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This is Bernard Gabriel. Hala kin are the arts and how similar are the natures of those who work in the various artistic fields. How different are the responses of people to music to painting sculpture literature. Can any one kind of art be considered actually to be superior to be greater than another. Well these are just a few of the medieval knotty questions that I hope to take up with my guest who is Willard McGregor a concert pianist of note and painter and a man who has spent many many years both actively and passively engrossed in this special world. Mr McGregor first let me say a little bit about you and your work in music and also as a painter and I might say your work in both fields has been very very impressive if you have concertizing extensively as a pianist here in this country abroad. You performed with Stravinsky
himself in that composer's Concerto for Two Pianos. You gave the world premiere of Paul Hindemith's monumental tonality and you played with Hindemith his Sonata for four hands. Not only that you have also played with several of that composers who works in Paris. And your teachers well they a number of the great names of recent piano history Rudolf Ganz artists novel that are Filipe not you belong. As a painter I know that you are an artist in the abstract expressionist school and that your paintings are exhibited in museums and galleries both here in the United States and abroad and also in many private collections. Right now that is quite a background I must say for take it away for what we want to talk about it today. When McGregor I have the impression
that people in general think that the various arts painting the written word dancing music that they are somehow relate here they people have to bulk them together and they think that artists in general have a great deal in common and that theyre the same sorts of individuals. And I want to know do you think thats true. Yes yes I certainly agree. I have I have always had a theory that. Anyone who is gifted in any art at all might have expressed himself in a different God equally well if if by some accident his tab would have been channeled into a different channel. That is of a pianist or a composer's talent had been channeled into October or into writing poetry or painted pictures he might have an equally good equally great in one field as another. I may be wrong but that's my my feeling that they are very much related. While this is odd I have to disagree right away.
I don't know in my own experience I found the theatrical people of theatrical folk are very different breed from so-called serious musicians I mean they think differently behave differently their interests are different they they're always sort of on stage I shouldn't say always you know they thought I was even there are introspective. I think I agree with that but I was thinking more of more of the creative arts really I think that composers and preachers are much more related than actors and musical performers. I was really thinking of the creative arts for example let me let me speak about I know Sharon very very yes I think we all agree that he's one of the one of the greatest composers of the 20th century certainly one of the most influential like colossal talents and he was a tremendous influence on 20th century music. Most people now know that he was a magnificent painter to do you know. Now I didn't. Well he was one of the he was very much associated with a group called
Plowright in Munich and Vienna. And I've seen surveys which are really beautiful he's done magnificent things for example as a as a model. Full length life size portrait of one bag by Sharon bag which is a magnificent thing. And then also in Washington at the congressional library of music I found a house ahead of it one time recently when I was out brought out two portraits for me to look at one. We all wrap together that was something that Ira Gershwin had just given to the library and it turned out to be a part of the show and begged by George Gershwin you know thought it was fascinating but then he showed me one by himself a little a little head down by Sure and so forth are done as a young man which was absolutely beautiful it was so mystical and so charming and beautiful.
Schoenberg was a great great writer but don't you think even in the same art in different branches of it you get totally different kinds of people now you take a person in the really commercial field of music. He's a very different kind of person than a serious composer. Symphonies for instance generally speaking and I think in painting to a man who does commercial art work is apt to be as different from a very very serious painter I don't know any other word for it as perhaps a plumber might be different from. Yes I know that I have no common language sometimes in talking to a person. Television in a completely commercial. There is no similarity. Yeah I agree I agree with I agree with that perfectly but I'm speaking about really creative artists what they think of themselves as speaking now about people who have who have made great reputations either in
composition and painting or sculpture for example another when they bring in another example of what I mean. The great painter power clay painter. Yeah officer one of the greatest pages of our time. But most people don't know that he was also a marvelous violinist is why did I keep these things. He started out as a violinist you know his father was a musician his mother was a musician. Yeah he started out being the concept meister of his father's orchestra and in Switzerland. But then he decided that the professional life of a violinist was not not what he wanted so I became a painter but he went on playing the violin beautifully all his life and his books diaries for example are full of wonderful references to music and music beautifully always like on the other hand I think of you know the great French actress I saw in my heart when I was a child. One leg was gone. It was a rather pathetic but she was wonderful.
Yes well she of the golden voice so musical in her speech and her acting. And yet from all reports she was completely tone deaf and insensitive to music itself music as an argument. I think of her at all. So there's an example of no artistic kinship at all and yet. Even for the music. Well anyway access to my theory that there are valid but I still I still cling to that theory that all right gifted creatively I should be able to switch. Well let me ask you they have been channeled that way by chance and you apparently have been channeled into direction as a painter or as a concert pianist. Now I wonder if you tell me. Sometimes I despair because well as a writer makes a rather complicated life now as a painter of course you're a creator and as a musician you are largely very interpretive How do you reconcile these two interests of yours and how far back do they go.
Well they both go back to my early childhood I had as a child of a little child I didn't know his mother drawing and painting I don't know how good it was but but it's the time to go and then I discovered the piano at about six and I also sang a lot I was a child I was so proud of can you imagine and I with this low voice but I sang a great deal and I was encouraged by my parents and I discovered they had a colossal passion for it so for some time then I gave up I gave up painting and I never started again until I was about 21 and then I rediscovered painting it ever since and which is quite a long time I've carried along. Do you think of them separately or do you feel that the same thing inside of you which expresses itself in why does Mahler sounds idiotic stresses. Yeah it is really although as a musician I'm not a composer and I study when she thought I should become a composer. How is it that you did she wanted everybody to become a part of that how is
it that you are an interpreter in one field in a creator and the other thing is an interest or theirs as a direct contact between the audience and the creator. Why can't they just like theatre has to have a middle man. Well when I met a man and that respected music why couldn't there be a creation in the sense of a copying of a great painting because. You know I can well if you're going to put his own work as a campaign jerk as a complete thing and yet we have other people get Iraq right. I see with you there are examples of I hesitate to call them copies but there are interpretations of other paintings by great painters for example of Matisse Mozart was doing interpretations of some ancient Dutch still life that he admired but in his own style so the name became on the original work but it was a sort of a recreation in a new style.
But isn't that similar his work to an interpretive musician or not in time. Yes not entirely sure that I know there are some examples now in music for example in the latest works of composers like the rest Barry of this symphony of which I had recently from a month in which. That they're using a technique which comes right out of painting that they're taking bits of compositions out of very large which they have my eye on. In painting you cut out you cut out that you've got a piece of paper and then you cut outs of and you paste them all together and you make a new work of art which is going to collage and musicians are doing and composers are doing the same sort of thing at the present time. There's another half another example of how they sort of overlap and all of these things like rhythm and melody and color and whatnot belong to painting as well as to music we speak about color and music.
Big brother Marcus Colorado I actually don't see the colors in music at all that is a convenient way to speak of tones in pain. Oh yes tone. Rhythm is a minus rhythm everywhere which to me is a fundamental thing in life. Rhythm as well as in sculpture and architecture without the good being the art of how up to that how modern Are you in your painting. That expression I mean a lot and I. However I don't like to be pigeonholed I occasionally do very realistic things I have many realistic things. I travel a lot and when I'm traveling around the islands of Greece for example law or Turkey then I do realistic things but I prefer things which are almost completely abstract and which which are to me a very emotional form of expression and which going to have can bring forth a very emotional and passionate response just through color and shape
texture scale and whatnot. Let me ask you something has puzzled me quite often. There are many who believe that we're living in a rather blasé apathetic age. We're not shocked easily or excited much by anything anymore. But I find audiences spectacular musical events sometimes even spectacular ones like even some so-so performances of opera the metropolitan I find audiences. Just become hysterical almost in their enthusiastic response as just listening in the air to some of the Saturday broadcasts will tell you you hear a piece of something that isn't really that great and the other cheering the screaming. It's not for Michael lackey there you know make you either way I want to hand yes on the other hand I'm often dismayed when I observe crowds of people. Even small groups of people at art events openings and sometimes those in which there's less sociability but where the pulse never seems to race on the part of
those who are looking by doing this. This art of painting or sculpture nor does the facial expression ever seem to give an onlooker a sense of deep involvement or enthusiastic reaction. Person usually looks as if being passed on to the next picture in another minute you could ask him what he ought to have for lunch tomorrow he could easily answer you without feeling that you were intruding on any private communion. Has this thought ever struck you the difference between the reaction to music and the quiet. Response to a work of visual art. Well yes I see I see exactly what you mean and to a certain extent I agree because I've been to hundreds of openings of art exhibitions in New York and Paris and Berlin and Vienna and unfortunately openings of art exhibitions are not a place to see the paintings. You're right I said not only that you've got to go see people and I personally I always go back two or three times later when there's nobody there to and then I can ask you what
you're having for lunch the next day you feel how I felt when I should've asked but I find that then there's enormous maybe unexpressed quiet unexpressed emotional appeal a response to the to the paintings. They don't applaud you know you also probably don't stay in front of it that long. Yes I do. That depends on the individual person but I spend a lot of time going to do art exhibitions and museums and I find there's a tremendous response to painting and a very passionate one and an obvious interest not only among us about it. Children among the month among the youth. Well Norma citrus because there isn't any shouting Abramov there is no law. Because there isn't anybody to plow there was an artist standing there to congratulate. Yes but you take a person reading a book that he's absorbed in you can't disturb you very
easily he can't wait till he gets back and you'll sit for hours reading unless something absolutely pressing makes him you know get away. But so often I see people looking at their looks. So I have to perhaps it's just a false impression. I think you're right to a certain extent but I in my own case for example well take for example the exhibition of all those magnificent paintings and sculptures collected by the Stein family which is on exhibition at the museum. I've been five times to see it already. And I go and buy all the paintings I still I don't know any along with you standing in looking. Oh yes yes yes. I'm very optimistic about the response to painting and music and I'm not one of those antiquarians or one of those people that nostalgia for the past you know who believe that that everything good everything wonderful of this has been already said in the arts I don't believe that at all. I think that the present period of period of artistic creation
is a really magnificent one. You do there's a lot of there's a lot of. Cheap painting there's a lot of our paintings a lot of sensational body but there's a lot of magnificent painting too. I have one in music too I'm fascinated by the experiments of Stockhausen and John Cage and barrios. And I have I have a very optimistic feeling about the future I don't like that the age of years ago the age of baiting is bashed by My Spirit boy by hearing that optimistic note. What did McGregor present day painters who favor abstractions and total representation in their art and I guess most of them do that often point to this ever present aspect of music. It's its objectivity its abstract nature and they then see a similarity if not a mirror image in the other. Art do you see abstract painting or sculpture as equivalent to a composer's abstract use of tones.
Do you think they similar or similar Yes I I think there's a similarity of course as I said before elements like rhythm and towing and law and color common to all of the arts and I know that music has very abstract qualities and all painting essay as is abstract even even the most realistic painting because it's all drawn out of nature and then it's designed and it's two dimensional. It's not known no matter how realistic it is whether it's on the other whether it's Kobe. It's it's not really realistic it's as because of that it's alive because it's on two dimensions. It's not three dimensional. You can't walk around it you've got to see what's on the other side. I've got but I feel I feel it. That really great abstract painting the response can be
just as emotional and just as passionate as it is through to music which has which has out abstract quality as a form and rhythm and what let me ask you this line but it has a passionate emotional feeling and I think that you can have that same passion tomorrow let me ask you this in music we all know that a melody which is just an abstract relationship of tones can haunt a person can seem one of the greatest experiences in all music a great melody. It may haunt the mind as I say it may recur and occur again. It may be associated with something perfectly wonderful now. I myself cannot picture any abstract. Grouping or arrangement of lines or even colors on a paper that would not that would have any comparable effect on me personally nor on anybody that I ever heard of I've never come across any person who would look at any abstraction. Isn't that marvelous my. I mean in the way they might a great melody of Handel or Schubert or something today
and or even a popular thing which were just taken possession of. I've seen them look at it in the most I'd say would be that it was interesting. It's nice or something like that but I've never seen it take hold of a person now and I just I agree lying to you. I've I agree with you on that. I don't think there's anything in this quite comparable to the to the x axis to the experience of hearing or hearing. The melody she was having already i was our example our hearing the first few bars of the pasta must be flat or sea of adventures to me one of the most heavily things I've ever read and I don't know if using it. Yeah yeah I like that but on the other hand I myself and I've been obviously thrilled by passages of color if I see a sense on painting where the most beautiful nuances of passage passages of color from from sort of lose a subtle thing to such a green all creating classic space. I kind of have almost as
intense feeling of something or something divine as I do if you don't listen to those messages or almost maybe not quite as much of a harvest. Want to get you to talk about our nation. That is that so true. Is there anything in any way similar to rock and roll in the world of painting and sculpture. I mean a popular type of visual art that can drive you out of its individual and collective mind. Now I know of course that commercial art might easily be compared to certain kinds of commercial music but I'm talking about the kind of thing that simply drives the boys and girls today into the record shops and into the music shops to get hold of this music and has them sitting at the television all the time and coming out in droves to hear the latest group and takes possession of their souls. I off hand can't think of anything in either in any of the visual arts but again I could very easily be wrong and if so enlighten me. But I can't offhand I can think of anything.
I'm sure there must be something better. Maybe like just a little bit strobe lights and things like experimenting with light now. Like you go into into a museum and you see nothing. Nothing on the walls but lights above and lights lights around your lights below which creates the kind of environment that rock and roll music does. That's something else and there's also a painting like a painting of Stuart Davis for example that's a little older though but he was enormously impressed by jazz music and why he was painting. He was listening to jazz under very very rhythmic and very dissonant music. And his painting has that same sort of. Same sort of jazzing same sort of disjointed rhythm which which he was listening to in music. I can't think of anything quite comparable to a rock music that we know.
Another thought that comes to mind that I wanted to ask you about is this. The emphasis I think today as never before in music is in popular music is on the vitality of the beat quotes in rock as well as other aspects of popular music and many people feel that this is a turn in a way towards primitivism which certainly also accentuates the elemental beats so much. Is there anything comparable in visual art there. Yes I think there is. There's been a school of painting in France so there's a lot of repercussions in various places of the world. There's a very mixed run a painter named John do you not. Not I don't I don't know. Your namesake bad I'd be afraid but hey who is an exponent of what he calls a brute primitive entre uncouth. Although himself is a very sophisticated painter but he is very
interested in primitive art and there's an enormous school of painting and sculpture which which goes back to primitivism for as far as inspiration. Yes I agree. For a final question a lot of McGregor. I'm sorry it has to be a final question this broadcast to continue another tie. Do you mean it. I really do yes and I'm going to try to get you to promise me in the listening audience that you will come back and talk more about using the memories and things of that we had a lot of pages together. All right great. But I did want to ask you this. I mentioned way back I think to a kind of introductory where if you worried that we might hazard a thought as to whether there is such a thing as a greatest or two or three greatest even or whether they are all on the same level of human noble mind. Now what do you think do you think as an example that dancing in any or all of its forms that this is comparable to the greatest painting sculpture or music or poetry. I doubt
that many dancers would be on my side in thinking that it's perhaps an admirable but somewhat less lofty an art. Well I think I have a right to go I mean there's a problem that all advances against you. I think probably the most the most locked in the most inspiring the most subtle and the most well it probably touches one emotion more than any other. I think dancing is a magnificent too and it has all the elements of rhythm and without without music it probably couldn't exist because it's also it's also fundamentally rhythmic and musical. But it's also a little deeper so that when you say well I'm not I'm not and it's also real dancing real to really inspire which comes from the body is not superimposed but is is an organic thing is is possibly the most the most human of all. But I don't think it touches an audience
as much as perhaps a painting can be very musical I think. Some papers will say that their art was the most all inclusive and that was closest to divine. Credo we've got all of the answers against as I have I guess an external I O architecture we forgot. Oh boy sensitive Oh yeah we got to be careful here. Well Gregor we delved into mighty subject one of which there must be a multitude of differing opinions and I certainly like to have a go again at this and other music and other subjects musical and other I just accept peace with you. If you're game and you've already volunteered that I have and I am going to certainly going to do that because I want to know about your experiences with all of you and Rob Vale novel and Hindemith and perhaps we could when I talk about Brown koozie to eyeball him with half of their salary that's for a good program.
Well I thank you so very very much for this chat and this has been Bernard Gabriel. Wishing all an artistically thoughtful as well as a most musical week. This program was acquired with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is the national educational radio network.
Series
Bernard Gabriel
Episode Number
31
Episode
Music and Painting Willard Mac Gregor
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-6m335s8q
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Date
1971-00-00
Topics
Music
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:27:35
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University of Maryland
Identifier: 70-16-31 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
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Duration: 00:30:00?
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Chicago: “Bernard Gabriel; 31; Music and Painting Willard Mac Gregor,” 1971-00-00, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-6m335s8q.
MLA: “Bernard Gabriel; 31; Music and Painting Willard Mac Gregor.” 1971-00-00. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-6m335s8q>.
APA: Bernard Gabriel; 31; Music and Painting Willard Mac Gregor. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-6m335s8q