Mozartiana and Music
Esther Williams, Art and Music
Williams’ Mozartiana is a still life of flowers in a vase, with one bloom lying on the keys of a piano, which, with a book, or score, of music by Mozart, is represented behind the vase. The overt musical aspect is suggested by portraying a small portion of the piano keyboard and a mostly obscured score that has just enough of the Mozart name visible to inform of the artist’s intent. Several details are altered from reality, such as the significant widening of the key cheek, which is the board next to the upper register of the piano keys, to accommodate the vase of flowers (a placement that strikes terror in the heart of a pianist!), or the location of the music book far to one side of the piano instead of in the center. As configured, this painting of a still life is pointing to another artistic medium, that of music, and to Williams’ favorite composer, Mozart.
Just as the painter uses brushes and other tools to apply paint to canvas in order to create the image that began as an idea in her imagination, working out the details in the process, so does a musician use a pen or pencil, or today perhaps a computer music notation program, to write out a score that suggests the musical composition that began in his imagination.
Methods in Music
A composer, similar to a painter, uses specific component elements, in this case pitch, rhythm, timbre, melody, and harmony, to communicate an artistic idea. The composer may also have a “story” to tell, a text to communicate, or, again, an emotion to suggest and to elicit in the hearer. While text in the form of words can be included in the body of a painting, as in the partly obscured “Mozart” name in Williams’ painting, it is relatively rare and usually quite limited. A musical composition, on the other hand, may include a lengthy text, with the music serving as a vehicle to carry and interpret that text, and possibly also make it more memorable. When a particular melody is regularly associated with a particular text, as with hymns or popular songs, another composition incorporating that melody has the power to call to mind the associated text. Of course, many musical compositions have no associated text, no “story” to tell, but are directly communicated from the soul of the composer to the soul of the listener. Such is the situation of a piano sonata by Mozart.