 | Albert Joseph Moore's oil painting titled "A Musician" is one of the works on view in "Art & Music in Britain," which opens Oct. 5. |
The relationship between art and music will be explored in a new exhibit opening at the Yale Center for British Art on Thursday, Oct. 5.
"Art & Music in Britain: Four Encounters, 1730-1900" will examine the connection between art and music at four distinct historical moments: "Handel's London" (1730s to 1750s), "Music and Polite Society"(1760s to 1820s), "Romantic Landscapes" (1829 to mid-1830s) and "Aspiring to the Condition of Music" (1860s to 1900).
The exhibit will feature more than 60 works from the center's collection, as well as period instruments from the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments and sheet music from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Lewis Walpole Library and the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library. Each room of the exhibition will include a listening station where visitors can hear relevant musical selections, and a variety of musical performances will complement the exhibition.
Among the artists represented are J.M.W. Turner, William Hogarth, Thomas Rowlandson, Johann Zoffany and George Romney. Period music will be represented in the works of Handel, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Gilbert and Sullivan. Some of the musical instruments on view include a serpent, hurdy-gurdy, an 18th-century guitar and a square piano.
The various sections of the exhibit explore the kinship between art and music both in a general sense -- such as the relationship between a stained glass window and church music, or the perspectives of a Romantic symphony and a panoramic landscape painting -- or in the particular -- such as how both a painter and a composer responded to the same landscape and expressed that experience in their art.
"Handel's London" will look at sites for viewing art and hearing musical performances around 1740. "Music and Polite Society" will explore the parallel roles of music and art in celebrating civility among the social elite of the 18th century. "Romantic Landscapes" will trace the responses of composer Felix Mendelssohn and painter J.M.W. Turner to a particular Scottish landscape that both visited around 1830. The final section, "Aspiring to the Condition of Music," will examine the ways in which painters of the Aesthetic Movement attempted to emulate music's direct, sensory appeal.
"Art & Music in Britain" will also consider the relationship between high and popular culture in each of the four historical moments. For example, Mendelssohn was interested in indigenous folksong and included elements of it in his Scottish works. The customs of Victorian high society provided fodder for satirical journals and the comic operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan.
The exhibit has been organized by Tim Barringer, the Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art at Yale, and Eleanor Hughes, a postdoctoral research associate at the Yale Center for British Art.
On Wednesday, Oct. 4, a special opening event at 5:30 p.m. will feature a lecture on art and music in medieval Britain by Margot Fassler, the Robert S. Tangeman Professor of Music History and Liturgy at Yale's Institute of Sacred Music (ISM), followed by a concert featuring mezzo-soprano and performers from ISM. Other upcoming events combining talks and music include a Wednesday, Oct. 11, lecture on the Aesthetic Movement by Barringer, followed by a performance of Victorian songs and ballads by vocalists from ISM. These take place in the lecture hall of the center.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Yale Center for British Art is also hosting an "Art and Music Fall Film Series," which will begin in December. It will draw attention to film scores written by major British composers in the mid-20th century. The films and other events will be listed in future issues of the Yale Bulletin & Calendar.
The Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (open late on Wednesdays through Nov. 22), and Sunday, noon-5 p.m. It is closed on Mondays and major holidays. Admission is free. For more information, visit www.yale.edu/ycba or call (203) 432-2800.
T H I S
Exhibit explores connections between
art and music in different periods
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