Studies X
24 Photographs
Meditations on "The Moment"
Homage to composer Valentin Silvestrov
24 Photographs
Meditations on "The Moment"
Homage to composer Valentin Silvestrov
Introduction
This project, the tenth in an ongoing series of projects entitled Studies, consists of photographs that sprang into existence spontaneously, untainted by any preconceived conceptual, formal or subject matter agenda. I consider each of the 24 images collected here the manifestation of a graceful-intuitive impulse, a gift of my Creative Process, offered freely, unconditionally.
When such images emerge, and I cannot include them in a project-in-progress, I store them in a digital folder identified as Unpublished. I return frequently to the folder to study the growing collection of images in the hope of discovering ideas for new projects.
Many of the pictures published in my recent Windows project (Part One) were discovered in the Folder. And yet, after completion of that project, an unusually large number of images remained. So I decided to select my favorite images and contemplate how I might make some kind of visual and conceptual sense of the collection. Perhaps, I thought, this could be a new Studies project.
It so happened, synchronistically, that I had begun listening to several new albums of the music of Valentin Silvestrov which consisted mostly of miniature compositions from his "late period" (2001-2011) for solo piano and small string ensembles--compositions which Silvestrov referred to generally as Bagatelles.
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My first Studies project, begun in 1994, was inspired by miniature piano pieces. I had fallen in love with the brief, pithy piano compositions of Chopin, especially his 24 Preludes, and Bach's Well Tempered Clavier, a collection of two sets of keyboard Preludes and Fugues in all 24 major and minor keys. Also, the Preludes and Fugues of Shostakovitch were an important influence on the first Studies project. To my great surprise the Studies project (consisting of miniature sized silver gelatin prints) sustained itself over a six year period! During that time I found additional inspiration in the miniature works of Scriabin, Satie, Debussy, Mompou, Bohuslav Martinu, William Bolcom, Ligeti, Kurtag, Howard Skempton, Thelonious Monk and other less well known composers. (Recently, Mompou's name was mentioned to me and I have been enjoying revisiting his music which relates to Silvestrov's piano music in many ways.)
Music had been an inspiration for several of my photography projects dating back to the late 1960's. (See my complete list of Music Inspired Photograph Projects.) Around 2002, when I was making photographs inspired by the music of Morton Feldman, I began following the newly recorded music of Valentin Silverstrov on the ECM label. I have continued listening to Silvestrov's music for the past seventeen years.
As I have aged I've tended to prefer quiet, slow, contemplative music, and most of Silvestrov's late period compositions, such as the Postludes, Elegies, Dialogues, Serenades, Waltzes, Bagatelles, and the Moments of Memory are particularly attractive to me. They tend to be atmospheric, mysterious ("almost a dream"), lyrical, melancholic, nostalgic, quiet and deep. Several of the most recent recordings of his music (2013-2018) have focused on the late miniature pieces.
I first wrote of Silvestrov's music and its influence on my work in my project Symmetrical Snow Photographs : Homage to Alfred Stieglitz, Minor White, the Equivalent and Valentin Silvestrov of May, 2018 (and revised in January, 2020). I was interested in how his ideas of Postludial Music and Meta-Music related to the idea of Equivalent photographs. Over the past year (2019) however, as I've been listening to the recent recordings and re-reading the liner notes to all my Silvestrov albums, I have became particularly interested in his ideas about the "musical moment" which is associated with the tradition of the Bagatelle.
As I contemplated my photographs selected from the Folder for this project, I was fascinated to discover that each of the images was unwittingly related to a common theme: "the moment." I will write more about Silvestrov's music, his ideas about the bagatelle and the "musical moment" and some of the relationships between my creative process and his after the presentation of the photographs.
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That this project contains 24 photographs is no coincidence; indeed I consider it a kind of homage to the European musical tradition of the compositional cycle based on the 24 major and 24 minor keys. Chopin's famous 24 Preludes, which inspired my first Studies project, were inspired by Bach's The Well Tempered Clavier, as was Shostakovitch's Preludes and Fugues. (click here to see an interesting article that explains this tradition in fairly clear and simple terms)
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Anyway, for this project, because of Silvestrov's preoccupation with the Bagatelle, the "Musical Moment" and his fascination with "halting" time and exploring the power of music in relation to memory, I have decided to experiment with titling the images. You must not, however, feel it necessary to read the titles: the pictures do "speak" for themselves.
The 24 photographs were selected and sequenced keeping in mind the vertical scrolling format, and the desire to create an overarching, cohesive visual experience. I encourage you, as contemplator, to pay close attention to the way the images interact with each other as the sequence unfolds, for in the transitional spaces between the images it could be possible you will sense in some intuitive way an ongoing silent "dialogue" between the images. If you "hear" or experience such a presence in the space between the images, I invite you to join in the conversation. ~ Welcome to Studies X .
24 Photographs
Meditations on "The Moment"
Homage to Valentin Silvestrov
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Meditations on "The Moment"
Homage to Valentin Silvestrov
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1. A bowl of sunbathed tomatoes : "The Moment in which the movement of light dissolves into shadow . . . "
2. A flowing stream, leaves, bubbles, hidden mysteries: "The Moment in which one feels a living presence held in suspension . . . "
3. A wind-blown sunlit snowed-upon plant : "The Moment in which the dance of inner music is being offered . . . "
4. Bubbles in blue-green water : "The Moment in which looking into depth one becomes aware of a luminous absence . . . "
5. Rain drops on a round table : "The Moment in which one becomes dazzled and lost in space . . . "
6. A bowl of blueberries : "The Moment in which one looks down and sees light rather than things . . . "
7. Fallen leaves after a rain : "The Moment in which one leaf inside a puddle's shadow reflection becomes part of a constellation . . "
8. A child's foot, a blue piece of tape, some crayon scribbles : "The Moment in which a dialogue between things is heard . . . "
9. A Child's Chair : "The Moment in which, looking down, one sees something wanting to be seen . . . "
10. Two pieces of golden ribbon : "The Moment in which looking directly at a something its shadow looks back . . . "
11. The red and golden sky : "The Moment in which colors merge in the dissolving evening light . . . "
12. Plastic glasses on sunlit concrete : "The Moment in which a camouflaged object is recognized . . . "
13. Fence shadows, a black dot, streaks of light, red painted wood: "The Moment in which the seen is not being understood . . . "
14. A plant creeping from shadow thru light : "The Moment in which movement crosses back into darkness . . . "
15. A gathering next to a light source : "The Moment in which the act of photographing is held in suspension . . . "
16. Orange Tree, Iron Gate, Church Wall : "The Moment in which a gesturing hand enters a photograph . . . "
17. A hand, reaching through a fence door : "The Moment in which something is being seen while waiting in a line . . . "
18. A Man sitting atop a ladder, changing the words on a sign : "The Moment in which a man becomes 'the messenger' . . . "
19. Hand Prints on Glass : "The Moment in which irrational space is layered in planes . . . "
20. A distant figure, a fallen tree, a waterfall : "The moment in which multiple worlds interface behind glass . . . "
21. Falling, cascading water : "The Moment in which the wildness in water and tree branches touch each other . . . "
22. A pocked wall, a dark doorway : "The Moment in which a red light appears to be looking at me . . . "
23. Highway "Scenic View" : "The Moment in which an opening of distant light helps one see beyond the dark foreground . . . "
24. Snow covered birdbath : "The Moment in which foreground and background merge into infinite space . . . "
Valentin Silvestrov
Musical Moments & Memory
Over the past 17 years that I've been listening to the music of Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1936 in the Ukranian SSR) I have often found myself wanting to make a series of photographs in response to his music, especially his brief compositions which he referred to as Bagatelles. But, to be honest, I simply could not find a way to do this.
However, after I had selected the photographs for this project from my Unpublished folder, and after listening intently to some new recordings of his music and re-reading all of the liner notes to the albums I own, it occurred to me that Silvestrov's creative process, and his ideas about music, time, memory, and "the moment" are very similar to my own. And because I have always felt deeply touched by his music, I concluded we are "kindred spirits."
This led to another realization: there would be no real point in trying to make photographs in response to Silvestrov's music, for indeed I had (in a way) been doing that all along. This understanding helped me to see that the 24 images I had selected for this project were indeed related to Silvestrov's idea of the bagatelle and the "musical moment." Indeed they were the very embodiments of those themes. I have tried to reflect this understanding in the titles I have placed beneath the images and in the texts I am providing here, below.
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This project seems to have created itself effortlessly: the ease with which the images were found and edited and sequenced; the way the entire project fell intuitively into alignment with Silvestrov's ideas about "the moment" and the musical tradition and "lightness" of the Bagatelle . . . it all seemed ready and waiting for me.
I admit, however, that in general there is very little about Silvestrov's music that could be characterized by the words "light" and "frivolous," terms often used in association with the bagatelle. Although Silvestrov ofter referred to his bagatelles as "sublime insignificances" they are in my experience anything but that. There is, however, one exception to which I must point: Silvestrov was unexpectedly recorded while in the act of improvising at the piano on some of his "melodic fragments." These spontaneous, brief pieces of music, which were made available on a 2006 ECM recording, do in fact reveal a natural affinity and commitment to the ideal associated with the traditional idea of the bagatelle. I will be writing more about this later, below.
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In the liner notes (click here) to ECM's 2001 recording of Silvestrov's 1997-99 composition Requiem for Larissa (Silvestrov's wife, who died early in life, in 1996), the following insightful-poetic commentary on the music was quoted:
It is as if Silvestrov's mind were constantly withdrawing into an
interior space in order to find room for remembered images
sheltered by music and uttered with its breath. (T. Rexroth)
This interior aspect of Silvestrov's music, especially noticeable in the pieces created after his wife's death, is full of melancholic longing, remembrance, nostalgia. The music is generally deep, heavy and contemplative. There are also some radiantly beautiful pieces as well. For example I love his Sacred Choral Works which (in his words) were not intended for liturgical use. Silvestrov once said that "music is a song the world sings about itself."
He held the belief that "the language of music has no owner, that only the word itself has value, regardless of who speaks it or when it is spoken." This idea reminds me of the music of the great jazz musician-composer Steve Lacy which inspired me to produce a series of photographs in the late 1970s. Lacy, too, believed that music had its own life, its own will and voice; that he was simply the one chosen in that moment to give The Music an audible form through his remarkable soprano saxophone improvisations.
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Silvestrov has written over 260 cycles for piano solo in the miniature forms of waltzes, lullabies, postludes, nocturnes, barcaroles, pastorals, serenades . . . all of which he generally refers to as bagatelles. At the center of each composition one usually will find a memorable, singable melodic fragment with which he tries to "seize" and "halt" "The Moment." (Schott Music).
Paul Conway writes in his liner notes for the Naxos Recording Moments of Memory II: "Silent Music [a set of three miniature pieces] . . . represents 'still metaphors of silence' because 'the melody is a symbol of something that cannot be expressed . . . '"
When I read these words they echoed for me the constant preoccupation I have with the ineffable meaning of a true, living symbol. I feel there is a direct relationship between the way melody functions for Silvestrov in his music and the way the outer world appearances function for me in my symbolic photographs. I will get back this later when I write about Silvestrov's spiritual kinship with the Russian philosopher Jakov Druskin.
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Tatjana Frumkis has written a great deal about Silvestrov's music. In her liner notes for the 2006 ECM recording Bagatellen und Serenaden she tells us that in the pauses during a recording session of his compositions for string orchestra, Silvestrov sat down at a piano and spontaneously, quietly, performed some of his unwritten miniature pieces (or bagatelles). She said the music sounded like improvisations upon melodic fragments he had been preoccupied with at the time; and she said the music "seemed to be taking place in the moment," though in fact she believed that Silvestrov had probably crafted the pieces in his mind "down to the nethermost detail."
Fortunately, a technician present at the site recorded Silvestrov's improvisations at the piano, and 14 of them were included in the ECM album Bagatellen und Sernaden.
Frumkis explains that Silvestrov would eventually commit to written form many of the melodic motifs that sprang into existence for him at the piano. In fact, she says every piece of written music by Silvestrov (including the string pieces, the choral works and the symphonies) began by "first being "played, and even sung at the piano." For Silvestrov "the most important thing is to capture the moment as such and to make it singable without subjecting it to so-called motivic-thematic manipulation."
It is no accident, Frumkis adds, "that he often uses another romantic concept: the 'song without words'--i.e., a song that is always recognizable and can therefore be 'played' by any voice or 'sung' on any instrument." Silvestrov used many of his own melodic fragments (as well as those of other well known composers) in multiple compositions and in a variety of instrumental settings.
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As I have already mentioned, Silvestrov often referred to his Bagatelles as "sublime insignificances," and yet, writes Frumkis, "universes may lurk within them . . . " This is a reference to William Blake's aphorism: To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour. Frumkis then concludes: "Music . . . as a response, a postlude to things already said, sung, or sounded: this is the connecting thread that runs through Silvestrov's entire oeuvre."
(At the conclusion of this project I have added one additional photograph which serves both as a "Postlude" to the project and a homage to Silvestrov's postludial music.)
In her liner notes for the excellent 2018 album Touching the Memory (which--interestingly--was recorded ten years before the album's publication), Frumkis, makes a reference to an image on an old photograph while writing about Silvestrov's melodic fragments, the bagatelle, the "musical moment" and memory:
As [Silvestrov] clearly stated, the main impulse to creating music is generally just a moment, a sparkle that will not go out, a call, a simple motive. The [melodic fragment or motif of a] "bagatelle" is a pure chance to capture a moment . . . It is the melodic clarity, the potential to be recognized, remembered, sung, that really matters. . . He repeats the same motive over and over again, as if he was holding to the memory of what he had seen, or rather heard, in a dream. It becomes not a clear image but, in his own words, "a shadow in profile," where the melodic outline is preserved, but a little vague, dim, as if on an old daguerreotype. . . . Everything is slightly shifting in time and space, "softly, lightly, distantly, almost a dream," as it is often stated in the composer's directions.
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Silvestrov felt a spiritual kinship with the Russian philosopher Jakov Druskin. Indeed Silvestrov's creative credo is indebted to the words of the philosopher who wrote of symbolic figures, "messengers" who represent the relationship between the inner and outer worlds:
The moment is the beginning of an experience but I don't know when it will end. Nobody knows the end of an experience, but the messengers are not daunted by that . . .
The messengers . . . observe the primal connection between the existent and the non-existent . . .
The messengers know . . . what lies behind things. (Dakov Druskin)
One of Silvestrov's most important piano pieces, Der Bote (The Messenger, 1996) was inspired by Druskin's writings and the unexpected death of his wife Larissa. Silvestrov instructs the performer to play the composition "as if in a fog" ~ "light and sad" ~ "The top of the piano should be completely closed. Keep pressing the [sustaining] pedal . . . so that the preceding sound continues to resonate."
Druskin's writings about "messengers" echo my own ideas about the ineffable meaning of a Symbolic Photograph. I believe true symbols--images radiantly alive with grace, the "creative energy" of the Universe--function as messengers which provide us with "new of the universe." Symbols "connect" the existent images (images of the exterior, visible world) with their corresponding counterparts from the non-existent (invisible, interior, perfectly silent, still) world of the Self.
Henry Corbin wrote similarly about an Imaginal world, the "place" of origin of symbols. The Imaginal world is the "non-existent" world which is suspended timelessly between the dual inner and outer worlds; Imaginal world is where the spiritual becomes material, and where the material becomes spiritual.
When the corresponding inner and outer fragments of the original One World become re-united in the form of a "visual symbol" (or a "musical moment"), and when we give ourselves fully to that image (that moment) through the act of contemplation or meditation, it becomes possible for us to glimpse or gain access to the sparklingly luminous, infinitely vast and timeless realm of ineffable non-dual knowledge of Absolute Reality, the Oneness of Being, the divine Self. It is in this sense that symbols are "messengers" which bring us News of the Universe.
Postscript
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Silvestrov's Two Dialogues with Postscript (for piano and string orchestra) consists of an Imaginal musical conversation between two pieces of music he composed: the first Dialogue is based on a melodic fragment from a waltz that Schubert had performed in 1822 for a friend's wedding--music that he never wrote down but has nonetheless come down to us through oral tradition; the second Dialogue is a haunting improvisation on a melodic fragment by Richard Wagner. In the space between the two Dialogues a third and mysterious piece of music, the Postscript, becomes manifested. This strange music gives us an audible but unspeakable glimpse into the meaning of what has been shared and exchanged between the two Dialogues, "musical moments," remembrances from the past. click here
One can feel in this extraordinary music that the inaudible sounds continue to echo in a realm beyond Time, as if the "dialogue" never really had a beginning . . . for this is the Primal Sound that has created and sustains the entire Universe in every recurring-recreated-eternal-present moment. click here In Silvestrov's words, this is the "song" that "the world sings about itself."
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In the Yoga that I practice there is a chant performed every morning--in ashrams, centers and homes around the world--known as the Guru Gita. For the purposes of this postscript, the Guru Gita can be defined as the "Song of the Self." It's 182 brief verses represents a dialogue between the Lord of the Universe, Lord Shiva, and his Royal Consort, the Goddess Parvati.
Parvati asks The Lord (the eternal and all-pervasive One who is both the visible form of the universe and the invisible sacred presence that dwells within each and every created thing, including the Heart of every human being):
"By which path can an embodied soul
become one with Brahman (Absolute Reality)?"
Lord Shiva responds:
"O Goddess, you are My very Self."
In other words: All is One with Shiva; All is the Lord's Self. The appearances of duality, of separation, is but a function of the ego, of maya and the creative, divine Play of Consciousness.
Symbolic photographs--and the divine music that comes through composers like Valentin Silvestrov--provide us with messages which transcend the limits of human language, messages that embody and are radiant with the light of grace, the Oneness of Being, the Eternal Present which exists in each and every "moment."
Postlude
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The Melodic Fragment of a Snow Circle :
"The Moment in which the Eternal Present can be
heard singing Its Song about ItsSelf . . . "
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This project was posted on my blog's
Welcome Page on June 14, 2019
Related projects:
Postlude To An Exhibition which includes a section which pays homage to Silvestrov
Welcome Page to my The Departing Landscape website/blog includes the complete listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and more.
