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Interpreting G. Silvestrini’s Six Études pour Hautbois through the Impressionist paintings that inspired them
Literature Review and Theorisation
Personal Interpretation and Experimentation Journal
Applying Interpretive Experimentation in Performance
In this experiment, I organised for the Oboe Class to perform pieces from their current repertoire at a lunchtime concert at the Centrale Bibliotheek, Den Haag. It was a beautiful, diverse program, consisting of music of the last century. There was a large audience of approximately 100 people. To conclude the concert, I performed Silvestrini’s sixth étude, Le ballet espagnol - Edouard Manet (1862). In contrast with previous performances of the piece, I gave the audience the opportunity to see the painting, but not the obligation, by including it in the programme instead of on a screen. I also verbally introduced the research and the concept before playing. After the concert, audience members were invited to complete a questionnaire about their experience of the music. The data revealed the following (see appendix 2):
- All who responded felt a connection between the music and the artwork.
- One viewer mentioned a desire to have seen the artwork before hearing the music.
- In recognition of the responses from the PLAY Lab, I asked if listeners felt distracted by the painting. One said they did, as they were imagining it "moving," but the rest did not.
- Most, but not all, felt that the experience would have been valuable without knowledge of the painting, although the painting did enrich the experience.
- Most reported that the painting helped them imagine a scene or setting for the music.
- After seeing the painting, listeners reported their imagination being preoccupied with the painting, and not ‘seeing’ other images while listening.
- One audience member found the music “much more colourful” than the painting.
In this experiment, I felt a more intimate connection with the audience than at the Student Present Festival, and a more traditional performance setting than the informal PLAY Lab. Also considering the location of a music library, I felt that this location and audience was more suited to how I would like this music to be performed. I was able to capture both the liveliness of the dancers and their awkwardness, having reflected on Silvestrini’s comments and solidified my own interpretation. In this performance, the painting was very present in my mind's eye, and after reading the audience’s feedback, I think it was more impactful in my own feeling of the performance than the audience’s.
In the future, I would like to do an experiment in which the audience is not told about the research concept before hearing the music, and rather interviewed afterwards. I think introducing the piece as part of a research project already predisposes the audience to listen in a certain way, and none of the experiments to this point have had a neutral audience. I also feel that the painting deserves a greater role than only in a programme booklet.
For this experimental performance, I had the opportunity to perform at an Open Stage Concert, where all students can present any music they have been working on. I performed Hôtel des Roches noises à Trouville again, with the painting projected on a screen beside me. This time, however, I gave only a simple introduction, not mentioning the research. Audience members were invited to complete the survey only after experiencing the performance (see appendix 2).
Similar to the prior surveys, responders were asked the following questions:
- When watching today’s performance, did you find a connection between the music and the artwork?
- Did the painting distract you from the music?
- Do you think the musical experience would have been as valuable if you had no knowledge of the source of inspiration?
- Do you think that understanding the inspiration changed your experience of the music? Please explain.
- Did you see any other images in your mind’s eye while listening to the music? If so, what were they?
Interestingly, this audience reported feeling a greater connection to the painting than previous audiences. All of the survey responders felt that the performance would not have been as valuable without the painting. I believe that this is because the painting was projected on stage beside me, and therefore an almost equal focus is placed on it.
Even though this audience reported feeling a greater connection to the painting than previous, this performance did not feel as successful to me as the performer as the library concert in April. At the library concert, the introduction I gave helped me to feel very connected to the audience, and perform more convincingly. I was also personally convinced of my interpretation. In future performances, I would like to have the opportunity to connect with the audience before performing, and also have further consideration for how the painting is presented within the stage design. Having performed études four times, I feel that the Students Present Festival was the most effective presentation of the painting, and the Library Concert was the most convincing interpretation of the music.
In one of the sessions, I had the opportunity to perform for the group and hear their feedback and ideas. As the first experiment of my research, and with no idea what to expect, I went in with only a very vague plan that consisted of:
- Introduce the piece with no background information
- Play it without the painting in view
- Ask the audience what they thought of the piece and the performance, and if they had any strong visual responses to it
- Start again, with the painting
- Afterwards, discuss Silvestrini’s ideas, mine, and ask the audience’s
- Ask: “would you have preferred to hear these ideas before I play?”
The audience responded far more enthusiastically and controversially than I had anticipated. After first hearing the étude, with no knowledge of the painting, members of the audience reported imagining birds, a walk through a forrest, a cartoon cat-and-mouse chase — many had very visual responses to the music.
When I presented the music with the painting, many were curious, but some were resistant. Some reported trying to find connections between the music and the art, taking an intellectual response, and while some enjoyed this, others said that they would prefer to imagine their own images. Others found the painting so contradictory to their experience of the music that they were upset by it. None reported feeling a very strong sense of concordance between the music and the painting.
This performance lead to my first realisation of the importance of how a piece is presented. The order, environment, dialogue, and likely many other factors can shape how an audience will perceive a performance, whether interdisciplinary or not. This was the first time I considered that knowledge of the composer’s source of inspiration may not necessarily enhance a performance.
I realise in hindsight that this experiment was more focussed on the audience’s opinion than my own interpretation of the music, and I was attempting to measure something immeasurable. In wanting to know if they would appreciate the project, I presented the music alone first, and inadvertently biased them against the artwork. My discussion with the audience also prioritised the approach of translating individual elements in the painting, which may have restricted other possible interpretations.
After four experiments with live performance, I decided to present Six Études pour Hautbois by Gilles Silvestrini as professional recordings within a podcast. This format allows the listener autonomy in how they engage with the music versus the artwork. After several experiments with live performance, I discovered that some audiences prefer to engage with the two elements separately, appreciating each as an individual, complete artistic work; others like to know of the painting and understand how it inspired the music but not necessarily experience the two together; and others enjoy experiencing both at once, and seek out the connections Silvestrini found, or else find their own. The podcast format allows listeners to choose how they engage with the painting and the music, as well as learn about Silvestrini’s process as the composer and my process as the performer, in conversational episodes preceding each étude. A listener also has the option to disregard the episodes and only listen to the recordings. Below is an example episode from Inspiration and Interpretation. Further episodes follow a similar format.
In order to experiment with how to present Silvestrini’s Six Études pour Hautbois and the paintings that inspired them, I performed different études in different environments. In all cases, the piece/s were presented in connection to their paintings, although when and how the paintings were presented to the audience varied. Some audiences had knowledge of my research goals and some did not. I would like to acknowledge that the audience members changed each time, and the means of surveying their responses also varied. These experiments were designed to measure how to most harmoniously present the music and the artwork together.
Cristiano Viviani and Joe Puglia’s ‘PLAY Lab’ was a workshop comprising of eight sessions in which student musicians and members of the community could examine the relationships between performers and audiences and discuss the role of music and its performance. I participated out of interest in music philosophy and love of group discussions, but also found a supportive and curious audience for my research.
After the first performance, I sought to present an étude in an entirely different context. The Students Present Festival was an invitation for students to independently conceive, organise and promote a performance which highlighted inter-departmental collaboration. The woodwind quintet that I am a member of chose to team up with another quintet to rehearse and perform Émile Bernard’s Divertissement op.36 (1888). To engage with the theme, we decided to invite students from the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (KABK) to create visual artworks inspired by our performance, live, along with the remaining audience members.
To introduce this concept, I suggested that the group perform an arrangement of Silvestrini’s fourth étude — Sentier dans les bois, Auguste Renoir (1874) — for wind decet, with the painting projected overhead. The concert began with our performance of Silvestrini’s Étude, in a dark hall, with vibrant blue and green lights illuminating us. Then, we explained the origin of the piece, and invited the audience to use materials that the KABK donated to create artwork inspired by the Divertissement, in a sort of reverse process to Silvestrini.
I hoped that this presentation of a Silvestrini Étude gave the audience an opportunity to explore their own senses of cross modal correspondences. I made a survey asking participants about their thoughts about the experience, and how the music inspired their artwork. Interestingly, most of the artworks produced featured bright colours and abstract lines and shapes.
“…I listen to the music in a way of what emotions I was feeling and then trying to copy that in the paint, or listening short motives or interactions with the instruments and then transform that ideas in lines or drawings that remind me of that music interpretation.” - an anonymous audience member (see appendix 2).
By arranging Sentier dans les bois for decet, I gained a deeper understanding of Silvestrini's compositional processes, examining it from another perspective. I maintained the exact rhythmic and pitch patterns Silvestrini used, only orchestrating it to display the individual colours of the five different wind instruments. In this way we demonstrated a ‘palette of colours’ to the audience. As Renoir’s Sentier dans les bois is the most abstract and non-figurative of the six Silvestrini chose as inspiration, it seemed interesting to me to explore the gestures and colours of the étude, rather than highlighting any melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic element.
The effect of this new mode of presentation was a greater departure from Silvestrini’s original intention. I thought that the staging was very impressive and effective, with the lighting and large projector screen really bringing Renoir’s painting to the fore. My arrangement for decet was effective in demonstrating the colours of the ensemble, but Silvestrini’s Étude demonstrates the colours of the oboe, and allows the instrument to shine. I think the performance would have been more powerful if I had been alone on stage.
Performing I. Hôtel des Roches noires à Trouville, Claude Monet (1870) at the PLAY Lab on March 4, 2024
The Wavzees-Eunoia Decet performing my arrangement of IV. Sentier dans les bois, August Renoir (1874) at the Students Present Festival on March 27, 2024
The process of this research has revealed that a performer’s interpretation of a piece of music can be found as much in how they play the notes as how they present the music to an audience. This is especially relevant in music which involves cross-modal correspondence or has an interdisciplinary aspect. While the journaling has facilitated interpretive experimentation, performance allows experimentation with presentation. Although audience feedback was gathered through survey questionnaires, my own reflections were essential, leading to changes in how the music and artwork are presented together to complement one another.
These experiments lead to a sub-question in the research: How can Six Études pour Hautbois and their corresponding Impressionist paintings be presented together most effectively?
It was important to find a balance between the music and the artwork, so that one element did not prevail over or distract from the other, instead creating a cross-modal synergy. This is challenging as while one of the two elements is temporal, and unfolds over time, the other is fixed and unchanging. It is possible that the audience’s perception of the fixed medium can change, as the other temporal element develops. Further, the music is new, and performed uniquely according to my interpretation, while the painting has existed in an unchanged state for 150 years.
How can these two vastly different media complement one another?
How can the audience be assisted in finding connections between the music and the painting?
Performing I. Hôtel des Roches noires à Trouville, Claude Monet (1870) at the Open Stage Concert on October 14, 2024
Episode 1 - Introducing Gilles Silvestrini and Six Études pour Hautbois
Hello, and thank you for listening to the first episode of Inspiration and Interpretation. This podcast series will dive into the brain of Gilles Silvestrini and his Six Études pour Hautbois - a collection of contemporary solos celebrated by the oboe community.
Silvestrini grew up in the idyllic French commune, Givet, in the 60s, and has since produced a plethora of music featuring the oboe and showing off the instrument’s virtuosic capacities.
The études are no different, they are a challenge for advanced oboists and are often used as competition or audition pieces. What is often overlooked however, is that each of the pieces was inspired by an impressionist painting, and Silvestrini’s transference of the paintings into musical material is fascinating.
So when I study and perform these pieces I think the painting has as much information to offer as the score, in terms of how the piece is meant to be played.
In this episode I’m going to talk about Claude Monet’s Hôtel des Roches noires à Trouville, and the music that Silvestrini heard in it.
So I’m sure you’ve heard the name Claude Monet, you’re probably familiar with his famous series, Water Lilies, among many gorgeous landscape works painted in his famous garden in Giverny. You might not know his Hôtel des Roches noires à Trouville though, unless you happen to have walked past it in the Musee d’Orsay. You’ll see it on your screen if you’re streaming, or the first image in the CD booklet. You’ll see how Monet’s characteristic broad brush strokes have captured the façade of an old sandstone hotel, a boardwalk, flags, and rolling waves in the background: a perfect summer day. To me, this painting is about relaxation and contentment. It brings to me memories of summer holidays.
I can almost feel the strength of the wind from the brush strokes. It’s a hot, dry wind, that kicks up the sand so it stings your ankles as you walk along the beach. The waves are ferocious, a reminder of the power of the ocean. On the promenade, people wander serenely. There is no rushing or anticipation, only the stillness and calm of knowing that your only task for the day is to soak up the sunshine.
Maybe you can hear the whipping of the flags in Silvestrini’s opening motif.
You can imagine the babble of conversation in the next, dialogic motif.
Or maybe you, like Silvestrini, hear the waves in this motif, the wholetone scales reminiscent of Debussy’s famous La Mer…
When you listen to the next track, my recording of Hôtel des Roches noires à Trouville, consider if you, too, hear this music in Monet’s painting.
Or perhaps you would prefer to close your eyes and conjure up your own images… that’s up to you.
Performing I. Hôtel des Roches noires à Trouville, Claude Monet (1870) at the Open Stage Concert on October 14, 2024
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