Harmony and Paul Klee
We search for a subject when colours are constructed into shapes and forms and musical notes are composed into melodies. However, if a concrete subject matter is not necessary for music, then it is not for art; in this way, musicalised abstraction began in the early twentieth century.
In this article, I will discuss the origins of Western colour-music theory, which began with the Ancient Greeks, in order to discuss the musical ouvre of Paul Klee. I will carry out a visual analysis of his artworks to evaluate the nature of ‘harmony’ and ‘rhythm’ within an artistic context. According to the Oxford Dictionary, harmony, which stems from the Latin harmonica, meaning ‘agreement’, can be defined in two ways: “a pleasant combination, especially of musical notes”, and “being friendly to each other and not quarrelling”. This suggests a double meaning to the word, which evokes values of moral goodness and an overall ‘ideal’ in addition to music terminology. Therefore, one could summarise ‘harmony’ in the context of music, notes which agree with each other, creating pleasant sounds. In the context of colour, chromatic tones complement each other, creating pleasing effects.
The Ancient Greek mathematician Pythagoras was among the first to link music and mathematics; he has been named the ‘father of numbers’ and the ‘father of harmony’. He constructed a system of ratios based on the musical scale and mathematics, to equate them to the divine order of the universe. He discovered the overtone series and the theory of ratios in music, becoming the founder of the primary harmonic of music composition. The Pythagoreans promoted the therapeutic value of music. Aristotle's pupil, Aristoxanus, stated that the Pythagoreans used music to ‘purge the soul’, just as medicine purged one physically, suggesting a moralising agent. The musical scale in Ancient Greece called the ‘genos’, introduced by Archytas of Tarentum in the fourth century BC, was labelled the ‘chromatic’ scale. Divided into semi-tones, it was understood as ‘colouring’ its neighbouring ‘diatonic’ scale consisting of full tone intervals. Colour was understood as a quality of sound itself, likened to ‘timbre’. With terms such as ‘harmony’ being used in art, the traditional language for both media became interwoven and exchangeable from early in Western history.
Paul Klee, New Harmony (1936), oil on canvas
From 1921, Klee and Kandinsky worked together at the Bauhaus, even living as neighbours when they relocated to Dessau. Klee ran a series of classes solely exploring rhythm in art. New Harmony (1936) demonstrates a compositional chessboard pattern which Klee frequently utilised to stimulate ‘structural rhythms’. Some argue that Klee used twelve different tones of colour within these paintings, responding to Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve- tone musical scale. However, this interpretation is doubtful, with much evidence pointing to Klee’s lack of interest in Schoenberg and contemporary music. Klee wrote in his diary, “One day I must be able to improvise freely on the keyboard of colours: the row of watercolours in my paintbox”. The metaphor of a keyboard could mirror Newton’s scale of seven colours to seven notes. Moreover, one could compare the constituent rectangles to piano keys or to musical notes, which harmonise with those around them, and even create chords. Klee wrote, “Since music sounds mechanical and free of expression when played without dynamics, I choose the qualitative representation and render the line with more or less weight, in analogy with the tone quality”. We can denote from this that the structure of the music takes precedence over its expressive and emotive qualities. However, he is still concerned with ‘tone quality’, for instance, dynamics, which Klee suggests through the weight of the line. Therefore, if we translate this into New Harmony one can understand the varying pigmentation of blocks of colour: stronger colours being louder and muted colours being quieter.
Paul Klee, Polyphony (1932), tempera on canvas.
In his 1917 diary, Klee wrote, “Polyphonic painting is superior to music in so far as the temporal element has more of a spatial quality. The sense of simultaneity emerges in an enriched form”. In Polyphony (1932) the base colours in rectangular fashions are overlaid with dots of contrasting colour. The structural rhythm is dictated by the chessboard pattern. This mosaic of dots is created by layering soft washes of colour over opaque white paint. The overlapping of forms suggests the ‘many voices’ of a polyphony, and the variations of a melody occurring in succession. The brightest forms on top of the layers suggest a closer sense of time, with the faded forms being past phrases. The many layers of independent ‘voices’ combine into one harmonious whole. Klee wrote in his diary, “More and more parallels between music and graphic art force themselves upon my consciousness. Yet no analysis is successful. Certainly, both arts are temporal: this could be proved easily.’’ Klee sees Temporality as a common denominator between music and painting. Although in music, the musician controls its temporal progression and what the listener hears, in painting, the viewer absorbs things at their own personal pace, in a manner not dictated by the artist. However, temporality is present in painting through our perception of its compositional arrangement, bringing together rhythm and harmony visually. A temporal ‘visual simultaneity’ is possible in painting, as the eye can move freely in any direction across an image. Klee strove to break down the distinction between art and space and time, particularly in polyphonic compositions. Since there is no use of line or distinct form in Polyphony, but solely layered washes of flat colour, Klee achieved this temporal progression, which can be inherently linked to rhythm, through the arrangement of colour without line.
Shaw-Miller discusses the etymology of ‘rhythm’. In Ancient Greece, “rhythmoi” was used to describe positions of a dancer’s body mid-action, and the natural pattern created by these at certain points in music. In this context, rhythm refers to the resting positions of figures at stages of a repetitive process. One can see how this concept of pattern and repetition has been adopted by Klee, particularly in his rectangular sequences. Music was the optimal initiating factor in the early twentieth century to help art transcend the material world into abstraction. The ‘ideal’ harmonies of interval ratios, initially founded by the Greeks, can be compared to the relationships of different colours to one another and indeed, compositional sequences.
Bibliography:
Dalahunty, Andrew; Fred McDonald, Oxford Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Düchting, Hajo, Paul Klee, Painting Music, Munich: Prestel Publishing, 2012.
Klee, Paul, Pedagogical Sketchbook, trans. by Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, London: Faber, 1953.
Shaw-Miller, Simon, Visible Deeds of Music. Art and Music from Wagner to Cage, New Haven, and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
Sanders, Edel, ‘Music and Mathematics: A Pythagorean Perspective’, University of New York in Prague, 29/06/2015, https://www.unyp.cz/news/music-and- mathematics-pythagorean-perspective/.
Vergo, Peter, That Divine Order. Music and the Visual Arts from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century, London: Phaidon Press, 2005.
