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Interpreting G. Silvestrini’s Six Études pour Hautbois through the Impressionist paintings that inspired them
Fig. 2 Potager et arbres en fleurs, Printemps, Pontoise
Camille Pissarro (1877)
Fig. 1 Hôtel des Roches noires à Trouville
Claude Monet (1870)
Fig. 4 Sentier dans les bois
Auguste Renoir (1874)
Fig. 6 Le ballet espagnol
Edouard Manet (1862)
This study involves two concurrent methods of investigating music inspired by visual art. While studying Six Études pour Hautbois by Gilles Silvestrini and their corresponding Impressionist paintings, developing an interpretation and finding correlations between the music and the artwork, a literature investigation was conducted, uncovering other examples of music inspired by visual art. By analysing and comparing existing literature from musicologists, performers, and composers, a framework of five approaches composers may take to translating paintings into music emerged, relating to mood, elements, immersion, notation, and specifications. This theorisation is relevant predominantly to the personal experience of a performer, specifically when studying Six Études pour Hautbois. It may further understanding about music inspired by visual art and assist in concert design, such that the connections between music and its source material are most celebrated. Its limitations may become apparent if applied to a larger scope of material.
Composers Claude Debussy, Ottorino Respighi, and Arthur Lourié were all inspired by paintings by 15th century Italian painter, Sandro Botticelli (fig.7). In her article Composing from Images, author Zdenka Kapko-Foretić compares the composers’ responses to their source of inspiration. Kapko-Foretić discovers two distinct approaches: the composer aims to capture the mood of the painting, or they explicitly and directly transfer elements of the painting to music. Kapko-Foretić suggests that if the art work is known to the listener, they will search for its similarities in the music; if the listener knows the source of inspiration, they may find it interesting to discover the relationship between the two works (1998, 29).
By discussing Debussy, Respighi and Lourié’s different interpretations of Botticelli artworks, Composing from Images outlines the different ways in which composers can take inspiration from visual arts. It provides a baseline from which to compare Silvestrini’s compositional choices to other composers who wrote music inspired by visual arts. Debussy’s Primavera, especially, highlights how converse Debussy’s approach to his source of inspiration was to Silvestrini’s - he finds a disturbing, philosophical meaning in the painting, a feeling which attempts to translate to music. It is important to note that the author makes assumptions about how the composer may have translated elements from the painting into music. This highlights that connections between the inspiration and the music do not have to exist only from the composer’s points of view, but can be interpreted as such from an outside viewpoint. In Composing from Images, Kapko-Foretić has already identified two approaches that composers take when they are inspired by visual art, either focusing on the overarching mood, or specific elements of a painting (1998, 33).
In 2019, Paul Chinen conducted a research project investigating French artwork, poetry, and music, which concluded in a performance of selected Silvestrini études, alongside their correlating paintings. Within his research, Chinen reflects on the technical and musical instruction offered by these études as well as their suitability for recital performance. Chinen draws on correspondence between himself and Gilles Silvestrini, in which the composer reveals how he interpreted four of the six paintings which inspired the études, and the compositional choices this inspired (2019).
Silvestrini writes to Chinen that the first étude was written to be very lighthearted, reflecting the happiness he saw in the painting (fig.1). The opening motif, high, fast, and fortissimo, is evocative of the “striking power of the wind that carried the flags to flight in the foreground and background, along with their bright colours representing the flags of France, America, and England (Silvestrini, 2019, as cited in Chinen, 2019, 3).” Silvestrini noticed the contrast between the stationary figures and the movement of the flags - the man tipping his hat, and women in conversation in the foreground. “This detail is not very visible, however it illuminates well the atmosphere which reigned in Trouville: worldliness, ease, lightness. I wanted to mark this clear contrast between culture and nature (Silvestrini, 2019, as cited in Chinen, 2019, 5).” By Silvestrini’s remarks, it seems that he has visited the hotel in Trouville, and experienced the atmosphere that Monet captured, or that the painting simply captures the place very clearly to him.
Chinen highlights that the Impressionist movement saw an effort to depict everyday life, rather than grand or mythological scenes. This is certainly the case for the painting which inspired the second étude, Potager et arbres en fleurs, Printemps, Pontoise, Camille Pissarro (1877) (fig.2), which depicts a tree and crops in flower, backed by a suburban landscape. As Chinen suggests, this étude could be a 'literal visual representation' of the painting — heavy articulation markings make the score look busy, while Pissarro’s shorter brushstrokes distinguish his style from Monet’s. Silvestrini says, “…violent contrast with the bird songs which must gradually evoke a polyphony. All means are good: registers, shades, articulations… One can imagine that the rain stopped and that immediately, in a ray of sunshine, the birds begin to sing in the excitement of the period of the nests (Silvestrini, 2019, as cited in Chinen, 2019, 9-10).” Chinen pictures the middle section conversationally, the legato much like the clouds, the staccato the chirping of birds. Both Chinen and Silvestrini describe bird song, rain, and sunshine, even though these elements are not depicted in Pissarro’s painting. Like Hôtel des Roches noires à Trouville, it is as if the composer (and perhaps performer) has stepped into the scene the painter captured, rather than viewing it from outside. The ‘literal visual representation’ of the painting Chinen mentions could suggest yet another approach to translating a painting to music (2019, 8-10).
Silvestrini says that the fourth étude, Sentier dans les bois, Auguste Renoir (1874) (fig.4), is the “heart of the collection. It evokes precisely a day (in the) heart of summer, when everything is on the verge of saturation (Silvestrini, 2019, as cited in Chinen, 2019, 13).” And indeed, of the six paintings, Sentier dan les bois is certainly the most intense in colour, featuring a blended, abstracted style that makes the scene he depicts difficult to distinguish.
Painted in 1862, Le ballet espagnol, by Edouard Manet (fig.6) is the earliest of the six paintings that Silvestrini selected. Manet was involved in the progression from realism to impressionism, and this is visible in the painting. Despite having produced many famous portraits, Silvestrini finds Manet’s figures in Le ballet espagnol ungainly: “the painting represents Spanish artists who are not yet playing and dancing. What are they doing? They look pretty awkward. Manet hardly knew Spain (Silvestrini, 2019, as cited in Chinen, 2019, 20-21).” In his étude, Silvestrini references flamenco music with triplet figures, flourishing runs, and syncopated rhythms (Chinen, 2019, 20-21).
Chinen’s paper and the comments from Silvestrini both support and contradict the theory of two approaches suggested by Zdenka Kapko-Foretić. While Silvestrini clearly aims to translate specific elements and moods in his composition, he also extends beyond these techniques, sometimes stepping into the world inside the painting, or creating a ‘literal visual representation’ of it (Chinen, 2019, 8). This is evidence of two more approaches composers and performers take to interpreting paintings: they immerse themselves in the scene, or it is apparent in the notation.
Another composer who was inspired by paintings is Alyssa Morris, whose 2019 Collision Etudes were written as a response to Silvestrini’s Six Études Pour Hautbois, drawing inspiration instead from female American artists. It is interesting, in understanding Silvestrini’s compositional process, to compare it to the performance notes included in Morris’ Collision Etudes.
Like Silvestrini’s études, Morris’ first etude Summertime was inspired by an Impressionist artwork painted by Mary Cassatt in 1894. Morris’ etude is a contrafact of George Gershwin’s jazz tune, Summertime, borrowing the harmonic progression in recognition of the shared title. Combining the jazz harmonies with Impressionist whole tone sonorities, Morris ‘collides’ musical idioms, referencing the diversity of American culture (2019). Morris prefers to use the historical context of the painting and the allusions present in its title to make compositional choices. She makes no comment about the visual content of the artwork being referenced or musically inspirational.
Morris used a scientific approach to the second etude, City Landscape, considering Joan Mitchell’s painting as a pitch map on which to apply Alexander Scriabin’s synesthetic system, and resulting in a series of pitches used in the piece. Rainbow follows a similar compositional process. Jimson Weed, however, borrows musical traditions from France and Hungary, although the relation to the painting in this case is unclear. Autumn Leaves, etude five, like Summertime, borrows Joseph Kosma’s original harmonic structure and licks from solos from jazz artists who recorded Kosma’s tune, including Chet Baker and Miles Davis. The final etude, My World is Not Flat, references Margarete Bagshaw’s layered painting technique with multiphonic sounds, and the painter’s Native American heritage with a repeating Pueblo Dance Song (Morris, 2019). Evidently, Morris’ sources of inspiration lead to a very different compositional process to Silvestrini’s. While Silvestrini steps inside the world depicted in his chosen paintings, and the mood and atmosphere captured in them, Morris prefers to consider the context and technical parameters, or specifications, to inform her compositional process instead.
In summary, the article by Zdenka Kapko-Foretić, dissertation by Paul Chinen, and performance notes by Alyssa Morris reveal five distinct approaches to how visual art can be translated into musical material:
- The music captures the mood of the painting
- Individual elements of the painting are translated into musical motifs or gestures
- The music immerses itself in the world captured by the painting
- Visual elements of the score notation relate to the painting
- Musical choices are determined by the specifications, such as title or background, of the painting
In Composing from Images, Kapko-Foretić outlines the predominance of two approaches composers take to respond to their source of inspiration: the composer aims to capture the mood of the painting, or they explicitly and directly transfer elements of the painting to music. I list these as numbers 1 and 2. Kapko-Foretić later, however, mentions how Respeghi interprets Botticelli’s La Primavera in his Trittico botticelliano by borrowing musical features of Vivaldi’s Spring (1998, 29-37). This technique neither refers to the mood or elements of the painting, but instead the title, and the existing music associated with it. Alyssa Morris uses the same technique to compose Collision Etudes, using the title and background of the paintings to compose harmonic and melodic material. For example, Summertime, inspired by the painting by Mary Cassatt, is a contrafact of George Gershwin’s jazz tune, Summertime (Morris, 2019). This is another approach, in which the musical choices are determined by specifications.
It is interesting to note that, although Silvestrini is largely guided by the elements depicted in the Impressionist paintings that inspired him, he often seems to step inside the scene of the painting, audiating features of the scene that are not actually visible in the painting. This is most clear in II. Potager et arbres en fleurs, Printemps, Pontoise, Camille Pissarro (1877), in which Silvestrini says the main motifs imitate bird song. However, there are no birds visible in Pissarro’s painting: suggesting a distinct approach of immersing oneself in the world captured in the artwork (Chinen, 2019, 9-10).
Another approach is one in which the artwork is translated into the shape of the score notation. V. Scène de plage - Ciel d'orage, Eugène Boudin (1864) is a scene of a beach in rough weather, and one can see the swells of the waves in the unending rising and falling arpeggios in the étude. Likewise, Chinen suggests that the short staccato passages in II. Potager et arbres en fleurs, Printemps, Pontoise, Camille Pissarro (1877) could be a ‘literal visual representation’ of the painter’s short brush strokes (2019, 8). This approach relates to notation, and as is identified by Philippe Junod in Counterpoints: Dialogues between music and visual arts, “musical notation itself gives music its first visual existence… the care taken in the execution, the visual, sculptural qualities and the use of colour bring back the aesthetic dimension (Junod, 2018)…”
It is important to note that these approaches can be interpreted as such from the perspective of the composer, the performer, and the audience, either dependently or independently. Although Silvestrini describes his compositional process quite explicitly in his interviews with Chinen, the performer may choose to apply this approach to their interpretation or else find another. For example, although Silvestrini describes how the opening motif of I. Hôtel des Roches noires à Trouville, Claude Monet (1870) evokes the flags Monet depicts whipping in the wind, for Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra’s principal oboist, Karel Schoofs, this motif is more evocative of the broad, messy brushstrokes that build the scene (Chinen, 2019, 3).
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Fig. 7 La Primavera
Sandro Botticelli (c. 1482)
