Monday, February 16, 2015 – Lecture and workshop on COLOUR AND FORM IN MUSIC for students at the Mikkeli Music Institute

The idea for a lecture and a workshop combining music and visual art came from Marina Bagdasarova-Karhunen, herself a piano teacher. My thanks go to her, to all who took part and my hardworking assistants.

The illustrated lecture picks out similarities between music and art. We begin with the line and straight sound, continue via rhythm to outline and melody, perspective and harmony, colour and dynamics, moods and feelings, formal tensions and their release, dissonance and consonance, and finally arrive at mighty examples of two great forms: the Sistine Chapel and a Mahler symphony.

In the workshop we express music in watercolours. Through a study of melody, we address movement and timbre, polyphony, ornamentation, dynamics, and finally harmony. We look at the ABA form in music, sizzling webs and diverse moods.