The music of Agnes Martin’s paintings

Agnes Martin often talked about her interest in music and in the emotions that she felt when listening to it. Join us for a classical music concert performed by the Ensemble Kandinsky, Switzerland. Uniquely set in the Agnes Martin exhibition, surrounded by the artist’s late paintings, the programme includes specially selected music by John Cage, Arvo Pärt, Johann Sebastian Bach, Tōru Takemitsu, John Adams and Augusta Read Thomas.

For Agnes Martin, music was the art form that most closely resembled the ideal of unconditional abstraction, inviting a multiplicity of responses and emotions. This programme includes works by Martin’s musical contemporaries as well as compositions from earlier centuries, inviting you to explore the connections between visual, musical and emotional abstraction. 

The musical compositions in the programme are introduced by Gottfried Schatz.