'Starry Night' variations by McLean and Dutilleux

Composers Datebook

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8d ago 2:00

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Synopsis

In 1971, after reading a book about Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, American pop singer Don McLean wrote the song, “Vincent,” which became a big hit the following year. The song is better known by its opening line, “Starry, starry night,” a reference to one of Van Gogh’s best-known paintings, The Starry Night.

But McLean wasn’t the only composer inspired by that painting. On today’s date in 1978, the National Symphony Orchestra under Mstislav Rostropovich premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., a new orchestral work by French composer Henri Dutilleux.

Dutilleux titled his new work Timbres, Espace, Mouvement, but added a subtitle, The Starry Night, in acknowledgment of the painting’s influence, and said he wanted to translate into music the (quote) “almost cosmic whirling effect which [the painting] produces.”

Now, painting and music are very different art forms, but the energy, pulsation, and whirling qualities of Van Gogh’s masterpiece do find vivid expression, both visual and musical, in Dutilleux’s work.

As a kind of frame, Dutilleux placed the cellos in a half circle around the conductor, omitted violins and violas from his instrumentation, and alternated static episodes and whirling wind and percussion solos to evoke the illusion of motion in the Van Gogh painting.

Music Played in Today's Program

Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013): Timbres, Espace, Mouvement; BBC Philharmonic; Yan Pascal Tortelier, conductor; Chandos 9504

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