Kandinsky No.2

Kandinsky No. 2 is a musical interpretation of Kandinsky’s 1925 painting Yellow-Red-Blue. I decided to revisit a method of composition that I had experimented with 13 years ago whereby I chose a piece of visual art and ‘translated’ it into music. I used this same method and similar methods when I composed Kandinsky No. 1, and Abstraction No. 1 For Violin and Piano.  To compose this piece I looked at the painting and assigned musical materials for different colours, patterns, shapes, and brush strokes present in the painting. From here I set out to depict the painting in the order in which my eyes discover it. It really helps to have seen this painting ‘in the flesh’  instead of as a digital copy on a computer. The size of the painting really takes on a huge importance in the way in which one digests it and plays an important role in how the musical version unfolds. Sometimes, these musical materials take on the form of a pitch set, other times I could be a musical gesture, or a rhythm. Since we don’t view paintings or any visual art for that matter, in a regimented top to bottom, left to right fashion, I allow the painting to determine the overarching form of the piece as a whole. This could mean perhaps, when you hear the expressive descending ‘light blue blending into yellow creating grass green threshold’ motif, it may occur in many different forms, lengths, degrees of recognisability etc. depending on where we are in the painting. 

︎Kandinsky2.pdf

Violin
Cello
Piano

8:00

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