Čiurlionis’ route towards musical painting

17 December 2015, 18.00 Čiurlionis’ route towards musical painting – lecture by Paweł Siechowicz
Lecture illustrated with examples of music and patterns illustrating the way Čiurlionis transferred his music scores onto cardboard.

Before Čiurlionis started painting on cardboard and canvas, he composed music inspired with his memories of the Lithuanian landscape. The composer became a painter. His letters to Eugeniusz Morawski contain hints that allow us to suspect that his first attempts at painting were records of his impressions of music. Several years later he made his first paintings with titles of music pieces. A proof of Čiurlionis’ route towards musical painting is found in his piano miniatures preserved as sketches. They contain structural solutions transferred later onto cardboard in series of sonatas, preludes and fugues, which suggests that the musical structure of these paintings was designed during improvisation on the piano.