In this lecture, a joint effort between Tom Richards, Assistant Director of The Florence Academy of Art and Ramiro Sanchez, Director of the Advanced Painting program, we are taken on a multi sensory journey, pairing live music by two violists with several artworks and their specific contexts as well as an analysis between the connection of the music and the art. Playing musical arrangements by Giuseppe Maria Gioacchino Cambini and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (full list below), our celebrated performers of the evening were Stefano Zanobini, 1st viola of the ‘Orchestra della Toscana’, and Hildegard Kuen, a viola professor at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole.

After a brief introduction by Ramiro, combined with the music by Zanobini and Kuen, Richards begins to take us through several artworks, beginning with a study for a painting by J. S. Sargent, asking us to contemplate the connections between music and visual art. These two disciplines often share similar viewing spaces such as halls and churches, and are both enormously effective narrative tools capable of telling complex and emotional stories.

The composers we are listening to, Cambini and Mozart, were contemporaries and had even met in Florence. Learning about Cambini’s life, we are introduced to the concept and reality of the mental asylums and hospitals of the time, and that sadly, Cambini had died in one in 1825. It is this connection with mental and physical duress that is the unifying theme of the artworks shown in this lecture.

The music performed during the lecture is available in the CD “Tuscania 2” published by NovAntiqua Records. The booklet includes an article on the history of mental asylums from the age of Enlightenment to the twentieth century in honor of Cambini’s tragic end. The “Tuscania” series of editions/publications was conceived by NovAntiqua Records to promote music by Tuscan composers from the second half of the 18th century.

This CD is also available to listen to on Spotify!
NovaAntiqua Records

Below you will find further details about the artworks and music featured in this lecture.