CULTURE

See Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Visualized in Colorfully Animated Scores


Music is often described as the most abstract of all the arts, and arguably the least visu­al as well. But these qual­i­ties, which seem so basic to the nature of the form, have been chal­lenged for at least three cen­turies, not least by com­posers them­selves. Take Anto­nio Vival­di, whose Le quat­tro sta­gioni, or The Four Sea­sons, of 1718–1720 evoke not just broad impres­sions of the epony­mous parts of the year, but a vari­ety of nat­ur­al and human ele­ments char­ac­ter­is­tic to them. In the course of less than an hour, its lis­ten­ers — whether of the ear­ly eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry or the ear­ly twen­ty-first — “see” spring, sum­mer, autumn, and win­ter unfold vivid­ly before their mind’s eye.

Now, com­pos­er Stephen Mali­nows­ki has visu­al­ized The Four Sea­sons in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent way. As pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, he uses his Music Ani­ma­tion Machine to cre­ate what we might call graph­i­cal scores, which abstract­ly rep­re­sent the instru­men­tal parts that make up wide­ly loved clas­si­cal com­po­si­tions in time with the music itself.

On this page, you can watch four videos, with each one visu­al­iz­ing one of the piece’s con­cer­ti. Fans of the Music Ani­ma­tion Machine will notice that its for­mer­ly sim­ple visu­als have tak­en a big step for­ward, though what can look at first like a psy­che­del­ic light show also has a clear and leg­i­ble order.

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For “Spring” and “Autumn,” Mali­nows­ki ani­mates per­for­mances by vio­lin­ist Shunske Sato and musi­cians of the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety; for “Sum­mer” and “Win­ter,” per­for­mances by Cyn­thia Miller Freivo­gel and ear­ly-music ensem­ble Voic­es of Music (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here for their ren­di­tions of Bach’s Bran­den­burg Con­cer­tos and “Air on the G String,” Pachel­bel’s Canon, and indeed The Four Sea­sons). Gen­er­al­ly under­stand­able at a glance — and in many ways, more illu­mi­nat­ing than actu­al­ly see­ing the musi­cians play their instru­ments — these scores also use a sys­tem called “har­mon­ic col­or­ing,” which Malinkows­ki explains here. This may add up to a com­plete audio­vi­su­al expe­ri­ence, but if you’d also like a lit­er­ary ele­ment, why not pull up The Four Sea­sonsaccom­pa­ny­ing son­nets while you’re at it?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why We Love Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons: An Ani­mat­ed Music Les­son

Watch All of Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons Per­formed on Orig­i­nal Baroque Instru­ments

Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons Brought to Life in Sand Ani­ma­tions by the Hun­gar­i­an Artist Fer­enc Cakó

Yes’ Rick Wake­man Explores Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons, and Why It Was the First Con­cept Album

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Come to Life in Art­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Scores: Stravin­sky, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.





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