М. К. Чюрленис и А. Н. Скрябин - музыкальная живопись и цветная музыка
ENThis review is dealing with unusual art, which excites imagination, namely, with visual music. Initially it was developed by two Titans of music and painting - M. K. Čiurlionis and N. A. Skriabin, both being contemporaries and compatriots. There is no wonder that Skriabin admired the paintings of Čiurlionis. The latter was the author of musical water-colours and Skriabin had been always dreaming of visual music. They both were musicians, poets and mystics. However, Čiurlionis is mainly known as an artist. In fine arts he is one of the greatest painters and, probably, the only one who managed to reveal the unseen, that is the structure and outlook of the subtle material universe. However, if he hadn't been a musician, but only a painter, his water-colours might have been quite different. Still, it's not the only achievement, that he had transformed paintings into “musical” works (his famous “sonatas” and “fugues” are paintings which, in fact, relay on the principles of musical form). In earlier days the romantics used to know that music is a perfect method or way to learn about other worlds, the “musical doors” to which open without major efforts. Skriabin once noticed: “a lot of mystical experience is impossible to express verbally, while sounds convey the meaning perfectly. Thus, the way of a musician is easier.” It's beyond doubt, that the fantastic, multistage world of M. K. Čiurlionis paintings in reality is much closer to the musical symbols: only in music time and space from the very beginning are multidimensional, which permits the simultaneous existence of distant worlds. In that way, apart from the rest, both the artists were connected by the same task of the visualization of music. It's evident today that the main problems of transforming music into visual forms come to the philosophical categories of time and space. It is general knowledge that music develops in TIME.A painting exists as an artefact independent of time, and that allows to talk only about the perception of the particular person at the particular moment of time. In that sense M. K. Čiurlionis was a genius because he was practically the only one to reveal that quality of musical perception (or better, musical creation), which was characteristic only of great composers. It was W. A. Mozart who said, that he could instantly visualize his symphony as a whole, as a perfect chamber. Exactly, like Skriabin saw his Fifth sonata. That might have changed the sphere of images of conscience stream, mystical experience or “hallucination dreams". It is evident, that the paintings of sonatas and fugues, as nothing else clearly revealed that state of spirit, when one can visualize music as a momentum image of the whole. Speaking about the musical SPACE (in fact, images), the attempts to depict it in painting had taken place more than once, but M. K. Čiurlionis was the first and most successful doing that. Maybe, along with the in-born talent, the Lithuanian nature contributed to it - its pine woods, where the background comes to light through the foreground. He had reflected that already in his symphonic poem “In the Forest” and later in his immortal water-colours. The analogical structure is found in Skriabinas music, when the “dense kernel of chord”, is surrounded by the figures of “astral mist”, in which a low register chord is “echoed” by a high register one. The CONTENT of those images might be described as follows: it's cosmic Eternity visible through reality, or reality seen through cosmos. All that is achieved by the most complex combinations and additions. Skriabin idea about the music of light, in fact, meant the delivery of images created by music. The fusion of music and mystical shapes of light had to transform the listener into the different reality, which today we would call virtual.We may say, that creating music Skriabin was writing the scenario of the virtual film. In our opinion, the content of music, as a specific phenomenon is the closest to virtual reality. The world of music is characterized by such particular features that can be expressed only by the computer created images, which we tried to picture. Unfortunately, I don't know if any attempts had ever been made to “revive” M. K. Čiurlionis paintings with the help of computer graphics. Probably, that shouldn't be done, since his drawings are fully completed and can exist in this form for unlimited time. However, since M. K. Čiurlionis paintings are musical and Skriabin music is “visual” their merging might bring unexpected or even great cultural results.
