SYMPHONY CHAMBER SOLOISTS OF CHICAGO
The impetus for the alliance came from the Art Institute’s president, James Wood, and the CSO’s Daniel Barenboim. Mary Sue Glosser, the museum’s lecturer who’s now in charge of the series, says, “In a series of this scope, we can closely examine music’s ties to the visual arts. Many composers have expressed admiration for certain painters and vice versa. But how did they influence each other?” Indeed.
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Music, painting, and sculpture spring from similar creative impulses. Yet they are quite different in a lot of ways. For instance, until the turn of this century paintings tried to be representational–rough filters of reality. Music, however, works on a more abstract level. It’s a language of sorts, a system of relations built on tones, rhythms, and dynamics. The beauty of music is derived from the coherence of its internal logic and the way it unfolds over time. If architecture is frozen music, then music is architecture in motion. No self-respecting composer would ever want to be caught mimicking nature for the sake of mimicry.
In her introductory remarks Glosser explained why artists since the Industrial Revolution have been invigorated by folk subjects and themes: “They admired the peasants’ noble simplicity. The countryside was a relief from the craziness of the cities, of commerce. Kandinsky, like a lot of painters of his time, in fact, did extensive research on rural life [in Russia] when he was a young man. Painters like van Gogh and Chagall had a healthy respect for the intuition common in folk art. Their challenge was to take jewels of folk culture and frame them into more structured settings.” Millet, Miro, and Brancusi–some of whose signature works are also in the Art Institute’s collections–also made her list. “Not surprisingly, all of these artists loved music. Van Gogh took music lessons, and the fiddler was one of Chagall’s favorite motifs.”
After the concert most audience members–musical novices, judging by the fact that they applauded between movements–followed Glosser on a tour. She led them from gallery to gallery, talking energetically of Millet, van Gogh, Kandinsky, Brancusi. The kinship she attempted to establish between the composers and painters might have seemed tenuous, but why fault a wonderful excuse to while away a Sunday afternoon?
