Art in modern days has actively extended its conventional boundaries of genres and integrated different genres into one. The fusion phenomenon among genres, as the boundaries among artistic territories that are separated dichotomously and categorized into genres crumble down, has started to appear as a complex phenomenon that each territory influences and united with other territories. The reality in fact is that it is difficult for pure music performances, which is a bit distant from such stream of times, to actively communicate with audience. Though efforts to attract the distant audience through ways including familiar repertoire programming and concerts with explanations have been made, these efforts usually have several limits. Most of concert repertoire programming and structures often are focused only on the approaches that are too easy or familiar. Considerations on the aspects that those performances which rely heavily on the ‘communication with audience’ can easily distract performers’ concentration and overlook the artistic quality, and more careful approaches are required.
This study, for the active communication with audience, looked at art in the consilient perspective and suggested the contents development methods of new music concerts that could enable to share synesthesia with the integration among different art genres. Consilience is purposed to explain the different fields that have been separated in one base, thus the consilient art is referred to those separated artistic genres crumble down and are integrated into one. The musical concerts in which the concept of consilient art is applied, different from the existing musical concerts that involve only the listening activity, as the musical concerts that involve information delivery through verbal explanations and visual images at the same time, move toward the synesthetic musical concerts in which visual and aural activities exist and which is complementary.
Synesthesia that connects more than two senses at the same time, rather than being subjective and vague connection, should combine those senses with detailed principles to be persuasive to audience. The most basic principle among the factors that need to be considered when fusing it with other fields of art is the principle of theme connection. It refers to the situation that the title or material of a work matches with another form of art and offers the performer or the audience the clearest reason for integration. Second, when the connections with other forms of art are not stated in detail and the synesthetic contents are programmed only with vague and subjective feelings, it will be difficult to gain the sympathy from the audience. To actualize the intention of the composer, the integration with other forms of art should be achieved by fully understanding the contents of the works. Lastly, the most distinctive characteristic of synesthetic concerts is that it can deepen the method of delivery by visual images. The biggest difference between the synesthetic concerts and the traditional concerts is that if they include visual images or not. For instrumental music that contains abstractness in nature, it is not easy to retain the concentration from audience continuously even when it is supported by descriptions in detail. The visual images that are closely related the performing music not only enhance the level of concentration of audience toward the music but also are useful to stimulate their synesthetic experiences. By excluding the traditional musical concert with only aural activities and including visual images, the delivery of the works can be more effective.
Preludes of Debussy were completed spanning from 1909 through 1913 when his impressionist techniques were at the peak and have been regarded as his most representative work. There are 24 Preludes in both volumes I and II, and each Prelude has different titles. The 24 Preludes has the highest level of relevance to other various forms of art. These works were divided into different categories including the works related to pictures, sculpture and construction, the works related to literature, the works related to pictures and literature, and the works related to performing arts and festivals and suggested a model for synesthetic musical concert contents programming. First of all, this study examined the detailed contents of these works and the relevance with other forms of art, analyzed the scores, and provided the validity of consilient interpretation. In addition to that, it suggested the visual materials according to the consilient interpretation and the actual cases in synesthetic musical concert contents program.
Though this research discussed about the pictures and the literature that are depicted in Debussy’s Preludes, it will be meaningful to support continuously the development of the synesthetic musical concerts that are integrated with movies, dances, and plays and provide the visual and aural stimulations simultaneously since perceiving art in a consilient perspective bears the possibility to create a variety of contents. Therefore, it is expected that helping audiences, who once found the classical music difficult to appreciate, understand it with easy and enjoy will eventually contribute to popularization and vitalization of classical music, and furthermore expand the base for musicians of classical music because art cannot be expressed without audience, also without communication with audience artists cannot exist.