In the Magic Mirror for Violoncello (No. 16a from Paul Klee: Painted Songs)

In the Magic Mirror for Violoncello

No. 16a from Paul Klee: Painted Songs

Jonathan Posthuma

About Paul Klee: Painted Songs Paul Klee: Painted Songs is an ongoing series of instrumental chamber works inspired by the visual art of Paul Klee. The series began in 2011 as a composition assignment from my first composition teacher, Luke Dahn, who asked all of his students to compose a work for clarinet and piano inspired by the iconic "Twittering Machine." Over the years, I have added to the series, continuing to draw on the wealth of inspiration from Klee's images, which are filled with musical references, textures, colors, and symbols that closely link musical concepts with Klee's philosophy of visual art. To me, these pieces are musical settings of visual poetry, hence "painted songs." What continues to fascinate me about Klee is both the diversity and consistency of his total body of work. Throughout his vast career, certain ideas continue to resurface and find new applications. In this spirit, Paul Klee: Painted Songs continues to expand, ever exploring the poetry of his work through musical interpretation.

Performing Paul Klee: Painted Songs Each piece within Paul Klee: Painted Songs can be performed separately and is considered an independent, free-standing musical work. But, performers are encouraged to recontextualize these pieces into "galleries." Like a curator of an art gallery, performers can combine these works in any order or number, interpolate them with other works by other composers, or arrange them for different instrumental forces. Some pieces are more flexible than others, but the full work is designed to be self-referential and open to interpretation. As the series grows larger, I have aided "curators" by arranging and composing my own "galleries," multi-movement works that were conceived together, but even these can be rearranged and will evolve as more "painted songs" are added to the series and developed in collaboration with performers.

About "In the Magic Mirror" (Zauberspiegelbild, 1934) "Illustrating what Klee called his method of "taking a line for a walk," a meandering red line twists and turns down the center of the canvas, delineating the features of a face. The tight curves on the brow suggest the figure is concentrating, while the tension between the nose and mouth, which pull in opposite directions, conveys anxiety. In contrast to the cheerful cheeks, the figure's tear-shaped eyes communicated distress. The thinly painted, ghostly outline of the head and shoulders is in contrast to the crisp rendering of the face. Klee paints the heart, the true createive center, black, thereby suggesting the pall that settled over this figure, and by extension, the artist at this time." — Art Institute of Chicago, online catalog description Note: No. 16a "In the Magic Mirror" appears as Mvt. VI in Gallery II and Mvt. VI in Gallery IV. No. 16b and 16c are transposed versions for violin and viola respectively.

In the Magic Mirror (Zauberspiegelbild, 1934) No. 16a from Paul Klee: Painted Songs Slow; Freely; q = 52

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Violoncello

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Jonathan Posthuma (b. 1989)

17

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© 2017 by Jonathan Posthuma Demodocus Music Publishing / www.jonathanposthuma.com

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ppp Saint Paul, MN June 2016 / November 2017