Tag: Music and Art

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Composers as Works of Art

Sibelius’s Second Symphony and Gallen-Kallela’s Lake View

Akseli Gallen-Kallela, "Lake View." Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Sibelius takes long walks in the forest mist. Gallen-Kallela paints a realistic yet mythic Finnish landscape. Miniature trees in the foreground suggest Finland’s forests to come. Brushstrokes like breath or delicate oars cause the lake’s many ripples. In Sibelius’s strings a brooding three note pattern of rising notes, each one louder. They are someone’s footsteps, […]

Categories
Composers as Works of Art

Beethoven’s Funeral March, Third Symphony, and Goya’s Third of May

Francisco Goya, "Third of May, 1808"

Beethoven’s funeral march plays as we stare into the eyes of Goya’s Third of May. A slow march in a minor key. A dotted rhythm to push as along as we grieve. The oboe and its sighs seem a solitary individual in the gathered crowd. Contrasts of light and dark, the church a shadow in […]