Interpretace Ferenz Liszt – Funerailles (triptych), akryl na plátně, 200x150cm, 2018 (3)

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  Interpretation Of Organ Music | 2019 - 2022

Path to topic  Although I am interested in other topics such as the Middle Ages, knights and their armor, in this thesis I deal with another of my favorite topic, which is very important and interesting for me and that is the organ. I am interested not only in the organ as a musical instrument itself, but in everything that belongs to them. From history, production, maintenance to the game.  In my childhood, although I later decided on an artistic journey, (I was also led to music in my childhood). Already in pre-school years I started attending the local elementary art school for piano lessons, where I also attended art school for several years. Since my mother is an organist and I, as a little boy, of course had to be there when she played, the organ became more and more intriguing and fascinating. I started to try to play them, go to organ concerts and finally I left the piano and decided to go to the organ. This was very beneficial for me outside the game, especially in terms of maintaining and repairing the organ. A teacher who is both an organist and an organist who taught me always took me with him to repair our organ. In the beginning I just watched, then helped and finally, when it is not a major disorder, which I would not myself, I care for them. This experience gave me a glimpse into the bowels of the organ, which I was absolutely fascinated with. Especially during the recent reconstruction of the organ, which I also took part in, which took place as part of the reconstruction of the entire interior of the church, including the complete restoration of the main altar and partial reveal of the ceiling paintings. I was shocked to look at the totally complex, purely mechanical system of the various wooden drawbars, switches, springs, rods and other mechanisms. And here I mention quite small and "simple" organ. The idea that I would have the opportunity to see the exposed mechanism of the largest church organ in the world in Passau, Germany, and most of all to play it, I would probably have no words.   I devoted myself to organ after I joined the art school in Uherské Hradiště, which had already led me in a very artistic way. In addition to the interest in the Middle Ages and armor, various fragments of this instrument, mostly whistles or keyboards, began to be projected into my work, which was the subject of the subject I was working on. But the whistles were dominant because they are actually the most visible and their size, height and number determine the overall size of the organ itself and are such a foundation of the organ. Although I was just dealing with another topic, I had the need to plant these fragments for some inexplicable reason. Maybe I could say that the organ pipes have become such an inherent feature of my paintings that I planted there quite automatically and spontaneously. I never thought about it, they just were there, and it didn't seem strange at all. After some time I thought about it and maybe compensated by my great desire to play some more grand organ than in our village. This changed here during my studies at the university in Brno at FaVU. Even though naive ideas came about to study the organ at JAMU before I started, I did not feel good enough, so I continued my artistic focus, painting. Still, I didn't give up on the organ. Right at the beginning of the first year of the studio assignment Still Life in the style of neoprimitivism, I conceived this theme by myself and created a series of painted imitations of organ pipes on various pieces of wood. In the years that followed, I devoted myself again mainly to the Middle Ages and armor, which kept me at school for the next few years and considered this subject still unused, but the motifs of the organ and the pipe were still there. In addition to the popular visit of various castles and their armories, I also like to visit churches, especially Gothic cathedrals, where the first thing that interests me most is the view of the organ. Of course, to admire the organ I do not have to go only to Gothic churches, especially in Baroque organs are the most magnificent.  In this way I drew a visual inspiration that was sufficient for me to look at the majestic instrument and which was reflected in most large-format paintings. Of course, I must not miss the opportunity to visit several organ concerts, which allowed me to listen to music and to perceive its spreading and filling the whole space and which I was completely absorbed.  I searched for the closest, largest organ in the Czech Republic, for example. St. Moritz in Olomouc or st. Jakub in Prague. The largest organ in Slovakia is in the Basilica in Šaštín. I must not forget to visit the cities, which boasts the largest church organ in the world in the Cathedral. St. Stephen's Cathedral in Passau and Regensburg, which has the largest and heaviest hanging organ in the Cathedral of Sts. Petra. It weighs 37 tons and the organist plays at a height of 15 meters.  Over time, I got the opportunity to play different organs outside the Czech Republic. For example, the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris or the Nitra Castle in Slovakia. That's it, I can say, he started to fulfill his dream and I hope that there will be more and more opportunities to play the organ.  Organ in history  In this part I will try to describe at least partially some of the construction and history of the organ. The organ is known as the royal instrument, it is the largest and mechanically most complex musical instrument. The organ is one of the polyphonic aerophones. Tones are created in wooden or metal whistles either by vibration of air columns or by vibration of metal tongues (depending on the type of whistles). Compressed air is usually blown into the pipes by the bellows. The organ can have up to seven manuals (keyboards), two pedal boards (footboards), tens of registers and up to tens of thousands of pipes from 11 mm to 20 m.  From the very original history of the organ, when looking for example in prehistoric times, we find almost nothing. There are allegations that the predecessor of the organ is Syrinx or Pan's whistle, or a Jewish magrefa that could have up to 100 whistles and was powered by bellows, but even this instrument has little information to make a serious statement.  The organ began to spread mainly in the Roman Empire, and there are also archaeological finds of remnants in Pompeii. With the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, the organ disappeared and had to be rediscovered for Europe. They remained preserved in Byzantium and from there spread again to Europe. One of the very first mentions of the organ in Europe was the Byzantine message, which in 757 gave the Franconian King Pipin the Short Gifts, among them the organ. So the organ was really a "royal gift" = a royal musical instrument. Between the 7th and 9th centuries, the organ was variously banned and allowed as an accompanying instrument, and until the Council of Milan in 1287 established the organ as the only accepted musical instrument in the church, which was again banned in 1290. Clear instructions on the use of the organ come after the Council of Trent 1545 - 1563.  There are no direct references to the organ in the Czech lands, but it is assumed that in the 11th century the organ was already in the Episcopal Church of St. Vitus. At the time of the Hussite wars, the greatest disaster for the organ, the organ was deliberately destroyed because it was considered a devil's instrument.   During the Renaissance, but mainly Baroque was the biggest boom of the organ, many new registers, colors of tones, positions, and the organ were getting the form as we know them today. Huge, complex machines were created.  The aim, intention of the work, use of means of expression, etc.  It is the complexity that I would like to express in my paintings, I do not mean the complexity of the organ in terms of technical, construction, even though it fascinates and interests me, but mainly the complexity of playing. Playing an organ may seem similar, if not the same, to a piano or a harmonium, but it is not quite the case. The piano is a dynamic instrument where you can play with only one hand and no indexes. There are a few basic registers and a few pedals for the harmony, but it's not to the same extent as an organ. Just the need for the right combination of different registers with different tones and instruments, "blinds", alternating manuals with foot play on the pedals, etc., is for me total fascination.  In rethinking this topic, I came back at the end of the fifth year, already after the final exams, when I started to think about my diploma work in advance and at that time the first series of three paintings (triptych) was interpreted. 1 in D minor Op. 42. They are a “prequel” of the whole diploma thesis, although formally they still bear signs of how I worked on the previous paintings. In this way, despite some other topics that I wanted to realize, but I dropped them, such as a large installation of old, unusable, broken, organ pipes, or an installation of painted pipes on woods, I got to a topic that I worked on forms that I no longer see the organ as such, but I try to portray the music, organ playing. Show what I hear. I chose some favorite songs, different authors, that I either learned, want to learn or just admire them. I got down to the abstract plane, where I don't show anything specific, even though they are specific songs.  In this work, I also want to take advantage of topics that came to the surface often as secondary, or I did not give them such emphasis, or were the main topic for only one semester, but actually I still work with them subconsciously, but still worked, for example Layering, Recycling, Substrate Response, etc. You could say that such organ compositions are also layering, such as Bach's or any other fugue that they are gradually added to, layering new and new tones, often ending up to the full extent that the organ is able to contain.  Especially on the topic of layering, I was inspired by the book by architect Ivan Koleček - Layers / Stratigraphy and his thesis from the lecture on professorship appointment - Layering, which deal with layering in architecture.  An example of a fascinating layering for me is New York, an example of its nature - a rectangular network - to regulate its presence, reading time and its uniqueness. “Manhattan is definitely a confined space and many of its blocks are forever determined. Any possibility of increasing their number is conventionally prohibited. This means that its urban design cannot remain formally the same. Any architectural solution can be given in a limited number of blocks of its rectangular network. It follows that any form of human intervention can only happen within the network, by destroying the former. The city thus becomes a mosaic of stories of different ages competing with each other within its rectangular network. (Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas, 1978) Understanding and responding to the world are two forms of thinking to identify other layers of unstoppable development.  The layer I worked with before, and indeed still appears in my work, has actually become an integral part of my paintings. I want to express in my paintings the complexity of organ compositions as they affect me. Not only by layering, but also by using various techniques, not just acrylic. I also used this in previous work, and examined how they work with each other. He reacted to various materials.  In my reactions to treasure, recycling and layering, I take advantage of finding something new every time I look at a picture. I enjoy researching, searching in it. I enjoy the thoughtless construction, I draw, I paint the picture completely spontaneously, automatically, without any preparation, just as soon as I can think of it, I'll do it there. Everything is connected in some way or another, transforms into something else. There is always something that will absorb me for an hour after the final examination. Then I leave, and when I look at the picture again after some time, I always discover something new there. Even though I have seen it several times, I did not realize it because I was just concentrating on something else in the painting. I feel that every time you look at him, the picture will surprise me with something new. Even though I am an author, I am curious and I look forward to completing it and what I will find in the new painting, what will surprise me, because I do not know what it will be. I create it without any order. Looking at the finished picture is like a "endless story" to me.  Organ music can be considered complicated because one person produces all that we hear. Who has to play and do everything else associated with it, except perhaps stepping on the bellows.  This series of paintings will therefore not express visually, at first sight, anything concrete. I don't mean that organ music is abstract, especially if I talk about Baroque or Classicism. Perhaps in romanticism, for example Ferenz Liszt, Leon Boellmann, Max Reger, Alexandre Guilmant and their organ compositions are already so complex and amazingly interesting that I could consider them quite abstract. But it is the organ music of Liszt and Reger and the other mentioned authors, which I admire most, I think that it is not possible to express anything other than abstract. It is a breathtaking, complex tangle of different tones, colors, index games, blinds, etc. and I want to put all this on canvas.  Technical description of diploma thesis output  From a technical point of view, the paintings are on a canvas stretched on a wooden blind frame. I didn't write some canvases, just gelatinized and then painted with acrylic paint. In this way I started from most of my previous work, when I painted straight on an unencapsulated canvas. I enjoyed the direct contact with the linen material itself, its structure, and the natural color of the flax, which was more pleasant than the neutral white color of whisper.  When working with layers, I used masking tapes, which allowed me to get into the bottom layers of the picture and then work with them. This series contains fourteen paintings on canvas, of various sizes, mainly painted with acrylic and sixteen sketches and designs on paper, which are painted with acrylic, watercolor, ink and dry pastel and accompany the paintings. The largest image is 220x300cm and the smallest 55x70cm.   Contextualization, setting the work into the relevant context in the area   The musical aspect has deeper roots in fine arts. The relationship between music and visual art is more widely encountered in the 20th century. The connection between them becomes especially important for artists who discover abstraction (Kandinsky, Kupka, Klee). Here we can mention orphism, which is a painting direction which, in its expression, brings visual art closer to other art forms, mainly music. This direction originated from the word Orpheus. He was a Greek musician, famous for his singing.  Some contemporary artists are also close to the topic, for example, the visual motifs are found in the works of Daniel Vlček, whose work is based on sound and its visualization. He uses phonograph records as templates to create "sound waves". It recycles old things for which it seeks new meanings. It also applies layering = scratches into the bottom layers. From a visual point of view, I was very inspired by the paintings by Jiří Černický, especially his Fluid Map image. Also Vladimír Kokolia, Milan Grygar - acoustic drawings, Jan Steklík and his graphic scores. Visually, Kokoli's paintings are for me, one can say crucial, even if it is not based on the perception of music. "He likes to paint what he sees, but he tries to see things and landscapes" differently "- see through the window, see behind them, see the horizon of what the senses can perceive. His watercolors of natural subjects, especially trees, are portrayed in a soft, almost abstract concept. He sees his painting as an examination of the sighted, penetration into the nature of the depicted reality. His paintings combine precision and geometry with ambiguity, hunch and surprise. He often divides the surface of his paintings into precise bars, seemingly repeating themes within the surface of one image, such as a human figure, but which is not at first sight quite readable. Formally, Vladimír Kokolia's work ranges from landscapes, objects, figures to purely abstract paintings. He often paints in one stroke, interested in the depth of the image, its grids, nets and lines extend beyond the dimensions of the canvas in their infinite variations and transfer their energy from it to space. ”  Evaluation, conclusion  The main aim of this thesis is to visually capture on my canvas my perception of organ music and to point out mutual inspirations and influences between art and music and the relationship between them. It should also be noted that many visual artists are also musicians or composers or vice versa. Fine arts and music are areas that have a significant impact on and influence human life. These artistic areas are interconnected, creating various variations that give artists, whether visual or musical, the opportunity to create new works. I drew inspiration from romantic organ composers, which I admire most. Their music is so catchy that I chose it just to portray it in a painting concept.