Creativity and classical music

[Ngaire Winwood]

I am intrigued how classical music inspires and motivates creativity as well as a fuel to get through the day with. I imagine that it plays a big part with most visual artists as a motivator etc. What are your most inspiring pieces you like listening to and for what reason? Do you have a favourite online music station you listen to? What composers bring out your best works?

If you would like to oblige my request or quest, I would like to find out more about the correlation between classical music in particular to visual artists more than any other type of music especially through the centuries to now, particularly when there is so much other music to choose from?

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Hello Ngaire

This is an interesting question. So interesting in fact that I had to give myself a few days to sort out all the ideas that went through my head when I first read your post.

I have always been influenced by music, and not always classical, in my painting. I have also been influenced by literature and theatre too. I am very often inspired to express the idea of music in my work but it has been difficult to discover a way of doing that satisfactorarily. I did attempt to do a work on the theme of Grieg's Peer Gynt suite. I had just read Ibsen's play (which actually moved me more than the Grieg music, but you can't read and paint can you?). At the moment I have been thinking a lot about Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado as it is currently being performed where we live. I am most moved to paint something on Yum Yum's song "The Sun and I".

So far, though, my attempts to express these ideas fall very much below the height and intensity of my emotional response to the music. I am trying to get my work more equal to the abstract qualities of musical notes - to get colours, shapes, and contrasts such as vigour and tenderness in the brushstrokes to fore so that I can move away from illustration to a more musical feeling. I do often feel when I am painting well that it is akin to singing.

I have been inlfuenced by the composer Satie very much, and, early on, by the Beatles, and also the Paddington Bear theme and the Wombles (British children's programmes from the 70's), so it all depends on where I am mentally and emotionally (how nostalgic I am feeling or how much I feel I can face the brave new world!).

On a side note, I am, at present, influenced by the books I am reading. Willa Cather's novels brought a bright, yellow sunlight into my paintings, while Faulkner's "Hamlet" turned my paintings more towards a green grey light and shadow. This was an unintended development. I wasn't trying to paint what I read at all. My mood changed naturally by reading these different writers, and the resulting expression was unforced and unexpected and because of this, it made a powerful and convincing feeling in my work.

I don't paint while listening to music, although I have very much done so in the past, listening to radio stations that play classical music so that I don't have to break through my concentration and reverie to turn over or change cd's. I found the interruption of the adverts very irritating, though. And even the music itself became irritating because it often would not coincide with my particular mood - i.e the station would often be garishly dramatic when I was trying to paint something delicate and difficult, which made me too angry without being able to use that anger productively.

The memory of music (and of plays and books) is most important to me because it is with that that the aspects of things that I have assimilated come out in an honest metamorphosis of the original theme.

On a last note, my musical appreciation and ability to play the piano certainly improved when my painting began to mature. I had a much deeper understanding of music when I began to understand what it was to paint like an adult - with larger ideas more encompassing of a universal humanity; or when I began to get to know myself as a human being living alongside other human beings.

[Claudemir Bonfim]

I always listen to opera, Rossini, Verdi, Bizet, etc.
But my favorite composers are Beethoven and Mozart.

[Ngaire Winwood]

Thomasin, I found your answer most interesting, thank you, as you express the effects of music as well to your accomplishment with colour emphasis' in your work and the effects of emotion.

I posed the question not for mere generalised answers, I hope to dig deeper into artist's pysche, as I am intrigued in ways other artists capture the essence of that deeper understanding/knoweness from and because of increased appreciation of certain music before and during production of paintings and its effects. Not just for the general effects but that abyss one can go into where all can be revealed, of these moments, of this level of achievement, that usually halts soon after we sstart to seek analysis of that moment/journey. I suppose how each of us can journey into that abyss and methods used to lengthen the time of this oneness, when using music as the catalyst or doorway.

Bonfim, do you have any specific ones that take you there quicker than others?

[Grethe Angen]

Hello Ngaire,
Interesting topic. I am not sure if I am directly inspired by music or not. but I that listening to great music really helps me concentrate an keep my mind on what I am doing.
Thomasin, I noticed that you like to read Ibsen, and I can also recommend" the wild duck", "A dolls house" and "Hedda Gabler" if you ever find time. The most fascinating is the fact that they were all written in the 18`eighties by a male writer:-)

[Julie Deane]

Interesting question, and I think you will get a different answer from each artist.

For me, too much sound can interfere with concentration. I can't stand hearing voices sometimes - too much to process. Sometimes no music will do, if the area is tricky and I really need to think. Of classical, preferance is classical guitar, and especially familiar pieces, so that the music will stay in the background and not intrude. Similarly, Mozart works well. Something with a steady rise and fall. No musical "storms" for me, so no opera , no Beethoven or other Romantic pieces.

But, on the other hand, music had a big part in an experiment I did a while back with abstract art, in which the art was based on the music. The rhythm and coloration, all of it needed little planning and apparently fell into place subconciously, influenced by what was being heard. But, sorry, that music wasn't classical - it was jazz.

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Originally Posted by Ngaire Winwood

that abyss one can go into where all can be revealed, of these moments, of this level of achievement, that usually halts soon after we start to seek analysis of that moment/journey. I suppose how each of us can journey into that abyss and methods used to lengthen the time of this oneness, when using music as the catalyst or doorway.

Ngaire, I did my Master's thesis on the topic of tactility in contemporary figurative / portrait painting. I focussed on the loss of boundaries between the artist and the painted object and, subsequently, between the viewer and the resulting painting.

I was fascinated by the question of what makes or made a figure painting great. i.e a real sense of flesh, touchable and human. This idea was spurred by the sparsity of luscious contemporary figurative painting like the paintings of Courbet, for example, and by the lack of interest (it seemed) in painting in general.

I went to probably the only serious painting school in my undergraduate years in South Africa, and had, what I now realise, was a truly world-class painting instructor . But outside of this little (glorious) world there seemed to be a dearth of passionate, deep-thinking painters. A lot of contemporary paintings seemed cold and calculated and I wanted to spend some time finding out why, when in the first analysis they seemed to have all the aspects of a Goya, Vel

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Hello Grethe

Thanks for the Ibsen recommendations. I have read "the Wild Duck" and seen the play. I know of "A Dolls House" but not "Hedda Gabler". I do get plenty of time to read in fact, when my son goes down for a nap, about 1/2 hour a day before I paint which doesn't sound like much but I got through almost all of Cather's work, Hawthorne, Capote, Faulkner and Dickens, as well as Agatha Christie and Tintin since the middle of last year, so I will look for them in the library. It will be nice to read a play again.

I also love Dylan Thomas whose poems have a similar feeling to Ibsen.

[Grethe Angen]

Originally Posted by Thomasin Dewhurst

Hello Grethe

Thanks for the Ibsen recommendations. I have read "the Wild Duck" and seen the play. I know of "A Dolls House" but not "Hedda Gabler". I do get plenty of time to read in fact, when my son goes down for a nap, about 1/2 hour a day before I paint which doesn't sound like much but I got through almost all of Cather's work, Hawthorne, Capote, Faulkner and Dickens, as well as Agatha Christie and Tintin since the middle of last year, so I will look for them in the library. It will be nice to read a play again.

I also love Dylan Thomas whose poems have a similar feeling to Ibsen.

.and besides all this you are an artist on the rise,bravo. I too voted 10 in the Satchi for your portrait.

[Claudemir Bonfim]

No, no specific ones from theses guys. I can listen to them at any time.