Illuminated pleasures
Music imitates art in Coll’s work Composer Francisco Coll’s double concerto Les plaisirs illuminés
– ‘illuminated pleasures’ – is inspired by a work of the same name by Salvador Dalí (above). Produced in 1929 and currently housed in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the oil painting packs an incredible amount of detail into its modest 24 x 35cm frame, revealing that Dalí, the world’s most famous surrealist painter, was also a talented miniaturist.
The work’s title almost certainly refers to the shining imagery projected on or performed within the three theatre-like boxes that make up the main section of the composition – through these separate ‘theatres’
Dalí was able to play out a sense of disconnection between reality and illusion, and to showcase both personal and universal dreams and anxieties. His own disembodied head appears in the central box.
Coll is one in a long line of composers inspired by works of art, including Saint-saëns, whose 1874 tone poem Danse Macabre is based on an ominous 15th-century painting by Giacomo Borlone; Musorgsky, whose Pictures at an Exhibition has its origins in the works of the Russian artist, architect and designer Viktor Hartmann; Respighi’s Botticelli Triptych, inspired by three paintings by the great Renaissance Italian painter; and Stravinsky, whose libretto for his opera The Rake’s Progress is connected to eight paintings and engravings by William Hogarth.