(The context of this article is conscious/subconscious influence of music on art/design with respect to Wassily Kandinksy & Arnold Schoenberg. The content should not be taken as a science, but rather an opinion, from real working knowledge of creative process and everyday creative development)

The common factor between music and painting is that they are both compositions. Wassily Kandinsky was fascinated by music’s emotional power and used music as an inspirational tool. Music expresses itself through sound and time. The beauty of music is that it allows a listener a freedom of imagination, interpretation, and emotional response that is not based on the literal but also on the abstract qualities of painting. In other words, one can deduce that music is the language that the soul is affected by in a very powerful manner; music is subtle, invisible, but its effects are tangible and profound, even though it is not always empirically provable. In the words of Friedricch Nietzsche “Without music, life would be a mistake.” Let’s not forget how music had contributed to Albert Einstein’s intellectual performance; he’s also quoted saying. “A table, a chair, a fruit basket and a violet, what else does a man need to be happy?

Kandinksy believed in a concept called ‘Gesamtkunstkwek’ or the total work of art. Kandinsky believed that music can respond and appeal directly to the artist’s subconscious and express his spiritual values. The artist went further reiterated that music advances the human to the epoch of greater spirituality (Dabrowski 2007) Spirituality, being that which relieves the human body from the straining emotions that the material world yield when the individual interacts with it; it helps transcend all the negatives that are relayed and absorbed from materialistic dimensions.

Total work of art that was formed by a mixture of language, music, and visual arts as playing equal roles in a viewer’s perception of art. This was in-part to the synaesthic experiences he had as a child in Moscow when he listened to music, in which sounds generated visual experiences for him. They fed him with what Einstein regards as more important than knowledge, imagination.

Kandinsky came up with several new ideas in art relating to human spirituality. One of them was inner necessity. He was devoted to the inner beauty, and deep spiritual desire which was a key aspect of his theoretical research Kandinsky was stimulated by color in an unusual way from childhood. In fact in 1889, he was part of an ethnographic research group that travelled to Vologda region of Moscow. He states that the houses and churches were decorated with amazing tonalities of color and shimmer, as if he was entering a painting. Kandinsky was also influenced by Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891), she was one of the pioneers of theosophy in modern times. Her theories stated that creation is a geometrical progression, beginning with a single point. Kandinsky further discusses this in the following books Concerning the Spiritual In Art (1910) and Point and Line to Plane (1926) Being friends with Arnold Schoenberg. Kandinsky expressed this communion between artist and viewer as being simultaneously available to the various sense faculties as well as to the intellect (synesthesia). As Kandinsky painted he theorized that various chords on a piano correspond and associate with colors. He developed a system on geometric figures and relationships and claimed that the circle is the most peaceful shape and represents the human spirit.

Kandinsky was a credited and respected pianist and cellist, and he even occasionally composed music. He had spent considerable time studying and pondering upon the affinities between art and music. Like Schoenberg liberated music from tonality, Kandinsky wanted to free art from representation. He believed that abstraction and atonality aimed for the same goal. He even developed a term “inner necessity” In which he stated had mystical sources. Firstly he said that every artist as a creator must give expression to what is characteristic of him, secondly characteristic to his nation or epoch, thirdly every artist must present as a servant of art what is unique to art generally.

In comparison to the conventional musical compositions. Schoenberg’s works displayed a radically increased chromaticim and atonality. Kandinksy understood such concepts very well, and realized that he was executing his paintings in the same manner. He rejected the traditional systems of pictorial and representational compositions and instead portrayed harmonious of color and form. Furthermore he distributed these elements equally throughout the composition, without a structure or hierarchy, to achieve a higher state of visual and emotional resonance.

There are other biological determined reasons also why Kandinsky was so fascinated with music. He was a synaesthere a person who could see music and hear colors. The mysticism surrounding this condition was paramount in the particular style of expression that Kandinksy innovated. His paintings were abstract works of emotional states, rather than literal representation of the world that humans normally experience.

Kandinsky was very much engulfed with the rhythm of music and he associated it with specific colors and emotions. It reminded him of an imaginary Moscow, inspired visions of a fairy tale scene from his childhood. As he stated ‘The violins, the deep tones of the basses, and especially the wind instruments at that time embodied for me all the power of that pre-nocturnal hour. I saw all my colors in my mind; they stood before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me. I did not dare use the expression that Wagnet had painted ‘my hour’ musically.’ (Dabrowski 2007)

The performance conjured for him visions of a certain time in Moscow that he associated with specific colors and emotions. It inspired in him a sense of a fairy-tale hour of Moscow, which always remained the beloved city of his childhood. His recollection of the Wagner performance attests to how it had retrieved a vivid and complex network of emotions and memories from his past. In an instant, Kandinsky realized the tremendous power that art could exert over the spectator and that painting could develop powers equivalent to those of music.

In 1905 Schoenberg pioneered an innovation in the world of art, he introduced a chromatic structure that he defined as a ‘developing variation’. In this movement there was a continuing evolution and transformation of the thematic substance while simultaneously rejecting repetition. This led to a constant unfolding of a musical arrangement in contrast to the symmetrical balances of equal phrases or sections corresponding to thematic content. Thus Schonberg achieved a state in which there was rich structure, dense layers of information, and equally developed parts of composition.

These new compositional structures led him toward the ‘free chromaticism’ which placed emphasis on non-harmonic tones and the “emancipation of dissonance.” Such smooth and consistent transformation led a repetition of melodic patterns, resulting in an endowment of innovative and unconventional spiritual depth and evocative strength.

Kandinsky’s philosophical and spiritual approach to things was indeed innovative. I observed that every phenomenon in nature, not just music but art, design, the human body, and even our emotions follow a structural rhythm.