Hearing Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky, from childhood, was fascinated by colors and their symbolism. He explained them as the keyboard, relating it to the piano and its art. He valued "inner necessity", or a devotion to inner beauty and spirit. He started with bright and colorful, more realistic paintings, but became more focused on the viewer perspective after inspiration from Monet's "Haystacks". Possibly from that point, his works became increasingly more abstract. It is thought that he painted one of the first abstract works. Especially in the abstract works, Kandinsky focused on the importance of shapes and colors. He viewed colors to have different tonalities and often found a strong link between music and color. As for shapes, he seemed to favor circles, and said that circles are the "synthesis of the greatest oppositions".

(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Kandinsky)

(source: http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artwork/1992)

The work I chose is "Several Circles", made by Kandinsky in 1926. This work is composed with exact circles of varying sizes and light colors on a black background. There are only a few instances of dark colors or black circles besides the background. Each circle has a mostly uniform color, adding to the preciseness of the work. The black background seems to be receding around the colorful circles. 

This work seems to have a lot of depth, both visually and in its interpretation. My initial reaction was that I was consumed by the work. It provides an all-encompassing feel and an eclectic composition, with the sporadic positioning of the circles. It reminded me of the universe in a literal sense, but that led to my perspective that there was a great deal of information to respond to. Some circles overlapped severely, creating a very connected and intense area, while others were spread which gave a more relaxed feel. Overall, I think the colors that are grouped together work well together for the most part, but there are some colors that clash especially when overlapped. It creates a contrast between the colors, while still keeping a cohesive togetherness, as they are close or overlapping.

  It is suggested that this work in particular was inspired by music. I was not able to find the specific song or musician that this work was inspired by, so I thought I would use my hour to recreate a kind of music that could be similar to what inspired this work. I would make music inspired by the work and using Kandinsky's relation of color and music.   

This was the first time that I had ever composed music. Not including the time it took me to familiarize myself with MuseScore, the actual composition took an hour. MuseScore is a downloaded program that allows the user to create sheet music for a variety of instruments and play the sheet music using pre-saved sounds for each note of each instrument. I added 5 instruments, but only used 3, and one more at the very end. It was nice to be able to create sheet music that would be difficult for an average musician, but calculated and easy for a computer program. 

In relation to the work, I used Kandinsky's color theory to find the right instruments and pitches. The violin, a bright and high-pitched instrument, was used to represent the smaller circles especially the yellow/orange circles. Kandinsky found yellow to be bright and high sounding. The oboe represented a lot of the reds and browns that were in the main cluster of circles around the large blue circle. Red was more of a middle-level color to Kandinsky. Since they were so present, I ended up creating a recurring portion of oboe in the work to make it a tonal main theme. The large blue circle is one of the most prominent portions in the piece, and therefore should be as well in the song. The blue circle is the double bass, providing a structure for the piece, and a sense of stability.

(source: http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/academic/courses/12w259/Kandinsky_%20Color%20Theory.pdf )

I learned a great deal about the connection between visual and auditory works. I have a greater understanding of color after being able to relate it to music. I was able to see in Kandinsky's perspective on the motion or stability of certain shapes, and how colors can enhance that perspective. I also give greater appreciation for the inner perspective of art, as that was Kandinsky's focus, which influenced me to see what the work meant to me. 

I would make the song longer, with the oboe theme running throughout, but being modified as the song progresses instead of being the same as the violin changes. I would emphasize the eclectic quality of the work with more clashes of notes, rather than mostly notes that sound relatively pleasing together. I think that would be a more appropriate representation. That being said, I still think that the song I created reflected my interpretation of the work, which was one of Kandinsky's main focuses.