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Realizing that he needed a planar color space that would be more unified as well as more transparent, Klee experimented with various formats and ideas, eventually developing what he called his “so-called pointillism.” 10 This technique was not in fact pointillism, instead it was more of a dot screen. This study lead Klee to further pursue this theme and consider the question of texture and voices in the visual arts. The curvilinear motion correlates to the movement of the melody, while the weight of the line expresses the rhythmic and melodic emphasis given to that voice at that time. Below this area he described the quality of the beat, both in terms of dynamic changes as well as reproducible accents that corresponded to the overall meter of the piece. He created a large musical staff able to span three octaves thereby allowing him to visualize all of the voices in one large space. Klee studied the movement of the voices in counterpoint compositions. His interest in individual lines of music as seen in counterpoint prompted him to attempt a visual translation of the different voices in the Adagio from J.S. Klee continued to further and refine his interest in music, rhythm and visual movement. In the alternating darks and lights he saw aspects of musical rhythm in the visual. 4Ĭubism helped Klee to see the possibilities of music in the visual arts. This treatise had a profound influence on the composers of the Viennese classical school, such as Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, all of whom learned the fundamental techniques of composition for the treatise. What was it that had been done for music and that was at last being done for the pictorial arts? In 1725 Johann Josef Flux published the landmark 18th century treatise on music theory, Gradus ad Parnassum, which introduced and codified the theories of counterpoint and polyphonic composition. According to Klee, what had already been done for music by the end of the eighteenth century had at last begun for the pictorial arts. Instead, he was looking to the principles of music as a way of thinking about composition in painting.
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He was not looking to make paintings that were merely musically inspired or that had a musical type of feeling. They are like two rivers which have their source in one and the same mountain, but subsequently pursue their way under totally different conditions in two totally different regions, so that throughout the whole course of both no two points can be compared.” 3 Klee looked to music as a means to derive an organizing principle for painting. As Goethe said in the Theory of Colors, “Colour and sound do not admit of being directly compared together in any way, but both are referable to a higher formula, both are derivable, although each for itself, from this higher law. Klee agreed with Goethe that color and sound should not be directly compared, rather that both should be derived from a higher law.
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He preferred the chamber music of the Viennese school because, as his friend and biographer, Will Grohmann, states, “he found that it stimulated his sense of form and provided him with a sure guide through the labyrinth of his own formal invention.” 2 Klee especially liked the music of the 18th century, composers such as Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, as well as Haydn and Schubert. In the end he chose painting, as he felt that the great days of music were in the past, whereas those of painting were yet to come. By age 11, Klee was an accomplished musician performing as an extra with the Bern symphony. His parents were both musicians and his father was a professor of music. Perhaps the biggest decision in Paul Klee’s life was whether to pursue a career as a musician or as a painter, as both paths were open to him.