Music & Arts

“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.

424 Posts
  • The Classical Age in Music and the Arts The Classical Age in Music and the Arts
    In the middle of the 18th century the last shadows of the Baroque faded into the more intimate, colorful and pastoral Rococo period. All of the art forms, particularly those in painting and music, emphasize the “artificial” disguised as the
  • The Age of the Baroque in Music and the Arts The Age of the Baroque in Music and the Arts
    The Baroque period began toward the end of the 16th century, reached into the middle of the 18th century, and is generally seen as the art of the Counter-Reformation. With the Reformation, the Catholic Church had lost a very large
  • The Renaissance in Music and the Arts The Renaissance in Music and the Arts
    The idea of the Renaissance, in which language, literature, the arts and music saw a remarkable change and renewal, started gradually taking shape in the 14th century, celebrated then and later by writers, artists and musicians such as Petrarch, Boccaccio,
  • Music and the Arts in the Middle Ages Music and the Arts in the Middle Ages
    Over the course of centuries, the relationship between music, the arts and literature has always focused on their similarities and differences. The difference between painting, which one sees and music, which one hears, has always been considered obvious. However, as
  • Fellini and Rota: filming music Fellini and Rota: filming music
    Italian composer Nino Rota wrote several operas, ballets and concerti, but he is best known for his cinema soundtrack work. Indeed, from the 1940s until his death, in 1979, there seem to be few great Italian films he did not
  • Picasso and Music Picasso and Music
    “There is Music in Picasso and Picasso is in Music” The current exhibition of ‘Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914’ at Museum of Modern Art in New York lets us consider the close relationship between art and music. As an artist, Picasso was
  • Ravel’s Repetition Ravel’s Repetition
    If God hadn’t desired repetition, the world would never have been created. Soren Kierkegaard, Repetition Repetition is essential to music. Indeed, without some form of repetition, there is no rhythm. And few composers have taken this consideration of repetition as
  • Three times Mozart Three times Mozart
    Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri is a fantastic exploration of the nature of artistic creation. This short blank verse drama, written in 1830, has been re-told many times (notably by Rimsky-Korsakov in his 1898 opera of the same name and by