The Relationship Between Music and Art
During a lively discussion with SoundEagle on my article about Lang Lang in Vienna, I mentioned that I could imagine painting to his piano piece The Last Rag. After listening and thinking about it, I decided to make a visual response to the composition, rather than simply paint while it played.
I have returned to the relationship between music and painting many times. Often, music simply helps me enter a particular frame of mind while I work. Brian Eno and his collaborations with David Byrne have accompanied some of those attempts.
Sometimes I examine a work more closely, as with Stravinsky’s The Firebird.
Palestrina’s interwoven musical lines have suggested a very different kind of density.
My usual way of getting there: I listen to the piece, summarize the essence in one or two sentences, and look for a visual core statement.
The Approach to “The Last Rag”
I hear The Last Rag as a contemporary work in conversation with an older musical tradition. SoundEagle’s own presentation describes both that inheritance and his departures from it. His connection with painting and calligraphy also gave me a starting point for the image.
My first thought regarding the implementation was an older study of Chinese characters.
But in the end, that would have been more “rug” than “rag”. The world of classical Chinese calligraphy would have pushed itself too strongly into the foreground and restricted me. Instead, I developed a new technique. It requires a lot of patience and concentration, but it brings out the message in a completely new way.
Yin and Yang in an Old Rag
The appeal for me lay in taking the word “rag” literally. I wanted to give the picture the character of an old shred of cloth. Once a light summer dress, then discarded, cut into pieces, and used for cleaning, only this last rag remains. Washed dozens of times, it still holds a tender, blurred memory of spring and days of joy.
These faint memories form the background: the yin, delicate and fleeting. Cloudy cyan and grey suggest faded fabric through which an older pattern still shows. Chance has a part in the surface, within a structure I have deliberately set. The light catches in this texture. I wanted to keep the image relatively flat, allowing the pale ground and the dark marks to act as distinct but interdependent layers. [1]
The contrasting yang consists of dark, angular forms that recall Chinese characters. Their broken edges also suggest wear. I associate that mixture of structure and unease with Ravel’s La Valse, where I seem to hear a remembered dance behind the music. SoundEagle’s piece brings similar associations to mind, along with Scriabin and the colour of musical Impressionism. These are my listening associations, rather than claims about the composer’s influences.
The Image as a Formal Analogy
My work is not an illustration of the music, but translates its basic principles into a visual language: strict form and torn rhythm.
I hear a tension between the piece’s dance-like movement and its more reflective passages. In the painting, soft colour and hard-edged signs give me a way to explore that contrast.
The four rows and three columns give the image a framework of twelve units. This is my visual arrangement, not a claim that the composition consists of twelve bars or sections.
Just as a piano ragtime consists of successive phrases, the image presents clear, separated “sound blocks.” They provide stability for the viewer, just like the steady bass of the left hand on the piano.
The fragmentation of the signs offers me an analogy with syncopation. [2] The eye follows a shape and encounters an edge or gap where it expected continuity. That interruption matters as much as the repeated grid. It also shifts these calligraphic forms toward the worn, ordinary surface I had in mind.
A quick glance may catch the repeated pattern first. Up close, each unit has its own small breaks, traces and changes of colour.
Second Attempt for “The Last Rag”
This newly developed technique is difficult to control, which became painfully clear to me during a second attempt. Some details, however, turned out quite similar to what I had striven for. I had also stopped concentrating on the piece of music and instead focused on a “dirty rag”.
Third Attempt for “The Last Rag”
This third version pushes the experiment even further. Although the structure of the original 4×3 grid is essentially retained, it is handled less rigidly to allow the elements more freedom.
The boundaries of the “sound blocks” become less definite in the third version. Deep blue and cyan carry the eye between them, while pale passages interrupt the pattern. The response has moved further from a fixed grid.
The fragmented signs now meet a broad passage of pale light. Dark accents extend through the surrounding layers, rather than remaining enclosed in separate units. I can still recognize the first idea, but its rhythm has changed.
Now we shall see how the composer views this visual response to his work.
Footnotes
[1] Two layers. “Flat” describes my compositional choice, not a limit on the expressive or spatial possibilities of piano music. The background and the dark forms are a way of organising this painting.
[2] Syncopation. Rhythmic emphasis that works against the expected pattern of beats. The broken signs are my visual analogy. The composer’s presentation of The Last Rag includes recordings, scores and notes on its relation to ragtime.
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