Abstract
Mondrian’s idea of rhythm is based on ‘anti-sequential repetition’. If visual rhythm is only plausible by way of producing repetitive or sequential motifs, then we need to establish whether or not it is possible to identify Mondrian’s specific idea of rhythm, not only in terms of how Mondrian himself put it, but in terms which accord with existing theories of rhythm within modern Western thought. So how does Mondrian’s rhythm compare to the ideas of other theorists: does the word “rhythm”, as Mondrian uses it, imply significations and associations completely at odds with those of other thinkers, especially those from within the Western tradition? Is there any common understanding of rhythm between Western and Eastern, between ancient and modern thought, e.g., from Europe, India, Java, Africa, China, and Japan, from early Greek thought to that of our time? As Wittgenstein suggests, whether a particular word is necessary “in the ostensive definition” is very much a matter of whether without that word “the other person takes the definition otherwise than I wish” (Wittgenstein 1958, 14e).
Many a one would like to know how the true movement of a musical work can be known. Such knowledge, alas, is beyond words. It is the ultimate perfection of music, accessible only through great experience and talent.
– Johann Mattheson, Der vollkommene Capellmeister, 1739 (Sachs 1953, 380)
A (A Singer). How can you say that, not being a musician!
B. (A Painter) I can say it because, fundamentally, all art is one. Painting has shown me that the equilibrated composition of color relationships ultimately surpasses naturalistic composition and naturalistic plastic—when the aim is to express equilibrium , harmony , as purely as possible.
– Piet Mondrian (Mondrian 1986, 79)
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Notes
- 1.
Certain psychological and physiological experimentations similarly suggest that even in the most stoic of listeners, a variety of subtle movements will reveal an empathy with the beat: light tapping of fingers or toes, nodding head, etc.
For example, Wittgenstein reports his own experience:
When I imagine a piece of music, something I do every day & often, I —always I think — rhythmically grind my upper & lower front teeth together. I have noticed it before but usually it takes place quite unconsciously. Moreover it’s as though the notes in my imagination were produced by this movement.
I think this way of hearing music in the imagination may be very common. I can of course also imagine music without moving my teeth, but then the notes are much more blurred, much less clear, less pronounced (Wittgenstein et al. 1998, 32e).
- 2.
I have borrowed ‘synoptic vision’ from Harold Osborne, The Art of Appreciation: “When we look at a colour reproduction we do not examine with a magnifying glass each almost imperceptible dot left by the printer’s screen, but we stand back and see the general effect. We cannot hear a melody by listening to each note separately on so many different days; we must hear the whole in our minds and perceive it as a whole. This is the principle of configuration . It is the sort of perception which … I have called ‘synoptic’ vision” (Osborne 1970, 190).
- 3.
George Antheil was a very important avant-garde contemporary music composer, and was also influenced by jazz . Antheil was a contributor to De Stijl magazine after 1926. Mondrian mentioned his name in ‘The New Plastic Expression in Painting’ (1926). Mondrian also met and associated with the Futurist painter and composer Luigi Russolo (who had given his first bruitiste performance in June 1913), whose concerts Mondrian attended in Paris in 1921.
- 4.
“Mondrian enjoyed the company of musicians, but, strange to say, not painters. He never wanted to go and visit any big name painters, Picasso or Léger , etcetera.” Joop Joosten, editor of Piet Mondrian, Catalogue Raisonné II, made this comment during a conversation I had with him in his house in Leiden, November 1998. Similarly, Blotkamp notes that: “But with the exception of the representatives of the music world, these contacts [with other artists — painters, architects, poets, actors, etc.] did not go any deeper than the kind of socializing customary in artistic circles” (Blotkamp 1994, 130).
- 5.
Mondrian wrote several essays in relation to music: ‘The Manifestation of Neo-Plasticism in Music and the Italian Futurists ’ Bruiteurs’ (1921), ‘Neo-Plasticism: Its Realization in Music and Future Theater’ (1922), ‘Down with Traditional Harmony!’ (1924), and ‘Jazz and Neo-Plastic ’ (1927). He also wrote two other pieces, ‘Les Grands Boulevards’ and ‘Little Restaurant — Palm Sunday’ (1920), both of which are lighter treatments of the topic, and normally called ‘Two Paris Sketches’. They are experimental ‘soundscape’ descriptions of a day of Paris life, based on the free associational connection of sounds, scenes, imagination and memory.
- 6.
Paul Sanders, the Dutch critic and composer whom he first met in the spring of 1917, was a close friend of Mondrian. In 1925 Sanders moved to Paris for a sabbatical and visited the artist frequently. During the spring, when Mondrian contracted influenza, Sanders provided care and support. He wrote to his brother Martijn, describing the artist’s condition and financial problems, and asking whether he would consider purchasing a painting. Martijn sent money, which Mondrian regarded as excessively generous. He therefore insisted on giving two paintings in return, of which Composition with Blue, Black, Yellow, and Red, 1922, was one (Bois and Joosten 1994, 206).
- 7.
Later Sanders recalled Mondrian’s frequent mentioning in 1917 of Schoenberg and Busoni.
- 8.
Mondrian must have known some of Dr Schoenmaekers ’ writings, since his article, Christosophie, appeared in the esoteric weekly Eenheid 1910, to which Mondrian subscribed (Blotkamp 1994, 111).
- 9.
Van Domselaer did not use the name, ‘Proeven van Stijlkunst ’, for the first time until after the first three numbers had been composed. Originally he had called them simply ‘compositions’. That the name ‘stijlkunst’ occurs for the first time in 1915 suggests that the origin of the term was Mondrian, or even earlier Schoenmaekers , from whom Mondrian borrowed much terminology for his essays. Van Dijk quotes Schoenmaekers ’ phrase:
Positive mysticism ...creates in art what we in a strict sense, call style (stijl) in art, style is the general in spite of the particular. Through style, art is brought into general cultural life. Style is a generally valid, mystical expression of life, which causes the distinct, artistic beauties to move in harmony with the broad stream of cultural life (Schoenmaekers 1915, 32).
It is highly probable van Doesburg adopted the term ‘stijl’ after Schoenmaekers via the suggestion of Mondrian, since Mondrian suggested the name to van der Leck in his letter in May 1917, when the first De Stijl magazine was published. However, the term was already used by the architect H. Berlage in his essay, “Gedachten over de Stijl in de Architectuur,” in 1905 (Van Dijk 1983, 15-6).
- 10.
“Environment music” describes a type of music after minimal music, and is not related to another “environmental music”, which was popular from the 1960s onward and which aimed to facilitate work efficiency in industrial or office context. Here, sound was used subliminally to address the subconscious and mobilise the inner motor. Environment music is represented by, for example, the late 1970s and 1980s Brian Eno “Music for Airports” (EG Records, 1978), Harold Budd “The Pavilion of Dreams” (Obscure, 1978), Gavin Bryars “The Sinking of the Titanic” (Obscure, 1975). Basically their concept is based on John Cage’s apprehension of noise. For Cage , noise is a sound which one does not want to listen to. To attain a quiet sonic environment one (especially a city dweller) has to produce the sound by oneself, otherwise “drawn sound” (for example, traffic noise and street noise) keeps invading one’s environment. Their compositions are not necessarily based on harmonic contrast, but rather on agogic accent, which lends a note prominence by means of increased length rather than greater volume or higher pitch (The New Everyone Dictionary of Music, sixth edition, 1988), and subtle signs of change and contrast of tones, in many cases using very slow melodious repetition .
- 11.
Seuphor translated from Dutch the same line in a different way: “they [the seven pieces] be played in such a way that the static element (the harmony ) be accentuated, while the movement (or the melody ) remains peaceful and flowing ” (Seuphor 1957, 136).
- 12.
In 1916 Mondrian attended van Domselaer’s piano concert of ‘Proeven van Stijlkunst ’. At one point in the foyer of the Concertgebouw, there arose an argument about the quality of van Domselaer’s music. Against this criticism, Mondrian, contrary to his usual taciturn disposition, stood up and defended the value of the composition (Van Dijk 1983, 12).
- 13.
As music which has ‘vertical’ time, Kramer nominates Iannis Xenakis’ Bohor I (1962), Larry Austin’s Caritas (1969), and Terry Riley’s A Raibow in Curved Air (1969). In my thinking, Terry Riley’s minimalist music, for example, In C (1964), which is strongly influenced by Indian music and is against melody , has a pronounced similarity with van Domselaer’s Proeven van Stijlkunst (Riley et al. 1992).
- 14.
Kyo Yasuda investigates the background of the Javanese gamelan music performance at the Paris Exposition of 1889. She mentions that the members of the gamelan group did not come from the same court of Java, where the performance of a gamelan which does not belong to that particular court is prohibited (even today). Yasuda also notes that the group was composed of temporary members under pressure from the Netherlands, members of which participated in the Expo on a personal rather than national basis (mainly as merchants). The Javanese village, kampong javanais, was very popular among visitors. The girl dancers especially, notably Wakiem, Sariem, Soekia and Tamihah, became very famous among Parisians. However, the gamelan music itself was not authentic, and even the musical instrument set, according to Yasuda, was provided by a German merchant, G. Mundt, the owner of a tea plantation in Java. The four girls were sent by Mangk-Negaran Palace, which was located in middle Java, while the musicians were from West Java, which as Yasuda points out, means that the dancers possibly danced to music from a different region (West Java). Such an arrangement never normally happens in Java, implying that the gamelan in this instance was performed only for the occasion of Paris Exposition (Yasuda 1999, 505-24).
- 15.
However, gamelan music’s influence on Debussy is not without complications — i.e., that the gamelan orchestra he witnessed performing at the 1880 Paris Exposition was not an authentic one (Yasuda 1999).
- 16.
Mahler heard the gamelan in 1900 in Paris, when the Javanese gamelan orchestra paid its second visit to Europe.
- 17.
In this sense Max Kozloff’s observation is wrong. Kozloff wrote: “Where artists like Léger and Mondrian deeply sympathized with the urban vitality of America, this was precisely the motif — especially in its accent on machined rhythms — that the Abstract Expressionists thought deadening to the human soul and had to escape” (Kozloff 2000, 110).
- 18.
In this context, reconsideration of John Cage’s similar attempt in 4’33” (‘Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Seconds’) to abolish background sound (or, as many theorists advocate, foregrounding background noise and converting noise into musical sound) may contribute to this argument.
-
4’33” is played at the piano and is divided into three movements. All of the notes are silent. The composition takes its name from the fact that it requires four minutes and thirty-three seconds to perform. The pianist uses a stopwatch to control his tempo. This tune lasts for exactly 4’33”.
-
Almost all theorists interpret 4’33” in terms of the reversal action of background ‘noise’ into foreground ‘sound’. However, if Cage’s influence from Zen Buddhist thought is considered, the reversal action is not a sufficient explanation, since in the context of Zen , no discrimination of the duality (of background and foreground) would be correct. (On this issue, a conversation with Zen Buddhist master, Eikai Korematsu, was beneficial.)
-
Cage’s (final) intention would be the non-discriminatory condition of sound: no background-foreground, no noise-sound, no life-art discrimination. Mondrian’s annihilation or sublation of foreground-background dichotomy can be taken as similar to the ultimate goal of Cage’s 4’ 33”. For Mondrian, one of the primary goals of Neo-plasticism is complete flatness , where each painterly element has an undiscriminatory effect on the other elements in the non-background-foreground dichotomy of the Gestalt field.
-
- 19.
Cage , John. 1968. Silence: Lectures & Writings, 3. London: Marion Boyars.
- 20.
Schafer, Murray, 1973. The Music of the Environment, 3. Wien: Unesco, Universal Edition.
- 21.
The book may have been given to Mondrian, since it has Marinetti’s inscription, “Mondrian, simpátia, futuristá”.
- 22.
The concept of ‘resolution’ was inspired by Richard Shiff’s series of lectures given at both the Fine Arts Dept., Melbourne University, and Victorian College of the Arts, in 1997.
- 23.
Seuphor also describes Mondrian’s fanaticism with dance and his ‘unusual’ style of dancing at various times:
In Laren, he had gone to dances every Sunday. “He would pick out the prettiest girl,” Mr. Van Tussenbroeck, who knew him in that period, told me, “and would dance as stiff as a ramrod, his head in the air, and without saying a word to his partner ” (Seuphor 1956, 170).
- 24.
Mondrian must have read this text since in his writings Kandinsky’s influence is obvious. Mondrian wrote in terms of Kandinsky’s ‘inner necessity’: “… when this manner of rendering results from an inner feeling of necessity that it must be so and not otherwise” (Mondrian 1969, I-59, 44). Also Mondrian wrote about Kandinsky’s theory of colour: “Kandinsky has aptly observed that ‘cold’ can become ‘hot’, so to speak (just as ‘hot’ can seem ‘cold’)” (Mondrian 1986, 240).
- 25.
For example, Kandinsky states:
The birth of a work of art is of cosmic character. The originator of the work is thus the spirit. Thus the work exists in abstracto prior to that embodiment which makes it accessible to the human senses (Kandinsky, Lindsay, and Vergo 1982a, 345).
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Tosaki, E. (2017). Mondrian’s Rhythm and Contemporary Music (His Music Peers). In: Mondrian's Philosophy of Visual Rhythm. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 23. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1198-0_4
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