The Starry Night

The Framework of Interpretation

 

“Just as we take a train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star,” wrote Vincent as he looked into the night’s sky, contemplating the juxtaposition between light and dark, stars and the night.

 

The Starry Night is an oil-on-canvas painting painted in 1889 by Dutch Post-Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh. Throughout his life, Van Gog struggled to understand his place in the world. Pain followed him, causing endless distress within his mind and soul, provoking a never-ending pursuit of knowledge. Within this pursuit of knowledge, he became one of the founding fathers of Post-Impressionism, an art movement known for playing with the geometry and the rhythm of real-life elements (Art In Context, 2021). Post-Impressionism developed from Impressionism but differs by exploring the world not just through what our eyes can see but also through our souls. Therefore, as Van Gogh tried to find his place in this world, he painted, and while staying in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence psychiatric hospital, Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, he created The Starry Night.

 

The Starry Night depicts the nighttime view from Vincent’s room in Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, along with a fictional village. The Starry Night is one of the several sketches and attempts he made to capture the beauty of what lay before his eyes and soul, and, between all his attempts, this one tells his story better (Payne, 2021). As Vincent describes, “It would be so simple and would account so much for the terrible things in life, which now amaze and wound us so if life had yet another hemisphere, invisible it is true, but where one lands when one dies”, as he concluded how “hope is in the stars”.

 

The audience can see three sections in the painting. The foreground and middleground comprise a third of the painting, the sky the other two-thirds, while the Cypress connects them. In many cultures, Cypress Trees are associated with the world of the dead, hinting that in the painting, the Cypress connects our world with the stars, where one goes after death (Elberg, 2019). Additionally, the painting’s tone, although not drastic, gets lighter as it approaches the sky, where light blues, yellows, and white explode, along with short, definite brushstrokes with thick, impasto paint in circular lines, creating dynamism, movement and a heavier texture in the stars. Van Gogh applied vivid whites, blues, and yellows with gestural verve and immediacy against the greens and dark blues appointed to the village. When analysing the colours with Delacroix Colour Theory, the audience understands how Van Gogh retained a level of realism by picking tones close to each other but also far enough to incite his story (Museum of Modern Art, 2019).

 

After researching Van Gogh’s life, his process towards culminating The Starry Night and the period he lived in, we can interpret The Starry Night as Van Gogh’s attempt to explore the path to heaven the stars offer, sheltering him from his painful life, and linking our world with the peaceful, painless stars. Ultimately, it tells of the painfully beautiful melancholy between life and death and how death is the path we take to the stars, where no pain will come to us.

 

The Creative Process

 

To express The Starry Night’s story and emotions, I opted for a three-movement piece for an orchestra consisting of a limited Woodwind Section, with usually the part of each instrument alternating between two players to decrease grandness, a limited Brass Section, which excludes bass trombones and tuba, and a String Section. Each movement tells a chapter of the painting’s story, culminating in the arrival of the stars.

 

I. A Painful Life. A duet between a Clarinet and Solo Violoncello supported by the String Section evoke the weight of Van Gogh’s pain and suffering. The movement aims to place the audience in Vincent’s shoes, understanding the pain he bore most days of his life accentuated by the resonant, deep colour the Clarinet and Violoncello’s register can make.

 

II. A Path To The Stars. Texture and colour create the sense of leaving the pain behind while walking forward as we begin to feel lighter and approach the twinkling stars. The movement’s purpose is to tell the story’s second chapter, where the Cypress Tree takes us towards the stars, picking up the pace and overwhelming us with the purity the stars offer us.

 

III. The Peaceful, Painless Stars. The music tells the journey’s culmination by bringing a final theme and, following that, reprising them all. However, the culmination of our journey is not just peaceful. It transmits the painfully beautiful melancholy between life and death, where we know what we have left behind, and even though we are now painless, the memory of what we lived will always stay with us.

 

Beyond the creative process of composing the piece, I had the privilege of workshopping an early draft with the DeHavilland Philharmonic Orchestra. The conductor, Robin Browning, and the musicians sight-read my piece and offered valuable feedback regarding how to format the score, the colours the orchestra can create, and how to play with dynamics better. Below this essay and the piece are some snippets of the audio recording from that workshop.

 

The Purpose of the Composition

 

Like the whole project, the purpose of this composition is to explore The Starry Night’s story and emotions through music. However, inevitably, the project also ends up sparking the creation of pieces which reflect a story that the audience can relate to. Therefore, beyond telling The Starry Night and Vincent’s story through music, this piece is a reminder of the beauty of life. Opposites are what make life worth living. There is no beauty without terror, no happiness without sadness and no light without darkness. Learning to embrace these opposites and all that lies in between keeps us moving forward, making the most of every emotion, experience and memory. Pain is part of life. Walking through it and hoping for an exit soon, too, and, most importantly, leaving the pain behind but retaining what it taught us makes us move forward with a more honest smile, a fuller life and a greater appreciation of it all. As Vincent said, “What would life be if we did not have the courage to attempt anything?”

 

Bibliography

 

Artble. (2017). Starry Night Analysis. [online] Artble. Available at: https://www.artble.com/artists/vincent_van_gogh/paintings/starry_night/more_information/analysis.

 

Art In Context. (2021). ‘Starry Night’ van Gogh - Exploring the Famous ‘Starry Night’ Painting. [online] Art In Context. Available at: https://artincontext.org/starry-night-van-gogh/.

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Elberg, S. (2019). Artwork Analysis: Starry Night by Van Gogh. [online] Artsper Magazine. Available at: https://blog.artsper.com/en/a-closer-look/artwork-analysis-starry-night-by-van-gogh/.

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Payne, J. (2021). Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night: Great Art Explained. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk9L1N9bRRE.

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The Museum of Modern Art. (2019). The Starry Night. [online] The Museum of Modern Art. Available at: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79802.