Description
Symphonism as a strategy of translating a lyric poem into an audio-visual aria
The research question of this study is, how to translate a written poem into other media like music, painting, or film. Therefore, the authors are focusing on the prosody, the rhythm of the language. Via the concept of symphonism, established at the beginning of the 20th century, two aspects come into play: 1. Is this modernist concept still valuable as an artistic framework for intermedial transfigurations? 2. How can the formal dimension of lingual rhythm be transposed to and integrated in the needs of melody, still and moving image(s)?
The researcher Marina Kazakova designed four experiments as correspondences with the singer John David Vandevert, the music composer Giorgio Briani, and the visual artist Sara Maino. Starting from a poem Foresta Rossa by Marina Kazakova which was written in response to a painting Da-No by Maino, they all tried to do right to the second aspect of the research, while the first aspect is discussed during the whole process by Marina herself. So, there is no origin – the starting point itself is already a transfiguration, a puzzling moment to question more profoundly the exchange between different media and their conditions.
Volkmar Mühleis
