LUKE GULLICKSON

Great-Great-Imperial Family of the Pacific

2/13/2012

 
Let's have another post about outsider art, deal? Deal.

My latest interest is Adolf Wölfli, an amazing Swiss artist who lived in a mental institution and produced books and drawings that often included musical notation. He was an inspiration for composer Per Nørgård. As so many times before with self-taught artists, I was taken by the drawings' striking atmospheres. And I started to write music.

Songs, this time. Simple songs. Naïve melodies, strange Ivesian chords, clipped forms, drifting meters.

Naïveté is key here. Modern music is often about surface ambiguity underset by intense structural logic. What I get from outsider art is the opposite -- simple, even "naïve" surfaces that belie structural ambiguities and subtleties.

(The drawings that grace the popular Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck, though not an example of outsider art, draw their magnetism from the same formula.)

So in my Wölfli Songs the melodies are simple and short, the sort of things you might hear someone casually humming or whistling on the street. It's what lies beneath them that is strange, mysterious, inscrutable.

The wonderfully evocative and whimsical titles are cribbed from his drawings:

1. Telescope
2. London-North, 1911
3. Poli-Chinelle, the Plum Queen
4. Saint-Mary-Castle-Giant-Grape


Comments are closed.

    A Selection

    • Gone Walkabout
    • Migration
    • Music as Drama
    • Crossroads II
    • 10 Best of 2014
    • January: Wyoming and the Open
    • ​February: New Mexico and the Holes
    • Coming Up
    • Notes on The Accounts
    • Crossroad Blues
    • Labyrinths

    Archives

    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    September 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    August 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010

    RSS Feed