7/1/99

Creativity is a mystery that is hard to define and magical to experience. It is the common wellspring from which artists drink before their creative expression finds its form.

Each art form has its individual discipline but all of the arts share common elements, such as unity, design, and movement. In literature, an idea grows in the same way the development unfolds in a piano sonata; the phrase in a novel is simiular to the phrase in a piece of music. A painting is composed of a main subject, background, color, light and shade just as a piece has a main melody, accompaniement, multiple tone colors and shadings of loud and soft. Composer Robert Schumann said "The aesthetic principle is the same in every art, only the material differs."

Legerdary pianist and teacher Ruth Slenczynska, in her book Music at your Fingertips, suggests that the artist should absorb the greatest in literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, dancing, acting and music. By doing this, she believes artists will give more fully.

Several talented artists have expressed their creativity in more than one art. Hildegard of Bingen was a composer, writer and painter. Robert Schumann started as a pianist but an injury kept him from playing, so he turned to composing, writing and critiquing. Celebrated pianist Alfred Brendel began piano lessons at age six, and during his teenage years showed promise in the areas of painting and composition. He made his recital debut at age seventeen and simultaneously had an art exhibit of his watercolors at a gallery near the concert hall. Winning a prize at the Busoni Competition helped him decide to pursue the piano. Brendel is knowledgeable in the areas of literature, language, architecture and films. He has written two books of essays; Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts, and Music Sounded Out.

Robert Schumann spoke of the connection between the arts in these words: "The cultivated musician may study a Madonna by Raphael, the painter a symphony by Mozart, with equal advantage. Yet more: in sculpture, the actor's art becomes fixed; the actor in turn transforms the sculptor's work into living forms; the painter turns a poem into a painting; the musician sets a picture to music."

By exploring all of the arts, artists will enrich their understanding of their own art.