Do pianos dream of coloured singins? 2017 Glass, wood, iron cables, headphones, song Le Chant du Départ by composer Etienne Méhul. 2,5 x 3 x 1,5 m.
"Musical sound gives direct access to the soul", Paul Klee
SOUNDS AND LIGHTS
After the transcription work of Beethoven's 5th Symphony Finished Expanding, Do pianos dream of coloured singings? translates the beginning of the singing part in the song Le Chant du Départ by Etienne Nicolas Méhul, classical composer from the XVIIIth Century. Each glass shape represents a note of the first sang sentence, or 22 notes for 22 blown glass shapes that can be read as a music partition. Here the different notes are translated by colour, shape and positioning of the glass elements, resulting from personal choices that are something in common with Kandinsky's philosophical point of view in his book Du spirituel dans l'art. Without revealing these choices I let some free interpretation to the viewer to let him or her immerse into the work, by the same manner we can live a synethesia experience. Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon which consist in combining two or more senses. As an exemple a picture or a colour that we perceive makes us think or even hear a specific sound (by an intern way, made by the brain), or even smell specific smells, of feel a tactile sensation...
GIVET
In the context the "Year Méhul" celebrated in the occasion of the bicentenary death of the composer, the city of Givet (Ardennes) and the CEMA (Crafts European Center) organize several events related to the famous composer and crafts. My work has been selected as a contemporary vision of his best-known song, Le Chant du Départ, linked with the glass material, here each shape blown by hand using a traditional venitian technique, the cane work.
The suspended glass shapes is a call to dreaming. Just like blown glass could be a representation of the glassblower's soul by capturing his blow in a glass bubble, the singer needs also to blow in order to sing. If singing is the singer's soul, could colour be the soul of melody? With this installation one can imagine that the musical instruments have their own dream of melodies as well, which pass through their wood species. The piano becomes rebel in any way because it has turned upside down to drop the melody.