FOREWORD

Ever since Goethe called architecture “frozen music” there has been an attempt to link various forms of the visual arts to the auditory art of music. It is an abstract connection that is difficult to explain because the mediums appear to be so different. And yet, I think one instinctively intuits a relationship. I know that I did. When I was somewhere between four and five years old, my greatest desire was to be either a sculptor or a musician. Knowing my interest, my mother sent me a book on sculpture from Italy when she was studying abroad, and in my lonely hours, I spent many a rainy afternoon looking at these photos of classic statues.

In the end, of course, music won. But I do believe a similarity exists between the art of creating music and that of sculpture. It all begins with an idea—an image or a musical theme. The sculptor begins by taking a slab of marble or gobs of clay, and through chiseling or molding and working with the materials, a form begins to take shape that is pleasing to the eye. Composing music follows a similar path from a blank piece of paper to written notes and imagined sounds and an eventual piece of music with a recognizable form.

Craftsmanship, learned through years of doing, supplies the tools that serve the inner vision. There is an emotion and a unique life created in the arts, and no matter how abstract the creation may be in visual or musical terms, the artist’s individual touch or voice is perceptible. This is especially evident, I think, in Rubino’s more abstract pieces, where he has broken the mold, so to speak, of classical tradition to make a more personal statement, in much the same way as the jazz musician adapts a standard form to invent a new piece of music out of the feeling of the moment.

Rhythm is the core, the heartbeat of it all—the visual rhythm of the eye viewing the forms of a sculpture, the pulse in music and in poetry, that gives life to sound.

I’ve known Peter Rubino for many years, and from viewing his works and seeing the master in action as he dances around his work in progress, I have a feeling that he feels these relationships in much the same way as I do.

Dave Brubeck