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Exhibitions / The music and the flight |
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| THE MUSIC AND THE FLIGHT* |
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by Giorgio Capezzani
* Introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition "The music and the flight", Biblioteca Civica in Gorizia, 1976
Among the different aspects of art, the playbill is an actual example of how it's possible for new materials to realize new patterns of expression that are at the same time a live proof of the taste and the custom at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
This exhibition, which is held in Gorizia for the first time, is only a part of the collection on display in the Aviation Museum Caproni in Taliedo. Specifically, it's about materials concerning Mitteleurope, that geographical area that still nowadays preserves a particular atmosphere, in spite of its current condition.
The covers of these scores fully reflect the spirit of that age, both in the Art Nouveau style and through images showing the astonishment of the common people on the ground for the first flights. They witness disappeared planes and an entire artistic spirit that grips people's heart. The charm of the balloons, of the airships, of the first airplanes struck so much Europeans' imagination that many musicians devoted to these first flight pioneers their pieces, maybe not of the highest quality, nevertheless expressing a necessary outlet for such heroism.
Within the today rediscovery of the artistic world, also this collection offers its own contribution. It's possible actually to have a flight history even through the musical image, in addition to witnessing a graphic style which is an example not to neglect. In the drawings on the covers, especially on those in colour, there is an harmony in an unceasing becoming, in dynamics within their sounds. Almost a balance between colours and sounds that in their own sections, spatial signs and melodic trajectories fit in the space. It's a clear relation between the visual field and the graphic and sound ones. Let's just think of Klee's creative work, in which the music is really important; Kandinsky himself pointed out analogies between music and figurative arts.
After the war spell and the daily ups and downs, it's clear the Mitteleurope peoples' wish for a sort of breeziness, the wish to enjoy life plunging in luxury desires and loosing themselves in those musical vibrations. It's the period of a sophisticated artlessness in music that accepts in itself the rhythm and the modernity of the metropolis, but at the same time suffered the vital waves of the new "belle époque". An aspect of this process is the return to the romantic music, filled up with sentimentalism, with a folk spirit based on the exaltation of the new mechanic means, the flight promoter.
These covers, moreover, had a very powerful influence, they represented a sort of public display for all the people who were not interest in arts or who never stopped to look carefully at a painting. In this way they may have helped to boost an artistic consciousness.
The drawer's freedom of colours and forms is not always allowed to the painter; boldness and an absolutely free choice are permitted only providing that these covers would reach  their purpose to attract general attention within few seconds striking the imagination and the eyes. Their purpose was to offer to a large audience a visual message connected to a musical aspect; that's the reason why they used to link the peculiarity of the prompt attraction to a lasting impression. In these works there is a whole age, a manner that shows itself with perspicacity and variety of meanings underlined by contemporary events or to advertise industrial products.
This exhibition undeniable value is to help us to get to know an ignored aspect of the graphic and chrome-lithographic technique by which, as these scores show, the printing reached a development that was the most effective means of attraction. At the same time it witnesses the finding of technical solutions to advertising problems and the finding of a style that was, with the passing of years, one of the many reasons of its success.
Such documents make up research object among a wider and wider number of collectors, establishing in this way the social value of these playbills that contain a sufficient language autonomy. We need to consider that also in the playbill, as in every other artistic work, there is the skill of an artist with all his insights and ideal excitement: so we ought to regard such graphic products as genuine works of art.
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Istituto per gli Incontri Culturali Mitteleuropei
via Mazzini 20, 34170 Gorizia, Italy - tel. +39 0481 535085 fax: +39 0481 536600
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