Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky, which inspired today's square, was a major influence in my decision to create this quilt. If a piece of music could be composed so closely around a collection of images, why not create a piece of art containing many images from studying many individual pieces of music? Or any other form of art, for that matter? For example, what about a fragrance? ....
I found out recently that Tommy Hilfiger decided to create a perfume for teens, inspired by the type of music they like. Following much market research, many focus groups, etc. his team came up with the name LOUD, and based the packaging design on the look of a CD. This is what the bottle looked like.
The project never came to anything, because although the designer of the fragrance, Guerlain, did come up with a product that Tommy liked, the elder patriarch of the company, Jean Paul Guerlain, made a very racist comment in public about how hard he worked just before the product was launched. Tommy felt this clashed with his image, and decided to cancel the whole project. (Actually, this is probably a good thing. Tommy should have had me on his product development team - Loud is a pretty good name, but I think Beat might have had an even more universal appeal. But that's just my opinion!)
So, there's an instance of a style of music inspiring a perfume. How about a piece of music inspiring a poem, as illustrated by a piece of art? I was honoured recently by being contacted by the Israeli poet Yael Cohen, who has asked if she might use our square for The Lark Ascending on the cover of her next book of poetry. Yael, who lives near Tel Aviv, loves the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and liked the rationale behind the development of our square. Of course I said "yes". So we now know of an international readership oft our quilt blog!
And then I got a telephone call from an amazing guitarist/arranger/writer, Steven Hancoff, who lives in the United States and has been working on a transcription of Bach's cello suites for 6 years, recording them on his acoustic guitar. He has just completed an e-biography about Pablo Casals and his role in collecting, preserving and recording the definitive collection. He is including in his book several pieces of art inspired by Bach, and asked if he could include my Robert's Quilt on the Goldberg Variations, and our square on Air on a G String. Another international follower - how cool is that?!
So a transcription from a four-stringed instrument to a six stringed instrument - of course I had to ask him which suite and which movement was his favourite, so I can produce a square on that too!
But, back to Mussorgsky and his amazing Pictures at an Exhibition. Those opening bars are iconic - how many advertisements have included them? (I learnt at the BBC years ago - another life, a previous career - that if you "borrowed" less than 15 seconds from a piece of music, you didn't have to pay royalties. I wonder if that is still true?)
Anyway, researching this one was a wonderful journey. I knew about Mussorgsky's friendship with the painter Viktor Hartman, whose paintings inspired the work. But I didn't know that it was originally composed as a piano piece, that many composers/conductors subsequently scored it for orchestra, or that it was Maurice Ravel who was commissioned in 1922 to do just that, his version becoming the most often performed one.
I do know, however, that the recurring "promenade" theme is one of those melodies that keep floating to the surface when you are trying to think about something else, and that I really enjoy the finale - the great Gate of Kiev, and the variations on the promenade theme. Hartman's design for the Gate of Kiev is shown in the middle of the top row of reproductions, and the two paintings at the lower left and right were owned by Mussorgsky and inspired the "Two Jews" movement.
Music flows through everything, doesn't it? I am sure you knew that Einstein was pretty good on the violin? He knew that e = f♭ way before he figured out e
= mc2. LOL!
Take care, and talk to you soon,
Susan
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