[Let's Talk About Music] | PAUL KLEE | EP1-1: "Old Violinist" - Klee and Musical Identity
- Manaka Matsumoto
- Jun 30
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 2
This post contains a full transcript of the lecture video below. To accommodate the content of the video to the blog post format, some images of photos or artworks from the video have been left out, and I have separated sections of the text with headings that are not in the video. The text from the video, however, is unedited and in its entirety.
Old Violinist. 1939.
A simple, black-and-white pencil drawing on paper and cardboard. A man plays a violin that has seemingly fused to his face. His expression, lopsided and distorted, is hard to read. Is he smiling? Is he in pain? Why is he looking away from the violin? Has he become united with the violin, or is he entrapped by it?
Paul Klee was more than just a painter. He also played the violin. Music was a major theme throughout many of his artworks, and also served as the heart of his artistic technique and vision.
Could this drawing from 1939 - a year before his death - be Klee’s re-imagining of his relationship with the violin throughout his life? What was the violin to Klee? What was music to Klee?
Klee's Final Years
In 1935, at the age of 55, Klee contracted scleroderma, which severely affected his mobility. Two years later, he was advised by the doctors to stop playing the violin - he had been playing throughout his entire life up until that point. Despite his illness, Klee kept on creating art, and in 1939 alone he produced a staggering 1,253 works.
It is during this period when he drew Old Violinist, one of many of his drawings or caricatures. Klee’s drawings were done in pencil, ink or chalk, and often had a bit of a childlike, humorous, sometimes satirical feel to them.
You can find these caricatures throughout many of Klee’s works, most of which served as a motif or part of a larger piece of artwork, usually a painting, and were often drawn against a colorful background.
In 1940, the year that he died, Klee produced a series of drawings which are pretty similar to the Angels series. These he titled the Eidola series.
Eidola comes from the Greek word meaning “ghost” or “spectre”. These series illustrate characters including “grasscutter” “army general” “philosopher” even “musician”. Yet all of the titles contain the word “former” - implying that these characters now live in the afterlife.
Old Violinist: Immortalizing Musical Identity
The musicians of Old Violinist and the Eidola series are either old or already dead. They also appear to question the relationship between the musician and the instrument; the instrument is either fused to the musician, or is completely absent.
Music and the musician are both very much mortal. It is almost as if Klee interpreted music as something like a vital organ - something that is part of the body, yet at the same time invisible.
As the musician is dying, they immortalize music by either transforming into the instrument - something that never dies - or continuing to play even if there is nothing to play with anymore.
These personal drawings suggest that Klee possesses the soul of a musician, just as if not more than that of a painter. It is almost as if, after realizing he will no longer play the violin, that the only way to immortalize the “musician” inside of him would be through the instrument - the visual embodiment of music.
Making Music as an Artist?
Many of Klee’s artworks have incorporated music-related motifs, including musical instruments, scenes of opera and ballet, caricatures of musicians, and musical notation symbols such as clefs or the fermata.
But did Klee just “draw” music?
Did Klee ever consider cultivating his identity as a musician, even after committing to painting? Klee may have played the violin - but was that his only way of making music?
How did Klee make music - beyond the violin?
(To be continued in EP1-2)
Sources
Klee’s "Alter Geiger" ("Old Violinist”) was downloaded from the Digital Work Database of the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern: http://www.emuseum.zpk.org/eMuseumPlus
All other images of Klee’s artwork and photos in this post are scans from pages of two books that I personally own.
The Eidola series:
『クレーの贈りもの (“Klee’s Present”)』. Tokyo, Corona Books editorial department. Heibonsha, 2001. (https://www.amazon.co.jp/クレーの贈りもの-コロナ・ブックス-コロナブックス編集部/dp/4582633927)
All other images and photos:
Hajo Düchting (translated into Japanese by Fumiko Goto).『パウル・クレー: 絵画と音楽 (“Paul Klee: Art and Music”)』. Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, Publishers, 2009. (https://www.amazon.co.jp/パウル・クレー―絵画と音楽-岩波アート・ライブラリー-ハーヨ-デュヒティング/dp/4000089862)
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