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Art Expressed in Music – Dali's Eccentricity, Feat. Belial Pelegrim
March 2024
Duration: 3:30
Listen to the Playlist: soundcloud.com/bruce-klepper-1/sets/art-expressed-in-music-i
Painting: The Persistence of Memory
Bruce Klepper: music composition with melting clocks (“soft watches”) and sound effects
Belial Pelegrim: sound design
Listen to Belial's brilliant electronic music: https://soundcloud.com/belial-pelegrim
John-Marc Ventimiglia: tool to create the melting clocks (“soft watches”), gliss and panning tools, Dali sound clips Visit: https://soundcloud.com/john-marc-ventimiglia
Salvador Dalí (May 11, 1904 - January 23, 1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in his work. Born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, Dalí received his formal education in fine arts in Madrid. Influenced by Impressionism and the Renaissance masters from a young age he became increasingly attracted to Cubism and avant-garde movements. He moved closer to Surrealism in the late 1920s and joined the Surrealist group in 1929, soon becoming one of its leading exponents. His best-known work, “The Persistence of Memory” was completed in August 1931, and is one of the most famous Surrealist paintings. “The Persistence of Memory” epitomizes Dalí's theory of "softness" and "hardness", which was central to his thinking at the time. As one art historian wrote: "The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order". This interpretation suggests that Dalí was incorporating an understanding of the world introduced by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. In August 1929, Dalí met his lifelong muse and future wife Gala, who was a Russian immigrant ten years his senior. Dalí and Gala lived in France throughout the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939) before leaving for the United States in 1940 where he achieved commercial success. He returned to Spain in 1948 where he developed his "nuclear mysticism" style, based on his interest in classicism, mysticism, and recent scientific developments. Dalí's artistic repertoire included painting, graphic arts, film, sculpture, design and photography, at times in collaboration with other artists. He also wrote fiction, poetry, autobiography, essays and criticism. Major themes in his work include dreams, the subconscious, sexuality, religion, science and his closest personal relationships. His eccentric and ostentatious public behavior often drew more attention than his artwork. In 1968, Dalí bought a castle in Púbol for Gala, and from 1971 she would retreat there for weeks at a time, Dalí having agreed not to visit without her written permission. His fears of abandonment and estrangement from his longtime artistic muse, Gala, contributed to depression and failing health. In 1980, at the age of 76, Dalí's health deteriorated sharply and he was treated for depression, drug addiction, and Parkinson-like symptoms, including a severe tremor in his right arm. Dali was obsessed with death. Feeling that any every moment he needed to be alive. At the end of his life, he is quoted as saying he was eccentric because he needed to show that he was alive as versus his brother who died very young and his family always referred to him as his brother. On the morning of January 23, 1989, Dalí died of cardiac arrest at the age of 84. He is buried in the crypt below the stage of his Theatre- Museum in Figueres.
For strings, flute, trumpet, trombone, virtual instruments, sound effects and percussion.
- Genre
- Soundscape