Plane isometries in the music of M. K.

Cˇiurlionis

Kevin Holm-Hudson
School of Music, University of Kentucky, USA
Kjholm2@uky.edu http://www.uky.edu/FineArts/Music/faculty/kevin_holm-hudson.htm

Darius Kucinskas
Department of Sound and Visual Art Technologies, Kaunas Technological University, Lithuania
darikuci@kaunas.omnitel.net Darius.Kucinskas@ktu.lt

In: R. Parncutt, A. Kessler & F. Zimmer (Eds.)

Proceedings of the Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM04)
Graz/Austria, 15-18 April, 2004 http://gewi.uni-graz.at/~cim04/

Background in art history. In the early twentieth century, numerous composers and artists—including Scriabin,
Schoenberg, and Kandinsky—explored connections between music and visual art. Even so, Lithuanian artist-
composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Cˇiurlionis (1875-1911) stands apart in the extent of his formal training in both
areas, and the degree to which he believed the two media interpenetrated. Initially trained as a musician, Cˇiurlionis
studied painting at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts from 1904 through 1906. Between 1907 and 1909 he aimed at
synthesis of the arts with paintings often analogous to musical forms (for example, the four-painting Sonata of the
Sun). Some scholars have linked Cˇiurlionis to symbolism (Fauchereau 2000) or abstraction (Rannit 1984); others
have examined musical metaphor in Cˇiurlionis’s painting.

Background in music theory. As Cˇiurlionis’s involvement in painting deepened, his music changed; functional
harmony was replaced by intersecting lines and a preoccupation with isometry, suggesting increasingly literal
translation of visual principles into musical notation. Theories of musical isometry (see for example Riemann 1896
and Lendvai 1993, as well as the growing body of literature in neo-Riemannian theory) parallel Washburn and Crowe’s
(1988) cross-cultural and cross-historical survey of isometries in the decorative arts. Each of the four plane
isometries (rotational symmetry, reflection, translation, and glide reflection) has its musical counterpart.

Aims. Rather than analyzing musical metaphor in Cˇiurlionis’s art, we will show how Cˇiurlionis’s creative process in
his music was influenced by visual principles.

Main contribution. Cˇiurlionis’s posthumous fame was as an artist until publication of his music began in 1957.
Since then, several Lithuanian scholars have analyzed his music (Cˇiurlionyte 1959, Landsbergis 1965, 1984, 1992,
2000, Kucinskas 2002, 2003a, 2003b); outside Lithuania, scholarly attention has been focused mainly on his
paintings. The extent to which Cˇiurlionis’s newly discovered “visual thought” of 1904-1906 permeated his music
during those years and thereafter has scarcely been examined.

Implications. By examining the structural similarity of Cˇiurlionis’s different artistic media, one is able to uncover
the deeper unity of his artistic expression (Kucinskas 2003, 4). We believe that this study of some of the distinctive
tendencies of Cˇiurlionis’s art manifested in his music will yield a deeper understanding of his creative process.

Although the Lithuanian artist and composer
Mikolajus Konstantinas Cˇiurlionis (1875-
1911) is revered as a cultural hero in his
native country, his musical work is little
known outside Lithuania. Born into a musical
family (his father was a church organist), he
studied composition at the Warsaw Music
Institute from 1897 to 1899 and continued his
studies in composition at the Leipzig
Conservatory in 1901-1902. Cˇiurlionis
probably began to receive private lessons in
painting in late 1902 (Nasvytis 1972b, 11-
12); he completed his first serious painting,
Music of the Forest, in the fall of 1903. He
began his serious study of painting as a
member of the first class of the Warsaw
School of Fine Arts on March 15, 1904,
studying there until the end of 1906
(Umbrasas in Gosˇtautas 1994, 405). As
early as 1896, however, Cˇiurlionis had
already begun his search for a “new [graphic]
language” by creatively ‘improving’ existing
music notation to indicate subtleties of
notation and performance (Kucinskas 2003a,
1). Certainly by February 1902 he had
already conceived of visual art and music as
intertwined; in a letter Cˇiurlionis described
the music of Berlioz and Richard Strauss as

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 CIM04 - Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology - Proceedings
“painting beautifully” (Gosˇtautas 1994,
366). Cˇiurlionis also experimented with
fusions of music and language; some
sketchbooks from around 1905 show
Cˇiurlionis’s invention of a musical alphabet,
with which he attempted to write music
(Kucinskas 2003a, 4).
After 1907 Cˇiurlionis devoted his energies to
painting, although he continued to compose,
mostly short aphoristic works for piano. 1907-
1909 was his most prolific period, during
which he aimed at a synthesis of the arts.
Cˇiurlionis’s dual interests in painting and
music invite comparison with another turn-of-
the-century composer-painter, Arnold
Schoenberg. Such interest in creating a
“synthesis of the arts” was shared by other
contemporary composers and artists, such as
Alexander Scriabin, Vasily Kandinsky, and
Paul Klee. Cˇiurlionis, however, was more
than a composer who painted (Schoenberg)
or an artist keenly interested in musical forms
(Kandinsky, Klee). He was equally well
trained in both artistic media, and in his life
the visual arts and music were co-equal and
mutually reinforcing.1 (Cˇiurlionis also
created designs for the stage and for book
frontispieces, and he was an enthusiastic
photographer.)
His paintings from 1907-1909 often have
visionary subjects and bear musical titles.
Unlike the earlier musically-titled work of
painters such as James MacNeil Whistler,
Cˇiurlionis aimed for a deeper structural
connection between painting and music. He
constructed his paintings as visually
analogous to musical forms, and specifically
modeled his paintings after absolute musical
forms (for example, the four-painting Sonata
of the Sun cycle, and the diptych Prelude and
Fugue), rather than the more fanciful and
metaphorical “fantasia” and “nocturne” titles
favored by other artists. His piano works from
this period are among his most abstract,
characterized by tonal experimentation.
Cˇiurlionis continued to paint and compose
until he succumbed to mental illness in 1909;
during the last two years of his life, spent in a
sanitarium, he failed to complete any musical
or artistic works.
Cˇiurlionis’ music was largely overshadowed
by his art in the years following his death, a
situation not remedied until the 1950s
2
(Landsbergis 1992, p. 48). Since then,
Cˇiurlionis’ music has been analyzed by
several Lithuanian scholars, most notably
Vytautas Landsbergis; outside Lithuania,
however, most scholarly attention has
continued to focus on his painting.
Writings about Cˇiurlionis’ art tend to be
vaguely hermeneutic. For example, Liongines
Sepetis writes that “the elements of time,
sensitive perception to the peculiarities of
rhythm, a deeper understanding of the
functions of color and space, and lastly the
dominant wavy line in Cˇiurlionis’ paintings,
create a mood which is evoked only by
musical harmony” (Sepetis, 1991). As noted
by sculptor/artist Vladimir Fedotov (1995),
such descriptions “see the musical basis of
these works only in terms of their imagery,
understatement and general emotional mood.
These approaches undoubtedly bring the
painted work closer in spirit to a musical
work, but they do not define the musical
method of construction” (54). More recent
scholarship has attempted to locate instances
of musical metaphor in Cˇiurlionis’ paintings;
Fedotov, for example, discusses instances of
“polyphony” in Cˇiurlionis’ art, including
polyphonies of perspective and temporalities.
Cˇiurlionis’ study of painting was to have a
decisive effect on his music. His earliest
compositions, not surprising for his Warsaw
training, show a debt to Chopin.2 However,
Cˇiurlionis for the most part avoided the
programmatic titles favored by his Romantic
contemporaries and also rejected much of
Romanticism’s textures and virtuosic aspects
(Stasˇkevicˇius 1981, p. 65). Instead, even
his early works reveal a preoccupation with
motivic development rather than the flowing,
“endless melody” lines associated with the
likes of Wagner. Freer chromaticism began to
appear in Cˇiurlionis’ music around 1901; by
1904 linear textures and chromatic lines
began to dominate his works. “The melodies
are now more independent of each other as a
result of increasing chromaticism. The triad
slowly disappears as a central structural unit
and is replaced by emancipated melodies
which assume the structural role formerly
relegated to structural harmony”
(Stasˇkevicˇius 1981, 69-70).
As an example, consider the Prelude VL 257
(Example 1), one of a set of four preludes
 CIM04 - Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology - Proceedings
composed in 1904. In key and meter it recalls
Chopin’s Prelude Op. 28 No. 21, which is
characterized by similar pervasive chromatic
descents in the bass register. Here, however,
the alto line is given a largely unbroken
chromatic line that slowly winds from Gb4
down to A3 and back up, ultimately reaching
Gb5 over its meandering trajectory (perhaps
reminiscent of the “wavy line” that Sepetis
and others remarked was a recurring feature
in Cˇiurlionis’s paintings). The soprano voice
is given over to a four-note series, <Eb, A,
Bb, C>, its reiterative character disguised
somewhat by octave displacements and
changes of harmonization. Cˇiurlionis also
used this technique in two variations cycles
(Variations on the Theme Sefaa Esec [1904]
and Variations on the Theme Besacas
[1905]), as well as his piano cycle The Sea
(1908), which he described as a “cycle of
small landscapes.” Landsbergis has described
this technique as “serial variation” (1992,
76), but classic serialist procedures such as
inversion or retrograde are nowhere to be
found here. Its cyclic repetition of four notes
instead suggests analogies with repetition of
design motifs in folk ornamental art.
Example 1. Cˇiurlionis, Prelude VL 257, mm. 1-8.
A later prelude, VL 335 in A major (1909),
shows an even more highly stylized approach
to the melodic line (Example 2). Here, the
melody is presented almost entirely in parallel
major thirds (or, in one passage, parallel
minor sixths). Only the last measure—where
the melodic 4-3-2-1 descent is given a
3
diatonic-thirds harmonization—deviates from
this strict linear parallelism.
Example 2. Cˇiurlionis, Prelude VL 335, mm. 1-4.
The emphasis on directed linear texture
shown in these preludes began soon after
Cˇiurlionis began painting and enrolled
himself at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts.
Vytautas Landsbergis (1992) denies any
causal link between Cˇiurlionis’s art
instruction and the change in his musical
style at about the same time: “there is no
conclusive evidence to support such a
straightforward explanation, and chronology
alone is not enough to establish the link”
(71). However, this denial should perhaps be
reconsidered.
First, Cˇiurlionis’ manuscripts are largely free
of any evidence of revisions (Stasˇkevicˇius
1981, p. 38). Landsbergis notes that the
manuscripts of 1904-1906 are “pencil
sketches jotted down in haste, occasionally
incomplete” (Landsbergis 1992, p. 71); his
later-period music (circa 1909) is similarly
described elsewhere as “his spontaneous
thoughts, produced in the form of sketches
and other short pieces” (40). While he
attributes this absence of revisions to the
“feverish pace of the composer’s thoughts
that prevented him from pausing even for a
moment to polish his creations” (71), Danute
Stasˇkevicˇius believes that the “clean
appearance of the manuscripts” is evidence
that “Cˇiurlionis set his ideas down only when
they were clearly formulated” (1981, p. 38).
She further notes that “Cˇiurlionis’s creative
process seems to have been spontaneous and
total, prompting him to write down only the
major musical ideas and to leave the
performance details for the final version”
(38). While it is possible that the absence of
 CIM04 - Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology - Proceedings
“performer-related notation” is evidence that
Cˇiurlionis never expected his work to be
published (38), it may be that the musical
parameters that translate more readily to
visual analogs—pitch intervals, register, and
rhythm—were of greater importance to
Cˇiurlionis. Once the desired contour or shape
was decided upon, the musical notation
becomes a matter of translation. For example,
Darius Kucinskas has shown that Cˇiurlionis
staggered instrument entries in a passage
from his symphonic poem The Sea (1903-
1907) to suggest the outline of a fir tree on
the score (2002, 55).
Although the reputed link between Cˇiurlionis’
musical training and the structure of such
works as the Sonata paintings has been
documented, to what extent did Cˇiurlionis’
newly discovered “visual thought” of 1904-
1906 permeate his music during those years
and thereafter? Investigating symmetrical
patterns in Cˇiurlionis’ music may reveal
some unacknowledged links between his
music and art. Our goal is not to show one
artistic medium as the “translation” of
another, but because the “structural similarity
of…different artistic media” allows us to
“uncover in-depth links between different
modes of … [Ciurlionis’s] artistic self
expressions” through the unity of his
thematic-structural material (Kucinskas
2003a, 4).
The four plane isometries
Washburn and Crowe (1988, 32) outline four
basic geometric motions that constitute
symmetrical patterns in decorative arts across
cultures and historical epochs. Each of these
motions— or plane isometries—has a musical
analog. For example, rotational symmetry
(about a point in the plane) is not only
characteristic of an equilateral triangle, which
is invariant under rotation by 60o (Washburne
and Crowe 1988, 45), but also of the
augmented triad, which enharmonically maps
onto itself at T4. Like the equilateral triangle,
the augmented triad permits two rotational
mappings (or inversions) before mapping
onto itself.3 Mirror reflection (on a line in the
plane) corresponds to real inversion;
translation (repeated shapes, with no fixed
axis of symmetry) corresponds to
transposition or to ostinato. The last motion
4
class, glide reflection (a symmetry that
combines mirror reflection with translation,
such as may be found in human footprints), is
somewhat rarer in music. However, the
interchange of motive and inversion in J. S.
Bach’s Bb Major Two-Part Invention, BWV 785
may be regarded as representative (see
especially measures 4 and 5).
Symmetry classifications may also be found in
combination. As an example, the spider web
in the Finale painting from Cˇiurlionis’s
Sonata of the Sun cycle (1907)4 may be
divided into four quadrants that admit
rotation by 90o, starting with the upper
vertical axial strand. Each quadrant is divided
into three parts, the secondary axial strands
forming angles of 35o, 20o, and 35o. Within
each quadrant, then, there is mirror reflection
symmetry (the unseen axis of symmetry
bisecting the 20o angle), and each quadrant
admits rotational symmetry to form the web.
Washburn and Crowe’s definition of symmetry
allows for resulting shapes that may not
appear to be visually symmetrical but may be
generated through symmetrical processes.
“Symmetry classification is not concerned
with the shape of the unit, but with the
motions which move the pattern along an axis
or around a point. These motions can be
thought of as generating the design” (55). For
example, the “serial” repetition of melodic
patterns in Cˇiurlionis’s piano work The Sea
(VL 317-319, 1908) is not in itself a
symmetrical construct but is considered
symmetrical by the process of translation. A
similar instance of translation in Cˇiurlionis’s
visual work can be found in the swallow motif
in the lower left of the Sonata of Spring:
Scherzo (1907).5
Examples of mirror and rotational symmetry
can be found in Cˇiurlionis’s music as well.
Particularly noteworthy in his Prelude VL 256
(1904) is the use of the [0268] set. This set
not only maps onto itself at T4I and T10I
(thus possessing mirror symmetry) but also
at T6 (rotational symmetry). In measures 4
and 5 (Example 3) the set functions as an
altered dominant seventh, alternating with
conventional dominant sevenths in a brief
circle-of-fifths sequence. The second [0268]
may be related to the first by T10 or T2I. In
the “reprise” at measures 16 and 17
 CIM04 - Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology - Proceedings
(Example 4), all four chords are [0268]s, the
second and fourth chords in the sequence
becoming altered as well. While the T10/T2I
relationship is preserved between the first
and third chords, additional relationships
obtain as well: T5 or T7I from the first to
second and second to third chord, T11 or T11I
from the third to fourth, and T4 or T0I from
the second to fourth.
Example 3. Cˇiurlionis, Prelude VL 256, mm. 4-5.
Example 4. Cˇiurlionis, Prelude VL 256, mm. 16-17.
Further musical-visual parallels
In applying Washburn and Crowe’s principles
of plane pattern analysis to the musical
domain, a number of interesting intersections
may be found with the work of the Russian
physicist Pavel B. Ivanov, concerning
“parallels to pitch perception in painting”
(Ivanov, 1995, p. 49). The basis of Ivanov’s
theory is a mapping of angle size and
direction to melodic intervals; chords are
similarly constructed as closed combinations
of angle forms, or polyhedrons. A 360o
rotation of a vector, returning to its initial
position, may be considered to be the visual
analogue for octave equivalence in music; the
360o rotation space may be divided into 12
intervals of 30o, corresponding to the equal-
tempered chromatic scale. The circle as a
representation of pitch space is found in the
writings of Johann David Heinichen (1728),
Johann Mattheseon (1735), and other
Baroque-era theorists (Lerdahl, 2001, p. 42);
such schemas were used to depict closeness
5
of key-area relationships, especially as the
adoption of equal temperament became more
widespread. However, the equal-tempered
“chromatic” circle (see Example 5) is a useful
schema for melodic structure (Brower 2000,
p. 339), and this conception is congruent with
Ivanov’s theory.
Example 5. The chromatic circle, after Brower 2000.
Applying aspects of Ivanov’s theory to
Cˇiurlionis’s musical and artistic work reveals
new correspondences between the artistic and
musical works of this enigmatic painter-
composer. Strictly speaking, “equal-
tempered” 30o angles are not particularly
common in Cˇiurlionis’s work, but proportions
of angles and shapes reveal other musical
analogs. For example, the 35o/20o/35o
proportion within the spider web in
Cˇiurlionis’s painting Sonata of the Sun:
Finale reduces to a proportion of 7:4:7. In
just intonation, 7:4 is the septimal minor
seventh (968.8 cents). The proportion 11:7,
obtained by isolating one 35o angle from its
complement within the 90o quadrant,
similarly corresponds to the undecimal minor
sixth (782.5 cents).
Recalling Washburne and Crowe’s observation
that symmetry may result from “motions
which move the pattern along an axis or
around a point…generating the design” (55),
we now turn to a late Cˇiurlionis prelude, VL
324 (1908) (Example 6).
 CIM04 - Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology - Proceedings

Example 6. Cˇiurlionis, Prelude VL 324, mm. 1-2. Ex

ample 7. Cˇiurlionis, Prelude VL 324, ascending and
The first two measures set the pattern for the descending patterns, respectively, inscribed in chromatic
piece. Observing the printed score, one is circle pitch space.
struck by the near-symmetrical parabolas
formed by the slurs; this appearance is
reinforced by the allocation of two measures
per line throughout. However, a subtler and
more intriguing symmetry is found within the
arcing patterns that the slurs connect. The
pattern can be interpreted as, initially, a
series of ascending minor sixths subjected to
sequential transpositions of a perfect fifth.
After six such transpositions, the pattern is
inverted, with descending minor sixths
sequentially transposed down a perfect fifth
with each iteration. After a quarter-note
respite, during which the bass “marks time”
with a trill-like half-step oscillation, the
pattern begins anew. Inscribing angles
representing melodic trajectory, after Ivanov,
within a chromatic circle representing equal-
tempered pitch space yields the shapes Ex
shown in Example 7. The first shape, ample 8. Cˇiurlionis, Prelude VL 324, union of both
representing the ascending pattern, admits ascending and descending patterns inscribed in
chromatic circle pitch space.
mirror symmetry about an axis of C#/G. The
second shape represents the descending Additional visual analogues, beyond
series; here we find that the axis of symmetry symmetrical chords and melodic patterns,
has rotated by 30o to D/G#. In other words, may be found in Cˇiurlionis’s music. One of
the “inversion” found in the descending the more interesting “visual” features in his
pattern may also be interpreted as the T1 music is the controlled expansion or
retrograde of the ascending pattern. The contraction of intervallic space, analogous to
union of the ascending and descending physical space or volume. Example 9 shows
patterns is diagrammed in Example 8; solid the left-hand pattern found in the opening to
lines represent the ascending pattern and his prelude VL 327, composed in 1909.
dashes represent the descending pattern. The Considered as a series of ascending intervals
total pattern admits both mirror and joined by stepwise descents, the pattern
rotational symmetry. shows a continuous intervallic expansion
within C major diatonic space (an ordered
interval set, or interval series, of <5, 7, 8,
10>).

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 CIM04 - Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology - Proceedings
Example 9. Cˇiurlionis, Prelude VL 327, left hand
expansion series.
The conclusion of The Sea’s second
movement (measures 30-34) offers one of
Cˇiurlionis’ most literally “visual” passages
(Example 10). Over a two-note ostinato, a
mostly chromatic descending line (measure
30) is subjected to a progressive series of
“erasures” in measures 31-33, until nothing is
left of it.
ample 10. Cˇiurlionis, The Sea VL 318
movement), mm. 30-34.
After The Sea was performed in St.
Petersburg on January 28, 1909, Cˇiurlionis
wrote to his fiancée Sofija Kymantaite that
“that which was truly my own [The Sea] and
truly new they failed to understand”
(Landbsergis 1992, 77). It may be that what
Cˇiurlionis found to be “truly his own” was
the correspondences between physical volume
and intervallic space, kinetic motion and
attack-point rhythm, tension-release and
register. Such correspondences had been
explored in an abstract fashion in some of the
earlier preludes, but they at last came to
programmatic fruition here.
Conclusion
During Cˇiurlionis’s lifetime, Lithuania was
part of the Russian empire; Druskininkai, in
the south of Lithuania where Cˇiurlionis spent
his formative years and to which he often
returned throughout his life, was part of
Poland. The Lithuanian language was not
spoken in Cˇiurlionis’s family as he was
growing up; his parents had adapted Polish
language and customs, because Lithuanian
was considered a language of the peasants
(Stasˇkevicˇius 1981, 14). Native Lithuanians
had few opportunities to receive systematic
musical training; accordingly, “Lithuanian
music had not been able to keep pace with
the musical developments of other European
countries” (Stasˇkevicˇius 1981, 1). Even
during his musical studies abroad—in Warsaw
and Leipzig—there is no evidence that
Cˇiurlionis had heard the more radical
developments in contemporary music, in part
because of the conservative outlook of his
instructors. His letters mention hearing the
music of Wagner and Strauss, but the only
contemporary French composer mentioned is
Saint-Saëns (Stasˇkevicˇius 1981, 55). There
is no evidence of his encountering the music
of the French Impressionists, or of the early
atonal works of Schoenberg or Berg. He
seems to have arrived at his innovations
through intuition—and, as I have attempted
to demonstrate in this article—that intuition
became increasingly filtered through ideas he
had later learned through formalized study of
the visual arts. Cˇiurlionis’ creative life as a
composer spans only about a decade—as a
Ex
(second painter, even less. This period was one of
intensive experimentation and creative
ferment for him.
Stasˇkevicˇius has written that “Cˇiurlionis’s
piano compositions reflect the state of
musical art at the turn of the twentieth
century, ranging as they do from conservative
Romanticism to the threshold of serialism and
atonality. Their various and often
contradictory features testify to his searchings
for a distinctive musical language that
nevertheless eluded him in the brief span of
his creative life” (Stasˇkevicˇius 1981, 86).
However, this is a misguided assessment, for
it implies a kind of lifelong eclecticism that
would perhaps better apply to composers
such as Charles Ives or Henry Cowell. In the
case of Cˇiurlionis, a trajectory can definitely
be traced from “conservative Romanticism” to
“the threshold of serialism and atonality.” The
common thread throughout his work is his
emphasis on line and register, resulting from
his contrapuntal outlook that was instilled in
his conservatory training at Warsaw and
Leipzig and remained with him for the rest of
his life. After he began his artistic training, he
7
 CIM04 - Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology - Proceedings
evidently came to see musical lines as lines,
in an abstract, spatial sense; this led to his
experiments with varying kinds of symmetries
and the ordering of intervallic space into
controlled patterns of expansion and
contraction. Therefore, we assert that his
search for a “distinctive musical language”
was not fruitless. In fact, his abstract
conceptualization of musical line and register,
as analogues for artistic principles, was his
distinctive musical language. Even
Stasˇkevicˇius admits that “the piano works
from 1904-09 do not resemble the music of
any of his contemporaries” (Stasˇkevicˇius
1981, 86).
Cˇiurlionis’s musical works remain largely
unknown in the West, partly because of the
delay in editing and publishing them in his
native country and largely due to Lithuania’s
cultural isolation from the West during the
years of Soviet occupation. With
independence has come a newfound interest
in the music of the Baltics—the success of
Estonian composer Arvo Pärt being but one
notable example. Accordingly, Edition Peters
published a collection of Cˇiurlionis’s piano
music in 1985; German pianist Nikolaus
Lahusen is in the process of recording
Cˇiurlionis’s complete piano works for the
Celestial Harmonies label (the first CD was
recorded in 2000). It is therefore becoming
easier to gain access to these pieces, though
there is still much that can be discovered in
them. It is hoped that this survey of some of
the distinctive tendencies of Cˇiurlionis’s art
manifested in his music—rather than the
other way around—will encourage further
study of a remarkable body of work.
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Bowlt, J. E. (1994). “M.K. Cˇiurlionis: His Visual
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Cˇiurlionis: Painter and Composer.
Collected Essays and Notes, 1906-1989.
Vilnius: Vaga.
Brower, C. (2000). “A Cognitive Theory of Musical
Meaning.” Journal of Music Theory 22/2:
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Chudovsky, V. A. (1914). “The Poet of the Vertical
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Birute Vaicˇjurgis-Sˇlezˇas. In Stasys
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1
Among the first analyses of Cˇiurlionis’s art are
Chudovsky 1914 and Ivanov 1914. A number of later
studies seek to contextualize Cˇiurlionis among his
contemporaries in European art , rarely agreeing in their
interpretations. Fauchereau 2000, for example, considers
Cˇiurlionis’s links with French symbolism, whereas Rannit
1950 argues for Cˇiurlionis’s primacy as the “first
abstract artist,” a label contested by Nina Kandinsky and
others (see Gosˇtautas 1994). More generalized
appraisals include Weidle 1939, Nasvytis 1972a, Bowlt
1994, and Andriusyte-Zukiene 2000.
2
For more information on the influence of Chopin on
Cˇiurlionis, see Stasˇkevicˇius (1981), 58-62.
3
The spellings of the various [048] sets in Schoenberg’s
“Angst und Hoffen,” no. 7 from Das Buch der hängenden
Gärten, opus 15 (1908-09), demonstrate the property of
rotational symmetry beautifully. Other sets displaying
rotational symmetry include [0369] and [02468T].
4
The painting may be viewed online at
<http://neris.mii.lt/art/Cˇiurlionis/chronol.html>, and
also at
<http://www.russianavantgard.com/master_03_artists_
world_of_art/mikalojus_chiurlionis-Master%203.html>.
(Information accurate as of 17 June 2003.) It is
reproduced in Cˇiurlionis (1972), plate 9.
5
The painting may be viewed online at
<http://neris.mii.lt/art/Cˇiurlionis/chronol.html>, and
also at
<http://www.russianavantgard.com/master_03_artists_
world_of_art/mikalojus_chiurlionis-Master%203.html>.
(Information accurate as of 17 June 2003.) It is also
reproduced in Cˇiurlionis (1972), plate 21, and in Rannit
(1984), p. 100.