Stellar Sonata

The artist

Čiurlionis was a Lithuanian composer and painter. His most famous musical compositions are probably the symphonic poems. In the Forest (Miške) and The Sea (Jūra). They are both in a late romantic idiom. As a painter was Čiurlionis was a symbolist rooted in Lithuanian mythology, and his paintings were built in part by musical form principles.

"Musical" paintings

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis painted seven pictorial sonatas. He named them with numbers (titles was later adapted). His pictorial sonatas can be connected with the theory of synaesthesia, the fusion of music and art. Ciurlionis' pictorial sonatas embody an original approach to synæstesis topics. The artist uses musical compositional principles of the paintings that associate with the structure of musical forms (such as sonata, fugue or prelude). He united different motives from reality, different spatial levels, dates and contrasting symbolic images into a single compositional system (cycle), based on the dynamics of rhythm. "Stellar Sonata. Allegro" is an artistic vision of outer space. In this sonata expose the viewer to fantastic multi-layered images. All of the compositional elements of the painting are arranged in a complex rhythm in different variations. In the portrayal of the third dimension are not used the room's perspective, instead chosen overlays of varying opacity. Čiurlionis imagines the universe as a grand polyphonic symphony of junctions of cosmic nebulae, stars and sunlight. The waves of this space ocean - the songs - mixed together to form a rich, ornamented and beautiful network pierced of the Milky Way path. The movement in outer space is not chaotic, but rhythmically and harmonically. The symbol of order and harmony in the universe is made like an angel, a light figure of standing on a tapered tower of light. The second part of the sonata ( "Stellar sonata. Andante") is as solemn and monumental, but much more restrained: a few bands of cosmic fog blur one spherical mass of a planet, perhaps the Earth itself, and an angel goes slowly over Milky Way band, and gives the impression of serene and magnificent music. This is one of the artist's most musical creations, full of the wonderful interplay of colors, rhythms variations and a powerful imagination.