Blues, Reds

Who writes love songs for a beloved woman of yesteryear these days? With sounds that whistle deep blue and evoke the blues - the origin of jazz? - in his new composition, Robin Verheyen takes colors from Jean Fouquet's 'Madonna' and assigns them to his tenor and soprano, the three musicians of the Goeyvaerts String Trio and the 88 keys of Marc Copland's piano. The masterpiece 'Madonna' in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp dates from around 1452 and is the right half of a diptych. The other work, in Berlin, depicts the patron of this artwork and his patron saint. Together they form the so-called Melun Diptych. In Antwerp, a 'Maria Lactans' can be seen: the intimate theme of a mother nursing her child. Because the subject was constantly adapted to the fashion, taste or insights of the time, it continues to give new meanings. In Master Fouquet's version, seraphim and cherubim appear. Throne and crown also replace the old-fashioned Gothic golden halo. But the Madonna remains exalted with all goodness: 'de tous bien plaine'. This is certainly how the much-coveted chanson by Hayne van Gizhegem from Fouquet's time sounds (which Robin Verheyen incorporated into his composition). Both liberate their art from devotion and carefully place autonomous aesthetic experience at the forefront. Mary becomes both heavenly and profane. Her ivory skin remains unsullied, but - so the gossip of the time would have it: "Is that not Agnes Sorel", the mistress of the French king? Is the most beautiful woman of high society a model for the Mother of God? In 'Blues, Reds and Other Songs', Robin Verheyen draws inspiration from the characteristic harmony of the emerging renaissance with quotations (such as the hymn Ave Maris Stella), canon techniques and faux-bourdon. Would the musical ornamentation and fuga-imitations from that period have already foreshadowed the uniqueness of jazz? A composition is built from different layers. In a painting, this is represented by the harmony between horizontal, vertical and the suggestion of depth with a foreground, middle ground and background. Mary with child, the throne and the angels, particularly the blue ones, in the distance can be translated into the polyphony of music. In contemporary music, we may too often listen to what is on the surface: the highest voice, the melody. Polyphony, by contrast, is an exercise in continuous interaction between all voices that virtuosically shift between foreground and background. Verheyen's composition makes the connection between all these voices and layers in an organic way. Tempo and rhythm is the flow with which the eye explores the composition. The bared breast probably lingers a little longer on many retinas. Let us not view that perfect geometry by today's standards, otherwise this noble lady would be suspected of plastic surgery. The idealized form fits within a Platonic perspective and is even a compelling moral exhortation to relationships that are stripped of sensuality or desire. The mysterious appeal of the painting and this newly created music corresponds precisely with the search for what perfection and aesthetics mean in a particular time.