Painting Put to Music

It is not common for a piece of music to directly echo a painting, and it’s hard to imagine how a composer would go about it. But turn-of-the-century Italian composer Ottorino Respighi got it right, and so did the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra under the baton of French conductor Pierre Vallet at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church. If you know the paintings of Sandro Botticelli, you would especially enjoy this music.

Conductor Pierre Vallet’s score

The Trittico Botticelliano conveys Respighi’s sense of meaning and mood in three of Botticelli’s works: his “Spring,” “Adoration of the Magi,” and “Birth of Venus.” Respighi’s three movements, like the paintings, are correspondingly vibrant, sacred, and sensuous. The only thing that might have topped this performance was if the paintings had been shown on a large video screen above the orchestra, with the camera zooming in on the details of each canvas as the pieces were played.

Most evocative is the second movement—the “Adoration”—because of the beautiful melody it borrows from O Come O Come Emmanuel. The haunting sound of a solo oboe further captures the serenity and majesty of Botticelli’s religious scene.

Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus”

In the “Birth of Venus” above, the figures (which are nearly life-size in the original) are especially magical because they float in the air, on the sea, and above the ground. The landscape is fantastical and the four figures (their bodies) are ethereal, yet their faces are fully charged with an unusual depth of emotion—all of which Respighi seems to have caught in his music. It no doubt helps that Botticelli’s works, as much as those of any Renaissance painter, have a fluid, lyrical quality.

Occasionally you come across poetry that tries to impart the essence of a painting. But music does it much better, perhaps because both mediums (painting and music) are wordless. In fact, on account of this, it can be a nice experience to visit an art gallery and walk through the exhibit while listening to music on your iPod. Sometimes a whole other dimension in the art—and in you—comes alive. ¶