Concert (January 23, 2011): "When Kandinsky Met Schönberg"

Several concerts and other events around the world are taking place this month to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the concert of Schoenberg's works that took place in Munich on January 2, 1911.    In Washington, DC, the Verge Ensemble is giving a concert with a brief pre-concert presentation at the National Gallery of Art on January 23, 2011 and another concert at La Maison Française/Embassy of France on March 31st.  Both concerts feature works from the celebrated 1911 concert as well as works surveying music created by others over the past century.  The National Gallery concert program is given below along with a program note by Verge artistic director, Steve Antosca.
Recommended reading on the initial encounter between Schoenberg and Kandinsky and its impact:  Schönberg & Kandinsky: An historic encounter, ed. by Konrad Boehmer.

Program and notes for National Gallery of Art concert

When Kandinsky Met Schönberg

A Wind From Another Planet

National Gallery of Art – January 23, 2011, 6:30 PM, West Garden Court

a pre-concert lecture will be held in the West Building Lecture Hall at 6:00 PM

Arnold Schönberg
Drei Klavierstücke (Three Piano Pieces), Op. 11 (1909) 

Mässige (at a moderate speed)

Mässige (at a moderate speed)

Bewegt (with motion)

Audrey Andrist, piano

Steve Antosca
traces of spirit whispers ~ i. circulation of the light (2003) – piano and audio

Audrey Andrist, piano

Steve Antosca, computer

Györgi Ligeti
Continuum (1968) – harpsichord

Jenny Lin, harpsichord

Elliott Carter
Caténaires (2006) – piano

Audrey Andrist, piano

~intermission~

John Cage
Amores (1943) – piano and percussion

Jenny Lin, piano

Quintin Mallette, percussion*

William Richards, percussion

Doug Wallace, percussion*

John Luther Adams
Red Arc/Blue Veil (2002) – piano, percussion and processed audio

Jenny Lin, piano

William Richards, percussion

Steve Antosca, computer

The pre-concert talk will include Stephen Soderberg, Contemporary Music Specialist at the Library of Congress, contributing author of  Music Theory and Mathematics: Chords, Collections and Transformations; composer/theorist Thomas DeLio, University of Maryland, author of the recent book The Amores of John Cage; and composer/VERGE ensemble Artistic Director Steve Antosca

*guest artists

CONCERT NOTES

When Kandinsky Met Schönberg : January 1911 – January 2011

In 2003, the Jewish Museum in New York presented der Blaue Reiter exhibit, representing an intriguing period in time after painter Wassily Kandinsky experienced the music of composer Arnold Schönberg at an historic concert in Munich on January 2, 1911. In 2009/2010 at the Kandinsky exhibit at the Guggenheim, while walking up the winding pathway, an observer was transported chronologically through the styles of Kandinsky. Immersed in his work, you realize the transformation which occurred in his paintings from 1909 through 1914, represented by works such as Untitled-First Abstraction (1909), Composition V (1911),  With A Black Arc (1912) and Improvisation 31 (Sea Battle) (1913) (on view in the East Building of the National Gallery of Art).

Kandinsky, who had not met Schönberg prior to the concert, moved to Munich to be exposed to the avant-garde, as he was slowly evolving toward his abstractionist style of painting. He instantaneously connected to Schönberg’s music, and felt Schönberg was creating in music what he was attempting to effect in painting. Schönberg had crossed a crucial point in his style, motivated only by direct emotional expression. Under the influence of Schönberg’s sound, Kandinsky created one of his most endearing paintings immediately after the concert – Impression III (Concert) (1911). Introducing himself, Kandinsky wrote to Schönberg on Jan. 18: “What we are striving for and our whole manner of thought and feeling have so much in common that I feel completely justified in expressing my empathy.”

This was a critical moment – a kairos moment – in art and music. Kandinsky was concerned with making painting more abstract, more like music, by removing figuration from art, and Schönberg was moving away from any sense of tonality in his music with the pathbreaking String Quartet No. 2 (op. 10, 1908), adventurous in harmonic style and the use of a soprano, and Three Piano Pieces (op. 11, 1909). These works, while not 12-tone, no longer lingered in the realm of tonality. Kandinsky published Concerning the Spiritual in Art, der Blaue Reiter Almanac, and Klänge in 1912. So this concert was a fascinating confluence in time, art and music that has had enormous repercussions throughout the 20th century. You can only find this kind of powerful ripple effect in the arts through such potent creators as Kandinsky and Schönberg.

[Program note by Steve Antosca] 

In 1911, the concert included an announcement poster in which Schoenberg  justified the direction his music was taking.  The following sentences in particular were latched onto by Kandinsky:

Dissonances are only different from consonance in degree; they are nothing more than remoter consonances. Today we have already reached the point where we no longer make the distinction between consonances and dissonances.

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