Concerts of the Arts

In this book, the author argues that it is against the nature of works of art, and of arts in general, to perform solo; rather, they tend to grow in concert toward an orchestral companionship. Furthermore, a kinship of style exists among the works produced in different media by artists working at the same time or place or in the same social or philosophical milieu. The author explores various modes of perceiving and understanding such relationships.;Each chapter takes up one kind of relationship among the arts and its effects on their meaning. In the psychological mode, the book traces the creative act from sensation and imagination to ideation and realization. in the analogous mode, it finds analogies between harmonic and visual proportions in music and architecture. Scriptural and literary references offer a key to the realtionships among works of art in the iconographic mode. A chapter on Michelangelo as a poet and philosopher defines the mode of personal synthesis. Social and philosophical factors illuminate trends in baroque art in the stylistic mode. For the autobiographical mode, the author draws on the self-revelations of Berlioz and Delacroix, and for the relativistic mode he explores the unity that may result when a common philosophical concept inspires bothe the science and the art of a period.