XUL SOLAR AND THE MUSIC: the Meeting of Arts By Cintia Cristiá Xul Solar. Visiones y Revelaciones. MALBA Colección Costantini, Buenos Aires del 17 de junio al 15 de agosto de 2005. Pinacoteca do Estado de Sao Paulo del 17 de septiembre al 6 de noviembre de 2005. Cintia Cristiá was awarded her Doctorate in History of Music and Musicology from the Université de Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV, with her thesis, Xul Solar y la música, presented in December 2004. She has given conferences in Argentina and The Netherlands, presented papers in important congresses and given seminars in her specialty at Universities in London, Glasgow, Birmingham and Paris. She received a distinction in the Primer Concurso Latinoamericano de Musicología “Gourmet Musical” (2002), and her essays have been published in Argentina, France and Lithuania. At the opening of the retrospective show of Xul Solar’s work at Alberto Ginastera, Carlos Guastavino, Carlos Vega and Atahualpa the Buenos Aires Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1968, Jorge Luis Yupanqui as well. He read about many aspects of the world of music Borges closes his speech with a somewhat enigmatic invitation: “As Xul –dance, the piano’s mechanism, folk songs, harmony, counterpoint would say, let’s pan-live in this world of his visions, of his lines, of joy, of and different types of music– as well as music’s relation with other art purity and of the melody of his colors” 1. Why does he speak of melody? forms. He participated in studio sessions, sang in choruses, played the Is he suggesting his colors are organized in a set sequence? Or is he al- piano, and frequented the ballet, concerts, conferences on music and luding to the musical side of Solar’s work, and urging a systematic study the opera –all of which confirm the importance of music in his life. thereof? Probably inspired by Xul’s piano of colors, Borges’s musical His taste for Richard Wagner and Johann Sebastian Bach, followed metaphor is not an isolated case among Xul Solar´s critics. It makes by Debussy and Stravinsky, is evident from his collection of scores, one wonder about the importance of music in the life of the artist and books and records. There is, however, a divide between the composers its influence on his pictorial work2. whose recordings he liked to listen to (Honegger, Richard Strauss, Ravel There are many questions: what instruments did Xul play? Did he and Liszt) and those he played on the piano. This latter group includes sing, go to concerts? Who were his favorite composers and what kind Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann and Schoenberg, as well as some of music did he prefer? At what point did he take an interest in music twenty composers for harpsichord or virginal (Frescobaldi, Scarlatti, and when did he begin to associate it with painting? It is necessary to Cou- perin, Rameau, Byrd, Gibbons and others). In terms of historical investigate whether there are influences to his synesthetic tendency and periods in his collection, there are few pieces from the Classical determine the effect of music on his other fields of interests. Are there period, and, among Romantic composers, the absence of works by documents that give further information about Xul’s research into the Schubert and Brahms is striking. His collection contains less popular field of musical notation? What are the concepts behind his keyboards music (specifi- cally jazz, Latin music and tango), and almost all of it is of colors and where do they lie in relation to similar inventions? How is in record form. The absence of chamber music and symphonies is the musical manifest in his paintings? Is this a conscious relation? To surprising. these ends, it is useful to reflect on the way music connects to Solar’s A study of the collection’s genres would lead to other conclusions. aesthetic thinking and to his work’s overriding symbology. Finally, what First, the almost total absence of piano recordings confirms that Xul does his work teach us about music? Or is music the key to understand- was an excellent piano player, which allowed him to play his favorite ing certain Xul Solar paintings? pieces. Second, two genres predominate: opera, especially Germanic opera, and ballet, especially by French composers. Russian composers STUDIES, PRACTICE AND MUSICAL INTERESTS hold an important place in both opera and ballet, and a certain predilec- The zither currently at the Museo Xul Solar might have been the tion for symphonic choral music is also evident. These preferences con- first instrument that the artist learned how to play, perhaps under his firm the artist’s interest in combined artistic media: sounds and words, father’s instruction. From a family of music lovers, Emilio Schulz (Xul’s music and gesture, stage sets and harmonies. father) carried on the musical traditional by sending his son to study the violin, the piano, music theory, and by taking him to concerts. Later, WAGNER AND THE MEETING OF THE ARTS the young Alejandro would sit at the piano during the long melancholy After the Teatro Colon opened in 1908, Xul was able to listen to days and the deep lonely nights that he spent pondering his vocation; Wagnerian dramas in an ideal setting4. The influence of this composer there, he would figure out melodies, explore chords and try to make up on Xul is so deep that it can be felt in his autobiographical writings, even harmonies. Music was an important part of the creative foundation of when there is no explicit reference to Wagner. Take, for example, the his early youth. Along with poetry, meditation, readings in the esoteric following text, where Xul uses an intense poetic style: and philosophy, painting and drawing, music was the magma where the anguish and desires that tormented him blended. October 1910 – Buenos Aires – night– In Europe, Xul’s musical awareness –and indeed his general cultural I am oppressed by a vague suffocation of desires, like rivaling and deadly awareness– broadened. He was able to listen to different sorts of excel- enemy fogs; in the midst of my agitation, my spirit flutters about, looking lent music in concert halls and through the scores that he could buy for a way to escape, I don’t know where to. I hear the splintering waves from between the hum of the sea and I feel cooling breezes; but the night- and then play on the piano. When he returned to Argentina, he made time fleets of wandering ships vanish when called; mounted stern giants contact with local composers and musicians like those gathered at the go silently through distant deserts of air, hiding the tight-colored moon, but 3 Grupo Renovación . In his library there are scores autographed by Juan their lesser souls do not understand me; ghosts, veiled things fill the air, I Carlos Paz and Roberto García Morillo, and Xul is likely to have known can not define them nor do they help me; keen hidden laughter and quick heard movements attract me fatally, while the fogs, like snakes, vanish. Clear visions in the night, rhythmic musical sighs from the florid jungle, was visually striking. Xul Solar curled up in this box to sound chords that assorted rustling waters dance about and the breath-perfume of the took him to the Olympus of his reveries10. 217 young Spring plays and surrounds me like delicious flames, in delirious fever they strike me dumb, Oh! And a lively group of delicate maidens Might these men have witnessed some of Xul’s music-induced and magnificent mermaids! But I do not understand their dances and nearby words, the most lovely trances? one is at my side and the tiring delight numbs me painfully, the sad fogs In the artist’s earlier discourse, he mixes images of vision (fogs, clear hiding the picture, worthy of eternity in its young life visions in the night), smell (breath-perfume), touch (I feel cooling breezes, - Oh! What hands, what calls will lead me to pure air, to radiant sun delirious fevers), movement (my spirit flutters, dancing waters), audition and to midday satisfaction? I will become an old hat at this anguished (splintering waves from between the hum of the sea, the murmur of the struggle; with my hands, my eager eyes and ears, with my burning and waters, rythmic musical sighs) and taste (delicious flames). This charac- wounding brain, I will find the way; if there is no way, if there is no land teristic is also true of poets like Baudelaire and Rimbaud, who write free of anguish for me, all of me, within my thoughts, I will make a from the common depths of sensations 11. It makes us wonder if Xul was 5 world for myself, for my brothers . already reading these poets. The answer lies a little later in the artist’s diary, when he writes: Splintering waves from between the hum of the sea seems to describe the beginning of The Rhinegold, whose erotic atmosphere resembles the I have been preparing to go to Europe with enough money for a month, feel of Xul’s writing. The lively group of delicate maidens and magnificent and I have gone back and forth between feelings of hope, the desire to mermaids is a reference to Rhine’s daughters, while the keen hidden struggle, rest and utter desperation. Un matin nous partons, le cerveau 12 laughter and quick heard movements that attract him fatally bring to plein de flamme, le cœur gros de rancune et de désirs amers . mind those daughters’ flirtatious teasing of Alberich. The musical set- ting is evident in the rhymic musical sighs, and the dancing waters refer Written in French, these verse were not written by Xul.