PAINTING THE MUSIC

HANDEL

May 2000. Handel, The Messiah, Jerusalem, Al-Quds  (Arab Jerusalem, the city were I was born in 1942). And an unusual and unforgettable walk I took as a youth just after hearing the Water Music at dawn (was I in love?). I had climbed the sunlit stone terraces of the Jabal El-Tawil (Long Hill), near my home in Bireh-Ramallah, the music reverberating in my mind, with Jerusalem just a few kilometers to the South. The association of the walk with the music is so strong that I now feel I must have heard it on a Walkman tape player, a gadget which would not be invented for another twenty years!

The large gates dominating the composition are how I remember the Damascus Gate, set in Jerusalem’s Northern wall. Entering, the spiritual treasures of the Old City can be discovered, hence the line drawing on gold of the city I love, including symbols of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The garish neon-like 'sign' in red declares "Al-Quds" in Arabic. The sign and the arcade (as I remembered Salah Eddin Street) pictured to the right both reflect daily life in the modern city. Cyclamens always remind me of the wild flowers of the countryside where I grew up[14a]. To the left I vainly tried to depict the incredible fragile infinitude of rolling hills seen from the Mount of Olives looking to the East towards the Dead Sea.

The flying arrow accentuates the sense of space just outside the confines of the city. It started when I drew a line that intruded into the space of the landscape and I could not paint it out.  The couple returning to the city seems unreal, like figures in a dream, because most Palestinians are not yet returning to their homeland and beloved city. The painting[14] might also be read as my wish to return to my religious faith, now weakened, chiefly by too much scientific skepticism. I could face and express these - for me - very charged and agonizing personal symbols and memories with confidence and clarity, thanks to the overwhelming spiritual energy, beauty and consolation to be found in most of Handel's music.

PROKOFIEFF

June 2000. From ancient spiritual faith to the Russian Revolution. It was the first of all 20th. Century revolutions, including our own Palestinian revolution, aspects of which I witnessed at first hand in Lebanon and Jordan between 1967 and 1970. As I listened to the angular, melodious and invigorating music of Prokofieff, the foremost Soviet composer, I could only paint robust angular shapes.  A rather mythical Pegasus-like figure finally emerged, dominating the composition. Perhaps this was in response to listening to the glorious music Prokofieff wrote for Eisenstein's film Alexander Nevsky, with its terrifying costumes and sets. I found that Prokofieff's music had a deeper artistry transcending all superficial associations, and I hope that my paintings succeed a little in that way too.

MENDELSSOHN

July 2000. After almost a month of listening to Prokofieff music daily, I needed a musical holiday, kindly provided by Herr Felix Mendelssohn.  Felix, Latin for 'happy'.  A musical tour, from his Italian Symphony to the Scotch Symphony, and to Fingal's Cave  (an actual location, also in Scotland). The latter composition is full of delicious, lyrical passages that could easily have been, but never are cloying.  One of my favorite passages in Fingal's Cave is when what may be the French horns sound a repetitive echoing call. This directly inspired the horizontal turquoise brush-stroke (under the violet edge) to the left of center of the painting.  Without my consciously intending it, the hill-like striated composition of the painting greatly resembles the hills in Palestine, particularly the Jabal El-Tawil.

BAROQUE MUSIC

August 2000. August in Tokyo is awfully hot and humid, and I extended my musical holiday by listening to Baroque composers (other than Bach and Vivaldi).  In enchanting succession I listened to the music of Tartini, Pergolesi, Monteverdi, Purcell, Rameau, Schütz and many others. The music suggested an ordered heavenly world of intricate dancing arabesques. The result was this painting.  

BEETHOVEN  (2)

September 2000. Normally I paint, while listening to the music, for about an hour a day, in the morning. Then I study the result quietly at other times to prepare the next day's work. After about 25 days I finish the painting in a much more concentrated effort.  I was so inspired by Beethoven's music, however, that I finished the painting in ten days.  The music is not only deeply emotional, but is expressed through a very sophisticated and perfectly constructed musical structure. It is all the greater because it sounds spontaneous. These qualities in the music, as in the Bach painting, encouraged me to paint my shapes simply and directly and to dare take creative leaps, the forms and colors interacting all across the painting. I coasted along the musical delights of such favorites as the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Archduke Trio, painting with great confidence.  The resulting transparency of the shapes and colors, uncluttered by over-painting, made up a pleasing and well-structured picture full of color and...music.

BEETHOVEN  (3)

September 2000. I finished the Beethoven painting, but I still had a stack of CDs of his music I wanted to listen to: the late symphonies, the quartets, the Missa Solemnis.  and the Kreutzer Sonata. After a couple of day's rest, I embarked on this second painting. Without hesitation, I applied the gold and silver leaf in their diamond and circular shapes, and outlined the bird-like figure that dominates the finished painting. This 'heroic' bird shape appears in many of my paintings and drawings, and represents freedom and the joy of life. Perhaps also a sentiment best expressed in Psalm 55: "Oh that I had wings like a dove!  Then I would fly away and be at rest". Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, is almost banal in its familiarity - it is ritually performed every year-end in Japan. For some time the melody of the Hymn To Joy was beeped to announce a phone call at our home. But it was incredibly moving when I listened to the symphony two weeks later, sobbing like a child as I frantically applied the final touches to this painting.

STRAVINSKI

October 2000. Unlike the other composers, Stravinsky is very much of our own time.  Kyoko attended a concert he conducted in Tokyo around 1959. He died as recently as 1971. Time magazine claimed that his "Symphony of Psalms” was the greatest piece of music written in the 20th. Century. Before starting to paint, I read about the three totally different musical styles Stravinsky developed in his lifetime, and decided to try something new: why not reserve a separate portion of the painting for each particular composition I heard? I delineated a symmetrical framework of rectangular shapes and proceeded to 'illustrate' more than 25 of Stravinsky's compositions in the order he wrote them, as shown in the diagram below.  It was wonderful to listen again to the early ballet pieces, Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rites of Spring and illustrate them in the center of the painting. Stravinsky's next period, the neoclassical, was all unfamiliar to me. The very moving "Symphony of Psalms"  inspired the arc of sky-like blues sweeping the painting from edge to edge. I illustrated the Jeu de Cartes   (Card Game) with a portrait of a dapper young Stravinsky on a playing card.  I enjoyed creating a decorative panel in silver foil for the immemorial lovers of Orpheus. The intricate illustration in colored inks is of the story of the opera The Rake's Progress.  The fact that the origin of the opera was a series of satirical engravings by Hogarth[15] encouraged this approach.  At the end I had only the four corners of the painting reserved for Stravinsky's final, serial (12-tone) period, with such works as Agon. Without much ado I painted all the corners at one go in various tones of green.

Key to the Stravinsky painting

Areas related to specific compositions:

1.The Firebird 2.Petroushka 3. Rites of Spring 4. Pulcinella,  Octet for Winds  and  Appollon Musag`ete 5. Oedipus Rex 6. Symphony of Psalms 7. Jeu de Cartes 8. Dumberton Oaks Concerto and Dance Concertante 9."Basel" Concerto in D 10. Symphony in C  11.Circus Polka  12. Pastorale 13. Orpheus  14. Capriccio for Piano,  Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments , Ode (Tripicon) and Scherzo `a la russe  15. Rake's Progress 16.Agon, Concertino for 12 Instruments and Variations in Memorium.  In addition to these works, I also heard L'Histoire du soldat, 3 Clarinet solos, and Chant de rossignol while working on details in various areas.

TCHAIKOVSKY

November 2000. Tchaikovsky expresses his hypersensitive and glorious emotions in perfectly elegant swirling forms. It invited me to start the painting in a style where the shapes undulated in a refined colorful dance. This seemed even more appropriate, since some of Tchaikovsky's most memorable music, such as Swan Lake, was written for the ballet. I had listened to this piece early on, and at one stage the painting was full of over- elegant sharp-edged shapes. Then I listened to the First Piano Concerto, and it jolted me out of my complacency. To match the dramatic pounding of the opening bars of the music, I drew the dark patches of magenta, violet and blue (at the bottom of the painting, left of center) almost in 'real-time' to the music. I then projected the colors vertically to the bouquet-like spray of colors at the top of the painting, considerably changing its mood.  The great First Violin Concerto inspired me to infuse the painting further with subtle modulations and flowing, literally purple, patches. But I became too excited with the music, and the painting got overworked in places.

Luckily at this point, since I could still not find a CD record of the Sleeping Beauty I had to watch a video of the ballet instead, even while I painted. The perfection of the Bolshoi performance, and the beauty of the dancers, costumes and sets, perfectly matched the music. It all shamed me into doubling my efforts to make a finer painting. Throughout this month, however, I was hearing news about the increasingly violent conflicts in Ramallah and the rest of Palestine. My worries were swept along in the emotional expressionism found in much of Tchaikovsky's music.

HAYDN

December 2000. The first piece I listened to by Haydn for this painting was The Seven Last Words of Christ. Instead of the anguish and drama that this theme suggested to me, the music was idyllic, pensive and almost decorative. With this piece I painted the blue-framed area at the bottom left of the painting. Haydn's unrelenting optimism continued in all his other music. As I listened, I found myself painting precise, brightly colored and delicate shapes.  The music encouraged a playful inventiveness and attention to detail.  Eventually I decided to paint as if I was sculpting and painting a piece of Meissen porcelain. My father had collected a few pieces of this type, which I enjoyed looking at as a child.  The more Haydn music I heard, the more respect I had for the sheer brilliance of the compositions. But even at his most inventive, exciting or emotionally charged moments (such as in the Nelson Mass, or The Creation), the music, and hence the painting had to be kept within a neat and disciplined aesthetic schema.

SCRIABIN

January 2001. Although I was unfamiliar with Scriabin's music, while writing this article I remembered that in my '60's research I had heard of a 'color organ'.  Searching in the Internet, I now found that Scriabin composed his 1910 Prometheus, according to a program based on a grandiose vision of the struggle between good and evil. He intended it to be performed in India, in a fantastic "globular temple"[16], accompanied by colors that flashed with the music[17], activated from the keyboard of the 'color organ’, which he invented.  The color organ was impractical at that time, but would be the precursor of a new art form of 'visual music', as discussed below.  For this painting I used the theme of a great explosion of light emanating from the center of a sphere. The sphere not only refers to Scriabin's planned temple, but also to the cosmic Big Bang - the creation of the universe from a point, according to concepts partly based on Einstein's general theory of relativity. In the bottom of the painting there is a bluish illustration of the space-time metric of an imploding black hole - the opposite of an explosion. The physicist was struggling with his gravitational theory at the very time Scriabin had created Prometheus!  The spherical theme was also fresh in my mind because during 2000 I invented a vacuum balloon and a special kind of mechanical press, both of which had spherical designs.  Scriabin's idealistic cosmic philosophy and wonderful music almost demanded the phantasmagoric approach I took in making this painting.