Strange visions and cosmic music: how Whistler makes me see – and feel – differently | Music

Cthe difference between music, painting and sculpture is not true for me because you are talking about ideas that contradict what art is about. A painting can be reflected in the meditation of a second or an hour, but a piece of music, whether it is a symphony or a sonata, has to go through it for a long time.

And yet, the week the James McNeill Whistler exhibition opens at the Tate in London (here Five star review by Jonathan Jones), I have to reconsider. Whistler was deeply influenced by music, a connection that goes so deep that the result is not only aesthetic but also visual, in the fabric of form and expression of his paintings and his artistic philosophy.

Whistler styled his paintings using short rhymes. Preparation in Gray and White No 1a picture of his mother; Symphony in White, No 1: The White Girlportrait of his mistress Joanna Hiffernan; or Harmony in Gray and Greenportrait of Miss Cicely Alexander. And above all, there is a series of Nocturnes, especially of the River Thames in the evening, taking the title from Chopin’s Nocturnes and the whole history of the nocturnalia of the music itself. Susan Tomes’ new book explains.

Like Whistler said in 1875“Just as music is a poem of words, so is painting poetry of visuals, and the story has nothing to do with the connection of words or color … a picture, (standing) beside any story that is supposed to explain … The art must be independent – it must stand on its own and appeal to the ability of the eye or the ear, without confusing this with feelings alien to it, such as devotion, compassion, love, patriotism and so on”.

Music, especially music, which Whistler thought of as art, provided the basis for his way of thinking about painting, a major change that made Jones asked “Was Whistler the first absolute modernist?”

But what’s amazing about these connections in all art is that what starts as inspiration from music is also motivating about music, and to one musician in particular: Claude Debussy. Debussy’s Three Nocturnes for orchestra, completed in 1899, were not composed in the musical tradition of nocturnal composition. In fact, the title is indebted to Whistler’s Nocturnes. As Debussy said, his Nocturnes are “various forms and special effects of light which the word suggests”, which is what Whistler’s Nocturnes are also, a play of blue and silver light; the river Thames turned to silk like a dream.

And there’s more to building an image to make sense: two of Whistler’s Nocturnes in the Tate show put time on canvas. His Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge and Nocturne: Black and Gold – Wheel of fire capture fireworks and transform their immobility into eternity in a way that no other technology of the time could. You can describe them as: “vibrations, dances of the sky… sudden flashes… vivid visions of luminous dust taking action in the… rhythm of nature”. But instead, Debussy is talking about the second of his orchestral Nocturnes, Celebrations (“Celebrations”).

More than mutual inspiration, what Debussy and Whistler share is important: the idea that their music is not about “one thing, but it is a multi-faceted and multi-faceted play that gave the audience a new kind of physical and expressive form. Inspired by music, Whistler’s painting is visionary and abstract; inspired by photography, Debussy’s music turns words into color, space, and light.

Fit was LotLife in music was one of the treasures of our time. Fortunately for us there are many recordings left where we can see and listen to her lighting up the stage with her sparkling soprano presence and brilliance. See him as Marschallin and conductor Carlos Kleiber inside Der Rosenkavalier by Strauss and transported to a world of painful desire and terrifying honesty.

Decades ago, when I was a Boulez-obsessed youth, I was foolish enough to think that Strauss’s Four Last Songs were cosmetic, too much for those who should know better. I was, in other words, a total idiot. Hearing Lott perform the work at Usher Hall at the 1992 Edinburgh Festival with Klaus Tennstedt conducting the London Philharmonic was an epiphany. (And here is the functionalitybrighter than I remember!) I was taught the power of many beautiful songs to say more and mean more than the narrow mind of today.

This week Tom has been listening to: inspired by the moving stories of the 98-year-old The Courage of Herbert Blomstedt conducting Mahler’s Ninth with the San Francisco Symphony, I have been listening his painting and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra from 2019, which he composed when he was only 92 years old. sound when thinking of Blomstedt, but what is remarkable about the Mahler Nine is its musical clarity and apparent sincerity. Blomstedt isn’t bold or bold in his approach, but he reveals Mahler’s work well, making his screams more violent in the first movement, his parodies more cutting in the third, and his comforts on the edge of the final presence more exciting. Listen on Spotify.