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Lot Essay
Musical notations, like all ancient texts found on fragments of parchment or on unearthed rock, inspired the work of Dmitry Plavinsky. There is a timeless majesty that defines such traces left by civilisations over time, and they seem to validate the notion of permanence. Dmitry Plavinsky's first meaningful encounter with musical notations was in the village of Berezhki on the Volga when he was working on the frescoes of a large church there in the 1960s. He discovered numerous books on ecclesiastical chants, which used an old notation form. 'An undiscovered territory opened to me; I became engrossed in the history of the development of notation in music in Europe and Russia' (D. Plavinsky, et. al, Dmitri Plavinsky, New York, 2000, p. 234).
Plavinsky was taken with the unique aesthetic quality as well as with the beauty that the symbols and structures conveyed. Musical scores form essential grids for the existence of music; they are as essential as skeletons are to living forms, as well as to buildings; as plans are to the design and function of towns, cities and countries. Here Plavinsky links all of these notions together in this beautiful work depicting the timelessly beautiful city of Venice, as ancient and mysterious as Atlantis, which he had encountered for the first time just before having executed this work.
Plavinsky was taken with the unique aesthetic quality as well as with the beauty that the symbols and structures conveyed. Musical scores form essential grids for the existence of music; they are as essential as skeletons are to living forms, as well as to buildings; as plans are to the design and function of towns, cities and countries. Here Plavinsky links all of these notions together in this beautiful work depicting the timelessly beautiful city of Venice, as ancient and mysterious as Atlantis, which he had encountered for the first time just before having executed this work.