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In 1934, Frederick Sommer (1905–1999) visited Los Angeles. Walking through the art museum one day, he noticed a display of musical scores. He saw them not as music, but as graphics, and found in them an elegance and grace that led him to a careful study of notes and notation. Sommer found that the best music was the most visually attractive, and assumed that there was a correlation between music as we hear it and its notations. He wondered if drawings that used notational motifs and elements could be played. Sommer made his first drawings in the manner of musical scores that year. In 1968, the first public performance of the music of Frederick Sommer was given at Prescott College, by Stephen Aldrich and Walton Mendelson. Of Sommer’s known works, it is only these scores that have been a part of his creative life throughout his artistic career; he was still creating scores in 1997. The Music of Frederick Sommer comprises offset reproductions of 15 scores and a digitally-mastered CD of Aldrich and Mendelson’s performances. |
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