“Art is not an end in itself, but a means of addressing humanity.”
Modest Mussorgsky
As philosopher Richard Wollheim says, art is “one of the most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture.” In its simplest manifestation, art is a form of communication that serves as a vehicle for the expression of emotions and ideas. As ideas and beliefs are culturally specific and constantly changing over time, there really is no generally agreed definition of what constitutes art. That being said, the classical branches of the visual arts are identified as painting, sculpture and architecture. Literature and poetry are considered part of the humanities or as one of the arts, while music, alongside theatre, film and dance belong to the performing arts. In this section you will discover not only specific explorations of individual art forms, but also a more detailed probing of the relationship between the visual arts and music, including painting and music, sculpture and music and architecture and music. Originally, poetry and music were treated as a unity, but gradually they have become more independent. Nevertheless, the two art forms have never forgotten their shared genetic makeup, and been intertwined for millennia. Art and music have engaged in a dynamic relationship that reveals a diverse range of human activity intended to be appreciated for their beauty.
Music played an important role in the life of Heinrich Heine. He did more than just write brilliant reviews of music and operas. For Heine, music was a great vital force that occupied an important place in the content sphere
We were visiting the Richmond Museum of Fine Arts the other week and noticed two wonderful pieces of particular musical interest. In the Museum’s extensive holdings of silver items, we found two pieces commemorating operas by Richard Wagner. A sterling
The very idea of making music inspired by the art form known as Abstract Expressionism seems an anathema. How do you pin down the undefinable? The music style that might match the art form of expressionism has come and gone
Composers know only too well the difficulty of maintaining the highest quality of craftsmanship and expression across genres. Beethoven wrote some real clunkers, as did Schumann and Rachmaninoff. Because Brahms very carefully controlled his output—we know that he mercilessly burned
William Jones first translated Hafez into English in 1771. It quickly fired the imagination of writers and poets such as Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who referred to him as “a poet’s poet.” Friedrich Engels, who together with Karl Marx
It has been said that every Iranian household contains two books, the Koran and Hafez. And a little saying suggests, “While one is read, the other is not.” More than 600 years after his death, the 14th-century poet Hafez of
In recent years, migration has meant the vast movement of peoples across West Asia and Europe and the Americas, seeking shelter from military action or economic inaction. At the turn of the 20th century, in America there was also a
In 1943, William Grant Still wrote his Suite for Violin and Piano, which took as its inspiration three sculptures: Richmond Barthé’s African Dancer, Sargent Johnson’s Mother and Child, and Augusta Savage’s Gamin. Each of these works was created in the
