Death and Fire: Dialogue with Paul Klee | Tan Dun

Orchestration
2(2pic)+pic(afl).2.2+bcl.2+cbn/4331/4perc/hp/str
Duration27 min

CategoryOrchestra
Topic
- Visual Art

Composer
Tan Dun

Performances
View Past Performances

Programme Note

Some years ago, I went to an exhibition on the painter Paul Klee at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Extremely moved, I decided to write a symphony, which unfolded like a discussion - a dialogue between myself and Klee’s paintings. Though, it is not in any sense a musical description of particular works, the symphony is constructed of many small sections reminiscent of Klee's method and imagined as a complete, continuous whole.

Klee was concerned with finding formal means to embody deep universal feelings without bitterness or pathos, using a sophisticated complexity to make a concentrated simplicity. Line, which in his thinking was associated both with melody and dynamics, was a major element in his work. This is closely related to the Chinese aesthetic, which is linear, non-harmonic, and seeks the soul of the work rather than its surface effects.

— Tan Dun

Media

Death and Fire, "Dialogue with Paul Klee": I. Portrait

Death and Fire, "Dialogue with Paul Klee": Insert 1: Animals at Full Moon

Death and Fire, "Dialogue with Paul Klee": Insert 2: Senicio

Death and Fire, "Dialogue with Paul Klee": Insert 3: Ad Parnassum

Death and Fire, "Dialogue with Paul Klee": II. Self Portrait

Death and Fire, "Dialogue with Paul Klee": Insert 4: Twittering Machine

Death and Fire, "Dialogue with Paul Klee": Insert 5: Earth Witches

Death and Fire, "Dialogue with Paul Klee": Insert 6: Intoxication

Death and Fire, "Dialogue with Paul Klee": Insert 7: J.S. Bach

Death and Fire, "Dialogue with Paul Klee": III. Death and Fire

Scores

Reviews

DEATH AND FIRE's imaginative flights put [it] in the upper echelon of Paul Klee-inspired music. Tan's composition has humor and pathos and is hugely entertaining.

Stephen Ellis, Fanfare