Counterpoints: Dialogues between Music and the Visual Arts

(Hardback)

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This book's main focus is music and its relationship with painting, sculpture and architecture. Philippe Junod draws on theoretical and practical examples to show how different art movements throughout history have embraced or rejected creative combinations. He explains how the Renaissance, Neoclassicism and certain brands of modernism tried to claim the purity of each mode of expression, while other movements such as Romanticism, Symbolism and Surrealism called for a fusion of the arts. Counterpoints: Dialogues between Music and the Visual Arts is a unique cultural history that provides a critical understanding of a popular but unheralded art form.

Reviews

this is a comprehensive, historical introduction to the relationship between music and art. Philippe Junod examines that idea of an original unity between the arts, their battle for supremacy and the complex interweaving of parallels, analogies and synaesthesia (could colours be used like notes in a scale) . . . this is a valuable and eloquent reference work, taking us to the dissolution of categories we find today. * BBC Music Magazine *
For decades colleagues and I have been enlightened and delighted by the insights of Philippe Junod, art historian extraordinaire with an expert passion for music (gleaned in part from study with Nadia Boulanger). At last English-speaking readers can enjoy his sympathy and depth of understanding, always conveyed with refreshing turns of phrase that lose nothing in this excellent translation. Reading Philippe Junod, I always sense anew, and with enjoyment, the rich fabric of our artistic history. * Professor Roy Howat, concert pianist, editor, author, Research Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music, London and Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow *
From opera to the symphonic poem, to paintings inspired by music, many attempts have been made to pair sounds with pictures and to combine the arts of time and space. Counterpoints explores this artistic evolution from ancient times to the present day . . . The anteriority and originality of Philippe Junod's work as well as his immense erudition, is a great chance for English-speaking colleagues to have access to his "unique cultural history that provides a critical understanding of a popular but unheralded art form". * Music in Art *

Author Bio

Philippe Junod was Professor of History of Art at the University of Lausanne from 1971 to 2003. He is the author of numerous works on art theory.