurally. It carried no editorial or
other material. It may have been seen as something other, perhaps
equivalent to the issues devoted to the work of an individual artist, as
Roller had described in one of his 1897 notes on the aims for Ver Sacrum.


 Music, Modernism and the Vienna Secession 37

Josef Reiter was appointed as musical editor, his task to acquire and select
the musical material. Most of the composers featured in the issue have
since disappeared from public recognition, with the notable exception of
Hugo Wolf. His song, “Anakreons Grab” (Anacreon’s Grave), set to a
poem by Goethe, is brief, intense and elegiac.53 Other featured composers
included Eugène d’Albert; Conrad Ansorge; Siegmund von Hausegger;
Reiter himself, who arranged a song by Glück; August Stradal and Ludwig
Thuille. These composers set music respectively to the poetry of Max
Brun, Richard Dehmel, Gottfried Keller, Josef Freiherr von Eichendorff,
Hildegard Stradal, and Otto Bierbaum.
Some research amongst the lesser-known composers also reveals that
several of them, like Wolf, shared Wagnerian concerns. Siegmund von
Hausegger, the composer of Siehst du den Stern (Do you See the Star), the
song illustrated by Roller, also composed a symphonic poem, Wieland der
Schmied, (Wieland the Blacksmith), which surely drew on Wagner’s
unrealised opera scheme (1849) of the same name.54 von Hausegger also
edited a book on Wagner’s letters to Frau Julie Ritter, one of Wagner’s
benefactors, in 1920.55 August Stradal, who composed Einsamkeit
(Loneliness), wrote on Liszt, and re-arranged Liszt’s arrangement of
Wagner’s Flying Dutchman.56
The songs commonly shared the poetic concerns of late Romantic art
and literature: sleep as a metaphor for death; death and the notion of the
eternal; night as a metaphor for eternal sleep, and the loneliness of the
soul. Musically, the Lieder exhibited certain Wagnerian tendencies. These
can be described as a melancholy decadence; Wagnerian-like harmonies
associated with his music drama, Tristan und Isolde (1860) particularly the
“Tristan chord” of delayed resolution, and a shimmering effect.57 This last
effect was reciprocated visually in the use of metallic silver as a decorative
device, drawing attention to the surface of each page. In their intense
completeness, several of the songs might be termed monodramas.58 Four
of the songs and their decorative content are now examined.
The framing design for Kleinstadt Idyll, (Small Town Idyll), on the
first page, by architect Josef Hoffmann was the most abstract of the issue
(Fig. 1.6). Little, if anything, of the meaning of the words of the poem was
reflected in the design, neither “the slumbering market place” with its
“fountain in the centre”, or “the houses, long ruined … in deep sleep”.59
The phrase, “a piece of heaven and the sickle moon”, may be indicated in
the silver squareforms intersected by a diagonal.60 The words, “sickle
moon”, are reflected as a shiver in the music, a tiny shadow of the
Wagnerian “shudder”. Falling fifths suggest decadence. There is a note-


38 Chapter One

like formation to the design form, a rhythmic insistency in its repetitive

phrasing.
Musically, Siehst du den Stern, (Do you See the Star), illustrated by
Alfred Roller, exhibits open spaces, suspensions, and notes which decay as
they hang in the air. It is declamatory in style. For the design, Roller used
the distinctive knotted form for the rising motif which ascends,
energetically, from the base line of the design to form the ‘S’ of the first
word of the title (Fig. 1.7). The stylised figures below the notation,
supported by the curve of a sweeping line, seem unaware, according to the
words of the poem, that their stars “have already fallen into ashes”, and
that their light is “what is and is not”.61 Life, energetically represented in
the rising motif on the left, exerts a tension with the horizontal curve.
Roller’s preoccupation with stars was not limited to this drawing. They
remained a persistent leitmotif in his work, as displayed both in his mural
Sinking Night, which appeared behind the “Beethoven” monument in the
1902 Secession exhibition, the poster he designed for the exhibition, and
later in his stage designs, notably for the 1903 Vienna Court Opera
production of Tristan und Isolde.
The song, Einsamkeit, (Loneliness), exhibits the notion of the abstract
line. Rising steps in the music suggest a mesmeric, static state. The words,
“only water trembles – like a wordless song, as light as a ghost – of the
pale moonshine”, seem self-reflexively to comment on the art of the song.
The surrounding design evokes the words, in the phrases “the road [which]
stretches away empty of people … my eye yearningly drinks in the
distance” (Fig. 1.8). It creates an atmosphere which expands their meaning
through a more extensive graphic landscape. The design represents
naturalism on the opening left-hand page, and a retreat from naturalism,
and towards abstraction, in the reduced lines and geometric forms on the
right. The debate on these two seemingly opposing drives emerged in
German culture in the 1890s, and in this example of Secession art as a
dissonance in the landscape. 62 According to the philosopher, Ehrenfehls,
Wagner, a “naturalist and a non-naturalist”, was seen as its archetype.63
Similarly, surprising dissonances and abrupt mood changes are exhibited
in the reduced and condensed spaces of the music of the song.
Stylised wings in heavy black with white, designed to cradle Wolf’s
Anacreons Grab (Anacreon’s Grave), sweep upwards in the most dramatic
gesture of the eleven songs. The Secession artist resisted the temptation
figuratively to depict more obvious motifs of the blooming rose and the
entwined vine in the opening words of Goethe’s poem. Instead, the
framing design suggests Ehrenfel’s description of Wagner’s music and its
special powers as an “art which is able to awaken that life of impulse and


 Music, Modernism and the Vienna Secession 39

drives which slumbers half in the unconscious … to capture it in firm

shapes”.64 The outspread wings bear the spirit of the poet Anacreon
heavenwards. In this brief, timeless moment, Secession graphic art seemed
poised in contemplation of a move towards an abstract realm indicated by
the border of empty, silvered semaphores. Wolf is reputed to have had
complete control of his medium. It is tempting to draw a parallel with the
skill of the illustrator, who appeared to evoke Horace, and his “wings of
eternity” in this motif. Wolf’s driving compositional intent was that the
music should follow the spirit and meaning of the words. The graphic
device seems to float free, of context and of time, in a similar intent.
The framing devices for each song exhibited musicality and musical
form. The dominant design forms were sweeping, curving lines; the
measured dialogue between line and empty space; the insistent use of
repetitive, outline shapes which were subtly modulated as they increased,
and then decreased in number or emphasis through the design on the page;
the progression of repetitive abstract motifs through time as well as space.
Each of the drawings integrated the words and lettering of the song title
into the design, in a synthesis of word and line. Empty or “silent” page
space was used as an active element in their composition.
Music is the temporal art, and the graphic arts, the spatial art. Yet an
evocation of both time and space, and the readers’ journey through both,
was implicitly suggested in the first and last issues of Ver Sacrum in 1901.
In January, the passing of time was marked with a special calendar issue, a
common Viennese tradition in periodical publishing. It was richly printed
in metallic gold with black. Like the Lieder issue, each month was
accompanied by an illustration designed by a Secession artist. In one of his
rare contributions to graphic art, Gustav Klimt’s dramatic illustration for
January depicted figures representing youth, age, and time eternal, using
the sparest of lines. Roller’s illustration for December, a male figure on
the deck of a ship, was distinctively Tristan-like in its medievalist style
and composition. Appropriately titled “Dank und Lebwohl” (thanks and
farewell), it resonated with the more famous and extended “Farewell” in
Wagner’s music drama.65 A golden sunset added dazzle to the sea.
Gold and silver finishes, a favoured element of Secession art, reflect
light, resist penetration, yet also reflect back some trace or essence of the
real world. Thus they contribute to ambiguity, and the shifting of planes
between what is real and what is not. This effect, of dissolving a sense of
reality, also appropriately describes the artworks in the 1902 “Beethoven”
exhibition, the planning for which was already in train when the Lieder
issue was produced. In the exhibition, the murals, notably Klimt’s famous
“Beethoven Frieze”, and Klinger’s “Beethoven” monument, gleamed with


40 Chapter One

precious finishes, challenging the boundaries between abstraction and

representation.
These two Secession productions, the Lieder issue and the “Beethoven”
exhibition, also shared a similar artistic concern: the persistent stress on
musical ideas conveyed through a visual aesthetic. The Lieder issue of Ver
Sacrum was intended for performance by the patrons, friends and
followers of the Secession in the music rooms of their private houses.
However, like the first song published in Ver Sacrum in 1898, the musical
notation was printed in rather reduced form, and the words were almost
illegible. As we have seen, according to the editorial intent recorded by
Roller, that poetry and prose should not be excluded provided they were
linked with art, the Lieder issue reflected the Secession’s primary concern
for the visual effect, rather than for the integrity of the musical notation.
Yet music appeared to inspire the decorative elements, which represented
a sustained example of the Secession art of Flächenkunst through its
pages.

Conclusion
Concerns for the role of ornament and the important relationship
between foreground and background were reflected in the theories of
Rudolf von Larisch, who was influential on the graphic arts of the
Secession, and in parallel time, with those of music theorist Heinrich
Schenker.
As Schenker described, in the statement cited above, musical
composition does not require a performance in order to exist. An imagined
sound may appear real in the mind. The score is sufficient to prove its
existence.66 Even without the benefit of a live performance, the pages of
this issue of Ver Sacrum, it seems, would still sound.67 Space, like the
pauses and silences in the Lieder, was deliberately employed in their
composition, as an integral element of the design. In the presentation of
each Lied, and a synthesis of the three arts of music, poetry and design, a
small Gesamtkunstwerk was created, and the complete issue, with its
through-composed presentation, a greater Gesamtkunstwerk. Its visual
effects were the dominant aesthetic, yet music made its presence felt in
silence and in sound.
Alfred Roller, Secession Secretary in 1897, overall editor of Ver
Sacrum in its first two years, and organiser, with Josef Hoffmann, of the
1902 “Beethoven” exhibition, was also occupied, during the period of the
exhibition, with another artistic concern. In June of 1902, six months after
the publication of the Lieder issue of Ver Sacrum, he sent his first stage


 Music, Modernism and the Vienna Secession 41

designs for a new production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde to Gustav

Mahler, the music director of the Vienna Court Opera.68 Mahler had
famously played a small, but significant role at the private opening of the
“Beethoven” exhibition. He arranged and conducted a performance of a
reduced version of the final part of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. These
events, and the overlapping roles and practices of Roller and his
colleagues indicate that while music was not the first concern of the
Vienna Secession, musical concerns were rarely distant from their world.69

Fig. 1.1: Entrance, Secession House, Vienna, 1898, image: author.


42 Chapter One

Fig. 1.2: Alfred Roller, front cover, Ver Sacrum, January, 1898.


 Music, Modernism and the Vienna Secession 43

Fig. 1.3: Josef Hofmann, musical motif, Ver Sacrum, July, 1898.

Fig. 1.4: Repetitive motifs, Ver Sacrum, August, 1898.


44 Chapter One

Fig. 1.5: Joseph Maria Olbrich, “Stiller Tod”, Ver Sacrum July, 1898.


 Music, Modernism and the Vienna Secession 45

Fig. 1.6: “Kleinstadt Idyll”, Ver Sacrum, ©V&A Images/Victoria and Albert
Museum, London.


46 Chapter One

Fig. 1.7: “Siehst du den Stern”, Ver Sacrum, ©V&A Images/Victoria and Albert
Museum, London.


 Music, Modernism and the Vienna Secession 47

Fig. 1.8: “Einsamkeit”, Ver Sacrum, ©V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum,
London.


48 Chapter One

Fig. 1.9: “Anacreons Grab”, Ver Sacrum, ©V&A Images/Victoria and Albert
Museum, London.


 Music, Modernism and the Vienna Secession 49

Notes

1
Heinrich Schenker, Heribert Esser, The Art of Performance, trans. Irene Schreier
Scott (Oxford: Oxford University, 2000), 3.
2
See Henri-Louis de la Grange, Gustav Mahler Vol. 2: Vienna the Years of
Challenge 1897-1904; Gustav Mahler Vol. 3 Vienna: Triumph and Disillusion
1904-1907, (Oxford: Oxford University, 1995, 1999).
3
Diane V. Silverthorne, “New Spaces of Art, Design and Performance: Alfred
Roller and the Vienna Secession,” unpublished doctoral thesis, The Royal College
of Art, (London, February 2010).
4
Klinger’s theoretical text was first published in 1891, see Max Klinger, Malerei
und Zeichnung, 3rd ed. (Leipzig: Georgi, 1899).
5
Ver Sacrum, Organ der Bildender Vereinigung Künstler Österreichs (Wiener
Secession) 1-6 (Wien: Gerlach & Schenk, and others, 1898-1903).
6
Described in an article in the first issue, Max Burkhardt, “Ver Sacrum,” Ver
Sacrum, (January, 1989), 1. Burkhardt was a prominent director of Vienna’s
Burgtheater.
7
See Oskar Pausch, Gründung und Baugeschichte der Wiener Secession, mit
Erstedition des Protokollbuchs von Alfred Roller, (Wien: Österreichischer Kunst,
2006) 59, 140, author’s translation and italics. Koloman Moser, a notable Vienna
Secession designer who founded the Wiener Werkstätte with architect Josef
Hoffmann in 1903.
8
See Anna Harwell Celenza, “Music and the Vienna Secession: 1897-1902,”
Music in Art XXIX, 1:2 (2004), 203-212 for this argument, also Bonnie H. Miller,
“Magazine Music of the Jugendstil and Expressionist Movements,” Periodica
Musica, V:IX (1991), 1-13.
9
For an account of the convergence of musical ideas and the decorative arts at the
turn of the century in Germany and Austria see also Walter Frisch, “Music and
Jugendstil,” Critical Enquiry, 17:1 (Autumn,1990), 138-161.
10
The term “Jugendstil”, after the Munich art and literary periodical, Jugend
(1896-1911), emerged in German culture to describe aesthetic tendencies similar to
art-nouveau. Other terms, such as “Secessionstil”, are used to describe Vienna’s
“youth art”.
11
“Malerei, Architectur, Plastik”, above the entrance of the Secession House.
12
Richard Wagner, Wagner on Music and Drama, selected by Albert Goldman
and Evert Sprinchorn, trans. H. Ashton-Ellis (New York: Dutton, 1964), 90, see
also “The Art-Work of the Future,” 179-235.
13
See Nicholas Cook, The Schenker Project: Culture, Race and Music Theory in
Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, (Oxford: Oxford University, 2007).
14
Cited Cook, The Schenker Project, 85. Schenker was referring to Mahler’s
conducting of Wagner, reflecting, as Cook describes, the particular trope of the
figure of Wagner in 1890s Vienna.
15
For an account of the design of the Secession House, see Leslie Topp,
Architecture and Truth in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University), 28-62.


50 Chapter One


16
Ludwig Hevesi, “Ver Sacrum” (5 February 1898), Acht Jahre Secession (März
1897-Juni 1905): Kritik, Polemik, Chronik, (Wien: Carl Konegen, 1906), 7.
17
Hevesi, “Ver Sacrum,” 7.
18
Also see Peter Vergo, “The origins of Expressionism and the notion of the
Gesamtkunstwerk,” in Shulamith Behr, D Fanning, D Jarman, eds., Expressionism
Reassessed, (Manchester, Manchester University, 1993), 12.
19
Wilhelm Schölermann, “Buchschmuck,” Ver Sacrum, 9:1 (September, 1898),
26.
20
Richard Wagner, Wagner on Music and Drama, 79. See also Richard Wagner
trans. William Ashton Ellis, The Art-Work of the Future V1, (London: Kegan Paul,
1892).
21
Heinrich Schenker, The Art of Performance, 68. See also Nicholas Cook, The
Schenker Project, 2007, (ff 9).
22
Cook, ibid, 68. While there is no evidence of similar terms entering the theories
of the graphic arts, Cook points out that Schenker’s interest in surface and depth in
performance, and the use of the terms “planimetric” and “stereometric”, emerged
in parallel time in Vienna with art historian Aloïs Riegl’s influential theories
concerned with ornament, surface and depth, ibid, 101.
23
Walter Crane, The Decorative Illustration of Books, (London: George Bell,
1896), 301.
24
Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, (New York:
Vintage, 1981), xxvi.
25
For the definition of “critical modernism” and its associated figures see Alan
Janik, “Vienna 1900 Revisited,” in Steven Beller, ed., Rethinking Vienna 1900,
Austrian Studies V 3, (Oxford: Berghahn, 2001), 32.
26
A. S. Levetus, “The Art of the Book in Austria,” in Charles Holme, ed., The Art
of the Book: a review of recent European and American work in Typography, Page
Decoration and Binding, (London: The Studio, 1914), 214, 215.
27
Rudolf von Larisch, Über Zierschriften im Dienste Kunst, (Munchen: Jos Albert,
1899) 7, 9.
28
von Larisch, ibid, 37.
29
Heribert Esser, “Introduction,” in Schenker, The Art of Performance, xii.
30
Esser, ibid, xv.
31
Cook, The Schenker Project, 104.
32
Cook, ibid, 92.
33
Esser, “Introduction,” ibid, xiii.
34
Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, xx.
35
Eberhard Höllcher, Rudolf von Larisch und Seine Schule: Rudolf von Larisch
and his School, (Berlin: Heinze & Blanckertz, 1938-9), 39.
36
Amanda Glauert, Hugo Wolf and the Wagnerian Inheritance, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University, 1999), 32.
37
Walter Frisch, “Music and Jugendstil,” Critical Inquiry 17:1, (Autumn, 1990),
138-161 (147).
38
Robert Judson Clark, “Olbrich and Vienna,” Kunst in Hessen und am Mittelrhein:
Schriften der Hessischen Museum, (Darmstadt: Eduard Roether, 1967), 47.


 Music, Modernism and the Vienna Secession 51


39
Richard Wagner, “Beethoven,” Actors and Singers, trans. William Ashton Ellis,
(London: University of Nebraska, 1995), 57-126.
40
Frish, ibid, 147.
41
See Richard Leppert, The Sight of Sound: Music Representation and the History
of the Body, (London: University of California, 1995), 58.
42
See Marian Bisanz-Prakken, Heiliger Frühling: Gustav Klimt und die Anfänge
der Wiener Secession 1895-1905, (Wien: Christian Brandstätter, 1999), 15.
43
Max von Millekovitch Morold, Richard Wagner in Wien, (Leipzig, 1938),
(which expresses extreme German National Socialist sentiments).
44
Edward Timms, Karl Kraus, Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture and Catastrophe in
Habsburg Vienna, (London: Yale University,1986), 8. Kraus, the polemicist,
satirist and editor of Die Fackel, was the central figure for the circle which
included Arnold Schoenberg, Loos and Kokoschka.
45
Patricia G. Berman, “The Invention of History: Julius Meier-Graefe, German
Modernism and the Genealogy of Genius,” in Françoise Forster-Hahn, ed.,
Imagining Modern German Culture: 1889-1910, (Washington, London: National
Gallery of Art, University Press of New England, 1996), 91-105 (92).
46
Udo Andersohn, Musiktitel aus dem Jugendstil: 64 Beispiele aus den Jahren
1886-1918, (Dortmund: Harenberg, 1981), 10, 11; 34, 35, respectively for the
Grasset and Erler examples.
47
See Thomas K. Nelson, “Klinger’s Brahmsphantasie and the Cultural Politics of
Absolute Music,” Art History, 19 (1996), 26-43, also Frisch, ibid., 93-106.
48
Anderson, ibid., 16, 17.
49
For an analysis of this issue as exceptional and tables annotating Jugendstil
composers and “little magazines” see Bonnie H. Miller, “Magazine Music of the
Jugendstil and Expressionist Movements,” Periodica Musica, V: IX, 1991, 1-13
(3-8).
50
Trevor Fawcett, “Illustration and Design,” in T. Fawcett and Clive Phillpot, eds.,
The Art Press: Two Centuries of Art Magazines, (London: The Art Press at the
Victoria and Albert Museum, 1976), 55-58 (57).
51
See Ian Rumbold, “Through-composition” (durchkomponiert), Stanley Sadie,
ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music, V: 25, (London: Macmillan, 2001), 434.
52
Silverthorne, “New Spaces of Art,” 68-69.
53
Glauert, Hugo Wolf, 32.
54
Siegmund von Hausegger, Wieland der Schmied, Symphonische Dichtung für
grosses Orchester, (Berlin: Riese Erler, 1904).
55
Siegmund von Hausegger, ed., Richard Wagners Briefe an Frau Julie Ritter,
(München: F. Bruckmann, 1920).
56
August Stradal, Errinerungen an Franz Liszt, (Berlin, Leipzig: P. Haupt, 1929).
57
Diane V. Silverthorne, “Aural and Visual Spaces of Music,” Royal Academy of
Music, London, 10 October 2008.
58
Descriptions of the musical form of the Lieder which follow, personal
conversation, Amanda Glauert, Royal Academy of Music, London, February 2008.
59
Trans. A. Glauert , in Silverthorne, “New Spaces of Art,” 208-209.
60
ibid.


52 Chapter One


61
ibid.
62
For an account of German Naturalism and Wagner, see Walter Frisch, German
Modernism, Music and the Arts, (London: University of California, 1995), 36-52.
63
Frisch, citing Ehrenfels, and his article “Freie Bühne,” 1891 on Wagner, ibid,
49-51.
64
Ehrenfels, cited Frisch, German Modernism, 50.
65
Isolde’s farewell to Tristan, the “love-death” (Liebestod), Tristan und Isolde,
Act Three.
66
Schenker, The Art of Performance, 3.
67
See also Shaw-Miller, Sighting Music, (Chichester: Pallant House Gallery, c.
2007), 1-4.
68
The 1903 Vienna Court Opera production of Tristan und Isolde is acknowledged
as ground-breaking, visually and musically. Roller was attributed with the visual
realisation of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk.
69
Silverthorne, “New Spaces of Art,” ibid, 2010.




CHAPTER TWO

ARNOLD BÖCKLIN AND MUSIC:

A CASE REVISITED

SPYROS PETRITAKIS

The facts behind the ‘musicalization’ of our culture, behind the shift of
literacy and historical awareness from eye to ear, are fairly obvious, but the
underlying motives are so complex, one is so much a part of the change,
that I hesitate to put forward any explanation.
—George Steiner1

Some questions over Böcklin’s musicality

The room disappears; Böcklin’s The Island of the Dead becomes the
backdrop; soft, quiet, pleasantly melancholy music is heard from the
island.

These are the stage directions read at the end of August Strindberg’s
Ghost Sonata (Spöksonaten, 1908).2 By that time Böcklin’s Island of the
Dead, 1880 (Fig. 2.1) had reached its peak of popularity, had been set
already to music by composers, had been admired by painters and writers,
and soon would serve as a postcard during the First World War.3 The
Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901), who preferred to spend the
most part of his life in Italy but who was highly acclaimed in the recently
united Germany by the early 1890s, had been the centre of debate among
his contemporaries but only since the late 1970s has he constituted the
case study of many scholars.4 Böcklin’s rise in the Wilhelmine era was
gradually set back during the first decade of the twentieth century, to some
extent due to the shift in public taste, especially in the upper-middle class,
who, while once approbating Böcklin’s eclecticism, all of a sudden
realised that it had inveigled itself into Böcklin’s hilarious, heathen-
creatures, gloomy landscapes and tritons frolicking in the waves. This a
posteriori disproof of the public’s aesthetic expectations is subjected to


54 Chapter Two

various sociological, economical and aesthetical factors in such a way that

it discloses a challenge for the historian, that is, to gauge in what density
or sparseness a social phenomenon appears, reappears, falls back or faints
away. Böcklin’s work has been seen by his contemporaries as an effort to
rekindle the lost humanistic tradition and classical antiquity and thus
appealed to a German middle class, who could proudly recognise in
Böcklin’s work the reflection of its own ideology. By the late 1870s,
though, Böcklin’s work took a significant turn towards a more iconoclastic
path that made it seem bizarre and eccentric. Our understanding of this
change in Böcklin’s style, which came in tandem with the rise of the
moneyed elite during the Second Industrial Revolution, is essential for the
reconstruction of the horizon of expectations among different publics. The
differentiation of horizons of expectations (Horizontabhebung) of a work
from the past constitutes the major problem for our historical-critical
understanding.5 Under this scope I will focus on the way art historians,
critics, writers and publics understood Böcklin as a “Symphoniker der
Farbe”.6 It is my purpose to question the motives behind Böcklin’s
musical reception, interpreting them not as a homogeneous source but
rather connecting them with the ideologies of the post-Bismarckian
Kaiserreich. Difficulties arise from two interrelated constellations; first, it
was the need, after the unification, to create a German modern style,
especially for the visual arts; Böcklin’s “musicality”, I think, is subjected
to this framework. Second, a particular tendency towards what I would
call “mythological, gross realism”, evident in the late work of Böcklin, in
his disciples Hans Sandreuter (1850-1901) and Albert Welti (1862-1912),
but also in the works of Lovis Corinth (1858-1925), in the early works of
František Kupka (1871-1957) and finally in Richard Strauss’s symphonic
works and operas. This predilection for realism coincides with the rise of
the moneyed elite and fits in the anti-French, nationalistic canon. It
discloses, though, ambivalences in Böcklin’s reception; I mean that
Böcklin’s “serious” paintings often stripped away what has been later
regarded as a comical and ironic aspect that is immanent in his work,
although these two strands continue in parallel. This “mythological gross
realism” in Böcklin finds, I think, its “pendant” in Strauss’s work. The
chapter will work towards this new Straussian interpretation.
It has been a common place in the Böcklin literature that the paintings
of the master evoked a musical mood (Stimmung) and activated certain
synaesthetic effects. The sources of those statements vary: from individual
art critics to institutions, museum directors and the disciples of Böcklin,
who underpinned this widespread view in order to establish the rumour of
their master.7 This convenient adaptation of a musical language by


 Arnold Böcklin and Music: A Case Revisited 55

contemporary authors in their art criticism on Böcklin and its projection

into his work has led to a series of misunderstandings in the modern
literature. In particular, Max Schneider published an entire book devoted
to the relationship between Böcklin and music, where he introduced a long
bibliography on the subject.8 Thus, terms or tropes such as Stimmungsmalerei
(mood-painting), musikalische Wirkung (musical effect), uralte, magische
Macht (primordial, magical force) and Gemütsleben (emotional life) began
to seep into modern art studies and were projected on to Böcklin’s work.
Karl Schawelka understands, for example, the musikalische Stimmung
only as an aesthetic value. It is immanent in the work of art and waits for
the art historian to uncover it.9 Franzsepp Würtenberger asserts that “music
is for Böcklin a primordial, magical force” and “nature [in Böcklin]
generates music and life dominates all around while music reverberates.”10
After arguing that in Böcklin’s paintings one can hear nature’s “total
sound” or reproducing Max Schneider’s viewpoint that “these figures that
are born from the spirit of nature incarnate in Böcklin the very elementary
moods of nature”,11 he concludes that “it is by no means absurd to play
music before Böcklin’s paintings, in order to help the beholder concretize
the artificial generated ‘Stimmung’.”12 Andrea Linnebach sees in The Surf
of the sea, 1877,13 “the perfect paradigm for romantic synaesthesia,”14
whereas Andrea Gottdang for the same painting remarks: “The musical
instrument and the ferocious nature of the reefs make us imagine the
music of Nature, the primordial music which corresponds to the plain,
archaic form of the harp.”15
The question should not be whether Böcklin experimented at the
margin of synaesthesia or whether he tried or succeeded to evoke the
audible with specific effects, but rather why the readers of his paintings
coveted so much the invitation to hear rather than to see. How have these
established tropes of “musicality” been correlated with Böcklin as a
German painter and to what extent did Böcklin foresee this process and
avail himself of it? Underlying this chapter is my intention to argue that
the understanding and interpretation of Böcklin’s oeuvre through musical
language is not only a matter of aesthetic reception but of a pre-shaped,
collective perception, umbilically tied to the social-political factors that
surrounded the work of the painter. I will propose that Böcklin’s
musicality became the key to understanding Böcklin’s modernism in
Germany, and also in the name of marketing gains, as an antithesis to
French modernism.
When dealing with Böcklin then, one ineluctably draws up all those
issues that are embedded in the reception of the painter, especially those
tied up with Germanness and modernism. The problem of the definition of


56 Chapter Two

modernism arose in art criticism in Germany when the museum directors

and art dealers came to equip their collections with contemporary art from
other countries, especially France.16 Although it was the Americans who
promoted Parisian modernists by being the first to buy their art for high
prices, and thus giving international success to them, it was the German
critics who posed the problem of modernism in its historical context.17 The
colonising ambitions and widely held anti-French sentiment of
Wilhelmine politics with its bureaucratic mechanisms were forged in the
public sphere in Germany and therefore Böcklin’s paintings, perhaps
unduly, served as the battering ram with which to wage a cultural war
towards the enemies of Germanness, especially internally. In due course,
Julius Meier-Graefe (1867-1935), an art critic who defined himself in
opposition to German cultural ideals, pilloried Böcklin in his book The
Case of Böcklin (Der Fall Böcklin, 1905), rescinding his earlier
appreciation for the painter.18 The book deliberately reminds its readers of
The Case Wagner (1888) by Friedrich Nietzsche, in which the philosopher
took Wagner for a false prophet. Through his comparison, Meier-Graefe, a
proponent of French art, denigrates Böcklin’s art as a crass embodiment of
the worst aspects of German culture. With this stance he confronted the
established German art history, particularly Hermann Grimm (1828-1901)
and Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945), the latter a great admirer of Böcklin’s
mythological scenes.19 It is important to notice that Meier-Graefe sought
to understand western painting as a technical and stylistic evolution,
whose tracks can be traced in the entirety of nineteenth-century French
painting, from Corot and Courbet to Manet and the Impressionists. Thus,
by proclaiming French painting, particularly Impressionism, as the
normative standard, by which German painting had to be judged, Meier-
Graefe propelled passionate public debates among German art critics. Due
to his Jewish origins the attacks involved overtly or less overtly anti-
Semitic slurs even against the German Impressionist painter Max
Liebermann (1847-1935). Meier-Graefe’s adversaries came to defend
Böcklin, Wagner and the German art.20 As a result Böcklin became in the
eyes of his defenders, the “Wagner of painting”, even for critics outside
Germany. I would like to question this relationship, yet, knowing that
discussions about German national identity can be rather tricky. We do not
know whether Ǻöcklin was sharing these patriotic tributes (from late
1880s) or not, but he certainly embraced them warily.


 Arnold Böcklin and Music: A Case Revisited 57

A “Symphoniker der Farbe”

The paintings of Böcklin along with Dürer’s and Picasso’s have been
the most popular source of inspiration for composers, who tried to
investigate the margins between the two arts.21 The Institute of Musicology
at the Leopold-Franzens University in Innsbruck offers a programme
entitled Musik nach Bildern under the auspices of Monika Fink and Lucas
Christensen. The programme began in September 2006 and is still in
progress, having as its purpose to organise a database of digital works of
art that have been used as narrative material for composers, whose names
appear alongside the painters’. In Böcklin’s case, we find that eighteen
musical pieces were composed between 1896 and 1915, one work for
orchestra in 1930, as well as an opera, dated 1923.22 We can also ascertain
that the most celebrated paintings of Böcklin, which were musically
interpreted, were The Isle of the Dead comprising of eleven compositions
and The Hermit playing the Fiddle, comprising of six.23 The most famous
symphonic poems composed after Böcklin’s paintings are The Isle of the
Dead op.29 (1907) by Sergei Rachmaninoff and Max Reger’s Böcklin-
Suite, op.128 (1913).24 We observe that before the First World War the
composers’ interest in Böcklin’s pictures dwindles; the result of his works
falling into oblivion.25 This demonstrates how Böcklin’s popularity
amongst musicians is subjected to, as well as it is analogous to, the overall
public taste and not independent from it.
Undoubtedly music played an important role in Böcklin’s life. Although
he did not have the opportunity for proper musical training, he
nevertheless experimented with various instruments such as the flute,
drum and above all an old harmonium, which accompanied him on all of
his journeys.26 In Rome he was singing the bass part in a vocal quartet.27
His disciple Otto Lasius recounts:

Before the Sea-Stillness, (1887) was finally delivered, I went back for
another time to Böcklin’s atelier… It was so dark inside but I could still
discern the picture; its illuminating, plastic effect made a huge impression
on me. Böcklin, who didn’t see me entering, was sitting bewitched in the
corner at his harmonium and was day dreaming, while outside, it was
flashing and thundering. Then the powerful, touching chords resounded,
Böcklin was playing a fugue by Bach. Music had undoubtedly influenced
his work since he could not live without it.28

Böcklin had also composed music of his own based on the poem of
Emanuel Geibel “Now that the shadows become darker” (Nun die
Schatten dunkeln) (Fig. 2.2).29 The composers whom he most admired


58 Chapter Two

were among others Allegri, J. S. Bach, Gluck, Haydn and Mozart.30 He

was touched especially by Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orpheus and by
Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere, which he also played on the Harmonium.31
The latter also served as an inspiration for the painting Maria
Magdalena’s lamentation over the body of Christ.32 Far from alluding to
this introspective relationship to music, Böcklin’s works abound in
iconographical details concerning musical instruments or creatures that
exult to the joys of life. His knowledge of musical instruments overcomes
the romantic tradition of Moritz von Schwind (1804-1871) or Anselm
Feuerbach (1829-1880) in the sense that he introduced iconographical
types of ancient instruments that were unknown to his predecessors. He
must then have fulfilled the expectations of a certain cultivated elite, who
avidly read Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) or became fascinated with the
new findings from the excavations in Pompeii.33 Böcklin delves into the
past, Greek and Roman Antiquities as well as the Italian Renaissance, and
depicts the musical instruments with an exact accuracy and verisimilitude
almost unprecedented.34 Böcklin to a large extent enhanced the effect of
musical iconography by experimenting with several colour techniques
which caused his work be condemned as eccentric and bizarre. Having
studied Pliny and Vitruvius’ writings about the Encaustic and Pompeian
mural paintings, Böcklin evolved a technique which consisted of a mixture
of wax painting, tempera, turpentine, sandarac, and copaiba balsam.35 This
strange mixture gave his colours a bright and resplendent texture creating
a gross realism that shocked the viewer. Referring to his painting In the
Sea the painter says:

Do see, the woman must yell - we must hear her singing out – that is the
purpose, the effect of the whole scene must be so real. For days now I have
been doing nothing else than working out the stillness and lightness of the
sea and air and trying to concentrate the colour where I want it to be
directly perceivable and lead to the main subject.36

Hence, realistic depiction was the means to enhance the musicality of the
work or, vice versa, the musical mood itself made his paintings look much
more realistic.37 Andrea Gottdang remarks that in this painting (In the Sea)
and other sea scenes the depicted item “ought not to be real but to affect
(wirkt) truthfully.”38 Munch has achieved something similar, says
Gottdang, with his Scream.39 Thus, according to her, Böcklin extended the
effect of his images beyond the visual impression, offering to the receptors
of his paintings an alternative way of seeing.40 The problem with the
above approach is perhaps that it is based on the premise that fictional
viewers react psychologically in the same way towards a Böcklin painting;


 Arnold Böcklin and Music: A Case Revisited 59

implying therefore that they share the same ideology, same cultural origins
and same taste for art. Moreover, it presupposes that Böcklin knew the
psychological theories of Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Fechner – a
fact that Gottdang does not deny–and thus to a degree, consciously
manipulated the viewer’s response.41 Historically, the elaborate depicting
of gestures and mime is not an invention of nineteenth-century painting;
rather, it goes back to seventeenth-century Dutch painting, like that of
Hendrick Terbrugghen (1588-1629) and Dirck van Baburen (1590-1624),
where the precise naturalism of detail is enhanced through such pictorial
devices.42 Böcklin, who was well acquainted with seventeenth-century
Baroque painting, must have made use of such practices of cheironomy in
order to add to the musical iconography a deeper psychological layer.
Thus, he did not need Helmholtz in order to enhance the realistic
depiction. The question now should be why Böcklin’s predilection for
realism was so easily understood and interpreted through musical language
and by whom?
Viewers soon understood Böcklin’s vivid palette as a quality which
had its equal in the chromatic, technical progress in the nineteenth-century
orchestra. Therefore it becomes a common topos for art criticism over the
course of the nineteenth century that painting should have the same
qualities as music. Hence, when a painting is believed to evoke musical
emotions, it is then automatically accepted as aesthetically good. William
Ritter sees the repeated versions of Villa at the sea as musical variations
that evoke every time a different mood.43 For the same paintings Ludwig
Justi speaks of a “passacaglia of warm and cold colours, carried out with
perfect certainty.”44 He introduces also the term “sonority (Klangfülle) of
colours.”45 Musical characterisations became also a means for negative
criticism; Meier-Graefe notes that “Böcklin is certainly loud; the loudest
we have in our galleries.”46 Otto Lasius remarks the “screaming
dissonance” in Böcklin’s work The Pest.47 Thus, in this context musical
language must be seen as an attempt to remodernise Böcklin in a tradition
from Baroque to contemporary art colour-sound theories.

Musicality in Böcklin and the Webs of German

Nationalism
At the end of the nineteenth century, a controversy about modern art
had flared up in Germany, when the reception of Impressionist painters
disclosed two or maybe more opposing camps, the supporters of the
modern movement and the defenders of national German art. Teachers at
art academies throughout Germany as well as artists themselves belonged


60 Chapter Two

to the latter category; as a civil conservative middle class that served the
official policy of Wilhelm II’s regime. The targets of their attacks were the
museum directors that favoured the acquisition of French Impressionist
painters. Such is the example of Hugo von Tschudi, the director of the
National Gallery of Berlin in 1896, who accepted works by Monet, Manet
and Degas as donations from Jewish collectors, who opposed the Imperial
Kunstpolitik. Works by Böcklin, Hans Thoma, Wilhelm Leibl and Max
Klinger were sought by von Tschudi to be hung beside the Impressionists.48
This caused a public outcry and a debate that lasted for several years. von
Tschudi’s acquisitions were seen as a desecration of the German temple of
art, due to which he was reprimanded and finally forced to resign in 1908.
At that time Böcklin’s works were understood to mirror the “inwardness
of the German spirit” and thus a side by side comparison with the
Impressionists sullied German patriotic esteem.49 von Tschudi made use of
musical vocabulary to define the modern element in Böcklin, namely those
pictorial means that cannot be expressed in words.50
The fear that German artistic ideals were suppressed by art historians
who favoured foreign modernism was expressed in many art journals such
as Kunstwert. Conservative voices, who declaimed against both foreign art
and particularly Jewish influence, penetrated even the liberal and
pluralistic Jugend.51 William II had taken actions to assert that the
National Gallery would house only German art and all foreign artists
should be displayed in less prominent places.52 It is a mistake however to
oversimplify this division, as there were many museum directors who
despite their nationalistic feelings fought to acquire modern art. In 1897,
when Böcklin’s seventieth birthday was celebrated with great acclamation
across Germany and Switzerland, art critics came to enhance the public’s
thirst for national art. Adulation was everywhere, from popular papers to
the aristocratic Pan. The official exhibition for Basel’s honoured artist-son
attracted twenty-five thousand visitors and it was surpassed by the Berlin
retrospective with sixty thousand.53
It is interesting to note that during the first exhibitions of Böcklin’s
work in Berlin in the early 1870s, when his paintings were viewed as gross
and ugly, even from the then director of the Nationalgalerie Max Jordan,
the musical characterisations ascribed to his work had a negative hue.
When the Catholic burgher August Reichensperger saw the paganistic
painting The Fields of the blessed,54 noticed that the “colours are so loud,
that I tried to close my ears.”55 Another art critic noticed ironically
regarding the Play of the Naiads:56 “And that must be according to your
modern terms a ‘symphony of colours’.”57 From the late 1880s, when the
works of Böcklin began to attract an appreciative audience, the art critics


 Arnold Böcklin and Music: A Case Revisited 61

gradually brought into use a musical vocabulary which conveyed a

positive meaning. Furthermore, the modern in Böcklin was understood
through his ability to evoke a musical mood (Stimmung) as his landscapes
are said to do. In his Geschichte der modernen Kunst in 1894 Adolf
Rosenberg writes that “Böcklin is a poet of colours, whose tones can be
compared to musical ones, because of their capability to evoke the
sentiment directly and also the vibrations of the soul.”58 Such tropes
indicate a chain of binary opposites that predominated in fin-de-siècle
Germany. The qualities that Germans mostly espoused were Kultur
(versus civilisation), ideas (versus entertainment), Geist (versus
sensuality).59 The above phraseology constituted the yeast of a nationalistic
frenzy that brought Böcklin closer to Wagner. Thus, statements, such as
those from Ludwig Pfau in 1888, that the phantasmagorias of H. Makart
are very alike with the dreamy pictures of Böcklin, became a common
place in art criticism.60 Hans Makart, by the way, was one of Wagner’s
favourite and most admired painters. Leon Botstein remarked that what
made Wagner and Makart so appealing to a large middle class was “both
the tendency towards pre-modern myths of community, and heroism, and
a polemical attack on the instruments of modernity, including capitalism,
the contemporary city and modern journalism.”61 Critics, such as Ludwig
Pfau and Adolf Rosenberg, who underpinned this linkage between
Wagner, Böcklin and Makart, were two of the most influential critics in
Germany between 1870 and 1885, whose taste for bourgeois realism
coexisted with a patriotic esteem. They were, of course, both anti-
Impressionists and rejected the naturalism of Liebermann, Leibl and
Courbet.
The parallelism between Böcklin and Wagner was so aptly forged
during the turn of the century that a whole book, published by Gottfried
Niemann, a landscape painter, was based on this concept. Mixing in the
same pot Nietzsche’s Dionysian and Apollonian with Böcklin’s work
Niemann states that: “Wagner’s music and the landscapes of Böcklin are
the epitome of Dionysian art.”62 He then sees in Böcklin’s landscapes the
elementary power and mood of nature.63 Meier-Graefe in order to assault
Böcklin’s admirers found this comparison very convenient. He argued that
Böcklin’s paintings form a stage, like Wagner’s operas, whereas
landscapes degrade to scenery where the mythological figures become
comic heroes.64 Meier-Graefe’s remark had influenced greatly the way
foreign artists and critics saw Böcklin.
Henry Thode, married to the older daughter of Cosima Wagner,
Daniela von Bülow, professor at the University of Heidelberg and friend
of Hans Thoma, came to defend Böcklin’s art from Meier-Graefe’s attack


62 Chapter Two

through a series of lectures he gave at the University and which he later

published as a book.65 There he criticised the “clique” of art historians
headquartered in Berlin who favoured modern French painting and
therefore debased the national German spirit.66 For Thode, German art had
to be idealistic, to reconcile man with nature and God in crashing contrast
to the realistic art which disengages itself from theological and moral
issues.67 It is interesting though that for his argumentation Thode evoked
the affinity between landscape mood-painting (Stimmungslandschaft and
music.68 He remarked:

I feel obliged to examine closely these relations between painting and

music, because, firstly, it is important for our understanding of the
historical context, in which both arts manifest themselves, and, secondly,
because Meier-Graefe treated with mockery the book of G. Niemann, in
which Böcklin and Wagner are paralleled.69

Thus, Böcklin and Thoma touch the German soul as Beethoven touches it
with his music and in an energetic way that no other landscape painter
French or English has ever managed to do.70 This patriotic delirium took
the form of a public debate in the Frankfurter Zeitung between Thode and
Max Liebermann revealing the economical, national and aesthetic interests
that both sides represented.71 The war that the defenders of true German
art waged against all aspects of modernity or internationality, together
with an overtly enunciated anti-Semitism, was to gain ground after some
decades.
The same statements were echoed much later when the debate over
Böcklin had abated. For example, the sociologist Georg Simmel (1858-
1918) saw the mood of Böcklin’s paintings to be closer to music.72 Later,
the musicologist Max F. Schneider, professor at the Halle University from
1928 to 1956, published (in the middle of the Second World War) a book
about Böcklin entitled Arnold Böcklin, ein Maler aus dem Geiste der
Musik (Arnold Böcklin, a painter from the spirit of music).73 There he
concludes that “in Böcklin’s paintings the primordial magical power of
music, of which the indo-Germanic folk groups tells us, becomes alive
again and entices the beholder.”74 At the end of his book he feels that from
all those composers influenced by Böcklin only Max Reger deserves to be
mentioned as a great master.75 The misappropriation of Böcklin’s
paintings by the Third Reich was inevitable. The landscapes of the painter
were interpreted as representations of the North German spirit and
together with Wagner stood for unsullied German art. Hitler himself had
acquired in 1934 the third version of The Island of the Dead (1883).76


 Arnold Böcklin and Music: A Case Revisited 63

But, was Böcklin indeed a Wagner in painting? I will elucidate the

subject further. It is repeatedly stated by some of Böcklin’s biographers
that their master found Wagner’s style of music rather boring and
grandiloquent. Böcklin was opposed to Wagner’s conception of the
Gesamtkunstwerk, which sought to converge all arts into one. He was
thinking that in such a case painting would be undermined to a decorative
form of art, as actually Wagner aimed to do.77 On the other hand Hans
Thoma willingly subjugated his art to the sovereignty of the
Gesamtkunstwerk by making the sets for the Wagner’s operas.78 Elizabeth
Tumasonis has shown that Böcklin took a very skeptical attitude towards
Wagner’s knightly Nordic ideal and histrionic dramatics. Only once did
Böcklin accept an invitation to design a dragon for the opera Siegfried and
this possibly due to financial problems. Notwithstanding Cosima
Wagner’s blandishments to persuade the painter to undertake another
commission, the design of Parsifal, Böcklin remained adamant.79 Once
when Böcklin was invited to attend a musical programme in Wagner’s
house in Naples, he must have become restless during the performance
because Wagner asked him rather caustically: “You don’t understand
much about music?” and the painter replied: “Hopefully, more than you do
of painting!”80 Yet, in 1977, Richard Peduzzi, designer of Patrice
Chéreau’s centenary “Ring”, used as a model for the stage sets of the third
act of the Walküre Böcklin’s The Island of the Dead.81
In France the linkage between Wagner and Böcklin was favoured
especially by Symbolist circles but was reconstructed and denuded of its
national mantle. The Symbolist painter and critic Emile Bernard compared
Böcklin with Wagner in his article in the Nouvelle Revue d’Egypt in 1903:
“In my opinion Arnold Böcklin incorporated in contemporary art what
Wagner accomplished in music: the evocation.”82 The polish painter
Boleslas Biegas (1877-1954), who lived in Paris from 1901, painted in
1924 the first images from La Mystique de l’Infini, in homage to the
painter Arnold Böcklin. The mingling of Böcklinian and Wagnerian
elements is manifested through the choice of mythological material.83
Notwithstanding the repulsion Böcklin felt towards Wagner, it seems
that the public was too willing to see Böcklin through the ears of Wagner.
Even Meier-Graefe in his manifesto against German art identifies Böcklin
with Wagner, rejecting all those statements that wanted Böcklin apart from
Wagner: “It is the same world” he says.84 About one thing Meier-Graefe
was right though. German critics had a difficulty to conceptualise the
visual arts. It is true that German composers and musicians have enjoyed a
greater reputation abroad, especially in France, more easily than the
German painters have.85 Moreover, music was seen to achieve a unity of


64 Chapter Two

taste whereas visual arts were seen to promote national consciousness with
much more difficulty. In his book Entwicklungsgeschichte der modernen
Malerei Meier-Graefe has pointed out:

Since Dürer there has been no German painter and even in its golden age,
the essential in German art was almost always more draftsmanship than of
a painterly kind…The German is a musician, a poet, he is always less as a
painter.86

It is often stated that music had contributed more than any other art to
the unification of Germany in 1871 and thus was understood as the
reflection of the German soul. By the end of the eighteenth century it was
a commonplace between writers, philosophers, educators and state
representatives that links between music and national culture should be
forged and hence music should be sponsored and supported by the state.87
The spiritual side of art which includes terms such as introspection,
brooding, melancholy, all of which might be ascribed to the German
nature, are more easily to be expressed in music – or so the artists thought
– that touches the soul more immediately than in painting, where the
sensory organs are bound up with the real world. Hence Germans were
more ready to embrace the abstract qualities of music and poetry. All the
romantic agony of German painters, philosophers and poets to explore the
very source from which all forms of art flow, could spiral out from their
unsettledness toward real-world images.88 Under this light it is perhaps
justifiable why Kandinsky chose to name Böcklin as one of the predecessors
of his art.
Returning now to the reception of Arnold Böcklin, we can see that the
musical reading of his paintings is totally entwined with the debate about
modernity in Imperial Germany at the end of the century and thus
concerned with the question of German cultural identity. Suzanne
Marchand argues that Böcklin’s adoption as a German artist

is not a simple reaction against modernization, but an attempt of one sector

of the classically-educated elite to substitute their form of modernism for
what was being offered by the anti-historical impressionists or, worse, the
social critical naturalists.89

I have tried to show how the interpretation of Böcklin by dint of musical

expressions unveiled a new dynamic in the painter’s reception after 1870,
when a particular sector of the educated elite yearned for a national but
also modern art. I believe that the musical reading of Böcklin’s work
enabled the channeling of his paintings onto a slowly growing market –


 Arnold Böcklin and Music: A Case Revisited 65

something also foreseen by the artist himself – which embraced a form of

modernism which turned itself towards the German national art.

Arnold Böcklin and Richard Strauss

Now, I would like to turn the prism so as to illuminate another facet of
Böcklin’s critical reception. Ludwig Wittgenstein once said: “You can
sometimes find the similarity between the style of a musician and the style
of a poet who lived at the same time or a painter.”90 He particularly cited
Brahms whose themes, he thought, had similarities with the writings of
Gottfried Keller (1819-1890). The interest of this statement - that Brahms
and Keller are the same - lies for Wittgenstein in the fact that both of them
lived at the same time and thus they shared the same culture or style. I do
not draw on this example randomly. Gottfried Keller was one of Böcklin’s
best friends at the time he was staying in Zurich and Brahms visited
Böcklin’s studio in 1887, where he saw and admired the painting Centaur
at the village Blacksmith, (1888).91 Leon Botstein argued in his essay that
Brahms and Böcklin had much in common. Both were influenced by the
writings of Jacob Burckhardt about the Renaissance, resisted French
influence and believed in scientific progress.92 Aesthetically seen one must
agree that both share a certain neoclassicism in the development of form,
although Klinger seems to me to fit better with Brahms. Yet, in order to
elucidate aspects in one art that are hidden or suggestive in the other, one
must take different strands together, such as the social context and
historical background, so that the issues of aesthetics and culture are not
construed artificially as autonomous of politics and history. I mean that
Brahms was politically liberal, had expressed disdain for the new radical
anti-Semitism, had friends who were wealthy Jews in Vienna and had
revolted against the conservative establishment in Vienna that Bruckner
represented.93 But could Böcklin so aptly fit in that ideological nexus?
Rather awkwardly I would say. Although he was disdainful of Wagner’s
style and ideology as well as the conservative, provincial circles in Basel,
he chose to suppress his democratic feelings and abnegate the social
reality. Thus, he preferred to hide himself behind elaborating,
psychological, and mythical subjects. I will indicate this stance by
examining a “pendant” in music.
While other critics in France correlated Böcklin with Wagner, Debussy
while attending a concert with the works Tod und Verklärung and Till
Eulenspiegel by Richard Strauss observed that:


66 Chapter Two

Between the art of Böcklin and that of Richard Strauss there are peculiar
similarities…the same carelessness for a pre-organized drawing, the same
taste for a form derived directly from the colour itself, and a drawing of
dramatic effects from the same colour. From the two artists the first cannot
change his style because he is dead; the second, much alive and active,
would do everything not to change his, since he enthralls five or almost
five continents.94

On the occasion of Böcklin’s death on 14th February 1901, an honorary

funeral took place in Munich where the fragmentary play Der Tod des
Tizian by Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) was performed. At the
beginning of the ceremony a Hymne by Richard Strauss was to be heard.95
In fact Böcklin and Richard Strauss came to know each other, when both
of them were in Italy. On 3rd October 1896 Richard Strauss and his wife
Pauline visited Florence. On 8th October the composer called on Arnold
Böcklin, who was staying in his villa Bellagio in Fiesole, on the outskirts
of Florence, and played Till Eulenspiegel to him on the piano, and a
Beethoven Adagio and Pauline sang five Strauss songs. They called on
Böcklin again on 10th October. They paid a third visit to Böcklin on 21st
October, when Strauss played more Beethoven at their host’s express
wish.96 In a letter from Florence on 13th October 1896 addressed to his
friend Eugen Spitzweg, Strauss writes that he and Böcklin would visit
Orvieto, Assisi and Perugia together.97 It is not certain though if that trip
ever took place. In Strauss’s diaries we find also that he thought highly of
Böcklin, and considered him to be a genius. In another letter in July 1947
he mentions that when his nephew asked him once to help him compose
an essay about a painting of Böcklin, Strauss replied furiously that this
was a very difficult task for a little boy and neither could he himself
manage it.98
Strauss had shown vivid interest in painting as a young man.99 When
he first visited Berlin he persevered to make contact with Anton von
Werner, Ludwig Kraus and other painters. He was an amateur art collector
and gathered items, which fascinated him.100 When he was in Paris or
London he never missed the chance to visit the museums and study the art
of the past. Moreover, while visiting the National Gallery and the Wallace
Collection in London in 1947, he felt “at home” and “he had no need of
the catalogue because he was acquainted not only with the painters but
also with the subject-matter of the images.”101 He had once confided to his
friend and biographer Willi Schuh that he planned to compose a
“symphony of images” [Bildersymphonie], in which he would
transubstantiate painting into music. In fact he planned to compose
psychological portraits based on famous paintings from the National


 Arnold Böcklin and Music: A Case Revisited 67

Gallery. Nevertheless the work never came into being, although later
Schuh found some sketches of this project.102 Like Böcklin, Strauss was
opposed to the theoretical understanding of art and believed in a more
spontaneous and subjective approach.103 However, during the winter of
1882-1883 he attended lectures in philosophy, history of art, aesthetics and
Shakespeare at University of Munich, as his father wished.104
While in Florence, on 11th October 1896, Richard Strauss jotted down:
“first idea for an orchestral piece: Don Quixote, free variations on a
knightly theme.”105 This tone poem (1897, Op.35) belongs to the second
cycle of his tone poems, the Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks (1895,
Op.28), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1896, Op.30), and A Heroic Life
(1897/8, Op.40), all composed in the late 1890s at the time when he met
Böcklin.106 These works came after Guntram, after the rejection of
Schopenhauer and the distancing from Bayreuth. They are also bigger than
the former works of the composer. By 1886, Strauss started reassessing
Wagner’s influence on him and thinking of new ways to express the
extramusical realms of experience. His relationship with the composer and
violinist Alexander Ritter (1833-1896) played an important role in that
decision. Charles Youmans points out that “his worldview is now shifting
to a direction closer to Nietzsche.”107 What strikes me as comparable to
late Böcklinian in these works are the tendencies to purge away every
metaphysical element and to evoke a sentiment of grandiose jocundity that
when obtained it lapses suddenly into nothing, baffling the viewer or
listener. In my opinion this ambivalence becomes psychologically evident
in these works when we hear or see the irony and parody that is being set
up in front of us.
Don Quixote was finished in Munich on 29th December 1897, after
Strauss’s return from Italy, and it was first performed in Cologne on 8th
March 1898 by Franz Wüllner (1832-1902) and the Gürzenich Orchestra.
Following Liszt’s lead on programme music Strauss achieves the fusion of
extramusical content with musical expressive means. The technique of
symphonic variations served as the structural underpinning of the work, as
the title implies, although Strauss composed rather polyphonically in that
direction creating several themes that illustrated psychological portraits;
Don Quixote is thus incarnated in the solo violoncello passage while his
squire Sancho Panza in the solo viola one. Strauss indulged into an
unprecedented musical realism to such an extent that a special exegesis of
twenty-seven pages for all the variations was compiled in order to guide
the listener and thus to ease the work’s reception.108 The depiction of the
flock of sheep (flutter-tonguing woodwind and muted brass), the ride
through the air (wind machine and harp glissandi), the battle with the two


68 Chapter Two

magicians (two bassoons) indicate that Strauss’s intention was to create

intense pictorial associations, just like guiding his audience through a
picture gallery. Rudolf Louis wrote in 1909 that with Don Quixote Strauss
was the first composer to create music for the eyes.109
Strauss’s Don Quixote bares similarities, both in style and content,
with Böcklin’s The Adventurer.110 Although Strauss could not have seen
The Adventurer in Böcklin’s villa in Fiesole, he might have noticed the
painting in Berlin much earlier, when it was exhibited in Gallery “Fritz
Gurlitt” between 1882 and 1885 and was finally acquired by the artists
association in Bremen.111 Richard Strauss lived at this period between
1883 and 1884 in Berlin gathering impressions from the artistic life of the
city.112 In The Adventurer Böcklin is also inspired by a literary source,
Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. The picture narrates the scene when
the Knight Astolfo with his horse Rabican visits the cannibal land of
Caligorant. The knight, unaware of what lies beyond marches pompously
when the horse balks at the sight of bones scattered on the sand.113 The
scene discloses a crass contrast: the knight, gaudy and steady, marches on
in order to fight, while the black horse sees the danger and loses its
courage. The vast, blue firmament underpins this contrast between the
ivory-towered knight and the down-to-earth horse. The grotesque-comic
character of the painting is mostly visible in the face of the horse, or to put
it in Henri Bergson’s words “the comic does not exist outside the pale of
what is strictly human…you may laugh at an animal, but only because you
have detected in it some human attitude or expression.”114
Böcklin had set to painting several scenes from Ariosto’s Cinquecento
epic, all awash with grotesque-like features.115 Norbert Schneider had
argued that in The Adventurer we could recognise the allegorical figure of
the voluptuously expansive Prussian militarism.116 Moreover, he related
the scene to the German colonial policy in south and east Africa in 1885.
The painting is thus a synecdoche, a Pars pro toto of the whole land.117
Even if we go too far to say that Böcklin while in Florence was latently
alluding to a political event clad in quasi-mythological context, we agree
that this painting hints not at the narration of chivalry but rather at its
mockery; a manifestation of anti-heroism.
Don Quixote, the novel, owes a lot to Orlando Furioso, especially for
the narrative technique and the parodying of traditional literary genres.118
In Don Quixote there is also a fearful king, Alifanfaron, who lived on the
vast island of Trapobana in India. Respectively, in the second Variation of
Strauss’s Don Quixote the knight fights with the supposed Alifanfaron’s
herd. Richard Strauss was aware of the parody and gave it a larger extent.
In the second group of Strauss’s tonal poems there is always a male hero,


 Arnold Böcklin and Music: A Case Revisited 69

who sets out to fulfill his chimerical ambitions rebelling against the norms
of society. The ironic-humorous undertone reminds us though that this
attempt should not be taken seriously. In Böcklin’s The Adventurer we
observe similar parodistic, critical elements (perhaps in both cases a veiled
autobiographical caricature?) The symbolic use of colour enhances this
effect; for example the exaggerating use of blue in the firmament
emphasises the theatricality the scene represents. Goethe before and
Kandinsky after have both indicated that blue colour equals with nothing,
guides us to nowhere.119 By the way, Strauss described a later recording of
Don Quixote as “a fight between a theme and a nothing.”120 Ernest
Newman finds that “the blend of humor and pathos in Don Quixote is
something wholly new in music.”121 Charles Youmans points out that

Parody became a central and self-conscious feature of Strauss’s music – a

disconcerting elliptical sort of parody that often leaves listeners wondering
whether this or that passage by Strauss was meant either seriously or
ironically.122

In Till Eulenspiegel, Strauss used for the first time a method of ironic
disguise that he would retain even after he moved on to opera.123 He even
quotes and parodies Siegfried’s “Idyll” from Act III of Wagner’s opera, as
Böcklin did with his series of dragons. In both cases, the scheme of irony
is being implied through vociferous colourings, large bold forms and
obvious theatricality. As Charles Youmans argues, “Don Quixote takes an
affectionate, understanding, but distinctly skeptical look at the effects of
stubborn metaphysical convictions on a single individual - a passionate,
learned, aging, misguided ‘Ritter’.”124 From a narrative aspect, both
Böcklin and Strauss have the tendency to connect the unconnected, a
symptom of late Romanticism that leads to an aesthetic Kitsch. The above
comparison is intended to be disparaging of neither Strauss nor Böcklin,
but rather to indicate a common specific tension in late nineteenth-century
music and painting. In both cases, though, the irony was not completely
understood by the public. Strauss had been complaining that his
contemporaries could not understand his contribution in music, which was
the tone of irony and mockery.125 In this regard, I interpret Strauss’s Don
Quixote as a musical “pendant” of Böcklin’s The Adventurer.
Both Strauss and Böcklin were seen by their contemporaries to
incorporate Nietzschean elements in their work. Both came from an upper-
middle class background, had a firm education, were avid readers, were
apolitical and had identified themselves with the Greek spirit.126 Both
enthralled the middle class with their cultural eclecticism, which lacks
historicity. Both oscillated between traditional forms and modern


70 Chapter Two

harmonies. Moreover, their work was abused by the agents of the Third
Reich – the older Richard Strauss held an ambivalent stance during the
war – because it seemed to encapsulate the innately German spirit and
enmity to foreign modernism. As in Strauss’s music, so does one observe
in Böcklin’s late pictures a tendency to heroic travesty; an ironic comment
to the Wagnerian world view. However, the element of parody in their
oeuvre reflects an individualistic, aristocratic perception, which is born
from the rejection of the directly and empirically experienced social reality
and political discourse; their withdrawal (Weltflucht) reflects an artistic
lassitude and intellectual Ennui born out from a repressed rebellion. In my
opinion Theodor Adorno summarises this aspect with the following words:

The passages intended as ‘high style’ have a conciliatory innocence of tone

much like official speakers with classical citations, or a latitudinarian
minister at a cremation. Strauss’s antiquity is of this stamp. It is not the
mythic anticlassicism of the Nietzschean, not the wish to oppose the
demonic, ecstatic Greece of the sixth Century to Winckelmann’s Roman
copies and Goethe’s Humanism, but rather Böcklinian, with many pillars
and cypresses.127


 Arnold Böcklin and Music: A Case Revisited 71

Fig. 2.2: Emanuel Geibel, Now that the shadows become darker, composed by
Arnold Böcklin, in Henri Mendelsohn, Böcklin (Berlin, 1901), 235.


72 Chapter Two

Fig 2.3: Arnold Böcklin, The Adventurer, 1882, tempera on canvas, 150 x 116 cm
© Witt library, Courtauld Institute of Art.

Notes

1
George Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle, Some Notes Towards the Re-definition of
Culture, (London: Faber and Faber 1971), 92.
2
Quoted in Toril Moi, Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism, Art, Theater,
Philosophy, (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2006), 136.
3
Die Toteninsel. For the implementations of this painting see: Franz Zelger,
“Invention, Realisation, Degeneration. Böcklin-Motive und ihre Umsetzung auf
Postkarten,” in In uns selbst liegt Italien, Die Kunst der Deutsch-Römer, ed.
Christoph Heilmann, (ex.cat., Haus der Kunst Munich: Hirmer 1987), 45-59; Franz
Zelger, Die Toteninsel, Selbstheroisierung und Abgesang der Abendländischen
Kultur, (Frankfurt am Main, 1991).
4
Rolf Andree and Hans Holenweg, who possesses the Böcklin archive, contributed
mostly with their source material: Rolf Andree, ed., Die Gemälde (Basel, 1977).
This was reprinted with a Supplement by Hans Holenweg, in 1998; Hans
Holenweg and Franz Zelger, Arnold Böcklin, Die Zeichnungen (Schweizerisches
Institut für Kunstwissenschaft, Oeuvrekataloge Schweizer Künstler 18, Basel,
1998). I will henceforth refer to Böcklin’s paintings using the catalogue number of
Rolf Andree. See also the recent exhibitions about the painter: Katharina Schmidt,


 Arnold Böcklin and Music: A Case Revisited 73


ed., Arnold Böcklin, Eine Retrospektive, (ex. cat. Basel-Munich-Paris, Heidelberg:
Edition Braus 2001); Dorothea Christ et al., Arnold Böcklin 1827-1901, Gemälde,
Zeichnungen, Plastiken, Ausstellung zum 150. Geburtstag veranstaltet vom
Kunstmuseum Basel und von Basler Kunstverein, (ex. cat., Basel, 1977).
5
On this subject see Hans Robert Jauss, Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der
Literaturwissenschaft, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1970), 144-207.
6
Adolf Rosenberg, Geschichte der modernen Kunst, (Leipzig: Grunow, 1887), vol.
2, 195.
7
See for example Adolf Frey, Arnold Böcklin, nach den Erinnerungen seiner
Zürcher Freunde, (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1903), 51, 121-122, 160; Gustav Floerke,
Zehn Jahre mit Böcklin, Aufzeichnungen und Entwürfe, (Munich, 1902), 34, 242,
243; Karl Schawelka cites numerous extracts from contemporary authors to
Böcklin. See: Karl Schawelka, Quasi una Musica. Untersuchungen zum Ideal des
Musikalischen in der Malerei ab 1800, (Munich, 1993), 239-254.
8
Max F. Schneider, Arnold Böcklin, ein Maler aus dem Geiste der Musik, (Basel:
Holbein, 1943). The book’s impact is particularly evident in Alfred Berner,
“Einige Erläuterungen zu Musikinstrumenten in den Werken Arnold Böcklins,” in
Die Gemälde, 542-543.
9
He even interprets the controversy between Meier-Graefe and Henry Thode on an
aesthetic-philosophic level: “Werden die Böcklinschen Personificationen…als
illustrierende Vergegenständlichung psychologischer Verhältnisse gesehen, so
verlieren sie schlagartig ihre Kraft, “musikalische Stimmung” zu evozieren. Dies
ist der eigentliche Streitpunkt zwischen Meier-Graefe und Thode.” Karl
Schawelka, Quasi una musica, 254.
10
“Musik ist für Böcklin eine uralte magische Macht…Die Natur erzeugt selber
Musik und überall herrscht Leben und überall ertönt Melodie.” Franzsepp
Würtenberger, Malerei und Musik, Die Geschichte des Verhaltens zweier Künste
zueinander-dargestellt nach den Quellen im Zeitraum von Leonardo da Vinci bis
John Gage, (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1979), vol. 1, 86.
11
“Diese aus dem Geiste der Natur geborenen Gestalten haben bei Böcklin die
elementaren Urstimmungen der Natur selber zu verkörpern.” Ibid.
12
“Es ist deshalb keineswegs sinnwidrig, wenn man vor Böcklins Gemälden
musiziert, um die künstlich erzeugte ‘Stimmung’ im Beschauer nochmals zu
konkretisieren.” Ibid.
13
Die Meeresbrandung, Kunsthaus Zürich. Andree 327.
14
“ein Musterbeispiel romantischer Synästhesie.” Andrea Linnebach, “Böcklins
Meeresszenen: ‘Klassische’ Ikonographie und ‘Deutsche Mythologie’,” in In uns
liegt Italien, 63. See also Christoph Heilmann’s entry for the painting in In uns
liegt Italien, 213-214.
15
“Das Musikinstrument und die raue Natur der Felsenklippe führen zur
Vorstellung der Naturmusik, ja der Urmusik, der auch die schlichte, fast archaische
Form der Harfe entspricht.” Andrea Gottdang, Vorbild Musik, die Geschichte einer
Idee in der Malerei im deutschsprachigen Raum 1780-1915, Münchener
Universitätsschriften des Instituts für Kunstgeschichte, 4 (Habil.-Schri., München
2003), 311.


74 Chapter Two


16
For the problem over German Modernism see, Walter Frish, German Modernism,
Music and the Arts, (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 2006).
17
Robert Jensen, Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siècle Europe, (Princeton:
University of Princeton Press, 1994), 8.
18
Julius Meier-Graefe, Der Fall Böcklin und die Lehre von den Einheiten,
(Stuttgart, 1905).
19
His adulation for Böcklin was the result of an intensely expressed anti-
Impressionism together with a resuscitation of the past, which he recognised in
Böcklin’s paintings. See Thomas Gaethgens, “Les rapports de l’art et de l’art
contemporain en Allemagne à l’époque de Wölfflin et de Meier-Graefe,” Revue de
l’Art, 88 (1990), 31-38.
20
Kenworth Moffett provides numerous answers to Meier-Graefe’s attack:
Kenworth Moffett, Meier-Graefe as Art Critic, (Studien zur Kunst des neunzehnten
Jahrhunderts, 19, Munich: Prestel, 1973), 52-60.
21
Unlike Böcklin, Dürer’s paintings have been set to music only far after the First
World War. See Klaus Schneider, “Vertonte Gemälde” in Karin Mauer ed., Vom
Klang der Bilder. Die Musik in der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, (ex. cat.
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Munich: Prestel, 1985), 452-460.
22
For the complete list see Monika Fink, “Kompositionen nach Bildern von
Arnold Böcklin,” in Imago Musicae, 6 (1989), 143-164.
23
Böckin’s images with Christian themes enjoyed great popularity by the late
1890s. Several photogravures, photographs and postcards of The Hermit (Der
geigende Eremit, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin) were distributed in the market.
Nevertheless the mixture of “courageous serenity” and “solemn earnestness” - just
like in the case of other religious works by the painter - has contributed to
Ǻöcklin’s falling into disrepute. About the popularity and trivialisation of
Böcklin’s most famous paintings see Franz Zelger, “Invention, Realisation,
Degeneration. Böcklin-Motive und ihre Umsetzung auf Postkarten,” In uns selbst
liegt Italien, 57-58.
24
For an analysis see Karlheinz Schlager, “Traumbild mit ‘Schauerlichster’
Musik? Bildende Kunst und Tonkunst am Beispiel der Toteninsel von Böcklin und
Reger,” in Matthias Bunge ed., Die Schönheit des Sichtbaren und Hörbaren,
(Wolnzach: 2001), 33-44; Susanne Popp, ed., Max Reger, Vier Tondichtungen
nach Arnold Böcklin op.128, (Preface), (London et.al: Ernst Eulenburg, 1990), III-
IX.
25
Meier-Graefe’s book, in which Böcklin’s memory was vituperated, played an
important role in that direction. Artists, such as Paul Klee and August Macke,
when reading the book felt that Böcklin was unessential to them.
26
Adolf Frey, Arnold Böcklin, nach den Erinnerungen seiner Zürcher Freunde,160.
27
Henri Mendelsohn, Böcklin, (Berlin, 1901), 234.
28
Meeresstille, Kunstmuseum Bern. “Bevor die Meeresstille versandt werden
sollte, ging ich nochmals im Atelier…so düster es im Atelier war, ich konnte das
Bild doch noch gut sehen, und es machte in seiner leuchtenden, plastischen
Wirkung einen gewaltigen Eindruck auf mich. Böcklin, der mich nicht eintreten
sah, saß, während es draußen blitzte und donnerte, ganz in eine andere Welt


 Arnold Böcklin and Music: A Case Revisited 75


versunken in einer Ecke am Harmonium und phantasierte. Dann erklangen
ergreifend mächtige Akkorde, Böcklin spielte eine Fuge von Bach. Die Musik war
zweifellos von großem Einfluss auf seine Kunst; ohne sie konnte er nicht leben.”
Otto Lasius, Arnold Böcklin. Aus den Tagebüchern von Otto Lasius, (1884-1889)
(Berlin, 1903), 137-138. For See-Stillness see Andree 403.
29
Henri Mendelsohn, Arnold Böcklin, 235.
30
ibid., 234.
31
Rudolf Schick, Tagebuch-Aufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1866, 1868, 1869
über Arnold Böcklin, ed. Hugo von Tschudi, (Berlin, 1901), 102.
32
Trauer der Maria Magdalena an der Leiche Christi, 1867/68, Kunstmuseum
Basel, Andree 201.
33
Burckhardt in his Griechische Kulturgeschichte devotes a chapter to the history
of ancient Greek music: Jacob Burckhardt, Griechische Kulturgeschichte, Band
III, (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 1977), 126-147.
34
For a description of the instruments see Max Schneider, Arnold Böcklin, 24-26.
35
For Böcklin’s technique consult Max Doerner, Malmaterial und seine
Verwendung im Bilde, (19th edition, Leipzig: Seemann, 2001, 1st edition 1921),
368-370; Ernst Berger: Böcklins Technik ,(Munich: Callwey, 1906).
36
Im Meere, 1883, Oil on wood, 86.5 x 115 cm, The Art Institute of Chicago, The
Joseph Winterbotham Collection. “Sehen Sie, die Frauenperson soll schreien –
man muss sie singen hören – das ist der Zweck, so wahr muss das Ganze wirken.
Ich habe tagelang nichts anderes getan als darauf hingearbeitet, dass es in Meer
und Luft immer stiller und lichter wurde, immer weiter und die Farbe nur da zu
konzentrieren, wo sie direkt auf einen Blick aufnehmbar ist, zur Hauptsache
spricht.” Böcklin in Gustav Floerke, Zehn Jahre mit Böcklin, 82.
37
Böcklin reinforced this aspect about the persuasiveness of the depicted item in a
letter addressed to the director of the Schlessisches Museum. He stated there that a
painting should speak to the viewer so strongly such as if he was listening to a
musical piece. Tittel Lutz, Arnold Böcklin. Leben und Werk in Daten und Bilder,
(Frankfurt am Main, 1977), 173.
38
“Muss nicht wahr sein, sondern…wahr wirken.” Andrea Gottdang, “Man muss
sie singen hören: Bemerkungen zur Musikalität und Hörbarkeit von Böcklins
Bildern” in Böcklin Retrospektive, 136.
39
For Munch’s Scream see Elizabeth Prelinger, “Music to Our Ears? Munch’s
Scream and the Romantic Music Theory,” in Marsha L. Morton and Peter L.
Schmunk eds., The Arts Entwined: Music and Painting in the Nineteenth Century,
(New York: Garland, 2000), 209-225.
40
Andrea Gottdang, Vorbild Musik, 314.
41
ibid., 308-309.
42
See Jane R. Stevens, “Hands, Music, and Meaning in Some Seventeenth-
Century Dutch Paintings,” in Imago Musicae, International Yearbook of Musical
Iconography, 1, 1984: 75-102. Jacob Burckhardt had also underlined the
importance of mimic for ancient Greek music. See Jacob Burckhardt, Griechische
Kulturgeschichte, Band III, 135.


76 Chapter Two


43
Villa am Meer, Andree 173-177. William Ritter, L’Art en Suisse-Arnold Böcklin,
(Ghent: Siffer, 1895), 85-87 in Henri Dorra ed., Symbolist Art Theories: a Critical
Anthology, (Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 71-74.
44
“Dass die Passacaglia warmer und kalter Farbe mit vollkommener Taktsicherheit
durchgeführt ist.” Ludwig Justi, Im Dienste der Künste (Breslau 1936), 121.
45
ibid., 123.
46
“Laut aber ist Böcklin sicher; der lauteste, den unsere Galerien beherbergen.”
Meier-Graefe, 107.
47
“Schreiende Dissonanz”, Otto Lasius, Arnold Böcklin. Aus den Tagebüchern von
Otto Lasius (1884-1889), Berlin 1903, 81. For Die Pest, 1898, Kunstmuseum
Basel, see Andree 471.
48
Angelika Wesenberg, “Memento vivere” Böcklins Selbstbildnis mit fiedelndem
Tod, (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: DuMont Literatur und Kunst Verl., 2002), 53-
58. See also Angelika Wesenberg, “Böcklin und die Reichhauptstadt,” in Böcklin
Retrospektive, 75-87.
49
ibid., 85.
50
Hugo von Tschudi, “Die Werke Arnold Böcklins in der Nationalgalerie zu
Berlin” in Die Kunst für Alle, 17:11, (Mai 1902), 256. See also Karl Schawelka,
Quasi una Musica, 248.
51
Beth Irwin Lewis, Art for all, The Collision of Modern Art and the Public in
Late-nineteenth-century Germany, (Princeton and Oxford: University of Princeton
Press, 2003), 304-311.
52
ibid., 310.
53
ibid., 281.
54
Gefilde der Seligen, 1877/8 (now lost), Andree 320.
55
“Die Farben sind derart schreiend, dass ich versucht war, mir die Ohren
zuzuhalten.” Angelika Wesenberg, “Böcklin und die Reichhauptstadt”, 82.
56
Spiel der Najaden, 1886, Kunstmuseum Basel, Andree 401.
57
“Und das soll nun nach euren modernen Begriffen eine ‘Farbensymphonie’
sein!” Albert Fleiner ed. Roland Fleiner, Mit Arnold Böcklin, (Frauenfeld 1915),
83. See also 25-27.
58
“Er ist ein Dichter in Farben, deren Töne sich etwa mit musikalischen Tönen
vergleichen lassen, weil sie direkt an die Empfindung, an die Schwingungsfähigkeit
der Seele appellieren.” Adolf Rosenberg, Geschichte der modernen Kunst, 2, 183.
59
See, Bernd Sponheuer, “Reconstructing Ideal Types of the “German” in Music,”
in Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter eds., Music and German National Identity,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 40-41.
60
Ludwig Pfau, Kunst und Kritik: Ästhetische Schriften, I, Maler und Gemälde.
Artistische Studien, (Stuttgart 1888), 490. See also Adolf Rosenberg, Geschichte
der modernen Kunst, 183.
61
Leon Botstein, “Brahms and Nineteenth Century Painting,” 19th-Century Music,
14:2, (Autumn 1990), 158.
62
“In diesem Sinne stellen sich Wagners Musik und Böcklins Landschaft also dar
als der Inbegriff der dionysischen Kunst.” Gottfried Niemann, Richard Wagner


 Arnold Böcklin and Music: A Case Revisited 77


und Arnold Böcklin oder über das Wesen von Landschaft und Musik, (Leipzig,
1904), 40.
63
ibid., 19-20.
64
Meier-Graefe, Der Fall Böcklin, 209-221.
65
Henry Thode, Böcklin und Thoma. Acht Vorträge über neudeutsche Malerei,
(Heidelberg, 1905).
66
ibid., 9-10.
67
ibid., 37-38.
68
ibid., 119-120.
69
“Auf diese Beziehungen zwischen Malerei und Musik sah ich mich genötigt
kurz einzugehen, einmal weil es für die Erkenntnis des historischen
Zusammenhanges, in dem gewisse Erscheinungen in beiden Künsten stehen,
wichtig ist, und dann weil ein Buch von G. Niemann, in welchem Böcklin mit
Richard Wagner verglichen wird, von Meier-Graefe mit Hohn behandelt worden
ist.” ibid., 121.
70
ibid., 124-125.
71
For Thode’s lectures, correspondence and debate with Liebermann and Meier-
Graefe see Peter Paret, The Berlin Secession, Modernism and Its Enemies in
Imperial Germany (Harvard University Press 1980), 170-182.
72
Georg Simmel, Zur Philosophie der Kunst, (Potsdam: Kiepenheuer Verlag
1922), 7-16.
73
Max F. Schneider, Arnold Böcklin, ein Maler aus dem Geiste der Musik, (Basel:
Holbein, 1943). For his contribution to musicology see Walther Siegmund-
Schultze, “Max Schneider 20. Juli 1875-5.Mai 1967” in Acta Musicologica, 40:
Fasc. 1 (Jan.-Mar., 1968), 7-8. Max Schneider together with Max Seiffert and
Johannes Wolf edited the Archiv für Musikwissenschaft from 1918 to 1926, an
organ of the Fürstliches Institut für Deutsche Musikforschung zu Bückeburg. The
journal reflected a nationalistic impulse by encouraging works on German music
by German scholars. See Pamela Potter, “Musicology under Hitler: New Sources
in Context,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 49:1 (Spring 1996),
75-76 (especially footnote 17).
74
ibid., 41-42.
75
ibid., 78.
76
The advocates of Ariosophy would easily imbue all these paintings by Böcklin -
such as holy shrines, fantastic landscapes and battles between ancient Roman and
German tribes – with nationalistic vocabulary. See for example Hans Floerke’s
description of the Sanctuary of Hercules (1884): Hans Floerke, Arnold Böcklin und
das Wesen der Kunst, (München: Georg Müller, 1927), 42-43. Such apocryphal
readings are rooted deeply in the nineteenth century and especially in Guido von
List’s Deutsch-Mythologischen Landschaftsbildern, of which Hitler possessed the
first edition and that inspired him to approach Wagner’s opera. See Nicholas
Goodrick-Clarke, Die okkulten Wurzeln des Nationalsozialismus, trans. Susanne
Mörth, (Wiesbaden: Matrix Verlag 2004), 173-174.
77
Ferdinard Runkel and Carlo Böcklin, Neben meiner Kunst: Flugstudien, Briefe,
und Persönliches von und über Arnold Böcklin, (Berlin 1909), 46-52.


78 Chapter Two


78
Hans Thoma was a fervent admirer of Wagner’s music. He has designed
costumes for the “Ring” and was inspired in his paintings by the northern
mythology. See Veit Veltzke, Der Mythos des Erlösers, Richard Wagner
Traumwelten und die deutsche Gesellschaft 1871-1918, (Stuttgart: Arnold 2002),
69-72.
79
Elisabeth Tumasonis, “Böcklin and Wagner: The Dragon Slain,” Pantheon, 44,
(1986): 87-91. Böcklin later, though, in 1887, four years after the composer’s
death painted the landscape painting Sieh! Es lacht die Au, which is inspired from
a scene in “Parsifal” (Andree 404).
80
Otto Lasius, Arnold Böcklin, 23.
81
Patrick Carnegy, Wagner and the Art of the Theater, (Yale: University of Yale
Press 2006), 78-80.
82
“Arnold Böcklin scheint mir in der zeitgenössischen Kunst vollbracht zu haben,
was Wagner in der Musik verwirklicht hat: die Evokation.” Nouvelle Revue
d’Egypte, 3, 1903; cited from Thomas W. Gaehtgens, “Böcklin und Frankreich,” in
Arnold Böcklin, Eine Retrospektive, 106.
83
Xavier Deryng, “La Mystique de l’Infini. Entre Böcklin et Wagner,” in Biegas et
la musique, eds. Anna Czarnocka and Xavier Deryng, (Paris : Bibliothèque
Polonaise in Paris, Société Historique et Littéraire Polonaise, 2006), 90-91.
84
“Dass es sich in Wirklichkeit um dieselbe Welt handelt, haben viele schreibende
Bewunderer längst erkannt.” Julius Meier-Graefe, Der Fall Böcklin, 209-211.
85
Hans Belting highlights this insecurity Germans traditionally felt towards visual
arts. The problem of defining German art comes forth after the unification. Hans
Belting, The Germans and their Art, A Troublesome Relationship, trans. Scott
Kleager, (Yale University Press 1998, First Edition Munich, 1993), 33-40.
86
Julius Meier-Graefe, Entwicklungsgeschichte der modernen Kunst:
vergleichende Betrachtung der bildenden Künste, als Beitrag zu einer neuen
Ästhetik, 3 vols., (Stuttgart: J. Hoffmann, 1904), IV, 219-221; quoted in Robert
Jensen, Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siècle Europe, 244. Wagner (in “Über
deutsches Musikwesen”, 1841) makes the same argument when he talks about
music. According to him the German musician, unlike the French or Italian one,
doesn’t have the need to make money or to gain glory from music because he
treats it with piety; quoted in Nicholas Vazsonyi, “Marketing German Identity:
Richard Wagner’s ‘Enterprise’,” German Studies Review, 28:2 (May, 2005), 327-
346, here 334.
87
For agood overview of the subject see Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter,
“Germans as the ‘people of Music’: Genealogy of an identity,” in Music and
German National Identity, 1-35.
88
On this matter see Hans Belting, The Germans and their Art, 1-32.
89
Suzanne Marchand, “Arnold Böcklin and the Problem of German Modernism,”
in Suzanne Marchand and David Lindenfeld eds., Germany at the Fin-de-Siècle,
Culture, Politics, and Ideas, (Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 154.
90
Ludwig Wittgenstein ed. Cyrill Barrett, Lectures and Conversations on
Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
University of California Press 1967), 32.


 Arnold Böcklin and Music: A Case Revisited 79


91
Kentaur in der Dorfschmiede, Szépmüvészeti Museum Budapest, Andree, 408.
92
Leon Botstein, “Brahms and Nineteenth Century Painting,” 19th-Century Music,
14:2, (Autumn 1990), 163-165. Eftychia Papanikolaou follows the same track,
“Brahms, Böcklin and the Gesang der Parzen,” Music in Art, 30:1-2, (2005), 155-
165.
93
Leon Botstein, ibid., 158.
94
“Il y a de curieux rapports entres l’art de Böcklin et l’art de Richard
Strauss…Même insouci d’un dessin préconçu, même goût pour chercher la forme
directement dans la couleur, et tirer de cette même couleur des effets de pittoresque
dramatique. De ces deux maîtres, le premier ne pourra plus changer sa manière,
puisqu’il est mort ; le second, incontestablement vivant n’aurait garde de rien
changer à la sienne, puisqu’il dispense l’émotion à travers les cinq parties du
monde – ou presque!” Claude Debussy ed. François Lesure, Monsieur Croche et
autres écrits, (Éditions Gallimard, 1974), 219.
95
The identification with a specific work by Strauss is uncertain. See Rolf Andree,
“Arnold Böcklins Leben,” in Die Gemälde, 34. Nevertheless, three Hymns had
been written in 1897; one of them was commissioned and performed on the
occasion of the opening of the Munich Secession exhibition. See Michael Walter,
Richard Strauss und seine Zeit, (Laaber: Laaber Verlag 2000), 438-439.
96
Willy Schuh, Richard Strauss: Jugend und frühe Meisterjahre. Lebenschronik
1864-1898, (Zurich: Atlantis 1976), 424.
97
Franz Grasberger ed., Der Strom der Töne trug mich fort. Die Welt um Richard
Strauss in Briefen, (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1967), 99.
98
ibid., 463.
99
The painter Karl Spitzweg was an ancestor. See, Franzpeter Messmer, “Richard
Strauss und die moderne Kunst” in Richard Strauss und die Moderne.
Konzertzyklus der Münchner Philharmoniker, ed. Bernd Gellermann et al.,
(Munich: Müncher Philarmoniker, 1999), 167.
100
ibid., 168.
101
ibid.
102
ibid.
103
ibid., 170.
104
Michael Kennedy, Richard Strauss, Man, Musician, Enigma, (Cambridge:
University of Cambridge Press 1999), 27. See also, Charles Youmans, Richard
Strauss’s orchestral Music and the German intellectual Tradition: the philosophical
roots of musical modernism, (Bloomington: University Press of Indiana, 2005), 21.
105
Walter Werbeck, “Richard Strauss’s Tone Poems,” in Mark-Daniel Schmid ed.,
The Richard Strauss Companion, (London: Praeger 2003), 112.
106
It is not the purpose of this chapter to analyze and examine the tone-poems in
detail. For a further study of these works see Mathias Hansen, Richard Strauss,
Die Sinfonischen Dichtungen, (Kassel: Bärenreiter 2003).
107
Charles Youmans, ibid., 180.
108
Michel Walter, ibid., 147.
109
Rudolf Louis, Die deutsche Musik der Gegenwart, (Munich/Leipzig, 1909),
171.


80 Chapter Two


110
Der Abenteurer, 1882, Kunsthalle Bremen, Andree,369.
111
Hanna Delf von Wolzogen und Helmuth Nürnberger, Theodor Fontane. Am
Ende des Jahrhunderts, vol. 1, (Königshausen: Neumann 2000), 281. For the
acquisition of the painting at a very low price by the art dealer Franz Gurlitt see
Runkel Ferdinard ed., Böcklin Memoiren, 305.
112
Jens-Peter-Schütte, “Zeittafel” in Richard Strauss und die Moderne, 27.
113
Böcklin had probably read the second edition of Johann Diederich Gries,
Lodovico Ariosto’s Rasender Roland, (Jena 1827) here 15.48, quoted in Rolf
Andree, Die Gemälde, 544. About the mythos of Orlando Furioso see: Entry
“Orlando Furioso” in Kindlers Literaturlexikon, (Munich, 1974), vol. 16, 7033-
7034.
114
Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on The Meaning of the Comic, trans.
Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell, (Dover Publications, 2005), 3.
115
Chronologically the paintings are: Angelica Guarded from the Dragon
(Angelika von einem Drachen bewacht), 1873, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin,
Andree 278; Astolf Rides with the Head of Orill (Astolf reitet mit dem Haupte
Orills davon), 1873, Kunstmuseum Basel, Andree 282; Roger Freeing Angelica
from the Dragon (Ruggiero befreiet Angelica aus den Klauen des Drachen), 1880,
formerly Düsseldorf, Kunstmuseum, disappeared after 1945, Andree 351; Orlando
Furioso (1901, Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Andree 469).
116
Norbert Schneider, “Ein Kunstwerk und sein Gebrauch IV. Über Arnold
Böcklins Der Abenteurer,” in Kunst und Unterricht, 25, (June 1974), 50.
117
ibid., 50-51.
118
For a comparison between the two novels see: David Quint, “Narrative
Interlace and Narrative Genres in Don Quijote and in Orlando Furioso” in Modern
Language Quarterly, 58: 3 (1997), 241-268.
119
Rupprecht Matthaei ed. Otto Maier, Goethes Farbenlehre, (Ravensburg 1971),
170; Wassily Kandinsky ed. Jelena Hahl-Fontaine, Über das Geistige in der Kunst,
(Bern: Benteli 2004), 92.
120
“Der Kampf eines Themas gegen ein Nichts”. Willi Schuh, Richard Strauss,
476.
121
Henry T. Finck, Richard Strauss, The man and his works, (Boston, 1917), 196.
122
Charles Youmans, 14-15.
123
ibid., 184.
124
ibid., 182.
125
“Warum sieht man nicht das Neue in meinen Werken…ist bewusst der Ton des
Spottes, der Ironie, der Protest gegen den landläufigen Operntext das individuelle
Neue.” Willi Schuh, Richard Strauss, 500.
126
For Strauss’s passion for Greek spirit and Mythology see Ulrich Tadday ed.,
“Richard Strauss, Der griechische Germane,” Musik-Konzepte, 129/130, (Munich:
Richard Boorberg, 2005).
127
Theodor W. Adorno, “Richard Strauss. Part II” in Perspectives of the New
Music, 4:2 (1966), 122-123.


 CHAPTER THREE

SEEING SOUND – HEARING COLOUR:

THE SYNAESTHETIC EXPERIENCE
IN RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE ART

ISABEL WÜNSCHE

In late nineteenth-century Europe, synaesthesia began to attract the

growing interest of scientists and artists alike.1 In Russia, many writers,
painters, and musicians believed that this fusion of the human senses
offered a promising basis for a new union of literature, music, and the
visual arts—a Gesamtkunstwerk, which would be a further step on the path
to transcendental knowledge. In this essay, I look at investigations into
colour and sound interrelations in the work of Alexander Scriabin, Wassily
Kandinsky, Nikolai Kulbin, and Mikhail Matyushin, particular emphasis is
placed on the gradual shift from the more mystical orientation found in
Russian Symbolism to the more scientifically minded approach found in
the experiments of the avant-garde.2 Whether these musicians and painters
were truly synaesthetic or not, their interest in synaesthesia provided them
with an opportunity to explore psycho-physiological phenomena and new
forms of art, works capable of revealing the structure of the cosmos, in
both its visible, material and invisible, immaterial aspects. Emphasising
the human creative ability and the psychological dimension, art could thus
become a means to individual self-realisation and the unification of art and
life, body and soul, man and nature.
The synaesthetic experience is a central element of Russian Symbolism.
Poets such as Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely; painters, including Viktor
Borisov-Musatov and Mikhail Vrubel; and the composer Alexander
Scriabin all shared the idea that colour and sound could simultaneously
serve to reflect expressively the psychic condition or an atmospheric
mood. In their work, colour and sound became universal artistic qualities,
capable of exerting a deep impression upon the human soul.3 These
explorations into the fusion of sensory experiences culminated in the
82 Chapter Three

colour-music compositions of Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915).4 Scriabin,

a mystic and theosophist, believed that one could experience divine
revelation in the mystic ecstasy of the Gesamtkunstwerk; his calling, then,
as an artist, was nothing less than the bestowal of human redemption,
wrought in a ritualistic mystery of music, colour, dance, and incense.5
Such a fully synaesthetic approach, he felt, would include symphonies of
sound, colour and light, fragrance and touch, as well as whispers and
noises, processions and dance, and impressions of nature, for example, the
colours of the rising and setting sun or the brightness of the stars.6
Scriabin’s famous 1910 composition Prométhée – Le poèmè du feu, a
symphony for chorus, piano and tastiera per luce, was performed in
Moscow in 1911 (Fig. 3.1). It was intended as a first step in the composer’s
striving to achieve ecstatic redemption through a complex synthesis of the
arts. In addition to piano, musical orchestra, and vocal choral singing,
Scriabin included a luce part to be played by a colour organ (Fig. 3.2).
Based on his own synaesthetic experiences, which were studied and
published by the British psychologist Charles S. Myers and also discussed
by the Russian musicologist Leonid Sabanejew,7 Scriabin created a system
of colour-sound equivalents, a parallel structure between the keys and the
spectral colours that served as an initial theoretical basis for the
simultaneous perception of colour and sound.8 “Colour underlines the
tonality; it makes the tonality more evident,” he noted.9 Adding colour
projections to a musical performance intensified the sound effects of the
piece; music and colour enhanced each other. The luce part in Prométhée
calls for the synchronised projection of selected colours onto a screen and
into the audience. The bright, intense light produced by the colour organ
was intended to create impressions of beams, clouds, and other shapes and
demonstrate the synaesthetic experience to the general public. The colour-
sound associations were further intensified through other sensory
impressions such as the ecstatic singing and movements of a chorus.10
Realisation of the intended range of effects was hampered by technical
problems and the 1911 performance of Prométhée, which in the end did
not include light projections, did not live up to its expectations. Even so,
Scriabin’s attempt fully to envelope the viewer-listener in ritualistic
mystery by means of a complex synthesis of sound, colour, and other art
forms had a lasting impact upon contemporary and following generations
of artists.
 Seeing Sound – Hearing Colour 83

Wassily Kandinsky: The Synaesthetic Experience

in a New, Monumental Art
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), who had studied law and economics
in Moscow, turned to art only after he settled in Munich in 1896. He was
attracted to metaphysical thinking and various esoteric practices,
particularly theosophy, but also followed the latest scientific inquiries into
the psychology of sensory perception. The multi-sensory aesthetic
experience of synaesthesia, he believed, offered an alternative to materialist
science and the realist art of the late nineteenth century and a path to
spiritual freedom and divinity.
Although most likely not a synaesthete in the strict sense,11 Kandinsky
clearly had a vivid sense for colour and was greatly interested in the
synaesthetic experience. Already in his childhood and youth, he experienced
strong colour associations; the first colours to make a powerful impression
upon him were “light juicy green, white, carmine red, black, and yellow
ochre”—the childhood objects to which these colours had once belonged
long forgotten, all that remained were their colours.12 Moscow, Kandinsky
insisted in 1913, was the fountainhead of his artistic efforts, and his
memories of the sunset in the Russian capital were likewise strongly
shaped by atmospheric impressions of colour and sound:

The sun dissolves the whole of Moscow into a single spot, which, like a
wild tuba, sets all one’s soul vibrating… this red fusion is only the final
chord of the symphony, which brings every colour vividly to life, which
allows and forces the whole of Moscow to resound like the fff of a giant
orchestra. Pink, lilac, yellow, white, blue, pistachio green, flame red
houses, churches, each an independent song—the garnish green of the
grass, the deeper tremolo of the trees, the singing snow with its thousand
voices, or the allegretto of the bare branches, the red, stiff, silent ring of the
Kremlin walls, and above, towering over everything, like a shout of
triumph, like a self-oblivious hallelujah, the long, white, graceful, serious
line of the Bell Tower of Ivan the Great.13

To capture such an experience on canvas would be impossible, he wrote,

but it would have filled him with the greatest joy.14
Kandinsky came to believe that there existed a “deep relationship
between the different artistic expressions, especially between music and
painting.”15 He went on to establish analogies between the colours and the
sounds of various instruments. Yellow he associated with the high-pitched
sound of a trumpet or fanfare, a light blue with the flute, a dark blue with
the cello, an even darker blue with the double bass, and the deepest blue
84 Chapter Three

with “the deep notes of the organ.”16 Orange is the ringing of “a medium-
sized church bell reminding one of a strong alto voice or the singing of
also violins” and violet “the sound of an English horn, the shepherd’s
flute, or the deep, low tone of the wood instruments, for example, a
bassoon.”17 Absolute green is best characterised by “the placid, long-
drawn middle notes of a violin,” a light, warm red by “a sound like a
trumpet accompanied by the tuba,” and vermilion “rings like a great horn
and is comparable to the thunder of drums.”18 Kandinsky acknowledged
that the painter finding no satisfaction in the mere representation of natural
phenomena will turn to “the non-material art of music” and seek to apply
its methods to his own art.19
Kandinsky considered the synaesthetic experience to be psychological
in origin. He formulated his understanding of the interrelation of colour
and sound and their effect upon the human mind in his treatise On the
Spiritual in Art:

Colour is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer, while the soul is a piano of
many strings. The artist is the hand through which the medium of different
keys causes the human soul to vibrate. It is, thus, evident that colour
harmony can rest only on the principle of the corresponding vibration of
the human soul.20

In his quest for a new spiritual art, musical analogy—the premise that
painting should emulate music—became the basis of his aesthetic theory
and his three-stage system of impressions, improvisations, and
compositions; musical analogy, Kandinsky believed, would help to guide
the way toward a non-objective art comparable to music.
Kandinsky found inspiration in the atonal music of the Austrian
composer Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951). He first heard a performance of
Schönberg’s compositions in 1911, and he felt an immediate empathy for
the composer’s rejection of traditional rules for consonance and
dissonance. Shortly after the concert, Kandinsky wrote to Schönberg:

In your works, you have realised what I, albeit in uncertain form, have so
greatly longed for in music. The independent progress through their own
destinies, the independent life of the individual voices in your
compositions is exactly what I am trying to find in my paintings.21

But while Schönberg was primarily concerned with the element of the
unconscious in artistic creation, Kandinsky acknowledged a great tendency
in painting to “discover the ‘new’ harmony by constructive means,
whereby the rhythmic is built on an almost geometric form.”22 This
included the concept of harmony and dissonance, which he would most
 Seeing Sound – Hearing Colour 85

likely have derived from Nikolai Kulbin’s writings, but also identified in
Schönberg’s music and theory of harmony. As he told him:

I am certain that our own modern harmony is not to be found in the

‘geometric’ way, but rather in the anti-geometric, antilogical way. And this
way is that of ‘dissonances in art’, in painting, therefore, just as much as in
music…. And today’s dissonance in painting and music is merely the
consonance of ‘tomorrow’.23

Kandinsky saw a correspondence between Schönberg’s successful

attempt to free music from tonality and his own extensive search for an art
freed from the burden of representation.24 When they met in 1911,
Schönberg was working on his Theory of Harmony, excerpts of which had
already appeared in the Berlin periodical Music,25 and Kandinsky was
finishing his treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art, in which he
introduced some of Schönberg’s ideas.26 Without even waiting for
Schönberg to give his permission, Kandinsky had translated into Russian
and published excerpts from Theory of Harmony in the exhibition
catalogue of Vladimir Izdebsky’s 1910-11 “Salon 2” in Odessa.27 He
invited Schönberg to contribute paintings to the Blaue Reiter exhibitions
of 1911 and 1912 and included an essay, illustrations of two of his
paintings, and the score “Herzgewächse,” op. 20, in the Blaue Reiter
almanac.28
The 1911 painting Impression III (Concert) is a response to the historic
concert of Schönberg’s new music that Kandinsky attended together with
Franz Marc and other friends in Munich on January 2, 1911.29 In one of his
initial sketches, he still represents the concert hall in more or less true
perspective, with the audience sitting around the grand piano under a
chandelier, but in a subsequent sketch he flattens the scene, juxtaposing
the audience and musicians onto the piano.30 The final oil painting
transforms the image of piano, musicians, and audience into a mélange of
abbreviated colour and form—recognisable still are the black piano and
the two white columns, with only a suggestion of audience or performers
to be seen. The right-hand side of the picture is empty and almost
exclusively filled with yellow; the overall impression of the work is
shaped by the tension arising from the contrast of yellow and black.
According to Kandinsky, the yellow creates “a spreading movement
outwards from the center which almost markedly approaches the
spectator.”31 In contrast, the black represents “nothingness” and “sounds
like an eternal silence… it is the least harmonious colour yet… any other
colour… will appear stronger and more precise in front of it.”32 Thus, the
black representing the piano, i.e., the material source of the music, is
86 Chapter Three

motionless while the large yellow area that visualises the immaterial sound
flows out of the piano, flooding the room, enveloping the audience, rising
up to the musicians in the orchestra, and finally settling in front of the
white, slanting column.”33
Kandinsky’s belief in the emotive equivalence between painting and
music arose as much from his personal intuition as from his wide-ranging
intellectual interests. He was certainly indebted to Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe’s colour theory but also familiar with the systematic colour studies
of Wilhelm Ostwald and the works of the German physiologist Wilhelm
Wundt, who had conducted systematic studies of synaesthetic perception.
The belief that the synaesthetic experience could contribute to a deeper
perceptual and aesthetic understanding of the basic elements of visual
imagery provided not only a basis for Kandinsky’s pursuit of non-
objective painting, but also served as a foundation of his stage
compositions.
Kandinsky recognised that every art form has its own language and
means of expression—be it sound, colour, or the word; yet, despite
differing vocabularies, each art form pursues the same final goal, i.e., to
effect or initiate a resonance (literally “vibrations”) in the human soul.34 A
unification of the various means of artistic production and art forms,
Kandinsky insisted, would yield a monumental art and thus achieve the
greatest possible impact upon its audience.35 The theatre, he believed,
offered the best opportunity for such a new and monumental art, which he
outlines in his essay “On Stage Compositions”, which was included in the
Blaue Reiter almanac. In his stage compositions, Kandinsky set out to
unite musical sound and its associated movement, the sound and
movement of people and objects, and colour-tones and their movement.36
He was convinced that together these would generate a complex spiritual
resonance within the audience and lead to a refinement of the listener-
viewer’s sensory abilities.
In 1908, together with the Russian composer Thomas von Hartmann
and the dancer Alexander Sacharoff, Kandinsky began to conduct
experiments on a synthesis of the arts. In a lecture given in Moscow
around 1920 he described their collaboration as follows:

The musician [Hartmann] looked through a number of my pictures to find

the one that seemed to him to carry the clearest musical message. In the
absence of the dancer [Sacharoff], he played through this image. Then the
dancer rejoined us and the music was played to him; he translated it into
dance, and then guessed which picture he had been dancing.37
 Seeing Sound – Hearing Colour 87

In 1909, Kandinsky worked on three stage compositions: Green Sound,

Giants, and Black and White. Of these, only Giants was further developed;
it was eventually published as The Yellow Sound in the Blaue Reiter
almanac.38 In 1914, Kandinsky worked on a fourth stage composition,
Violet, a part of which was published in 1927 in the Bauhaus journal.39
The Yellow Sound was never fully completed and performed on stage
only after Kandinsky’s death. Its free play of forms and colours
accompanied by musical and vocal effects offered a blueprint for an
abstract synthesis of the arts.40 The play started off with “a few indistinct
chords from the orchestra” and a “dark-blue dawn, which… becomes
intense dark blue”; it culminated in “dazzlingly colored rays (blue, red,
purple, green) alternating rapidly” and eventually blending in the centre of
the stage, and it ended with a bright yellow giant suddenly turning black
accompanied by expressive music.41
The only stage composition that Kandinsky himself was able to realise
was a performance of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition
(1874), which was presented in two matinee events at the Friedrich Theatre
in Dessau in April 1928.42 Kandinsky re-interpreted Mussorgsky’s own
musical impressions of sixteen watercolours by the Russian painter and
architect Victor Hartmann, thus translating music derived from still images
into moving pictures on the stage.43 “My principle resources,” Kandinsky
wrote, “were:

1. form itself,
2. color and form, to which
3. the color of the lighting was added as a kind of more profound
painting,
4. the independent play of the colored lights, and
5. the structure of each scene, which was bound up with the music, and
of course the necessity of dismantling it.”44

The staging of the work was a reflection of ideas on theatrical production

that Kandinsky had developed during his time at the Bauhaus. The “purely
abstract form of the theatre,” he wrote, brought together within a common
architectural framework “the abstract sounds” of painting (colour), music
(sound), and dance (movement).45

Nikolai Kulbin: The Psychophysics

of Colour-Music Perception
The physician and painter Nikolai Kulbin (1868–1917) worked closely
with Kandinsky while developing his own theory of art. When Kandinsky
88 Chapter Three

was looking for a connection to the Russian art scene in 1910, he

approached Kulbin, and thus, Kulbin became a propagator of Kandinsky’s
ideas in Russia.46 In December 1911, he not only presented his own papers
“New Tendencies in Art” and “Harmony, Dissonance, and Close
Combinations in Art and Life” at the Second All-Russian Artists Congress
in St. Petersburg, but also the Russian-language version of Kandinsky’s
treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art.47 In turn, Kulbin’s article “Free
Music” was included in the Blaue Reiter almanac, published by Kandinsky
and Franz Marc in Munich in 1912.48 Along with Kandinsky, Kulbin
shared a belief in the advent of “a new epoch of the great spiritual” and an
interest in theosophy and the occult. Both artists promoted a subjective-
intuitive approach to art and used musical analogies to formulate their
ideas. But whereas Kandinsky strove for an expression of universality in
his early abstractions, Kulbin turned inward, to the human psyche, within
which outer stimuli are transformed into inner sensory experience.
Kulbin, who studied medicine at the Imperial Military-Medical
Academy in St. Petersburg from 1887 to 1895 and later taught there,
derived his theories of art from his physiological and neurological
studies.49 His 1895 dissertation was on the problem of alcoholism and, in
1907, he published a study entitled Sensibility: Studies on Psychometry
and the Clinical Application of its Data.50 In this publication, he laid out
the foundations, research questions, and goals of his psycho-physiological
studies within the context of contemporary physiology and experimental
psychology, nature philosophy and epistemology. He considered research
into sensory perception to be fundamental research. “The study of
sensations should lie at the base of the study of life and the world as a
whole,” he wrote and added that it serves as a point of departure for all
sciences and is relevant to numerous professions.51
Successful as a physician and researcher, Kulbin turned to painting and
art theory only in his forties. Between 1908 and 1910, he organised four
important art exhibitions: New Tendencies in Art (St. Petersburg, 1908),
The Impressionists (St. Petersburg, 1909, and Vilna, 1909-10), and
Triangle (St. Petersburg, 1910).52 These exhibitions, with their accompanying
lectures, discussions, and publications, were important outlets for the
contemporary artistic and intellectual circles in St. Petersburg. Kulbin was
also instrumental in hosting the composer Arnold Schönberg in
St. Petersburg in 1912 and in bringing the Italian Futurist Filippo Marinetti
to Russia in 1914.53
In his worldview and in his approach to art, Kulbin defined harmony
and dissonance as the essential principles of existence: “the basic
phenomena of the universe,” he wrote. “They are universal and are
 Seeing Sound – Hearing Colour 89

common to the whole of nature. They are the basis of art.”54 In the natural
world Kulbin found harmony in the symmetric, regular structures of
inorganic life. Dissonance he associated with the more complex, irregular
structural makeup of organic life. In art, harmony represented tradition and
dissonance the new, modernist creation. The driving principle of artistic
creation, Kulbin declared, was dissonance.
In his theories of art, Kulbin drew heavily upon Hermann von
Helmholtz’s theory of musical harmonies (Fig. 3.3).55 Helmholtz found in
dissonance a disturbance or disruption of our psychological perception of
sound, something akin to the unpleasant sensations produced by flickering
light or the scratching of a brush. Kulbin saw this as a means by which the
artist could generate specific sensations during the perception of a work of
art by the viewer. Building upon Helmholtz’s explanation of aural
dissonance, Kulbin proposed the use of “close combinations,” i.e.
combinations of adjacent colours of the spectrum or tones of the scale.
These, he believed, can generate powerful, subliminal sensations in the
human soul: “The vibration of closely connected tones is extremely
exciting … their unfolding, their manifold play, make the representation of
light, colours, and everything living much more effective.”56
In contrast to Romanticist thought and earlier scientific studies, Kulbin
focused his attentions not on the eye or the ear, but rather the psyche. The
physical action of transmitted light or sound produced a psychological
effect: outer stimuli are transmitted via specific physiological nerve
pathways directly to the human brain, where they are transformed into
visual or acoustic sensations. The concept—that an outer stimulus remains
a subliminal effect until its intensity (or a combination of intensities)
reaches a specific threshold value at which point it is transformed into a
sensory impression—fit well with explanations offered by contemporary
psychophysics.57
Along with Kandinsky, Scriabin, and others, Kulbin was intently
interested in the similarities and interrelationships between colour and
sound. Whether a stimulus was visual or acoustic, Kulbin believed that the
point of interaction with the spectator was the same: it was in the brain that
the material, the objective world, was transformed into the immaterial, the
sensation. He therefore sought to establish the psycho-physiological
interrelations between seeing and hearing as a basis for his colour-music
theory. At the 1909 Impressionists’ exhibition, he provided for musical
accompaniment to the paintings in order to achieve a more holistic
experience of art.58 His 1910 publication Studio of the Impressionists
included a sub-chapter on colour music (Fig. 3.4).59 In this text, Kulbin
looked at the connections that could be drawn between colour and sound
90 Chapter Three

based on Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s system of correlations, which had

been published by Vasily Yastrebtsev in the Russian Musical Newspaper
in 1908,60 and at the colour-sound studies by the music teacher and
theosophist Alexandra Unkovskaya.61 He recognised that not all discussions
of “colour-hearing” were necessarily based on the true synaesthetic
experience and admitted that it is a rather rare phenomenon and “primarily
and almost exclusively happens in those people, who possess the so-called
absolute hearing,” but can also be found in painters who are sensitive to
music.62 “There is an undeniable connection between the area of psychical
vision and psychical hearing in the cerebral brain,” he wrote, “a constant
interaction between hearing and vision… consequently, the exchange of
the impressions is quite possible.”63 Kulbin concluded that the perception
of colour was due to “the influence of sounds on the optical apparatus of
the eye and brain” and likewise that sounds were perceived due to the
action of colours.64 In a similar way, he related poetry to painting and
music by equating colours with consonants and musical tones with vowel
sounds, leading to a unified art in which music would join with the plastic
arts, the plastic arts with literature, and literature with music.65 With his
psychological approach to art, Kulbin thus established the basis for a
complex art form uniting literature, music, and the fine arts. Art was no
longer a pure depiction of the visible world, but represented a broader
psychological reality in which the objective and subjective become fused
together.
In his own painting, Kulbin strove to depict not only colour and form,
but also “the psyche, the sounds, movement, and more—all that is
necessary and essential to reflect the poetic experience.”66 His oil painting
Ocean View, from the period 1905-07, is a good example of the way in
which Kulbin married the inspiration he drew from Impressionist and Post
Impressionist painting to his Symbolist striving to express the relationship
between the human soul and the essential features of nature using colour
equivalents. One of Kulbin’s most abstract paintings, it depicts an
imaginary seascape, established primarily through the contrast created by
the complementary colours blue and orange. The foreground, predominantly
a dull brown earthy tone, is set off from the sea by a thick red-orange
ribbon of burning colour, the first of numerous horizontal bands of
contrasting colours that move up the painting and toward the distant
horizon: piercing yellow-oranges of the reflected light of the setting sun,
set off against starkly contrasting bands of dusky blues. These ribbons of
complementary colour develop a striking visual dynamic that is greatly
enhanced by the simultaneous contrast effect they set up. Juxtaposed with
this are the rather ornamental, static patterns of blue clouds in the orange
 Seeing Sound – Hearing Colour 91

sky above. Kulbin’s Ocean View is less a representation of the external

natural world than a realisation of the artist’s inner vision.

Mikhail Matyushin: Colour, Form, and Sound

Interrelations in Organic Culture
Mikhail Matyushin (1861-1934) studied music at the Moscow
Conservatory, played first violin in the St. Petersburg Court Orchestra
from 1881 to 1913, and is today best known for the music of the Cubo-
Futurist opera Victory over the Sun, which he composed in 1913. At the
same time, however, he pursued an interest in painting. He studied with
the artist Yan Tsionglinsky and was a member of Kulbin’s circle and the
artists’ society Union of Youth.
Throughout his life, his musical and artistic activities were closely
intertwined. Inspired by Kulbin and Schönberg to pursue his own studies
of quarter-tone music, Matyushin at the same time was searching for new
principles of colour and form in painting and exploring concepts of the
fourth dimension. At the 1913-14 Union of Youth exhibition in
St. Petersburg, Matyushin showed two works with musical themes—the
now lost paintings Red Sound and Placatory Sound.67 In 1917-18, he
created two large oil paintings titled Painterly-Musical Constructions and,
in 1921, he created a series of charcoal drawings titled Sound Noise.68 The
Painterly-Musical Constructions (Fig. 3.5) embody Matyushin’s belief in
immediate colour-sound interrelations and his conviction that material
qualities such as “a thin, thick, transparent, brilliant or dull sound
determine and show very clearly that our eye, as it were, can hear and our
ear can see.”69 In these works, layers of vibrating colour dots follow the
same phenomena of universal movement, superimposition, and interference
by which sound propagates through space.
As outlined in his 1916-17 publication Studies in the Experience of the
Fourth Dimension: Painting, Sculpture, Music, and Literature, Matyushin
associated the different arts with the corresponding human sensory
experiences, i.e., painting with seeing, sculpture with touch, music with
hearing, and literature with thought.70 In an effort to overcome such
limitations, Matyushin set out to create a new synthesis of the arts that
would simultaneously address all senses and thus lead to a more complex
way of perception. He was convinced that the conscious, simultaneous use
of the different sensory organs such as eye and ear could guide and
improve our ability to “see” music and to “hear” colours. Typical of the
scientific approach that was common in the Russian avant-garde, he turned
to the investigation of pure artistic qualities such as colour, form, and
92 Chapter Three

sound and their interactions as alternative means to reveal forms of higher

consciousness in a new synthetic art.
There is no specific evidence that Matyushin was truly synaesthetic;
however, his writings do make clear that his artistic approach was heavily
informed by the current interest in evolutionary theory, the
psychophysiology of sensory perception, and the utopian ideals of the
avant-garde. Convinced that the evolution of humankind was dependent
upon the further development of the human senses, Matyushin believed
that the physiological and cerebral centres of human sight could be further
developed: an increased sensitivity to space, light, colour, and form would
then open up a completely new dimension of spatial perception and world
experience that he called “Spatial Realism”. Relying on contemporary
physiological studies by Hermann von Helmholtz and Johannes Kries,71
Matyushin developed a method he called “Extended Viewing”. “Extended
Viewing” was a physiological concept and methodology that included
specific exercises for the further development of cones and rods in the
retina of the human eye; these exercises were intended to lead to a greater
overlapping and more extensive combination of direct daylight vision and
indirect twilight vision. “Extended Viewing” taken together with the other
senses and forms of inner vision comprised a technique Matyushin called
“Zorved” —it meant to simultaneously see and know. Unlike “Extended
Viewing”, which focused specifically on the extension of human eyesight,
“Zorved” aimed at the development of a higher consciousness to be
achieved through a synthesis of all forms of sensory experience.
With these ambitious goals in mind, Matyushin initiated a major
research programme at the State Institute of Artistic Culture (GINKhUK)
in Petrograd in 1923. His department of Organic Culture addressed “the
investigation and development of the human organism, [including] sense
of touch, hearing, vision, thought and their centres”.72 Throughout the
1920s, Matyushin, together with his students, conducted numerous series
of experiments that focused on the development of the human sensory
faculties. Beginning with the observation of colour forms in central and
peripheral vision and then looking at their dependence upon motion, space,
time, and the conditions of observation, he determined that warm colours
of a longer wavelength (red, orange, yellow) round off angular geometric
figures, giving them an epicycloidal form, whereas cold colours of a
shorter wavelength (green, blue, purple) lend the same figures a faceted,
hypocycloid form.73
On the basis of his studies of colour contrasts and the interrelations
between colour and form, Matyushin concluded that it must be possible for
humans to gain the ability to see the respective colour form while listening
 Seeing Sound – Hearing Colour 93

to a particular sound and vice versa. In 1926, he began to investigate

systematically the interrelationships between colour, form, and sound. For
his colour-sound experiments, Matyushin started from the empirical
observation that visual impressions tend to suppress acoustic sensations,
but after removal of the visual stimulus, the sounds become more
apparent.74 On the basis of Helmholtz’s theory of acoustic sensations (Fig.
3.3), in which Helmholtz had maintained that sound and colour were of the
corresponding wavelength but acted upon different sensory organs,75 and
Georg Anschütz’s experiments on the interrelationships between colour
and form in relation to sound,76 Matyushin, together with his students,
investigated the changes in colour of a red and a blue conic section under
the influence of various sounds. He also studied the impact of four
different notes played on a string instrument upon the appearance of red,
yellow, blue, and green screens respectively.77 These experiments
demonstrated to him that there exists a double-sided interaction between
colour and sound: “... dark, unclear sounds ... make a colour denser and
darker, while high, sharp sounds make it lighter and more transparent.”78
Likewise, red diminishes a sound, blue makes it higher; a deep sound
seems to make a colour more dense, darker, and somewhat warmer,
whereas a high sound makes a colour lighter, more transparent, and cooler
(Fig. 3.6).79 From the observation that strong colours or sounds intensify
visual or acoustic experiences, Matyushin concluded that simple sounds
must be combined more often and more densely with light in order to
reach a more intense level of sensory experience.
Matyushin found confirmation for his empirical findings in the latest
scientific studies. In his Ionic Theory of Excitation of 1923, the Russian
biophysicist and member of the Academy of Sciences Petr Lazarev
established the existence of a physiological connection between the optic
and acoustic nerves within the brain and explained acoustic perception—
analogous to visual perception—as a process of ionization of particular
substances in the ear, similar to the process of ionization and dissolution of
light-sensitive substances in the cones and rods of the retina.80
Matyushin’s investigations into the interaction of eye, ear, touch, and
thought found their most profound realisation in his synaesthetic
performances of the early 1920s. Commemorating each year in early May
the anniversary of the death of his second wife and fellow artist, Elena
Guro, Matyushin and his students would stage her literary pieces
“Harlequin,” “In a Closed Cup,” “Autumn Dream,” and “Baby Camels of
the Sky” in the private home of the Ender family.81 These stage
productions included both figurative and non-figurative shapes that moved
through space and were accompanied by music and coloured light, thus
94 Chapter Three

resulting in continuously changing form-colour-sound formations. The

audience was placed at the very centre of the room, so that it could
experience the theatrical event simultaneously from all sides and in its
totality. Spoken words, the sound of a grand piano, various string
instruments, the thrum of a long string stretched across the room, and the
rustling of branches appearing interchangeably at various locations
surrounding the audience created a kind of “sound perspective.”82 These
synaesthetic performances represented a break with “the old scenic box”
of traditional theatre and offered Matyushin the opportunity to realise at
least in part his belief that “the artist must move from the surface of the
picture to a volumetrical, tactile and colorific construction of the image.”83
In the early 1920s, Matyushin also worked on the music to Through the
Dimensions of Space, a similar multi-sensory stage work based on the
interaction of colour, sound, and form in space.84 He even went so far to
construct a “light-form-sound-noise” instrument that consisted of a
tensioned rope in the form of a square, one by one metre, with a
“sounding” coloured geometric shape on each side: a red ball the size of a
pumpkin, which sounded like a gong when struck; a green cube that made
a crackling noise; a yellow rhomboid sounding like the low bass of strings
or a grand piano; and a whistling blue spiral.85 In 1923, Matyushin staged
the non-objective spectacle The Birth of Light and Volume,86 the final
work in his series of Gesamtkunstwerk performances. It was not based on a
literary work, but consisted solely of the movement of geometric solids—a
blue cone, a green cube, a yellow ellipsoid, and a red sphere—around a
beam of light. These volumes were set into motion by performers within
them, who responded to the various tones and noises while moving
through space filled with coloured light. The conceptual idea was to
visualise the growth of these volumes under the influence of light.87 In his
kinetic, spatial constructions, Matyushin was able to overcome the static
depiction of the traditional picture plane. His organic entities remained in
constant interaction, “stretching, protruding, splitting, spinning, receding
into the distance and, above all, connecting so miraculously with [their]
environment.”88 These multi-medial performances were based on his
fundamental conviction that humans, through the combined sensory
experience of incorporating touching, seeing, hearing, and thinking could
achieve a complex perception of colour, forms, sound, and movement
within a spatial environment.
 Seeing Sound – Hearing Colour 95

Conclusions
Artistic investigations into synaesthesia in Russia in the first decades of
the twentieth century were closely associated with the search for cross-
sensory correspondences. Influenced by contemporary studies in physiology
and psychology, synaesthesia was viewed as a form of neural crossover,
one that suggested the existence of interconnections between the sensory
nerves of distinct, but adjoining cortical areas in the brain. Perceiving the
synaesthetic experience as neither an exceptional condition nor an
anomaly but rather an evolutionarily advanced and aesthetically superior
state, one that would some day be accessible to all of humankind, the
works of these artists became psycho-physiological exercises intended to
accelerate the development of human sensory perception.

Fig. 3.1: Alexander Scriabin, Prométhée – Le poèmè du feu, 1910, front cover,
detail.
96 Chapter Three

Fig. 3.2: Alexander Scriabin, Prométhée – Le poèmè du feu, 1910, opening page
showing “luce” part.
 Seeing Sound – Hearing Colour 97

Fig. 3.3: Hermann von Helmholtz, O fiziologicheskikh princhinakh muzykal’noi

garmonii (On the Physiological Principles of Musical Harmonies) (St. Petersburg:
A. A. Porokhovshchikov, 1896).
98 Chapter Three

Fig. 3.4: Nikolai Kulbin, Studiia impressionistov. Kniga 1-aia (Studio of the
Impressionists. First Book) (St. Petersburg: Izd. Nibutkovsky, 1910).
 Seeing Sound – Hearing Colour 99

Notes
1
Synaesthesia is a condition in which one type of sensory stimulation creates the
sensation of perception in another sense, e.g. the simultaneous perception of colour
when certain sounds are heard and vice versa. Subject to intense study during the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century, it was later abandoned and only
recently has once again become a topic of scientific study, attracting the interest of
psychologists and neuroscientists. Crétien van Campen, “Artistic and Psychological
Experiments with Synesthesia,” Leonardo, 32 (1999):
9–14. doi:10.1162/002409499552948. See also Cretien van Campen, The Hidden
Sense. Synesthesia in Art and Science, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008).
2
Richard E. Cytowic, The Man Who Tasted Shapes, (London, Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1993), 54-56; Kevin T. Dann, Bright Colors Falsely Seen:
Synaesthesia and the Search for Transcendental Knowledge, (New Haven,
London: Yale University Press, 1998), 54-64, 71-77.
3
Isabel Wünsche, Harmonie und Synthese. Die russische Moderne zwischen
universellem Anspruch und nationaler kultureller Identität, (Harmony and
Synthesis: Russian Modernism between Universal Aspiration and National
Cultural Identity), (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2008), chapter 4.
4
These works include White Mass, Sonata No. 7 (1911), Black Mass, Sonata No. 9
(1913), Vers la flamme (1914), Flamme somber (1914), and Prométhée – Le poèmè
du feu, Symphony No. 5 (1910).
5
Marina Lobanova, Mystiker, Magier, Theosoph, Theurg. Alexander Skrjabin und
seine Zeit, (Mystic, Magician, Theosophist, Theurg: Alexander Scriabin and His
Time), (Hamburg: von Bockel, 2004), 263-264.
6
Leonid Sabanejew, Alexander Skrjabin. Werk und Gedankenwelt, (Alexander
Scriabin: Work and Thought), (Berlin: Ernst Kuhn, 2006), 50.
7
Charles S. Myers, “Two Cases of Synaesthesia,” British Journal of Psychology,
7, (1914), 112-117; Leonid Sabanejew, “O Zvuko-Tsvetovom Sootvetstvii,” (On
Sound-Colour Analogies), Muzyka, 9 (January 29, 1911), 196-200. Sabanejew’s
text was also published as “Prometheus von Skrjabin,” in Wassily Kandinsky and
Franz Marc, Der Blaue Reiter (Munich: R. Piper, 1912), 57-68. English as L.
Sabaneiev, “Scriabin’s ‘Prometheus’,” in Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc,
eds., The Blaue Reiter Almanac, ed. Klaus Lankheit, (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1974), 127-139. See also Jörg Jewanski, “Von der Farbe-Ton-Beziehung
zur Farblichtmusik,” (From Colour-Sound Relations to Colour-Light Music), in
Jörg Jewanski and Natalia Sidler, eds., Farbe – Licht – Musik. Synästhesie und
Farblichtmusik (Colour – Light – Music: Synaesthesia and Colour-Light Music),
(Berne: Peter Lang, 2006), 190-193; Barbara Kienscherf, Das Auge hört mit. Die
Idee der Farblichtmusik und ihre Problematik – beispielhaft dargestellt an Werken
von Alexander Skrjabin und Arnold Schönberg, (The Eye Listens as well. The Idea
of Colour-Light Music and its Problematique – a Discussion of the Work of
Alexander Scriabin and Arnold Schönberg), (Frankfurt Main: Peter Lang, 1996),
106-118.
100 Chapter Three

8
See Dorothee Eberlein, “Ciurlionis, Skrjabin und der osteuropäische
Symbolismus,” (Ciurlionis, Scriabin, and Symbolism in Eastern Europe), in Karin
von Maur, ed., Vom Klang der Bilder. Die Musik in der Kunst des 20.
Jahrhunderts, (On the Sound of Pictures: Music in 20th-Century Art), (Munich:
Prestel, 1985), 342; Lobanova, Mystiker, Magier, Theosoph, Theurg, 265-266,
269-283.
9
Scriabin according to Charles S. Myers, “Two Cases of Synaesthesia,” 113.
10
Sabanejew, Alexander Skrjabin, 187.
11
Richard Cytowic, Kevin T. Dann, Andrea Gottdang, Jörg Jewanski, and Karl
Schawelka doubt that Kandinsky was a true synaesthete. See Jewanski, “Von der
Farbe-Ton-Beziehung zur Farblichtmusik,” 205.
12
Wassily Kandinsky, “Rückblicke, 1913,” in Hans K Roethel and Jelena Hahl-
Koch, eds., Kandinsky. Autobiographische Schriften, (Kandinsky: Autobiographical
Texts), (Berne: Benteli, 2004), 27. English as Wassily Kandinsky, “Reminiscences,”
in Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo, eds., Kandinsky: Complete Writings on
Art, vol. 1, (Boston, MA: G. K. Hall & Co., 1982), 357.
13
Kandinsky, “Rückblicke,” 29. English in Lindsay/Vergo, Kandinsky: Complete
Writings on Art, vol. 1, 360.
14
ibid.
15
Wassily Kandinsky, Über das Geistige in der Kunst. Insbesondere in der
Malerei, 2nd ed. (Munich: R. Piper, 1912), 51. English as Wassily Kandinsky, On
the Spiritual in Art, first complete English translation by Hilla Rebay (New York:
Solomon R. Guggeheim Foundation, 1946), 45.
16
Kandinsky, Über das Geistige in der Kunst, 76, 78. English as Kandinsky, On
the Spiritual in Art, 63, 65.
17
ibid., 86; English as n.16, 71.
18
ibid., 80, 83-85; English as n.16, 66, 69-70.
19
ibid., 37. English as n.16, 35.
20
ibid., 49. English as n.16, 43.
21
Wassily Kandinsky, Brief an Arnold Schönberg, 18. Januar 1911, in Jelena
Hahl-Koch, ed., Arnold Schönberg – Wassily Kandinsky. Briefe, Bilder und
Dokumente einer außergewöhnlichen Begegnung, (Salzburg, Vienna:
Residenzverlag, 1980), 19. English as Wassily Kandinsky, letter to Arnold
Schönberg, 18th January 1911, in Jelena Hahl-Koch, ed., Arnold Schönberg –
Wassily Kandinsky: Letters, Pictures and Documents, (London, Boston: Faber &
Faber, 1984), 21.
22
ibid.
23
ibid.
24
Esther da Costa Meyer, “Schönberg and Kandinsky,” in Schönberg, Kandinsky,
Blauer Reiter und die Russische Avantgarde. Die Kunst gehört dem Unbewußten,
(Vienna: Arnold Schönberg Center, 2000), 33-34.
25
Arnold Schönberg, “Über Oktaven- und Quintenparallelen,” (On Parallel
Octaves and Fifth), Die Musik, 10, (October 1910) 2: 96-105. Arnold Schönberg ,
Harmonielehre, (Leipzig: Universal-Edition, 1911).
 Seeing Sound – Hearing Colour 101

26
He wrote: “Schönbergsche Musik führt uns in ein neues Reich ein, wo die
musikalischen Erlebnisse keine akustischen sind, sondern rein seelische. Hier
beginnt die ‘Zukunftsmusik’.” Kandinsky, Über das Geistige in der Kunst, 32.
English as “His [Schönberg’s] music leads us into a new realm where the musical
experiences are not acoustic but purely soul inspiring. Here begins the ‘music of
the future’.” Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, 31.
27
Arnol’d Shenberg, “Paralleli v oktavakh i kvintakh,” in Vladimir Izdebsky,
Salon 2, Odessa, 1910, 16-18. English as Kandinsky, “Footnotes to Schoenberg’s
‘On Parallel Octaves and Fifth,’” in Lindsay/Vergo, Kandinsky: Complete Writings
on Art, vol. 1, 91-95.
28
Arnold Schönberg, “Das Verhältnis zum Text,” in Wassily Kandinsky and Franz
Marc, eds., Der Blaue Reiter, (Munich: R. Piper, 1912), 27-33. English as “Arnold
Schönberg, “The Relationship to the Text,” in Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc,
eds., The Blaue Reiter Almanac, edited by Klaus Lankheit, (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1974), 90-102. His pictures Vision (undat.) and Self-Portrait (1911)
appeared on pages 80 and 85 respectively. His composition for soprano, celesta,
harmonium, and harp to Maurice Maeterlinck’s “Herzgewächse” was included in
the appendix with other musical compositions.
29
On the programme were Schönberg’s First and Second String Quartets, ops. 7
and 10, Three Piano Pieces, op. 11, and five songs.
30
Wassily Kandinsky, Sketch for Impression III (Concert), 1911, crayon on paper,
10 x 14,9 cm and Sketch for Impression III (Concert), 1911, crayon on paper, 10 x
14,8 cm, both at Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou. See
Schönberg, Kandinsky, Blauer Reiter und die Russische Avantgarde. Die Kunst
gehört dem Unbewußten, (Vienna: Arnold Schönberg Center, 2000), 108.
31
Kandinsky, Über das Geistige in der Kunst. 73; English as n.16, 62.
32
ibid., 81; English as n.16, 68.
33
For an in-depth discussion of the work see Günther Brucher, Kandinsky. Wege
zur Abstraktion (Kandinsky: Paths toward Abstraction), (Munich: Prestel, 1999),
279-288.
34
Wassily Kandinsky, “Über Bühnenkomposition,” in Wassily Kandinsky and
Franz Marc, eds., Der Blaue Reiter (Munich: R. Piper, 1912), 103-104. English as
Wassily Kandinsky, “On Stage Composition,” in Lindsay and Vergo, Complete
Writings , vol. 1, 257.
35
Kandinsky, Über das Geistige in der Kunst, 39. English as Kandinsky, On the
Spiritual in Art, 36.
36
Kandinsky, “Über Bühnenkomposition,” 112. English as Kandinsky, “On Stage
Composition,” 264.
37
Iris Pfeifer, “Schönberg and Kandinsky – Stage Composions,” in Schönberg,
Kandinsky, Blauer Reiter und die Russische Avantgarde. Die Kunst gehört dem
Unbewußten, (Vienna: Arnold Schönberg Center, 2000), 112-113.
38
Wassily Kandinsky, “Der Gelbe Klang. Eine Bühnenkomposition,” in Wassily
Kandinsky and Franz Marc, eds., Der Blaue Reiter, (Munich: R. Piper, 1912), 115-
131. English as Wassily Kandinsky, “The Yellow Sound: A Stage Composition,”
102 Chapter Three

in Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, eds., The Blaue Reiter Almanac, ed. Klaus
Lankheit, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), 207-225.
39
Wassily Kandinsky, “’Violett.’ Romantisches Bühnenstück. Bild VI (Anfang),”
in bauhaus, Dessau 3 (1927), 6. English as Wassily Kandinsy, “Violet,” in Lindsay
and Vergo, Kandinsky: Complete Writings, vol. 2, 719-721.
40
See Hahl-Koch, Arnold Schönberg – Wassily Kandinsky, 177, 201-202. On the
performances, see Kienscherf, Das Auge hört mit, 194-196.
41
Kandinsky, “Der Gelbe Klang,” 15-131. English as Kandinsky, “The Yellow
Sound,” 207-225.
42
Wassily Kandinsky, “Modeste Mussorgsky: ‘Bilder einer Ausstellung’,” Das
Kunstblatt, (August 1930), 246. See also Max Bill, ed., Kandinsky. Essays über
Kunst und Künstler, (Kandinsky: Essays on Art and Artists) Berne: Benteli, 1955),
119-121. English as Wassily Kandinsky, “Pictures at an Exhibition,” in Lindsay
and Vergo, eds., Kandinsky: Complete Writings, vol. 2, 749-751.
43
For a complete account of this project see Marcel Bongni, “Wassily Kandinskys
Synthese der Künste. Eine Analyse von ‘Bilder einer Ausstellung’”, (“Wassily
Kandinsky’s Synthesis of the Arts: An Analysis of ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’”),
PhD dissertation University Zürich (Zurich: ADAG Copy AG, 2000), 54-67.
44
Kandinsky, “Modeste Mussorgsky: ‘Bilder einer Ausstellung’,” 246. English as
Kandinsky, “Pictures at an Exhibition,” 751.
45
Wassily Kandinsky, “Über die abstrakte Bühnensynthese,” in Staatliches
Bauhaus in Weimar 1919-1923 (State Bauhaus in Weimar 1919-1923) (Weimar,
München: Bauhaus-Verlag, 1923), 143. See also Bill, Kandinsky. Essays über
Kunst und Künstler, 82. English as Wassily Kandinsky, “Abstract Synthesis on the
Stage,” in Lindsay and Vergo, eds., Kandinsky: Complete Writings, vol. 2, 506-
507.
46
John E Bowlt, “Vasilii Kandinsky: The Russian Connection,” in The Life of
Vasilii Kandinsky in Russian Art. A Study of On the Spiritual in Art, in John E
Bowlt, Rose-Carol Washton Long, eds., 2nd ed. (Newtonville, MA: Oriental
Research Partners, 1984), 1-41.
47
Nikolai Kulbin, “Novye techeniia v iskusstve,” (“New Tendencies in Art”), in
Trudy vserossiskogo s''ezda khudozhnikov v Petrograde, dek. 1911 - ianv. 1912,
(Works of the All-Russian Artists’ Congress in Petrograd, Dec. 1911 – Jan. 1912)
(St. Petersburg: Akademiya Khud., 1911), vol. 1, 40; --, “Garmoniya, dissonans i
tesnyya sochetaniya v iskusstve i zhizni,” (Harmony, Dissonance, and Close
Combinations in Art and Life), in ibid., vol. 1, 35-40; Vasilii Kandinsky, “O
dukhovnom v iskusstve,” (On the Spiritual in Art), in ibid., vol. 1, 47-76.
48
Kulbin’s essay “Svobodnaia muzyka. Primenenie novoi teorii khudozhestvennogo
tvorchestva k muzyke” (“Free Music. The Application of a New Theory of Artistic
Creation in Music”), first appeared in St. Petersburg in 1909. The text was
published in a German and a French edition in 1910 and also included in the 1910
collection Studiia impressionistov (Studio of the Impressionists). In 1912, it
appeared in Munich as Nikolai Kulbin, “Die freie Musik,” in Wassily Kandinsky,
Franz Marc, eds., Der Blaue Reiter (Munich: R. Piper 1912), 69-73. English
translation: Nikolai Kulbin, “Free Music,” in Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc,
 Seeing Sound – Hearing Colour 103

eds., The Blaue Reiter Almanac, ed. Klaus Lankheit (London: Thames and Hudson,
1974), 141-146.
49
On his scientific biography see Nikolai Kulbin, “Curriculum Vitae,” in
Alkogolizm. K voprosu O vliianii khronicheskago otrableniia etilovym alkogolem i
sivushnym maslom na zhivotnykh (Alcoholism: On the Question of the Influence of
Chronic Ethyl Alcohol and Fusel Oil Poisoning on Animals), (St. Petersburg:
Imperial Military-Medical Academy, 1895), 175-177; Jeremy Howard, The Union
of Youth: An Artists’ Society of the Russian Avant-Garde (Manchester, New York:
Manchester University Press, 1992), 226.
50
Nikolai Kulbin, Chuvstvitel’nost. Ocherki po psikhometrii i klinicheskomu
primeneniiu eia dannykh, (Sensibility: Studies on Psychometry and the Clinical
Application of its Data), (St. Petersburg: V. S. Ettinger, 1907).
51
Kulbin, Chuvstvitel’nost’, 4.
52
On his artistic biography see Nikolai Ivanovich Kulbin, “Biograficheskaia
spravka,” in Boris Kalaushin, ed., Kul’in. Kniga Vtoraia (Kulbin. Second Book),
(St. Petersburg: Apollon, 1995), 233-235; Jeremy Howard, “Prologue,” in The
Union of Youth, as n.49, 8-40.
53
On Schönberg’s visit to St. Petersburg see Iris Pfeiffer, “Schönberg in
St. Petersburg,” in Schönberg, Kandinsky, Blauer Reiter und die Russische
Avantgarde, (Munich: Lenbachhaus, 2000), 178-181. On Marinetti’s performance
see Benedikt Livshits, The One and a Half-Eyed Archer, (Newtonville, MA:
Oriental Research Partners, 1977), 181-213.
54
Kulbin, “Svobodnoe iskusstvo, kak osnova zhizni,” 3. English as Nikolai
Kulbin, “Free Art as the Basis of Life: Hamony and Dissonance (On Life, Death,
etc.) Extracts, 1908,” in John E. Bowlt, ed., Russian Art of the Avant-Garde:
Theory and Criticism 1902-1934, (New York: Viking, 1976), 13.
55
Hermann von Helmholtz, Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als
Physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik (Braunschweig: Vieweg,
1863). Russian as ---, O Fiziologicheskikh Princhinakh Muzykal’noi Garmonii,
(On the Physiological Principles of Musical Harmonies), (St. Petersburg:
A. A. Porokhovshchikov, 1896). English as --, On the Sensations of Tone as a
Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music, 2nd ed., (London: Longmans, Green &
Co., 1885).
56
Kulbin, “Svobodnaia muzyka,” 17. English as Kulbin, “Free Music,” 144.
57
Johannes Müller, Ueber die phantastischen Gesichtserscheinungen. Eine
physiologische Untersuchung (About Fantastic Impressions: A Physiological
Study), (Coblenz: Jacob Hölscher, 1826). Gustav Theodor Fechner, Elemente der
Psychophysik (Elements of Psychphysics), 2 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel,
1860). Wilhelm Wundt, Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie (Foundations
of a Physiological Psychology) (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1874); --, Grundriß der
Psychologie (Outline of Psychology), (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1896). On the
foundations of psychophysics and panpsychism around 1900 see also Monika Fick,
Sinnenwelt und Weltseele. Der psychologische Monismus in der Literatur der
Jahrhundertwende (World of Sensations and World Soul: The Psychological
Monism in Turn-Of-The-Century Literature), (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993), 33-48.
104 Chapter Three

58
“Khudozhestvenniya vesti’,” Rech, March 5, 1909. See also Howard, The Union
of Youth, 22.
59
N. I. Kulbin, “Tsvetnaia muzyka,” (“Colour Music”), in --, Studiia
impressionistov. Kniga 1-aia (Studio of the Impressionists. First Book),
(St. Petersburg: Izd. Nibutkovsky, 1910), 20-26.
60
Vasily Yastrebtsev, “O tsvetnom zvukosozertsanii N. A. Rimskago-Korsakova,
(“On the Colour-Sound Experiences of N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov”), Russkaya
muzykalnaya gazeta (Russian Musical Newspaper), 39-40 (1908), 842-845.
61
Kulbin speaks of Zinaida V. Unkovskaya, but the publications are by
A[lexandra] V[asilevna] Unkovskya. According to Unkovskaya, who used colour
to teach music to less musically-gifted children, the seven main colours of the
spectrum correspond to the seven main notes: red corresponds with do, orange with
re, yellow with mi, green with fa, light blue with sol, blue with la, and violet with
si. See Kulbin, “Tsvetnaia musyka,” 23-24. She not only related color to sound but
also to numbers. According to her, “every note, as every colour, has its distinctness
and its number as an oscillation of sound and color and as a rhythm of the
combinations of sounds and words.” Her article on colour—sound—number
interrelations was published by the Theosophical Society as well as in the journal
Russian Musical Newspaper. See A. V. Unkovskaya, “Metoda tsveto-zvuko-
chisel,” (“The Method of Colour-Sound-Numbers”), Vestnik teosofii, (Messenger
of Theosophy),1 (1909), 77-82. The same article also appeared in Russkaya
muzykalnaya gazeta (Russian Music Newspaper), 6-7 (1909).
62
Kulbin, “Tsvetnaia muzyka,” 21.
63
ibid, 25.
64
ibid, 25.
65
Nikolai Kulbin, contribution to Alexei Kruchonykh and Velimir Khlebnikov,
Slovo kak takovoe (The Word as Such), (St. Petersburg 1913).
66
Nikolai Kulbin, [Untitled], in Salon 2 - Mezhdunarodnaia khudozhestvennaia
vystavka Vladimira Izdebskago, (Salon 2 - International Art Exhibition of Vladimir
Izdebski), (Odessa 1910-11), 19.
67
Mikhail Matyushin, Krasnyi zvon (Red Sound), 1913 and Proshchennyi zvon
(Placatory Sound), 1913. See Soiuz molodezhi. Katalog vystavku kartin (Union of
Youth: Exhibition Catalogue), (St. Petersburg 1913-14), no page numbers.
68
Mikhail Matyushin, Zvukoshum (Sound Noise), 1921, charcoal, 36,0 x 22,3 cm;
Zvukoshum (Sound Noise), 1921, charcoal, 23,0 x 37,0 cm; Zvukoshum, (Sound
Noise), 1921, charcoal, 36,0 x 22,4 cm; all three at Museum Ludwig, Cologne. See
The Isms of Art in Russia 1907-30, (Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1977), 124-
126, nos. 98-100.
69
Matyushin, “Nauka v iskusstve,” (“Science in Art”), doklad, (lecture), 1926-27,
Department of Manuscripts at the Institute of Russian Literature (RO IRLI),
F. 656. English citation in Alla Povelikhina, “Matyushin’s Spatial System,” The
Structurist, 15-16, (1975-76), 69.
70
Matyushin, Etiudy v opyte chetvertogo izmereniia. Zhivopis, skulptura, musyka,
literature, (Studies in the Experience of the Fourth Dimension: Painting,
Sculpture, Music, and Literature), 1916-17, manuscript at RO IRL, F. 656.
 Seeing Sound – Hearing Colour 105

71
Hermann von Helmholtz, Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik, (Handbook of
Physiological Optics), 2nd ed., (Hamburg: Voss, 1896). His 1855 lecture “Über das
Sehen des Menschen” (“On Human Seeing”) was published in Russian as O Zrenii
(On Seeing), (St. Petersburg: A. A. Porokhovshchikov, 1896). Johannes Kries,
Physiologie der Sinne, 2 vols. (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1904-05), Johannes Kries,
Allgemeine Sinnesphysiologie, (Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, 1923).
72
“Otdel Organicheskoi Kult’ury. Issledovanie I Razvitie Organizma: Osiazaniia,
Slukha, Zreniia, Mysli I Ikh Tsentrov” was printed on a banner above the entrance
door to the research department. See Heinrich Klotz, ed., Matjuschin und die
Leningrader Avantgarde, (Matyushin and the Leningrad Avant-garde), (Stuttgart,
München: Oktogon, 1991), 120, photo 24. On the research see Irina Karassik, “Das
Institut für künstlerische Kultur (GINChUK),” ibid., 44-45.
73
Mikhail Matyushin, Zakonomernos’ izmeniaemosti tsvetovykh sochetanii.
Spravochnik po tsvetu, (The Laws of Changes in Color Combinations: A Handbook
of Color), (Moscow, Leningrad: Gos. Izd. Izobrazitelnykh Iskusstv, 1932), 20.
74
ibid., 22.
75
Hermann von Helmholtz, Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als
physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik, (Braunschweig: Vieweg,
1863). In Russian it was published as O Fiziologicheskikh Prichinakh Muzykal’noi
Garmonii, (On the Physiological Principles of Musical Harmonies)
(St. Petersburg: A. A. Porokhovshchikov, 1896). Mikhail Matyushin, “Zvuk i
tsveta,” (“Sound and Colour”), 1926, manuscript at private archive. See Alla
Powelichina, “Michail Matjuschin – Die Welt als organisches Ganzes,” (“Mikhail
Matyushin – The World as an Organic Whole”), in Heinrich Klotz, ed., Matjuschin
und die Leningrader Avantgarde, (Matyushin and the Leningrad Avant-Garde),
(Stuttgart, München: Oktogon, 1991), 32.
76
Georg Anschütz’s book Die Erforschung des Farb-Tones, (Investigation of
Color-Sound), was published in Leningrad in 1927. See Matyushin, Zakonomernos’
izmeniaemosti tsvetovykh sochetanii., 27. See also Georg Anschütz, “Die neue
Synthese des Geistes” (“The New Synthesis of the Spirit”), Farbe-Ton-Forschungen,
(Colour-Sound Research), (Hamburg: Kongreß für Farbe-Ton-Forschung, 1931),
vol. 3, 304-316.
77
Leningrad State Archive of Literature and Art (LGALI), F. 244, Op. 1, Ed.
khr. 71, L. 10-17. On a reconstruction of the four monochords used by Matyushin
and his students, see Organica/Organic: The Non-Objective World of Nature in the
Russian Avant-Garde of the 20th Century, (Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1999),
78.
78
Matyushin, Zakonomernos’ izmeniaemosti tsvetovykh sochetanii, 22.
79
ibid.
80
Petr Lazarev, Ionnaia Teoriia Vozbuzhdeniia, (Ionic Theory of Excitation),
(Moscow, Petrograd: Gos. Izd., 1923), 38. See also Matyushin, Zakonomernos’
izmeniaemosti tsvetovykh sochetanii, 26.
81
Alla Povelikhina, “Matyushin’s Spatial System,” The Structurist, 15/16 (1975-
76), 69. Also published in the exhibition catalogue The Isms of Art in Russia 1907-
30 (Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1977), 39.
106 Chapter Three

82
See Alla Povelikhina, “Matyushin’s ‘Total’ Theater,” in Organica/Organic: The
Non-Objective World of Nature in the Russian Avant-Garde of the 20th Century,
(Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1999), 75.
83
Matyushin, Tvorchestki put’ khudozhnika, (An Artist’s Creative Path), 1932-34,
copy at the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg (RO GMISPb), 162.
English in Povelikhina, “Matyushin’s Spatial System,” 70.
84
Matyushin, Po izmereniiam prostranstva, (Through the Dimensions of Space),
(1921-22). See Alla Powelichina, “Über die Musik im Schaffen des Malers Michail
Matjuschin,” (“On the Music in the Work of the Painter Mikhail Matyushin”), in
Sieg über die Sonne, (Victory over the Sun), (Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1983),
292.
85
Matyushin, “Zvuko-Tsvet,” (“Sound-Colour”), manuscript at the Department of
Manuscripts at the State Institute of Russian Literature (RO IRLI), F. 656, d. 36.
See Povelikhina, “Matyushin’s ‘Total’ Theater,” 76.
86
Matyushin, Rozhdenie sveta i ob''ema, (The Birth of Light and Volume), (1923).
See Powelichina, “Über die Musik im Schaffen des Malers Michail Matjuschin,”
293.
87
Povelikhina, “Matyushin’s ‘Total’ Theater,” 76.
88
Matyushin, Tvorchestki put’ khudozhnika, 162. English in Povelikhina,
“Matyushin’s Spatial System,” 70.
 PART II:

CORRESPONDENCES:
MUSICAL-VISUAL LANGUAGE IN LATE
NINETEENTH CENTURY FRANCE
 CHAPTER FOUR

COURBET, WAGNER AND THE TOTAL

WORK OF ART

JAMES H. RUBIN

In a blistering attack on Richard Wagner in 1853, the distinguished

musicologist, François-Joseph Fétis, compared the German composer’s
alleged errors in music to those of Gustave Courbet in painting.1 For the
past year, he had been attacking Wagner for literalism and for his
dismissal of the art of the past, which he believed smacked of anarchism.2
Courbet’s friend Champfleury made much of Fétis’ comparison, alluding
to it in his famous letter of 1855 in which he explained Courbet to George
Sand.3 Champfleury ridiculed those who would dismiss any new idea as
realist—even, he said, the music of Wagner, which he quoted Fétis as
having accused of realism. In fact, Champfleury had slightly misremembered.
Fétis described Wagner’s system not as Realist but as Romantic, although
he did indeed lambaste it with much the same vocabulary that others used
to condemn Realism. Fétis defined Romanticism as: “scorn for all rules
and all experience, the negation of the beautiful…, the adoration of the
true and the cult of the ugly…”.4 Fétis believed Wagner had been tainted
by Auguste Comte’s Positivism when he lived in Paris from 1839 to
1842,5 and he connected Wagner with the anarchism of Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon, with whom Courbet was also associated. But most of all, Fétis
the purist was offended by Wagner’s effort to effect changes in musical
culture through alliances with other media. For Fétis and conservatives
like him, programmatic material led music away from the abstraction that
gave it the highest status among the various forms of art.
In nineteenth-century romanticism, well before Wagner, the relationship
and sometimes rivalry between visual art and music was especially
productive for painting. Many examples are known, from Phillip Otto
Runge and Johann Wilhelm von Goethe’s “Orphic” theories of colour to
Eugène Delacroix’s defence of the superiority of painting over poetry and
music. Charles Baudelaire’s claims for the musicality of colour in his
 Courbet, Wagner and the Total Work of Art 109

Salon of 1846 laid the groundwork for late nineteenth-century synaesthesia.6

His passages were directly inspired by remarks in the legendary composer
and critic E.T.A. Hoffmann’s autobiographical Letter to Kappelmeister
Kreisler, published in 1814.7 In 1853, the writer and critic Champfleury,
who was also an enthusiastic amateur musician and champion of Beethoven,
published articles on E.T.A. Hoffmann in the same journal as Fétis on
dates that alternated with some of Fétis’s letters on Wagner. In a letter of
1860, Courbet thanked Champfleury for sending him an article the latter
had just written on Wagner in which he repeated his reference to Fétis’s
comparison of the composer to Courbet.8 Courbet could thus easily have
known about Germanic ideas on art and music, even if he read no German
and even if Wagner’s music itself was practically unknown in France.
Wagner’s first great article, the short and polemical “Art and
Revolution,” was written during a second stay in Paris in 1849, soon after
the Revolution of 1848. Anyone versed in the utopian theories of the
1840s will immediately recognise Wagner’s debt to this milieu which had
nourished other Germans including Karl Marx. One of Wagner’s most
remarkable claims was that art could only “teach the social impulse… and
guide it toward its true direction” by emanating from the people as “a
faithful mirror.”9 Another was that the combination of media he advocated
should be understood as an expression of man himself become whole
thanks to revolutionary freedom. Freedom, expression of ones times, and
socially progressive art forms went hand in hand. He dismissed criticisms
that such ideas were merely utopian.10
These ideas parallel many attributed to Gustave Courbet, as Monsieur
Fétis apparently knew. That Courbet actually took an interest in the
discourse associated with music and the total work of art, however, is
rarely acknowledged. Yet he was one of the few French artists of his
generation to spend serious time in Germany, or to be familiar with
Germanic culture through friends such as the poet Max Buchon, Baudelaire,
or Champfleury. Any painter’s ambition to attain at one and the same time
an Ur-und-überkunst was in fact characteristic of Romanticism’s
universalising aims, especially in Germany. In the first half of the
nineteenth century, the concept of total artwork was not yet defined in
specifically Wagnerian terms. Nor does the argument I propose in the rest
of this paper rely on direct contact between Courbet and Wagner’s
theories. It suggests, rather, a parallel path that a painter followed, as
opposed to a composer. It is a path to which German Romantic thinking
was no doubt crucial, but German thought that was already well assimilated
to French discourses, as in Delacroix through the writings of Madame de
Staël and Baudelaire.
110 Chapter Four

***

Especially during the 1840s and early 1850s, Courbet was deeply
involved with things musical. Following a brief introduction to the various
dimensions of Courbet’s involvement with music, I will suggest how in his
later work he developed his interests, often expressed through iconography,
into a more-than-visual experience by evoking, not so much music, as
sound.
Music was part of Courbet’s home life and regional heritage. There
was a piano in the Courbet home.11 Courbet’s adored companions Alphonse
Promayet and Urbain Cuenot, who are both present in the painter’s largest
early work, After-Dinner at Ornans, 1849, were deeply committed to
music. Promayet, who is shown playing his violin, was a struggling
musician who gave lessons to Courbet’s sisters, directed the local militia
band, and organised concerts for Courbet’s pleasure. Cuenot, who is
leaning on his hand while listening, became the leader of the town chorale.
In 1844, Courbet had represented Promayet as a guitarero. This small
painting was a pendant to one in which he showed himself as a sculptor
(Fig. 4.1), perhaps inspired by Promayet’s playing.
In Paris, Courbet attended public concerts, and his bohemian friends
Champfleury and Alexandre Schanne enthusiastically played quartets by
Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart.12 In 1847, he unsuccessfully entered two
paintings alluding to music at the Salon. One was called Ballade, the other
Memory of Consuelo; the former has not been identified, the latter is of
considerable interest. Consuelo (1842-43) was a recent novel by George
Sand in which song and musical reverie embodied the aspirations of the
story’s heroine. By the way, Sand was also a reader of E.T.A. Hoffmann.13
The following year, Courbet successfully exhibited his powerful
Violincellist (Fig. 4.2), which embodies the ideal of the artist as musician.
It is thought that this painting, a self-portrait in fact, is actually the
Memory of Consuelo that was rejected the previous year. In that same
year, 1848, although he abstained from the contest for a painting of The
Republic, Courbet planned to enter the public competition for a people’s
song.14 He prided himself on his voice and had written ballads, four of
which Promayet and other hometown musicians set to music in 1849, as
the painter proudly recounted to his friend Francis Wey.15 It was Francis
Wey, moreover, who arranged for Courbet to make his Portrait of Hector
Berlioz (1850), the composer whose Damnation of Faust, performed in
1846, had inspired Courbet’s Classical Walpurgis Night of 1848.16 The
latter was a large composition that Courbet destroyed by over-painting The
Wrestlers on the canvas several years later.17
 Courbet, Wagner and the Total Work of Art 111

A significant aspect of music’s appeal as a model for the arts in the

1840s was its association with utopian socialism, already evoked in my
remarks on Wagner. In Emile Barrault’s famous call to artists of 1830, he
cited music as the most powerful of the arts.18 Franz Liszt, for example,
was a follower of Saint-Simonianism.19 His connection to George Sand
helps to round out the circle of thinkers and performers. Berlioz is known
to have been touched by the utopian spirit when in 1846, he wrote the
music for a cantata, “Chant des chemins de fer,” the text of which contains
cries of “Industrie!”20 More to Courbet’s temperament was the popular
songwriter Pierre Dupont, much admired by Baudelaire, too. His songs
were calls to arms for the brewing political battle, especially his “Chant
des ouvriers” and “Chant des paysans” of 1846 and 1849, which achieved
lasting success.21 Indeed, Courbet’s efforts at songwriting come closer to
Dupont than to any other musical model.22
In Baudelaire’s chapter on colour from the Salon of 1846, the poet
described a landscape with effects of colour and of painterly touch in
terminology that deliberately evoked music. Recall moreover, that in
Baudelaire’s preface to the 1846 Salon, however ironic, he presented art as
a means to creating a balanced existence, even a harmonious society.
Baudelaire was using the vocabulary of utopian thinking. In his chapter on
colour and landscape, he was proposing the specific means, analogous to
music, through which painting as an art could achieve ends similar to those
of music. For many years, I read Baudelaire’s chapter as a template for
Impressionist painting. His emphasis on colour and touch seemed to
anticipate Manet and his followers. I realise now that one need not assume
that a discussion of colour necessarily announces the bright colours of that
later generation. Baudelaire was drawing his lessons from E.T.A.
Hoffmann and Delacroix, and there is no reason why Courbet, who knew
Baudelaire well in the 1840s and 1850s, could not have been thinking
along similar lines, except with subject matter located in an existing world
rather than imagination.
My argument is not, however, that Courbet was motivated by a
particular theory. Rather, it is that the intellectual discourses and cultural
environment of his formative years could give rise not only to what we
understand to be Courbet’s Realism, exemplified by pictures such as The
Stonebreakers (1849), A Burial at Ornans (1849-50), The Bathers (1853),
and so on, culminating in The Studio of the Painter (1853) and the Realist
Manifesto. The same discourse and environment could support a
complementary and subsequent canon of works running from The
Violincellist and La Curée (1856) to The Sea at Palavas (1850s), the
112 Chapter Four

Grotte de la Loue (1864), and the great triad of paintings that includes
Combat of the Bucks (1861).

***

When Baudelaire heard Wagner’s Overture to Tannhaüser for the first

time in 1861, he thought he was hearing the voice of nature itself.23 A
painter might ask how he or she can achieve a similar effect of making
nature speak its essence. Note that there was no human voice in the pieces
Baudelaire heard. I suggest that Courbet, without necessarily thinking of
Wagner, was hoping to emulate musical effects, which in painting, as
described by Baudelaire, could be evoked through colour. I would argue
further that in may cases Courbet left important clues or reminders of
sound, as in certain titles, for example La Curée and L’Hallali (1867),
which refer to hunting calls and in which there are musical instruments.
But ultimately, beyond music, Courbet’s paintings often evoke sound.
A number of motifs in Courbet’s landscapes are hard to imagine
without sound, such as the famous Wave (1869) or The Waterspout (1870),
with the immense tides that crash down on the Normandy beaches and
echo against the cliffs. Indeed, in his very first picture of the sea, at
Palavas on the Mediterranean coast near Montpellier, Courbet included a
self-portrait doffing his hat. He is said to have written to his friend Jules
Vallès the following words: “O Sea, your voice is grand, but it will never
drown out the voice of Fame as it shouts my name to the entire world.”24
Obviously, one may not take such words literally, but they certainly
suggest Courbet’s consciousness of the phenomenon of natural sound.
When Courbet painted the Source du Lison (1864) how could one imagine
the river’s rapid flow, over rocks and waterfalls in silence. The noise is
deafening. In Courbet’s painting of La Grotte de la Sarrazine (1864), the
water is calmer, but the cave is deep and Courbet’s curves emphasise an
ear-like shape. How can one avoid thinking of echoes. In one of his
paintings of the Source of the Loue, he has placed a fisherman, who gives
a scale to the huge opening in the mountainside. If Max Buchon’s poem on
the subject of the Grotto can bear witness, the sound effect must have been
forbidding:

Hear it roaring in its cavernous den

Like a demented tiger bounding at its step …

These pounding surfs, these echo chambers, all give measure to human
existence, as do the more pensive hunt scenes, with their horns sounding a
prelude to death.
 Courbet, Wagner and the Total Work of Art 113

Finally, a few words about silence may be useful. A letter written by

the Barbizon landscape painter Théodore Rousseau equates silence with
the lack of human presence: ‘Silence is golden’ he writes,

When in my observatory … I dared not move, for the silence opened the
way to discoveries. The families of the woods went into action. It was
silence that allowed me, immobile as I was like the trunk of a tree, to watch
the deer in his shelter at his toilet, to observe the habits of the muskrat, and
so on. … He who lives in silence becomes the centre of a world. I could
almost think of myself as the solar source of a small creation.25

This is natural nature, without human pollution. In such a realm, the

sounds of nature, nature’s true voices, emerge from what at first may
appear to be silence. But the ear adjusts. Courbet painted a number of
pictures of deer in the woods. In Deer at a Source (1861), note the
orientation of the animals’ ears. They are listening. It’s a matter of
survival. A combat of antlered bucks is also about survival and
procreation. The French word rut, which refers to the mating combat,
shares its linguistic root with the words rugir—to roar—and bruit—noise.
It implies sound, the bellows and grunts emitted by the battling males.
Courbet’s title again evokes sound. In the solitude and the silence of the
woods, Courbet represents the dramatic survival of the fittest up and down
the Darwinian scale. A fox catches a mouse; a fox is trapped by a human
mechanism. I’ve supplied the sound effect in a title one might imagine.
Of course, these are literal examples. They provide a kind of transition
between iconography evoking music and Courbet’s expansion of the work
of art to evoke sound from visual motifs. In a modernist history of art, the
next logical step would be for forms themselves to evoke music or sound
independent from their subject matter. Here and in so many instances in
Courbet’s work one could refer to the percussive effects of his brushwork
and the harmonies of his colours. And these effects could be said to
communicate to man in a universal language, as suggested in Baudelaire’s
poem “Correspondances,” written in the 1840s or 1850s or one of its many
earlier sources.26 And yet, I would argue against the formalist
interpretation, for it is still nature speaking through this language.27
In conclusion, one may consider a painting of one of Courbet’s
favourite woodland spots, Le Puits Noir (c. 1860-65). I suggest that
imagination, prodded by the memory of outdoor experiences, supplies the
sound when one’s field of vision is enveloped by Courbet’s large scale
scenes. Through theatrical scale, resonant structures and percussive visual
effects, Courbet’s landscapes evoke the sounds of living presences in
nature. Baudelaire equated Realism with Positivism, which he attacked for
114 Chapter Four

its lack of imagination, for the absence of the human. But in Courbet’s
later works, the absence of the human figure and the materialism of his
technique could in fact be read as strategies meant to appeal to
imagination. In Le Puits noir, those greyish cliffs surely force the water to
run quick; one imagines the limestone walls echoing the sound. I am
suggesting that Courbet wished to envelope his viewers in complete
experiences of places he knew intimately not just as scenescapes but as
soundscapes. Through such a totality of experience, lessons of nature and
of human existence in relation to it could be conveyed, not through
rhetoric or programmatic narrative, but through feeling.
Of course, there is a difference between music and sound. Music is art;
sound is reality. It seems odd that Fétis chastised Wagner for too closely
imitating the real. Yet is was precisely the kind of aims Wagner had for
music that ultimately led Courbet from music to sound. It seems odd from
our perspective to compare Courbet’s efforts to those of Wagner, given the
latter’s predilection for myth and narrative. But in the perceptions of their
contemporaries, Wagner and Courbet shared a desire to deploy the
material means to give voice to nature as a totalising utopian world. It was
no accident that Courbet represented this world at the centre of his Studio
of the Painter. As in the operas of Wagner, the more of the human senses
Courbet could address through his artwork, the more effectively he could
create an experience of wholeness. Disconnected from the urban world,
the forests of Franche-Comté were, in Courbet’s personal experience, as
close to utopia as one could find in a reality on earth.
 Courbet, Wagner and the Total Work of Art 115

Fig. 4.1: Gustave Courbet, The Sculptor, (self-portrait), 1844, oil on canvas, 55.9 x
41.9cm, private collection, © Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art.
116 Chapter Four

Fig 4.2: Gustave Courbet, The Violincellist, 1847, oil on canvas, 112.4 x 86.7 cm,
Portland Art Museum, © Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art.
 Courbet, Wagner and the Total Work of Art 117

Notes
1
François-Joseph Fétis, “Aux compositeurs dramatiques,” first letter, Revue et
Gazette musicale de Paris, XX, 47, (20 November 1853), 404. The journal is
abbreviated as RGM in subsequent notes.
2
Fétis, “Richard Wagner : sa vie, son système de rénovation de l’opéra , ses
oeuvres comme poète et musicien, son parti en Allemagne, appréciation de la
valeur de ses idées,” in RGM, XIX, 23-32, (6 June - 8 August1852). On Fétis and
Wagner, see Katharine Ellis, Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France: La
Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 1834-80, (Cambridge: Cambridge University,
1995),, 206-10. Fétis, “Wagner,” RGM, XIX, 25, (20 June 1852), 202.
3
Champfleury (Jules Fleury-Husson), “Du réalisme : Lettre à Mme Sand,” (1855)
in Geneviève et Jean Lacambre, eds., Champfleury : Le réalisme, (Paris: Hermann,
1973), 171.
4
Fétis, “Aux compositeurs dramatiques,” RGM, XX, 52, (25 December 1853),
444.
5
Fétis, “Wagner,” RGM, XIX, 32, (8 August 1852), 259.
6
Note Baudelaire’s enthusiastic reaction to Wagner’s Tannhüuser when it was
produced in Paris in 1861. Charles Baudelaire, “Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à
Paris, in Charles Baudelaire ed. Claude Pichois, Oeuvres complètes, II, (Paris:
Gallimard, 1976), 779-815.) There are certain uncanny parallels between
Baudelaire’s discussion of colour in the Salon de 1846 and Wagner’s theories. If
one can speak of common sources, they would obviously lie in the Orphic thinking
of early nineteenth-century German writers.
7
Ingeborg Köhler, Baudelaire et Hoffmann, (Stockholm, 1979) and Rosemary
Lloyd, Baudelaire et Hoffmann: affinités et influences, (Cambridge and New York,
1979).
8
Gustave Courbet, Letter to Champfleury, ? October 1860, Petra T. Chu, ed.,
Correspondance de Courbet, (Paris, 1996), no. 60-8, 163-164.
9
Richard Wagner, “Art and Revolution,” in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, trans.
William Ashton Ellis, 2nd edition, (London, 1895), 43 and 56.
10
ibid., 59.
11
The expansion of musical culture in early nineteenth century France can be
understood through a simple statistic. In the year 1790, piano production was 130
pianos. In 1830 it was 8,000. In 1860 it was up to 21,000, Arthur Loesser, Men,
Women and Pianos: A Social History, (London). The reputations of virtuoso
musicians and composers was huge. On a musical score following a performance,
an adoring player left the following words: “Nature wished to show in our century
her infinite power. So, to astonish the world, she created two men: Bonaparte and
Paganini.” Quotation from an anonymous musician in T.C.W. Banning, ed.,
Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Europe, (Oxford and New York, 1998), 138.
12
Courbet, Letter to his family, August 1847, in Correspondance de Courbet, 47-
3, 73; Champfleury, Souvenirs et portraits de jeunesse, (Paris, 1872), 197-99, in a
chapter on Charles Barbara (1819-1866), author of Esquisse de la vie d’un
virtuose, 1857.
118 Chapter Four

13
On Sand and Hoffmann, see Thérèse Marix-Spire, Les Romantiques et la
musique: Le cas George Sand, 1804-1838, (Paris, 1954), 96-204.
14
Courbet, Letter to his family, Paris, 17 April 1848, Letters, 48-3, 80.
15
Courbet, Letter to M. and Mme. Francis Wey, Ornans, 30 October 1849, Letters,
49-7, 86.
16
I have studied Courbet’s relationship to Berlioz in “Courbet et Berlioz : La
Nature comme Performance,” in Courbet à Neuf, Actes du Colloque Courbet,
Musée d’Orsay, December, 2006, (Paris, 2010), forthcoming.
17
In 1853, Courbet reused the large canvas for The Wrestlers.
18
Ralph P. Locke, Music, Musicians and the Saint-Simonians, (Chicago and
London, 1986).
19
He joined in many benefit performances for workers. See Locke, esp. 97-98 and
101-106.
20
Locke, 118. The text was by Jules Janin.
21
Pierre Brochon, La Chanson française: Le pamphlet du pauvre, du socialisme
utopique à la révolution de 1848, (Paris, 1957), 70-79.
22
Writing from prison in 1851, Proudhon hailed art as a celebration of humanity
and divided it into four sections: Gymnastics, Politics, Philosophy, and Music.
Music was thus the master art; visual art was a sub-category within it. Their
common purpose was to celebrate the virtues and beauties of humanity as well as
to execrate ugliness and crime. Pierre-Paul Proudhon, Philosophie du progrés
[1853], (Paris, Rivière, 1946), 93-94.
23
Charles Baudelaire, “Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris” [1861], in Oeuvres
complètes, as n.6, 779-815.
24
“O mer, ta voix est formidable, mais elle ne parviendra pas à couvrir celle de la
Renommé criant mon nom au monde entier,” in Hélène Toussaint, ed., Gustave
Courbet (1819-1877), exh. cat., Grand Palais, (Paris, 1977,) no. 38, 127; Courbet à
Montpellier, exh. cat., Musée Fabre, (Montpellier, 1985), no. 16, 55. Philippe
Bordes cites the same letter, but raises the possibility that the figure is that of
Courbet’s patron Gustave Bruyas rather than Courbet himself. In the latter case,
the letter would have to be apocryphal.
25
Théodore Rousseau, cited by Alfred Sensier, Souvenirs sur Th. Rousseau, (Paris,
1872), 120-121.
26
Charles Baudelaire, “Correspondances,” Les Fleurs du mal, IV, [1857], in
Oeuvres complètes, I, as n.6, 11, and notes, 839 ff.
27
In his controversial novel Mademoiselle de Maupin of 1834, Théophile Gautier
writes: “A silence full of noises and muffled sighs made itself heard everywhere in
the garden… I felt as if surrounded by spirits unknown and adored.” Also, “A
thousand mysterious voices whispered in my ear; … I understand a host of things I
never understood before; I discover marvelous affinities and sympathies, I hear the
language of the roses and the swallows, and I can read fluently the book whose
title I could never even spell.” Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin (Paris,
Gallimard, 1973), 147 and 240.
 CHAPTER FIVE

INVOKING THE LANGUAGE OF THE MUSICAL

VAGUE IN THE ART AND CRITICAL RECEPTION
OF HENRI FANTIN-LATOUR

CORRINNE CHONG

La musique, disait –il récemment encore, est l'art du vague; par cela même,
elle répond à certaines postulations de notre nature. Elle satisfait le
sentiment de l'infini, de l'ineffable. Elle excelle à exprimer ce qui échappe
à la pensée et à la parole. Elle commence où la raison finit. Il lui faut le
lointain, la pénombre, le clair de la lune, quelque chose de flottant et de
voilé. Elle émeut obscurément.1
—Victor Hugo

Introduction: An Aesthetic of Vagueness

Hector Berlioz, Richard Wagner and Robert Schumann formed the
holy trinity in Henri Fantin-Latour’s musical pantheon of "grands
maîtres."2 Berlioz was declared "le premier romantique" who inspired the
artist's most ambitious tribute to any artist in his oeuvre.3 For Wagner,
Fantin postponed his long awaited marriage to Victoria Dubourg to hear
"la musique de l’avenir" at the Bayreuth Festival in 1876. And lastly, it
was his reverence for Schumann that compelled the unusually shy artist to
proudly flaunt his title as a "Schumanniste." However, Fantin was no
dilettante who dabbled in music to be au courant: he was far too modest to
be fashionable. Instead, his erudite nature precluded a superficial
knowledge of music and steered him towards the company of musicians
and musicologists. Painter-musician friends such as Edmond Maître and
Frédéric Bazille, in addition to some of the most illustrious musical figures
in Paris that included Charles Lamoureux, Emmanuel Chabrier and
Adolphe Jullien provided him with an education to envy. So while he
frequented musical soirées to nourish his passion for music, he attended
120 Chapter Five

the Café de Bade and the Café Guerbois where Edgar Degas, James Tissot,
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Eduard Manet and Monet intermingled
with the likes of Baudelaire, Astruc, and Emile Zola, out of a sense of
duty, or as Jullien put it bluntly: "c'etait en quelque sorte une obligation du
métier."4 Fantin-Latour earned his title as "un peintre mélomane."5
Without question, memories of the idyllic summers spent with the
Edwards in Sunbury, England in 1861 and 1864 cultivated his new
musical outlook. Edwin Edwards– a successful lawyer turned amateur
artist – and his wife Ruth, indulged Fantin's incipient melomania with
nightly performances of Beethoven, Schumann, and Mozart on the flute
and piano. Towards the end of his second English sojourn, he confided to
his parents in a bittersweet tone that "Cette musique de l'avenir, je la
préssentais. C'est celle-là que j'aimerais faire si j'étais musicien, hélas!" 6
Years later, he would poignantly divulge to Edwards his disenchantment
with naturalism and his search for a sense of artistic identity:

Je reste l'étudiant des œuvres, du passé au Louvre, où je vais toujours

étudier et faire des copies, comme conduite, enseignements et préservatif
de la folie de l'imagination, et je suis toujours écolier de la nature. Je fais
toujours des natures mortes, et trouve que la nature, tout est là. Mais mon
moi, que je découvre tous les jours, veut paraître plus maintenant.7

In time, Fantin's aspirations became realisations as the "moi" found its

voice through his melomania. Copies of the great masterworks at the
Louvre became less copious and still-lifes began to lose their bloom as he
strove to create art in a more individual vein.8 His creative outlet was his
"compositions d'imagination" or "fantasies." Whether they were inspired
by the grandiose stage at the Paris Opéra or sparked by reminiscences of
an intimate piano recital, a pervasive hazy and vaporous mist unifies lush
and ambient lithographs, pastels, and paintings. A distinct veil of vagueness
is deliberately interposed between the beholder and the artist’s fantastic
visions – a veil that contrasts sharply with the photographic veneer of his
sober portraits and is withdrawn from his meticulously rendered floral
still-lifes. Scenes such as Scène première du Rheingold,1876 (Fig 5.1), La
Prise de Troie: Apparition d'Hector, c.1880 (Fig. 5.2), and Manfred et
Astarté, 1892 (Fig. 5.5) illustrate the correlation between genre and style. I
posit that Fantin developed a unique pictorial style of art-making that
aspired to evoke and simulate what was understood to be music’s inherent
vagueness: his musical aspirations translated into an aesthetic of
vagueness. For the present author, its most compelling aspect is the
appearance, signification and intertextuality of the word itself, le vague, in
music and art criticism. An entire vocabulary of vagueness was formulated
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 121

by art critics in their attempt to articulate the indescribable emotions that

Fantin's musical scenes aroused and the formal abstraction that they
believed to be inherent in music. Overwhelmed by their senses, these
critics overlooked the presence of musical structure. More importantly, it
was specifically the language of instrumental music – still replete with
resonances of German Idealism but also presages of Symbolist aesthetics –
that was invoked to evoke the musically vague. A transposition de
critique went hand in hand with Fantin's transposition d'art.
This paper will begin within a pre-thematic summary of the musical
currents in German philosophy that gave rise to the notion of "absolute
music" and the eventual legitimisation of the vague in the visual arts. The
transmission of these Germanic ideas and ideals to France will be affirmed
by a selection of critical writings by Francois-Joseph Fétis, Baudelaire,
and Berlioz. The focus will then shift to Fantin's progressive musical
formation and the origins of its German orientation. The core of this paper
will highlight what I describe as the dual aspects of vagueness. I contend
that Fantin's musical aesthetic can be interpreted as an expression of
semantic vagueness which signifies meaning or the cognitive content of a
work and formal vagueness by which I mean the elements, syntax and
structure of art. The former corresponds to a reduced legibility in the
process of interpreting Fantin's musical scenes, and the latter relates to the
diminished visibility in the appearance his work. Correspondingly, two
distinct but interrelated strands of art criticism appeared in succession and
intertwined in perfect counterpoint to underscore this duality. In an
analysis of the critical discourse, I will specifically examine the rhetoric of
semantic vagueness surrounding Fantin's minimalistic narrative style and
the language of formal vagueness which became commensurately more
pronounced as his lithographic style veered towards abstraction. As an
acknowledgment to Fantin's fierce independence from the current artistic
trends of his day, I will formulate and situate his theory of art within the
traditions of absolute and programme music.9

Aspiring towards the Absolute

One of the most percussive changes that transformed music appreciation
and practice at the turn of the nineteenth century in Western Europe was
the revered status of instrumental music. Its meteoric rise was fuelled by
the metaphysics of the German Idealists, such as Karl Phillip Moritz and
Immanuel Kant, the revival of their principles in the Romantic era by
Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, E.T.A. Hoffman, Ludwig Tieck, and
their reinterpretation through Wagner's adoption of Schopenhauer's
122 Chapter Five

aesthetics.10 Prior to this period, vocal music was accorded primacy over
instrumental forms as it embodied the Platonic ideal of rythmos, harmonia
and above all, logos.11 When liberated from the dictates of the
linguistic/rhetorical model, music had to contend with the mimetic
doctrine but towards the end of the eighteenth century, the tuneful
birdsongs and cacophonic thunderstorms that accompanied the operatic
overtures of Lully and Rameau would subside as the expressive theory of
music came into genesis.12 According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his
partisans, the noblest aim of music was to arouse the emotions of the
listener. In other words, music was regarded as a language of feeling: a
notion that expanded the audience's understanding of musical meaning to
include the intangibility of emotions that nevertheless was still descriptive
in essence. Mimesis was still mimesis: natural phenomena were merely
displaced by the human passions.13 However the resurgence of Idealist
philosophy in the early Romantic era would reinforce the challenge
against the supremacy of representational models and by the height of
Romanticism, the view that delimited art as a mirror lost its lustre. The
migration from the empirical world to the cloistered realm of the
subjective repositioned the value of a musical work within itself.
Instrumental music alone constituted a universe that was self-contained,
complete, and by virtue of its inherently abstract nature, transcended extra-
musical barriers. This inward viewpoint was also conducive to aesthetic
contemplation and self-reflection.14 Subsequently, the unprecedented
popularity in writing about music across all domains of art, would add
force to the new sense of art's autonomy and in time, this concept would
become intertwined with the emancipation of art from social function.15
In Carl Dahlhaus' seminal work on the subject, he argues that the
autonomy of art grew in direct opposition to the petty strictures of
bourgeois moral philosophy which stipulated that all art served an edifying
purpose.16 The antidote for this moralistic pandemic was absolute music,
that is, instrumental music that was entirely free from the tyranny of
imitation, demands of the text and burden of moral imperatives. This idea
of autonomous art would form the credo of the aesthetes and resonate as
the call for art-for-art's sake. Andy Hamilton deftly distinguishes between
these two types of autonomy: "the autonomy of one art (in this case
music) from other arts and the autonomy of art in general from non–art."17
It is the former understanding that concerns this essay and as Dahlhaus
asserts, the centrality of music's autonomy in European thought was
symptomatic of what he describes as a "paradigm shift" towards the idea
of absolute music. Yet, for the large part of the century, absolute music
would remain more of a "metaphysical aspiration, rather than a social
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 123

fact"18 due to the disjuncture between what was preached and what was
practiced in the contemporary musical repertory.19 Fundamental to this
new paradigm was the perception of music's vague content or semantic
obscurity as a virtue not a deficiency. Though initially restricted to the
Austro-Germanic tradition at first, the autonomy of music would also exert
its influence in France, and permeate into the consciousness of visual
artists, composers and poets alike.

A Vocabulary of the Vague

In French music criticism, the absence of meaning and signification –
in other words, subject matter– that lent instrumental music its vagueness
was interpreted as semantic vagueness.20 François-Joseph Fétis (1784-
1871), musicologist, composer, author of the monumental Biographie
universelle des musiciens (1835–44), and chief editor of the influential La
Revue musicale (1827-1834), was the most emphatic and ardent
spokesperson for instrumental music. He staunchly upheld the principle
that music be appreciated solely for its formal attributes and emotional
expression. As evidenced by his reviews, any other view would incite his
vitriolic polemics against dramatic and programme music. A language of
absolute music was formulated and rehearsed in his pedagogical articles
for the journal. "Le vague" was a recurring word and it was strictly
employed in the positive sense. In his article, "De l’Influence de la
musique instrumentale sur les révolutions de la musique dramatique," he
proclaimed:

Tout le monde avoue que la musique est par sa nature un art vague; mais
les opinions différent sur les avantages ou les inconvéniens [sic] de ce
caractère dominant. Les uns, partisans déclarés des idées et des passions
déterminées, le considèrent comme un défaut, et font consister le mérite
principal du compositeur à l’atténuer; les autres, au contraire, y trouvent le
principe de sa puissance, et veulent que l’artiste, au lieu de le combattre,
profite des ressources sans bornes que lui offre ce principe dominant de
son art. . . . Le principe vague de la musique réside dans la musique
instrumentale . . . En écoutant cette musique l’âme est émue; mais quelle
est la nature de son émotion? Voilà ce qu’il est impossible de discerner; et
remarquez que ces émotions, dont l'âme est agitée, loin d’être atténuées par
la manière vague dont elles se produisent, n’en sont que plus vives. 21

That music’s full expressive potential could only be brought out by ideas
that are indistinct and indefinable justified Fétis’ tirades against imitation
and its requisite precision. In practice, this "principe vague" could only be
realised by "un rapport de convenance entre les sons, ayant pour unique
124 Chapter Five

résultat d’affecter plus ou moins agréablement l’oreille."22 Theoretically,

"le principe vague" is a problematic one because its existence depends on
its resistance against a rational explanation of its possible "origins." The
vague dissipates the moment it is defined and its origins determined.
Needless to say, and much in line with the formalist aesthetic of Eduard
Hanslick (1825-1904) and E.T.A. Hoffman (1766-1822), Fétis did not
sanction the fusion of the arts. So while Wagner exalted the
Gesamtkunstwerk as the birth of music-drama, to Fétis' ears, it was music-
adulterated. Even Berlioz, who was the victim of choice for Fétis'
absolutist diatribes, conceded that there was value in the vague.23 On the
subject of Beethoven and Weber's instrumental oeuvre, he explains that

c'est la musique livrée à elle-même, sans le secours de la parole pour en

préciser l'expression; son langage devient alors extrêmement vague et par
là même acquiert encore plus de puissance sur les êtres doués
d'imagination. Comme les objets entrevus dans l’obscurité, ses tableaux
grandissent, ses formes deviennent plus indécises, plus vaporeuses . . . 24

For Fétis, it was simple: the value of a musical work was determined by
the diametric opposition between "le principe de sensation vague" and "le
principe d’imitation." There was simply no juste milieu as there was for
Baudelaire.25 Published in April 1861, Baudelaire's essay “Richard
Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris” was written in defence of the composer:
due to its riotous reception, Wagner withdrew his opera following its third
performance at the Paris Opéra on 24th March 1861.26 A closer look at
some key excerpts belies the middle road that Baudelaire actually took and
betrays his inadvertent validation of Fétis' invective:

J'ai souvent entendu dire que la musique ne pouvait pas se vanter de

traduire qui que ce soit avec certitude, comme fait la parole ou la peintre.
Cela est vrai dans une certaine proportion, mais n'est pas tout à fait vrai.
Elle traduit à sa manière et par les moyens qui lui sont propres. Dans la
musique, comme dans la peinture et même dans la parole écrite, qui est
cependant le plus positif des arts, il y a toujours une lacune complétée par
l'imaginationde l'auditeur.27

Fétis was partially correct when he argued that music could not translate
concrete ideas– partially because the degree of vagueness in a work was
contingent on the listener's interpretation: “Liszt voit un monument
miraculeusement beau qui se reflète dans un mirage vaporeux. Ma rêverie
est beaucoup moins illustrée d'objets matériels: elle est plus vague et
abstraite. ”28 Fantin had purchased tickets for the cancelled performance.
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 125

As a loyal follower of Wagner, an admirer of Baudelaire, and a voracious

reader—Fantin undoubtedly had a copy of this essay in his library.

The Musical Formation of a Mélomane

Concert-going played an instrumental role in the development of
Fantin's musical tastes during the most formative years of his melomania
in the 1860s and 1870s. Despite his apathy towards political banter,29 he
also frequented the popular salons held by Madame Meurice, the Manets
and the poet Saint Cyr de Rayssac where he occasionally found himself in
the company of Félix Nadar, Auguste Renoir, Camille Saint-Saens, and
Jules-François-Félix Husson (Champfleury). By 1876, his marriage to the
still-life painter and talented pianist, Victoria Dubourg, enabled the
reclusive artist to enjoy his favourite transcriptions of symphonic and
operatic works in the comfort of his home.30 Although his attendance at
these soirées would wane, his unwavering commitment to Wagner and "la
musique de l'avenir" made it difficult to refuse invitations to Wagner's
Parisian fan club: le Petit Bayreuth.31
Fantin's group-portrait, Autour de piano (1885) provides a snapshot of
the key-players who contributed to his musical education.32 Despite the
conspicuous absence of Charles Lamoureux–"le champion le plus determiné
de la cause Wagnérienne en France"33 – who led a controversial series of
concerts at the Eden Theatre, virtually all the members of le Petit Bayreuth
congregate around the composer and Wagner devotee, Emmanuel
Chabrier. According to Lisa Norris, the presence of Lamoureux would
have been so "inflammatory" in the midst of the Germanophobic climate
following the war that Fantin chose to exclude him.34 These gatherings
were organised by the judge, Antoine Lascoux after his 1876 pilgrimage to
Bayreuth to promote the Wagnerian cause in France.35 Fantin along with
the other privileged attendees revelled in the orchestral arrangements of
Wagner's operas and relished Lascoux's personal reminiscences of the
composer.36 There was no shortage of members who were able to translate
and interpret German texts, including the Louvre curator and aspiring
Wagnerian composer, Camille Benoît, and the German correspondent for
Le Figaro, Amédée Pigeon. However, of all the individuals represented, it
was Adolphe Jullien (1845 -1932) – the acclaimed musicologist, music
critic, accomplished pianist and Fantin's biographer— who played the
leading role in the artist's musical formation. At the time that Autour du
Piano was conceived, Jullien was in the process of writing his two
landmark monographs on Berlioz and Wagner.37 Therefore, le Petit
Bayreuth was not merely a venue for music enthusiasts but for experts as
126 Chapter Five

well. Discourse on Wagner's aesthetics was an integral part of the

repertoire. Fantin who never missed an opportunity to engage in his
musical learning would have been acutely attuned to the aesthetic debate
on programme versus absolute music that was so germane to the Austro-
Germanic tradition.38 To understand how Fantin's aesthetics were
consonant with Wagner's philosophy necessitates a short overview of the
composer's tentative relationship with the absolute.
The term "absolute music" was first employed by Richard Wagner in
his 1846 analysis of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony: variations included
"absolute harmony," "absolute melody," and "absolute instrumental
music."39 But while writers such as Hoffman exalted the symphony as "the
most romantic of all arts," for it revealed "the mighty and the
immeasurable,"40 Wagner held a different opinion. A comparison between
Hoffman and Wagner's principal works highlights their opposing
perspectives. From his celebrated essay on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony,
the former declared:

When music is spoken of as an independent art the term can properly apply
only to instrumental music, which scorns all aid, all admixtures of other
arts (poetry)– and gives pure expression to its own peculiar artistic nature.
It is the most Romantic of all arts, one might say the only one that is
genuinely romantic, since its only subject matter is infinity. . . . Music
reveals to man an unknown realm, a world quite separate from the outer
sensual world surrounding him, a world in which he leaves behind all
feelings circumscribed by intellect in order to embrace an inexpressible
longing.41

According to Wagner, without the "aid" of the extra-musical, instrumental

music was demoted to the status of a "partial art." The solution was the
Gesamtkunstwerk: a total work of art that synthesised music with drama,
dance, and poetic text. Music-drama was the goal; instrumental music was
merely an "intermediate step in a dialectic process."42 In contrast, an
extreme formalist like Eduard Hanslick regarded instrumental music as
"an end in itself" because "the beautiful is not contingent nor in need of
any subject introduced from without, but that it consists wholly of sounds
artistically combined."43 In other words, music is intrinsically beautiful. A
euphonic interplay between melody, harmony and rhythm was sufficient
for Hanslick but Wagner's allegiance to the Platonic idea of logos
necessitated "the meaningfully melodic tunes of words."44 Absolute
music, its limitless indeterminacy and expansive expressionism, required
"boundaries." In his Art–Work of the Future (1849) the metaphor of the
sea is invoked to elucidate his theory:
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 127

Man dives into this sea in order to return to daylight refreshed and
beautiful; his heart feels wonderfully expanded when he looks down into
this depth, capable of all the most inconceivable possibilities, whose
bottom his eye shall never fathom, whose unfathomless thereby fills him
with wonder and intimations of the infinite. . . .But in Nature, everything
measureless struggles for measure; all that is unbound draws boundaries
for itself.45

However, Dahlhaus unhesitatingly cuts through the "façade of apologetic

and polemical formulas" to expose Wagner's "latent affinity" for absolute
music.46 In his article “On Franz Liszt’s Symphonic Poems” (1857)
Wagner's defence of Liszt and programme music also betrays an implicit
attraction to pure music:

Hear my creed: Music can never and in no possible alliance cease to be the
highest, the redeeming art. It is of her nature, that what all the other arts
but hint at, through her and in her becomes the most undoubtable of
certainties, the most direct and definite of truths. . . .

The contradiction underlying his beliefs rises to the surface when he adds:

Nothing is less absolute (as to its appearance in life, of course) than music,
and the champions of an absolute music evidently don’t know what they’re
talking about. To utterly confound them, one would only have to ask them
to show us a music without a form borrowed from either bodily motion or
spoken verse.47

Indisputably, Wagner's stance on absolute music was an ambivalent one.

From one standpoint, the vagueness inherent in absolute music should be
circumvented by boundaries set by vocal or verbal accompaniment in
order for it to retain any sense. From the other, vagueness was irresistible
because of its metaphysical intimations. Moreover, it endowed the
orchestra with an endless range of new expressive possibilities and a
power that he did not expect from the "intangible and vaporous quality" of
pure orchestral music.48 This need to reconcile logos with what seemed to
be the incomprehensible and infinite in absolute music would also
underpin Fantin's vision: one that similarly verged upon a "sea" of
abstraction but still clung onto the "shore" of reality. Thus, it was
inevitable that Théodor de Wyzewa– a leading exponent of the Symbolist
movement in Paris and co-founder of the radical journal La Revue
Wagnérienne- would proclaim Fantin to be the artiste wagnérien par
excellence.49 Fantin's overt affiliations with Wagnerian circles, including
128 Chapter Five

his critically acclaimed lithographs for Jullien's monograph of Wagner

cemented his reputation as "un peintre wagnérien."50
However, to echo Fantin's own sentiments on the public's delayed
appreciation of Berlioz, scholarship has similarly overlooked the
composer's impact on Fantin's aesthetics. This is surprising considering
Fantin considered Berlioz to be Eugène Delacroix's equal: "Berlioz me
paraît bien plus grand. C’est un grand artiste et qui ne ressemble en rien à
notre musique française, c’est vraiment lui qui a fait le premier cet art
romantique qui correspond bien à Delacroix!"51 Fantin's studious
sensibility and perhaps even the pressure to be on par with his
musicologist and musician friends would have drawn him to Berlioz's
most substantial theoretical writings, Le grand Traité d’Instrumentation
(1843), Les Soirées de l’Orchestre (1852), and À Travers Chants (1862).52
Berlioz was also an astonishingly prolific critic and over a span of four
decades, he tirelessly reviewed the works of his peers and promulgated his
own artistic doctrines in a plethora of prestigious journals.53 As a regular
contributor to Le Minstrel, la Revue et Gazette musicale, Le Moniteur and
Le Journal des Débats, Jullien's professional connections would have
facilitated Fantin's access to the composer's critical works. A letter written
to Otto Scholderer illuminates the source of Fantin's admiration for
Berlioz:

Il m’avait semblé que sa mémoire demandait quelque chose, ce pauvre

grand Artiste, était bien un Artiste, encore plus un Artiste même qu’un
musicien et ne peut rivaliser avec vos grands musiciens, mais certainement
il a donné des idées. Il a été le premier romantique, il a donné bien l’éveil à
Wagner par exemple. Sans aucun doute Berlioz est celui qui [a] eu le
besoin le premier de mêler le drame, la Poétique moderne avec la
Musique.54

"Sans aucune doute" it was this synthesis between music, drama and
poetry that captivated Fantin on 5th December, 1875 at the Théâtre du
Châtelet where he attended a performance of Roméo et Juliette (1839).55
Although he did not articulate it in words, the vaporous haze that pervades
the minimalistic mise-en-scène of his two variations on Roméo et Juliette:
Confidence à la Nuit, (H.82, H. 176) evoke the sense of vagueness that
was idiomatic of Berlioz's hybrid dramatic-symphonic genre – a quality
that the composer himself acknowledged in his avant-propos de l'auteur to
the score of Romeo et Juliette (1838-1839):

C’est aussi parce que la sublimité de cet amour en rendait la peinture si

dangereuse pour le musicien, qu’il a dû donner à sa fantaisie une latitude
que le sens positif des paroles chantées ne lui eût pas laissée, et recourir à
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 129

la langue instrumentale, langue plus riche, plus variée, moins arrêtée, et,
par son vague même, incomparablement plus puissante en pareil cas.56

Berlioz felt obligated to provide his readers with an explanation of his

unconventional approach to the highly anticipated scène d’amour. The
composer had subverted the expectations of the audience by conceiving
Shakespeare' most famous literary work as a long dramatic symphony with
only occasional choral parts to punctuate his rich and novel instrumentation.
Gone were the traditional recitatives and arias that would normally propel
the narrative and guide the listener in eliciting the "standardised"
emotional response. Instead, a lush instrumental segment sans paroles
replaced what would have been a conventional heart-wrenching duet sung
by the two lovers. In short, the message explained in the avant-propos and
embedded in the music was that only the musically vague could express
the ineffable. Fantin was present at one of these performances: he was
bewitched rather than bewildered.57 Moreover, he was intrigued by the
possibility of form as content.

On Vagueness, Semantics and Legibility

One of the most defining characteristics of Fantin's musical genre was
a diminished legibility that discouraged the beholder from merely reading
a work of art. He consciously dispensed with all the conventional stage
props that typically crowded illustrations for scores and programmes. An
incomplete picture demanded the beholder's imaginative input and he
himself had depended on this faculty because as Lisa Norris has also
noted, Wagner's epic operas were often reduced to piano transcriptions and
orchestral arrangements within the confines of the salon.58 Not seeing and
listening to a work in-situ, nor in its entirety and original form could only
lead to a lack of specificity but to Fantin's advantage: only the vague and
obscure could fuel his effusive emotional transports and sustain the
lingering reveries that typified his Romantic spirit. His subordination of
subject matter and the limited legibility that follows, heighten the sense of
semantic vagueness – an effect admired by his critics. To illustrate,
Fantin's opening scene of Wagner's Das Rheingold or l'Or du Rhin (Fig.
5.1) was one of two exhibited works that were "composés moins pour
leurs sujets que pour le plaisir de jouer dans la couleur, et de jouer en vrai
peintre."59 "Rare et suggestive" aptly describes this scene which
dramatically opens up to a spiralling vortex of golden light. The
suggestiveness arises from the lack of specific anecdotal detail: the
sweeping trio of Rheinmaidens could easily be interpreted as generic
130 Chapter Five

nymphs, Siegfried could stand in for the archetypal male voyeur, and the
landscape is merely a non-descript backdrop. What the image does do
accurately is capture Fantin's sense of awe and wonder as he witnessed the
opening scene of the Rheingold in-situ. In the first of the four Bayreuth
letters addressed to Edmond Maître, the source of Fantin's ecstatic reaction
is obvious:

Là comme dans tout le reste, c'est de la sensation, pas la musique, pas le

décor, pas le sujet, mais un empoignement du spectateur, c'est [sic] pas le
mot qu'il faut, que spectateur, ni auditeur non plus, c'est tout cela mêlé.60

As with his admiration for Berlioz, it was the multi-sensory exhilaration

triggered by a "triple chef-d'oeuvre [comprising of] musique, drame [and]
mise-en scène" that enthralled him. 61 Sensation – the strong emotions that
music aroused – not the subject matter was what compelled him to
express "ce que l'on ne peut dire avec la voix" through his art.62
Consequently, "le sujet" was sometimes "assez difficile à formuler", but it
was precisely because of this that Fantin earned his reputation as "le plus
attirant et le plus aimé, parce que son inspiration vient de la musique
souvent et y retourne toujours, pénétrante, indéfinissable voisine de rêve
comme la volupté des sons."63 For de Wyzewa, it was imperative that the
subject remain elusive rather than illustrative in order to preserve the
vague:

Le sujet n'est rien si l'on veut, et même c'est à peine si la composition du

peintre a gardé quelque rapport avec les paroles que le musicien avait
choisies pour le thème. En revanche, l'impression musicale est tout, avec
son vague enchantement et sa fécondité de rêverie.64

In fact, for some other critics such as Frank Rutter, Fantin's dissolution of
subject matter did not matter at all but was a "side issue":

I do not mean that these prints are to be applauded as pictorial

interpretations of Wagner and Schumann and Berlioz and Brahms, for their
subject is a side issue with which I have no concern, though to the
musician it will doubtless be full of interest and suggestion; but to the
artists these prints will be of premier importance as a revelation of the
capabilities of a medium long neglected but here developed to its fullest
extent. And what a wonderful medium it is! 65

Aesthetic value preceded cognitive value or meaning: "la volupté des

sons" was a sujet suffisant for Fantin's admirers. He did not strive
pictorially to transcribe libretti nor slavishly reproduce what was on the
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 131

stage: a principle shared by Berlioz who mercilessly ridiculed the absurdity

of mindless musical imitations that were devoid of dramatic significance
and poetic value.66 Thus, critics have rarely focused on whether or not
Fantin produced faithful transcriptions of what he saw or envisioned but
rather, they were drawn to his expressive use of line, colour, atmospheric
effects (enveloppe) and musical equivalences which were seen as prophetic
of the Symbolist movement’s espousal of synaesthesia.67 Consequently, art
critics were more inclined to use the term transposition to define his
musical genre. For example, in Gustave Geffroy's review of the 1884
Salon, Fantin's Tannhäuser (Elizabeth et Harold); Le Paradis et la péri;
Musique et Poésie, and l’Harold de Berlioz were described as "une
étonnante transposition d’art."68 Transposition, not transcription enabled
the materialisation of the vague.
Fantin’s interpretation of Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust: l’Apparition
de Marguerite, 1888 (Fig. 5.3) exemplifies the secondary role that
semantics played. The scene unfolds in an ambiguous setting that is
shrouded in mist and shadow. Landscape features that would normally
anchor the composition have been obliterated to enable the earth, the sky,
and their respective inhabitants to almost merge into one. The light source
is unseen, creating an aura of mystery that recalls Berlioz’s innovative
technique of using hidden instrumental locales.69 The setting is even more
nebulous in Harold dans les Montagnes, 1884 (Fig. 5.4) where Fantin
employs the most minimal and economic of means just barely to trace the
outlines of the rugged landscape. Suspense could only be sustained
through narrative hints and subtle scenic minutiae and at times when he
bordered on the too definite or descriptive, critics were quick to address
this faux pas. According to the opinion of one writer for the Athenaeum,
although Fantin's Gotterdamerung was clearly inspired by "modern music
and shares its vague diffuseness, indefinite emotional content and
seductive charm," excessive attention on the costumes muted the musical
mood:

Here we think too definite associations with the opera are introduced—
associations which limit and disturb the purely musical mood. The pictorial
analogue of such musical effects would have been more truly given if all
the figures had been nude. By this means alone the requisite abstraction
from particular associations would have been secured. 70

Less was more. And in de Wzyewa's eyes, even the use of colour
threatened to efface the musically vague:
132 Chapter Five

Faut-il louer M. Fantin-Latour d'avoir adjoint la couleur aux élements

symphoniques que rendaient si émouvans ces dessins wagnériens? Nous
avions accoutumé, du moins, voir ces œuvres se passant des couleurs: et
leur adjonction ne fait guère plus vive notre délicieuse impression
première.71

As for Fantin's word on the subject of subject, a letter to Edwards in

which the artist ridicules the eighteenth-century writer Bernard de Bouyer
Fontenelle, makes the matter unequivocally clear:

Le charme de l’esquisse est cette chose impossible à décider, à affirmer, le

charme est dans son incertitude, que chaque spectateur achève à son goût,
ceux qui ont de l’imagination et le goût de rêve, pas les gens comme
Fontenelle, qui écoutant des Sonates, finit par s’écrier "Sonate que me
veux-tu?72

Fantin's inclusion of Fontenelle's infamous question and moreover, the

analogy between the semantic "lacune" left by the sketch and the alleged
lack of content in purely instrumental forms affirm a general knowledge of
the critical aesthetic discourse on absolute music. Both the esquisse and
instrumental pieces like the sonata were traditionally viewed as
incomplete: the former was often dismissed as a preparatory work, and the
latter, sans paroles, sans programme was accused for leaving peu à
penser. But in their defence, each embodied the evocative and was
admired for the imaginative latitude that they offered the beholder and
listener.73 Furthermore, in his comparison of the sketch to musical
variations – another instrumental form – Fantin draws our attention to the
formal expression or visibility of the vague. He explains that "ces
esquisses sont des hommages, des actes d'admiration, des maitres que
j'aime, c'est un jeu comme si l'on chantait des mélodies que l'on aime,
comme aussi des variations sur un thème que l'on admire"74 In music, the
thematic statement is increasingly diluted as each successive variation
becomes more inventive and free-form. Comparably, Fantin's style veers
more towards the abstract each time he revisits a favourite theme. For
instance, a juxtaposition between all three of his variations on Schumann's
Manfred et Astarté (H.21, H.34, H.107, Fig. 5.5) reveals a progressive
diminution of detail, delineation and definition. The pleasure lies in using
one's imagination and memory to complete its contours, to make sense of
the image and above all, to appreciate the sensuality of its form.
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 133

On Vagueness, Form and Visibility

While Fantin's musically attuned supporters appreciated the "vagues
des contours et des decors," the lack of precision and definite delineation
was perceived as a fault by his detractors. In his review for the Salon of
1881, J. Buisson remarked that "les lithographies de M. Fantin-Latour
volontairement vagues et aspirant à dégénérer en musique, en sons ne
méritent pas grande attention. Le peintre est sur une fausse piste. . . . il y a
longtemps déjà, les impressions après lesquelles court M. Fantin-Latour,
en conservant la précision des formes, qui est essentielle en peinture."75
Berlioz was right when he asserted that music was "l'art d'émouvoir par
des sons les êtres sensibles, intelligents, instruits et doués d'imagination...
elle n'est pas faite pour tout le monde."76 Buisson's critique is nevertheless
insightful because he was more concerned by the alleged lack of form than
by the content. But by the late 1880s, the ephemeral optics of
Impressionism no longer startled the eye and the acclimatisation of anti-
naturalism had primed art critics to appreciate the lyrical expressionism in
Fantin’s technique. More importantly, Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk and
Baudelaire's theory of correspondences had been assimilated into the
Symbolist credo. The interrelationship between vagueness and music was
becoming common currency among the arts. Therefore, what was once
deemed crude and "unfinished" in technical execution by some critics was
now praised. A diminished visibility of form (formal vagueness) served to
enhance the diminished legibility of the content (semantic vagueness).
Together, the two-sided sketchiness of the vague offered the clearest
expression of the musical and was acknowledged by more musically astute
critics such as Octave Mirbeau:

J'imagine que les conceptions intellectuelles de M. Fantin Latour naissent

en lui, musicalement; puis qu'elles se transforment par la couleur et par le
dessin, gardant toujours je ne sais quelle sonorité exquise et vague de leur
origine.77

Through the transformative language of form ("les couleurs" and "le

dessin"), the clarity of the content ("les conceptions intellectuelles") may
lose some of its resolution yet it gains a new poeticism because its
vagueness ("vague de leur origine") is accentuated. The result is sheer
sound. However, whereas Mirbeau heard "une sonorité exquise," Buisson
saw imprecision as a degeneration "into music, into sounds." In both cases
– positively and pejoratively – formal vagueness is equated with
autonomous music: "musical sounds" that coincided with the ascendancy
of sonority that the nineteenth-century orchestra brought into prominence.
134 Chapter Five

For Mendelssohn, Brahms and Berlioz, it was the symphony that enabled
them to showcase an expanded palette of orchestral colours, novel
juxtapositions of instrumental timbres and a new fullness and intensity of
sound. All in all, there was a sense of freedom form "form and all
harmonic restraints."78 Although the primacy of sound would never
translate into a complete emancipation from melody, harmony, rhythm and
structure, it resulted in a change in priorities: the overall impression was
that of sound over shape.79
Correspondingly, a similar development would characterise Fantin's
facture as it became more expressive and gestural. In reponse, the critical
discourse increasingly resorted to musical nomenclature or more
specifically, musical genres to describe his evolving style. The most
notable of these was the symphony: the paradigmatic form of absolute
music. Through the visual lens of the art critic, the softening of melodic
outlines, polyphonic layering of textures and limitless harmonic
progressions found their parallel in Fantin's subtle contours, delicate
touche, and expansive scale of tonal gradations:

Un nuage pommelé plane dans l’azur pâle, et c’est la couche légère où

repose la Nuit indolente et douce; dans la féerie vaporeuse du clair de lune,
les pelouses d’un parc brillent, argentines, entre les ombres vagues de
taillis, et la blanche caresse d’un rayon effleure le contour délicat d’une
jeune épaule et glisse le long d’un bras nu. Le rythme souple des lignes
ondule dans l’indécision de l’enveloppe, comme une mélodie très pure se
dessine, moelleusement bercée par un accompagnement discret: cette
peinture est sœur de la Musique et l’on ne saurait s’étonner que le
charmant maître ait consacré à la gloire de Berlioz toute une suite fameuse
de lithographies, où le noir et le blanc chantent de fières et suaves
symphonies.80

The poetic epithets "vaporeuse," "indécision," "subtil," and "enveloppe"

harmonised to compose "une melodie très pure" that could only allude to
the symphony: content was allegedly vague in both Fantin's art and the
symphonic form. More significantly, these poetic synonyms were reflective
of an expanding vocabulary of the vague. The intertextual dialogue
between the arts was not a simplistic interchange of words. Art critics
needed to develop a more concrete language in order to articulate the
ineffable in music. Rhetorical overlaps require adjustment. The word
vague and its variants result from the process of adaptation that naturally
follows when ideologies are transposed from one context to another or in
the case of Fantin, from an immaterial medium to a material one. The ideal
medium was lithography: its musical associations, graphic nature and
unique processes enabled him to recapture the sense of immediacy,
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 135

improvisation and motion in music. Through Fantin's technical innovations,

the temporality of music would find a new tangibility in his lithographic
oeuvre.81
An amplification of the musical entailed the attenuation of the visible
and one method that Fantin excelled in was his innovative use of transfer
paper (papier végétal). Instead of cutting directly into the lithographic
stone, he was able to render the subtlest textures, scintillating surfaces and
nuanced gradations by drawing directly on a sheet of paper prior to
transferring it onto stone. To expand his range of surface effects, he
experimented with textured papers which he would place under the
transfer paper during the drawing process. The additional use of the
scraper, stump and crayon also enhanced the illusion of une toile voilée. In
Siegfried: Évocation d' Erda, 1876 (Fig. 5.6) the coarse grain of the
underlying paper is clearly visible and runs horizontally to accentuate the
wide expanse of the sea and sky. The bold white field of Erda’s
diaphanous veil is loosely defined by vertical strokes that dissolve into the
dense darkness of the background. The scene is almost entirely enveloped
in an amorphous haze that also hovers above Tannhäuser: l'Etoile du Soir,
1884, (Fig. 5.7). Here, Druick draws our attention to Fantin's expressive
use of texture. The heavy grain of the underlying paper not only
emphasises the ruggedness of the rocks in the left of the composition but
intensifies the sense of emotional turmoil by lengthening the growing
distance that the retreating Elizabeth leaves behind.82 A loose flurry of
diagonal scrapes on Wolfram’s cloak accentuates the anguished turn of his
body as he takes a final glance at his unattainable love. The association
between despair, departure and the diagonal are similarly repeated in
Manfred et Astarté (Fig. 5.5) and the Finale du Vaisseau Fantôme, 1885
(H.60). Hence, Fantin's facture also played an equal part in weaving the
half-formed, half-tinted overcast veil that lent his work its mysterious
ambience.
Fantin's treatment of space is pervasive and diffusive: it is space that
actively erodes the topography, leaving behind indeterminate and
insubstantial traces of landscape. Although Fantin's definition of space
cannot avoid suggestions of mist, fog, and rain due to convention and its
situation within the composition, the evocative nature of its non-
descriptive and abstract formal qualities permits the vague to materialise.
In other words, empty space leaves a void for the vague to emerge and the
general impression is an ambient space. Rhythmic surges of undulating
lines imbue his compositions with a sense of movement analogous to the
dynamic temporal unfolding of music. Transitory passages between light
and shade mimic the interplay between the musical diminuendo and
136 Chapter Five

crescendo, forming an "enveloppe vaporeuse et lyrique."83 The effect is a

blurred visibility which could be attributed to Fantin's own blurred vision
as many of his most memorable moments musicaux transpired in semi-
darkness, by the moonlight, from a shadowy corner, or with his eyes half-
closed in reverie. A letter written during Fantin's stay with Whistler's
brother-in-law in 1859 testifies to the extent that his surroundings affected
his response to music:

À la nuit, nous allons au salon où Mme. Haden fait de la musique. Je suis

près de la porte. Je vois au fond, par la fenêtre le parc sombre, l'air frais du
soir entre, les rideaux de mousseline sont agités par ce vent. Dans cette
demi-nuit, je vois Mme. Haden en crêpe blanc et ruban noir et rose qui
promène doucement ses doigts sur le piano, elle joue la fameuse Barcarolle
d'Oberon; où va t-on dans ce moments-là, quelle chose que la musique, oh!
l'art!84

Fantin's souvenir reveals that his experience of music was a multi-sensory

one: it was the dimness of the "demi-nuit" that heightened his sense of
hearing; the diaphanous textures of crepe and muslin that entranced his
eye, together with the evening breeze that propelled him towards a
moment of indescribable emotional intensity. In time, "les rideaux de
mousseline" would materialise into his veil of vagueness. The correspondence
between auditory sensation, visual perception, and the formal expression
that it would inspire, is even more apparent in his description of the Or du
Rhin at Bayreuth:

Avant l'obscurité, il y a demi-lumière, on sent qu'il va se passer quelque

chose de sérieux, on entend une sonnerie militaire à l'extérieur, c'est le
Roi, mais avant qu'on puisse le voir, le signal se fait entendre. La nuit
(presque) se fait. Je vous assure que cela remue très fort, puis comme des
mugissements, (c'est sonore et voilé) l'orchestre fait d'une seule voix,
orgue immense! Oh, c'est très beau, unique. . . . Le rideau s'écarte
doucement et voici une chose sans nom, vague, obscure, petit à petit
verdâtre, s'éclairant lentement; bientôt on aperçoit des roches, puis tout
doucement des formespassent, repassent, les Filles du Rhin dans le haut;
dans le bas, Albérich dans le fond des roches. Je n'ai rien dans mes
souvenirs de plus féerique, de plus beau, de plus réalisé. . . . Ces messieurs
[Antoine Lascoux and Jules Bordier] sont ravis, renversés par l'orchestre
et le sentiment musical du tout, absolument réussi, orchestre invisible!
Son absence fait un grand effet; le vide, l'espace mystique est étonnant. 85

Fantin's breathless account of the opera vividly captures his fascination

with the suspense and theatricality of the vague. More importantly, it
illuminates the conflation of sight, sound and sensation: the pure wash of
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 137

sound emanating from the hidden orchestra is visualised as empty space:

"le vide, l'espace mystique." This quality of musical space would be
matched by its visual counterpart in Fantin's own Ring cycle where empty
space predominates the composition. Lithographs such as the Scène
première du Rheingold 1876 (H.8), the Finalebut de la Valkyrie 1877
(H.24), the Götterdämmerung: Siegfried et les Filles du Rhin c.1880
(H.51) its Finale, 1892 (H.100) overturn the presupposition that space was
a secondary concern by highlighting its primary role as the harmonising
element in Fantin's musical works. The correlation between the abstraction
of space and instrumental sound was surely sensed, for music filled his
surroundings, fed his senses, fired his imagination and infiltrated his art.
Music was omnipresent.86

On Words and Music

The obvious operatic orientation of Fantin's musical oeuvre belies the
pivotal part that instrumental forms played in the formation and
crystallisation of his artistic identity. Pure music was the catalyst that
triggered his melomania, a constant in his listening repertoire and a
cathartic release for the "moi" that "veut paraître. His early exposure to the
symphonies and quartets of Schumann and Schubert through his friend
Otto Scholderer would instil in Fantin an enduring appreciation for
German instrumental music.87 By the end of the 1860s, Fantin had already
become a connoisseur and collector of Schumann's piano pieces and
Mozart's sonatas. The symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, and most notably
Beethoven to whom he did not "dare" to pay tribute would also resound in
his musical reminiscences.88 In his art, the essence of absolute music was
fore-grounded but by the subtlest means and hence, in accordance with his
understated aesthetic: interpretations of opera, lieder and music-dramas
were filtered through a lens of the musically vague. Fantin's musical
preferences were not restricted by a hierarchy of musical genres nor
styles.89

Pouvons-nous juger ce qui maintenant se fait dans ce temps, comme nous

jugeons le passé, les jouissances des modernes sont tout autres que celles
des anciens. Moi, j’aime tout. J’ai été élevé avec la musique d’opéra et
celle symphonique me plaît beaucoup. 90

His passion for music transcended the traditional demarcations between

Classicism versus Romanticism, opera versus symphony, and more
broadly speaking, programme versus absolute music. The criteria on
which the value of a musical work was judged were its emotive power and
138 Chapter Five

visual potential. The former criterion concerns his subjective response to

"la poésie" in music but the latter relates to the objectivity of form, the
materiality of his art, and the technicality of his touche. In his interview
with Arsène Alexandre, he explained that he gravitated towards music that
could be translated into "belles images" through a "dessin très cherché et
très matièrellement équillibre, et de la couleur très raisonné."91 For instance,
the instrumental movements from Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's
Dream, op. 61 (1842) were admired for their scintillating colouristic
effects:

Je suis un fervent au Concert Populaire. J’ai beaucoup fait amende

honorable à Mendelssohn, vraiment pour le bien juger, l’orchestre est
indispensable. Dans le Songe d’une nuit d’été il est merveilleux de
sonorité, il a des effets d’instrumentation superbes, il remplace beaucoup
par cela, les idées mélodiques.92

Fantin's artistic eye and musical sensibility were immediately drawn and
attuned to colour or timbre: the "sonorité" and "des effets d'instrumentation."
Melody was secondary. Form alone could stand alone and this principle
was equally applicable to instrumental compositions such as the "superbe
symphonie" of Schumann and his Phantasiestucke, op. 12 (1837) which
were replete with "les belles idées."93 Yet, Fantin's attention to form is
never analytical; his extreme sensitivity which readily reduced him to tears
at concerts prohibited an emotional detachment from his experience of
music.94 His rhapsodic response to a performance of Wagner's Vaisseau
Fantôme in 1864 divulges the convergence between form and feeling that
underlies his reception of music:

L'orchestre dans ses mains est inouï, le début de l'ouverture est

incomparable, de merveilleuses sonorités, étrangetés appartenant à lui seul;
l'on aurait dit que c'était écrit avec d'autres instruments. . . . Ma pauvre tête
a été emportée par ce tourbillon merveilleux.. . . je rêvais; j'étais transporté.

Moreover, Fantin regarded form as a language in itself – a belief that

befittingly concludes the passage above:

Oh! le grand bonheur que me donne la musique ! Je pensais à ces grands

artistes: quelle belle chose que de produire des oeuvres qui peuvent tant
remuer les hommes, de donner sa pensée, son suprême idéal, de dire ce que
l'on ne peut dire avec la voix!95

What the "étrangetés de sonorité" expressed was the inexpressible because

pure music was a language so entirely profound and mystifying that it
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 139

transcended words. Or more precisely, music without the appendages of

the extra-musical spoke of François-René de Chateaubriand's "vague des
passions" that lay at the heart of the discourse on absolute music in
France.96 However, not all musicians recognised the aesthetic merit and
expressive value in the formal language of instrumental music. In a brief
but insightful critique of Jullien's review on Wagner's Die Nibelungen in
Le Journal des Débats, Fantin addresses this issue:

Que vous en voulez aux trilles, canons etc. Moi, j’ai remarqué quand les
musiciens ont épuisé les moyens d’expression, à la portée de tout le
monde, ils se souviennent qu’ils sont musiciens et que la musique est
supérieure dans ses formes à nos besoins de raisonnements. Les arts ont
une logique qui leur est propre. Et la fugue finale du Paradis! Vous êtes
trop sévère en laissent supposer que c’est de la sénilité! Il avait 57 ans en
finissent la Gotter. Pensez aux derniers quatuors de Beethoven. Delacroix
dit à ce propos: "Cependant ne nous prononçons pas encore, il faut toujours
parler pour le génie. L’avez-vous lu ? 97

Thus, the musician must remember that the purely aesthetic attributes of
music override the necessity for "logic," meaning or signification that a
literary programme provides. There was logic and sense in structural
sound alone just as there were "lois harmonieux" in the "arrangement,
disposition [and] composition" in the medium of his own art.98 Everything
else that is imposed on music is superfluous; anything demanded from
music would undoubtedly leave the musician "épuisé" Remarkably, his
reasoning bears a striking resemblance to Eduard Hanslick's manifesto on
formalist aesthetics: "Music has sense and logic- but musical sense and
logic. It is a kind of language which we speak and understand yet cannot
translate."99 So while the trill in music was deemed "inexpressif" and
"absolument dépourvus de sens musical" by Jullien,100 Fantin perceived
the aesthetic virtues in this ornament. Sound and syntax were elemental in
music. Beauty can be found in the harmonic structure, rhythmic patterns,
and polyphonic textures in instrumental forms like the fugue and canon: an
observation that affirms his wider belief in the autonomy of music.
However, this does not imply that Fantin was a pure formalist: there was
always a textual basis for his work, be it a libretto or poem. In fact, his
Bayreuth letters reveal a tension between form and content that parallels
the music dramas of Wagner and the vocal-orchestral works of Berlioz.
For instance, despite his veneration for the composer, he did not hesitate to
complain of the occasional "fatigue de la langue" as in the case of Wotan's
recitatives in the Or du Rhin.101 On the other hand, in his assessment of Le
Crépuscule des Dieux, he conceded to Scholderer that "la seule difficulté
140 Chapter Five

pour moi, c’est la longueur des récits que j’attribue à mon ignorance de la
langue." However, he also acknowledged that "j'entends dire qu'il y a des
.

choses fort belles dans le dialogue."102 "La poésie" and "la féerique" were
clearly not contingent on text: "Je ne sais plus dans quel état j’étais tant
j’étais transporté et je n’entendais pas les paroles."103 And at the
retrospective point of his career, he would arrive at the conclusion that
"true art," was represented by none other than the symphony: “Les
exécutions des œuvres symphoniques allemandes dans ces concerts ont
produit sur moi une impression profonde et m'ont initié de nouveau aux
merveilleux mystères de l'art véritable. ” 104 The specific references to
German symphonies, the marvels of mystery, the intimations of the
infinite, and the revelation of truth form a constellation that sheds light on
the legacy and lure of absolute music. What was prefigured in Idealist
aesthetics and re-interpreted by Romanticism, was now carried over and
coloured by Fantin's new visual language. Correspondingly, art critics
would also associate the mysterious aura and dreamy evocations in his
musical genre as a distinctly German trademark:

Much more remarkable is the effect of German music on a Frenchman who

has forsaken the lucidity and definite form, usually so congenial to the
Latin mind for Träumerei and cloudy visions and the landscape of a world
of dreams.105

By "German music," the author in all probability had the quintessential

symphony in mind and by "effect" he could only allude to Fantin's aesthetic
of vagueness. However, the analogy between the abstract as embodied by
the symphonic form and exemplified by his style is a tentative one.

Conclusion: programming the absolute

Although Fantin's musical genre would verge towards the abstract, he
never ventured far enough into the abstract. One foot was always firmly
grounded in reality because there was both value and pleasure in learning
from nature to the extent that he admitted: "Je ne cesse pas d'admirer et
d'apprendre avec les Italiens pour reporter tout cela d'après nature."106The
question was "comment représenter avec le plus de réalité possible ces
rêves, ces choses qui passent au moment devant les yeux?''107 The answer
was to employ narrative as a point of departure— a springboard to launch
his musical reveries. In effect, the proverbial problem of dream versus
reality or more generally, the binary opposition between form and content
was resolved through a reconciliation or compromise that aligns Fantin's
work to that of Berlioz. The dichotomy between between representation
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 141

and evocation in Fantin's art, and music and text in Berlioz's music both
called for a programming of the absolute.
Music critics from both the past and present have likewise remarked
that Berlioz "only composed music about something."108 "Something"
could only refer to something meaningful and in music this understanding
testifies to the tenacious hold of the mimetic and rhetorical/linguistic
doctrines of music. Concerning the first doctrine, Berlioz did approve the
use of imitation insofar as it served a dramatic purpose, and only to a
certain degree because it was subordinate to the expressive powers of the
orchestra. His conception of the idée fixe – an instrumental theme unique
to the characterisation of a person, place or concept— can be interpreted
as imitation in its most minimal form: that of evocation. In regards to his
stance on language in music, a paradox emerges, for despite his conviction
in the superiority of purely instrumental music, he frequently relied on a
textual supplement. For example, the scène d'amour in Roméo et Juliette is
preceded by a choral introduction (measures 49-118) and a programme
was recommended for performances of the Symphonie Fantastique (1830).
With his characteristic lucidity, the composer explains in the avertissement
preceding the programme for the Symphonie Fantastique that

Le compositeur a eu pour but de développer, dans ce qu’elles ont de

musical, différentes situations de la vie d’un artiste. Le plan du drame
instrumental, privé du secours de la parole, a besoin d’être exposé
d’avance. Le programme* suivant doit donc être considéré comme le texte
parlé d’un opéra, servant à amener des morceaux de musique, dont il
motive le caractèreet l’expression.

*La distribution de ce programme à l’auditoire, dans les concerts où figure

cette symphonie, est indispensable à l’intelligence complète du plan
dramatique de l’ouvrage.109

Berlioz's "plan du drame" is "indispensable" because of the necessity for

meaning yet also for the preservation of the poetic imagination through
instrumentation alone: requirements met by his hybrid operatic-symphonic
genre. According to Vera Micznik, the "coexistence" between spoken
interludes; songs; orchestral passages; titles; subtitles, and programme
exemplifies what she describes as an "aesthetic of ambivalence"110 – one
that is mirrored by Fantin's aesthetic of vagueness. Comparably, Fantin's
"sketchy" narrative framework provides just enough anecdotal detail to
guide interpretation. A complete erasure of the real was avoided because
vestiges of verisimilitude were entailed to establish a connection with the
beholder. Mystery did not need to be incomprehensible; imaginative
latitude should not leave one lost. Essentially, vagueness required visual
142 Chapter Five

signposts and in Berlioz's case, verbal pegs on which the beholder/listener

could hang his interpretation. To paraphrase one of the central tenets of
his essay De l'Imitation Musicale (1837), an ideal imitation would "merely
trace the outline of its subject, and touch it with delicate colour."111 This
visual metaphor would equally apply to any one of Fantin's musically
inspired pastels, and more significantly, it encapsulates the artist's
representational methods. The intention was to ensure that a work made
just enough sense to move the senses. Therefore, despite his affinities with
Wagner who also cast "boundaries" that limited "the endless and imprecise
expressiveness" of absolute music,112 Fantin's vision and rationale were
closer to the spirit of Berlioz's dramatic symphonies and légendes
dramatiques. Whereas the compositions of Berlioz left ample space for the
emergence and expansion of the vague, the demands of the
Gesamtkunstwerk stifled it with its restrictive narrative structures and
explicit content. The key was to suggest the emotional reality of moment:
"le vague des passions."113
Both Fantin and Berlioz recognised the value in pure form and music
but in the end, the art of the former was only almost abstract just as the
music of the latter was only almost absolute. Absolute music would
remain a constant aspiration, inspiration and source of their modernity.
After all, it took Fantin nearly a lifetime to reach the point of the absolute:
"Depuis quelques années je peins mes songes. Je suis arrivé lentement de
la réalité au rêve. Ce voyage a presque duré ma vie."114 There was no
turning back, especially not when "le moindre danger qu’on puisse courir
est l’obscurité et le vague."115 To end with a re-evaluation of Buisson's
rather harsh critique, if all arts did aspire towards the condition of music,
Fantin was actually on a favorable piste not a "fausse piste" in his pursuit
of finding musical equivalences in his imaginative compositions and
fantasies. Not only that but he paved the way for musically-minded artists
such as Whistler, Redon and Kandinsky who would later prove that the
vogue for the vague was hardly a fleeting one.
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 143

Fig 5.2 : Henri Fantin Latour, La Prise de Troie: Apparition d'Hector, (H. 30), c.
1880, lithograph, 32.4 x 39.0 cm, © BNF.
144 Chapter Five

Fig. 5.3 : Henri Fantin Latour, La Damnation de Faust: Apparition de Marguerite,

(H. 83), 1888, lithograph, 23.2 x 15.3 cm, © BNF.
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 145

Fig. 5.4: Henri Fantin Latour, Harold: Dans les Montagnes, (H.49), 1884,
lithograph, 43.0 x 29.5 cm, © BNF.
146 Chapter Five

Fig 5.5 : Henri Fantin Latour, Manfred et Astarté, (H.107), 1892, lithograph, 30.5
x 39.0 cm, © BNF.
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 147

Fig 5.6 : Henri Fantin Latour, Évocation d'Erda, (H. 20), 1876, lithograph, 28.5 x
36.0 cm, © BNF.
148 Chapter Five

Fig. 5.7 : Henri Fantin Latour, Tannhäuser: L'Étoile du Soir (H.48), 1884,
lithograph, 39.7 x 29.7, © BNF.
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 149

Notes
1
Émile Blémont, "Victor Hugo Artiste Philosophie de sa Vie et de son Œuvre, "
in Le Livre d'or de Victor Hugo par l'élite des artistes et des écrivains
contemporains (Paris : Librarie artistique, 1883), 286-304 [290]. Fantin greatly
admired Hugo and took his philosophical insights to heart. Surely, at one of the
soirées led by Mme. Meurice where "le monde Hugo et compagnie" gathered,
Fantin would have come across Hugo's poetic statement on the nature of music.
2
"Les noms de Schumann, Berlioz, Wagner et Brahms leur font horreur! Ces
quatre noms m’ont paru aller bien ensemble et caractérisent une époque. Quel nom
aurait-on pu ajouter aujourd’hui?" Letter from Fantin to Otto Scholderer, 12
February 1880, (item number 1880-2) Correspondance Fantin-Scholderer, eds.,
Thomas W. Gaehtgens and Anne Tempelaere-Panzani, Centre Allemand d'Histoire
de l'Art, Paris (hereafter subsequent references will appear as sender-recipeint,
date. CAHA-CFS: item number). Although Fantin acknowledges Brahms as
Schumann's successor, the composer is rarely mentioned in the letters. The
consultation of the Fantin-Scholderer correspondence was made possible by
Mathilde Arnoux who kindly permitted me to view the source prior to its
publication date.
3
Fantin-Latour, l'Anniversaire, 1876. Oil on canvas. Musée de Grenoble,
Grenoble. Please note that references to Fantin's lithography in the footnote, text
and figure captions will be accompanied by an inventory number established by
the art historian Germain Hédiard. Hediard published the first catalogue raisonné
of Fantin's lithography in 1906. See Germain Hediard, Les Maîtres de la
Lithographie, Fantin-Latour Catalogue de l'œuvre lithographique du Maitre
précédé d'une étude par Germain Hédiard et d'une notice sur Hédiard par Léonce
Bénédite, (Paris: Librarie de l'Art ancien et moderne, 1906). All reproductions for
this essay with the exception of figures 2 and 3 are drawn from Oeuvre d'Ignace-
Henri-Jean-Théodore Fantin-Latour, vol. 1-6 . DC 310 a. (Paris: Bibliothèque
Nationale - Département des Estampes et Photographie).
4
Adolphe Jullien, Fantin-Latour, sa Vie et ses Amitiés; Lettres inédites et
Souvenirs personnels, avec cinquante-trois Reproductions d'Oeuvres du Maitre,
tirées a part, six Autographes et vingt-deux Illustrations dans le Texte (Paris: L.
Laveur, 1909), 23.
5
Adolphe Jullien published an article on Fantin's musicality which developed into
the chapter for the artist's monograph. "Un Peintre Mélomane: Fantin-Latour et la
musique d'après les lettres inédites," Journal des débats, vol.5 no.5 (1906): 366-80.
6
Letter from Fantin to his parents: 19 September 1864. Lettres écrites à ses
parents et amis par Henri Fantin-Latour de 1859-1900, copies faites par Mme.
Fantin- Latour, R. 8667: cahier 1. Bibliothèque Municpale de Grenoble (hereafter,
subsequent references will appear as sender-recipient, date. BMG: cahier number).
The collection of letters has not been published. My familiarity with the Fantin
letters is indebted to Professor Michèle Barbe whose comprehensive and
methodological analysis of the artist's musical correspondence remains
unsurpassed. I also thank her for encouragement during my research trip to Paris
150 Chapter Five

in 2010. See Michèle Barbe, "Fantin-Latour et la Musique," PhD diss., 3 vols.,

Université de Lille, 1992.
7
I remain a student of the great works of the past at the Louvre, where I regularly
go to study and make copies for research, lessons to prevent the follies of the
imagination, and I am forever a pupil of nature. I still paint still-lifes and find that
everything is there in nature. But the me, that I am discovering every day, now
wants to appear more. Fantin to Edwin Edwards, 21 March 1869. BMG: cahier 2.
Fantin's emphasis.
8
Fantin would continue making sketches "esquisses" at the Louvre but for his
own learning and pleasure; Correggio, Veronese, Titian, Rembrandt and above all,
Delacroix were amongst his most revered artists. Fantin consistently painted still-
lifes despite his ambivalent relationship with this genre: on the one hand, his still–
lifes were highly profitable in the British market but on the other, he recognised
that their limited scope and pedestrian unassuming "subject matter" could never
compete with the grandes machines at the Salon.
9
In its most basic sense, programme music refers to instrumental music that tells a
story, contains a pictorial idea, represents a scene or depicts an object and its
development. In short, programme music is accompanied by an extra-musical
reference. For a critical analysis of the origins, multivalent interpretations, and
misnomers of the term, see Roger Scruton's article in Stanley Sadie ed., The New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, (London: MacMillam Publishers
Limited, 1995), s.v. "Programme Music."
10
Mark Evan Bonds, "Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music at the
Turn of the Nineteenth Century," Journal of the American Musicological Society,
50, no.2/3 (1997), 387-420 (420).
11
Carl Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, trans. Roger Lustig (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1989), 8.
12
James H. Johnson, "Beethoven and the Birth of Romantic Musical Experience in
France," 19th-Century Music 15, no. 1 (1991), 28.
13
Bonds, "Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music," 391.
14
The rise of concert life and the burgeoning market for music freed composers
from the obligation to serve the church, theatre or whims of the aristocracy; hence,
composers were at liberty to write music according to their own ideals and
purposes. See Andy Hamilton, "The Aesthetics of Form, the Aesthetics of
Expression and 'Absolute Music'" in Aesthetics and Music, Continuum Aesthetics
(London: Continuum, 2007), 66-93 [68-89]. Also see Max Paddison, "Music as
Ideal: the Aesthetics of Autonomy," in The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-
Century Music, The Cambridge History of Music ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 318-341.
15
Hamilton, "The Aesthetics of Form," 69.
16
Dahlhaus, Idea of Absolute Music, 4-6.
17
Hamilton, "The Aesthetics of Form," 69.
18
Paddison, "Music as Ideal," 321; Hamilton, "The Aesthetics of Form," 68.
19
Bonds, "Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music," 389.
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 151

20
Katharine Ellis also employs this phrase in Music in Nineteenth Century
France: La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 1834-1880, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995), 42.
21
Everyone acknowledges that music, by its nature is a vague art; but opinions
differ on this dominant characteristic's advantages and disadvantages. On the one
hand, self-confessed partisans of determined, defined ideas and passions, regard it
as a fault and according to them, the composer’s main merit is attenuate it; in
contrast, others see in that same characteristic, the source of power and instead of
asking the composer to combat it, asks that he profit from the limitless resources
that this dominating principal of his art offers him. The principle of the vague in
instrumental music….When listening to this music, the soul is moved; but what is
the nature of its emotion? This is what is impossible to determine and notice that
these emotions, which move the soul, far from being subdued by the vague manner
in which they are produced, are even more vivid as a result. François-Joseph Fétis
"De l’Influence de la musique instrumentale sur les révolutions de la musique
dramatique," La Revue Musicale 10 (11 December 1830), 129- 134; (129, 131).
22
Fétis, "Sur la philosophe et sur la poétique de la musique’ dramatique" La Revue
Musicale, 3 (1828), 409.
23
For example, see Fétis' review of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique in La Revue
Musicale 15 (1 February 1835), 33-35.
24
It is music left to its own devices, without the aid of words to specify what it
expresses; that its language thus, becomes extremely vague, and for that very
reason, appears even more powerful to those who are endowed with the gift of
imagination. Like objects glimpsed in obscurity, its images expand, forms become
more indefinite, more vaporous. Hector Berlioz, "Aperçu sur la musique classique
et la musique romantique," Le Correspondant, 22 Oct. 1830, in H. Robert Cohen
and Yves Gérard, eds., Hector Berlioz: La Critique Musicale, vol. 1. 1831-1834
(Paris: Éditions Buchet/Chaste, 1996), 63-68 [67]. Berlioz's emphasis.
25
Charles Baudelaire, "Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris" in Charles
Baudelaire: Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris suivi de textes sur Richard
Wagner par Nerval, Gautier et Champfleury, introd. by Robert Kopp (Paris, Les
Belles Lettres, 1994), 1-71. Fétis' relentless critiques of the composer udoubtedly
incited Baudelaire's acerbic jab at the beginning of his essay: "Les articles de M.
Fétis ne sont guère qu'une diatribe affligeante; mais l'exaspération du vieux
dilettantiste servait seulement à prouver l'importance des œuvres qu'il vouait à
l'anathème et au ridicule."
26
The public's assault on the reception of Tannhäuser was instigated by Wagner's
gutsy break from convention by moving the second act ballet to the beginning of
the first act. Members of the infamously conservative Jockey Club were outraged
as the custom was to wine, dine and show up fashionably late but in time for the
corps de ballet's entry in the second act.
27
I have often heard it been said that music could never pride itself on translating
anything with precision as words and painting do. This is true to a certain extent
but not entirely. Music translates according to its own manner and through means
that are unique to it …. In music, as in painting and the written word which is
152 Chapter Five

notwithstanding, the most definite of all the arts, there is always a lacuna that is
completed by the imagination of the listener; ibid., 8.
28
Trans ibid., 14.
29
Fantin to Edwards, 27 November 1864. BMG: cahier 2.
30
Fantin's home was a convenient ménage à trois. Both Victoria Dubourg and her
younger sister Charlotte played the piano and dutifully translated German texts by
Goethe, Heine, Schopenhauer and Schiller.
31
"Schuman est, avec Wagner, la musique de l’avenir, c’est beaucoup attaqué. S’il
y a une suite de morceaux pour piano, cela serait bien de tout acheter." Fantin to
parents, 23 August 1864. BMG: cahier 1.
32
Fantin-Latour, Autour de piano. Oil on canvas, 1885. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
33
Jullien, Fantin-Latour, 131.
34
Lisa Norris, "Painting Around the Piano," in The Arts Entwined: Music and
Painting in the Nineteenth Century, Critical and Cultural Musicology (New York:
London: Garland, 2000), eds. Marsha Morton and Peter L. Schmunk, p. 142 , note
41. Norris points out that Lamoureux was such a staunch supporter of Wagner that
he faced regular death threats. He was rumoured to carry a gun for his own
protection!
35
It was Lascoux who generously gave Fantin a ticket to Bayreuth for the
inaugural celebrations in 1876. He attended the festival with Fantin and Jules
Bordier. Lascoux also financially supported La Revue Wagnérienne.
36
Norris, "Painting Around the Piano," 153, note 37. Lascoux continued his
correspondence with Wagner's wife Cosima after the composer's death. The two
exchanged reports on the reception of Wagner's work in their respective countries.
37
Adolphe Jullien, Richard Wagner: Sa Vie et ses Oeuvres; Ouvrage orné de
quatorze Lithographies originales (Paris: J. Rouam, 1886); Hector Berlioz: Sa Vie
et ses Œuvres; Ouvrage orné de quatorze Lithographies originales par M. Fantin-
Latour (Paris: Librairie de L'Art, 1888). Along with Edmond Maître and Otto
Scholderer, Adolphe Jullien belonged to Fantin's most intimate circle of friends.
38
For example, after a performance of selections from Tannhäuser, Lohengrin,
Tristan et Iseult and the Vaisseau Fantôme at the Théatre des Italiens, Fantin
attended a post concert talk at the Andler Keller where Baudelaire and
Champfleury also frequented. Fantin was present at one of three concerts held on
1st, 25th January and 17th February 1860. See Douglas Druick and Michael Hoog,
Fantin-Latour Exhibition Organised by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux and the
National Gallery of Canada in Conjunction with the Fine Arts Museums of San
Francisco (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada National Museums of Canada,
1983), 149.
39
Dahlhaus, Idea of Absolute Music, 19.
40
E. T. A. Hoffmann, "Beethoven's Instrumental Music" (1810) in E. T. A.
Hoffmann's Musical Writings, trans. David Charlton (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press , 1989), 96-102; (97).
41
Ibid., 96.
42
Dahlhaus, Idea of Absolute Music, 22.
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 153

43
Eduard Hanslick, The Beautiful in Music: A Contribution towards the Revision
of the Aesthetics of Music (1854), trans. Geoffrey Payzant (Indianopolis: Hackettt
Publishing, 1986), 28.
44
Dahlhaus, Idea of Absolute Music, 24.
45
Richard Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtugen, ed. Wolfgang Golther
(Berlin and Leipzig,), 2:61, translated in Ibid., 24-25.
46
Ibid., 19
47
Richard Wagner, “Über Franz Liszt’s symphonische Dichtungen,” Neue
Zeitschrift für Musik, 10 April 1857, trans. William Ashton Ellis in Richard
Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. 3 (London: Keegan Paul, 1894), ed. Bryan R. Simms,
246-7. Wagner's emphasis.
48
"I will merely conclude by telling you something about the formal side of the
message of [Liszt’s] symphonic poems. In this regard I was above all struck by the
great and explicit plainness with which the subject proclaimed itself to me.
Naturally this was no longer the subject as described by the poet in words, but that
quite other aspect of it, unreachable by any manner of description, whose
intangible and vaporous quality makes us wonder how it can display itself so
uniquely clear, distinct, compact and unmistakable to our feelings." Ibid., 251.
49
Druick, Fantin-Latour, 302.
50
Fantin actually defied labels and was irritated by his title as "un peintre
wagnérien." In an interview with Arsène Alexandre, he explained that he was
drawn to music which he could interpret in visual terms – be it by Rossini or
Wagner. See Arsène Alexandre, "Fantin-Latour," Le Monde Moderne, (December
1895), 827-838 [828].
51
Fantin to Scholderer: 14, April 1877. CAHA-CFS: 1877-4.
52
Fantin's exceptionally erudite knowledge of music and literature was well noted
by contemporary critics. See Amédée Pigeon, "Souvenirs sur l'Homme et sur
l'œuvre," Les Arts Décoratifs (March 1905): 105-113 [110]. He was not regarded
as a dilettante, in fact correspondence exchanged between Fantin and Jullien reveal
that the monographs were very much collaborative projects to which Fantin not
only contributed some of his most inspired and innovative lithographs but also his
opinions on composers, artists and philosophers. For example, he advises Jullien to
consider George Sand, Delacroix, Balzac, Nerval and Heine as primary sources for
his Berlioz publication. See letter from Fantin to Jullien, 2 September 1887, (1997-
A.466) Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia (Paris), 1997 (hereafter,
references to letters from this unpublished collection will appear as sender-
recipient/date. FC: item number).
53
Berlioz contributed most proilfically to Le Journal des débats (1835-1863) and
La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris (1834-1868). Other major journals with
which he was also affiliated include Le Correspondent and La Revue des Deux-
Mondes. For a comprehensive and critical history of the most important music
periodicals and writers in France, see Katharine Ellis, (1995).
54
Fantin Scholderer, 9 February 1876. CAHA-CFS: 1876-2.
55
The music of Berlioz was an integral part of the Concerts Populaires led by
Jules Pasdeloup (1819-1887) at the Cirque Napoléon and was also showcased at
154 Chapter Five

the Concerts Colonne organised by Eduoard Colonne (1838-1910) at the Théâtre

du Châtelet. Fantin rejoiced in the burgeoning popularity of Berlioz after the
Franco-Prussian war: "Cela se joue en même temps chez Pasdeloup et chez
Colonne. Berlioz dont l’œuvre n’avait jamais été exécutée serait bien étonné de se
voir annoncer partout." See letter to Otto Scholderer: 5 October 1879. CAHA-CFS:
1879-22.
56
Hector Berlioz, "Avant-propos de l'auteur to Roméo et Juliette," ed., D.
Holomanm, Hector Berlioz New Edition of the Complete Works, vol. 18, (Kassel:
Bärenreiter-erlag Karl Votterle GmbH & Co .KG, 1990), 2. The magnitude of the
preface’s importance is noted by Langford who aptly describes it as a "manifesto."
See Jeffrey Langford, "The Symphonies" in P. Bloom, ed., The Cambridge
Companion to Berlioz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 53-68
[61].
57
According to Jullien, Fantin was so overwhelmed by his sensations that he
rushed home to begin his sketch for l'Anniversaire: "l'impression qu'il ressentit aux
Concerts du Châtelet fut si profonde qu'immédiatement il sentit le besoin
d'épancher son admiration débordante. Il avait tout de suite brossé une esquisse,
tracé un dessin, préparé une lithographie dont le sujet était toujours le même, où il
se représentait, lui, le peintre, apportant une couronne au pied d'un monument
devant lequel se tient la Muse de l'histoire en deuil, autour duquel se groupent où
pleurent les héroïnes célébrées par Berlioz." In Adolphe Jullien, Fantin-Latour, 47.
58
Norris, "Around the Piano," 154-155.
59
Edmond Haraucourt, [no title], (1888), in Critiques sur l'oeuvre de Fantin-
Latour (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, Département des Estampes et
Photographie) 2: 250. (Hereafter, references to this source will appear as BN
CRIT YB3-2746- volume number: page. The Critiques consists of three volumes
of press clippings compiled by Madame Fantin-Latour. Titles, authors and page
numbers are occasionally cut off and hence, not all sources of the originals have
been identified.
60
Fantin to Maître, 28 August 1876. BMG: cahier 3.
61
Fantin-Maître, 31 August 1876.BMG: cahier 3.
62
Fantin to Edwards, 24 October 1864. BMG: cahier 2.
63
Germain Hediard, 1890, l'Artiste, n.p. BN CRIT YB3-2746- 2, 265.
64
Germain Hediard, "Les Lithographies de Fantin-Latour" La Revue Mensuelle:
Les Maîtres Artistes, 7, 28 February 1903, 250-254; 252.
65
Frank Rutter, "Round the Galleries", The Standard, c.1900, in, BN CRIT YB3-
2746-3:66.
66
To borrow Berlioz's examples, neither a rock nor a swarm of locusts was worthy
of musical imitation. Hector Berlioz, "De l'Imitation musicale," 2nd part. Revue et
Gazette musicale de Paris, 8 January 1837.
67
Norris, "Autour du Piano," 155-156. Although. Fantin was adopted by the
Symbolists, he never had "un gout pour le mysticisme." See "Nos Artistes: Le
Peintre Fantin-Latour à son Atelier" Éclair, 1892, 14 May, 1892, n,p. According
to Druick, it was highly unlikely that Fantin accepted Joseph Péladan's invitations
to the Rose+Croix. See Druick, Fantin-Latour, 343.
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 155

68
Gustave Geffroy, "Salon de 1887: La Vie Moderne," La Justice, 7 June 1887, 1.
69
For instance, the sonorous bells that tolled during the Dies Irae of the Symphonie
Fantastique (1830) and the entry of the oboe in the third movement were played
by musicians behind the stage.
70
Anonymous, “Van Wisselingh Gallery” The Athenauem, 27 February 1904,
279. Author's emphasis.
71
Théodor de Wyzewa, "Notes sur la peinture wagnérienne et le salon de 1886" La
Revue Wagnerienne, 2 (8 May 1886),100-113 [112].
72
Fantin to Edwin Edwards, 30 December 1871. BMG: cahier 2. Similarly,
another critic by the name of Cesario remarked that " Je ne vois pas bien qu'elles
[lithographies]gagnent à se transformer en pastels et peintures à l'huile. Elles ont
perdu leur indécision fantômique, leur mystère inquiétant, la suggestion musicale. .
. . "; in BN CRIT YB3-2746 - 2: 225.
73
Jullien, Fantin-Latour (1909), 7-8. His high regard for the sketch stems from his
training under Lecoq de Boisbaudran who rigorously encouraged drawing and
painting from memory. What Fantin distilled from his early lessons was that the
attenuation of descriptive and incidental detail released the evocative powers of the
artwork. Fellow students included Legros and Whistler whom he would join to
form the short-lived Société de Trois.
74
Fantin to Edwin Edwards, 30 December 1871. BMG: cahier 2.
75
Buission, J., "Le Salon de 1881" Gazette des Beaux Arts, 24 (1881), 132-141
[137].
76
Berlioz, "Aperçu sur la musique," 63. Berlioz's emphasis.
77
Octave Mirbeau, "Portrait de Maître "(1886), in BN CRIT YB3-2746-2: 229.
Author's emphasis.
78
H. P. Allen, "Some Considerations of the Effect of Orchestral Colour upon
Design and Texture in Musical Composition," Proceedings of the Musical
Association, 35th Sess. (1908 - 1909), 109-121; (116).
79
Leonard G. Ratner, Romantic Music: Sound and Syntax (New York: Schirmer
Books, 1992), 4.
80
Lorsquet, "Fantin–Latour" Quinzaine (1897), in BN CRIT YB3-2746-2:350.
81
After the 1870s, Fantin frequently treated his lithographs as "embryonic works in
oil,” by painting or coloring over them with pastels. See Druick, Fantin-Latour,
220.
82
Ibid., 299.
83
"Au mussée du Luxembourg" 1899, BN CRIT YB3-2746-3:32.
84
Fantin to parents, 17 July 1859. BMG: cahier 1. Author's emphasis.
85
Fantin to Maître, 28 August 1876. BMG: cahier 3. Author's emphasis.
86
During a moment of sublime communion with nature, Fantin once exclaimed,
"la campagne en est tout étonnée d’entendre Beethoven et Schiller. Letter from
Fantin-Scholderer, 3 August 1881, CAHA: 1881-9.
87
Notes Prises par Madame Fantin-Latour du vivant de Henri Fantin-Latour1836-
1860 (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, Département des Estampes et Photographie)
s.d., n.p. The original copy of the Notes (YB3 3203 ) is currently lost. My
156 Chapter Five

references to this source were made possible by Madame Anne Tempelaere-

Panzani who graciously provided a facsimile of the original notes.
88
"Beethoven! Je n'ose pas!" in Alexandre Arsène, "Souvenirs sur Fantin-Latour"
Le Figaro, 31 August 1904, n.p.
89
Barbe, "Fantin-Latour et la Musique," 236.
90
Fantin to Scholderer, 27 November 1884. CAHA-CFS: 1884 - 11.
91
Arsène, "Fantin-Latour," 827-838 [828].
92
Fantin to Edwards, 27 November 1864, BMG: cahier 1.
93
Schmann’s Symphony in B –flat, op. 38; Fantin to Edwards, 27 November 1864.
BMG: Cahier 1. Michèle Barbe identified the piece as the Phantasiestucke. See
Barbe, Fantin-Latour et la Musique, 156.
94
The musicologist H. Imbert recalls Fantin's tears at a performance of Wagner's
La Walkyrie, in H. Imbert, "Fantin-Latour" Le Guide Musical (11 September
1904): 643-646. Also see letter from Fantin to Edwards, 31 October 1864. BMG:
Cahier 1.
95
Fantin to Edwards, 26 December 1864 in Julien, Fantin-Latour, 102. The syntax
in Jullien's edited version of the letter is clearer than the copy at the BMG .
96
The phrase "le vague des passions" was coined by François-René de
Chateaubriand and appeared in Le Géenie du Christianisme (1802), Part II, Book
III, Chapter IX, entitled "Du Vague des Passions." He defines it as "celui qui
précède le développement des passions, lorsque nos facultés, jeunes, actives,
entières, mais renfermées, ne se sont exercées que sur elles-mêmes, sans but et
sans objet. . . . L'imagination est riche, abondante et merveilleuse ; l'existence
pauvre, sèche et désenchantée. On habite, avec un cœur plein, un monde vide; et
sans avoir usé de rien, on est désabusé de tout." [that which precedes the
development of the great passions, when all the faculties, young, lively, and whole,
but closed, have only acted on themselves, without aim and without object. . . . .
The imagination is rich, abundant, and marvellous, the reality is poor, dry, and
disenchanted. With full hearty, one lives in a empty world; and having experienced
nothing, one is disillusioned with everything]. Trans. Nicholas Temperley, ed.,
Symphonie Fantastique, vol. 16, The Hector Berlioz New Edition of the Complete
Works (Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Votterle GmbH & Co .KG, 1972), x.
97
Fantin to Adolphe Jullien, 18 September 1893.FC: 1997-A.478.
98
Fantin to Whistler, 7/14 October 1862 [GUW 1075, GUL F6]. The
Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler, 1855-1903, University of Glasgow
Library.
99
Hanslick, On the Beautiful in Music, 30.
100
Fantin was writing in response to the following passage from Jullien's article:
"Et pourquoi dans le dernier acte de Siegfried, aussi bien que dans Le Crepuscule
des dieux, Wagner a-t-il recours, très rarement par bonheur, à un agrément vocal
aussi banal, aussi inexpressif que le trille, lui qui dans les œuvres de sa pleine
maturité, a sévèrement proscrit ces pures ornements et s'en tient strictement à la
déclamation la plus sévère?... Ces trilles sont absolument dépourvus de sens
musical."Adolphe Jullien "Revue Musicale: l'Anneau de Nibelung à Munich"
Journal des Débats, 16 September 1893, 1.
 Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague 157

101
Fantin to Maître, 28 August 1876. BMG, cahier 3.
102
Fantin to Maître, 28 and 31 August 1876. BMG, cahier 3.
103
Fantin to Scholderer 24 February 1879. CAHA, 1897-6.
104
Fantin to Edwards, 14 September 1896. BMG, cahier 2.
105
Anonymous, "The Art of Fantin-Latour" The Times Literary Supplement, 2
September 1904, 270. Author's emphasis.
106
Fantin to Scholderer, 10 March 1873, CAHA, 1873-3.
107
Fantin to Edwards, 21 March 1869, BMG, Cahier 1.
108
Jacques Barzun, "The Meaning of Meaning in Music: Berlioz once more," The
Musical Quarterly, 66:1, January 1980, 1.
109
The avertissement in this essay is drawn from the 1845 version of the score.
According to an additional note by Berlioz which appeared in issues of the score
printed between 1844 -1846, the distribution of the programme at performances of
the Symphonie Fantastique was "indispensible." After the 1855 Weimar
performance, he stipulated that pamphlets were to be handed out when the work
was performed in conjunction with its sequel, Lélio. However, when performed on
its own: "on peut même à la rigueur se dispenser de distribuer le programme, en
conservent seulement le titre des cinq morceaux; la symphonie (l'auteur l'espère)
pouvant offrir en soi un intérêt musical indépendant de toute intention
dramatique." [The distribution of the Programme may, if absolutely necessary, be
dispensed with, the titles of the movements only being preserved (or so the
composer hopes) enough musical interest in itself quite apart from all dramatic
intention]. Trans. Nicolas Temperley, Symphonie Fantastique, x.
110
Vera Micznik, "Of Ways of Telling, Intertextuality, and Historical Evidence in
Berlioz's "Roméo et Juliette" 19th-Century Music, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Summer, 2000),
21-61 [22].
111
Hector Berlioz, "De l'Imitation musicale," 2nd part. Revue et Gazette musicale
de Paris, 8 January 1837), H. Robert Cohen and Yves Gérard, Berlioz: La
Critique Musicale, vol. 3. 1837-1838 (Paris: Éditions Buchet/Chaste, 1996), 9-14;
(10). Trans. Jacques Barzun in Edward T. Cone, Fantastic Symphony, (New York,
1971), 43.
112
Dahlhaus, Idea of Absolute Music, 18.
113
The autobiographical "jeune musicien" in Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique is
afflicted with "le vague des passions."
114
Jérôme Tharaud, "Visites d'Ateliers: Chez M. Fantin-Latour," Les Débats (12
Juin 1904), 6.
115
André Michel, "Le salon de 1895," Gazette des Beaux Arts (1 June 1895), 473-
496. Author's emphasis.
Fig. I.1: František Kupka, Amorpha: Fugue in Two Colour, oil on canvas, 211 x
220 cm, © Prague, Narodni Galerie. ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2010.
Fig 2.1: Arnold Böcklin, The Island of the Dead [Toteninsel], 1880, oil on wood,
73.7 x 121.9 cm, © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Fig 5.1: Henri Fantin Latour, Scène première du Rheingold (l'Or du Rhin), 1876,
oil on canvas. 116.5 x 79 cm, © Kunsthalle, Hamburger.
Fig 3.5: Mikhail Matyushin, Painterly-Musical Construction, 1917-18, oil on
board, 51 x 63 cm, inv. 155.78, © Greek State Museum of Contemporary Art –
Costakis Collection, Thessaloniki.
Fig. 3.6: Mikhail Matyushin, Colour-Sound Charts, Zakonomernos’ izmeniaemosti
tsvetovykh sochetanii. Spravochnik po tsvetu, (Moscow, Leningrad: Gos. Izd.
Izobrazitelnykh Iskusstv, 1932), 22.

Fig. 6.3: Nave ceiling, Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge, G. F. Bodley, William
Morris, Philip Webb & Frederick Leach, 1866-67. © Jesus College, Cambridge,
used with the kind permission of Jesus College, Cambridge.
Fig. 9.9: Stuart Davis, Swing Landscape, mural for the Williamsburg Housing
Project, Brooklyn, 1938, oil on canvas, 220.3 x 400 cm, Photograph by Michael
Cavanagh and Kevin Montague, Copyright 2009, Indiana University Art Museum,
Bloomington, Indiana, #42.1. © Estate of Stuart Davis/DACS, London/ VAGA,
New York 2010.
 PART III:

SPIRITUAL HARMONY?
MUSIC AND MODERNISM IN BRITAIN
 CHAPTER SIX

SACRED PERFORMANCE:
TWO INSTANCES OF MUSICAL
ARCHITECTURE IN CAMBRIDGE

AYLA LEPINE

“Seeing the city is built to music”

Medievalism and England’s pre-Reformation past provided rich
sources of inspiration for numerous artists, architects and musicians in the
nineteenth century. Michael Alexander’s recent exploration of this
period’s enthusiasm for the Middle Ages focuses on figures such as the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Walter Scott, and Alfred Tennyson.1 The
latter, whose epic poem Idylls of the King set a benchmark for Victorian
medieval visions, wrote of a fantastical Arthurian New Jerusalem in 1872.
Tennyson pictures a Camelot where “They are building still, seeing the
city is built/ To music, therefore never built at all,/ And therefore built
forever.”2 Music’s structured, and elusive, immaterial qualities are
simultaneously invoked in Tennyson’s image of a process wherein
everything and seemingly nothing is constructed. As a medievalist Victorian
vision which yokes materiality and absence it is a useful point of entry for
a discussion of the interaction between music and architecture in a specific
place and time: Cambridge at the height of the Gothic Revival. Two
buildings face each other across a road through the town. Both were built
for sacred purposes, albeit eight centuries apart. They will be considered in
terms of the ways in which Victorian architecture engaged music both
metaphorically and in practice. The first building is All Saints, Jesus Lane,
a church designed and decorated by the architect George Frederick Bodley
in phases between 1860 and approximately 1905.3 The second is the
chapel for Jesus College, originally built as a convent church in the twelfth
century and now the oldest of its type in Cambridge. G. F. Bodley was
also responsible for interior decorative schemes and exterior alterations
from 1862 until around 1870. At both sites, Bodley invited additional
artists to contribute their skills collaboratively. Those involved in the
 Two Instances of Musical Architecture in Cambridge 161

projects included the local artist Frederick Leach as well as Charles Eamer
Kempe, Edward Burne-Jones, Philip Webb, and William Morris.4
Walter Pater’s importance as a critic and a historian cannot be
underestimated in Victorian studies; his assertion that music is “the
condition to which every form of art is perpetually aspiring” often informs
academic discourse regarding the contested and complex overlapping of
art forms and aesthetic language in the nineteenth century.5 It is useful to
pair this aspirational tendency Pater reads in the arts with William James’
belief, outlined in his 1902 Principles of Psychology, that “all things fuse
that can fuse, and nothing separates except what must”.6 Collapsing
boundaries between the arts is suggestive, and it is possible to consider
architecture and visual art sonorically and even synaesthesically. These
two Bodley structures in Cambridge do stand up to such interpretive
purchase. Moreover, the theological dimension of these works has yet to
receive sustained academic attention. Text as image, image as sound, and
architectural space as the setting and substance of ritual activity are all at
stake in an approach to Bodley’s spatial and decorative strategies.
Furthermore, these architectural projects can also be understood through
Richard Leppert’s musicological explorations of instruments, bodies, and
sensory experience. At All Saints and Jesus College chapel, the decorative
deployment of text and pattern embodies an important dialectic initiated
and held in any consecrated space. Christian sites are liminal ground
between the material, temporal world and transcendent sacramentality.
Indeed, as Allan Doig has pointed out, architecture is profoundly powerful
as it shapes “the spaces where heaven and earth meet”.7 Discussion of
these two Cambridge buildings will demonstrate their capacity for radical
fluidity between architectural history, theology, and musicology, the
fusion of which has profound phenomenological consequences.

Aspiration and Abstraction in Architecture and Music

In the 1894 novel Corinne by Madame Anne-Louise de Stael, the
heroine remarks of St Peter’s in Rome, “I often come and walk here to
restore to my soul that serenity which it sometimes loses. The sight of
such a monument is like continual and stationery music, which waits to do
you good when you approach.”8 Corinne experiences St Peter’s as
paradoxically stable and mutable, and de Stael is deliberately ambiguous
regarding the nature of the “good” which is done to those who enter this
holy Catholic site, though it is certainly clear that there is a spiritual,
regenerative power patiently present (with)in the walls. Similarly, Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe recalled finding “a paper of mine among some
others in which I call architecture ‘petrified music’. Really there is
162 Chapter Six

something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches

the effect of music.”9 As for de Stael, there is a fusion between material
spaces and the potent non-space of a musical event, which is also charged
with an implication of permanence or even eternal continuity. Crucially,
Goethe also believes that the “tone of mind” architecture produces
“approaches” that which music can create. Pater, who was certainly
familiar with Goethe’s work and took a great interest in art criticism’s
historiography, may have been drawn to this synthetic yet hierarchical
comparison for his own statement in The Renaissance, which he published
in 1873. The metaphorical relationship between architecture and music
was further cemented, disregarding the possibility of hierarchical
aspiration, by Friedrich von Schelling, a contemporary of Goethe who
claimed that “architecture in general is frozen music”.10 Thinking about
architecture in musical terms was not an uncommon stance in 1860s
British artistic networks. The architect George Edmund Street, in whose
office G. F. Bodley probably first met William Morris, explained that
architecture and music were conjoined because of their shared
mathematical principles:

Architecture is an art depending on numbers and proportions. Some

expression caught up, repeated, balanced, emphasized in succeeding
passages, at intervals which are either regular or regulated, constitutes…
the rhythmical beauty of a work of architecture.11

Notably, Street was echoing a contemporary article in the architectural

periodical The Builder, which contended that music and architecture are
united first through rhythm, defining rhythm as “the recurrence of an
accentuation at marked and equal periods.”12 The Builder’s author claimed
that the only difference between the rhythms of the two arts is that, “what
regular division in time is to music, regular division in space is to
architecture.”13
Repetition and the conjoining in tension of variation and constraint is
common to both music and architecture; moreover, in this vein there is an
important connection between the medievalist Victorian surge of interest
in the Gothic Revival and medieval plainchant. William Dyce, for
example, was employed to paint the vast east wall’s reredos for William
Butterfield’s All Saints Margaret Street, an Ecclesiological Society-
endorsed High Anglican London church completed by 1859. A decade
earlier, Dyce was also deeply invested in publishing plainchant manuals
with music accompanying psalm texts for choral and congregational
singing during church services. This project was part of a small but
important movement within the Church of England to reintroduce musical
settings from before the Reformation in order to enrich the rituals of
 Two Instances of Musical Architecture in Cambridge 163

Anglican worship. Many of the earliest communities to adopt these sung

forms (controversial as they were) also commissioned Gothic Revival
architecture, much of which was also born of and supported by the High
Anglican movement. This aspect of Anglicanism had gained momentum
and a visual, structural lexicon since the inauguration of the Oxford
Movement in 1833 and the Cambridge Camden Society–later to become
the Ecclesiological Society–in 1839.14 The importance of repetition and
the distinction between time and space is common to a number of
Victorian interpretations of architectural music/musical architecture, but
the introduction of text inscription as gothic architectural embellishment in
both of Bodley’s Cambridge projects problematises these distinctions in a
series of interesting ways.
If one reads an architectural inscription stretching across the
circumference of an interior or an exterior, or marking the presence of a
doorway, and if that inscription invites or refers to musical understanding
as well as spatial divisions, an architectural structure’s rhythm operates
simultaneously in space and time. The addition of rituals taking place in
space and time that call on the timeless eternal reality of God and assert
God’s presence in those ritual sites solidifies the paramount importance of
decorative inscription in these Victorian sacred spaces. Doig’s assertion
that “every act of worship must have a setting” is an important element in
understanding the significance of the decorative programme for these
sites.15 Doig continues,

There isn’t a simple formula or necessarily a direct correspondence

between given aspects of the register of the liturgical language and
specific elements of its surroundings, which are almost always
architectural…Rites have histories, and each time we reflect on the grand
narrative of salvation [that reflection] forms another layer of our
understanding. It is part of the spiritual pilgrimage of the people of God.16

Interior decoration at All Saints, Jesus Lane and the chapel at Jesus
College invites the viewer to embark on a range of ritual journeys of the
kind that Doig refers to as “spiritual pilgrimage”. A journey within sacred
space is one that exists both in a given moment and in a ritual moment
which cuts across times and places. Three inscriptions, two of which are
biblical (the other is the text of a sixth-century processional hymn) assert
and frame this simultaneously abstract and phenomenological movement.
In 1881, G. F. Bodley spoke at the annual Church Congress alongside
the art historian and collector Thomas Gambier Parry and the musician
William Monk. Parry spoke about gothic wall painting in new churches,
Monk about liturgical music, and Bodley about “The Modes in Which
Religious Life and Thought May be Influenced by Art”.17 “Architecture,”
164 Chapter Six

Bodley explained, “is in some respect like music, the expression of

abstract ideas. It is eminently expressive and symbolic, and fitted for the
use of Religion. Christian architecture shows one long effort to reach after
the idea; to aspire.”18 Bodley unites architecture and music very differently
from Street, in that Bodley sees the two arts as similarly abstract, dynamic
and intentional. Bodley’s emphasis on aspiration is perhaps related to
Pater’s, but in Bodley’s hierarchy, the ultimate goal is not for each art to
attain the condition of music, but to attain godliness. Pater’s “art for art’s
sake” was integrated and reformed in Bodley’s Christian language into art
for God’s sake. The implication is that religion forms and is formed by
music and architecture, and that both arts are united in a common
aspirational goal, drawing on symbolic and traditional or historicist
language in a perpetual struggle to achieve a beauty which reflects God’s
glory. Bodley, who was also a musician, believed that there was a
profoundly important connection between music and architecture
throughout his career.19 In 1892 he wrote with an increasingly clear view
on the variation and fluidity shared between the two arts. Bodley believed
that architecture, “like music, expresses abstract ideas, such as power,
simplicity, grandeur and beauty. For neither music nor architecture sets
forth facts, they express ideas.”20 Bodley’s view constitutes a shift, also
acknowledged by the historian Michael Bright, from an understanding of
music and gothic architecture as structurally analogous towards a
holistically and abstractedly ideological comparison in which both arts
mutually aspire towards the expression of certain qualities, asserting an
intention towards transformation, if not transfiguration. Vision and
memory also united music and architecture in dream-like abstraction, such
as in William Morris’ 1888 narrative, A Dream of John Ball. Morris wrote,

As the men sang, a picture of the wild woods passed by me, as they were
indeed no park-like dainty lawns, but a rough and tangled thicket…Then
through the open window came the sound of another song…a piece of the
plain-song of the Church, familiar enough to me to bring back to my mind
the great arches of some cathedral…21

Morris infamously struggled throughout his prolific and multivalent career

to appreciate music. However, one important exception was his interest in
medieval sacred chant and polyphony; when undergraduates at Oxford in
the 1850s, Morris and Edward Burne-Jones were early members of the
University’s plainchant society, who met in the Holywell Music Rooms.22
Both artists became friends with G. F. Bodley shortly after they graduated,
and each shared in a dynamic social network with a particular enthusiasm
for the Middle Ages in fourteenth and fifteenth-century England.
 Two Instances of Musical Architecture in Cambridge 165

Imaging an active text: All Saints, Jesus Lane

Jesus College granted the necessary land to establish All Saints church,
“on condition that the college approved the parish’s choice of architect”.23
George Gilbert Scott was invited to submit a design in March 1853. Plans
were shelved through the 1850s due to a lack of funds. While the parish
held off on commissioning any new building work, G. F. Bodley began to
make a name for himself as an innovative Gothic Revival architect. In
1858 he restored the chapel at Queens’ College, Cambridge. A close circle
of multiply-connected academics and clergy in Cambridge were very
supportive of the young architect. First among them was the Revd. John
Gibson, a fellow at Jesus College from 1842-57 and subsequently rector of
King’s Stanley in Gloucestershire. Bodley’s earliest churches were in
Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. All Saints, Selsley, which Bodley
designed from 1857, was in Gibson’s parish.24 Dr. George Corrie, Master
of Jesus College and William Whewell, Master of Trinity College and a
prominent architectural historian, were also among this important and
influential High Anglican network.25 There were family connections too:
Bodley’s nephew Henry Bodley Bromby was an undergraduate at Jesus
College from 1860-63.26
The parish had difficulty raising the £5000 required for Bodley’s
original design so they requested that he supply a second, cheaper design,
to cost no more than £3600.27 Bodley produced a remarkably different
second plan. Duncan Robinson and Stephen Wildman point out not only
the design’s deviations from the first proposal, but also its value as
evidence of Bodley’s breakthrough from medievalist continental
eclecticism into a gothic design which is,

quintessentially English. Without mimesis, but in idiom…The wide nave

has been kept, linked now to a narrower aisle with a separate pitched roof,
and joined within by a noble arcade; the northern exterior wall is taller,
with a large area of smooth wall articulated by more spacious windows,
set high, and by simple buttresses…Bodley’s inclination to emphasize the
verticals in his design led him to place the tower and spire ingeniously at
the head of the nave, forming a crossing within the chancel, which is then
carried on, at nave height, to end with a glorious five-light window.28

This assessment of the design concludes with an assertion that Bodley’s

second design demonstrated his ability “to learn from past styles and to
build from their principles, rather than to plunder them for individual
features and precedents.”29 The height which Bodley was so concerned to
convey in his initial design was maintained and emphasised in the second
166 Chapter Six

proposal. Pevsner notes that, “The interior [is] also tall, of an earnest spirit,
not at all showy or fanciful.”30
The Ecclesiologist reviewed it much as they had his first All Saints
design. The article appeared in April 1863, and was effusively positive. In
addition to the much-quoted statement that the Ecclesiologists were
pleased that, “Mr. Bodley has restricted himself to pure English forms,”
the article discusses the design’s merits at length, noting that,

The architectural style is a severe, but graceful, Early Pointed…The plan

as at present proposed will consist of a well-proportioned nave, separated
by an arcade of five from an equally broad south aisle; a chancel, which
will form the lowest stage of an engaged tower, opening by a broad arch
into a south aisle of equal breadth; a sanctuary, corresponding to which on
the south side is a spacious vestry…A considerable space at the extreme
west end of the nave and its aisle is left free, with an exceedingly good
effect…There is a solid unpierced parapet and an octagonal broach spire,
with three lights on each cardinal face, rises from within. The west
elevation is excellent…Altogether we can commend the design very
highly.31

The design was approved by the parish in December 1862. The building
tender was granted to William Bell and Sons for £4,326 and work began in
March 1863.32 The materials were originally to be brick faced with
Casterton and Ashlar stone. Clunch – local to Cambridge – and Ketton
stone were also used.33 Humphrey notes that Bodley probably drew
inspiration for the tower and spire from fourteenth-century structures at
Ashbourne and Derbyshire, additionally speculating – I believe correctly –
that Bodley’s decision to crenellate the tower was based on the sixteenth-
century crenellation at nearby Jesus College, where Bodley had been
consulted regarding the integrity of its structure in 1862.34 This latter work
forms the second section of this chapter’s discussion of the new purchase
which can be gained for Bodley’s architectural spaces and text inscriptions
by seeing them afresh. They are musically and theologically suggestive,
and there is much in common between the All Saints and Jesus College
work in this regard.
Painted inscriptions throughout the interior decorative fields at All
Saints are part of an extensive programme of ornament, which covers
nearly all the church’s walls. The size and deployment of the painted
spaces are generally dictated by the building’s structure, embellishing its
points of transition and effectively incorporating areas of light and shadow
created by the design’s spatial compartmentalisations. Text is usually
found at the boundaries of the painted designs or of the structure itself
(Fig. 6.1). The beatitudes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel
 Two Instances of Musical Architecture in Cambridge 167

according to Matthew encircle the nave.35 Beginning “Blessed are the poor
in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” the English text
circumambulates the space, beginning in the northwest corner. Frieze-like,
it marks the conjoining of the exposed beamed ceiling with the ashlar
walls. In Matthew’s text, Jesus speaks to a seated crowd, who are still to
listen to his guidance. The inscription’s limited palette is important
because of its double reference to red and black wall text in late medieval
English churches, and to medieval and Victorian medievalist revival
missals, where worshippers would find text to be recited or sung in black,
and the ritual instructions in red.36 In other words, the black text is spoken
and the red was reserved for explication and embellishment. In the
Victorian revival of medieval liturgical traditions, the procession of the
Gospel into the nave would be accompanied by short sung passages, and
the Gospel itself was, in some parishes, sung by the minister. Bodley’s
design, probably painted by Frederick Leach in the late 1860s or early
1870s, deployed text as image in the midst of a controversial historicist
Anglican movement where the medieval rituals and aesthetics of the
Church were being avidly researched and promoted. The text, like the
patterns, marks the space as ritualist territory just as potently as it fills the
space with the word of God. Additionally, when the church was not in
formal liturgical use–when it was unseen, uninhabited and silent–its walls
resonated with the presence of scripture. This recalled not only the
worshipper’s perpetual access to God’s kingdom, but the historiography of
medieval aesthetics, and the nationalistic framework of the King James
translation of the Bible as a statement of corporate faith. It also alluded to
the reverential and memorial process of singing sections of the Gospels in
anticipation of the Eucharist, binding text together with ontological
transformation. The events of the Incarnation, like the Sermon on the
Mount, contain the promise of inevitable culmination with the cross and
resurrection, instigating the pattern of sacramental worship reinvigorated
by the Victorian interpretation of High Anglican historicism.
The other major text source for the All Saints inscriptions comes from
the Book of Revelations. Exiled on Patmos, St John the Divine recorded
his eschatological vision in overwhelmingly vivid language. Much of the
familiar iconography of angels with instruments originates in John’s
descriptions of a heavenly world, and the apocalyptic activity he describes
is awash in music. In chapter three a promise is made that the saints,
whose whiteness is a metaphor for their righteousness and holiness, will be
granted intimacy with God (Fig. 6.2). Bodley took up this passage for the
interior decoration of All Saints, and “They shall walk with me in white”
is written in black on a white background.37 The scroll-like text surface is
suspended in an ornamental field of red tones punctuated by the I.H.S.
168 Chapter Six

monogram, which in this case probably stands for “Iesus Hominum

Salvator”, in English “Jesus, saviour of men”. The inscription is positioned
above a small door at the eastern end of the church’s south aisle. The door
opens into the sacristy, a space where the Eucharistic vessels and such as
the chalice and paten are kept, and where celebrant clergy and servers put
on and remove liturgical vestments. The inscription connects the
eschatological sonority of the music of God’s worshippers in John’s vision
with the everyday practice of the body’s transformation through ritual
clothing, the first layer of which (the alb) is always white in reference to
the aspirations of purity and godliness in the model of sainthood. The
aspiration to express God’s reality–which Bodley suggested was the ideal
of both music and architecture–is evident in the inscription from
Revelations: its aesthetic deployment across the surface, situation above
the sacristy door, relation to the surrounding text and ornamental patterns,
and connection to liturgical events signify, like the beatitudes passage
encircling the nave, a perpetual promise of God’s redemption opening
onto the New Jerusalem’s fulfillment.
Both the Matthew and Revelations texts point to bodily renewal and
the hopeful expectation of transformation through devotion to God. They
mark out the limits of material experience while indicating what sacred
space claims to contain: in a sacramental theological view, no less than the
presence of God, active and moving in the fecund bodies present in the
building, whose forms and emblematic texts echo and affirm the need to
reach into and through the senses in order to reach beyond them. The
musicologist Richard Leppert’s concern with the sensing body is an
essential part of my investigative process that examines the power of
architecture and its interior spaces. This repositioning of Leppert’s
argument in relation to architecture casts a unique light on ways of
interpreting Gothic Revival buildings like this one afresh. Spaces are
shaped by and shape sacred encounter, setting parameters for sensory
stimulation, whether they are coloured walls or the boundaries of skin
populated with nerve endings:

The body is a sight, in essence a sight of sights. It is also a site, a physical

presence that is biologically empowered to see at the same time it is being
seen. The body is a terrain, a land, as it were both familiar and
foreign…Sound constitutes the atmosphere supporting and confirming life
on and in the terrain of the body…the body is sighted and hears; the body
sees and makes audible.38

The body receives and responds. In Bodley’s All Saints, Jesus Lane, the
body of the building, penetrated by the ritual movement of the living
bodies it contains, simultaneously receives and responds, its ornamental
 Two Instances of Musical Architecture in Cambridge 169

inscription – conforming to and confirming the architectural delineation of

space – indicating an Augustine-esque city of God, built to music.
Leppert’s assertion of the body’s circulatory sensory exchange tallies with
another imaging of sacred art and ritual behaviour in the pattern of call and
response. In the Eucharistic Prayer, the priest who celebrates the Mass will
instruct a congregation to “lift up your hearts”. The congregation responds
“we lift them to the Lord”. This brief ritual dialogue between the
representative of Chirst to his people in the Eucharist and the congregation
as the Church and Body of Christ present to receive the consecrated
elements and fully enter into the mystery of the Incarnation is at the crux
of what all Christian sacred spaces attempt to do: to invite and affirm
God’s presence. Sacred art ensures that like priest and congregation, the
artist and the viewer are mutually caught up in an aspiring, vertical
movement, where height is gained by plumbing a depth of religious
history and theological meanings. This connects firmly with Bodley’s
buildings and his writings about architecture and music’s mutual
ideological power to ascend and their united goal to aspire. Additionally,
for Victorian Ecclesiologists such as John Mason Neale and Arthur
Beresford-Hope, and many of their artistic and theological circle including
G. F. Bodley, “truth must have a moral as well as an aesthetic meaning”
wherein sacramentality combined “aesthetics and theology in one”.39

Procession and legibility: Jesus College Chapel

The location of spiritual meaning within an object and its power to
facilitate sacred and creative experience is cogently expressed in the
medieval world’s devotion to relics. Saint Radegund, a Frankish princess,
founded a convent dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Poitiers in the early
sixth century. In 569 she petitioned the Emperor Justinian for a fragment
of the True Cross to be sent to the nunnery so that it might enrich the lives
of those in the community and that the site could become a destination for
pilgrims. The Emperor responded positively; Radegund’s local bishop,
confessor, poet and eventually her first biographer, Venantius Fortunatus,
wrote “Vexilla Regis Prodeunt” to mark the event. The hymn was
composed specially to be sung during the translation of the relic from its
journey across Europe eventually to cross the threshold into the convent’s
holy consecrated space.40 The convent was rededicated to the Holy Cross
and became an important pilgrimage site, as Radegund had anticipated.
Fortunatus’ hymn was adopted throughout the Western church and is still
sung on Good Friday by many Christians as a sign of hope and trust that
the isolation and suffering of the crucifixion is transformed by God into
the resurrection and redemption of all people. The most influential
170 Chapter Six

translation of this hymn into English took place in the midst of the
Victorian Gothic Revival and its accompanying High Anglican movement.
John Mason Neale was an important Anglican theologian and
clergyman who had been a founding member of the Ecclesiological
Society, an avid translator of early and medieval Christian texts, and a
supporter of the establishment of an Anglican convent at East Grinstead.
He poetically translated numerous hymns from Latin into English for use
in Anglican congregations, “Vexilla Regis Prodeunt” among them. This
was translated as “The Royal Banners Forward Go” in 1851. This text was
then taken up by G. F. Bodley as a part of a decorative scheme covering a
wood-paneled ceiling above the nave in the chapel at Jesus College.
Restoration work began in 1864, and an interior painted scheme
accompanied this structural bolstering. The painted ceiling was designed
collaboratively by G. F. Bodley, William Morris and Philip Webb, and
was completed by 1867. It incorporates a number of iconographic
emblems related to the college’s foundation and the building’s history
prior to its collegiate use, ones moreover that exemplify Bodley’s
sensitivity to the site in his choice of the Vexilla Regis text. In 1191 a
group of nuns established a convent on the site and dedicated it to Saint
Radegund. By the late fifteenth century, however, few nuns remained and
the Bishop of Ely, John Alcock, petitioned the King to grant him the land
and its buildings to form an additional college for Cambridge University.
The king agreed and in 1496 the college was dedicated to Saint John the
Evangelist, the Virgin Mary, the name of Jesus, and Saint Radegund. John
Alcock’s rebus–a cockerel on an orb–is dispersed across a grid which also
contains images of the college crest and the I.H.S. monogram. Pairs of
angels and fruiting trees surround the central panels; the angels hold a
white banner upon which in black text is written a series of excerpts from
the Latin text of “Vexilla Regis Prodeunt” (Fig. 6.3).
The interspersed trees and angels are central to the interpretation of the
Vexilla Regis hymn, the Latin text of which wends its way in black gothic
lettering on a white scroll held by each angel and threaded through the
branches and around the trunks and boughs of the trees. This scroll is the
only aspect of the roof’s decorative scheme that negates the borders set in
place by the wooden ribs. The foliage that surrounds symbols within the
ceiling’s small interior squares neatly conforms to its imposed boundaries.
The leaves of the trees, too, are confined within their borders, and in both
cases the confinement of the foliage is not strained or anxious, but is an
image of visual repose. Vegetation does not press against boundaries –
there is sufficient space for the fullness of mature growth in all cases of
organic imagery employed across the ceiling’s surface. The same is true of
the figures of the golden-winged angels, who, each with slight differences
 Two Instances of Musical Architecture in Cambridge 171

but consistent in their position, clothing and expressions, proportionately

fill their frames without a threatening resistance. Proliferation and excess
are refused in favour of restrained discipline and measured, steady rhythm
instilled by the consistent alternation of colour and figure. The most
significant diversity then is also to be found in the banner of text. The trees
and angels are, as representations of vital beings, not entirely static figures,
but they are rooted and steady; it is the scroll itself that embodies
movement and indeed in the progression of text is a visual procession
which encourages the reader to circumambulate the ceiling. Morris was
very clear that for the tower ceiling, and indeed for the nave, “IHS” should
be painted so as to be legible by one facing east.41 The figures and text are
directed towards the sanctuary and the altar and therefore guide the viewer
to be situated likewise.
The following table compares the Latin original hymn with John
Mason Neale’s translation. The verses Bodley and Morris chose to use for
the Jesus College inscription are firstly a consequence of legibility: it was
essential that the text could be read easily by someone standing in the
space beneath it. More importantly, these select excerpts were chosen
because of their combinative theological meaning. The first verse
establishes the cross as a site of sacrifice; the fourth depicts it as a tree: the
site of hope, rest, and new life; the final verse situates the cross as the site
of God’s Trinitarian power.

Vexilla Regis Prodeunt The Royal Banners Forward Go

(Venantius Fortunatus, 569) (Transl. John Mason Neale, 1851)
1. Vexilla regis prodeunt Fulget 1. The royal banners forward go;
crucis mysterium Quo carne The cross shines forth in mystic
carnis conditor Suspensus est glow
patibulo. Where He in flesh, our flesh who
made,
Our sentence bore, our ransom
paid;

4. O Tree of beauty, Tree of light,

4. Arbor decora et O Tree with royal purple dight;
fulgida Ornata Regis Elect, on whose triumphal breast
purpura Electa digno Those holy limbs should find their
stipite Tam sancta membra rest;
tangere.
7. To Thee, eternal Three in One,
Let homage meet by all be done
7. Te summa Deus Trinitas Collaudet Whom by the cross Thou dost
omnis spiritus: Quos per crucis restore,
mysterium Salvas, rege per saecula. Amen. Preserve, and govern evermore.
172 Chapter Six

The three verses which process across the ceiling describe the inspiring
link between the crucifixion and the procession, followed by a description
and exploration of the meaning of the Cross as tree, and concluding with
an invocation to praise the condition of humanity and of God’s kingship
accomplished through Jesus’ death. The dead wood of the cross functions
through Christ’s transformation as the living tree and the sign of God’s
triumph. The fruiting trees – death transformed into life – and the contents
of the scroll express the same narrative in different forms. Additionally,
Bodley’s structural restoration and Morris’ decorative programme should
be interpreted as mutually accomplishing the same goal, answering one
another through the building. The eastward three panels of the ceiling, two
heavenly angels and finally an earth-rooted fruit tree, send us out of the
nave towards the crossing, through the choir into the sanctuary and the
transformative sacrificial power of the activity which occurs on the altar.
On the nave ceiling the text’s transgressive eschewing of linear boundaries
articulates its signification of procession, at once timeless and unfolding
through time as the viewer/singer/listener perambulates, eyes heavenward,
around the chapel’s nave. These three panels do not conclude the text of
Fortunatus’ hymn. Rather, they begin the hymn again: the final word in the
ceiling scheme is “mysterium”, fluttering against the branches of the tree
(Fig. 6.4). This is not a teleological coda, however. It is an indication of
the eternal repetition and proclamation of the theological convictions set
out in the hymn, which point to an eschatological reality of union with
God. If we read the fruit trees as the redeemed cross and resurrected body
(the body that receives and gives, in Leppert’s understanding) the
Incarnation and its promise of salvation is sonorously and visually
established in this all-important final eastward-facing panel. The liturgical
power of sung procession and ritual movement, embodying journeying,
transition and pilgrimage, is established and resonantly proclaimed on the
surfaces of the nave ceiling at Jesus College.
The “Vexilla Regis Prodeunt” inscription is in Latin rather than
English for several reasons. First, Latin text in sacred buildings from the
1850s indicated an especially Catholic stance on ritualism in the High
Anglican liturgical revival. Secondly, Neale, Bodley and Morris would all
have been familiar with the Latin text and took Latin over English as a
preference in their artistic work when they were allowed to do so on the
grounds that it was more explicitly medieval, especially in a collegiate
setting. Thirdly, as the Jesus College historian and Fellow, Frederick
Brittain explains, cathedrals and Oxbridge chapels,

were the only places were Latin was used in the Anglican rite. The clergy
who used it were, consequently, in that sense a small religious minority…
 Two Instances of Musical Architecture in Cambridge 173

the clergy who used it, or who supervised its use by choirs, were drawn
almost entirely from the old universities.42

Jesus College was a leading institution associated with High Anglicanism.

The college was one of the first in Cambridge to reintroduce medieval
plainchant at services and a chapel choir:

During 1847, while work continued in the remainder of the building

[under A. W. N. Pugin’s supervision], part of the nave was re-opened for
services…At first comprising only eight boys ‘dressed in very quaint
looking surplices [with] large silver buckles on their shoes,’ the new choir
had been formed by [John Sutton] who trained the boys and played the
organ himself. The psalms and canticles were sung antiphonally…43

These controversial revivals of the late 1840s were championed by John

Mason Neale, whose work at promoting choral music in Anglican
churches and translating Latin hymns eventually resulted in the publication
and widespread popularity of Hymns Ancient and Modern. Neale’s
translations of Durandus’ medieval architectural symbolism demonstrate
the extent to which a Christian building’s elements could be interpreted as
didactic instruments, indicating the presence of God invested in the
materials of the structure and in the people who inhabited it:

The four side walls, the four cardinal virtues, justice, fortitude,
temperance, prudence…The windows are hospitality with cheerfulness,
and tenderness with charity…The piers of the church are bishops and
doctors…The bases of the columns are the apostolic bishops, and the
capitals of the piers are the opinions of the bishops and doctors…The
ornaments of the capitals are the words of Sacred Scripture, to the
meditation and observance of which we are bound.44

The first recorded collaboration between G. F. Bodley and J. M. Neale

was in 1855, when Bodley renovated the small eighteenth-century chapel
for the Society of St Margaret at East Grinstead, a convent community
founded by Neale.45 They probably met far earlier than this, however, as
Bodley was a committed Ecclesiologist from the late 1840s, when he
trained as an architect under George Gilbert Scott.46 Neale stated in 1843,

A Church is not as it should be, till every window is filled with stained
glass, till every inch of floor is covered with encaustic tiles, till there is a
Roodscreen glowing with the brightest tints and with gold, nay, if we
would arrive at perfection, the roof and walls must be painted and
frescoed. For it may be safely asserted that ancient Churches in general
were so adorned.47
174 Chapter Six

Bodley echoed this approach in his projects and persuasive correspondence

with patrons, including the Master of Jesus College, when he attempted to
persuade the college’s master, E. H. Morgan, that the entire interior of the
chapel should be decorated. Bodley and Neale were a part of a larger
movement and probably met regularly. Neale’s untimely death in 1866
would certainly have had an impact on Bodley. Bodley and Morris’
decision to include the text of one of Neale’s best loved Early Church
hymns, “Vexilla Regis Prodeunt”, could provide an apt memorial to him in
a chapel which had begun its life as a convent dedicated to St Radegund,
for whom the hymn was originally composed. The text’s meaning is also a
fitting memorial, proclaiming the transformation from death into life and
the all-pervading power of the Resurrection. Held aloft by angels and
intertwined through bright leaves, brushing against ripe fruit, the space
occupied by this banner is no earthly space. Rather, the imagery when
taken together becomes an evocation of the Beatific Vision in which
Bodley and his associates passionately believed, and about which Neale
convincingly preached to the East Grinstead nuns.48

Fusion: Looking and Listening

There is a synaesthetic component to the nature of the musical-
architectural forms at stake both at All Saints and in the chapel at Jesus
College. All three architectural inscriptions explored above are instances
of corporate music-making: the All Saints inscription of the beatitudes
preached to a crowd in Matthew’s Gospel indicate the aspiration towards
holier activity and are confirmed in the procession, often accompanied by
medievalist chant and sung responses involving the whole congregation in
a call and response ritual reflective of the spiritual depths of art’s potential.
The Revelation text points to each individual’s capacity in Christian
practice to gain a worshipful position alongside the triumphant Christ at
the sonorous transformation from our world’s constraining time and space
to God’s realm. The “Vexilla Regis Prodeunt” hymn winding its way
across the Jesus College nave ceiling declares the power and paradox of
redemption through God’s suffering and sacrifice. In each case, the
inscriptions’ place in these sacred spaces is explicable and potent through
the dedication of the building (All Saints and Radegund, for example) and
their painted historicist aesthetics are the product of numerous factors and
inheritances combined to distinctly Victorian effect. These words mobilise
and enliven the spaces upon which they have been placed, transforming
the architectural sites into echoing chambers which signify, direct and
affirm the utterances stirred from within the echoing chamber of each
participant body moving, living and worshipping in the space, present
 Two Instances of Musical Architecture in Cambridge 175

momentarily and caught up in what Bodley, his patrons, and many of his
circle of artists understood as the true yet unfathomable presence of God.
It seems apt in the midst of returning to the theme of the sonorous,
responsive, sensing body also to return to Richard Leppert and his interest
in the correspondence between instruments’ aesthetics and purpose. He
explains that,

Between the instrument’s front and back is the airspace of the resonating
chamber. It is from this chamber that sound (and sonoric meaning) issue
and from which sound (which means differently by its disappearance)
disappears. This air-space is the symbolic locus, in other words, of that for
which men strive. The visual assertions inscribed on the instrument…
render more permanent the socio-cultural meaning of music once its
sounds cease: seeing, in other words, takes over when there is nothing left
to hear.49

Leppert’s view can be shifted and unsettled in order to take the sites
(sights) of All Saints and Jesus College chapel into account. Seeing, in
these architectural spaces, is simultaneously hearing, or at least the
promise of the music to be heard, and which is eternally being produced,
enhanced, expressed, contained and released. If, in Bodley’s view, music
and architecture share in a struggle to convey that which is beyond the
bounds of human creativity but can only glimpse, seek and strive to
express God’s reality, then the origin of the arts is clearly located within
the body of the broken and resurrected God himself. They are human tools
to articulate through beauty that which cannot be adequately described or
explained. At All Saints and Jesus College, the imaging of sonorous text
enacts and enshrines the promise of sensory fusion–such as the insistently
bonded unity postulated by William James-and experiential wholeness,
which Christians frame with an eschatological anticipation.
Bodley and numerous fellow Gothic Revival architects, artists, and
historians who promoted an Anglican return to sacramental and pre-
Reformation ritual activity, were seeking to give material form to
theological ideas. There is however a melancholy in the ambition Bodley
articulated in 1881 and again in 1892, that both architecture and music
“show one long effort to reach after the idea; to aspire”.50 Aspiration and
its associated drives restlessly await completion and fulfillment, even if
that impatient vibration is for no less than the New Jerusalem of the
Parousia. The theological underpinning of Bodley’s architectural
envisioning of sacred meanings necessarily incorporated acknowledgement
that all architecture and music which responds and points to the sacred
cannot dissolve the boundaries of its material limitations. Sacramental
conjoining–the meaning of communion–bears the promise of transcendence,
176 Chapter Six

but can only fragmentarily and inadequately grasp the possibility of fully
transformative ascension.

Fig. 6.1: Detail of painted inscription (‘Blessed are the poor in spirit…’), north
aisle, All Saints Church, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, G. F. Bodley (with Frederick
Leach?), c.1870. Image: author.
 Two Instances of Musical Architecture in Cambridge 177

Fig. 6.2: Detail showing painted inscription (‘They shall walk with me in white’),
north east sacristy entrance, All Saints Church, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, G. F.
Bodley (with Frederick Leach?), c.1870. Image: author.
178 Chapter Six

Fig. 6.4: Detail of nave ceiling (repetition of ‘Vexilla Regis Prodeunt…’), Jesus
College Chapel, Cambridge, G. F. Bodley, William Morris, Philip Webb &
Frederick Leach, 1866-67. Image: author, used with the kind permission of Jesus
College, Cambridge.

Notes
1
See Michael Alexander, Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern England.
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007).
2
Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King: Gareth and Lynette, (London: Strahan and
Co., 1872), 22.
3
George Frederick Bodley (1827-1907) was the first pupil of George Gilbert Scott
and practiced as an architect throughout Britain and internationally from the 1850s
until his death. He is widely regarded as a key instigator of the so-called “second-
generation” of the Gothic Revival which looked to later medieval architectural
inspiration and forged connections with the emergent Queen Anne and Arts and
Crafts movements. See Michael Hall, “Bodley, George Frederick (1827–1907),”
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn., Oxford University Press,
Sept 2004.
4
See Duncan Robinson and Stephen Wildman, Morris and Company in Cambridge,
Exh. Cat, (Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, 1980). Bodley gave Morris and
 Two Instances of Musical Architecture in Cambridge 179

Company some of their earliest commissions from the early 1860s, notably St
Martin’s, Scarborough (1860) and All Saints, Selsley (1862).
5
Walter Pater, The Renaissance, 1893 edn., (London: University of California
Press, 1980), 117.
6
William James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1, (London: Macmillan,
1902), 112.
7
Allan Doig, Liturgy and Architecture from the Early Church to the Middle Ages,
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 30.
8
Anne-Louise de Stael, Corrine, (London: J. M. Dent, 1894), 106.
9
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Conversations of Goethe with Eckermnann and
Soret (London, 1882), quoted in Michael Bright, Cities Built to Music: Aesthetic
Theories of the Victorian Revival, (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1984), 82.
10
My italics. Friedrich von Schelling, Philosophy of Art, quoted in Bright, Cities
Built to Music, 1984, 82.
11
Arthur Edmund Street, Memoir of George Edmund Street, RA 1824-1881, [1888]
(New York: Benjamin Blom, 1972 reprint.), 345.
12
Anon., “Architecture and Music,” The Builder, 29, Jan-July 1871, 197.
13
Ibid.
14
For an excellent overview of Anglo-Catholicism, see Geoffrey Rowell, The
Vision Glorious: Themes and Personalities of the Catholic Revival in Anglicanism,
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1991). On the plainchant revival in particular: Bernarr
Rainbow, The Choral Revival in the Anglican Church, 1839-1872, (London: Barrie
and Jenks, 1970). On the Ecclesiological Society: J. F. White, The Cambridge
Movement, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
15
Allan Doig, Liturgy and Architecture, xxi.
16
Ibid., xxi.
17
G. F. Bodley, “The Modes in Which Religious Life and Thought May be
Influenced by Art,” paper read at the Church Congress, 1881. Bodleian Library,
Vol. XVIII: Pamphlets on Ecclesiastical Art and Custom.
18
Ibid., 2.
19
E. P. Warren, “The Life and Work of George Frederick Bodley,”RIBA Journal,
3rd series, (17) 1910, 307.
20
G. F. Bodley, “Architectural Study and the Examination Test,” in R. N. Shaw
and T. G. Jackson, eds., Architecture: A Profession or an Art. Thirteen short
essays on the qualifications and training of architects, (London: John Murray,
1892), 57.
21
William Morris, A Dream of John Ball, (London: Reeves and Turner 1888), 14.
22
Suzanne Fagence, “Representations of Music in the Work of D. G. Rossetti and
E. Burne-Jones,” MA Thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, 1996, 6.
23
Stephen C. Humphrey, The Victorian Rebuilding of All Saints’ Church,
Cambridge, or, The Salt of Noble Sentiment in Jesus Lane, (London: Ecclesiological
Society, 1983), 6.
24
Bussage, Bisley and France Lynch, all in Gloucestershire, were designed by
Bodley c.1854-57. See F. M. Simpson, “George Frederick Bodley RA, FSA,
180 Chapter Six

DCL,” in RIBA Journal, 3rd series (15),145-58; E. P. Warren, “The Life and Work
of George Frederick Bodley,” RIBA Journal, 3rd series, (17), 305-40.
25
Michael Hall, “The Rise of Refinement: G. F. Bodley’s All Saints, Cambridge,
and the return to English models in Gothic architecture of the 1860s,”
Architectural History, 36, 1993, 111.
26
ibid., 125.
27
Humphrey, The Victorian Rebuilding of All Saints’ Church, 1983, 12.
28
Duncan Robinson and Stephen Wildman, Morris and Company in Cambridge,
Exh. Cat., (Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, 1980), 30.
29
ibid.
30
Nikolaus Pevsner, Cambridgeshire, (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 2002), 221.
31
“All Saints, Cambridge,” The Ecclesiologist, 24: new series 119, April 1863
127-28.
32
Humphrey, The Victorian Rebuilding of All Saints Church, 1983, 12.
33
Ibid., 14-15.
34
Jesus College Archives, Chapel Box 3, G. F. Bodley to Fellows, 18 February
1862.
35
Matthew 5:3-10
36
There are many instances of wall inscriptions and stenciling in late medieval
English churches. One of the finest is the parish church at Ewelme in Oxfordshire.
Gothic revivalism included an increased interest in illuminated manuscripts and
rubrics, and these ancient didactic polychromatic techniques were translated into
mechanically printed volumes such as William Dyce’s missal, discussed later in
this essay.
37
Revelation 3:4
38
Richard Leppert, The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of
the Body (London: University of California Press, 1993), xix.
39
Joseph Mordaunt-Crook, The Architect’s Secret: Victorian Critics and the Image
of Gravity (London: John Murray, 2003), 37.
40
I use “translation” deliberately here as a theological verb to describe the
transportation, usually procession, of a relic from one geographical location to
another.
41
William Morris to Frederick Leach, June 1866, Norman Kelvin ed.,, The
Collected Letters of William Morris, Vol. 1, 1848-80, (Princeton University Press,
1984), 44.
42
Frederick Brittain, Latin in Church: The History of Its Pronunciation, (Alcuin
Club Tracts, No. 28, London, 1934), 78.
43
Bernarr Rainbow, The Choral Revival in the Anglican Church, 1839-72,
(London: Barrie and Jenks, 1970), 217. The next Cambridge college to introduce
regular choral worship was Queens’, where Bodley had also been architecturally
active, commissioning Morris to carry out extensive decorative work in the Hall,
using motifs similar to the interior of All Saints, Jesus Lane.
 Two Instances of Musical Architecture in Cambridge 181

44
William Durandus trans. J. M. Neale, The Symbolism of Churches and Church
Ornaments, 1843, quoted in H. F. Mallgrave, ed., Architectural Theory, Vol. I,
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 24.
45
Peter F. Anson, The Call of the Cloister: Religious Communities and Kindred
bodies in the Anglican Communion, (London: SPCK, 1964), 340.
46
Michael Hall, as n. 3
47
J. M. Neale, Church Arrangement and Church Enlargement, 1843, quoted in J.
F. White, The Cambridge Movement, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1979),187.
48
J. M. Neale, Three Groups of Sermons on The Portions of the Apocalypse, the
Holy Name, the Last Chapter of Proverbs (London: J. T. Hayes, 1871).
49
R. Leppert, The Sight of Sound, 51.
50
G F. Bodley, “The Modes,” 2.
 CHAPTER SEVEN

“TURNING THE EARTH

ABOVE A BURIED MEMORY”:
DISMEMBERING AND REMEMBERING
KANDINSKY1

CHARLOTTE DE MILLE

Do you know… the improvisations of Wassily Kandinsky…? Pause before

you embark on that voyage. You will find yourself without a chart, without
a compass. Beauty, say these protagonists … is not final. To understand us,
you must break through your conventional ideas of beauty.2

In October 1910, the British journalist C. Lewis Hind wrote a column

entitled “Consolations of an Injured Art Critic” – part VII. In this case, his
didactic and conciliatory tone was directed towards the exhibition of the
Allied Artist’s Association (hereafter AAA), at the Royal Albert Hall of
the immediate summer past. Here Kandinsky had shown three oils,
Landscape with Green House, 1909, Improvisation VI, 1909, and
Composition I, 1910 (lost). Behind Hind’s cautionary fire-side chat is a
remarkably astute observation: one of the first commentaries on
Kandinsky in the British press (his exhibits at the 1909 AAA – Jaune et
Rose (Yellow Cliff), 1909, Winter Landscape, 1909, and 12 engravings -
seem to have gone unnoticed), and one of the first attempts to voice the
reconceptualisation of beauty by Modernist artists this side of the Channel.
The question of beauty had, of course, a particular legacy in Britain that
made it a subject to be fought for. The slippage of Continental ideas into
British art practice could be regarded as nothing less than a siege to an
illustrious heritage, arguably the foundation of British national artistic
tradition. Hogarth’s “line of beauty”, Burke’s treatise on the sublime and
the beautiful, Keats’ famous lines “beauty is truth, truth beauty”, surely all
could not be swept aside by a Russian artist who proclaimed that
“conventional beauty must go by the board”?3
 Dismembering and Remembering Kandinsky 183

For Kandinsky, the beautiful is that which “is produced by the inner
need, which springs from the soul.”4 That Kandinsky’s redefinition of
beauty in his seminal 1911 treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art stems
from questions of aesthetics debated particularly in France during the last
decade of the nineteenth century can be affirmed by the first example he
uses to address the problem: the “spiritual harmony” of Claude Debussy.
The listener, we are told is
tossed about like a tennis ball over the net between the two parties of the
outer and the inner beauty. To those who are not accustomed to it the inner
beauty appears as ugliness because humanity in general inclines to the
outer and knows nothing of the inner.5

Kandinsky was well placed to make such judgements, having spent time
in Paris in 1889, exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in 1904 and 1905, and
associated with the exhibiting and literary circle of Les Tendences
Nouvelles, a publication which reviewed Debussy’s work as well as
illustrating Kandinsky’s woodcuts. His qualification of inner beauty
chimes with Maurice Denis’ justification of Nabi painting:
The subject matter of the painter is in himself …. All spectacles, emotions,
dreams are summed up for him in combinations of patches, in the rapport
between tones and hues, in lines. What he expresses … is the interior
rhythm of his being, his esthetic endeavour, his necessary beauty.6

Denis was an artist revered by Roger Fry, and his summation is mirrored
in Fry’s aesthetics, perhaps most obviously in the formalism of the
“emotional elements of design”: rhythm of line, described as a “record of
gesture”; mass, recognisable for the “inertia” of the object, its “power of
resisting movement, or of communicating its own movement to other
bodies”; space; light and shade; colour; and the inclination of the picture
plane. By these means, Fry was convinced that post impressionists
“express by pictorial and plastic form certain spiritual experiences.”7
It is Fry rather than Hind who is famed for the introduction of Post
Impressionism (indeed his term) to Britain. His call to “justify actual life
by its relation to the imaginative” resonates with the turn to the interiority
of vision prevalent on the Continent.8 His formalist criticism prioritised
the character of colours and break in narration to effect emotional intensity
by purely visual means. The sentiment resonates with Kandinsky’s as
expressed in his introductory letter to Arnold Schönberg: “the independent
progress through their own destinies, the independent life of the individual
voices in your compositions, is exactly what I am trying to find in my
paintings.”9 Kandinsky however never wanted to “paint music”, rather his
184 Chapter Seven

interest was in the extent to which the structure of music might be used
synonymously with formal methods in painting to open new expressive
“dissonances in art.”10 So was Fry wrong to call Kandinsky a “pure visual
musician”? And how did artists and theorists negotiate the synchrony of
different media as the place of that bastion of aesthetic excellence, beauty,
was renegotiated for modern times? Within a broader reception of
Kandinsky into British painting, this chapter takes the specific case of his
assimilation by Bloomsbury as one focussed answer to these pervasive
Modernist concerns.
In tracing a connection between Bloomsbury and Kandinsky, I am not
taking as my departure Fry’s description of the three works by Kandinsky
exhibited at the 1913 AAA (Improvisation 29, 1912, Improvisation 30,
Canons, 1913, Landscape with Two Poplars, 1912), convenient as it may
be. For although his contention was that from this “pure visual music… . I
cannot any longer doubt the possibility of emotional expression by such
abstract visual signs”, such doubt can hardly have been an issue for the
formalist critic of impassioned emotional integrity of “An Essay in
Aesthetics.”11 Furthermore, in 1912 Fry had praised the “abstract and
musical quality” of designs by Picasso, which aimed for the “construction
of a fugal arrangement of forms.”12 The language of music was a
convenient metaphor for any critic needing to explain the complexities of
non-mimetic art, and it could be used for artists whose grasp of musical
composition was far less explicit than Kandinsky’s thorough investigation
of the subject. Equally, whilst I am interested in the synonymity between
the aesthetics of Fry and Kandinsky, Fry could in no way have known of
Concerning the Spiritual in Art prior to its publication in 1911, by which
time his own aesthetic of Post Impressionism was already formed. There
are however tantalising visual and literary comparisons to be drawn,
supported by Kandinsky’s exhibiting history in Britain, and framed by a
shared aesthetic milieu.
Kandinsky’s work was exhibited at the AAA from 1909 – 1914, with
the exception of 1912. Amid the shows of avant-garde factions across
London in this period, he was omitted by Boris Anrep from the “Russian
Group” at Fry’s Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition of 1912, but
included in the Grafton Group show of 1913, also organised by Fry. If the
national identity of the Munich based Kandinsky slipped beneath Anrep’s
notice in 1912, it does not infer that Fry was at that date ignorant of him.
Rupert Brooke had met the artist in Munich in 1911, and noted his absence
from the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in a review for the
Cambridge Magazine.13 Although Fry makes no reference to Kandinsky
prior to his review of the 1913 AAA, the first English translation of
 Dismembering and Remembering Kandinsky 185

Concerning the Spiritual in Art had been undertaken with Kandinsky’s

approval by the son of an acquaintance, M. T. H. Sadler.14 Indeed, Fry was
to stay with the father, M. E. Sadler, in 1913, and it was from his
collection that the works were selected for the Grafton Group show. 15 M.
E. Sadler wrote to Kandinsky, “Mr Fry has been staying with us and was
deeply interested in your drawings. He asked if I would lend them for an
exhibition … next week in London … and of course I gladly consented.”16
M. T. H. Sadler recollected that the works lent by his father comprised the
“first specimens of Kandinsky’s work to be found in England”, and,
“shown under the auspices of Roger Fry … [they] attracted attention in
perceptive quarters.”17 M. T. H. Sadler himself however had a small
collection of woodcuts by Kandinsky purchased from the 1911 AAA, and
it is in fact these rather than the works from his father’s collection that
arguably hold the greater interest for the interchange of media in
Bloomsbury.
The site of this interchange that is the most fruitful and intriguing must
be Virginia Woolf’s short story “The String Quartet” published in her first
collection Monday or Tuesday (1921) with illustrations by her sister,
Vanessa Bell. Woolf’s story is a short piece of descriptive writing which
presents an associative listening rather than an abstract reflection of music
as such; the music takes her nameless woman to the mountains and valleys
of the Rhone in what she apologetically portrays as “silly dreams”.18 As
Roger Fry remarked of the whole collection, Woolf was a “visual writer”,
and this story is no exception. Images pile upon one another in “confusion
and chaos”, conjuring a rapid sequence of viewpoints that are as decentred
and heterogeneous, as crystalline and entire as modernist painterly
abstraction.19 Dora Carrington was to remark “your visions are so clear
and well designed.”20 How then was Vanessa to respond? With a striking
series of four woodcuts, of which the accompaniment for “The String
Quartet” (Fig. 7.1) is the one least illustrative of Woolf’s visions, although
deeply evocative, and I will argue, closely attuned to her subject. The
woodcut had been largely a neglected art in Britain during the nineteenth
century, despite William Morris’ instigation of a semi revival during the
1870s. Deemed crude and barbaric it was a liberating medium, appropriate
for the new non-mimetic aesthetic, and relatively unexploited in recent art
making. Cheap to print, it was a natural choice for book or journal
illustration, used at the Omega workshops, and in the pre-war avant-garde
magazines Rhythm and Blast. Notwithstanding these prototypes, Bell’s
sources for the medium could have been equally European, and it seems
that there is a strong visual case to relate her illustration for “The String
186 Chapter Seven

Quartet” to Kandinsky in particular. It is with this in mind that I return to

those woodcuts shown at the AAA of July 1911.
M. T. H. Sadler wrote of his purchase from the exhibition of six “small
square woodcuts … strange productions, semi-representational, and with
an element of hieratic rigidity.” 21 There is very little information
regarding which woodcuts were shown in 1911, and Sadler’s description
fits the early set of Xyolgraphies (1909), which Kandinsky had sent to
Schönberg in 1911 as equally as the sequence of woodcuts published as
Klänge, or Sounds. Gabriel Münter described Klänge in letter to
Schönberg dated 20 August 1912, as “an album with woodcuts and
texts.”22 The description belies the unusual nature of Kandinsky’s
publication, a tour de force of creativity by one artist in arguably three art
forms: text, image, and sound. As Christopher Short has said, Kandinsky
sought to “overcome the relation between text and image where one serves
as explanation, or illustration, of the other.”23 It is for this reason that
Klänge so interests me, as a single voice grappling across media in what is
firstly a practical rather than theoretical way. And indeed, it was Klänge
that was shown at the AAA, as a postcard to the exhibition organiser and
friend of Sadler’s father, Frank Rutter, clarifies. Attached to the card was a
transcript of “sixteen little texts”, certain of these were later to appear in
Klänge, scholarship on which has dated the woodcuts to 1907-1911, and
the poems to 1909-10.24
The poetic style of Klänge sought to break the indicative quality of
language, and this was achieved through repetition, rhythm and assonance.
E. R. Napier has described Kandinsky’s method as one of “interchange of
appearing and dissolution.”25 The multiple possibilities of perception give
the sensation of flux, abstracting the particular vision in the emphasis of
form over narration. The separateness of the word from the object it
denotes emphasises the uneasy relation of description to reality, and thus
the symbolical quality of language. M. T. H. Sadler himself, in a short
article published in 1912, noted the similarity of Kandinsky’s painting
technique to Mallarmé’s Symbolist theory, whereby combinations of
words may alter the conventional meaning of the individual word itself.
This he described as “synthetic word painting”, unconsciously echoing
Kandinsky’s description of Klänge as a “small … synthetic work”.26 In the
volume, the intersection of woodcuts orchestrates a rhythm of leitmotifs,
reverberating through the pages to intensify an overall visionary
impression. There is a consistency of voice across text and image, dictated
Kandinsky would no doubt say, by a “Stimmung”, or atmosphere.27
Klänge was to be read as a complete entity, a heterogeneous and dislocated
 Dismembering and Remembering Kandinsky 187

single artwork, formulated with Wagner’s gesamtkunstwerk in mind.28 In

this sense, it is a “purely aesthetic counterpoint” of total sensation. 29
Klänge makes tangible the taught dialectic between fracture and unity.
A frank and illuminating comment in a letter to Sadler reveals the
fundamental problem with which the series dealt:

The texts have no connection with the woodcuts. I wrote them because I
could not express these particular feelings as a painter. There is however
… a deep inner relationship between the texts and the woodcuts. And
indeed, even an outer one: I treat the word, the sentence in a very similar
way to that in which I treat the line, the dot.30

The poems manifest visionary moments, complete fragments which

turn as the grains in a kaleidoscope from one crystalline image to the next.
Pared descriptions invite the reader to follow sensory movements in the
text, suggesting rather than effecting what is experienced. This break from
narrative structure resuscitates a vitality powerful for its direct re-tracing
of mental process. In each text, the focus is action and colour. In “Some
Things” the shifts revolve around the colour blue:

A fish went plunging into the water. He was silver. The water blue. …
A white horse stood quietly on his long legs. The sky was blue. His legs
were long. …
On the open field a flower grew. The flower was blue. …

Here impressions are dissected with a refrain of testimony: “I saw him. …

he was alive. … it was there” – memories so forceful that they transpose
ordinary situations into an extraordinary imaginary life more real than the
shadowy cognition of pragmatically oriented consciousness. It was not
without reason that the Dadaist Hugo Ball felt Kandinsky had
“illustrate[d] purely mental phenomena.”31 Kandinsky however, was
adamant that his was a directing rather than an intrusive hand, describing
himself as a “calculating gardener” set to nourish insights rather than to
intervene. “In spite of all calculations”, he wrote, “this [propitious] hour
comes by itself and determines the moment.”32 As he had said, “I simply
wanted to shape sounds. But they shape themselves. That is the
description of the content, of what is inside.”33
Kandinsky’s thoughts on his writing process mirror those of Virginia
Woolf. In a letter to Vita Sackville-West, she described the wave-like
rhythm which seems to take her writing beyond herself: “as it breaks and
tumbles in the mind, it makes the words to fit it.”34 At the same time, her
aspiration was to write “entirely, solely and with the integrity of one’s
thoughts. Suppose one could catch them before they became ‘works of
188 Chapter Seven

art’? Catch them hot and sudden as they rise in the mind.”35 In the case of
“The String Quartet”, the subject serves as a hook for writing that is barely
fiction. Instead it brings creative process to presence: we are witness to
that “flight” of thought that is the foundation of creativity.

Flourish, spring, burgeon, burst! The pear tree on the top of the mountain.
Fountains jet; drops descend. But the waters of the Rhone flow swift and
deep, race under the arches, and sweep the trailing water leaves, washing
shadow over the silver dish, the spotted fish rushed down by swift waters,
… the yellow pebbles are churned round and round, round and round – free
now, rushing downwards, or even some-how ascending in exquisite spirals
into the air …
‘That’s an early Mozart, of course –

Of course the reality is it could be anything, which is precisely Woolf’s

point. This is not outwardly descriptive of concert going. Indeed, we
know the story to have been written shortly after Woolf attended a private
performance of a Schubert quintet, so to excavate the particular composer
or piece would, in her estimation, evidently be to miss the point.36 Instead,
Woolf explores the quality of auditory perception to stimulate acute
multi-sensory experience:

But the tune, like all his tunes, makes one despair – I mean hope. What do
I mean? That’s the worst of music! I want to dance, laugh, eat pink cakes,
yellow cakes, drink thin sharp wine. Or an indecent story, - now I could
relish that.37

Like Kandinsky’s writing, Woolf’s translation of music into text is

articulated through action and colour. Without sound as mediator, Woolf
had, in the same collection explored the overwhelming sensations of pure
colour in the two prose poems, “Blue” and “Green”. At the same time,
she responded to questions of style raised in a letter from Gerald Brenan:

I don’t see how to write a book without people in it. Perhaps you mean that
one ought not to attempt a ‘view of life’? – one ought to limit oneself to
one’s own sensations – at a quartet for instance; one ought to be lyrical,
descriptive: but not set people in motion, and attempt to enter them, and
give them impact and volume?38

The exchange between Brenan and Woolf construes fiction and

description as two contrary methods of writing. Both were worked out
separately and together in Monday or Tuesday, for instance, alongside the
“lyrical” experiments of “The String Quartet” and “Blue” and “Green”,
“An Unwritten Novel” is an attempt at setting “people in motion”, the
 Dismembering and Remembering Kandinsky 189

author quite literally finding a way to “enter” her subject by inventing a

life dashed when the subject gets up to lead her own. And yet the “view
of life” offered in these cameo pieces is no less striking for being
improvisations around personal feeling. After all, is not all writing so?
The final movement of the quartet stimulates a vignette of surreal images,
their movements arrested and characters settled, condensing and resolving
the piece in the listener’s mind: “The green garden, moonlit pool, lemons,
lovers, and fish are all dissolved in the opal sky, across which as the horns
are joined by trumpets and supported by clarions there rise white arches
firmly planted on marble pillars.”39
This image re-members – etymologically re-groups disparate moments
and sensations past. Remembering is a process connoting variously bodily
sensation; the construction of physical space from its parts; and
dismemberment: both contextual, and physically and mentally fractural. In
aesthetic terms, it is the preserve of art to disengage thought from the need
for practical action, enabling an out-of-conscious experience in which the
aesthetic object may be perceived anew, severed from its context, and
from the demands of our lives upon it. It is in this sense too that
Kandinsky regarded his writing, asking Sadler to read his “texts without
looking for explicit narration. Just let them work on your feeling, on your
soul. And I think they will become clear to you.”40 In this light, Bell’s
woodcut of enmeshed string instruments is not a denial of a wealth of
plausible imagery, but her own response to her sister’s story, and the genre
of the string quartet more broadly. To be more illustrative would be to risk
constricting the evocation of musical experience in her viewer. For
however fanciful we might suppose Woolf’s flight to be, it has an
admirable companion in Helen Schlegel’s “goblins” summoned by
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in E. M. Forster’s Howards End.41 There is
strong reason to suppose that Bell’s illustrations were intended as
suggestive supports, complementary, but not strictly descriptive - the text
itself was that. Bell wrote to Woolf about her first illustration for “Kew
Gardens”, “it might not have very much to do with the text, but that
wouldn’t matter.”42 I wonder though whether this was indeed the case with
“The String Quartet”, or whether, subconsciously, Bell had a precedent in
mind through which to allude to some of the themes of Woolf’s text.
Improvisation 7 (1910) is a work that was particularly significant for
Kandinsky, surviving in two oils, one on canvas in Moscow, the other on
board in Yale. It can be surmised that the Yale version was shown as Study
for Improvisation 7 at the AAA in 1914, whilst it was a photograph of the
Moscow canvas that Kandinsky sent to Schönberg by way of introduction
following his discovery of his music at a concert in Berlin, where the
190 Chapter Seven

composer was then working, in 1911. The subtitle for Improvisation 7 is

Storm, and certainly the dynamism from the scumbled heavily textured
paint surface is redolent of flux. Brilliant white scuffs the centre of the
image, gleaming tension. With a living presence, paint surges across
diagonals, leaching between contours, assailing their logic in the demand
for synthetic energy. Kandinsky characterised his use of “improvisation”
in the titling of his work in Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and as
Magdelena Dabrowski has said, this work is a particularly apt demonstration
of his claims. To my mind though, the work effects his “new symphonic
composition, in which the melodic element plays a subordinate part, and
that only rarely.”43 To extend these metaphors for painting, symphonic
here would allude to the spatial overlay of simultaneous multiple
memories, the depth and richness of experience which cannot be grasped
entirely. In contrast the melodic connotes linearity, which although not
always associated with ordered cognition, expresses intention and
direction in a way that is more easily perceived. Improvisation 7 is an act
of siege against linearity, forms pressed against one another in a denial of
linear perspective, effecting a condensation of spaces and moments. But it
is equally true that there is a very tense relation here between linearity and
immersion, something that is clarified by looking at the third version of
this work, the woodcut produced for Klänge (Fig 7.2). The strictures of the
medium surely focussed Kandinsky’s mind on formal issues, particularly
since the German tradition of woodcutting was upheld for the
sophisticated dexterity with which its masters could execute fine lines.
What seems to happen in Kandinsky’s experiments with the medium is a
denial of those qualities for which it was most prized. Everywhere in the
Klänge suite the line is prevented from predominating over the
composition, which is constructed instead with a balance of splodges and
shading. The dynamism remains, the white scuffs translated negatively
into black scratches, evocative of the rapid shading of a fast and free
brushstroke. Flecks of movement in the muddy green water become near
sets of quavers, the path of the oil is obscured, but the boats in which the
figures are situated are sharpened. Indeed, in spite of the brave non-
linearity of the woodcut, it stabalises the content of the oil, prizing
structure from obscurity. This is not to say that the woodcut is static, but it
does implement the translation of temporal experience by more overtly
spatial means. The architechtonic construction freezes activity as surely as
it suggests it.
The woodcut of Improvisation 7 appears in Klänge beside a poem
entitled “In the Forest”. It is stretching to find a narrative connection
between them, certainly there are no “red trunks thicker and thicker”, and
 Dismembering and Remembering Kandinsky 191

we should remember Kandinsky’s assertion that it was an inner rather than

representational connection that dictated the relation between text and
image. It is surely the same motive that stimulated Woolf to respond to
Bell’s self-proclaimed non-analogous illustration for “Kew Gardens”, “a
very successful piece, and just in the mood I wanted.”44 These are projects
far removed from the late nineteenth-century art-book; projects where
correspondence of text and image is arbitrary, but where their intersection
opens up a visionary space otherwise denied by proximity to narrative
content. If Kandinsky and Woolf-Bell share an attitude towards the
relationship of the visual and the textual, what can be said by way of a
formal comparison of these woodcuts in particular? Although it is possible
according to the exhibition history of the Klänge album that Bell had seen
Improvisation 7, I do not wish to make any claim for her definite
knowledge of it. However there is a suggestive visual similarity: the
scuffed blotches, diagonal emphasis, thick parallel lines (the sides of the
cello and boat respectively), and the fanned motif - variously suggestive of
sunrise in the Kandinsky, and an unidentifiable ground in the Bell.
Moreover, Bell’s employment of the woodcut technique here is such as to
function negatively, by which I mean she denies the formal solidity or
definable space which would make her subject legible. Instruments emerge
from a mass of free-floating black forms. Contours never fully defined, the
image risks its own dissolution, for a momentary collapse of perceptive
attention would render it incomprehensible. Whilst this may be
comparatively rare in Bell’s work, it is common in Kandinsky’s. In
Improvisation 7 black and white reside equally, each functioning so as to
differentiate shared spatial areas with a tenacity which threatens the
collapse of those very spaces they are deployed to shape. Resolution is
suspended, content prized from the dialectic of black and white to hover
between positive and negative presence. In this light, it is probing to
consider Kandinsky’s analysis of black and white from Concerning the
Spiritual in Art, where black is described as “absolute discord, devoid of
possibilities for the future (death)”, and white, “eternal discord, but with
possibilities for the future (birth).”45
In a letter to Schönberg, Kandinsky spoke of his desire for spatial
ambiguity, and it is Schönberg who provides the last suggestive fragment
in this speculative contextualisation of Kandinsky’s reception by
Bloomsbury. “There is a great tendency in painting to discover the “new”
harmony by constructive means,” he wrote, “whereby the rhythmic is built
on an almost geometric form. … I am certain that our own modern
harmony is [to be found in …] the anti-geometric, anti-logical means.”46
The transition from accepted harmonic form to an “anti-logical” one is
192 Chapter Seven

charted in the work which most drew Kandinsky to the composer: his
infamous Second String Quartet (op. 10, 1908). The opening key of F#
minor is put under increasing strain during the first movement, key shifts
falling so swiftly on one another that the auditory sensation is of harmonic
fracture. The third movement, “Litany” accentuates this fragmentation,
where in Bryan R. Simm’s words, it seems Schönberg “blasted the work
… and reforged [it] into an entirely new musical argument.”47 Having
recapitulated the three themes from the previous movements he introduces
a soprano soloist in music that denies the tonal stability of the movement’s
key, E flat minor. Finally the last movement, “Entrückung”, or “Rapture”,
introduces an associative, floating tonality of no fixed key where
Schönberg instead writes a sequence of fifths in the cello and viola using
eleven out of twelve notes of the chromatic scale. In this progression each
note could settle into a definable key, there are instants of recognisable
chords, yet overall the impression is of music freed from harmonic law.48
Schönberg lays open every possibility, musical material functions
relatively to that which preceded it rather than being constructed in
accordance to an overarching harmonic frame. This indeed is in keeping
with the composer’s own statements on form from his treatise Theory of
Harmony, (1911): “There are absolutely no notes that are foreign to
harmony, but simply notes to which the systems established by teachers of
harmony are foreign.”49
In a surprising twist of history, the British public were remarkably
engaged with Schönberg’s work following the première of his Five
Orchestral Pieces (op.16, 1909), under Henry Wood at a prom on 3
September 1912. In spite of the ensuing uproar, the Daily Mail critic was
astute enough to mention the composer’s double life as a “Futurist
painter”, and when he arrived in person to conduct a second performance
of the pieces in 1914, he was greeted warmly.50 The Musical Times alone
carried four articles on Schönberg between October 1913 and May 1914,
offering a thorough discussion of both Theory of Harmony and his recent
compositions. The Music Club held a party for the composer at the
Grafton Gallery, (previously home to Fry’s Post Impressionist exhibitions),
in January 1914, where Verklärte Nacht (op.4, 1899), received its first
airing in Britain.51 The Second String Quartet finally received its London
première in June. It must be said that this reception is all the more
surprising given the ethos of Schönberg’s work. For fundamentally,
Schönberg’s music does not proceed through reason - the very quality that
British critics were so fast to harangue modernist painting and writing
over. In a letter to Ferruccio Busoni Schönberg defined his endeavour “to
place nothing inhibiting in the stream of my unconscious sensations.”52
 Dismembering and Remembering Kandinsky 193

Astutely, this premise was picked up by The Musical Times: “It is this
contrapuntal writing by streams of harmony, instead of by melodic lines,
which accounts for so much in Schönberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces”.53 A
month later, another article spoke of the works of 1909-1911 to
demonstrate how the composer

throws over almost everything hitherto accepted, i.e., consonance, tonality,

thematic use, form, even programme, and retains only rhythm and
instrumental colour. He boldly calls this music a mere emanation from
himself.54

The openness of these critics is striking, more so for the manner in which
their views have been corroborated by subsequent analysis. Simms for
instance, discusses Schönberg “composing in a stream of consciousness”,
a phrase with startling overtones in a context which includes Virginia
Woolf.55
Conveniently, the Five Orchestral Pieces have been the subject of a
stimulating analysis by William E. Benjamin. Taking as his departure a
revealing statement in which Schönberg accords “multifariousness” and
“illogicity” central importance for composition, Benjamin demonstrates
this in action in the last of these pieces, “Obbligato Recititivo”.56 Whilst
detailed analysis is beyond the needs of this chapter, Benjamin’s
convincing re-assessment of Schönberg’s use of melody provides rich
interpretative ground which compares favourably with Kandinsky’s
discussion of the melodic and symphonic in painting. What Benjamin
argues is that melody is suspended, offering many potential avenues for
progression, none of which are pursued to the exclusion of any other.
Resolution is a “chimera” he states; Schönberg places chromatically
sequential music together, writing “polyphonic strands” which intertwine
in a yet more “abstract polyphony”. Furthermore, where melody is
“determined by [metric] patterning and accentuation”, melodic passages
are equally entwined in several metric continuities.57 Such melodic density
can do nothing other than render harmonic intricacy. The result is that any
melodic linearity is disjointed, progressions contrast and surprise rather
than congeal. It is telling then, that a British contemporary claimed the
composer’s innovation was in forming “harmonic planes” from “pedal
figures and chords”.58 Schönberg’s texture attempts to balance the linearity
of temporal development with spatial presence, together more reflective of
human experience. In effect this is music of multi-point perspective,
lacking a tonal centre but retaining its possibility, just as the
decentralisation of focus confuses the perspectival logic of Bell’s String
Quartet or Kandinsky’s Improvisation 7.
194 Chapter Seven

***

I began this chapter with some observations on beauty in response to

which I have sought to weave together canonical works of European
modernism in a surprisingly shared context. Roger Fry quipped that “every
new work … is ugly until it becomes beautiful”, a statement which
receives its exegesis in Kandinsky’s discussion of “outer” and “inner”
aesthetic appreciation.59 The

“outer need," which never goes beyond conventional limits, nor produces
other than conventional beauty. The "inner need" knows no such limits,
and often produces results conventionally considered "ugly." But "ugly"
itself is a conventional term, and only means "spiritually unsympathetic,"
being applied to some expression of an inner need, either outgrown or not
yet attained.60

The key here is that beauty is not something known, but rather the
unexpected or arresting. It was precisely this change of meaning that was
encapsulated by British art critic D. S. McColl. Close friend of
Bloomsbury, he wrote to Bell’s husband Clive: “I was puzzled about the
‘sheer beauty’: but I see that you mean not the beauty of the picture but of
the subject?”61 His parallel is to be found in a searching article defending
Schönberg by Philip Heseltine, better known as the composer Peter
Warlock:

The theory of a finite and absolute standard of beauty is the supreme

obstacle to the progress of musical evolution. Every standard of beauty
must necessarily lie in the taste of the individual, or as Thomas Hardy has
it, ‘Beauty, to all who have felt, lies not in the thing, but in what the thing
symbolises.’62

Beauty for these modernists is fundamentally that which is true to life,

and not the ordered illustrations which provide an idealised, deluded view
of experience. It is Fry who put this most lucidly with regard to the Post
Impressionist endeavour to “arouse the conviction of a new and definite
reality,” not intending to “imitate form, but to create form; not to imitate
life but to find an equivalent for life. …In fact, they aim not at illusion but
at reality.”63 Yet the paradox is that the nature of such insight means we
often fail to recognise it. As Lydia Goehr has commented in relation to art
of precisely this period, “art’s expression is inexpressible relative to
rational (ordinary) expression.”64 The view has a long heritage,
particularly in French thought. Simultaneously with Kandinsky’s sojourn
 Dismembering and Remembering Kandinsky 195

in Paris, Henri Bergson published his first treatise, Time and Free Will.
Here he contended,

the artist aims at giving us a share in this emotion, so rich, so personal, so

novel, and at enabling us to experience what he cannot make us
understand. … the richer in ideas … the deeper and the higher shall we
find the beauty thus expressed.65

Beauty here is ungraspable by logic for it reaches beyond pragmatic

perception, a quality which it shares with aesthetic cognition. Whilst this
is not to say that everything unknown is necessarily beautiful or artistic, it
is requisite to both that we should learn something not previously
understood by other means. And in this, the beautiful or artistic does
indeed reflect life as it is experienced rather than thought about in the
abstract. It is for this reason that Vladimir Jankélévitch distinguished
beauty as the motivator of what he terms “enchantment” or charme. The
apprehension of beauty demands “a transitive relation with the human”.66
If these points on beauty seem laboured, their importance for
modernism cannot be over emphasised. This radical change in perception
was fundamental to the re-writing, re-painting, and re-composing of art for
contemporary times. Is it too strong to read something of Jankélévitch’s
transitive activity in the experience of metamorphosis charted in Woolf’s
concert goer, and in closer proximity, the protagonists of Kandinsky’s “In
the Forest” and George’s “Litany”? These last bear uncanny symbolism:
both feature an arduous journey, more properly a quest of mystical
dimensions. George’s figure cries “close the wound!” Kandinsky’s
answers “The wounds that heal”.67 Perhaps Improvisation 7 is closer to its
facing text: the path through the forest becomes the passage across a Lethe
of forgetting that is uncompromisingly transformative. George’s “Rapture”
describes “a sun-filled, open expanse / That includes only the farthest
mountain hatches.” Once more it is tantalising to consider the mountain
top and sunrise of Kandinsky’s woodcut. It can be little surprise that in
Kandinsky’s estimation, Schönberg opened

gold mines of new beauty in his search for spiritual harmony. His music
leads us into a realm where musical experience is a matter not of the ear
but of the soul alone - and from this point begins the music of the future.68

For Kandinsky, creativity in modernist terms is itself understood as a rite

of passage that he couches in a description of biblical resonance: “this
city to which we travel has neither stone nor marble; hangs enduring,
stands unshakeable.”69 His vision bears intriguing correspondence to the
sky suffused with “white arches” at the end of Woolf’s “String Quartet”.
196 Chapter Seven

The “spiritual” in art, harmony, and experience as exposed by Kandinsky,

Schönberg and Fry is after all a discourse which traces the shifting
aesthetic of modernism.
Finally, what if Vanessa Bell had had Improvisation 7 in mind? How
might it inform our reading of Bloomsbury’s intersection of text-image-
music, and what light might it shed on the elusive piece referred to in
Woolf’s text? In this rich but speculative context I could posit that:
Woolf’s story refers to “early Mozart” only in so much as it could refer to
any quartet; that the Schubert quintet she heard shortly before writing the
piece (I could hazard, “The Trout”), provides a closer auditory analogy to
the vigour of her description; and that Schönberg’s Second String Quartet
lurks beneath. This realm of imaginative scholarship lays me open to
lampoons from the more historically minded, however how different is it
from the questions first raised by the founders of Modernism? How far,
even, from the re-evaluation of beauty itself – from something external
apprehended by the senses, to something empathetically and physically
experienced by each individual. It is surely within the spirit of Modernism
to take experimental licence, just now and then, to mix archaeology with
aphasia, and to allow a flight to enrich our appreciation of canonical
“moments of being”.70
 Dismembering and Remembering Kandinsky 197

Fig. 7.1: Vanessa Bell, The String Quartet, 1920, © Estate of Vanessa Bell,
courtesy Henrietta Garnett. Image: Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham.
198 Chapter Seven

Fig. 7.2: Wassily Kandinsky, Study for Improvisation 7, 1912-1913, woodcut, 31.1
x 24.1cm, © Image: Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham, © Image: Goldmark Gallery,
Uppingham, ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2010.
 Dismembering and Remembering Kandinsky 199

Notes

The grains of the study of Kandinsky’s reception in Britain were first sown during
my M. Litt degree at the University of St Andrews under Christina Lodder and
Tom Normand, and work in British modernism and aesthetics developed with
Christopher Green and John Mullarkey. I am most grateful to them all, and to
Lydia Goehr and Simon Shaw-Miller for their encouraging comments on an earlier
version of this article, first given as a paper in June 2010.
1
Title quote, Virginia Woolf, “The String Quartet,” in The Mark on the Wall and
other Short Fiction, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 36.
2
C. Lewis Hind, “Consolations of an Injured Critic VII,” Art Journal, 30, October
1910, 294.
3
William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, 1753; Edmund Burke, A Philosophical
Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful, 1757, John
Keats “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, 1820; Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the
Spiritual in Art, (New York: Dover, 1977), 51.
4
Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual, 55.
5
ibid, 16. Compare Fry: “every new work of creative design is ugly until it
becomes beautiful, “Art: The Grafton Gallery: An Apologia”, The Nation, 9
November 1912, in J. B. Bullen ed., Post-Impressionists in England, (London:
Routledge, 1988), 391.
6
Maurice Denis, Théories 1890-1900, 79, in Jeanne A. Stump, Les Mardis:
Stéphane Mallarmé and the artists of his circle, (Kansas: University of Kansas
Museum of Art, 1965), 48. The passage finds its echo in the Futurist statement
accompanying their 1912 exhibition in London: “spots, lines, zones of colour
which do not correspond to any reality, but which, in accordance with a law of our
interior mathematics, musically prepare and enhance the emotion of the spectator.”
Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo, Balla and Severini, “The Exhibitors to the Public,”
quoted in P. G. Konody, “The Italian Futurists: Nightmare Exhibition at the
Sakville Gallery,” Pall Mall Gazette, 1 March 1912, exh. cat., in Bullen as n.5,
295.
7
Roger Fry, “An Essay in Aesthetics,” [1909], Vision and Design, (London:
Pelican, 1937), 36-37; “The French Group”, ex. cat. Second Post-Impressionist
Exhibition, in Bullen, as n. 5, 352.
8
Roger Fry, “An Essay in Aesthetics,” 27.
9
Kandinsky to Arnold Schönberg, 18 January 1911, in Jelena Hahl-Koch ed.,
trans. John C. Crawford, Arnold Schoenberg Wassily Kandinsky, Letters Pictures
and Documents, (London: Faber, 1994), 21.
10
ibid, 21.
11
Roger Fry, “The Allied Artists,” The Nation, 2 August 1913, in Bullen (as n. 5),
459.
12
Roger Fry, “Art: The Grafton: An Apologia”, 395.
13
Rupert Brooke, The Cambridge Magazine, 23 November 1912. It is clear in a
letter from Kandinsky that he and Brooke were in correspondence, Kandinsky to
M. T. H. Sadler, 6 October 1911, TGA 8221.6.18. See also A. Glew, “‘Blue
200 Chapter Seven

spiritual sounds’: Kandinsky and the Sadlers, 1911-16,” The Burlington Magazine,
139, September 1997, 602.
14
Translated as The Art of Spiritual Harmony, 1914. Lindsay and Vergo, in
introducing their translation of the second (authoritative) German edition noted
that Sadler had used the first. Yet, Kandinsky’s letters, un-catalogued at the date of
Vergo and Lindsay’s book, offer new light on this issue. Sadler had bought the
rights for the first edition only, yet Kandinsky’s desire for the most accurate and up
to date presentation of his ideas led him finally to prefer the use of a later edition: a
letter to Sadler dated 10 April 1913 checks “you are making the translation not
from the first edition, but from the second, or third, aren’t you?” Kandinsky’s
emphasis. (TGA 8221.6.26). Unfortunately, Sadler’s replies to Kandinsky are
unknown, but in general he seems to have been an attentive, if rather slow,
translator. It is possible that the delay in publication was due to the late date of
Kandinsky’s imploring behest. It is possible to suggest that Sadler’s translation
was the product of an amalgamation of the German editions, for this would explain
the closeness of parts of it to Lindsay and Vergo’s version.
15
Confusingly, the Grafton Group exhibition at the Alpine Club Gallery is cited in
J. B. Bullen, Post-Impressionists in England, as occurring in January, 499. A. G.
Robins, however, cites it as March, which fits with the date of M. E. Sadler’s letter
and M. T. H. Sadler’s recollection. A. G. Robins, Modern Art in Britain 1910-
1914, (London: Barbican, 1997), 133.
16
M. E. Sadler to Kandinsky, 11 March 1913, in A. Glew, as n. 13, 603. The
works fitting this description then in M. E. Sadler’s collection comprise:
Composition, 1912, watercolour, otherwise known as Aquarell 10, (V. E. Barnett,
Kandinsky Watercolours, catalogue raisonné, (London: Sotheby’s, 1992) 304);
Composition, Flowers, 1912, watercolour and Indian ink; Composition, Bavaria,
1911, watercolour (small); Study for Improvisation 28, 1912, watercolour, Indian
ink and pencil, (Barnett 316). For a full list of M. E. Sadler’s collection, see M. L.
Hutchinson’s 1934 Catalogue of pictures, prints, and sculpture in the possession of
M. E. Sadler at The Rookery, Headington, Oxfordshire, TGA 8221.1.
17
M. T. H. Sadleir, Michael Ernest Sadler, a Memoir by his Son, (London:
Constable, 1949), 239.
18
V. Woolf, “The Sting Quartet”, 37.
19
V. Woolf, “The String Quartet,” 38.
20
D. Carrington on Jacob’s Room [1922]: 14 October 1922, in L. Woolf and J.
Strahey eds., Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey: Letters, (London: Hogarth Press,
1956),144, also Julia Briggs, Virginia Woolf, an Inner Life, (London: Penguin
2005), 105.
21
M. T. H. Sadleir, Michael Ernest Sadler, a Memoir by his Son, Constable,
London, 1949, 237. Sadler had by this stage changed the spelling of his surname,
however I continue to use the original spelling, since it was still current during the
time under consideration. The exhibition secretary was Frank Rutter, head of the
City Art Gallery in Leeds, where M. E. Sadler held a position at the University.
22
G. Münter to A. Schönberg, 20 August 1912, in J. Hahl-Koch ed., Arnold
Schoenberg Wassily Kandinsky, 55.
 Dismembering and Remembering Kandinsky 201

23
Christopher Short, “Between text and Image in Kandinsky’s Oeuvre: A
consideration of the Album Sounds,” Tate Papers, Autumn 2006, 3.
24
Elizabeth R. Napier, “Introduction to the English translation,” W. Kandinsky,
Sounds, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 8. Peg Weiss agrees with the
dating of the woodcuts, Kandinsky in Munich, (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1979), 131; plates 132-135. Many of the poems were first written in
Russian, but Klänge was published in German in late 1912.
25
Napier as n.24, 3.
26
M. T. H. Sadler, “After Gauguin,” Rhythm vol. I no. 4, Spring 1912, 26;
Kandinsky, 1938, in Napier, 1. Again I argue Kandinsky’s time in Paris was
crucial. Equally, Weiss has noted the influence of the German symbolist poet
Stefan George on Kandinsky’s Klänge, Kandinsky in Munich, 86-91. George
himself had spent time in Mallarmé’s circle in Paris. See J. W. Burrow, The Crisis
of Reason, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 222.
27
Kandinsky’s term has been variously translated. Vergo and Lindsay use “mood”,
K. C. Lindsay and P. Vergo eds., Kandinsky, Complete Writings on Art, Faber,
London, 1982, 114-220; Sadler used “essential spirit of nature”, thus linking the
term to the idea of “inner need”. “Atmosphere” is used by Strattan in the
introduction to the Dover reprint of Sadler’s text.
28
I would also suggest that Concerning the Spiritual in Art could be read in this
way. Weiss further interprets Kandinsky’s earlier Poems without Words in relation
to the gesamtkunstwerk, as n.24, 126.
29
Edward Wadsworth, “Inner Necessity,” Blast, vol. I, June 1914, 124.
30
Kandinsky to M.T. H. Sadler, 7 December 1911, TGA 8221.6.19.
31
Hugo Ball, Lecture on Kandinsky, Zurich, 1916-17 in Jelena Hahl-Koch,
Kandinsky, London, 1993, 142.
32
Kandinsky, advertising circular for Klänge, in Hahl-Koch, as n.31, 142.
33
ibid, 142.
34
V. Woolf to V. Sackville-West, 16 March 1926, Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol.
3, 247.
35
V. Woolf, “A Sketch of the Past”, Moments of Being, 75, in Briggs, as n. 20,
251.
36
J. Briggs, 79.
37
V. Woolf, “The String Quartet”, 36-7.
38
V. Woolf to Gerald Brenan, 25 December1922, Letters of Virginia Woolf, 3,
597-598.
39
V. Woolf, “The String Quartet”, 38.
40
Kandinsky to M.T. H. Sadler, 7 December 1911, TGA 8221.6.19. He continued
“If this really is the case, write to me about it.”
41
E. M. Forster, Howards End, [1910], (London: Penguin, 2000), 28. Forster’s
writing is discussed at greater length in my introduction to this volume.
42
V. Bell to V. Woolf, 3 July 1918, in Regina Mahler, ed., The Letters of Vanessa
Bell, (London: Bloomsbury, 1993), 214.
43
Kandinsky, on painterly composition from Concerning the Spiritual in Art, in
Magdalena Dabrowski, “Kandinsky and Schoenberg: Abstraction as a Visual
202 Chapter Seven

Metaphor of Emancipated Dissonance,” Schoenberg, Kandinsky and the Blue

Rider, (New York: The Jewish Museum, New York, 2004), 86.
44
V. Woolf to V. Bell, 15 July 1918, in J. Briggs, as n.20, 67.
45
Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual, Figure 1.
46
Kandinsky to Schönberg, 18 January 1911, as n.9, 21.
47
Bryan R. Simms, “ ‘My Dear Hagerl’: Self-Representation in Schoenberg’s
String Quartet No.2,” 19th-Century Music, XXVI, (3), 2003, 272.
48
A clear layman’s exposition of this work is given in BBC Radio Three’s
“Discovering Music”, Saturday 12th August 2006,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/discoveringmusic/pip/vr2bl/ accessed 20 July 2010.
49
Arnold Schönberg, Harmonielehre, quoted in M. D. Calvocoressi, “The
Classicism of Arnold Schönberg,” The Musical Times, 1 April 1914, 235.
50
Daily Mail, 31 August 1912, in David Lambourn’s revealing article “Henry
Wood and Schoenberg,” The Musical Times, vol. 128, August 1987, 422.
51
ibid, 426. For a contemporary assessment of Schönberg in Britain see Charles
Maclean, “Schönberg: a short sketch of his life,” The Musical Times, 1 May 1914,
302-304.
52
Schönberg to Ferruccio Busoni, quoted in William E. Benjamin, “Abstract
Polyphonies: The Music of Schoenberg’s Nietzschean Moment,” C. M. Cross and
R. A. Berman, eds., Political and Religious Ideas in the Works of Arnold
Schoenberg, Garland, New York, 2000, 10.
53
A. Eaglefield Hall, “The Discrepancies Between Present Musical Theories and
Modern Practice,” The Musical Times, 1 April 1914, 239.
54
Charles Maclean, “Schönberg: a Short Sketch of his Life,” 303.
55
Simms, as n. 47, 259.
56
Schönberg to Busoni, after 11 August 1909, in W. E. Benjamin, 13.
57
W. E. Benjamin, 18-28. For suspension, see also Lydia Goehr, “Adorno,
Schoenberg, and the Totentanz der Prinzipien – in Thirteen Steps,” Journal of the
American Musicological Society, vol. 56 no.3, 2003, 595-636.
58
A. E. Hall, 303.
59
Fry, “Art: The Grafton Gallery: an Apologia,” as n.5, 391.
60
Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 36.
61
D. S. McColl to C. Bell, 26 October 1913, Cambridge, Kings College,
CHA/1/384.
62
P. A. Heseltine, “Some Reflections on Modern Musical Criticism,” The Musical
Times, 1 October 1913, 653.
63
Roger Fry, “The French Group,” as n.7, 353.
64
Lydia Goehr, “Radical Modernism and the Failure of Style: Philosophical
Reflections on Maeterlinck-Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande,” Representations, 74,
Spring 2001, 57.
65
Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will [1889], authorised trans. F. L. Pogson 1910,
(New York: Dover, 2001), x.
66
Vladimir Jankélévitch, Leje-ne-sais-quoi et le Presque-rien, quoted in
Jankélévitch, trans. Carolyn Abbate, Music and the Ineffable, (Princeton and
Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003), x.
 Dismembering and Remembering Kandinsky 203

67
Stefan George, “Litany”, The Works of Stefan George: rendered in English,
(AMS, 1966), 213.
68
Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual, 17.
69
Kandinsky, “Reminiscences,” [1913], K.C. Lindsay and P. Vergo, eds.,
Complete Writings on Art, (London: G.K. Hall, 1982), vol. I, 357-82.
70
V.Woolf, “A Sketch of the Past”, Moments of Being, 72-73, in Julia Briggs, 353-
4.
 PART IV:

MUSIC AND MODERN LIFE

 CHAPTER EIGHT

VISUAL MUSIC IN FILM, 1921-1924:

RICHTER, EGGELING, RUTTMAN

MALCOLM COOK

The early 1920s saw considerable activity in the field of what may be
called “visual music”. Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Walther Ruttman
produced a series of abstract animated films whose focus on qualities such
as movement, rhythm, tempo, mood, counterpoint, harmony and composition
was more akin to the concerns of music than the representational narratives
that were characteristic of cinema in this period. Music was a central
influence on all the artists discussed here; Richter’s interest in counterpoint
was provoked by discussions with composer Ferruccio Busoni; Busoni
also proved an influence on Eggeling who was a pianist and whose father
owned a music shop; Walther Ruttmann was a cellist and violinist.1
Beneath this apparently simple unity of intention, however, lay a
number of complex and at times oppositional issues. The influence of
music can be understood in two very different ways; on the one hand the
non-representational quality of music can be seen as an inspiration to
explore the unique qualities of the artist’s own medium, music serves as an
analogy for the interrogation of the non-representational qualities of
painting or film. In contrast music can be tightly integrated into the film in
an attempt to synthesise the visual and the aural, to create a synaesthetic
mingling of the senses which denies the differences in art forms that the
music as analogy approach erects. This chapter will examine the work of
three key practitioners of visual music in the period 1921-1924: Eggeling,
Richter and Ruttmann, to identify how each addressed these issues, both in
their discussion of their films but particularly with regard to the films
themselves. Furthermore it will argue that these issues should not be
considered simply as aesthetic choices, but as intimately linked to broader
cultural concerns, Richter’s and Eggeling’s work embodying the “separation
of the senses”, described by Jonathan Crary, that resulted from the
nineteenth century scientific investigation of vision. In contrast Ruttman’s
 Visual Music in Film, 1921-1924: Richter, Eggeling, Ruttman 207

films can be seen to reflect not only nineteenth-century aesthetic concerns

with synaesthesia and the Gesamtkunstwerk, but also the emergence of
Gestalt psychology.
My chosen period begins in 1921 with the earliest extant abstract
animation films, Ruttmann’s Lichtspiel Opus 1 and Richter’s Rhythmus 21.
While there is some doubt over the provenance of Richter’s Rhythmus
films, the question of primacy is unimportant as there are a number of
precedents which indicate that these films belong to a cultural continuum
rather than marking a paradigm shift.2 The abstract co-ordination of colour
and music can be traced at least as far back as 1725 and French Jesuit
monk Louis-Bertrand Castel’s clavecin oculaire, a colour harpsichord
which displayed coloured light on a screen above the harpsichord when a
note was played; similar colour organs have been experimented with since
that time.3 Equally the treatment of visual art in analogy with music has a
long history as far back as 1647, even if full abstraction did not emerge till
much later.4 Twentieth century relations can also be found in the scroll
paintings of Duncan Grant (1914), and Werner Graeff (1922), as well as
early kinetic light sculptures and theatrical performances.5 It is beyond the
scope of this essay to examine these parallels in detail, however there are
two lost or unrealised film projects which I would like to examine in more
depth, as they highlight the distinction between music as an analogy for
purely visual work and as a synaesthetic impulse to cross sense boundaries.
Between 1910 and 1912 brothers Arnaldo Ginna and Bruno Corra, who
were associated with the Italian Futurist movement, produced a series of
films by applying coloured paint directly to film strips. Although the films
have since been lost, their work is documented in Corra’s article “Abstract
Cinema – Chromatic Music”.6 The films emerged out of their experiments
with a colour organ, on which they “translated, with a few necessary
modifications, a Venetian barcarolle by Mendelssohn, a rondo by Chopin,
a Mozart sonata”.7 The attempt to make direct translations of music into
colour indicates an impulse towards synaesthesia, and thus relates to my
first distinction, between music as an analogy and attempts to synthesise or
mimic music.
Synaesthesia is primarily a medical term which describes the condition
in which the stimulation of one sense causes a perception in another. The
most famous example is “colour hearing”, hearing a particular sound
producing a perception of visual colour, although almost all combinations
of senses are known, from tasting sounds to seeing smells. Many artists are
thought to have experienced synaesthesia, and have tried to translate their
experience in their artwork, for instance Russian composer Aleksandr
Scriabin (1872-1915), whose symphony Prometheus – The Poem of Fire
208 Chapter Eight

Op 60 (1908-1910), features not only musical notation but also colour

notation to be performed on a colour organ.8 Other artists, particularly
poets, have embraced cross-sensory metaphors, even if they are not known
to have experienced synaesthesia, or only a drug induced psychedelic
equivalent. Charles Baudelaire’s poem “Correspondances”, which played
an important role in the Symbolist movement, expressed a clear belief in a
correspondence of the senses, that “perfumes, sounds, and colours
correspond”.9 Arthur Rimbaud established a direct relationship between
colours and vowels in “Voyelles”, whose opening line is “A black, E
white, I red, U green, O blue”.10 Similar use of synaesthetic metaphor may
equally be found in the work of the Romantic poets, such as John Keats
and Percy Bysshe Shelley.11 Despite these examples, Richard Cytowic
argues that synaesthesia’s “phenomenology clearly distinguishes it from
metaphor, literary tropes, sound symbolism, and deliberate artistic
contrivances that sometimes employ the term "synesthesia" to describe
their multisensory joinings”.12 Nevertheless the term synaesthesia is in
common currency in describing any artwork which attempts to cross
sensory boundaries.13 Ginna and Corra’s experiments can be seen as
synaesthetic because they do not simply take inspiration from music, but
attempt to translate music into colour, demonstrating a belief in a direct
correspondence between the senses, a belief repeated through the
Futurists’ manifestos and works: consider the titles of Carlo Carrà’s article
“The Painting of Sounds, Noises and Smells” (1913), and Enrico
Prampolini’s “Chromophony – the Colours of Sounds” (1913).14
In contrast to the Futurist synaesthetic impulse, the work of Léopold
Survage, who was associated with the Cubist movement, highlights the
alternative, the use of music purely as an analogy for abstract animation.
Survage explicitly rejected the idea of a synaesthetic correspondence “[my
work] is in no way an illustration or an interpretation of musical work. It is
an autonomous art, although based on the same psychological premises as
music”.15 Working in Paris around the same time as Ginna and Corra were
producing their films in Italy, Survage produced a series of paintings
which were intended to serve as “key frames” for a full animated film
which he titled “Coloured Rhythm”. Unfortunately, despite discussions
with the Gaumont Company, the film was never produced.16 Nevertheless,
it is clear from both Survage’s descriptions and those of others that music
served purely as a model for an independent art of kinetic colour and form,
rather than an attempt to mimic or accompany music. In the words of
Guillaume Apollinaire “one can compare Coloured Rhythm to music, but
the analogies are superficial, and it really is an independent art having
infinitely varied resources of its own”.17 For Clement Greenberg, it is this
 Visual Music in Film, 1921-1924: Richter, Eggeling, Ruttman 209

treatment of music as the ideal art form, its use as an analogy, which is the
defining characteristic of the move towards abstraction in twentieth
century painting. In 1940 he wrote,

Only by accepting the example of music and defining each of the other arts
solely in the terms of the sense or faculty which perceived its effect and by
excluding from each art whatever is intelligible in the terms of any other
sense or faculty would the non-musical arts attain the “purity” and self-
sufficiency which they desired … the other arts can also be sensuous, if
only they will look to music, not to ape its effects but to borrow its
principles as a “pure” art, as an art which is abstract because it is almost
nothing else except sensuous.18

Greenberg’s comments raise an important adjunct to the relationship

established between music as an analogy and synaesthetic fusing of the
senses. A notion of “the arts” and the criteria for their categorisation has a
long history and is a topic which deserves attention in its own right,
however there are two approaches which are important to our discussion.19
The first approach is that used by Greenberg, who makes the distinction on
the basis of the senses; “defining each of the other arts solely in the terms
of the sense or faculty which perceived its effect”.20 The arts have often
been divided on the basis of the sense they primarily address, a concept
that remains evident today, as Hermès’ perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena
states, “the painter learns to see, the pianist learns to listen, I learned to
smell”.21 For Greenberg music serves as a model for the other arts to
explore the unique qualities of their medium in relation to the sense they
address. A synaesthetic approach, such as that of the Futurists, which
explores relationships and parallels between the senses, and therefore the
arts, clearly stands in direct opposition to this approach. Ultimately this
distinction must address the question of perception and the scientific
understanding of the human senses. If the senses are understood as five
discrete channels, then Greenberg’s approach may seem appropriate,
although not inevitable. However, if the cross-sensory experiences of
synaesthetes are taken to suggest that the senses are not discrete, then
Greenberg’s distinction can be considered arbitrary.
The arts are not always divided purely on the basis of the senses, and
there is an equal tradition of dividing them between the spatial and
temporal, music being concerned purely with changes over time, painting
being concerned with changes over space. 22 Such an approach often
returns to the senses and the division between them, as Jean-Jacques
Rousseau suggests: “the field of sound is time, that of sight is space”.23 As
with the sensual division of the arts, the temporal/spatial distinction is
210 Chapter Eight

undermined by a synaesthetic approach to visual music, as it introduces

temporal aspects to the visual. Clearly cinema poses a significant
challenge to this distinction, encompassing as it does both the spatial and
temporal, and poses a problem for the use of film by artists who wish to
work purely in analogy with music.
It can be seen that the aesthetic context in 1921 in which Richter,
Eggeling and Ruttmann were working provided two very different models.
On the one hand the idea of music as an analogy for visual art, on the other
a synaesthetic correspondence of the senses. It is common to divide the
work of Richter/Eggeling (treated as an inseparable pair), and Ruttmann as
embodying this split; Richter/Eggeling concerned with music purely as an
analogy, Ruttmann creating a synthetic union of colour, form and music.
As Standish Lawder writes “Ruttmann’s film of pictured music depended
upon a sensual fusion of image and sound … whereas Richter and
Eggeling used music as a structural model to analyze the movement
through time and space”.24
It is certainly the case that Richter and Eggeling used music as an
analogy for their work. They were both painters working around the Dada
movement in Zürich when they were introduced, in 1918, by Tristan
Tzara.25 Already by this time, Richter had expressed a desire to paint
“according to principles like those in music”.26 Discussions with composer
Ferruccio Busoni had led him to compare his notion of counterpoint, “a
balance and counter-balance of the white paper with the black spots of
ink” with Bach’s music and its “up and down, the movements and
countermovements all leading to a definite unity”.27 Equally Eggeling had
been developing his own theory of linear relationships, a “language of
linear forms” which Hans Arp suggests was called a “symphony” even at
this point, identifying a musical influence that would be explicitly
acknowledged in the titles of Eggeling’s Horizontal-Vertical Orchestra
(1921), and Symphonie Diagonal (1924).28 Richter and Eggeling’s theories
were similar enough that they joined forces and worked together at the
estate Richter’s parents owned in Klein-Kölzig, near Berlin. Between 1919
and 1921, their shared interest in movement and progression led to a
natural development, first from painting and drawing to scroll paintings,
and then to film. That music remained an influence is confirmed by Theo
van Doesburg, who visited Richter and Eggeling in late 1920 and wrote
the following in De Stijl in 1921:

It is helpful to compare abstract film-making with visual music, because

the whole composition develops visually, in its open field of light, in a
manner more or less analogous to music. The spectator sees the
composition (already worked out by the artist in a “score”) come into
 Visual Music in Film, 1921-1924: Richter, Eggeling, Ruttman 211

being, attain a clearly defined form, and then disappear into the field of
light, from which a new composition of totally different structure is built
up again.29

Despite this historical evidence, the use of music as an analogy is not

always immediately apparent when watching Richter and Eggeling’s films.
The films are rigidly visual, and the only element that may be considered
musical is the temporal aspect the medium of film introduces. Despite
Richter’s titles, there is little sense of rhythm or tempo in the sense one
would experience in music; it would be impossible to tap out the rhythm of
these films afterwards, as one is able to after a piece of music. A better
understanding of the films is found when they are viewed in the spirit in
which they were made; as they were made in analogy with music, so they
should be viewed in analogy to music. There are of course many different
aspects to understanding music, but we might highlight a particularly
important and overarching division, the examination of vertical and
horizontal relationships. The vertical relationships are those in the same
moment, in music examples are harmony (and dissonance), and the
relationship between different instruments; in Richter and Eggeling’s films
this equates to the spatial relationships between the multiple shapes which
appear on screen at the same time. The horizontal relationships are those
that occur over time, for example in music melody is understood as the
relationship of notes over time. In Richter and Eggeling’s films this
equates to the relationship between the visual elements over time, such as
those between shots. Such an analysis must still acknowledge the
fundamental differences between music and these purely visual films. In
Richter’s Rhythmus 21 there is a section where a white square on a black
background becomes a black square on a white background (Figs. 8.1,
8.2). This change strikes one as inherently visual, there is no equivalent
reversal that could be achieved in sound. Thus while a reading of the films
in analogy with music is useful, it must be noted that it serves as much to
highlight the differences between them as the similarities.
Walther Ruttmann, like Richter and Eggeling, started his career as a
painter, however for him the influence of music was more than purely
analogous, following instead the Futurists’ concern with the
correspondence of music with colour and moving form. Relatively little is
known about Ruttmann’s intentions or how he made his animated film, yet
is clear from the completed film that he was more technically
accomplished than Richter and Eggeling, who by their own admission
knew nothing more “about cameras than we had seen in shop windows,
and the mechanised technique of photography frightened us”.30
Ruttmann’s film is more proficiently animated, using primitive versions of
212 Chapter Eight

many of the animation techniques that would become institutionalised ten

years later at the Disney Studio, such as “squash and stretch” and “slow in
and out”.31 In addition Ruttmann was able to co-ordinate colour and sound
with his film. While the colour techniques of tinting, toning and hand
colouring used by Ruttmann were common in this period, the precise co-
ordination of sound required Ruttmann to notate visually Max Butting’s
musical score to allow the players to ensure the music coincided precisely
with the intended visual.32
While these differences can be attributed to Ruttmann’s technical
accomplishment, importantly they are also indicative of the very different
concerns Ruttmann had in making his film. Each of the three qualities,
animation, colour and music, is synthesised into the overall experience of
the film. The use of sound and colour to complement the moving shapes in
Opus 1 indicates Ruttmann’s inheritance of the synaesthetic tradition, his
belief that there is a correspondence between these elements or the senses
they address, although he does not establish a fixed relationship between
them. Ruttmann rejects, for instance, any rigid or precise colour-tone or
colour-pitch correspondence of the kind Scriabin had used in his work,
preferring instead a more impressionistic relationship between the
elements.33
The second of the three “movements” in Opus 1 most clearly illustrates
this aspect of the film. The movement begins following a black screen and
a silence, already a form of correspondence, an absence of light and sound.
Its first sequence depicts an abstract yet anthropomorphised battle between
a triangle which stabs into the screen with increasing violence (Fig. 8.3),
and a number of aquatic organic shapes which swim around the triangle
(Fig. 8.4). The opposition in the qualities in these two elements finds
equivalence in the music accompanying the sequence. The graceful fluid
movement of the aquatic shapes find a partner in the smoother legato
notes, the triangle’s fixed, geometric shape and its stabbing motion equally
find a partner in the shrill staccato notes in the music. As the triangle’s
stabbing becomes more erratic, protruding from top or bottom and
penetrating the screen to a greater or lesser extent, so the music also
becomes less melodic, and the aquatic shapes disappear, an apparent
victory for the geometric and staccato over the organic and legato in both
image and sound. The whole sequence is tinted and toned in a cold blue
colour which again would seem to correspond with the nature of the
sequence, a battle in which the harsh elements are victorious over the mild.
Such a reading is given further strength by the following sequence in
this movement. Again the sequence establishes a relationship between a
protrusion from the top or bottom of the screen and a free-floating aquatic
 Visual Music in Film, 1921-1924: Richter, Eggeling, Ruttman 213

shape, but where in the first sequence the relationship was antagonistic,
here it becomes a mating dance. The protrusion is no longer a fixed
geometric shape, rather an organic form which languidly moves across the
screen (Fig. 8.5). The aquatic elements, rather than trying to avoid the
aggressive movements of the triangle, instead caress the protrusion,
sensuously tracing its shape (Fig. 8.6). Both the music and colour reflect
this shift. In opposition to the cold blue of the first sequence, the mating
dance is shown in a warm orange/red colour, with the music emphasising
the harmonic and legato over staccato and dissonance. In Opus 1
geometric forms, the colour blue, and shrill staccato tones are grouped
together in opposition to organic shapes, the colour red, and deeper legato
tones; thus Ruttmann may be seen to be establishing a relationship or
correspondence between colour, form and music.
While I have characterised Ruttmann’s work as fitting into the tradition
of synaesthesia, his later films can equally be seen in relation to the
musical analogy approach I identified as characteristic of Richter and
Eggeling’s work. After finishing Opus 1 Ruttmann produced a further
three shorter abstract animated films Opus II (1922), Opus III (1923), and
Opus IV (1924). These did not have a co-ordinated score and used only
basic tinting, in contrast to the complex score and variety of tinting,
toning, and hand colouring used in Opus 1. Some commentators have
interpreted this shift as a progression from the nineteenth-century concern
with synaesthesia found in Opus 1 to the modernist concern with form in
Opus II/III/IV. Malcolm Le Grice suggests there is a progression in these
three later films, from the anthropomorphic, through the geometric to the
optical, a progression which mirrors the wider trajectory of abstract art in
the twentieth century.34 Yet the shift away from the complexities of Opus 1
can equally be seen more simply as a result of the difficulties of producing
a film with co-ordinated music and colour in the early 1920s, a position
taken by William Moritz.35 The planning, production, post-production and
performance of Opus 1, with the technology available to Ruttmann in 1921
would have been difficult, time consuming and expensive. Repeating the
experiment may have proved too difficult, whatever Ruttmann’s aesthetic
aims. Technology can thus be seen as an important factor in the aesthetics
of the films discussed.
Richter and Eggeling’s work equally presents contradictions and
complications which undermine characterising them as simply opposing
the synaesthetic approach. One such contradiction is in the use of music to
accompany Richter and Eggeling’s films. It is usually assumed that these
films were shown unaccompanied, in contrast not only to Ruttmann’s
Opus 1, but also to most “silent” cinema which would have had some form
214 Chapter Eight

of musical accompaniment. This is given additional weight by contemporary

accounts, such as the following by Adolf Behne

It is characteristic that the film [Horizontal-Vertical Orchestra], a technical

collaboration between Eggeling and Hans Richter, not only exists without
musical accompaniment but quite rejects the need for one.36

For Behne the lack of musical accompaniment is not simply a technical

issue but fundamental to the aesthetic of the film, its treatment purely as an
analogy rather than as an element to be synthesised into the film. Yet
writing in 1949 Hans Richter suggests that, at least at some screenings,
Symphonie Diagonal was accompanied “with fragments of Beethoven’s
symphonies as a musical background” and elsewhere that “Stephen Volpe
[sic] … accompanied my film with his atonal music”.37 Stefan Wolpe’s
involvement is confirmed by the appearance of Filmmusik zu Rhythmus in
the list of the composer’s lost compositions for 1925.38
Furthermore it is not clear that these artists made the strict division I
have made between music purely as analogy and the synaesthetic impulse
to combine the arts and senses. Theo van Doesburg, following his visit
with Richter and Eggeling in 1920, wrote the following in De Stijl: “this
abstract dynamic plasticism is mechanically realised, and will be
accompanied by musical compositions in which the instrumentation as
well as the content would have to be totally new”.39 It is not the synthesis
with music which van Doesburg objects to as much as the particular type
of music. Later in the same article, van Doesburg, goes further, saying,

this motion-picture composition cannot only serve as a medium for the

collaboration of all the arts according to a new harmony, but it can also
release the modern artist from the old primitive method of manual oil-
painting.40

If the arts are divided by the sense they appeal to, then the “collaboration
of all the arts” embodies the synaesthetic impulse, yet van Doesburg
considers this compatible with the modernist project of Richter and
Eggeling. For van Doesburg the strict use of music purely as analogy was
secondary to the importance of experimentation and the creation of new
forms. Considering Richter's and Eggeling's work as synaesthetic was not
problematic as long as they were synthesising new forms of musical and
visual language.
Eggeling and Richter’s films also challenge the other method of
dividing the arts, that between the temporal and spatial. By progressing to
scroll paintings and then to film Richter and Eggeling introduced temporal
 Visual Music in Film, 1921-1924: Richter, Eggeling, Ruttman 215

aspects not just to the perception of the work, to be discussed later, but
also to the work itself. The result of this can clearly be identified in their
films, particularly Hans Richter’s Rhythmus 21 and Rhythmus 23. One
possible result of the music as analogy approach is the elimination of
figuration, the focus on pure form without reference to the objective world,
and particularly the elimination of the illusion of depth. Within Richter’s
paintings, and even within his scrolls, the flat planes achieve this, there is a
concentration on the surface relationship between elements and no illusion
of depth. The introduction of time in his film does not simply allow him to
explore these depthless relationships across time as well as space, but
reintroduces an illusory depth to the image. Richter shows a number of
rectangular forms, growing and shrinking, yet while this may be
intellectually interpreted as depthless forms changing over time, it is
almost inevitable that they are immediately perceived as the object moving
closer or further away from the spectators, and thus implying a depth to
the screen.
An equal illusion of off screen space is implied by the movement of
forms across the edge of the screen. Again while these may be interpreted
as forms simply stretching on screen, it is more easily perceived as a
constant shape travelling from or to an imaginary off screen space. In a
static painting a form abutting the frame would only imply a space beyond
the frame if the object were recognisable. On the whole, within an abstract
painting the spectators have no prior knowledge of the forms visible and
therefore a shape abutting the edge of the frame will simply emphasise the
frame rather than implying a space beyond it. The introduction of time to
space, that is, movement within Richter’s films, allows the spectators to
gain knowledge of the form and thus when it abuts the edge of the screen
and gets smaller, the implication of an off-screen space is greater than the
idea that the shape is simply changing shape.
It is these two qualities which most distinguish Richter’s films from
Eggeling’s. Symphonie Diagonal implies neither off-screen space nor
depth; instead its time lapse changes remain much closer to the painterly
concern with the viewers’ perception of the artwork in time than the
introduction of temporal elements into the artwork. Yet this concern with
perception was not the starting point of Eggeling’s project but one of the
implications brought about by the initial impulse of his work, the
investigation of a universal language.
Viking Eggeling’s work (and to some extent Richter’s work with him),
was motivated by a single aim, to investigate and delineate an understanding
of a language and grammar of form. Richter describes “its almost scientific
method [which] led him to analyze how elements of form ‘behaved’ under
216 Chapter Eight

various conditions”.41 This involved not only reducing form to its basic
components, but also examining the relationships between them. This led
firstly to scroll painting and then to film, as the impact of changing
elements dynamically most clearly revealed their bearing upon the whole.
This shift introduced the question of perception, as Richter explains:

without intending to, we had arrived at a kind of dynamic expression which

produced a sensation rather different from that possible in easel painting.
This sensation lies in the stimulus which the remembering eye receives by
carrying its attention from one detail, phase or sequence, to another that
can be continued indefinitely … in so following the creative process, the
beholder experiences it as a process, not as a single fact. In this way, the
eye is stimulated to an especially active participation.42

In this aspect of Richter and Eggeling’s work we can see a strong

connection with the modernist painters that preceded them, particularly the
Cubist movement, for whom a concern with time and perception was
central.43 According to this interpretation, Cubist paintings placed
increased emphasis on the spectators’ role in perceiving over time, the eye
passes over the multi-faceted surface of the paintings that gave Cubism its
name. More broadly this shift in attention, from the scientific examination
of an object external to the observer, to an awareness of the role of
perception in comprehending and constructing experience provides a
direct connection with changes in the scientific examination of vision in
the nineteenth century.
Jonathan Crary claims many accounts of visual modernism and
modernity identify a rupture in representation and perception in the late
nineteenth century, whether in the work of Manet, the Impressionists or
Post Impressionists. Crary argues against such a reading, instead arguing
that visual modernism is the product of earlier scientific investigation,
rather than a reaction against it. He suggests that in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries the camera obscura was the dominant paradigm for a
model of vision, where “observation leads to truthful inferences about the
world”.44 With the camera obscura the observer stands apart from the
observed, a tabula rasa for information. During the nineteenth century,
increased attention was paid to the physiology of the human body,
especially vision, and the role of the observer in constructing their
perception. For Crary, the stereoscope became the dominant model for
vision in this period. When viewing with a stereoscope the observer is no
longer distinct from that which is observed, but rather becomes the focus
of attention. Of particular importance to our discussion, Crary suggests
that this increased “empirical isolation of vision” led to a “pervasive
 Visual Music in Film, 1921-1924: Richter, Eggeling, Ruttman 217

‘separation of the senses’”, a shift from a unified sensory model of human

perception to understanding the human sensorium as a collection of
independent senses. 45
Richter and Eggeling’s films can thus be seen as typically modern, not
only in the context of the visual modernism of Impressionism, Post
Impressionism and Cubism, but also a broader cultural modernity
predicated upon the notion of the active observer and a separation of the
senses. In contrast, viewed from this perspective, Ruttmann’s films,
particularly Opus 1, would seem antiquated, harking back to nineteenth-
century conceptions of synaesthesia which were debunked by the scientific
rationalism described by Crary. Standish Lawder gives such a reading of
Opus 1, arguing “it was, quite literally, an exercise in visible music,
fulfilling the nineteenth-century urge for a Gesamtkunstwerk”.46 Nineteenth
century interests in synaesthesia, whether in Wagner, Symbolism or
Romanticism, are an important aesthetic context for Ruttmann’s films, but
there remains a closer context which Ruttmann’s film can be considered in
relation to, and which also stood in opposition to the separation of the
senses: Gestalt psychology.
The roots of Gestalt psychology can be found in observations made by
Max Wertheimer in 1912, at that time working in Frankfurt.47 Wertheimer
noticed that when two lights placed together are alternately lit, there is a
perception of movement, that is rather than seeing two alternating lights
we see a single light moving from one position to another. For Wertheimer
this observation contradicted the prevailing scientific position that human
perception was the product of individual sensory inputs. Instead
Wertheimer argued it illustrated that it is the whole that is perceived first,
and only broken into its parts afterwards. Wertheimer expressed the
fundamental precept of Gestalt theory as follows,

there are wholes, the behaviour of which is not determined by that of their
individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves
determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole.48

This observation became the basis for a wide ranging study, particularly
with regards to, but not limited to, human perception. With regards to our
discussion of synaesthesia and the senses, Erich von Hornbostel’s 1927
paper “The Unity of the Senses” is the most useful in outlining a Gestalt
understanding of the senses. Von Hornbostel writes,

what is essential in the sensuous-perceptible is not that which separates the

senses from one another, but that which unites them; unites them among
themselves; unites them with the entire (even with the non-sensuous)
218 Chapter Eight

experience in ourselves; and with all the external world that there is to be
experienced.49

Von Hornbostel goes on to identify the same implication for art

identified earlier in relation to synaesthesia, that the unity of the senses
makes arbitrary any categorisation of “the arts” on the basis of them. He
writes,

the unity of the senses is given from the very beginning. And together with
this the unity of the arts … In the mask-dance, music and painting,
sculpture and poetry, are not yet separated from one another; colours and
forms are still drawn into the sounding whirl of human action and its
cosmic meaning.50

In Gestalt psychology and theory, we find a cultural context for

Ruttmann’s synaesthetic films. It is unclear whether Ruttmann was
directly aware of the Gestalt psychologists’ work. Certainly, the initial
Gestalt experiments of Wertheimer, in conjunction with Wolfgang Köhler
and Kurt Koffka, were carried out in Frankfurt, Ruttmann’s home town
and the location for the first screening of Opus 1.51 Furthermore, both
Wertheimer and Köhler were working in Berlin when Ruttmann moved
there in late 1922.52 Ruttmann’s films certainly embody the same spirit as
Gestalt theory.
My earlier reading of Opus 1 emphasised the synaesthetic qualities of
it, and in many ways this same reading may be used equally as a “Gestalt”
reading, however there remains an important distinction between
synaesthesia and the Gestalt understanding of the senses outlined above.
Synaesthesia, both as a medical condition and as a more general artistic
metaphor, may be considered cross-sensory, the senses are understood in
relation or comparison to each other, they are intermingled. In contrast, as
the quotation from von Hornbostel above suggests, a Gestalt approach is
trans- or meta-sensory. It is concerned with those qualities which are not
unique to an individual sense, which von Hornbostel suggests are in the
majority.53 Whether such a distinction can be made with regard to the
films under discussion is questionable. Much of the distinction rests at the
level of language. One might argue that such a discussion reveals the
imprecise nature of language and communication, that there is an
experiential difference between a warm touch and a warm sound, but that
the attempt to communicate that difference tests the limits of language.
Yet language is such a fundamental part of the way that we experience the
world that non-specific sensual concepts like intensity or brightness seem
natural. Such discussions consume both scientists and philosophers, and
 Visual Music in Film, 1921-1924: Richter, Eggeling, Ruttman 219

are clearly beyond the scope of this chapter to solve, but it remains useful
to understand that such discussions were precisely what provoked the
filmmakers under discussion to make their films. I would argue that
Ruttmann’s Opus 1 clearly demonstrates a concern with these issues, even
if it ultimately does not fully resolve them. In the second movement of the
film, Ruttmann makes a strong case for the Gestalt approach, the qualities
of the “sharp” strings coinciding with the “sharp” geometric shapes, while
the “smooth” strings coincide with the “smooth” forms. When Max
Wertheimer, in 1925, said “one finds many processes which, in their
dynamical form, are identical regardless of variations in the material
character of their elements”, he could easily have been describing Opus 1.54
Just as Ruttmann’s Opus 1 embodies the concerns of the Gestalt
approach, so Eggeling and Richter’s films, especially Symphonie Diagonal,
would seem to embody the atomistic scientific approach described by
Crary that Wertheimer and the Gestalt psychologists attacked. Wertheimer’s
description of science could equally to be taken as a description of the
operation of Symphonie Diagonal:

isolate the elements, discover their laws, then reassemble them, and the
problem is solved. All wholes are reduced to pieces and piecewise relations
between pieces.55

In watching Symphonie Diagonal the viewers experience this first

hand. Stills from Symphonie Diagonal can be rather misleading, giving the
impression that the film presents a single, consistent gestalt form (Fig.
8.7), which is then broken down to its constituent elements. It should be
recognised that a version of this form only appears several minutes into the
film, and that it never exists in a fixed state, unlike stills which purport to
represent it. The experience of viewing Symphonie Diagonal is of each
element of this form being presented in part, and being systematically
divided into smaller and smaller elements. By the time the larger form
appears the viewers see it not as a gestalt, but as being constituted of the
individual elements: pan-pipes (Fig. 8.8), combs (Fig. 8.9), and swirls
(Fig. 8.10). These elements are in turn understood as being constituted of
smaller elements down to the most basic straight and curved lines. The
rhythmic and constantly shifting relationships between the elements
further emphasises their nature as individual parts. The viewers are unable
to hold in place a simple relationship between any of the parts and instead
must accept their autonomy. Of course the intention of Gestalt theory was
to describe the mechanisms of perception, not to prescribe a particular way
art should be created, or provide a value system by which to judge it. Yet
Symphonie Diagonal would seem to demand that it is perceived in pieces
220 Chapter Eight

(and only with the eyes), and therefore can be seen to stand in opposition
to Gestalt theories.
The notion of “visual music” can be seen as a useful way for
understanding the significant number of abstract animated films produced
in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. For each filmmaker the term can be
understood in a slightly different manner: for Hans Richter and Viking
Eggeling music served purely as an analogy of interrogating the qualities
of visual media without recourse to representation. In contrast Walther
Ruttmann integrated music into his film in attempt to synthesise them, to
cross sense boundaries in a manner analogous to the medical condition
synaesthesia. These ideas were not simply timeless aesthetic choices made
by each artist, but rather intimately linked to social and cultural patterns.
Eggeling and Richter’s work can be seen to embody the separation of the
senses established by scientific investigations of the nineteenth century.
This atomistic approach to the human sensorium came under scrutiny by
the Gestalt theoretical movement at the same moment that Ruttmann was
producing films which rejected the rarefied purity of Richter and
Eggeling’s films, instead revelling in a hybridity that foreshadowed the
arrival of sound cinema in 1928.
 Visual Music in Film, 1921-1924: Richter, Eggeling, Ruttman 221

Fig. 8.1: Hans Richter, Rhythmus 21, white on black reversed to black on white, ©
image courtesy of Kino International.
222 Chapter Eight

Fig. 8.3 -8.4: Walther Ruttmann, Opus 1. Geometric triangle and aquatic shape in
conflict, © Image Entertainment.
 Visual Music in Film, 1921-1924: Richter, Eggeling, Ruttman 223

Fig. 8.5: Walther Ruttmann, Opus 1, 1921, languid organic protrusion, © Image
Entertainment.

Fig 8.6: Walther Ruttmann, Opus 1, 1921, aquatic shapes caress the protrusion, ©
Image Entertainment.
224 Chapter Eight

Fig. 8.7: Viking Eggeling, Symphonie Diagonal, gestalt form, © image courtesy of
Kino International.
 Visual Music in Film, 1921-1924: Richter, Eggeling, Ruttman 225

Figs. 8.8-8-10: Viking Eggeling, Symphonie Diagonal, pan-pipes, © image

courtesy of Kino International
226 Chapter Eight

Notes
1
Bernd Finkeldey “Hans Richter and the Constructivist International” in Stephen
C. Foster ed., Hans Richter: Activism, Modernism and the Avant-Garde,
(Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1998), 94; Louise O’Konor, Viking Eggeling,
1880-1925: Artist and Film-maker, Life and Work, (Stockholm: Almqvist &
Wicksell, 1971); Robert Russett and Cecile Starr, Experimental Animation:
Origins of a New Art, (New York: Da Capo Press, 1976), 34.
2
William Moritz suggests that the film now titled Rythmus 21 was produced in
1927-1928 along with most of Rhythmus 23, with only the middle section of that
film containing elements of Richter’s 1921 work, albeit in combination with
material added in 1925. See William Moritz “Restoring the Aesthetics of Early
Abstract Films” in Jayne Pilling ed., A Reader in Animation Studies, (London:
John Libbey, 1997), 221-222. Ruttmann’s Opus 1 was thought to be lost until
1976, when a partial print was discovered in a Moscow archive. The version I have
referred to is that released on DVD alongside Ruttmann’s Berlin, Symphony of a
Great City by Image Entertainment in the USA. This is accompanied by Timothy
Brock’s adaptation of Max Butting’s score. I believe both the print and score are as
accurate as possible, however it should be borne in mind that they are
reconstructions. For further information on the reconstruction see William Moritz,
1997, 223-224.
3
Olivia Mattis “Scriabin to Gershwin: Colour Music from a Musical Perspective,”
in Kerry Brougher ed., Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900,
Jeremy Strick, Ari Wiseman, Judith Zilczer, (New York: Thames and Hudson,
2005), 213.
4
Andrew Kagan “Ut Pictura Musica to 1860,” Absolute Art, (St. Louis: Grenart
Books, 1995), 73-99.
5
See Wulf Herzogenrath, “Light-play and Kinetic Theatre as Parallels to Absolute
Film,” in Film as Film: Formal Experiment in Film, 1910-1975, (London: Arts
Council of Great Britain, 1979), 22-26.
6
Bruno Corra, “Abstract Cinema – Chromatic Music” (1912), reprinted and
translated in Umbro Apollonio ed.,Futurist Manifestos, (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1973), 66-70.
7
Bruno Corra, 1973, 67.
8
Simon Shaw-Miller, Visible Deeds of Music: Art and Music from Wagner to
Cage, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2002), 56-72.
9
“Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent”, Charles Baudelaire, Les
Fleurs du Mal, (Paris: Calman-Lévy, 1857), reprinted in Charles Baudelaire
,Oeuvres Complètes, (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), 11.
10
“A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu”, Arthur Rimbaud “Voyelles” (1871),
reprinted in Arthur Rimbaud, Oeuvres, (Paris: Garnier, 1960), 110.
11
Lawrence E. Marks, The Unity of the Senses: Interrelations among the
Modalities, (New York: Academic Press, 1978), 236-243.
12
Richard E. Cytowic, “Synesthesia: Phenomenology And Neuropsychology,”
Psyche 2, July 1995 http://www.theassc.org/files/assc/2346.pdf. See also Richard
 Visual Music in Film, 1921-1924: Richter, Eggeling, Ruttman 227

E. Cytowic, Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses, 2nd ed., (Cambridge, Mass: The
MIT Press, 2002).
13
The title of Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900 is but the
most recent example. Kerry Brougher et al, 2005.
14
Carlo Carrà, "The Painting of Sounds, Noises and Smells” (1913), and Enrico
Prampolini “Chromophony – the Colours of Sounds” (1913), reprinted and
translated in U. Apollonio, 1973, 111-118.
15
Léopold Survage, “Coloured Rhythm,” Les Soirées de Paris, July-August 1914,
reprinted and translated in Robert Russett and Cecile Starr, 1976, 36.
16
Robert Russett and Cecile Starr, 1976, 35.
17
Guillaume Apollinaire, “Coloured Rhythm,” Paris-Journal 15 July 1914,
reprinted and translated in Robert Russett and Cecile Starr, 1976, 38.
18
Clement Greenberg, “Towards a Newer Laocoon,” Partisan Review, July-
August 1940, reprinted in Clement Greenberg, ed. John O’Brian, The Collected
Essays and Criticism - Vol.1: Perceptions and Judgments 1939-1944, (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986), 31-32.
19
Simon Shaw-Miller discusses the categorisation of the arts further, see Shaw-
Miller, 2002, 1-4.
20
Clement Greenberg, 1940, 31.
21
Quoted in Chandler Burr, “The Scent of the Nile,” The New Yorker 14 March
2005, 82.
22
See Simon Shaw-Miller, 2002, 7-11.
23
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Sounds and Colours,” Essai sur l’origine des langue
(1753), quoted and translated in Olivia Mattis, 2005, 215.
24
Standish D. Lawder, The Cubist Cinema, (New York: New York University
Press, 1975), 62.
25
Hans Richter, 1949, 220. Also Standish D. Lawder, 1975, 42.
26
Justin Hoffmann, “Hans Richter: Constructivist Filmmaker,” Stephen C. Foster,
1998, 74.
27
Hans Richter quoted in Bernd Finkeldey, 1998, 94.
28
Standish D. Lawder, 1975, 39; Hans Arp quoted in Standish D. Lawder, 1975,
39.
29
Theo van Doesburg, De Stijl, 4:5, June, 1921 quoted and translated in Standish
D. Lawder, 1975, 48.
30
For a brief description of Ruttmann’s working practise see William Moritz,
1997, 222; quote from Hans Richter, 1949, 221. It should be noted that Richter is
speaking on behalf of Eggeling, who died in 1925.
31
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation, (New
York: Disney Editions, 1981), 47-71.
32
William Moritz, 1997, 223.
33
Simon Shaw-Miller, 2002, 67.
34
Malcolm Le Grice, “German Abstract Film in the Twenties”, Arts Council of
Great Britain, 1979, 32.
35
William Moritz, 1997, 223.
228 Chapter Eight

36
Adolf Behne, “Der Film als Kunstwerk” Sozialistische Monatshefte, 15
December 1921, quoted and translated in Standish D. Lawder, 1975, 55.
37
Hans Richter, 1949, 223- 224.
38
The Stefan Wolpe Society “List of Works” http://www.wolpe.org/
39
Theo van Doesburg, De Stijl, 4:5, June, 1921 quoted and translated in Standish
D. Lawder, 1975, 48.
40
Theo van Doesburg, De Stijl, 4:5, June, 1921 quoted and translated in Louise
O’Konor, 1971, 48.
41
Hans Richter, Art and Anti Art quoted in Bernd Finkeldey, 1998, 95.
42
Hans Richter, “Easel-Scroll-Film”, Magazine of Art February 1952, reprinted in
Robert Russett and Cecile Starr, 1976, 52. Italics in the original.
43
For one discussion see Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten, Cubism and Culture,
(London: Thames and Hudson, 2001), 64-110.
44
Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the
Nineteenth Century, (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1992), 29.
45
Jonathan Crary, 1992, 19.
46
Standish D. Lawder, 1975, 51.
47
Duane Schultz, A History of Modern Psychology 2nd ed. (New York: Academic
Press, 1975), 266.
48
Max Wertheimer, “Gestalt Theory” (1925), reprinted and translated in A Source
Book of Gestalt Psychology, ed. Willis D. Ellis (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1938), 2.
49
Erich M. v. Hornbostel “The Unity of the Senses” (1927), reprinted and
translated in Willis D. Ellis, 1938, 214.
50
Erich M. v. Hornbostel, 1938, 216.
51
Duane Schultz, 1975, 265; William Moritz, 2004, 4.
52
William Moritz, 2004, 8.
53
Erich M. v. Hornbostel, 1938, 211.
54
Max Wertheimer, 1938, 9.
55
Max Wertheimer, 1938, 2.
 CHAPTER NINE

“IT DON’T MEAN A THING…”:

JAZZ, MODERNISM, AND MURALS
IN NEW DEAL NEW YORK

JODY PATTERSON

Since its emergence in the United States during the early years of the
twentieth century jazz was embraced by a number of artists who sought to
translate its vitality and unorthodox compositional methods into the
pictorial language of modern art.1 While the cultural and aesthetic
meanings of jazz were by no means clear-cut, with issues around race and
class consistently accompanying its development, it was praised by
admirers as a distinctly modern American art form whose fast-paced
energy and syncopated rhythms were a liberating force that symbolised
social rebellion, cultural change, and artistic freedom of expression.
Synthesising African American rural folk songs with urban dance music,
jazz provided a model for modernists that eschewed standardised formulas
to instead foreground improvisation, dynamism, and technical virtuosity.
An engagement with jazz on the part of modernists was not, however,
necessarily limited to formal and technical concerns. As Toni Morrison
observes, the dawn of the Jazz Age in the 1920s marked “the moment
when an African American art form defined, influenced, reflected a
nation’s culture in so many ways: . . . a burst of political, economic, and
artistic power.”2 This was especially true during the 1930s when swing—a
big-band variant of jazz that emerged early in the decade—took on a
heightened degree of ideological significance.3 It was within the context of
the Great Depression and the increasingly widespread calls for a
democratisation of culture that jazz, a musical form whose folk roots were
grounded in songs of protest, was embraced by many liberals and leftists
alike. Following the establishment of the Popular Front Against War and
Fascism in 1935, there was a broad left-democratic commitment to jazz in
its new swing variant as an authentic “people’s music” on the part of both
230 Chapter Nine

President Roosevelt’s New Deal administration and, equally, the American

Communist Party (CPUSA).4 Although many clubs and bands remained
segregated during the 1930s, with players, audiences, and promoters often
divided along lines of class and colour, jazz was nevertheless implicated in
efforts to foster a mixed cultural movement that went an unprecedented
distance toward establishing the principle of racial and ethnic equality.
What I would like to explore in what follows are the ways in which jazz
was taken up by two American artists, namely Aaron Doulas (1899-1979)
and Stuart Davis (1892-1964), each of who sought to achieve a
rapprochement between modernist aesthetics and leftist politics within the
context of the New Deal arts projects. It is to Douglas that I turn first.
Born in Topeka, Kansas, Douglas moved to New York City in 1925
where he immediately became involved with the Harlem Renaissance.
Now widely considered to be the “father” of African American art in the
US, he began his career illustrating books by James Weldon Johnson,
Countee Cullen, Alain Locke, and other prominent black writers, activists,
and intellectuals associated with the New Negro Movement. In 1928 he
was awarded a scholarship to study at the Barnes Foundation in Merion,
Pennsylvania, where he was able to take advantage of first-hand access to
Barnes’s collection of modern art, in addition to a variety of West and
Central African artifacts. This was followed by a sojourn in Paris in from
1931 to 1932, by which point Douglas had developed his signature style
synthesising aspects of modern European, ancient Egyptian, and West
African art. His engagement with African and Egyptian motifs brought
him to the attention of W. E. B. Du Bois and Locke, who were
encouraging young African American artists to embrace their heritage and
the forms and narratives of African American folk culture. By the 1930s
Douglas was widely regarded as one of the most important artists of the
Harlem Renaissance.
Douglas’s four-panel cycle of murals, collectively entitled Aspects of
Negro Life (1934), was executed under the auspices of the Public Works
of Art Project (PWAP) (1933-1934), the first of the New Deal cultural
initiatives.5 The paintings, which Douglas described as “a folk drama of
Negro life,” were commissioned for the Assembly Hall of 135th Street
Branch of the New York Public Library (now the Arthur Schomburg
Center for Research in Black Culture).6 Picturing episodes in the history of
African Americans from the nineteenth through to the early twentieth
century, the mural cycle charts a narrative from The Negro in an African
Setting (Fig. 9.1), across the Atlantic to An Idyll of the Deep South (Fig.
9.2), to the struggles From Slavery through Reconstruction (Fig. 9.3), and
concluding with Song of the Towers (Fig. 9.4), which is set in Depression-
 Jazz, Modernism, and Murals in New Deal New York 231

era Manhattan following the migration of thousands of African Americans

from the rural south to the industrial north. Like his other murals of the
1930s, such as those he painted in 1930 at Fisk University in Nashville,
Tennessee, and in 1933-1934 for the Harlem branch of the YMCA, the
panels are comprised of flat forms set within a shallow space and are
executed in muted pastels punctuated with black. Relying heavily upon
Egyptian and Art-Deco stylisation, the murals feature a cast of sinewy,
silhouetted figures presented almost entirely in profile. The figures are
surrounded by hard-edged, geometric elements with bands of concentric
circles marking the focal point in each painting.
Douglas’s use of abbreviated forms and his repetition of schematised
motifs within each composition not only demonstrate his understanding of
the lessons of Cubist composition, but represent a self-conscious effort to
engage the compositional strategies of jazz. While he acknowledged the
difficulties of drawing precise correlations between the two media and
recognised there were “no exact equivalents,” he insisted there were
“correspondences” and “analogies.”7 According to Douglas, the basic
principles underpinning modern art and jazz were the same and both art
forms relied upon “opposition, transition, rhythm, repetition, domination,
variation, alternation, and continuity.”8 Later clarifying his stance, he
approvingly noted the way in which the influential modernist Piet
Mondrian attempted to transpose the sounds of jazz into artistic form. As
is well known, following his arrival in New York in 1940 Mondrian took a
special interest in the boogie-woogie pianists, as became evident in iconic
paintings such Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1942-1943) and Victory
Boogie-Woogie, which was left unfinished at the time of the artist’s death
in 1944. For Douglas, these canvases “went beyond the mere reorientation
of subject matter in terms of modern forms and attempted to reveal and
interpret in modern pictorial language something of the very essence of
contemporary music—especially jazz.”9
Douglas’s interest in jazz was not circumscribed by formal
correspondences with modern painting, but was also directed towards its
contemporary cultural and socio-political resonances, as is borne out in
Song of the Towers, the culminating panel of Aspects of Negro Life. Set
against the backdrop of a modern cityscape, the forces of racial oppression
and poverty are still ominously present. At the lower right of the
composition, the migrant worker arriving from the south with a suitcase in
hand wears ragged trousers and is barefoot. Despite his concerted effort to
escape to the urban north, he is pursued by groping spectral hands that
endeavour to pull him back into their clutches. As Douglas observed in
“The Negro in American Culture,” a paper he delivered in 1936 at the
232 Chapter Nine

inaugural meeting of the Artists’ Congress in New York (where he was the
only black speaker), while Fascism was an increasing menace abroad, it
was no less a threat at home: “If there is anyone here who does not
understand Fascism, let him ask the first Negro he sees in the street. The
lash and iron hoof of Fascism has been a constant menace and threat to the
Negro ever since his so-called emancipation.”10 However, while the mural
shows African Americans continuing in their struggle for liberation, the
central figure in the composition could hardly be less joyous and hopeful.
Dominating the panel, with eyes and hands raised jubilantly toward the
sky, is none other than an iconic figure of a jazz musician.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the celebrated status of music within
African American culture, the iconography in each panel of Aspects of
Negro Life features a musical reference: tribal drumming in Africa; the
banjo and Negro spirituals in the South; a bugler heralding the era of
Reconstruction; and, finally, the contemporary saxophonist. According to
Douglas’s narrative it is the jazz musician who has risen above the forces
of oppression and stands secure and triumphant on the cogs of the grinding
metropolis. Moreover, in a compositional strategy that suggests the
apotheosis of the musician as a symbol of freedom, the saxophone is held
aloft by the Statue of Liberty. As such, Douglas has perhaps paid the
ultimate tribute to the jazz musician. This commanding figure, with his
saxophone held high, can be read as the embodiment of the New Negro
Art Movement. While often divided along class lines over the question the
jazz (with many middle and upper-class black families favouring an
assimilationist stance in relation to white culture that issued in either
ambivalence or even hostility towards jazz), the New Negro Movement
uniformly championed black creativity, liberty, and self-expression and
for many African Americans this was epitomised in the figure of the jazz
musician. This was not, however, the conclusion of Negro history as
Douglas saw it and he had intended to paint a fifth panel that would point
the way to the future. According to Douglas, this final panel would have
been based on the philosophy of Marx and would have shown “the unity
of black and white workers in the class struggle.”11 But as Douglas
observed, had he insisted on this fifth panel, “the whole mural would
undoubtedly have been rejected by the [PWAP] authorities.”12
Although Aspects of Negro Life was executed with federal funds under
the auspices of the PWAP for a public setting and therefore demanded a
certain degree of compromise, the murals are hardly innocuous history
paintings. Race relations took on increasing prominence during the 1930s
and while the New Deal administration was committed to fostering a
democratic America that included the enfranchisement of African Americans
 Jazz, Modernism, and Murals in New Deal New York 233

(with Eleanor Roosevelt being an outspoken opponent of segregation), it

was the American Communist Party (CPUSA) that served as the most
energetic force campaigning on African American issues during the
period. Douglas was deeply involved in struggles for equality and openly
declared his Marxism throughout the decade. In 1935 he was elected first
President of the Harlem Artists Guild, an offshoot of the Artists’ Union
that was organised to ensure that African American artists were given
equal opportunities on the New Deal arts projects. He also participated in a
range of Popular Front initiatives, including the American Artists’
Congress where he was an active member of the Executive Committee.
Although one critic concluded that “there is nothing revolutionary” about
the mural cycle and that viewers would “hardly suspect the influence of
Karl Marx on the delicately-beautiful decoration,” a closer inspection of
the iconography suggests otherwise.13 Not only does Slavery through
Reconstruction prominently feature a mounted group of hooded, sword-
wielding Ku Klux Klanners trampling underfoot those in their path, but in
the panel representing Reconstruction a black political activist (whose
profile bears a striking resemblance to that of Lenin) exhorts a group of
freed slaves to cast their votes and put their ballots in the box.
Furthermore, An Idyll in the Deep South incorporates a politically
inflammatory vignette of a lynch victim dangling from a tree, a subject
that apparently brought instant objections from his project supervisors.14
As Andrew Hemingway astutely suggests, Douglas’s murals “may have
matched better with Communist views” than critics and subsequent
commentators realised.15
By the time Aspects of Negro Life was unveiled in November 1934
there had been a series of decisive developments on both political and
cultural fronts for American artists on the left. To begin with, by 1935 the
PWAP was replaced by the Works Progress Association Federal Art
Project (WPA/FAP) (1935-1943), a New Deal relief measure that was far
vaster in scale and more far-reaching in ideological import that its
predecessor. That same year the Communist Party’s transition to the
Popular Front was of considerable importance in the US for several
reasons.16 Firstly, the new alliance of Western democracies in an effort to
create united front against the rising threat of war and fascism meant that
the CPUSA no longer indicted all forms of nationalism as reactionary and
instead began to put its support behind the New Deal administration.
Secondly, as the CPUSA took broad strides toward embracing Roosevelt,
the adoption of the Popular Front was also accompanied by a new
sympathy with mainstream American culture. It was during this period of
reorientation that jazz began to be reassessed in increasingly positive terms.
234 Chapter Nine

For if in 1933 the influential communist literary figure Mike Gold

concluded in the Daily Worker that jazz was “a source of bourgeois
corruption” that had “no roots in anything except the Broadway
pavement,” by mid-decade leftist critics were re-evaluating its cultural and
political significance.17 This was partly a result of the CPUSA’s desire to
strengthen its ties with the African American community in an effort to
forge a united front, and partly through a critical distinction that was made
during the Swing Era between “hot” jazz and its “sweet” counterpart. The
difference was summarised in Marxist terms by leftist music critic Charles
Edward Smith in his “Class Content of Jazz Music,” which appeared in
the Daily Worker as a refutation of Gold’s blanket dismissal. As Smith
pointed out, while the mellow, crooning “sweet” jazz of musicians such as
Benny Goodman (who was nevertheless a strong People’s Front partisan
and who achieved fame for organising the first integrated dance band)
served as a soundtrack for middle-class white dreams, the more dynamic
and spontaneous “hot” jazz played by Duke Ellington and Louis
Armstrong “aims to be the genuinely folk expression of a people.”18
By the mid-1930s, as the CPUSA assumed a more conciliatory stance
towards American popular culture and actively encouraged inter-racial and
inter-class struggle, the link between the left and swing became official
policy. As one music critic later concluded: “Jazz—especially racially-
integrated jazz—was on the front line of social change along with the
causes of anti-fascism, the New Deal, the labor [sic] movement.”19 Indeed,
integration remained, as Barbara Melosh points out, “a code for radical
politics” during the Popular Front period, with Café Society, the first
racially-integrated cabaret outside of Harlem, opening in Greenwich
Village in 1938.20 The club was a product of the alliance between jazz and
the Popular Front and represented what Michael Denning describes as “a
remarkable synthesis of the radical political cabarets of Berlin and Paris
with the African American jazz clubs and revues of Harlem.”21 The idea
for the nightclub originated with Communist Party Secretary Earl Browder
as a fund-raising initiative and the club was known to host a range of
illustrious guests, including Eleanor Roosevelt, an outspoken opponent of
segregation in her own right. More recently, Lewis Erenberg suggests that
“the growing awareness that swing was American music—and that its
players, black and white, deserved to be heard by whites and blacks
equally, was a part of the excitement of swing.”22
This is not to say that the politics of swing were by any means
straightforward with respect to race or class. Despite Ellington’s support
for the left, his orchestra headlined at the Cotton Club, a legendary venue
in Harlem where black musicians played for a well-heeled white audience,
 Jazz, Modernism, and Murals in New Deal New York 235

and it was the aptly named bandleader Paul Whiteman who was often
hailed in the mainstream press as the “King of Swing.” Despite the
ongoing realities of segregation, many leftists held that swing was “an
authentic folk and protest music” and by the end of the decade benefit
dances for New Masses (the journal of the CPUSA), the Workers’ School,
the Young Communist League, along with Party fund-raisers for the
defence of Ethiopia and Loyalist Spain, invariably included swing bands,
not just for the crowds they would draw, but as exemplars of the
democratic ideals being defended.23 Moreover, the two Spirituals to Swing
concerts staged at Carnegie Hall in New York were surely amongst the
cultural landmarks of the decade. Sponsored in 1938 by New Masses and
in 1939 by the Theater Arts Committee (a Popular Front alliance of film,
theatre, and radio entertainers), the concerts presented a genealogy of
African American music from early spirituals and gospel, through ragtime,
blues, traditional New Orleans jazz, and culminating with contemporary
swing. Both events were organised by left-wing jazz critic and producer
John Hammond and the concerts were historically significant not least
because they featured mixed race bands playing for an integrated audience
at one of the most prestigious concert venues in the US. Significantly,
Davis was an ardent fan of swing and it is his engagement with this
musical form that I now want to address.
From his youthful interest in realism during the early years of the
twentieth century to his late abstract works of the 1960s, Davis’s paintings
demonstrate an abiding interest in jazz. He often compared his
introduction to European modernism at the International Exhibition of
Modern Art mounted at the New York Armory in 1913 with the
experience of listening to African American music in clubs in Newark and
Harlem. As he stated: “[Modern art] gave me the same kind of excitement
I got from the numerical precisions of the Negro piano players in the
Negro Saloons.”24 Moreover, in his writings he expressly cited the “hot
piano” of Earl Hines as one of the things that made him want to paint.25
However, whereas in earlier works such as Jackson’s Band of 1913 (Fig.
9.5) Davis’s interest in jazz took the form of paintings documenting his
late-night pilgrimages to hear ragtime pianists performing in basement
blues clubs (places where blacks and whites intermingled in the same
social space no less), by the 1930s he was interested in big-band swing, an
interest that had both aesthetic and political implications for his painting
practice.
During the New Deal era Davis was one of the most accomplished
modernists working in the US, having assimilated the lessons of the
School of Paris into his own version of what Holland Cotter has
236 Chapter Nine

appropriately dubbed “Swing Cubism.”26 Davis was also one of the

political left’s most vociferous and visible artist-activists. He was a tireless
supporter of artists’ economic and political rights, serving as President of
the Artists’ Union, an editor of its journal Art Front, and National
Chairman of the American Artists’ Congress. His commitment to
Communist political theory throughout the decade did not, however,
extend to his artistic practice. He did not subscribe to the Party’s aesthetic
priorities of the period, which were focused upon the promulgation of a
Social Realist art, and he adamantly refused to put his art in the service of
illustration or propaganda. In contradistinction to the Party’s calls for an
easily legible art grounded in the traditions of naturalism, he was
unwilling to abandon the formal lessons of avant-garde European painting.
Davis staunchly insisted that advanced modernist techniques were the
most important tools at the artist’s disposal and were indispensible to the
production of a truly social art. Unsurprisingly, not all leftists agreed and
he was consistently confronted with the difficult task of overcoming
widespread skepticism about the relevance of modern art to the masses.
During this period Davis increasingly directed attention to the
connections between his approach to painting and swing—a musical form
that was decidedly modern and which attracted a mass audience.27
Musicians such as Duke Ellington, who merged folk elements of
indigenous black experience with European compositional forms, offered
Davis a model for effectively extending native traditions to create a
contemporary art that was both technically sophisticated and popular. As
John Lane observes, jazz “paralleled Davis’s own efforts to fuse modernist
style with American subject matter into a new vernacular.”28 In an effort to
clarify the formal and cultural resonances shared by the two art forms,
Davis and fellow leftist artist Walter Quirt proposed to stage a Festival of
Creative Swing Music and Modern Painting in 1941. They were unable to
secure funding for the event, but their intention had been to highlight the
formal affinities between swing and modern painting and foreground their
homologous development within the context of urban, industrial culture.
As Davis and Quirt stated, the purpose of the festival was “to demonstrate
the relationship between the two art forms, to demonstrate the similarities
in their origins, to show how both were authentic art expressions of
contemporary society, and finally to show the genuine American character
of their expression.”29 Two years later, in 1943, Davis invited Ellington
and Armstrong to be on hand at the opening of his exhibition at the
Downtown Gallery in New York. According to Davis, the performance of
live jazz on this occasion was meant to enable guests to “see how the
 Jazz, Modernism, and Murals in New Deal New York 237

irregular geometrical shapes and piebald color of his compositions . . .

echo the rhythms and tempo of swing” (Fig. 9.6).30
To date scholars have acknowledged some of the structural analogies
between Davis’s compositions and swing music, often focusing on the
ways in which he adeptly employed line, shape, and colour to evoke the
rhythms and sounds of jazz.31 It has also been suggested that the intrinsic
Americanism of jazz may have helped Davis to temper his foreign-
inspired visual vocabulary during a period preoccupied with cultivating
indigenous cultural expressions.32 Yet while, as Armstrong enthusiastically
affirmed in his 1936 biography Swing That Music, jazz was truly
American and constituted the first instance of a musical form that the
nation could call its own, I want to argue that Davis’s interest in this type
of jazz was not merely an expedient or opportunistic means of presenting
his work as a “native” product.33 As Brian O’Doherty has noted, “A lot
remains to be written about what Davis found in jazz.”34
Davis’s interest in jazz was not unique among early twentieth-century
American artists. Modernists such as Arthur Dove, John Marin, and
Joseph Stella also engaged this musical form in their works, albeit
according to different sets of formal priorities. For example in 1938 Dove
executed Swing Music (Louis Armstrong) (Fig. 9.7), a modest canvas
whose brilliant reds set against a dark ground suggest the capacity of
sound to conjure certain chromatic associations— in this instance
Armstrong’s “red hot trumpet.” Not unlike other modern artists who,
taking cues from the influential example of Wassily Kandinsky, were
interested in synaesthetic perception and the possibility of transposing
experience from one sense modality to another, Dove adopted the
nonrepresentational qualities of music as a model for nonobjective
painting. As Donna Cassidy suggests, he was intent upon creating “visual
equivalents” for musical sounds by transforming them into lines, colours,
and forms with the aim of conjuring the experience of listening to jazz
through an abstract visual idiom.35 However, while the early decades of
the twentieth century were marked by the development of increasingly
sophisticated efforts on the part of modernists to establish correspondences
between two artistic registers, to map musical values such as rhythm,
harmony, and counterpoint onto an abstract visual vocabulary, jazz
transformed the musical analogy, not least through its emphasis on
syncopation.
Although syncopation is widely used in music, it gives jazz—
especially its swing variant—much of its characteristic feel. Through the
unexpected placement of accents on beats where they would not
conventionally occur, swing musicians deliberately interrupt the regular
238 Chapter Nine

flow of rhythm. This refusal of orthodox compositional structures in swing

is analogous to the disruption of naturalist spatial structures in abstract
painting. Just as the swing soloist breaks with set melodies to create new
rhythmic patterns, the abstract painter detaches formal elements from their
representational function and reconfigures them in novel combinations.
This approach to abstraction is amply demonstrated in Davis’s 1939 mural
for the New York Municipal Broadcasting Company’s Radio Station
WNYC (Fig. 9.8)
If in earlier works such as Jackson’s Band Davis was working with a
more straightforwardly figurative artistic idiom, by the 1930s he was no
longer interested in literally picturing musicians at work. His WNYC
mural, executed under the auspices of the WPA/FAP (and currently on
extended loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), attests to
the ways in which his engagement with jazz was now of a different order.
While the composition includes stylised motifs of a saxophone and
clarinet—two instruments closely associated with swing—the panel is
predominantly abstract. Refusing the conventions of naturalist picturing,
the painting in not grounded in conventional forms of description and
instead attempts to give visual form to the invisible process of sound
transmission through suggestion. According to his working notes for the
project, he wanted to create what he described as:

a series of formal relations which are identified with musical instruments,

radio antenna, ether waves, operators panel, and electrical symbols, etc.
These various elements are presented in an imaginative rather than a
factual relationship.36

Using an abstract language of signs, symbols, and schematic forms, Davis

thus emblematises the journey of swing sounds from their production in
the studio through to their reception on the radio. Not unlike Dove, he
intentionally sought to create a “visual equivalent” for music in painted
form, one that would evoke the experience of listening to jazz rather than
literally transcribe it.
Taken together, Davis’s working notes for the WNYC mural suggest
that he perceived the formal properties and processes of abstraction as
analogous to musical structure and composition. As he concluded, the
practice of abstracting diverse elements relating to the transmission of jazz
over the radio waves was not intended to literally picture the process, but
was meant to “[create] a mood in the spectator, just as a piece of music
creates a mood, instead of giving some kind of factual information or
instruction.”37 In response to detractors on the left who continued to
question the relevance of abstraction and favoured a more conventional
 Jazz, Modernism, and Murals in New Deal New York 239

approach to public art, Davis summed up his position up with characteristic

wit: “A radio is the product of an extremely complex set of abstract
generalisations but no one calls it ‘an abstraction’ or ‘an escape from
reality’ because the loud speaker is not equipped with a set of teeth.”38
Just as Davis’s WNYC mural did not seek to engage music
transmission over the airwaves according to the conventions of naturalism
or in any mimetic fashion, neither did his mural for the Williamsburg
Housing Project in Brooklyn. Also executed under the auspices of the
Federal Art Project, Swing Landscape (1938) (Fig. 9.9) similarly abstracts
motifs and recombines them in a modernist idiom, leading scholar Rudi
Blesh to conclude: “One can look in vain in this vast, packed canvas for
anything literally pertaining to music—not a saxophone, not a single hemi
demisemiquaver.”39 But again, this was not the point. With its lively
juxtaposition of vivid colours and vibrant concatenations of myriad, often
unexpected, forms, Swing Landscape synaesthetically captures the energy
and dynamism of the “hot” jazz played by Armstrong and Hines,
transforming their syncopated rhythms and instrumental colourism into
visual form. Demonstrating Davis’s ability to emphasise compositional
structure while simultaneously overlaying it with a raucous amalgam of
anecdotal detail, the mural demonstrates his debts to Cubism and swing.
Each form in the mural, while still recognisable, is highly schematised,
recalling the ways in which the Cubists reduced compositional elements to
their essences in a kind of visual synecdoche. But as John Lucas observes,
this process of simplification equally suggests Armstrong’s habit of
“abstracting and representing a melody by its dominant notes or
phrases.”40 Furthermore, “in its arbitrary repetition, alteration and
superimposition of forms,” Swing Landscape offers something comparable
to Armstrong’s “variations on a theme as well as his interpolation of
fragments from other tunes.”41 As the viewer’s eyes dart between the
fractured forms and overlapping planes that animate this pyrotechnical
display of formal and chromatic ebullience—what New York Times art
critic Edward Alden Jewell described on the occasion of its public
unveiling as a “non-objective inebriant”—the enormous energy
characterising the painting evokes the fast-paced tempo of swing, with its
constant melodic invention and pulsing forward motion.42
Davis’s artistic engagement with jazz was characterised by a series of
structural and technical analogies. With its startling elisions and abrupt
transitions, Swing Landscape takes an established theme and subjects it to
processes of recombination. The back and forth movement between the
familiar and unfamiliar creates a montage effect that, like the spontaneous
and impromptu deviations from the score that characterise “hot” jazz,
240 Chapter Nine

denaturalise the experience of viewing such that traditional patterns are

reconfigured. This upsetting of expectation in an effort to break away from
pictorial convention and establish something new—a sort of Brechtian
“estrangement”—may well have served Davis’s purposes to develop a
self-consciously realist style, despite his use of a so-called abstract visual
vocabulary. After all, the laying bare and complicating of a pre-given or
naturalised reality combined with the uncoupling of the appearance of
things from their underlying reality is surely the cornerstone of any realist
practice, especially when it seeks to have socio-political resonance.
As suggested earlier, Davis’s interest in swing music did indeed have
socio-political import during the 1930s. He shared with many musicians a
commitment to artistic freedom that, as Lane suggests, insisted upon “the
artist’s liberty to transform source material, emphasising the prime
importance of innovative formal relations.”43 Swing was also deeply tied
to the political and cultural milieu of the Roosevelt era, symbolising a
major reorientation in American national culture and epitomising a new
model of democratic pluralism that sought to enfranchise racial and ethnic
minorities. While blacks in northern cities had traditionally supported the
Republicans (the party of Lincoln and emancipation), rather than the
Democrats (the party of Southerners and white supremacy), by 1936 the
majority of blacks now joined working-class whites in backing the
President for another term, with Gallup polls estimating that seventy-six
per cent of the black vote went to Roosevelt.44 Within the international
context, jazz music, like modernism, was being suppressed under Fascism
as decadent and degenerate, with the result that swing could be seen in the
US as a symbol of the American way of life—one premised upon
democracy, tolerance, and freedom of expression. It was through the
efforts of bandleaders such as Ellington and Goodman that black and
white musicians first began to perform together on stage. Moreover, the
musical model provided by swing—one in which individual solos are at
once distinct while also integrated into the overall composition—was a
model that was entirely cognate with the way in which Davis and fellow
leftists envisioned the role of the individual within the larger collective.
That he fully supported the equation of jazz with democratic ideals is
further demonstrated in his Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors—Seventh
Avenue Style (1940) (Fig. 9.10), a painting in which the colours (white,
yellow, blue, orange, red, and black) work together in simultaneous
juxtaposition and are used, according to Davis, “as the instruments in a
musical composition.”45 Significantly, the composition was originally
subtitled Art of An Urban Democracy.
 Jazz, Modernism, and Murals in New Deal New York 241

This raises the issue of audience, which is paramount to any evaluation

of murals painted in the 1930s, especially those commissioned under
federal patronage. While it is notoriously difficult to assess the
sensibilities of popular audiences, to evaluate the range of potential
meanings art carried for different viewers, muralism was seen by artists,
critics, and New Deal ideologues alike as the social art form par
excellence. Circumventing the elitist networks in which easel paintings
circulated, the public mural was embraced as the ideal means for bringing
art to a mass audience. Sadly, Davis’s Swing Landscape was never
installed in one of the common rooms of the Williamsburg Housing
Project, a working-class community in Brooklyn that boasted a large
African American population. Instead, in 1942 it entered the collection of
the Indiana University Art Museum in Bloomington. For such an ardent
champion of public art as Davis, the fact that his mural ended up mounted
on the wall of a museum would have seemed a massive betrayal of New
Deal ideals. Douglas’ murals, on the other hand, remain in situ and are
now installed over the heads of readers in library. More than seventy years
after its unveiling, Aspects of Negro Life still serves to highlight past and
present African American achievements, to present Harlem residents with
a vision of their history, and to perhaps suggest a link between art and
struggle. Yet while I would like to maintain that the saxophonist is
emblematic of a cultural identity that could be construed as free, modern
and American, this claim for the jazz musician is hardly straightforward or
uncontested.
Regardless of their respective fates, the murals executed by Davis and
Douglas during the New Deal era were intended to bring modernism to a
mass audience, and I now want to address their decision to engage jazz
music as means of imbuing their paintings with socio-political resonance.
The emergence of swing during the 1930s marked the establishment of
jazz as a mass commercial success. Throughout the decade swing was
popularised for working-class audiences through a range of outlets,
including live performances in clubs and dance halls; radio programmes;
phonograph recordings; and even motion pictures (for example, in 1927
Al Jolson’s Jazz Singer was the first feature length film with synchronised
dialogues that heralded the ascendance of the “talkies”). By 1938 Life
magazine celebrated swing as “The Hottest and Best Kind of Jazz.” Yet
despite widespread popular enthusiasm for swing and its adoption by
many leftists and liberals as an authentic “people’s music” rooted in the
folk and proletarian cultures of African Americans, some cultural
commentators, then as now, denigrated jazz as just another decadent and
242 Chapter Nine

corrupt American commercial product that had been standardised by those

who owned and controlled the means of production.
This view of jazz as a hopelessly whitened and sanitised musical form
is most famously associated with Theodor Adorno, one of the left’s most
outspoken critics of jazz during the 1930s whose essays on music and
mass culture continue to generate heated debate.46 However, although, as
Adorno correctly asserts, jazz was instrumentalised during the 1930s by
music promoters and record companies who sought to revive the depressed
popular music industry by creating a marketable product that would be
profitable, I want to insist that jazz was never simply an instance of
cultural domination by other means. As Richard Leppert points out, the
Adornian conclusion that jazz was unable to escape the imperatives of the
culture industry is compromised in several respects.47 There are
historically complex reasons for this, not least of which concerns the type
of jazz Adorno was actually listening to when he wrote his now famous
essays. For example, in “Farewell to Jazz” of 1933 he was not frequenting
the clubs of Newark or Harlem, as Davis and Douglas were; rather, he was
in Weimar Germany where “sanitized” commercial big-band swing was
indeed both popular and widely available. That being said, Adorno did at
least make the critical distinction between “hot” jazz and the
blandishments of its “sweet” variant. In fact, in his 1936 essay “On Jazz”
he was even willing to admit that in its “hot” variant, jazz was actually
“relatively progressive” and he acknowledged that the “virtuosity” of
improvisation demonstrated by these musicians was an “expression of a
certain excess of musical productive force which goes beyond the
demands of the market.”48 However even with the distinction between
“hot” and “sweet” jazz in place (a distinction which, it should be noted, is
generally of far greater interest to critics and cultural commentators than to
musicians or audiences), I want to suggest that Adorno’s position remains
insufficiently dialectal in at least two significant respects: the unremittingly
negative impact of the culture industry and the role (or seeming lack
thereof) of the audience.
Firstly, while the negative effects associated with the popular
consumption of jazz are undeniable, it seems important to also point out
that it was not only those who controlled the means of production that
benefitted from the activities of the culture industry. The enterprising
promotion of jazz (in all its forms) through records, radio, and live
performances also affected other groups in potentially productive ways.
Not only did jazz offer one of the first opportunities for professionalisation
to African Americans, with the effect that many more musicians were able
to earn a living wage and enjoy the respect of their communities but, Eric
 Jazz, Modernism, and Murals in New Deal New York 243

Hobsbawm points out, “it was in the studio that the colour bar was first
effectively broken.”49 As such, the development of jazz as a business
provided opportunities for professional enfranchisement previously
unthinkable for black musicians. Furthermore, while the mass marketing
of jazz often meant that the more experimental aspects of the music were
edited or censored, the converse was also true in that an expanded
audience encompassed a wider variety of tastes and thereby encouraged
greater flexibility and experimentalism amongst the players. What is
perhaps most interesting about the commercial success of jazz in the 1930s
was that, as Hobsbawm contends, the music did not establish its rapport
with the public at the expense of art, nor did it develop art at the expense
of cutting itself off from all but a chosen public of experts—jazz was a
technically sophisticated music that was enjoyed by a broad and diverse
audience.50
The popular audience for jazz in the 1930s brings me to the second
point I want to address with respect to Adornian assessments. Here again,
I hardly want to champion the homogenising aspects of mass culture,
especially during an era when the disasterous realities of totalitarian
prescriptions for culture were becoming increasingly evident, but I do
want to take issue with the implication in Adorno’s evaluation that jazz
listeners are always and everywhere the same. This stance accords little
space for human agency on the part of individual audience members and
has persisted in much structuralist and poststructuralist on the production
of meaning in cultural forms. More recent thinking on cultural production
rejects the assumption of passivity on the part of the audience to instead
insist upon the dynamic ways in which cultural forms generate multiple
meanings at the point of reception. With respect to jazz, it is surely
significant that this type of music was shaped by the African American
tradition of oral performance that relied upon a call-and-response
interaction between performers and audience. The music was thereby
grounded in a dialogue at the moments of both production and reception.
As Erenberg asserts, most studies of jazz “focus heavily on music and
musicians and pay little attention to audiences;” but in the case of swing,
“the audience interacts with the creators [and promoters of the music for
that matter] to determine the music’s form and content.”51
Davis and Douglas may have hoped for an analogous participatory
process on the part of viewers of their murals, with individual spectators
bringing their own experiences to bear when viewing and making sense of
the panels. So while they each engaged jazz as a technical model for
creating an art that was at once modern and American, they were also
acutely aware of the ways in which this musical form had particular
244 Chapter Nine

cultural resonances that complemented and reinforced their shared

commitments to the political left during the 1930s. As Davis affirmed,
jazz was “an expression of social forces that was in itself a social force.”52
Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly given the intended locations
for the murals, the paintings were intended to bring pleasure to their
audiences. It thus seems that Douglas and Davis must have agreed with
Ellington: “It don’t mean a thing, if ain’t got that swing.”53

Fig. 9.1: Aaron Doulgas, Aspects of Negro Life: The Negro in an African Setting,
1934. Oil on canvas, 274.3 x 274.3 cm. © Schomburg Center for Research in
Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Harlem.
 Jazz, Modernism, and Murals in New Deal New York 245

Fig. 9.2: Aaron Doulgas, Aspects of Negro Life: An Idyll of the Deep South, 1934.
Oil on canvas, 146.7 x 351.2 cm. © Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture, The New York Public Library, Harlem.
246 Chapter Nine

Fig. 9.3: Aaron Doulgas, Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery through
Reconstruction, 1934. Oil on canvas, 146.7 x 351.2 cm. © Schomburg Center for
Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Harlem.
 Jazz, Modernism, and Murals in New Deal New York 247

Fig. 9.4: Aaron Doulgas, Aspects of Negro Life: Song of the Towers, 1934. Oil on
canvas, 274.3 x 274.3cm. © Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The
NewYork Public Library, Harlem.
248 Chapter Nine

Fig. 9.5: Stuart Davis, Jackson’s Band, 1913. Pencil on paper, 50.8 x 40.3 cm.
Private collection. © Estate of Stuart Davis/DACS, London/VAGA, New York
2010.
 Jazz, Modernism, and Murals in New Deal New York 249

Fig. 9.6: Stuart Davis and Duke Ellington at the opening of Davis’s exhibition at
the Downtown Gallery, New York, 1943. Private collection.

Fig. 9.7: Arthur Dove. Swing Music (Louis Armstrong), 1938. Oil and wax
emulsion on canvas, 44.8 x 65.7 cm. Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949.540, Art
Institute of Chicago. Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago.
250 Chapter Nine

Fig. 9.8: Stuart Davis, Mural for Studio B, WNYC, Municipal Broadcasting
Company Radio Station, New York, 1939, oil on canvas, 213.4 x 335.3 cm, Art
Commission of the City of New York, on extended loan to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York. © Estate of Stuart Davis/DACS, London/ VAGA,
New York 2010.
 Jazz, Modernism, and Murals in New Deal New York 251

Fig 9.10: Stuart Davis, Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors—Seventh Avenue Style,
1940. Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 113.98 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Gift of the
William H. Lane Foundation and the M. and M. Karolik Collection, by exchange,
1983.120 Photograph © 2010 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. © Estate of Stuart
Davis/DACS, London/ VAGA, New York 2010
252 Chapter Nine

Notes

I wish to thank the Terra Foundation for American Art for their generous support
of my research activities. I am also grateful to Charlotte de Mille for providing a
forum for the exchange of ideas around music and modernism, firstly in the
conference at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2009 and finally in this anthology.
As ever, I am indebted to Warren Carter and Andrew Hemingway for their
ongoing encouragement and indispensible expertise. Some of the material
presented in this essay originally appeared in altered form in 'The Art of Swinging
Left in the 1930s: Modernism, Realism, and the Politics of the Left in the Murals
of Stuart Davis', Art History, vol. 33, no. 1 (2010), pp. 98-123.
1
On this topic see, for example, Donna M. Cassidy, Painting the Musical City:
Jazz and Cultural Identity in American Art, 1910-1940 (Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution, 1997); Richard J. Powell, et al, Rhapsodies in Black: The
Art of the Harlem Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California, 1997); Powell,
et al., The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism (Washington, DC:
Washington Project for the Arts, 1989); and Barbara Zabel, Assembling Art: The
Machine and the American Avant-Garde (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of
Mississippi, 2004), 133-151.
2
Toni Morrison, Jazz (London: Vintage Books, 2005), xii.
3
For a leftist history of jazz and the emergence of swing see Eric Hobsbawm, The
Jazz Scene (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989) [originally published in
1961 under the pseudonym Francis Newton]; Sidney Finklestein, Jazz – A
People’s Music (1948; New York: International Publishers, 1988).
4
On the cultural and political resonances of swing during the 1930s see Michael
Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth
Century (London: Verso, 1998), especially 283-361; and Lewis A. Erenberg,
Swingin’ the Dream: Big Band Jazz and the Rebirth of American Culture
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
5
In 1938 Douglas also executed a mural under the aegis of the Treasury Relief Art
Projects. Entitled Education of the Colored [sic] Man, the panel features the
abolitionist Frederick Douglas and was commissioned for the Atlantic City
Holmes Village Housing Project in New Jersey. The mural is illustrated in Olin
Dows, “Art for Housing Tenants,” Magazine of Art 31 (November 1938), 618.
6
Aaron Douglas, “Central Office Correspondence with Artists, 1933-34” National
Archives and Records Administration, New York, Record Group 121, Entry 117.
7
Douglas, [untitled, undated lecture], Reel 4520, Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, p.11.
8
ibid., p.13, 10.
9
ibid., p. 9.
10
Douglas in Mathew Baigell and Julia Williams, eds, Artists Against War and
Fascism: Papers of the First American Artists’ Congress (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1986), 84.
11
Douglas in T. R. Poston, “Murals and Marx: Aaron Douglas Moves to the Left
With PWA Decoration,” Amsterdam News, 24 November 1934, np.
 Jazz, Modernism, and Murals in New Deal New York 253

12
ibid.
13
ibid.
14
Lynching remained an important issue on the left. This was attested to by the
fact that several exhibitions sponsored by the John Reed Club in New York (a
Communist cultural organization) featured artworks attacking the continuation of
this form of racial punishment and terrorism. For example, in 1935 the Club
organized the exhibition Struggle for Negro Rights in 1935, a show that Douglas
helped to organize; see Andrew Hemingway, Artists on the Left: American Artists
and the Communist Movement, 1926-1956 (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2002), 64-65.
15
Hemingway, 92.
16
On the shift to the People’s Front see Fraser M. Ottanelli, The Communist Party
of the United States from the Depression to World War II (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1991), 83-105; and Harvey Klehr, The Heyday of
American Communism: The Depression Decade (New York: Basic Books, 1984),
186-206; see also the latter half of Anders Stephanson, “The CPUSA Conception
of the Rooseveltian State, 1933-1939,” Radical History Review 24 (Fall 1980),
166-176.
17
Mike Gold, “What a World,” Daily Worker, 29 August 1933, 6. See also 6
September 1933, 6; and 20 September 1933, 6.
18
Charles Edward Smith, “Class Content of Jazz Music,” Daily Worker 21
October 1933, 7.
19
John McDonough, “John Hammond Rebel with a Cause,” Jazz Times (January
1987) as cited in Erenberg 125.
20
Barbara Melosh, Engendering Culture: Manhood and Womanhood in New Deal
Public Art and Theater (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1991), 91.
21
Denning, 324.
22
ibid., 119.
23
ibid., 132-135.
24
Davis, “Autobiography” (1945) in Diane Kelder, ed., Stuart Davis (New York:
Praeger, 1971), 23-24.
25
Davis, “The Cube Root,” Art News (1 February 1943), 34.
26
Holland Cotter, “Swing Cubism,’ Art in America (September 1992), 99-79.
27
For Davis’s thoughts on jazz and his painting practice see, for example, Stuart
Davis papers, 26 July 1939; undated 1939; 10 April 1941; September 1941; 18
January 1942; Easter 1942, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums,
Gift of Mrs Stuart Davis (all rights reserved by the President and Fellows of
Harvard College).
28
John Lane in Lowery Stokes Sims, et al., Stuart Davis: American Painter (New
York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991), 76.
29
Davis and Walter Quirt as cited in Earl Davis, “Stuart Davis: A Celebration in
Jazz,” published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in conjunction with Stuart
Davis: American Painter (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991), np.
30
Emily Genauer, “Two Americans Give Solo Shows,” New York Times, 6
February 1943.
254 Chapter Nine

31
On Davis and jazz see, for example, Cassidy, 103-114; John Lucas, “The Fine
Art Jive of Stuart Davis,” Arts 31 (September 1957), 34-37; Brian O’Doherty,
American Masters: The Voice and the Myth (New York: Universe Books, 1988),
75-79; and Cécile Whiting, Antifascism in American Art (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1989), 82-8.
32
See, for example, Cassidy, 103.
33
Louis Armstrong, Swing That Music (1936; Cambridge, MS: Da Capo Press,
1998).
34
O’Doherty, 77.
35
Cassidy, 85.
36
Davis, “Mural for Studio B, WNYC (working notes) (1939), rpt. Kelder, 92.
37
ibid.
38
Davis in O’Doherty, 78.
39
Rudi Blesh, Stuart Davis (New York: Grove Press, 1960), 55.
40
John Lucas, “The Fine Art Jive of Stuart Davis,” Arts 31 (September 1957), 34.
41
ibid.
42
Edward Alden Jewell, “Commentary on Murals: Exhibition at the Federal Art
Gallery Presents WPA New York Region Survey,” New York Times, 29 May 1938.
43
Lane, 76.
44
Anthony J. Badger, The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940 (New
York: Palgrave, 1989), 251. For more on the status of blacks under the New Deal
see Steve Valocchi, “The Racial Basis of Capitalism and the State, and the Impact
of the New Deal on African Americans,” Social Problems 41.3 (August 1994),
347-362.
45
Davis, “Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors—Seventh Avenue Style,” Parnassus 12
(December 1940), 6.
46
More recently Cassidy has argued that both Davis and Dove participated in the
“sanitiztion of jazz”; see pp 69-114.
47
Richard Leppert, Essays on Music, trans. Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002); this volume brings together Adorno’s
writings on music and mass culture and is particularly useful in that Leppert not
only details assessments of Adorno’s position, but also offers counter-arguments.
48
Theodor W. Adorno, “On Jazz,” in Leppert, 475.
49
Hobsbawm, 185.
50
ibid., 135.
51
Erenberg, xiii.
52
Davis in Blesh, 55.
53
Davis scrolled the lyrics of Ellington’s hit song of 1931 along the top right-hand
corner of his American Painting, which he reworked between 1932 and 1951.
 PART V:

FRAMING THE MODERN:

RETROSPECT?
 CHAPTER TEN

ZEN AND THE ART OF LA MONTE YOUNG

MELISSA WARAK

At a noon time chamber music concert at the University of California

at Berkeley in the spring of 1960, composition student and conceptual
artist La Monte Young premiered his most recent work, titled Poem for
Chairs, Tables, Benches, Etc. or Other Sound Sources. This “conceptual
composition”—so called because the idea, rather than the effect, pertained
to the compositional text—dictated loosely that performers push, pull, or
drag furniture such as the piano bench across the stage floor. The music,
then, consisted of the sounds resulting from these largely visual and
physical actions. During the performance, musicians ambled around
reading music textbooks aloud, a woman fried eggs on the stage, another
woman rested in a sleeping bag in the aisle, composer Terry Riley played
catch with a friend on stage, and the artist Bruce Conner walked around
the auditorium with a cricket in his shoe. Meanwhile, Young concentrated
his efforts as conductor of his orchestra by repeatedly shouting “Green!”
into a bucket on the stage.1
How were contemporary audiences meant to understand such works—
as musical performances, as theatre, or as illogical neo-Dada exhibitions?
These questions may be answered by examination of the four concerns
that united Young’s compositions during the period from 1958 to 1961.
First, almost all of them allowed for the performer’s improvisation,
making them chance operations; secondly, the performer’s action, rather
than specific instruments, created incidental sound; thirdly, none of the
compositions specified any set duration, forcing the performer to tackle
the issue of time; and finally, most of the compositions necessitated the
direct or indirect participation of the audience. Although historians
traditionally recognise South Asian music and metaphysical philosophy as
the key non-Western sources for Young, he has also identified Zen
Buddhism as a source for him while both a composition student at
Berkeley in the 1950s and a colleague of artists such as John Cage and
Yoko Ono in New York in the early 1960s.2 This study of Young’s works
 Zen and the Art of La Monte Young 257

from 1958 to 1961, with particular attention paid to his 1960 series
Compositions 1960, uses the four uniting principles of these early
compositions to offer a reading of these visual-musical activities as a
modern type of Zen meditation.
With his works most often associated with Fluxus performance, the
Compositions 1960 and Compositions 1961, Young introduced what
would soon be called the event score. The American Fluxus group
included artists and musicians such as Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles,
Allan Kaprow, Robert Watts, George Maciunas, and George Brecht and
staged performance festivals in Europe and the United States, creating
European and Asian outposts sometimes referred to as “neo-Dada” as
well. Fluxus events, which sought to encompass the entire range of the
arts, often consisted of long programmes of up to twenty different
performances of work by a single artist. In addition, participants avoided
standard staging in favour of a free-flowing assortment of activities and
the experience of minutiae. Maciunas invented the term “Fluxus,” which
participant George Brecht defined as “the smallest unit of a situation.”3
Brecht, author of scores such as Incidental Music, coined the phrase
“event score”, meaning a series of written directions for a performer to
enact in order to create music in a theatrical setting.4 As Liz Kotz has
written, event scores possessed a conceptual ambiguity because one could
view them as both art objects in their own right or as “scripts for a
performance or project or musical piece which is the ‘real’ art.”5
Strong metaphysical and meditational currents run through much of
Fluxus’ musical endeavours, but Young was unique in his far-reaching
embrace and actual practice of metaphysical philosophy. To position
Young’s works as Zen-styled meditations, one must frame his unorthodox
conception of meditation. Much of Young’s work has been connected to
the Hindustani understanding that music connected people to the cosmos
through both mathematic and spiritual principles. Young saw himself as
mining the primordial character of humanity and a universal connectedness
through sound and meditation; later in the 1960s, Young’s experimental
band called the Theatre of Eternal Music, which included Young, and his
partner Marian Zazeela, John Cale, Angus MacLise, and Tony Conrad,
sought to connect to audiences spiritually via sound waves.6 Many of
Young’s metaphysical leanings come from ancient understandings of a
mathematically ordered universe that is the basis for all music. In the sixth
century B.C.E., the master mathematician Pythagoras was thought to have
first posited the model of the universe as equivalent to musical harmony.
As historian Jamie James has noted, Pythagorean philosophy made
distinctions among three types of music: musica instrumentalis, or music
258 Chapter Ten

created by instruments; musica humana, or the “continuous but unheard

music made by each human organism, especially the harmonious (or
inharmonious) resonance between the soul and the body;” and musica
mundana, the sound created by the cosmos, known now as the “music of
the spheres.”7 This abstract idea of a musically dominated cosmos, in
which both music and the human soul seemed to reveal a sense of eternity
through their intangibility, seemed to explain the mysterious phenomenon
of humans gaining spiritual, emotional, and cosmic insight from sound. In
the realm of Fluxus performance, Young’s compositions allowed for all
three types of music.
Ancient Indian philosophy, including early Buddhist and Vedic
thought with which Young was familiar, took the idea of sound creating
the cosmos further by suggesting that one could tap into a higher level of
being through music when using sound as a form of meditation. Also
concerned with this type of cosmic sound, Zen or Chan Buddhism was
founded by the Indian Buddhist monk Bodhidharma in the fifth century
C.E. Zen Buddhism became popularised within mainstream Western
culture in the 1940s and 1950s via the writings of the Beat authors,
including Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory
Corso. For many of the Beat writers, and especially Kerouac, a modern
person could achieve a Zen state of mind through listening to or playing
jazz. Allen Ginsberg, in his incendiary poem Howl from 1956, wrote in the
opening lines that he “saw the best minds of my generation …
contemplating jazz.”8 Significantly in this context, Young began his career
in music as a jazz saxophonist.
For Young, now known as the progenitor of Minimalist composition,
duration and tempo had been among his compositional concerns since his
experimentation with sustained tones as a graduate student at Berkeley in
the mid-1950s. In reference to their musical aesthetic, Zazeela has stated,
“We determined at a certain point that our medium was time …. If you
think the medium is time, then the observer is going through a process of
cognition of what time is.”9 This recognition of the metaphysical capacity
of time coordinates with both Zen and other Buddhist philosophy. In the
1960s, the Buddhist scholar Lama Anagarika Govinda posited, for
example, that in advanced stages of meditation, one could experience what
is conventionally thought to be “time” as “another dimension of
consciousness.”10 Likewise, Govinda asserts that humans experience
space not as a static entity, but through the movement of molecules in the
“cosmic dance of the heavenly bodies,” also called the “harmony of the
spheres.”11 According to Mahayana Buddhist philosophy, from which Zen
emerged, the conscious man craves an understanding of the infinite nature
 Zen and the Art of La Monte Young 259

of space; and Zen Buddhism simplified this concept as man’s meditation

on the “no-thing-ness” of so-called empty space. Because the medium of
music possesses immaterial and abstract qualities, Mahayana Buddhist
belief likened it to dhyana, the “profound space-experience of meditation.”12
In this context, the Mahayana used mathematics in music in a largely
symbolic manner as an attempt to close the gap between infinite space and
ordinary human consciousness.13
In the 1940s and 1950s, the Zen teacher Daisetz Teitaro (D.T.) Suzuki,
guru to avant-garde figures such as John Cage, simplified Zen philosophy
into a three-fold entity. When faced with a ko-an, usually an anecdote of
an old master or a question put forth by a teacher, the Zen Buddhist then
engages in the practice of zazen, or meditation on that single point, in
order to attain satori, or a state of expanded consciousness. According to
Suzuki, “Satori may be defined as intuitive looking-into, in contradistinction
to intellectual and logical understanding … Satori means the unfolding of
a new world hitherto unperceived in the confusion of a dualistic mind.”14
Notably, in early Zen teaching, a person could achieve satori not only
through meditation, but also through accidental concentration on repetitive
mundane actions or incidental single events. According to Suzuki, “An
inarticulate sound … a blooming flower, or a trivial incident such as
stumbling, is the condition or occasion that will open [one’s] mind to
satori.”15
In considering the performance of his music as meditation, Young
amalgamated meditational theory from Vedic, Mahayanic, and Zen
philosophy. As Young explains,

Sound, music … is considered a form of yoga, the fifth form of yoga. And
it can be practiced in such a way that it’s a meditation …. Yogis practice a
discipline … where they bring the energy up and listen to the sound inside
their heads, the sound of the sixth and seventh chakras, and this is a
preparatory exercise for finding a way out through the top of your head to
meditate on the music of the spheres ….16

Although this explains the meditational aims for one of Young’s

performers, we may also consider Young’s early works as meditation
pieces suitable for creating an environment of expanded consciousness for
the spectator. Most of Young’s early compositions eschewed set musical
parameters in favor of illogical improvised revelations important for the
mere act of their performance.
In the summer of 1960, Young had been reading volumes of Japanese
haiku poetry and the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu’s foundational Taoist text
from the sixth century B.C.E. A precursor to the later philosophy of Zen
260 Chapter Ten

Buddhism, the Tao Te Ching, served as an important source for much of

Young’s composing in 1960 because many of its tenets focused on
singular events, ideas of spatial organisation, the interconnectedness of
activities, and the art of concentration. The first section of chapter fourteen
of the Tao Te Ching states,

Look, it cannot be seen—it is beyond form.

Listen, it cannot be heard—it is beyond sound.
Grasp, it cannot be held—it is intangible.
These three are indefinable;
Therefore, they are joined in one.17

Theorising from different sources, such as these verses on silence and

nothingness, Young’s early works functioned both as consciousness-
expanding pieces for the performer and as suitable conduits for spectator
meditation. In 1966, Young explained his goal in performance as follows:

The tradition of modal music has always been concerned with the
repetition of limited groups of specific frequencies called modes
throughout a single work and … the assignation of a particular mood or
psychological state to each of the modes …. When these frequencies are
continuous, as in my music, we can conceive even more easily how, if part
of our circuitry is performing the same operation continuously, this could
be considered to be or to simulate a psychological state. My own feeling
has always been that if people just aren’t carried away to heaven I’m
failing.18

Thus, Young emphasises his goal of using repetition of sonic forms to

create a psychological state of expanded consciousness similar to the
practice of Zen meditation. And it is a heady goal indeed; one which
always exists in a state of potential energy since the results are hardly
quantifiable.
Zen attributes in Young’s early composition were heavily influenced
by American composer John Cage’s aleatorical practices, which were
based on sources such as non-Western music, the aesthetic theory of Asian
art specialist Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, and Suzuki’s Zen Buddhist
philosophy. In the 1930s, Cage began experimenting with chance
composition by consulting the divination sticks of the I Ching, the ancient
Chinese book of fortunes.19 Around 1938, while teaching at the Cornish
School in Seattle, he started using recorded sounds and manipulated
phonograph records in his compositions. It was also during this period that
Cage had become deeply interested in both the teachings of Zen Buddhism
and non-Western music. Simultaneously, out of the need to create certain
 Zen and the Art of La Monte Young 261

sounds in works such as Bacchanale (1938), he also began making his

“prepared pianos”, in which he carefully and systematically inserted
rubber, metal, and wooden objects between the strings of a piano (Fig.
10.1). In the early 1960s, this unorthodox treatment of the piano would
unfold not only in objects such as Nam June Paik’s Klavier Integral (Fig.
10.2), but also in performance pieces by artists such as George Maciunas
and Joseph Beuys.
Cage also experimented with compositional scoring itself, often
eschewing traditional notation on a musical staff to allow for greater
interpretation on the part of the performer, such as in his Water Walk of
1960. Although textual in theory, because they serve as directions for the
musician, these scores were also considered visual objects and allowed for
a chance operation within a concert performance. In 1952 Cage introduced
his most infamous composition, 4’33”, which required that a performer sit
at a piano and make no intentional sound for the exact duration of four
minutes and thirty-three seconds. Known as the “silent piece,” 4’33”
stunned audiences because of its audacious use of incidental and
atmospheric sound as music.20 According to Douglas Kahn, Cage did not
believe in the concepts of “imaginary sounds” or silence because “all
matter was sonorous.”21 In other words, Cage thought that the human
conception of silence was merely an indication of inaudible sound;
however, this also ties to a Zen reliance on silence as a tool in zazen. Of
this new interpretive freedom, Cage declared that it is the aegis of
composers, musicians, and audience to “let sounds be themselves.”22
Young had studied under Cage at Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Summer
Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, Germany in 1959. Thereafter,
Young concentrated on similar chance operations and mixed means
performance pieces that he referred to as the Theatre of the Singular
Event.23 As a graduate student at Berkeley, Young began incorporating
Eastern philosophy into his compositional theory and also presented
several Happenings, or “live” experimental group events that relied on the
interaction of the performers and audience. In the late 1950s, Young and
the sculptor Walter De Maria staged different Happenings at Berkeley,
Stanford University, and the California School of Fine Arts. Referring to
the events as “meditative Happenings,” De Maria and Young once sat in
the courtyard of the Architecture building at Berkeley and gave people
small mirrors and oranges to peel.24 Allan Kaprow observed in Art News
magazine in May 1961 that Happenings executed by musicians and writers
tended to be “sparsely abstract, almost Zen-like rituals.”25 In these early
experiments, Young and De Maria not only engaged the audience, but they
262 Chapter Ten

also gave specific directions for mundane repeated actions that created a
focus for deliberation.
In works such as Poem for Chairs, Tables, Benches, Etc. or Other
Sound Sources, composed in 1960, Young extended the idea of creating
unconventional sounds as an aleatorical or chance operation within a
classical concert setting. Young has said that he derived his choosing
sounds and durations by chance directly from the ideology of Cage.26 In
Vision, which the choreographer Merce Cunningham adapted for dance
performance in 1960, Young harnessed the audience’s reactions of
indignant shock as his musical source. This piece was one of Young’s
early experiments with harnessing audience feedback as sound. In this
work, Young used a mere eleven sounds and spaced them at different
intervals and durations over thirteen minutes. However, they were atypical
sounds, such as the one he called “Herd of Elephants,” in which a duo or
trio of bassoons play a series of notes at rapid speed. In performances of
Vision, Young turned out all lights and placed the musicians throughout
the auditorium and within the audience. This tended to disorient and even
shock the audience members, who then contributed their own noise
unintentionally.27 These incidental sounds made by the audience
constituted the chance element of the composition. Ironically, the title of
Vision refers to the sense of sight, which Young completely severed in
performance. It implies an action beyond listening, rare for a musical
composition; however, the use of the term “vision” also suggests a
mystical prophetic experience, which Young later explored by his idea of
fostering a “drone state of mind” with the Theatre of Eternal Music. These
were among the modes of experimentation that formed the impetus for the
creation of the Compositions 1960, Young’s compositions most frequently
performed in the early 1960s.
Most of the Compositions 1960, which Young published in 1963 in the
avant-garde book that he co-edited called An anthology of chance
operations, double as text and conceptual object.28 Most of the
Compositions 1960 are brief, typed on white paper, and possess ko-an or
haiku-styled language. One could call these his “conceptual compositions”
because the idea, rather than the effect, pertains to their text. Young has
referred to these works as his biggest social statement and a rebellion
against the establishment of classical music. According to the artist, the
restrictive academic setting at Berkeley inspired him to author works to be
performed in a traditional concert setting, but with unsettling and
undetermined musical results.29 Young completed only six of the fourteen
Compositions 1960 before moving to New York City that year. He had
simultaneously been working on his Lecture 1960 - a landmark conceptual
 Zen and the Art of La Monte Young 263

piece loosely based on Cage’s essay Indeterminacy – that he first delivered

as a lecturer at choreographer Ann Halprin’s Dance Workshop in
Kentfield, CA in the summer of 1960.30 Lecture 1960 consists of several
sections that, according to Young, could be read in any order. He has
written of Lecture 1960, “The order and selection can be determined by
chance, thereby bringing about new relationships between parts and
consequently new meanings.”31 In addition, Young continued adding
sections to the lecture throughout 1960, and it thus included references to
several of his Compositions 1960.
Unlike Lecture 1960, however, the compositions contained directions
for the performers. In addition, Young removed traditional notational
scoring from the set of works, aside from the one handwritten
composition, Composition 1960 #7. This score on manuscript paper
presents two whole notes in the pitches of B and F sharp in the harmonic
interval of a perfect fifth and, underneath, Young wrote, “to be held for a
long time”. He writes no further measures, but instead includes ties to
indicate duration.32 Performances of this piece, such as Tony Conrad’s
1963 realisation at a Fluxus Yam Festival event at the Poet’s Hardware
Theatre, regularly continued for over five hours, certainly qualifying the
duration as a “long time.”33 With titles such as Piano Piece for Terry Riley
#1, Piano Piece for David Tudor #1, Composition 1960 #10 to Bob
Morris, and Composition 1960 #13 to Richard Huelsenbeck, Young
dedicated some of the works to collaborators and artists in his circle,
creating an homage system to those who inspired him visually and
musically. As such, several of the Compositions 1960 have become
canonic Fluxus pieces in part because they allowed for the broadest
interpretation of their terms by the performer. Almost anyone could
perform the Compositions 1960 since few of them dictated that the
performers play an instrument in a traditional sense; in fact, few required
the performer to play any instrument at all.
In some of the Compositions 1960, Young required the musicians to
complete tasks both inside and outside the realm of typical behaviour on a
stage. For example, in giving complete visual control to the performer,
Composition 1960 #13 to Richard Huelsenbeck dictated that, “The
performer should prepare any composition and then perform it as well as
he can.”34 Invoking the sense of hearing within an abstract visual work,
Young’s partner Marian Zazeela created an ink on paper drawing
consisting of a densely formed abstract design in which she embedded the
word “Listen”. As Zazeela has stated, she considers the drawing a
realisation of the musical composition not only because she fulfilled its
requirements by rendering a meticulously detailed image, but also because
264 Chapter Ten

Young’s open-ended performance aesthetic would allow for the visual

depiction of a musical composition.35 Because Zazeela considered this
kind of drawing a “votive object” that gives the audience a point of
concentration, she has stated, “The process of looking at or concentrating
on a visual symmetrical configuration does bring the mind to a state of
quietude.”36 Of course, making a drawing in a private setting is not a
typical action for either a musical event or a theatre event. Similar to the
Zen concept of achieving satori through the accident of a single occasion,
Young attributed this kind of score to his interest in the singular event and
often referred to his Compositions 1960 as embodying the “Theatre of the
Singular Event.”37 The appeal of concentrating on a single action over a
period of time came from his meditation-based Taoist background in
California.38 Young has stated, however, that he considered many of his
works from the 1960-61 period to be both theatre and music pieces with
the understanding that the two categories continuously overlapped.39
Others among the Compositions 1960 demanded a visual presence on
stage to create incidental sound through non-musical actions. Many of
these same works also called upon the audience for participation.
Composition 1960 #2 gives the instruction:

Build a fire in front of the audience. . . . After the fire is burning, the
builder[s] may sit by and watch it for the duration of the composition;
however, he [they] should not sit between the fire and the audience in order
that its members will be able to see and enjoy the fire. . . . The
composition may be of any duration / In the event that the performance is
broadcast, the microphone may be brought up close to the fire.40

Here, Young makes the performance a reflexive act between musician

/ fire-builder and audience by demanding the passive participation by the
audience, which needed to “see and enjoy” the visual product conjured on
the stage. Young signaled the use of incidental sound made by the fire,
however inaudible, by instructing the musician / fire-builder to amplify it
in the event of a televised or radio audience. With this piece, one finds an
example of a composition whose action creates a quiet meditative
environment for the audience. For example, Brecht performed Composition
1960 #2 at a Fluxus concert in New York in 1964. During this realisation
of the piece, he concentrated on constructing a small tower of matches on
top of a glass resting on a plate, which in turn sat on a piece of cloth on top
of a stool in front of the artist.41 Brecht then turned out the auditorium
lights and lit the matches, causing a bright but short-lived fire. The music
then consisted of the sounds made by the igniting and burning matches;
 Zen and the Art of La Monte Young 265

what is more, the construction of the tower could be likened to the Zen
monk’s banal daily tasks, which could act as meditative conduits to satori.
The musical effect of the fire piece—an indeterminate sound made by
barely sonorous material that generated a quietly meditative atmosphere—
transpired in others of Young’s 1960 works. In Composition 1960 #5,
Young directed the performer to “Turn a butterfly (or any number of
butterflies) loose in the performance area. / When the composition is over,
be sure to allow the butterfly to fly away outside.”42 Focusing on the issue
of time, Young amended the end of the composition to allow that one
could consider the work finished when the last butterfly flew away; one
could have opened doors and windows to facilitate this action in the case
of unlimited time in the concert hall.43 Again, Young set up the possibility
for an unprecedented visual event in a concert hall: the sight of a butterfly
occupying not only the musician’s physical space, but also his or her role
as sound-maker. A section from Young’s Lecture 1960 described his
understanding of the butterfly’s musical role in his piece. He wrote that the
director of the noon concert series at Berkeley rejected his proposition to
hold performances of Compositions 1960 #2 and #5, the fire piece and the
butterfly piece. The director’s refusal of the idea shocked Young,
particularly in the rejection of the less hazardous butterfly piece. Young’s
colleagues believed that the director banned the butterfly piece on the
grounds that it was not music. Still, Young asserted,

I felt certain the butterfly made sounds, not only with the motion of its
wings, but also with the functioning of its body and that unless one was
going to dictate how loud or soft the sounds had to be before they could be
allowed into the realms of music that the butterfly piece was music….44

Here, Young’s interest in Cagean non-silence re-emerged; however,

Young takes the idea a step further in the imagination of his reader when
he implies that a butterfly can be both performer and instrument.
Furthermore, in order to hear the music made by the butterfly, a listener
would need to both quiet the mind and concentrate on the practically
inaudible performance as one would in Zen meditation.
Alternately, Young’s Piano Piece for David Tudor #1, also included
with the Compositions 1960, called for the performer to attempt to feed a
bale of hay and a bucket of water to a piano and the music again resulted
from these repeated attempts. The actions used to nourish the piano, a
seemingly absurd and futile activity, might be considered a precursor to a
drone state of mind through their focus on the singular event. Young loved
this idea and thought this composition was hilariously funny. This homage
is particularly striking when one considers that Young has referred to
266 Chapter Ten

Tudor as “the greatest performer of new music who ever lived.”45 Tudor
was no stranger to avant-garde performance, having been the first to
perform Cage’s 4’33” and a regular performer of radical work at the
Darmstadt Summer Courses. Young wrote to Tudor repeatedly in 1959
and 1960 regarding his new work and Tudor was among the first to
receive copies of the Compositions 1960. Echoing the manner in which
Tudor had performed 4’33”, Young’s Piano Piece for David Tudor #2
states,

Open the keyboard cover without making, from the operation, any sound
that is audible to you. Try as many times as you like. The piece is over
either when you succeed or when you decide to stop trying. It is not
necessary to explain to the audience. Simply do what you do and, when the
piece is over, indicate it in a customary way.46

In these pieces, the appeal of concentrating on a single action over a

period of time reflects Young’s interest in fostering a meditational
atmosphere that is based on both ritual and joy.
Another piece from the series, Composition 1960 #9, existed as a
strictly visual object that required no performance, only its contemplation.
Young has stated of this work, “The line on a card was my answer to
Cage’s graphic notations.”47 This composition consisted of a small
envelope that bore the words, “the enclosed score is right side up when the
line is horizontal and slightly above center.”48 Inside the envelope, the
reader finds an index card printed with a single black horizontal line. With
this work, Young exploited the singular line concept not only by
eliminating all instruction, but also through producing the end result a
priori. He literally reduced the composition to its barest and most purely
visual element: the almost single dimensional line on a two dimensional
surface. Although seemingly not related to sound, the work again
connoted two of Young’s recurring themes, the long tone and the simple
meditation, signified by a long line.
Young further explored the concept of a single line as Zen-like musical
act in Composition 1960 #10 to Bob Morris, which stated as its score,
“Draw a straight line and follow it”.49 Young thus gives a specific
direction for an action (“draw a straight line”) and then another direction
for the subsequent action (“and follow it”). However, the composer
provided no instruction for how or where the straight line should be drawn
or how long it should be; nor did he require any specifics for the following
of the line. The outcome of this chance operation depended entirely on the
realisation chosen by the performer. In addition, Composition 1960 #10 to
Bob Morris demanded a visual action as a performance piece. Rather than
 Zen and the Art of La Monte Young 267

calling for the performer to make a sound, Young relied on the incidental
sound created by the act of drawing a line and following it to serve as the
music of the piece.
Young, who once performed this work by drawing a single line for an
entire evening, has explained its particularly Zen-like genesis by stating,

I felt that a line was one of the more sparse, singular expressions of
oneness… the line was interesting because it was continuous—it existed in
time…. In graphs and scores one designates time as one dimension… the
actual drawing of the line did involve time, and it did involve a singular
event….50

Artistic interpretations of the composition’s meaning have varied

greatly. For example, Young dedicates the work to his friend, the sculptor
Robert Morris, who was taking part in many dance performances with his
wife Simone Forti Morris at the time. Conversely, Young’s Theatre of
Eternal Music band mate John Cale, who himself performed the work as a
music student Goldsmith’s College in London, claims that the composition
was a “tribute” to Berkeley mathematician and composer Dennis Johnson,
Young’s close friend who “was instrumental in teaching La Monte about
Einsteinian physics.”51 Later, however, other artists viewed the work
differently. Fluxus artist Nam June Paik performed this composition
several times in 1962 and 1963 at venues such as the Fluxus Internationale
Festspiele Neuester Musik in Wiesbaden, Germany, and used his own
subtitle: Zen for Head. In these performances, Paik dunked his necktie,
head, and hands into a bowl filled with tomato juice and ink and slowly
pulled himself over thin lengths of paper laid on the floor, creating dark
semi-linear marks. By using the title Zen for Head and repeating the action
several times, Paik concentrated on the meditative aspect of performance.
At the end, though, he had created a work on paper, a physical manifestation
of this meditation. Fluxus artist Ben Vautier also performed Composition
1960 #10 to Bob Morris in a similar manner at a Fluxus event in Milan,
Italy, in 1967, suggesting that Paik’s repeated performances of the work
had created a visual rubric for concerts of the work. Ostensibly, then, this
slow and rather uncomfortable-looking process is intended to put either
Paik or his audience (or both) in a Zen state of mind; conversely, perhaps
the final ink drawing acts as a conduit for Zen meditation.
Young’s entire compositional output of 1961 was determined by
repetition. Focusing on the singular event and the line of Composition
1960 #10 to Bob Morris, Young created twenty-nine Compositions 1961
that all read, “Draw a straight line and follow it.” Maciunas published the
book of compositions, titled LY 1961, in 1963, with particular dates
268 Chapter Ten

assigned to each composition. In his process, Young first determined the

concept on January 6, 1961. He next calculated an average of the number
of works he had composed in a given year and then applied that number to
1961, assigning dates approximately thirteen days apart, as in January
first, January fourteenth, January twenty-seventh, etc. Therefore, although
he wrote out the works in one night, he projected them further into time by
assigning future dates.
The premiere of the Compositions 1961 took place at Harvard
University on March 31st, 1961 (Fig. 10.3). The concert, organised by
then-student Henry Flynt, an early conceptual artist, also featured an
exhibition of Robert Morris’s sculpture Box with the Sound of Its Own
Making, 1961. That evening, Morris assisted Young with the performance
of the Compositions 1961, many of which had not yet been composed
according to their dates.52 The performance of all of the consecutive works
lasted a few hours. During that time, Young executed each of the
compositions by using a plumb line and then drawing along the floor with
chalk. For each successive work, he drew over the same line as a chance
operation, but as he asserted, “each time it invariably came out differently.”53
Throughout 1961, Young performed this series of compositions in
different combinations using a plumb line and chalk. In 1961, Yoko Ono
had invited him to organise a concert series at her Chambers Street loft.
During one of his own concerts at Ono’s loft, Young performed all of the
Compositions 1961 in one evening with the assistance of Bob Dunn.
Describing the process of performing the works, Young wrote in a 1961
letter to David Tudor that he first established a “sight” by connecting a
string perpendicularly between the floor and ceiling. He then directed
Dunn to hold the plumb line to create different points about three feet
apart along a path. After Dunn had made the marks for one line, Young
used a yardstick as a straight edge along which Dunn drew the lines.
Young writes that Dunn was

careful that he stayed behind the chalk he was holding so he would be

following the line he was drawing …. I always thought of the drawing and
following taking place in more or less the same act…. I wanted this
performance to be very mathematical, and workmanlike with the
performers just doing what they had to do and working very hard at getting
each line very straight and then bowing between each completed piece.”54

Clearly, a great deal of concentration and precision were necessary to

complete this series to Young’s specifications. Describing two additional
collaborative performances of the Compositions 1961 in a letter to Tudor,
Cage directly addressed the problem of time for the performance of these
 Zen and the Art of La Monte Young 269

works. He writes, “By the time La Monte finished, not only had all the
audience left, but Bob Dunn too had left exhausted. The next evening the
project was shortened by shortening the line. Even then it took three
hours.”55 Furthering this discussion of time in Young’s 1961 works, Cage
wrote:

He is able either through the repetition of a single sound or through the

continued performance of a single sound for a period like twenty minutes,
to bring it about that after, say, five minutes I discover that what I have all
along been thinking was the same thing is not the same thing at all, but full
of variety. I find this work remarkable.56

At this point, Young was employing this ability to use time as an agent
for expanded consciousness, a practice that he explored more fully in the
group activities of the Theatre of Eternal Music.
In 1964, the Theatre of Eternal Music began developing their major
work, The Tortoise: His Dreams and Journeys, a theoretically never-
ending piece that consisted of many improvised sections, including Map of
49’s Dream The Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals
Ornamental Lightyears Tracery. The titles of the sections, such as Map of
49’s Dream, often referred to musical elements such as the drone or the
harmonic intervals used within the compositions; the inclusion of slightly
mystical title words such as “galactic” or “dream” indicated the cosmic
quality that Young envisioned for the performances. The phrase Ornamental
Lightyears Tracery, however, was the title of Zazeela’s light projections,
which she viewed as an infinite work that developed from one
performance to the next. The band practiced for hours at a time and
performed at different downtown venues, giving very lengthy and highly
amplified concerts. To Zazeela, this kind of sound environment seemed to
fill the listener’s entire space, particularly because of the almost painful
level of amplification. The audience not only becomes aware of the issue
of sound’s slow development over time, but also “maps” the experience of
the sound space through time.57 Thus, Zazeela used lights to fill visually
the musical space of the group’s vanguard performances, many of which
fostered significant avant-garde interest in metaphysics and psychedelia.
As Alan Licht writes, “The group’s work with excessive amplification,
light projection, and Indian music-derived drones in the early Sixties
predates nearly all other examples of their use in Western music”.58
John Perreault reviewed the Theatre of Eternal Music in The Village
Voice in 1968, writing of the experience of their amplified drone sound,
“Entering [the auditorium] was like being hit in the face with a blast of hot
wind or like walking into a room full of brine, then discovering that
270 Chapter Ten

surprisingly enough it was still possible to breathe.59 To viewers, the

concerts often seemed without beginning or end. According to Licht, “To
help get across this idea [of eternal duration] at concerts, the group would
play before the audience was allowed to enter, giving the impression that
the piece was continuing, not starting.”60 The group termed their sound
“dream music” because it aimed to bring the audience to a highly
meditational state, close to cosmic consciousness.61 In creating a musical
situation in which the listener could understand sound in a meditational
manner, the band often performed using the drone frequency of the alpha
rhythm, also known as the “blood-beat” of the human body.62 By having
the sound coordinate with human pulse, the listener experiences the music
internally. Even Conrad, the more mathematically-minded member of the
group, understood the group’s goal of affecting the human body with
sound as a function of using numbers and frequency on a higher
metaphysical level.
By combining light, abstract images, sound, and physical vibration, the
Theatre of Eternal Music attempted to create synaesthesia by tapping into
both new technology and ancient Eastern metaphysics. When describing
the group’s use of just intonation,63 the tonal theory of Hindustani music,
in 1965, Conrad wrote in Film Culture magazine, “All this sounds like the
mythical rigor of Eastern mysticism, perhaps, but far from this, it is the
world-wide demand made upon the exacting and significant musical
communicant.”64 Working as a single harmonious unit in concert, the
group slowly unveiled both a scientific and a mystical preoccupation with
creating meditative drones and chants. Not only did rehearsing for long
hours teach the group about musical discipline, but it also emulated the
meditative process. In 1965, Conrad summed up the group’s guiding
principle succinctly by stating, “The moment of enlightenment is a
sound.”65
 Zen and the Art of La Monte Young 271

Fig. 10.1 A prepared piano by John Cage, after 1938. Source: Rich, American
Pioneers: Ives to Cage and Beyond, 151. © John Cage Trust.
272 Chapter Ten

Fig 10.2 Nam June Paik, Klavier Intégral, 1958-1963. Photo © Museum of
Modern Art Ludwig Foundation Vienna, former collection Hahn, Cologne.
 Zen and the Art of La Monte Young 273

Fig. 10.3: Henry Flynt, concert flyer for Young’s Compositions 1961 at Harvard
University, 1961. Source: Flynt, “Young in New York, 1960-62,” © by kind
permission of Henry Flynt.
274 Chapter Ten

Notes
1
La Monte Young, interview with the author, New York City, 15th March 2004
and 19th March 2004. See also William Duckworth, Talking Music (New York:
Schirmer Books, 1995), 235.
2
Young, interview with the author, New York City, March 15, 2004 and March
19, 2004.
3
Simon Shaw-Miller, “‘Concerts of Everyday Living’: Cage, Fluxus and Barthes,
Interdisciplinarity and Inter-media Events,” Art History, 19: 1, March 1996, 9-10.
4
Shaw-Miller, “‘Concerts of Everyday Living’: Cage, Fluxus and Barthes,
Interdisciplinarity and Inter-media Events,” 9-10.
5
Liz Kotz, “Post-Cagean Aesthetics and the ‘Event’ Score,” October, 95, Winter
2001, 57.
6
Ian Nagoski, “La Monte Young—Marian Zazeela: An Interview,” Halana 1,
November 1995, 31.
7
Jamie James in Nagoski, “La Monte Young—Marian Zazeela: An Interview,” 31.
8
Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems (San Francisco: City Lights Books,
1956), 9.
9
Nagoski, “La Monte Young—Marian Zazeela: An Interview,” 33.
10
Lama Anagarika Govinda, “The Mystery of Time,” Main Currents, 27: 4,
September / October 1970, 19.
11
Govinda, “The Mystery of Time,” 19.
12
Lama Anagarika Govinda, “The Conceptions of Space in Ancient Buddhist Art
and Thought,” Main Currents, 26: 3, January / February 1970, 79.
13
Govinda, “The Conceptions of Space in Ancient Buddhist Art and Thought,” 80.
14
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (New York: Grove
Press, 1964), 88.
15
Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism, 92.
16
Frank J. Oteri, “La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela at the Dream House: In
Conversation with Frank J. Oteri” (unpublished interview, copyright La Monte
Young, Marian Zazeela, and NewMusicBox, 2003), 2.
17
Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Trans. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English (New York:
Vintage Books, 1997), n.p.
18
Young in Richard Kostelanetz, The Theatre of Mixed Means: An Introduction to
Happenings, Kinetic Environments, and Other Mixed-Means Performances (New
York: Dial Press, 1968), 217-218.
19
Elliott Antokoletz, Twentieth-Century Music (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall,
1992), 476.
20
Richard Kostelanetz, John Cage (Ex)plain(ed) (New York: Schirmer Books,
1996), 54.
21
Douglas Kahn, Noise Water Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 1999), 236-237.
22
Kahn, Noise Water Meat, 163.
23
Kostelanetz, Theatre of Mixed Means, 214.
 Zen and the Art of La Monte Young 275

24
Walter De Maria, Interview by Paul Cummings, October 4, 1972, Archives of
American Art / Smithsonian Institution, n.p. De Maria elaborated on the
Happening, saying, “It was like there you were and there were a certain number of
objects to contemplate, that kind of thing. There were very few elements, things
with very few elements, very long periods of silence going on for a long period of
time, not a lot of acting, not a lot of elements, not a lot of expression. . . .The idea
of interaction is very interesting . . . the idea that maybe the art world is going to
express itself with the spectator totally engaged, you know, with the actor just a
few feet from you, with the sound all around you. . . . the idea of being absolutely
part of it, that was the important part of the Happenings”.
25
Allan Kaprow, “’Happenings’ in the New York Art Scene,” Art News, May
1961, 38.
26
Duckworth, Talking Music, 233.
27
Kostelanetz, Theatre of Mixed Means, 192-194.
28
Henry Flynt, “Mutations of the Vanguard: Pre-Fluxus, During Fluxus, Late
Fluxus,” in Achille Bonito Oliva, ed., Ubi Fluxus Ibi Motus, (Milan: Mazzotta,
1990), 105.
29
Young, interview with the author, New York City, March 15, 2004 and March
19, 2004. Young explained that he had a difficult time recruiting musicians to
perform his works in California. By the time that he started writing the
Compositions 1960, he had become exasperated with the lack of musicians
interested in performing his work seriously. Thus, he turned to artists to dream up
new ways of performing his works.
30
Douglas Kahn, The Latest: Fluxus and Music,” in Janet Jenkins, ed., In the Spirit
of Fluxus, (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1993), 103.
31
La Monte Young, unpublished introduction (2002) to Lecture 1960, courtesy of
the artist (copyright La Monte Young, 2002), n.p.
32
La Monte Young, “Compositions,” An Anthology of chance operations, concept
art, anti art, indeterminacy, plans of action, diagrams, music, dance constructions,
improvisation, meaningless work, natural disasters, compositions, mathematics,
essays, poetry, ed. La Monte Young and Jackson MacLow (New York: George
Maciunas and Jackson MacLow, 1963), n.p.
33
Marian Zazeela, interview with the author, New York City, March 15, 2004 and
March 19, 2004.
34
Young, “Compositions,” n.p.
35
Zazeela, interview with the author, New York City, 15th March 2004 and 19th
March 2004.
36
Nagoski, “La Monte Young—Marian Zazeela: An Interview,” 30.
37
Kostelanetz, Theatre of Mixed Means, 214.
38
Kostelanetz, Theatre of Mixed Means, 205.
39
Kostelanetz, Theatre of Mixed Means, 203.
40
Young, “Compositions,” n.p.
41
Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, Second Edition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 84-85.
42
Young, “Compositions,” n.p.
276 Chapter Ten

43
Young, “Compositions,” n.p.
44
La Monte Young, “Lecture 1960,” in Mariellen R. Sandford ed., Happenings
and Other Acts, (New York: Routledge Press, 1995), 74.
45
Oteri, “La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela at the Dream House: In
Conversation with Frank J. Oteri,” 47.
46
Young, “Compositions,” n.p.
47
Duckworth, Talking Music, 234.
48
Young, “Compositions,” n.p.
49
Young, “Compositions,” n.p.
50
Kostelanetz, Theatre of Mixed Means, 204.
51
Victor Bockris and John Cale, What’s Welsh for Zen? (New York and London:
Bloomsbury Publishing, 1999), 40.
52
Henry Flynt, “Mutations of the Vanguard: Pre-Fluxus, During Fluxus, Late
Fluxus,” in Oliva, ed., Ubi Fluxus Ibi Motus, 105.
53
Kostelanetz, Theatre of Mixed Means, 205.
54
Getty Research Insitute, David Tudor Papers, Box 14, Folder 2.
55
ibid.
56
Kahn, Noise Water Meat, 229-230.
57
Nagoski, “La Monte Young—Marian Zazeela: An Interview,” 36.
58
Clinton Heylin, From the Velvets to the Voidoids: A Pre-punk History for a
Post-punk World (New York, 1993), 6.
59
John Perreault, “La Monte Young’s Tracery: The Voice of the Tortoise,” The
Village Voice, 22 February 1968, 27.
60
Alan Licht, “The History of La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music.”
Forced Exposure 16, 1990, 64.
61
Tony Conrad, “Inside the Dream Syndicate,” Film Culture 41, Summer 1966, 7.
62
Conrad, “Inside the Dream Syndicate,” 6.
63
Just intonation is a tonal system distinct from twelve tone equal temperament in
that it uses ratios of whole numbers rather than multiples of one interval in a
harmony. Young believed that by using integers and prime numbers as the basis
for his harmonic intervals, he could induce a sense of the natural order of the
cosmos, since prime numbers are the basis for all harmonic vibrational
relationships and “universal structure can be conceived of as vibration” (Nagoski,
“La Monte Young—Marian Zazeela: An Interview,” 31).
64
Conrad, “Inside the Dream Syndicate,” 7.
65
Conrad, “Inside the Dream Syndicate,” 6.
 CHAPTER ELEVEN

FORMALISING THE STOCHASTIC CLOUD:

XENAKIS AND HIS MACHINE
FOR DRAWING MUSIC

OLGA TOULOUMI

I proposed a world of sound-masses, vast groups of sound-events, clouds,

and galaxies governed by new characteristics such as density, degree of
order, and rate of change.
—Iannis Xenakis1

Introduction
On the 4th November 1978, Raymond Ericson of the New York Times
invited his readers to go and see for themselves in the show about to open
at the Drawing Centre in New York why “many contemporary composers
are accused of writing music for the eye rather than the ear.”2 The subject
of the exhibition was “Musical Transcriptions” and it featured notation
pages from one hundred twenty five composers. Most of the items on
display came from the collection that John Cage had curated almost a
decade earlier with the intention comprehensively to present the various
directions post World War II composers had given to the writing of music
and notation systems.3 With the scores, however, deprived of their sonic
referent and mounted on the walls of a gallery space dedicated to the
question of drawing, the collection transformed from a testimonial to the
linguistic turn occurring in music to an exploration of the ways in which
drawing partook in it. Interestingly enough, one of the participants in the
exhibition and a veteran of the graphic method in music composition,
Iannis Xenakis, during the same period would come up with an
electroacoustic system quite literally to allow for the drawing of music.
Apart from yet another experiment with alternatives to the standardised
Western notation system, the UPIC – as was the name of the system – also
278 Chapter Eleven

testified to a particularly McLuhanesque perspective on the relationship

between the writing of music and the sounds it produced: unless the
medium changed, the message could not be radicalised.
Indeed, Xenakis belongs to a second generation of modernists, who
addressed ontological questions regarding the subject matter of their
music. Discontent with previous efforts to break with the academic canon
and its aesthetics, these composers decided to address the problematic of
the very language of music and its signifying mechanism with the hope of
coming up with alternative notation that would allow new content to
emerge. For some like John Cage, the graphic method guaranteed
indeterminacy in music composition. Since drawing turned notations into
pictures not to be read but rather interpreted while performed, graphic
scores opened up composition to the “voice” of the performer and its
unpredictability. For others like Xenakis, drawing offered a double
opportunity; on the one hand to democratise music composition, since no
specialised knowledge was required, and on the other hand to allow for
science and its representations of sounds to partake in the writing of music
and the creation of sonic “clouds” and “galaxies.” In both cases, drawing
held a predominant position as a method of notating to redefine music and
its compositional process. My intention here is to explore Xenakis’s
theory of drawing, its position within the reform of the notating system in
music, and the ways in which it impacted upon the workings of
representation and signification. In particular I will focus on an early
computational system that Xenakis and his research group at the Centre
d’Etudes de Mathèmatique et Automatiques Musicales (CEMAMu),
invented in the late 1970s: the Unité Polyagogique Informatique du
CEMAMu (UPIC – Fig. 11.1).4

A Machine for Drawing Sounds

The UPIC constituted an electroacoustic system, a unity as its name
(“unité”) implied, to couple sounds and drawings and to permit the
composition of music by means of graphic design. The system was
centered around a drawing board equipped with an electromagnetic pen
that the aspiring composer would use while testing his or her skills in
drawing music. The potential composer drew a line with the electromagnetic
pen on the diagram of the drawing board, where the x-axis represented the
time when the sound appeared and the y-axis, the height of its frequency.
Upon contact of the electromagnetic pen with the conductive pad of the
drawing board, an analogue signal would be created and transmitted to the
analogue-to-digital converter. The data would be analysed by the SOLAR
 Formalising the Stochastic Cloud 279

mainframe and then sent to the digital-to-analogue converter and the

transducers that would transform data into an audio signal to be amplified
and projected stereophonically into space, this time as a sonic pressure
wave. Simultaneously, two cathode-ray tubes would represent the
composition both graphically and alphanumerically. The composer would
listen to the sonic result of his drawing, go back to the drawing board,
correct it, and so on and so forth until a satisfying result was obtained.5 In
short, whenever someone designed something on the drawing board, the
system would translate it into sound.6 And that was exactly the promise of
the system: to synthesise sounds and sonic events out of graphic input.
From the very moment the UPIC was announced, there was a fair
amount of obscurity surrounding it. Even though when referring to the
UPIC one could potentially mean the drawing board per se, the whole
system of composing music, the institution established in order to
facilitate research on its programme of action or the programme of action
per se, the CEMAMu team would repeatedly present the drawing board as
the nodal point of the system. In public demonstrations, exhibitions, and
broadcastings, the team would place the board in a prominent position
with the rest of the system dispersed on the periphery (Fig. 11.2).7 Even in
the analytical block diagrams the team released, the drawing board would
eventually move from the periphery to the centre of the drawing, with the
name “UPIC” directly associated with it. In reality only part of the system,
this strange object of another “pragmatogony” – in Latour’s words -came
to represent, if not embody, the whole of it, thereby concealing the
workings of the system behind it. In the end, Xenakis’s campaign was as
much about the UPIC as it was about the place of drawing in music
composition. More than that, the UPIC brought quite literally onto the
table, the issue of writing sound – strictly speaking, in terms of drawing.
But what kind of drawing did the UPIC introduce?

Abstraction and the Alloying with Science

Xenakis’s drawing is strongly related to his understanding of
abstraction and his continuous efforts for an “alloying” of the arts with the
sciences as the title of his doctoral defence Arts/Sciences: Alloys implies.8
In a way, his use of drawing, as present in the programmatic statement of
the UPIC, appears to be the counterpoint to early twentieth-century efforts
to discover in music the tools to reform the visual arts. Early modernists
like Arthur Dove, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky continuously tried to
locate in music the means radically to depart from the figurative practices
of painting, to the point of claiming synaesthesia as the particular
280 Chapter Eleven

neuropathology that conditioned their work. For Kandinsky music

exemplified in the most comprehensive way an art practice indifferent to
representations of nature but that was primarily concerned with structuring
its own subject matter, i.e., sound,9 while Klee would insist that his
background in music provided the élan vital behind the formation of his
visual language,10 and Dove would go so far as to attempt the translation
of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue into painting by substituting, for
sound in music, colour on his canvas.11 Despite these differences, scholars
have recently discussed the work of these early modernists vis-à-vis the
synaesthetic claims that surrounded them so as to historicise the
emergence of abstraction within the visual arts. This abstraction promised
to rearticulate the relationship between signs and referents via the
presumed internal voice of the artist and manifested itself on the level of
representation as surfaces of colour.12 In contrast to such early modernist
efforts, Xenakis understood the quest for abstraction as an opportunity not
only to expose the arbitrariness involved in the naming of things and
aesthetics in general, but also to rationalise the process of composing via
the introduction of the sciences to it.
Even though Xenakis had been writing on music and the sciences since
the mid-1950s, he introduced the concept of abstraction for the first time
only in 1958, when the completion of the Philips Pavilion provided him
the opportunity to contribute a text to the Pavilion’s companion book for
the Brussels Expo. With the title “Note sur un Geste Électronique,” the
text was designed to wrap up the presentation of the contiguous parts of
the Philips Pavilion, or “Le Poème Électronique” as Le Corbusier fancied
calling it, with a postlude to the synthesis of the arts that the design of the
Pavilion was attempting (Fig. 11.3).13 Xenakis grasped this opportunity to
unify his views on music, architecture, the arts, and the role of the sciences
within a single cohesive narrative. He chose abstraction as the spine for his
narrative. In fact, when he republished his “Note sur un Geste Électronique”
in La Revue Musicale a year later, he would go so far as to include a line
that would cement the central position of abstraction in the arts in general
and music in particular once and for all. “The abstract current is so
powerful and so important,” he said, “that any of its detractors within the
realm of the arts appear to be inflicted [sic] by mental deficiency.”14 In the
opening of his essay, Xenakis offers his understanding of abstraction:

Below, I will attempt to highlight some of the current tendencies within

artistic creation that are converging towards an integration of the visual
and the audible arts. The intentions behind painting and sculpture have
already adopted the most recent stages of physical, mathematical and
philosophical thought. These are the steps towards Abstraction. Abstraction,
 Formalising the Stochastic Cloud 281

here, is meant in the sense of conscious manipulations of laws and pure

ideas, and not of concrete objects.15

Even though Xenakis sets off his “note” with a discussion on the
integration of the arts, he soon moves his analysis to a stage before that
integration happens, to the domain of “tendencies” and “intentions.” This
exact condition of “tendencies” that “converge” but have not yet resulted
in integration seems to be for Xenakis the place where abstraction emerges
and not the epiphenomenon of these tendencies, aka the “integration”
itself. However, even when back in the realm of “intentions” and
“tendencies,” Xenakis argues that abstraction is not guaranteed. “These are
the steps towards Abstraction,” he reminds us, and not abstraction per se,
for only within the realm of ideas does Xenakis’s abstraction exist. The
abstraction the mathematically literate composer was referring to preceded
figuration or schematisation. To be more precise, Xenakis did not
understand abstraction as the result or cause of a visual language that
denies figuration, but rather as a method for developing the process to
govern and articulate the final product in its entirety, be it music, or arts,
or architecture. Ultimately, his theory of abstraction decisively placed the
sciences within the compositional process in a hope not only to reform the
pedagogy, but also to calibrate the disciplining of the field of music
definition within an alliance of a different order that complicated
narratives of harmony and melody with claims of objectivity and
scientifically determined control.
The effort radically to reform the methods of music composition via
the sciences actually emerged from a profound criticism of the Serialist
model and its systematisation of the compositional method. Initially, in
“La Crise de la Musique Sérielle” (1955), and four years later again in his
note on the Philips Pavilion, Xenakis openly denounced the Serialist
approach to music composition on the level of its very linear structure.16
For him the concept of the series presented the composer with two
problems. On the one hand, the twelve notes of the row doomed Serialism
to finitude. Any sound that could not be represented on the staff did not
have a place within the principal structural series to be inverted,
retrograded, and so on, thus curtailing the number of combinations a
composer could obtain in a single series. On the other hand, the linear
system of Serialism conceived of notes as points within a row and was not
concerned with their distribution on the space of the musical score. In fact,
the discrepancy between the Serialist method and the nature of the
polyphonic compositional task became the Achilles’ heel of Serialism that
Xenakis would attack:
282 Chapter Eleven

Linear polyphony destroys itself by its very complexity; what one hears is
in reality nothing but a mass of notes in various registers. … There is
consequently a contradiction between the polyphonic linear system and the
heard result, which is surface or mass. This contradiction inherent in
polyphony will disappear when the independence of sounds is total. … The
macroscopic effect can then be controlled by the mean [sic] of the
movements of elements which we select. The result is the introduction of
the notion of probability. … Here, in a few words, is the possible escape
route from the “linear category” in musical thought.17

For Xenakis, polyphony called the Serialist approach into question. As

a problem of a synchronic co-existence of sounds that develop rather than
a diachronic arrangement of a row that unfolds, polyphony challenged the
Serialist methods on the very levels of perception and aesthetics. Brian
Kane has rather acutely discussed this shift in terms of a “move to the
macroscopic … away from the individual, concrete object, towards
perception, and the manipulation of the population as a whole.”18 He is
right. Xenakis’s criticism of Serialism reflects his own gradual detachment
from the domain of objects and a step backwards, to reconsider populations
of sounds and sonic fields. Opposing the Serialist fixation to the structure
of the row, he proposed to adopt a designer’s approach that looks at the
overall form of the entirety. “This contradiction inherent in polyphony,”
he claimed, “will disappear when the independence of sounds is total,”
implying here an independence from the ordering of the row.19 Once there
was no Serialist row to organise sonic singularities, the composer could go
back to the abstraction of mathematics and find the formula to distribute
these sonic entities directly onto the surface of the score, hoping for
sciences not only to organise the musical form, but also to solve the
perceptual problem of its auditory experience. Since the problem was how
to organise complexity, the answer would come from one of the theories
that dealt with large numbers.
In the years to follow the publication of his attack to Serialism,
Xenakis presented in a series of articles in the periodical publication
Gravesaner Blätter possible ways of deploying mathematical and physical
formulas to determine parts or even the whole of the compositional
process.20 In 1958, the year of his concluding note to the Philips Pavilion,
he published an article in which he proposed a new approach to music.
This article, along with others to follow,21 later formed the volume
Musiques Formelles (1963) of La Revue Musicale (Fig. 11.4).22 Xenakis
named this new approach “Stochastic Music,” announcing thus the
introduction of probability theory and calculated randomness in music
composition. The thought behind this choice was clear. Since stochastics
 Formalising the Stochastic Cloud 283

“studies and formulates the law of large numbers, the laws of rare events,
the different aleatory procedures, etc.,”23 he explained, then it might as
well be used to introduce indeterminism into music composition. In order
to break down for his reader the logic behind this unbelievable turning of
the tables from a mathematical abstraction that describes to one that
produces, he gave two examples of different origins. The first family of
examples described sonic events that occur in nature. “The collision of
hail or rain with hard surfaces, or the song of the cicadas in a summer
field,”24 exemplified for Xenakis randomly produced sounds. Within
exactly the same framework, the sounds of a violently disrupted
demonstration also followed stochastic laws in their passage from order to
chaos, and then back to order. Both families of events, humanly or
naturally produced, did not condition “the passage from complete order to
total disorder in a continuous or explosive manner,” but were conditioned
by it. “They are stochastic laws,”25 he concluded. Was Xenakis deluded?
Partly yes, and partly no, for in his cybernetic understanding of nature,
there was no randomness outside the calculated randomness that
probability theory described.26
Actually, Xenakis’s understanding of probability theory as preceding
the phenomena that occur was not an invention of his imagination alone.
Apart from being characteristic of the positivism inherent in the belief in
scientific causality, the belief that a law precedes, if not conditions, the
occurrence of a phenomenon was actually germane to the theories of
cybernetics. Norbert Wiener, the godfather of cybernetics, along with his
MIT group working on the AntiAircraft Predictor (AA),27 would indeed
theorise the aerial battlefield as a stochastic cloud in which probability
theory could delineate the trajectories of the enemy’s aircrafts and their
distribution in the sky.28 In his 1948 “peace” message in The Human Use
of Human Beings (1948), Wiener described a brave new “probabilistic
world,” in which, he says:

we no longer deal with quantities and statements which concern a specific,

real universe as a whole but ask instead questions which may find their
answers in a large number of similar universes.29

It was this new conception of the world as a probabilistic distribution

rather than as a series of discrete objects that could be fully known that
underlies Xenakis’s move from a concern with predetermined sound
objects to the design of their distribution as points within a pulsing sonic
cloud.
284 Chapter Eleven

Formalisms and the Mapping of Sounds

The shift from objects to fields did not come on its own in Xenakis’s
work, but rather it coincided with the development of a graphic method for
music composition (whether it instigated or followed this development is
unclear). Already from the two pieces that introduced him to the world of
new music as an avant-garde composer, Metastaseis (1953/54 – Fig.
11.5)30 and Pithoprakta (1955/56 – Fig. 11.6), Xenakis proposed designing
instead of notating sounds. Featuring clusters of straight lines dispersed
over the surface of the paper, the scores of the two pieces had replaced the
traditional staff with a pitch versus time Cartesian diagram and the notes
with straight lines going up and down the diagram. After all, as he would
later claim in his Arts/Science: Alloys, and as the title of his earlier book
Musiques Formelles implied, design constituted for him the most
appropriate and historically established tool in the pursuit of “general
morphologies;”31 a pursuit that would later lead to the construction of the
UPIC as the technology not only to establish but also to naturalise the
continuity between the visual and the aural realms.
Xenakis himself situates the introduction of drawing in music within
his explorations for Metastaseis and Pithoprakta. Actually, when years
later Joel Chadabe asked him to clarify the impetus behind the
employment of drawing, the composer referred back to these two
particular scores and explained:

I was doing designs for Metastasis and Pithoprakta because it was easier
for me to control large numbers of events by designing them instead of by
writing them on staves, which was cumbersome, so I linked one pitch with
another pitch through lines, and I thought, ‘Why should I write them as
notes instead of as these lines? – we are used to seeing things in visual
shapes, it’s natural.32

For Xenakis the introduction of design served a double purpose. Trained

as an engineer and working for years in the office of an architect, Xenakis
felt at ease with drawing, or at least so he claimed, particularly the kind of
technical drawing he would later take up. At the same time, however, in
the formalist mind of the young composer, drawing allowed for the
conception of a composition all at once. Design provided him with the
kind of control that traditional notation could not: the control of a
population of sounds and their distribution on a planar surface. Basically,
to compose music in terms of sonic events occurring in a field required a
new system of notation to present, or re-present if you like, sounds to the
sciences that were to determine the form and distribution of those very
 Formalising the Stochastic Cloud 285

events. In a sense, the design that Xenakis proposed was capable of

describing the deployment of sonic events and formalising them within
delineated territories. As Sharon Kanach has underlined, drawing could be
concerned with a totality and its macroscopic control in a way that
traditional notation with its linear processional structure could not afford.33
Or, in other words, Xenakis’ drawing permitted the inception of a music
composition in terms of a form that design controls in its totality. Drawing
came “naturally” to him, and here I am implying the cybernetic view of
nature that Xenakis himself subscribed to, only and under the condition
that it allowed for the move from the scripting of texts according to the
syntax and grammar of the western tradition to the scribing of forms
alloyed with scientific formulas and architectural structures.
Music composition, however, was not the only occasion upon which
Xenakis would turn to drawing. Taking a look at the scores of Metastaseis
and Pithoprakta, one can only wonder regarding the origins of his design
approach to composition, since they seem to fuse the abstraction of the
traditional staff with the engineers’ use of graph paper to denote the
mathematical space within which structures are deployed, organised, and
controlled. In fact, starting with architecture and engineering, design
permeated the full range of his practices, if not facilitated the
interdisciplinary crossings in his work. After all, at the moment of his first
experiments with drawn music, he was employed as an engineer at the
office of the Franco-Swiss architect Le Corbusier. To characterise,
however, his design approach as architectural is far from the truth, since
neither of his drawn scores employs any of the representational means of
architecture. No plans, no sections, and no axonometric renderings were
introduced to describe, define, and give form to his music compositions.
Xenakis himself can be held responsible for part of the confusion. Apart
from throwing every now and then “architecture” into his texts, on a
number of occasions he repeatedly interlaced in his narrative of origins the
score of Metastaseis that he composed in 1954, the drawings he designed
for the Philips Pavilion in 1956, and the mathematics of ruled surfaces.34
From articles to essays to interviews, he would reiterate their intrinsic
connection as a datum, without ever explicating the nature of this holy
triad of his. Scholars have put tremendous efforts into clarifying the
sequence in which the passing from one field to another occurred in the
formation of his design approach both to music and architecture.
Comparing the score of Metastaseis to drawings of the Philips Pavilion,
Nouritza Matossian found in the former the inspiration for the latter,
arguing for an architecture informed by music on the level of the formal
similitude between the perspectival drawings of the former and the excerpt
286 Chapter Eleven

from the notation of the latter.35 Pointing to Xenakis’s architectural

practice in Le Corbusier’s office and his education as a civil engineer at
the National Technical University of Athens,36 Stev Sterken has discussed
Metastaseis as the application of ruled surfaces, thus moving the origins of
the architecture of the Philips Pavilion back to Xenakis’s education as a
civil engineer.37 Meanwhile, the architectural historian Robin Evans has
shifted the analysis to a whole new level by arguing that actually it was the
Corbusian modular, and through it the mathematics of the Fibonacci
sequence, that underlay the form of the musical composition that informed
the architecture of the Philips Pavilion.38 Even though most of the points
regarding the causality governing the connections among music,
architecture, and mathematics in the work of Iannis Xenakis can
potentially be valid, we need to look closer at the drawings themselves,
and how they reflect upon his theory of form that conditioned the passages
from one field to another during his compositional quest.
To take one thing at a time, however, the application of ruled surfaces
in architecture had already appeared in the mid-1930s, and it truly took off
after World War II.39 Images of hyperbolic paraboloids, conoids, and other
types of ruled surfaces (Fig. 11.7), along with detailed descriptions of the
load distribution and the calculations needed, circulated in architectural
offices and through the pages of architectural journals, while more and
more buildings in need of a larger than usual span would employ them. In
the postwar years of reconstruction, this “new way to span space,” as
Eduardo Catalano would advertise thin shells, won over architects as a
demonstration of “purely functional and economic reasoning.”40 Ruled
surfaces, however, were not a patentable engineering invention, but
actually an epistemological loan from geometry. Basically almost any
plane or curved surface can be described as “ruled,” which means
described by one or more (depending on the kind of surface) lattices of
parallel straight lines. Hence the design of ruled surfaces does not
represent the distribution of the load – it is not structural – but rather is
representational of the ruling and potentially generative of the curvature
that it produces.
Xenakis seemed to know the implications that ruled surfaces brought
to the table. When it came to music, he persistently avoided their strict and
overall use. In the preparatory sketches of Metastaseis, ruled surfaces
appear only between measures 309 and 314, and even then only to
organise parts of the orchestra and not the fragment in its entirety. In terms
of design, the score almost looks like a scratch paper where Xenakis has
been working and reworking on iterations of ruled surfaces, some tight,
others loosening up and allowing some of the lines to escape the overall
 Formalising the Stochastic Cloud 287

ruling. Throughout the fragment, there is no one emerging form but rather
four distinct ones, with no indication of the principle that governs their
becoming. Be it the Fibonacci series, or the theory of gases, or the golden
ratio, one thing was for sure: the kind of drawing Xenakis used for the
preliminary sketch of Metastaseis turned the orchestra into clusters of
homogenised lines that design could potentially rule and organise. The
distinct sound object was absorbed within a field to be described and
formed; in other words to be mapped.
Xenakis also had other reasons for introducing ruled surfaces. When
interviewed by Bálint András Varga, he explained that he was “interested
in the idea of continuous and discontinuous change,” or what he would
elsewhere call “the contrast between movement and immobility.” He used
the name Metastaseis primarily to signify exactly that: “a dialectical
contrast… between ‘meta’ [beyond, after] and ‘stasis’ [immobility].”41
Xenakis understood a ruled surface as that mathematical construct that the
continuous movement of a single straight line could produce. The Greek
composer hoped to bring this kind of continuity into the score of
Metastaseis with glissando lines which “when long and sufficiently
interlaced,” they could result in ruled surfaces and “sonic spaces of
continuous evolution.”42 In the case of Metastaseis, drawing and the
employment of the Cartesian diagram created the mathematical space that
permitted the introduction of ruled surfaces, and along with them a
continuity to undo the workings of what Xenakis theorised as the
discontinuous notation system of the past. In a way, the drawn score
provided the canvas upon which Xenakis would fabricate his dialectics.
With the Philips Pavilion the question of drawing and the use of ruled
surfaces moves into a whole different dimension. Le Corbusier, at the
time, with his own body of engineers at the Atelier des Bâtisseurs
(ATBAT), was experimenting with the formal possibilities of ruled
surfaces immediately after World War II.43 As part of ATBAT, Xenakis
had not only calculated the reinforced concrete structures for the Unité
d’Habitation in Marseille and for the Rezé-lès-Nantes housing project, but
he had also experimented with the calculation and construction of his first
hyperbolic paraboloid in the design of the Plug of the Assembly Hall in
Chandigarh.44 When – so the oft-told story goes – the office was
commissioned with the Philips Pavilion in 1956, Xenakis turned to ruled
surfaces, and in particular to hyperbolic paraboloids, to come up with a
form for the shell.45 In the text Philips Company published in the issue of
Philips Technical Review that was dedicated to the design and
construction of the Pavilion, the work of Felix Candela, and in particular a
drawing of the church Notre Dame de la Solitude he designed found its
288 Chapter Eleven

way in the article attributed to Xenakis as a reference and an influence in

the use of ruled surfaces.46 Surprisingly enough, the ruling of the surface
did not appear in any of the construction documents, but only on
perspectival projections and models (Fig. 11.8). Actually, building ruled
surfaces proved to be almost impossible task, and another engineer, H. C.
Duyster,47 was called upon to calculate the hyperbolic paraboloids of the
pavilion.48 Xenakis’s ruled surfaces needed to be themselves “ruled” by a
network of cables that would hold the entire enterprise in place (Fig. 11.9).
Therefore, in the drawings of Philips Pavilion ruled surfaces rendered the
surface geometrically perceivable but not necessarily buildable. Instead of
being the structural devices Xenakis claimed them to be, ruled surfaces
mainly functioned as agents of form.
Be it sound or space, Xenakis found in design yet another opportunity
to formalise. From the mathematical space where ruled surfaces thrive, to
the abstraction of the traditional staff, to the unfolding thin shell of the
Pavilion, he would attentively stick to the continuities that the transfer of
ruled surfaces from one to another implied, even though never really
constituting them. To him, forms ever preceded the sciences. They existed
before and across any cultural, historical, or disciplinary referent: forms
were for Xenakis “pananthropic and therefore universal.49 Not, however,
any kind of forms, but rather the ones that could potentially allow their
subjection to a particular scientific alloying. Upon his “papier millimétré,”
the engineered masses of lines and points articulated acoustical fields. In
any case, acoustics had for a long time employed the linear visual
vocabulary to describe or even synthesise the attributes of sound. In a
sense, Xenakis’s “sound events,” “galaxies,” and “clouds” he so much
enjoyed talking about in his texts and interviews constituted formalised
acoustical fields that were articulated in maps and for a good reason. To
conceive of music as a field of distributed micro-sound events, required a
reform of the means of representation, and since for him the control of
musical forms in terms of drawing constituted the issue at stake, maps and
cartography provided an illuminating analogy to the development of his
graphic method.

Transducing Electronic Fields

For a composer, however, who had devoted his career to the pursuit of
continuities, the graphic method still posed a problem. Even with the
works after Metastaseis, the drawings functioned more as diagrams, as
sketches of a composition in its becomings, than as finalised scores. The
performers could not interpret the graphs and Xenakis certainly did not
 Formalising the Stochastic Cloud 289

desire for his music the kind of interpretation the experimental school of
thought promoted in the US. There was still the need to transliterate
drawings into the standard notation system, to turn them from graphs to
text that the performers could read. The UPIC promised to do exactly that:
to naturalise the process of translation to the point that the drawings would
become accurate maps to anterior aural territories.
From the early 1960s onwards, Xenakis put his efforts into establishing
a research institute to explore the use of the computer in music
composition.50 Initially under the auspices of the Groupe de Mathèmatique
Sociale de l’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Études, Xenakis founded L’Équipe
de Mathèmatique et Automatique Musicales (EMAMu) in 1966.51 With
an additional grant from the Gulbekian Foundation and the Centre
National d’Études des Télécommunications (CNET), he finally founded
his own research institute in Paris: the CEMAMu.52 Dedicated to the study
and application of mathematics and information/system theories in music
composition, the institute soon transformed into a laboratory where
engineers and mathematicians would cross paths with composers and
performers, weaving an interdisciplinary network around research on
stochastic and other processes in music composition. The computer proved
to be an exceptional tool in this regard, apart from one serious defect:

The obstacle stood on the side of the computer: how to transmit to the
machine a notation and concepts that the musician learns in the
conservatories. The solution was the hand: the musician gives his
commands to the computer through drawings, and not punch cards or
programs. … The hand, itself, stands between randomness and calculation.
It is both an instrument of the mind – so close to the head – and an
imperfect tool.53

For Xenakis, the basic problem was one of transmissibility, or

continuity if you like. He needed to establish a channel of communication
between two organisms that spoke two different languages: the
composer’s system of musical notation and the computer’s binary code of
on-and-off, of ones and zeros. From the perspective of the computer, the
note as a linguistic symbol of music did not convey sufficient acoustic
data to allow for the translation of each symbol into a sonic event.
Therefore Xenakis proposed drawing as a method to index acoustic data
that could then be transmitted to the computer. With enough funding from
the French Ministry of Culture to hire the technicians and communication
engineers, and to purchase the equipment, Xenakis initiated research on a
graphic input composition tool in 1972, and UPIC was finally born in
1978.54
290 Chapter Eleven

As the cybernetic system that would translate graphic input into sonic
output, the UPIC utilised design in a very particular way. Unlike
technologies of sound reproduction in which the trace inscribed on the
medium constitutes a literal index of a sonorous object that preceded it and
caused the writing of its trace, the UPIC appeared to turn the tables.
Within the time versus frequency diagram that framed the field of all
inscribable sounds on the drawing board, the trace that the electromagnetic
pen inscribed was not indexing an existing sound, but rather the electric
current that would produce the signal to be later translated via the
cybernetic line into a sonic event projected into space.55 To be more
precise, there were two kinds of inscriptions at work. The first one was the
line drawn by the composer, the permanent trace of ink on paper produced
by the gesture of the user – the movement of the hand. The second
inscription, the referent that was indexed on the tracing paper, was the
temporary line the electromagnetic pen created on the electric field below
the tracing paper – a line constituted by the difference of voltage produced
at each point. Upon contact with each one of the wires under the drawing
surface, the electromagnetic pen induced a difference in voltage that
generated an analogue signal to travel through the circuits and be projected
as electrons shot onto the fluorescent screen of the cathode-ray tube.56 The
signal was additionally transmuted from analogue to digital and was
transferred as such to the computer for further manipulations, before being
again converted from digital to analogue and sent to the loudspeakers,
where the signal was transduced and then finally projected into space in
the form of a pressure wave. From drawing to sound, a cybernetic line of
communication would constantly transmute in order to transmit currents.
In doing so, this cybernetic line reconstituted the subject matter of music –
sound – as pure information and transformed the design on the drawing
board into a map that indexed the position of the electrical currents
induced within a field.
The first result of this system was Mycènes Alpha (Fig. 11.10), a piece
to be performed during Xenakis’s last multimedia spectacle in Greece in
1978. The graphic score features nothing but lines; horizontal ones,
scribbled ones, curved ones and so on, that come together, overlap, or are
kept in distance forming rhizomes, plateaus or the stochastic cloud itself.
Yet unlike the stochastic cloud of aircraft patterns, in which the mark left
on the sky functions as an indexical sign of its cause, hence tying the trace
to its object via a very physical relationship, the mass of lines in the score
of Mycenae Alpha did not uphold such a one-to-one relationship to the
sounds they produced. In fact, a close look at the drawings of the graphic
score reveals lines that do not make sense, scribbles that move from right
 Formalising the Stochastic Cloud 291

to left and then back to right on the x-axis of time. What constituted a
continuous line on the score did not necessarily index a continuous sound
since the UPIC would detect two different lines starting at the same
coordinates, and therefore what seemed to represent one visual line within
the Cartesian diagram of the UPIC, was actually read as two or three or
more sonic lines.57 The UPIC was founded upon the promise and not the
reality of continuity. Engineering ties among sonic referents, the currents
that produced them, and their indexes, this machine for drawing sounds
unexpectedly threw into question Xenakis’s rhetorics of “organic”
continuities. Despite the continuous path of the transformation of
information within the cybernetic line, what one sees is not what one
hears, and what UPIC leaves us with are maps of lines too stubborn to
translate.

Post Scritum
One could position the UPIC within the tradition of other sound
technologies and the status of the inscriptions they employ, as media
theory has so successfully done for quite a while now. On the one hand we
have the acoustical referent, and on the other hand we have its trace, and
we can continuously theorise their relationship as indexical. Within this
context, the UPIC offers a different perspective since it brings the question
of form to the problematic of the sign and its ambiguous relationship with
an exterior reality. In the lack of a generative exteriority, this early digital
interface proposed a composition of the lines to induce the currents that
then produce the piece; a formalisation to be more precise. Within this
context of a score that maps the beginnings of a becoming, the
electroacoustic system of CEMAMu produced maps that denied their
capacity to map posteriori. Or, to remember Alfred Korzybski’s point,
UPIC’s maps were definitely not the territories they referred to even on
the occasions that they looked like them. Within the context of a map that
deceives – as if there is a map that does not – this cybernetic organism
articulated the tie between lines and their acoustic referents in terms of a
schematisation, and not a language, and proposed drawing and not writing
as the appropriate technology to delineate its form. After all, Xenakis
found at the heart of any design practice, across medium, discipline, or
genre, exactly that: to paraphrase Alois Riegl’s kunstwollen, a will-to-
form.
292 Chapter Eleven

Fig. 11.1: Patrick Saint-Jean, UPIC block diagram for Iannis Xenakis © Patrick
Saint-Jean.
 Formalising the Stochastic Cloud 293

Fig. 11.2: Iannis Xenakis in Lille (Courtesy of Françoise Xenakis) © Iannis

Xenakis Archives, BnF.
294 Chapter Eleven

Fig. 11.3: Philips Pavilion photograph from Le Corbusier, Le Poème Électronique

Le Corbusier, 1958 © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP,
Paris / F.L.C.
 Formalising the Stochastic Cloud 295

Fig 11.4: Front Page from Iannis Xenakis, Musiques Formelles, 1963 © Hermann,
www.editions-hermann.fr.
296 Chapter Eleven

Fig. 11.5: Score of Metastaseis, Iannis Xenakis, Musiques Formelles, 1963 ©

Iannis Xenakis Archives, BnF.
 Formalising the Stochastic Cloud 297

Fig. 11.6: Score of Pithoprakta, Iannis Xenakis, Musiques Formelles, 1963 ©

Iannis Xenakis Archives, BnF.
298 Chapter Eleven

Fig 11.7: Sketches and diagrams of ruled surfaces from Le Corbusier, Le Poème
Électronique Le Corbusier, 1958 © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
/ ADAGP, Paris / F.L.C.
 Formalising the Stochastic Cloud 299

Fig. 11.8: Model of Philips Pavilion from Le Corbusier, Le Poème Électronique Le

Corbusier, 1958 © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
/ F.L.C.
300 Chapter Eleven

Fig. 11.9: Photograph of Philips Pavilion from Le Corbusier, Le Poème

Électronique Le Corbusier, 1958 © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
/ ADAGP, Paris / F.L.C.
 Formalising the Stochastic Cloud 301

Fig 11.10: Third page of the score for Mycenae Alpha, 1978 © Iannis Xenakis
Archives, BnF.

Notes

This essay was initially presented in May 2009 at the Courtauld Institute and
constitutes part of my doctoral research on the emergence of the psychoacoustic
paradigm and the reconstitution of the status of the architectural object within post-
World War II experiments with sound technologies in architecture.
1
Iannis Xenakis, Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Music (New
York: Pedragon, 1992), 182.
2
Raymond Ericson, “Music Notes: Composer as Painter,” New York Times, 4th
November 1979.
3
John Cage, Notations, New York; West Glover, VT: Something Else Press, 1969.
4
Joel Chadabe, Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music (Upper
Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1997), 213; James Harley, Xenakis: His Life in
Music (New York: Routledge, 2004), 114-115.
5
For a description of the first and second generation UPIC, please see Iannis
Xenakis. “Music Composition Treks,” Curtis Roads, ed., Composers and the
Computer, (Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1985), 184-187;
Gerard Marino, Marie-Helene Serra and Jean-Michel Raczinski, "The UPIC
system: Origins and Innovations," 258-269; Henning Lohner, "The UPIC System:
A User's Report." Computer Music Journal vol. 10, no. 4 (1986), 42-49; Sharon
Kanach, “Appendix A: The UPIC System,” in Music and Architecture by Iannis
Xenakis (New York: Pedragon Press, 2008), 280-285; Iannis Xenakis, Formalised
Music: Thought and Mathematics in Music, (New York: Pedragon, 1992), 331-
334; Joel Chadabe, Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music,
213-215; Henning Lohner, “Das UPIC: eine Erfindung von Iannis Xenakis,” in
Iannis Xenakis Musik-Konzepte Heft 54/55 (Müchen: Edition Text + Kritik, 1987),
71-82.
302 Chapter Eleven

6
Gerard Marino, Marie-Helene Serra and Jean-Michel Raczinski, "The UPIC
system: Origins and Innovations," Perspectives of New Music, 31: 1 (1993), 260.
7
Joel Chadabe, Electric Sound, 214.
8
Here I am referring to Iannis Xenakis’s doctoral defence, which was later
published under the title Arts/Science: Alloys. In the book Xenakis attempts a
theory that will unify his experiments and creative activity across disciplines and
fields under the theme of an art-science alliance. According to this view of the
relationship, art leads the way and instigates questions or problems that the
sciences are called forth to respond to. He explains: “From here on nothing
prevents us from foreseeing a new relationship between the arts and sciences,
especially between the arts and mathematics; where the arts would consciously
"set" problems which mathematics would then be obliged to solve through the
invention of new theories.” Iannis Xenakis, Arts/Sciences: Alloys, trans. by Sharon
Kanach (New York: Pendragon Press, 1985), 3.
9
In his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky pointed at music as an
example of an art that springs from an internal spirituality: “With few exceptions
and deviations, music has, for centuries, been the art which has used this means,
not so much to represent natural phenomena but rather, as an expression of the
artist’s spiritual life and to the creation of a unique life of musical sounds …
Music, by its very nature, is ultimately and fully emancipated and needs no outer
form for its expression.” Wassily Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art; First
Complete English Translation, with Four Colour Page Reproductions, Woodcuts,
and Half Tones (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, for the
Museum of Non-objective Painting, 1946), 34-35.
10
For a comprehensive insight into Paul Klee’s relationship to music and his
operatic work see K. Porter Aichele, “Paul Klee’s Operative Themes and
Variations,” The Art Bulletin, 68: 3 (1986), 450-466.
11
Donna Cassidy has given a full account of the role of the American Jazz scene
of the 1920s played in the paintings of Arthur Dove, as well as his general
preoccupation with music and its analogy to painting. Donna M. Cassidy, “Arthur
Dove’s Music Painting of the Jazz Age,” American Art Journal, 20:1 (1988), 5-23.
12
During the early 2000s, Musée d’Orsay, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Centre
Georges Pompidou, and the Smithsonian Institution, to name some, curated
exhibitions that investigated the role of music in the emergence of abstraction. For
catalogues of these exhibitions please see: Javier Arnaldo, et al. Analogías
Musicales: Kandinsky Y Sus Contemporáneos, (Madrid: Fundación Colección
Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2003); Musée d'Orsay, Serge Lemoine, and Pascal
Rousseau, Aux Origines de l'Abstraction, 1800-1914: Musée d'Orsay, 3 Novembre
2003-22 Février 2004, (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2003); Sophie
Duplaix, Marcella Lista, and Centre Georges Pompidou, Sons & Lumières: Une
Histoire Du Son Dans L'art Du Xxe Siècle, (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2004); Kerry
Brougher, Olivia Mattis, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles Calif.), and
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and
Music since 1900, (New York Thames & Hudson; Washington, DC, Los Angeles:
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Smithsonian Institution; Museum of
 Formalising the Stochastic Cloud 303

Contemporary Art, 2005).

13
Edited by Jean Petit, Le Poème Électronique Le Corbusier was published shortly
after the completion of the Philips Pavilion, and it featured detailed analysis of all
the parts of the multimedia spectacle. Inside the book, Iannis Xenakis, Le
Corbusier, Michel Butor, C.G.J. Vreedenburgh, Edgard Varèse, and H.C. Duyster
published essays with their contributions to the project. Le Corbusier, Le Poème
Électronique Le Corbusier, (Paris, France: Editions de Minuit, 1958).
14
For the quotation, I am using the translation by Sharon Kanach, Iannis Xenakis,
“Notes Towards an ‘Electronic Gesture’,” Music and Architecture by Iannis
Xenakis, trans. Sharon Kanach, (New York: Pedragon, 2008), 132.
15
Xenakis, Music and Architecture, 131.
16
“En effet le système sériel est remis en question en ses deux bases qui contienent
en germe leurs destruction et leurs dépassement propres: a) la série; b) la structure
polyphonique. La série (de toute nature) procède d’une “catégorie” linéaire de la
pensée. Elle est un chapelet d’objets en nombre fini.” Yannis Xénakis, “La Crise
de la Musique Sérielle,” Gravesaner Blätter, 5 (1955), 2-4.
17
For the quotation, I use the translation of the original article published in
Gravesaner Blätter as it is translated and quoted in Iannis Xenakis. Formalized
Music, 8.
18
I am indebted to Brian Kane’s distinction between the Schoenbergean concern
with the position of individual tempered notes within a row and Xenakis’s attempt
to “control populations.” In his presentation Kane discusses this shift from “note”
to “population” within the context of biopolitics on the grounds of the broader
implications of the composer’s epistemological appropriations. According to Kane
this concern with the “control of a population” is already apparent from Xenakis’s
discussion of “abstraction.” Brian Kane, “Xenakis: the First Composer of
Biopolitics?,” Xenakis: Past, Present, and Future, Polytechnic Institute of New
York University, 28 January 2010.
19
Xenakis, Formalized Music, 8.
20
Iannis Xenakis, “Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie und Musik,” Gravesaner Blätter, 6
(1956), 28-34; Iannis Xenakis, “Auf der Suche einer Stochastischen Musik/In
Search of a Stochastic Music,” Gravesaner Blätter, 11-12 (1958), 98-122; Iannis
Xenakis, “Grundlagen einer stochastischen Musik/Elements of Stochastic Music,”
Gravesaner Blätter, 18 (1960), 61-105; Iannis Xenakis, “Grundlagen einer
stochastischen Musik/Elements of Stochastic Music,” Gravesaner Blätter, 19-20
(1960), 128-150; Iannis Xenakis, “Grundlagen einer stochastischen Musik/Elements
of Stochastic Music,” Gravesaner Blätter, 21 (1961), 102-121; Iannis Xenakis,
“Grundlagen einer stochastischen Musik/Elements of Stochastic Music,” Gravesaner
Blätter, 22 (1961), 131-145; “Stochastische Musik/Stochastic Music,” Gravesaner
Blätter, 23-24 (1962), 156-184.
21
Gravesaner Blätter was a Swiss journal founded by the German conductor
Hermann Scherchen. See the preface of the editor in Iannis Xenakis ed. Makis
Solomos, Keimena peri Mousikis kai Architektonikis, (Athena: Ekdoseis
Psichogios, 2001), xvii.
22
James Harley, Xenakis, 21.
304 Chapter Eleven

23
Iannis Xenakis. Formalized Music, 8-9.
24
ibid., 8-9.
25
ibid., 8-9.
26
For more information on Xenakis’s view cybernetic understanding of the
concepts of nature and organism, see Olga Touloumi, “Schediazontas (s)to Ichitiko
Topio,” Kostas Manolidis and Theoklis Kanarelis , eds., I Diekdikisi tis Ipaithrou:
Fisi kai Koinonikes Praktikes sti Sigchroni Ellada, (Volos: Indiktos, 2009), 328-
344.
27
Galison argues that a cybernetic understanding of the universe is based on a
vision of the other as an active opponent that does not supplement but is in war
with the “other.” The author identifies sciences developed during wartime as
Manichean sciences that are informed by the dialectics of a “continuing struggle”
between two active oppositional intelligences where both opponents are introduced
in scientific discourse as men/machines at war. Galison moves even further to
locate the roots of postmodernism and its discourse on otherness within these
Manichean sciences. Peter Galison, "The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener
and the Cybernetic Vision," Critical Inquiry, 21:1 (1994), 228-266.
28
Ibid., 229.
29
Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, (Boston: Da Capo Press,
1950), 11.
31
Actually within the context of “an art/science alloy,” Xenakis proposed “general
morphology” as a new field of inquiry that will overwrite and surpass the
discontinuity among the diverse epistemologies, or to be more precise that will
“treat these forms and architectures within these diverse disciplines in their
invariant aspect.” Iannis Xenakis, Arts/Sciences Alloys, 3.
32
The quotation is recorded as part of a personal communication between Iannis
Xenakis and Joel Chadabe. Chabade, Electric Sound, 213.
33
In a comparison of the standard notation system to Xenakis’s graphic method,
Sharon Kanach explains: “Traditionally, composers are trained to consider music
from a micro- to a macro-perspective, true to their etymological root, componere:
to put together, ultimately at the expense of an immediate grasp of the overall
form.” Sharon Kanach, “Music to be seen: Tracing Xenakis’s Creative Processes,”
Ivan Herett, ed., Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary, Carey Lovelace,
Sharon Kanach, and Makhi Xenakis (New York: The Drawing Center, 2010), 96.
34
Iannis Xenakis. Formalized Music, 10.
35
Nouritza Matossian. Xenakis (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1986), 112.
36
The university was given the name Ǽthniko Metsovio Polytechneio in 1914. The
curriculum of the university followed the German model of technical schools for
engineers. For more see Yannis Antoniou, Oi Hellenes Mechanikoi: Thesmoi &
Idees 1900-1940, (Athena: Ekdoseis Vivliorama, 2006).
37
In his article, Sven Sterken situates the work of Xenakis within a tradition of
parametrical design in architecture and discusses the use of ruled surface across his
oeuvre as a research on the possibilities of achieving a virtual architecture.
According to the author, the Philips Pavilion constitutes a prehistory of such
formal investigation and heralds the coming of the new “era of cyberspace.” Even
 Formalising the Stochastic Cloud 305

though such a view predominates among scholars, the discourse on cybernetics

that informs the emergence of “cyberspace” actually not only precedes the work of
Xenakis, but has been a major influence. Other times directly, and other times
indirectly via intellectuals like Abraham Moles, Xenakis actively engages with the
body of work and the theories produced within the fields of cybernetics. Sven
Sterken, “À la Recherche de l’Espace Paramétrisé. Les Surfaces Réglées comme
Thème dans l’Oeuvre de Iannis Xenakis,” Présences de Iannis Xenakis (Paris:
Centre de Documentation de la Musique Contemporaine, 2001), 219-221.
38
Robin Evans dedicates a whole section of his book on the role of projection in
architecture to the Philips Pavilion and the use of ruled surfaces to actually claim
that the Philips Pavilion was not the first occasion to use ruled surface, but rather
the most daring. For Evans, the actual inspiration for Metastaseis that conditioned
the architecture of the Philips Pavilion was the Modulor, with which Xenakis had
already experimented in the Convent of La Tourette. Evans says, “Xenakis had
used the Modulor in his orchestral composition Metastaseis. Music, source of
inspiration for architecture, was borrowing back inspiration from architecture. It
was a good closing shot.” Robin Evans. The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its
Three Geometries (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000), 295-296.
39
Bernard Lafaille, who published two books on the application of ruled surfaces
on concrete structures (Mémoire sur l’ Étude des Surfaces Gauches Miches in
1935, Étude des Voiles Minces en Paraboloïde Hyperbolique Travaillant sans
Flexion in 1936), used to collaborate in projects with the consortium of ATBAT.
In his description of the ruled surfaces in the pavilion, Iannis Xenakis
acknowledges Lafaille’s research as the major resource for the formation of the
ruled surfaces of the pavilion in a number of publications. “Through personal
contact with B. Lafaille and the knowledge of his studies, we were already
accustomed to conoids and hyperbolic-paraboloids. They are the clue – the
constant – by which the above-mentioned equations could be solved. It is logical,
that the functional equations not only are soluble by a contour formed through
conoids and hyperboli-aparboloids, but, the contour itself turns out to be a
convincing architectural image,” Xenakis explained in his text for the periodical
publication Gravesaner Blätter. Le Corbusier, Le Poème Électronique Le
Corbusier, 129; Robin Evans, The Projective Cast, 301; Janis Xenakis, “Le
Corbusier’s ‘Elektronisches Gedicht’ und der Philips Pavillion (Brüsseler
Weltausstellung 1958)/Le Corbusier’s ‘Electronic Poem’ – the Philips Pavilion
(Brussel’s World Exposition 1958),” Gravesaner Blätter, 9 (1957), 52;” Sven
Sterken, “À la Recherche de l’Espace Paramétrisé. Les Surfaces Réglées comme
Thème dans l’Oeuvre de Iannis Xenakis,” 217.
40
Eduardo Catalano, “A New Way to Span Space,” in Architectural Forum, 103
(1955), 170.
41
Bálint András Varga, Conversations with Iannis Xenakis (London: Faber and
Faber Limited, 1996), 72.
42
Xenakis, Formalized Music, 10.
43
Xenakis was introduced to Le Corbusier by Georges Candylis, who was at that
point working in Le Corbusier’s office. Founded for the needs of the Marseille
306 Chapter Eleven

project, ATBAT was dedicated to the calculation of the structures and resolving
engineering problems. See Sharon Kanach, “Xenakis in Le Corbusier’s Studio:
1947-59,” in Music and Architecture by Iannis Xenakis, trans. Sharon Kanach
(New York: Pedragon, 2008), 3; Eric Paul Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on
Urbanism, 1928-1960 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 158; James Harley,
Xenakis, 9; Matossian, Xenakis, 34; Robin Evans, The Projective Cast, 295-296.
44
For a synoptic account of the projects in which Xenakis participated and his
contributions, see Sharon Kanach, “Xenakis in Le Corbusier’s Studio: 1947-59,”
3-9.
45
In Le Poème Électronique Le Corbusier, Xenakis claims that the use of ruled
surfaces could actually furnish the architect with the tools to conceive form on all
three dimensions at once, and not as a projection indicated by the plan. He says
“Pour l’architecte, ces formes signifient en outré un passage d’une conception
translative du Volume (élévation issue du plan par translation verticale) à une
conception nouvelle à trios dimensions distinctes et non homomorphes.” Jean
Xenakis, “Architecture,” in Le Poème Électronique Le Corbusier, 126-149.
46
“The static stress distribution in a shell having the form of a hyperbolic
paraboloid can, to a certain extent, be calculated: such a shell is found to possess
remarkable properties of strength and stability.… Moreover, these surfaces
produced by straight lines readily lend themselves to construction in straight
wooden beams or in concrete (see article IV). These attractive properties have led
to an increasing use of such shell structures in various countries, particularly for
roof constructions.” See, after Y. Xenakis, “I. The Architectural Design of Le
Corbusier and Xenakis,” in Philips Technical Review, 1:20 (1958/59), 3.
47
Duyster provides a full account of the problems Xenakis’s daring form created
in construction. The use of membrane would render the shell acoustically
transparent, something that the Philips Company did not want. The only viable
answer seemed to be concrete, but the form was too complex to be resolved only
by calculations. Therefore Duyster proposed to build a model in order to test the
tensile forces and compressing stresses. The final solution was to use pre-stressed
concrete that would hold the prefabricated pieces of the shell together. See H. D.
Duyster, “Construction,” in Le Poème Électronique Le Corbusier, 165-170; H. C.
Duyster, “IV. Construction of the Pavilion in Prestressed Concrete,” Philips
Technical Review, 1: 20 (1958/59), 27-36.
48
Marc Treib has provided a detailed account of the history of the design and
construction of the pavilion, where he exposes in detail the structural problems the
engineers of Strabed had to deal with. Marc Treib, Le Corbusier, and Edgard
Varèse, Space Calculated in Seconds: The Philips Pavilion, Le Corbusier, Edgard
Varèse, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 52-97.
49
“ While explaining his theory of general morphology in the introduction of his
thesis defence, and while arguing for a return to the renaissance model of the
Uomo Universalis, Xenakis says: “…in short, a sort of universality, but one based
upon, guided by and oriented toward forms and architecture.” Iannis Xenakis,
Arts/Sciences: Alloys, 3.
 Formalising the Stochastic Cloud 307

50
Xenakis had already performed his first experiments with computers in 1962,
when Jacques Barraud, director of the Ensemble Électroniques de Gestion de la
Société des Petroles Shell-Berre, and François Génuys, head of the Études
Scientifiques Nouvelles at IBM-France handed him access to an IBM-7090
computer in order to calculate his first pieces of stochastic instrumental music:
ST/10-1 and 080262. Xenakis, Formalized Music, 134.
51
Matossian, Xenakis, 193.
52
Actually sources disagree on the exact year the centre was founded. Even
Xenakis contradicts himself from texts to interviews. For the dates indicated I
crosschecked the dates provided in his books, with the extensive outline compiled
on the Internet by A. S. Barthel-Calvet. See Iannis Xenakis, Roberta Brown, and
John Rahn, “Xenakis on Xenakis,” Perspectives of New Music, 25: ½ (1987), 22;
Chabade, 213; Barthel-Calvet, “Chronology,” Les Amis de Xenakis,
http://www.iannis-xenakis.org/xen/bio/bio.html [accessed: 01 May 2010]
53
Iannis Xenakis, Roberta Brown and John Rahn, “Xenakis on Xenakis,” 22-23.
54
Chadabe, Electric Sound, 213-214.
55
Xenakis, Formalized Music, 207.
56
It is unclear whether the electromagnetic pen was acting as a switch, hence
closing the circuit of each wire, or whether it induced electricity on the wires of the
conductive pad of the drawing board.
57
I am thankful to Benoît Gibson for analyzing how the continuous lines in
Xenakis’s arborescences do not turn back in time, but rather represent two sonic
lines that depart from the same point within the time versus pitch diagram. See
Benoît Gibson, “Drawing Musical Ideas: Xenakis’s Arborescences,” Xenakis:
Past, Present, and Future. Polytechnic Institute of New York University, 28
January 2010.
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 CONTRIBUTORS

Malcolm Cook is a doctoral candidate at Birkbeck College, University of

London. He is researching early British animated cartoons prior to the
advent of sound cinema, with a particular focus on the relationship
between the moving image and the graphic arts and other pre-cinematic
entertainments, as well as the neurological processes involved in the
perception of these forms. He holds a BA in Film and Literature from the
University of Warwick and an MA in History of Art, Film and Visual
Media from Birkbeck College.

Corrinne Chong is a University of Toronto alumna and is a teacher by

profession. Her interdisciplinary approach to teaching visual arts, music
and language in the classroom has led her to the University of Edinburgh
where she is currently completing her Ph.D in art history. Her specialist
area is nineteenth century French art, with an emphasis on the intertextual
relationship between art and music criticism. The subject of her thesis is
the concept of musical abstraction in the art of Henri Fantin-Latour and
the critical reception of his musical genre in the press. Corrinne is
delighted to start her residency at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris
(2010) where she will continue to examine and discover new Fantin
archives.

Charlotte de Mille received her Ph.D from The Courtauld Institute of Art
(2009) following MA and M. Litt degrees at the University of St Andrews.
A Visiting Lecturer at the Courtauld, she has taught at the Universities of
Bristol, St Andrews, and Central St Martin’s. A specialist in British
Modernism and French aesthetics, current research includes the intersection
of music, painting and philosophy. The first part of a continuing exploration
of the possibilities and limitations of intuition as a method for art history is
forthcoming in Art History, April 2011. With Public Programmes for the
Courtauld Gallery she is co-ordinator of a series of lecture-recitals, and
has commissioned new music in conjunction with the Courtauld’s East
Wing VIII exhibition of contemporary visual art (2008). She is Chair of
the Royal Musical Association Music and Visual Arts Group.
336 Contributors

Ayla Lepine is a Visiting Lecturer at The Courtauld Institute of Art. She

specialises in Victorian art and architecture, and has a particular interest in
the Gothic Revival. Following her BA at the University of Victoria,
Canada, she moved to the UK where she first read theology at Oxford
University before returning to art history at the Courtauld. Gothic and its
Legacies, 1600 to the Present (a collection of essays co-edited with Laura
Cleaver), is due to be published with Ashgate in 2011. She is also a
freelance writer and curator, whose projects explore the intersections of art
and faith.

Jody Patterson received her Ph.D from University College London in

2008. In 2009 she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in American Art at
the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She is
currently the Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in American
Art at the Institut national d'histoire de l'art in Paris. She has published
articles and reviews in journals such as Art History, American Art, The
Burlington Magazine, and the Oxford Art Journal.

Spyridon Petritakis graduated from the History and Archaeology

Department of the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Ioannina in
Greece, before obtaining a Masters Degree in the history of art from the
University of Crete, where he is currently a Ph.D candidate. His studies
were supported by several scholarships, which allowed him to attend
courses in art history at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich
and later in Berlin, where he now researches for his dissertation. His
research interests and publications include the convergence between
painting and music as well as German and Eastern European Symbolism.
He holds a diploma in music theory, and continues piano and composition
studies in Berlin.

James H. Rubin specialises in the history, theory and criticism of

nineteenth century European Art, especially that of France. He teaches
courses at graduate and undergraduate level. His interests are
interdisciplinary, with special attention to cultural history and art and
politics. He was educated at Phillips Andover, Yale (BA), Harvard (Ph.D),
and the Institut d'Art et d'Archéologie of the Sorbonne in Paris (license ès
lettres). He has taught at Harvard, Boston University, Princeton and the
Cooper Union. He has published over thirty articles and essays on subjects
ranging from the eighteenth century to the present. He is the author of
eight books: Eighteenth Century French Life-Drawing (1977), Realism
and Social Vision in Courbet and Proudhon (1981), Eugène Delacroix's


 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 337

'Dantebarke' (1987), Manet's Silence and the Poetics of Bouquets (1994),

Courbet, Art and Ideas (1997), Impressionism, Art and Ideas (1999),
Nadar (2001) and Impressionist Cats and Dogs: Pets in the Painting of
Modern Life (2003). He has served on the International Committee of the
College Art Association and represented the CAA at the United Nations.
He is a member and Vice-President of the Société Paul Cézanne, based in
Aix-en-Provence, France. He travels frequently, speaks fluent French, and
lives in New York City and Mittelbergheim, Alsace.

Diane Silverthorne specialises in fin-de-siècle art and the convergence of

art, music and performance, from the mid nineteenth century onwards. She
was awarded her doctorate by the Royal College of Art in 2010. Her
research considered art, design and performance in Vienna around 1900,
and the designer Alfred Roller. She holds an MA in Cultural Memory and
Visual Culture, from the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies,
University of London and lectures extensively on nineteenth and twentieth
century art history at Birkbeck and the University of London.

Olga Touloumi trained as an architect. She is now pursuing research in

architectural history and theory, focusing on questions of ambience,
immersion, cybernetics, and media in design and architecture. Her work
addresses the concept of space as an epistemological and aesthetic
category in psychoacoustics, the avant-garde music of the twentieth
century, the history of sound technologies, and the architectural production
in the post-World War II period. She is a Ph.D Candidate at Harvard
University and holds a professional degree in architecture from AUTh, and
a Master of Science in History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture from
MIT.

Peter Vergo (MA; Ph.D; Cambridge, Professor) is one of Britain’s leading

experts on modern German and Austrian art. His exhibition Vienna 1900
was the centrepiece of the 1983 Edinburgh Festival and led to the award of
the Golden Order of Merit by the Republic of Austria for services to
Austrian art. Other exhibitions he has curated include Abstraction:
Towards a New Art (Tate) and Emil Nolde (Whitechapel Art Gallery and
Arken, Copenhagen). As editor of the anthology The New Museology he
launched a controversial debate about the role of museums in society. His
other publications include Art in Vienna 1898-1918, Kandinsky: Complete
Writings and The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Twentieth-Century
German Painting. The first of his two books about the relationship
between art and music, entitled That Divine Order, was published by
Phaidon in 2005. The second, supported by the award of a Major Research


338 Contributors

Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust (2004-7), The Music of Painting, was

published in September 2010.

Melissa Warak is a Ph.D candidate in the Department of Art and Art

History at The University of Texas at Austin. A native of Houston, Texas,
she earned a BA in English literature and art history from Vanderbilt
University in Nashville, Tennessee, and an MA in art history from The
University of Texas at Austin. She is currently writing a dissertation that
explores intersections of music and art during the early 1960s. She has
held research fellowships from both the Getty Research Institute and the
Smithsonian Institution. She is co-owner of Friends of Sound Records, a
music store that specialises in rare vinyl.

Isabel Wünsche is Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Jacobs

University in Bremen, Germany. Previously, she taught at the California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Scripps College, Claremont, and the
University of California, Los Angeles and worked on museum projects at
the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Norton Simon Museum in
Pasadena, and The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical
Gardens, San Marino. Dr. Wünsche studied art history and classical and
Christian archaeology in Berlin, Moscow, Heidelberg, and Los Angeles;
she received her Ph.D. from Heidelberg University. Her research interests
are nineteenth and twentieth century art, particularly European modernism
and the avant-garde movements. Her book publications include Galka E.
Scheyer & The Blue Four: Correspondence 1924-1945 (German and
English editions, Berne: Benteli, 2006), Kursschwankungen: Russische
Kunst im Wertesystem der europäischen Moderne (together with Ada
Raev, Berlin: Lukas, 2007), Harmonie und Synthese. Die russische
Moderne zwischen universellem Anspruch und nationaler kultureller
Identität (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2008), Biocentrism and Modernism
(together with Oliver A. I. Botar, Ashgate, in press), and Kunst & Leben.
Michail Matjuschin und die Organische Kultur in der russischen
Avantgarde (Cologne: Böhlau, forthcoming).


 INDEX

Absolute music, 4, 6, 9, 121-22, Bodley, G.F., 5, 160, 162, 163, 165,

123, 126, 127, 132, 134, 137, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172,
140, 141, 142 173, 174, 175,
Abstraction, 9, 10, 39-40, 84, 86, Brahms, Johannes, 10, 17 35, 65,
87, 108, 121, 123, 127, 129, 130, 134
131, 132, 137, 140, 161, 163-64, Braque, Georges, 13
184, 185, 206, 208, 209, 213, Burckhardt, Jacob, 57, 65
215, 220, 237, 238, 239, 240, Burne-Jones, Edward, 161, 164
259, 263, 280, 281, 283, 288 Bussoni, Ferruccio, 16, 192, 206,
Adorno, Theodor, 70, 242, 243. 210
Alberti, Leon Battista, 8 Cage, John, 6, 17, 256, 259, 260-61,
Allegory, 2, 29 262, 263, 265, 266, 269, 271,
Architecture, 280, 284-85, 286, 287- 277, 278
88; interiors: 33, 161, 163, 166, Champfleury (Jules François Felix
168, 170-172, 173, 174; and Fleury-Husson), 4, 108, 109,
music: 8, 160, 162, 163, 175, 111, 125
261, 285 Colour, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16,
Armstrong, Louis, 234, 236, 237, 18, 29, 30, 36, 66, 69, 81, 85,
239 87, 89-90, 91, 108, 111, 112,
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 10, 11-12, 113, 129, 131, 133, 138, 142,
13, 14, 15, 16, 210 167, 171, 183, 187, 188, 207,
Baudelaire, Charles, 108, 109, 111, 208, 212, 213, 218, 230, 237,
112, 113, 120, 121, 124, 125, 239, 280; and instruments: 82,
133, 208 83-84, 93, 94, 193, 240
Bauhaus, 14, 15, 16 Courbet, Gustave, 4, 108, 109, 110,
Beethoven, Ludwig von, 3, 10, 21, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116
33, 41, 62, 66, 109, 110, 120, Davis, Stuart, 230, 235, 236, 238,
124, 126, 137, 189, 214; 239, 240, 241, 242, 243-44, 248,
Beethoven exhibition: 26-27, 249, 250, 251
39-40 Debussy, Claude, 65, 183
Bell, Vanessa, 5, 185, 189, 191, Denis, Maurice, 9-10, 12, 183
193, 196, 197 Design, book design, 29, 30, 32, 36,
Bergson, Henri, 3, 68, 195, 280 39, 162, 185, 186, 189, 190-91,
Berlioz, Hector, 4, 110, 119, 121, 230; and music, 4, 27-28, 32,
124, 125, 128, 129, 130, 131, 62, 261, 262, 263, 264, 266,
133, 134, 139, 140-41, 142 277, 278, 279, 282, 284, 285,
Böcklin, Arnold, 4, 15, 53, 57, 62, 287, 288, 289, 290; and theatre:
65, 66, 68, 70, 71, 72 26, 38, 40, 63, 86, 87, 93-94,
113, 120, 129, 131, 257, 263


340 Index

Dissonance, 18, 38, 59, 84, 85, 87, Goethe, Wilhelm von, 37, 38, 69,
89, 184, 211, 213 70, 86, 108, 161
Doesburg, Theo van, 210-11, 214 Greenberg, Clement, 5, 208-09
Douglas, Aaron, 230, 232, 233, 241, Harmony, 84, 85, 87, 88, 113, 126,
242, 243-44, 245, 246, 247 134, 139, 191, 192, 193, 195,
Endell, August, 9, 196, 206, 211, 213, 214, 237,
Eggeling, Viking, 5, 19, 119, 206, 257, 258, 263, 269, 270, 281
210, 211, 213, 214, 216, 217, Hartley, Marsden, 13, 20
219, 220, 224, 225 Helmholtz, Hermann von, 4, 59, 89,
Fantin-Latour, Henri, 4, 119, 120, 92, 93, 97
121, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, Hoffmann, E.T.A., 109, 110, 111,
130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 121, 124, 126
136, 137, 139, 140, 142, 143- Hoffmann, Josef, 30, 32, 33, 37, 40,
148 43
‡‹‹‰‡”ǡ›‘‡ŽǡͳͶǦͳͷ Identity, 137, 167, 235, 236, 237,
Fétis, François-Joseph, 4, 108, 109, 240, 241 and African-American
114, 121, 123, 124 culture: 229-30, 231, 232, 233,
Film, 5, 19, 206, 207, 210, 211, 212, 234, 241, 243; and German
213, 214, 215, 216, 219, 220, nationalism: 4, 54, 55-56, 59-60,
241, 270 61, 62, 64, 68
Fluxus, 6, 257, 258, 263, 264, 267 Imagination, 10, 12, 111, 113, 114,
Form, 3, 5, 33, 65, 86, 87, 91, 92, 120, 124, 129, 132, 133, 137,
94, 113, 131, 133, 142, 183, 141, 142, 183, 187, 196, 238,
184, 186, 187, 190, 191, 208, 261, 283
209, 213, 215-16, 218, 219, 229, Irrational, 119, 124, 191, 192, 193,
231, 236, 237, 240, 260, 284-85, 194, 195, 259
288, 291; and critical language, Itten, Johannes, 14, 15
2-3, 120, 121, 124, 133, 134, Jazz, 6, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234,
138, 139, 161, 210-11, 214, 219; 235, 236, 237, 238, 240, 241,
musical: 9, 10, 32, 39, 59, 66, 242, 243, 244, 258
67, 84, 121, 126, 127, 129, 131, Jugenstil, 28, 33, 34
132, 134, 137, 138, 139, 141, Kandinsky, Wassily, 4, 14, 16, 64,
184, 190, 192, 193, 206, 210, 69, 81, 83, 86, 87, 89, 142, 182,
239, 282, 287; multi-point 184, 186, 190, 193, 195, 196,
perspective: 5, 17, 185, 193, 198, 237, 280; Concerning the
238; proportion: 8-9, 162; Spiritual in Art: 4, 85, 87, 184,
spatial music: 5, 18, 66, 91, 94, 185, 190, 191; and “Inner
137, 161-62, 193, 211, 282; Need”: 3, 183, 194, Klänge:
temporal painting: 5, 17, 19, 186-187, 189, 190, 191; Point
135, 190, 215-15, 216, 238, 267 and Line to Plane, 16, 21
Forster, Edward Morgan, 1, 189 Klee, Paul, 14, 15, 16, 280
Fry, Roger, 5, 183, 184, 185, 194, Klinger, Max, 27, 35, 39, 60
196 Kulbin, Nikolai, 4, 81, 85, 87-9, 91,
Fugue: 8, 10-12, 15 98
Gesamtkunstwerk, see Wagner, Kupka, František, 2, 8, 18-19, 54
Richard. ƒ”‹• Šǡ—†‘Žˆ˜‘ǡ͵ʹǡ͵͵ǡͶͲ


 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 341

Le Corbusier, 6, 280, 285, 286, 287 psychology: 207, 217-18, 219;

Language: contemporary criticism: multi-sensory: 5, 81, 82, 86, 88,
2-3, 29, 54, 60-61, 62, 63, 108, 91-2, 94, 114, 130, 136, 186,
120-21, 123, 124, 128, 130, 133, 187, 188, 209, 210, 212, 217,
209, 214, 218; metaphor (music) 218, 237; musical: 18, 64, 67,
3, 8, 55, 59, 60, 83, 84, 87, 133, 136, 188, 195, 208; science of:
134, 139-40, 141, 160, 162, 184, 4, 83, 88-90, 92, 93, 95, 206,
190, 207, 210, 218, 220, 231; 209, 216, 217, 219, 220
musical-visual translation: 17, Performance, 26, 28, 31, 32, 34, 40,
18, 54, 65, 68, 84, 86, 90, 124, 41, 66, 84, 110, 125, 128, 129,
128-9, 130, 131, 138, 184, 207, 136, 188, 231, 232, 241, 242,
229, 236, 237, 238, 256, 262, 243, 262, 263, 265, 266, 267,
277, 279, 280-81, 284, 289, 291; 278; by artists: 14-15, 57, 89,
and Modernism: 27, 60, 216, 91, 93-94, 110, 120, 164, 206,
219, 231, 240 235, 256, 258, 259, 261, 264,
Mahler, Gustav, 26, 28, 29, 41 268; multi-sensory: 6, 82, 86,
Matyushin, Mikhail, 4, 81, 91- 212, 256, 257, 261, 264, 278
Melody, 10, 11, 126, 134, 138, 190, Picasso, Pablo, 13, 57, 184
193, 211, 212, 238, 239, 281 Politics, 6, 122, 232, 235, 240, 242,
‡‹‡”Ǧ ”ƒ‡ˆ‡ǡ —Ž‹—•ǡ͵ͷǡͷ͸ǡͷͻǡ 243; New Deal: 229-30, 232,
͸ͳǡ͸ʹǡ͸͵ǡ͸Ͷ 233, 234, 235, 241, 262, 278;
‡‘”›ǡͳͳͲǡͳͳ͵ǡͳʹͺǡͳ͵ʹǡͳ͵͸ǡ and socialism, 109, 110, 111,
ͳ͸Ͷǡͳ͸͹ǡͳ͹Ͷǡͳͺʹǡͳͺ͹ǡͳͺͻǡ 114, 232, 233, 234, 243-44
ͳͻͲǡͳͻͷǡͳͻ͸ǡʹͳ͸ Radio, 238, 239, 241, 242, 250, 264,
Modernism, 34, 88, 137, 142, 182, 279, 290
184, 194, 195, 196, 216, 217, Realism, 59, 62, 67, 84, 90, 92, 108,
240; anti-modern: 61, 62, 64; 111, 127, 142, 194, 235, 236,
and interiorisation: 5, 88, 121, 240; and nature: 54, 61, 112,
183, 187, 191, 259; 113, 120, 127, 140, 283; and the
periodisation: 2, 6; reception: cosmos: 6, 81, 113, 141, 218,
54, 56, 57, 58, 64, 235, 241 257
Morris, William, 161,162, 164, 170, Revelation, 81, 92, 126, 127, 130,
171, 172, 174, 178, 185 140, 141, 18, 195, 216; and
Neale, John Mason, 169, 170, 171, mysticism: 82, 88, 136, 195,
172, 173, 174 257, 258, 259, 270; and
Neugeboren, Heinrik, 16 transcendence: 4, 5, 82, 138-
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 35, 56, 61, 67, 139, 164, 174, 195, 260; in
69 theology: 5, 161, 163, 168, 169,
Olbrich, Josef Maria, 26, 33, 34, 44 172, 174, 175
Paik, Nam June, 261, 267, 272 Rhythm: 16, 84, 122, 126, 134, 135,
Pater, Walter, 161, 162, 164 139, 162, 163, 171, 183, 185,
Perception, 189, 191, 216 affect: 3, 186, 187, 191, 193, 206, 208,
58, 61, 63, 64, 81, 121, 131, 211, 219, 229, 231, 237, 238,
137, 142, 183, 184, 189, 238, 239, 270
256, 259, 260, 270, 282; in
Bergson: 3, 195; and Gestalt


342 Index

Richter, Hans, 5, 19, 206, 207, 210, Strauss, Richard, 35, 54, 65, 66, 67,
211, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 68, 69, 70
219, 220, 221 Subjectivity, 138, 183, 188-89, 193,
Roller, Alfred, 26, 31 34; and Ver 195, 196, 243, 258, 280; and
Sacrum: 4, 29, 36, 37, 38, 39, bodily sensation: 3, 88, 161,
40, 42 168, 169, 174, 175, 183, 189,
Ruttmann, Walther, 5, 19, 206, 207, 216-17, 220, 270; and
210, 211, 212, 213, 217, 218, psychology: 3, 60, 64, 67, 81,
219, 220, 222, 223 88-89, 91, 187, 260; and the
Sadler, M. E., 185 unconscious: 39, 84, 89, 187-88,
Sadler, M.T.H, 185, 186, 187, 189 192
Sand, George, 108, 110, 111 Synaesthesia, 4, 5, 54, 81, 82, 83,
 Š‡‡”ǡ ‡‹”‹ Šǡʹͺǡ͵ͳǡͶͲ 86, 90, 91-2, 94, 95, 109, 131,
Schola Cantorum, 12; and Vincent 161, 174, 206, 207-08, 209, 210,
d’Indy, 12; and César Franck, 212, 213, 214, 217-218, 220,
12 237, 239, 270, 280
Schönberg, Arnold, 5, 15, 84, 91, Ver Sacrum, 4, 27, 29, 30, 31, 33,
183, 186, 189, 191, 192, 193, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40
194, 195; and Theory of Vienna Court Opera, 26, 29, 38
Harmony: 85, 192 Vienna Secession, 26-27, 30, 31;
Schumann, Robert, 119, 120, 130, Seccession house: 27, 28, 29
132, 137, 138 Wagner, Richard, 29, 33, 34, 36, 37,
Scriabin, Alexander, 81, 89, 212; 38, 56, 61, 62, 63, 65, 67, 70,
Prometheus: 2, 82, 95, 96, 207 108, 109, 111, 112, 114, 119,
Silence, 31, 39, 83, 85, 112, 113, 121, 125, 127, 128, 129, 130,
167, 212, 213, 260, 261, 265 137, 138, 139; “Art and
Song, 9, 138, 141, 164, 167, 169, Revolution”: 2, 109; The Art-
171, 172, 173, 174, 229, 270, Work of the Future: 28, 30, 126;
Lieder: 15, 27, 28, 33, 34, 35, ”‹•–ƒ—† •‘Ž†‡ǡ͵͹ǡ͵ͺǡͶͳǢ
36, 37, 39, 40, 57, 66, 71, 137 gesamtkunstwerk, 3, 4, 27, 28,
Sound, 4, 54, 83, 86, 91, 92-3, 110, 29, 40, 54, 62, 81, 82, 94, 109,
112, 113, 114, 133-34, 136, 137, 124, 126, 133, 142, 187, 207,
139, 164, 168 186, 187, 188, 217; on Beethoven: 3, 126
207, 208, 209, 211, 212, 218, Wolf, Hugo, 33, 34, 37, 38
220, 231, 237, 238, 256, 257, Wölfflin, Heinrich, 56
258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 264, Woolf, Virginia, 5, 185, 187, 188,
265, 266, 267, 269, 270, 277, 189, 191, 193, 195
278, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284, Wundt, William, 4, 86
287, 288, 290, 291 Xenakis, Iannis, 6, 277, 280, 281,
Space, 31, 189, 191, 215, 258, 259, 282, 286-87, 288; and UPIC, 6,
260, 269, 279, 285, 288, 290; 278, 279, 281, 284, 289, 290,
sacred: 5, 161, 163, 168, 169, 291
174; spatial music: see Young, La Monte, 6, 256, 257, 258,
Formalism 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264,
Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 261 265, 266, 267; and Theatre of


 Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950 343

Eternal Music, 6, 257, 262, 267, Zen Buddhism, 6, 256, 257, 258,
269, 270 259, 260, 261, 264, 265, 266,
Zazeela, Marian, 256, 258, 263-64, 267
269