Capturing Music

I heard the Cecilia String Quartet play today in Kimball.  There was a moment when their music was 'sweet', reminded me of fall, and just at that moment the wind ran through the trees outside and I saw leaves falling diagonally through the windows.  What if one could capture music visually?  The music tells a story, and musicians in a quartet work hard to communicate to each other what the piece means to them, until they come to one cohesive image.  What if we could display a quartet in front of a glass wall (hexagonal), floor to curving ceiling, like a green house, and the musicians are at some critical point of the music where the movement of their instruments can be readily expressed. 

At one point, the smaller violins were both playing by the base of their bows, leaning forward to the right (my right), while the two players on the right leaned towards them (to the left).  Their bows played somewhere in the middle, but would it be believable if I positioned them at the tip?  There is some technical difficulty in expressing the piece being played accurately, and having the bow movements where I want them.  The musician's faces, too, has the potential for intense expression, but so far only one or two are ever intense at any given moment.  What if we could have the cello player glaring/smirking forward while the violinist pushed away, eying her furtively?  The other two players are conscious only of their music, not recognizing the conflict happening, but that could help cushion the drama and bring it out, the way a fuzzy edge brings out the center of the photograph.

Another thing to consider is having three musicians playing their parts, lost in their instrument, while once glances up furtively (that's just my word for today) at someone else.  Like in a changing room, where everyone's keeping their eye on themselves and someone peeks.  My favorite character was the cello player whose position is different from the violinists.  She sits squarely, elbows out, a firm, manly figure whose music is solidly present and support all those flitty violins.  She gives a mean glare/smirk that delighted me to no end.  Until I've had a chance to observe more cellists, I think she might be my model one.

While it may be more dynamic to portray conflict between musicians, they can also be displayed in unison.  At the very tip of a long note, all four are at the tip of their pendulum swing, and if we snapped the painting there, movement might be expressed.  If that's too boring, try having two musicians swing one way (up), and the other two another way (down).  It seems more technically correct that musicians play to the tip of their bows, rather than the base, since they'll run into their own fingers.  Try portraying twitching movements of their bow by drawing the bow at both high points of their twist (not swing, too dramatic of a location change), so that little back and forth movement that happens at the base of the bow when they're wriggling a note. 

The setting of glass walls is to create that white canvas feel that actually needs to be translucent.  I'm not a fan of the acrylic white that creates the misty, thick feeling in Jack Vettriano's "Dance Me To The End Of Love."

Dance Me To The End Of Love by Jack Vettriano

The feeling here is too 'wedding' when it needs to feel like a breath of fresh air.  Like that moment when you step out into bright sunlight and you're suddenly blinded, and then your vision slowly restores so that you can see the scene in front of you.  The background needs to show the intermediary step of that experience, and I can suggest what the scene on the other side of the glass should be, but the viewer is invited to fill in.  So let me rephrase that: instead of a blank canvas on which the viewer can paint the scene they imagine the musicians to be playing, it should be a window outside which the scene is happening, but the viewer can invent what they want to be happening.  It's easier for the viewer to snap a photograph than to compose a painting, so avoiding the 'blank canvas' effect might help make the painting more accessible.

The technical difficulty we might face in this painting is the realism of back-lighting.  Musicians playing in front of a sunlit window will have their features tossed in darkness, and we need someway to compromise that because the painting must not be black and white (as Vettriano's End of Love painting above), but light and happy.  There shouldn't be a block of black as in the gentlemen in tuxedo, because that's just too somber.  Vettriano's "Sweet Bird of Youth" can lead us in the right direction for a solution, but we need to make sure the figures look as though they are indoor, and we have to solve the problem of musicians wearing black for performances.  That would be difficult.

Sweet Bird of Youth by Jack Vettriano

In the end, the painting needs to tell a strange sort of story, such as Vettriano's "The Singing Butler."

The Dancing Butler by Jack Vettriano

There's a story in this painting, but it's not the traditional story setting that viewers are familiar with.  When have we ever seen this scene in real life?  But the scene is nevertheless probable, and invite the viewer's imagination to create a new story.  "The Singing Butler" mimics the feel that I want the painting to have, but obviously the colors are too saturated/deep.

Research for this painting might be as follows:
- go to concert and sketch musicians playing, noting the scores and the feeling each bring so that you can listen to them again later.  write down any immediate imagery/story that the music inspires so that you can eventually chose one piece, one story, to paint
- research and observe buildings with glass walls and study how the light might fall on a group of people sitting in front of it.  Try studying it at different times of the day so that you can figure out which intensity of light will work best
- study other ways that motion can be captured in painting
- research to see if other artists have created the same idea before, or paintings of musicians in general, to see if they have answered some of the questions we have asked and solved questions we have not thought of, but are important
- attend quartet rehearsals and listen to the conversation that musicians have with each other.  This will clue you in on how the musicians intend their music to be received, which should be added to your own interpretation and response to the music

- practice, practice, practice the human figure and portraits of instruments.  You can sell your practice pieces to help pay for this project and living expenses as you work.

This concept has the potential to become a concentration.  The idea of capturing music, musicians and stories and their motion in a two dimensional, 'static' painting is a flexible one with lots of nuances to explore.  For example, what sort of stories can be told by a pianist?  Can we expand the idea into contemporary music that are rougher, more improvisation, or should we keep it to the classical and refined?  I feel that the concept might have a huge impact if we created four to six paintings, 5 ft by 6 ft, to hang at eye level in one room surrounding some musical apparatus (say a grand piano) at the center.  It would be as though there were 4 - 6 concerts playing in the room, and the background of glass walls will create a sense of light and airy space.

P.S. Someday, I would love to have a copy of "Dance Me To The End Of Love", which would look beautiful framed on white framed in black.  But it does need to be the lighter print shown above.  Also, I would have loved to snatch a copy of his "The Singing Butler" sketch, which is lighter than the finished piece.