{"id":3464,"date":"2012-05-04T08:24:54","date_gmt":"2012-05-04T13:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=3464"},"modified":"2012-05-04T08:24:54","modified_gmt":"2012-05-04T13:24:54","slug":"the-mysteries-of-expressing-colour-and-texture-in-sound-come-into-focus-with-music-of-debussy-and-messiaen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2012\/05\/04\/the-mysteries-of-expressing-colour-and-texture-in-sound-come-into-focus-with-music-of-debussy-and-messiaen\/","title":{"rendered":"The mysteries of expressing colour and texture in sound come into focus with music of Debussy and Messiaen"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
“The Colors of Music,” submitted by Michigan public school student Caden Roberts in a Jackson Symphony art contest.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To many, it must be a mystery how classical music people talk about colour and light and texture in describing the intermingling of intangible sound waves. The secret to understanding this translation is not to think literally, but to think in metaphors and evocations, as when reading poetry.<\/p>\n

Some notes of music meet up and hold hands, embrace, or sweetly caress each other. We describe them as light, sweet, consonant, golden.<\/p>\n

Others are old sparring partners whose every meeting is a clash of egos or ideas or, worse yet, fisticuffs. Here is darkness, dissonance, crimsons, indigos and purples.<\/p>\n

It’s all about evocation and suggestion, often going places our language-based thinking process simply can’t penetrate. As French writer Andr\u00e9 Esparcieux so aptly stated, there are emotions so untranslatable that we need music to suggest them (Il y a des sentiments si intraduisibles qu’il faut la musique pour les sugg\u00e9rer).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>There’s a new album out from Naxos that provides high-definition, 20th century examples of this, as rendered by two pianos and four hands, featuring Claude Debussy’s En blanc et noir<\/em> (In White and Black) and Olivier Messiaen’s monumental Visions de l’Amen<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The strong performances by Dutch contemporary music master Ralph van Raat and Norwegian pianist Hakon Austbo make this album a particularly fine way to explore the full spectrum of light, colour and rhythm in works that suggest the inexpressible. (For more on this album, including audio samples, click here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Debussy provides us with a relatively straighforward introduction at the start of the CD: En blanc et noir<\/em>, a three-movement spree he wrote in 1915 as the guns of the Great War boomed in the distance.<\/p>\n

The first movement, marked “Avec emportement,” (Carried away) is vintage Debussy playfulness. You can practically hear birds and fountains in the higher piano notes as the pianists’ fingers skip along.<\/p>\n

Here is a magical interpretation featuring Benjamin Britten and Sviatoslav Richter:<\/p>\n