Works of the artist

PROJECT - Three individualized interpretations on Beethoven's nine symphonies, more three manifestations, based on the development of the previous nine.

DEVELOPMENT - it was made a study, in group, on the Beethoven’s life and work, to pass indeed to the execution of the works that consisted of each artist, isolated of the others, to hear the symphonies, to make a work regarding each one and more three works where there was the possibility to use total creation freedom, using as main base the experience acquired in the execution of the previous works.

Maria Bertoldi, Roberto Giannecchini and Walter Miranda

Symphony is an independent musical work, executed by orchestra of strings, wind and percussion instruments, usually developed in four movements, the first of them is built as sonata form. The modern symphony is, actually, a great sonata for orchestra.

Musical gender created about 1750, the symphony had many great cultists, like Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Franck, Tchaikovski, Dvorak, Bruchner, Mahler, Berlioz, Liszt, Sibelius, Prokofiev, Stravinski and other. Above these masters, hovers the huge figure of Beethoven, the greatest symphonic composer of all times and one of the most powerful personalities of the whole art history.

Beethoven delegated to mankind 9 symphonies that cross over the years without wear and tear signs, as works of supreme and permanent artistic value. Beethoven's influence on composers of the XIX century and even XX, was dominant and the fascination of his work extrapolates the domain of the music to manifest, until today, in several fields of the artistic creation.

In 1981, the painter Walter L. L. Miranda invited some plastic artists to create works referenced or inspired on Beethoven's nine symphonies. Almost three years later, he Maria Bertoldi and Roberto Giannecchini (GIA) showed the outcome of this experience that excited them. During the development of the series, they established that, besides the nine basic works, each one would produce more three, giving free sequence to the creative process.

Personalities of different formation, information and temperament, each one created inside of their line and the results are more than satisfactory: they show fundamental problems of the artistic creation and they approach the metalanguage of the critic, in the measure that they create works referenced on other works of art. Their creative postures sometimes resemble certain behaviors of own Beethoven, whose deeply intellectual positioning transforms some of his works or part of them, first of all, in spiritualized visions of the life than in direct projections of its flowing.

WALTER L. L. MIRANDA projected in the works that he accomplished on cardboard his own personality, rich and complex. And he did, at the same time, in a rational and passionate way. An attentive personality to the significant progresses of the knowledge and, to the madness practiced by segments of the society on behalf of doubtful ideals, deeply concerned with the social problems and the man's destiny in the earth. In the group of his work, it is felt a message of hope.

MARIA BERTOLDI let herself to impregnate by the romantic component that coexists with the tragic feeling in the group of Beethoven's symphonies. She materialized the life that breathes in these symphonic poems by representations of the urban landscape that is seen from the windows of her house-studio, in the neighborhood of Agua Fria, in Sao Paulo. She worked more in the poetic line of the Seventh Symphony than in the tragic slope of the Symphony of the Destiny, the Fifth.

GIA built a beautiful work using in his sculptures-objects pieces of matted aluminum and scraps of computers, incorporating to them elements supplied by the modern technology as fluorescent lamps, rigid optic fibers, polyurethane  strings, small motors and timers. Some pieces are fixed, other move. The Sixth Symphony - The Pastoral - was exemplarly synthesized in an aluminum figure of a bird that “flies” smoothly, moved by a motor of 18 watts provided with a mechanical resonance system, moved by a timer.

The whole works presented by the three artists has the mark of their Beethovenian origin: the spirit of faith in the art and in the life that it reflects. It is as if they repeated, in other languages, the verses of the ODE TO JOY, of Schiller, in the end of the Ninth Symphony:

“EMBRACE EACH OTHER, YOU MILLIONS! / THIS KISS IS FOR THE WHOLE WORLD!...”

Enock Sacramento - Sao Paulo, Christmas 1984

Member of the Brazilian Association of the Critics of Art

PROJECT - Three individualized interpretations on Beethoven's nine symphonies, more three manifestations, based on the development of the previous nine. DEVELOPMENT - it was made a study, in group, on the Beethoven's life and work, to pass indeed to the execution of the works that consisted of each artist, isolated of the others, to hear the symphonies, to make a work regarding each one and more three works where there was the possibility to use total creation freedom, using as main base the experience acquired in the execution of the previous works.

BEETHOVEN PROJECT by MARIA Bertoldi

 It was just the registration of one moment. The wonderful moment lived during a symphony of Beethoven. And I was knowing and I was feeling and hearing the symphonies and trying to colour the most fantastic sounds of those true symphonic fantasies. A lived dream. A true flight to the fantastic world of Beethoven's musical sounds where I try to follow him with my brush on the blue canvas in this crazy flight of sounds. The 9 Beethovenian Symphonic Fantasies more three works, was everything that remained...  

BEETHOVEN PROJECT by GIA - Roberto Giannecchini

   My work on the symphonies was done starting from suggestions supplied by the musical material, selected by the sensitive and "filtered" by the rational. The result, maybe questionable, it is there. However it is worth to highlight as more important the creative process, since it brought to the surface mental and sensitive mechanisms that I ignored. The continuous and disciplined work on a theme can bring consequences other than the expected ones; for example, an intimate suspicion:

• if the music was determinant of a result, or na alibi to liberate other things, or though, a catalyst. From this pont of view the music of Beto was magnificent Art; vivifying and creator of "derived Art" through other artists.


• Here is the multiplication of the breads. So, I am thankful to the situation that brought my own interior enrichment opening new roads and mysteries.

In the technique concerns, the works were made in way completely handcraft, included the project and the accomplishment of the mechanisms. The used material is almost exclusively aluminum matted with micro glass spheres. This obeys my natural sympathy for the aluminum, that in spite of not being very resistant, due its lightness, it allows liberated structures. In the same way it is explained the screwed assembly and the use of some scrap piece. (Beethoven used similar processes as in the case of the "Ode to Joy" by Schiller that, only after a long time he used as part of the ninth symphony). When during the process some work took own configurations independent of my intentions, I insisted on respecting them. So, the movement of the bird of the Pastoral "asked" (as a friend make me notice) a solution using the mechanical resonance, which was accepted and accomplished. Gracias, Armano. I would like also to thank my companions of the group, my friends and MARILENA for the incentive and for the patience. And to master Beethoven... forgive me.  

BEETHOVEN PROJECT by Walter Miranda SYNPHONIC TRANSPOSITIONS

My works follow a main line that consisted of listening to a symphony several times as I composed the parts of the work related to that symphony. So it was done for each of the nine symphonies.

 Each work is divided into five parts:

- The upper part, intuitive, was defined for the spontaneous manifestation of my sensitivity. In all works, both the choice of colors and their application on the canvas with expressive brushstrokes, has always occurred when listening to the symphony concerning each transposition.

- In the center of each painting, I drew a pentagram with an excerpt from the relative symphony. It has the function of making the intersection between the upper and lower parts of the paintings, but it also connects the works of the group with each other and works as a melodic visual line due to the movements it presents when all the works are placed side by side.

- For the lower part of the paintings, I chose the theme and the images as I listened to each symphony, associating them to the feeling provoked by the music with the situations that bothered me at that moment.

- Another part contains excerpts from writings that I transcribed from different authors, from the Bible and even personal texts. Each text was written and chosen also when listening to the relevant symphony and has the function of comparing something that has been said for millennia by sages, prophets or intellectuals, with the reality of the images of each picture they represent.

- In each work there is also a triangular part, where I write physical-mathematical formulas representing the scientific development of the human being; in my view, one of the few positive things we achieved in our inner search.

After the execution of the nine symphonic transpositions, I created three more works that flowed spontaneously while listening sequentially to all Beethoven's symphonies.

Now, after many years that the series is over, I realize how strong the analogy is between Beethoven's humanitarian concerns and my concerns about the actions and inconsequences practiced by the human being against the human being itself and against the planet Earth.

Read and watch articles about the Beethoven Project: Análise do crítico de arte Enock Sacramento sobre o Projeto Beethoven Diário do Grande ABC - Beethoven Reabre o Salão de Exposições Diário do Grande ABC - Nove Sinfonias em Três Claves Visuais São Paulo Shimbun - Interpretando as Obras de Beethoven ATribuna de Santos - Música de Beethoven Inspira Artistas Veja São Paulo - Projeto Beethoven TV Globo - Jornal Nacional