Light, shapes and colors in the paintings by Lyonel Feininger dissolve into prisms and melt into one another. »My pictures come ever closer to the synthesis of the fugue,« he writes in 1918. He plays the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and sees parallels to his own art in the constructive logic of the fugue.

The importance of Feininger's compositions, twelve fugues from the early 20s, surpasses therefore their musical value. The painter shows us in both forms of art what he sees and lives; we understand the parallel to his music when we look at the paintings and feel their inherent rhythm.

  Fuge I in E flat minor, for piano (Weimar, 1921)
Fuge II in A flat major, for piano (Weimar, 1921)
Fuge III in G major, »Gigue«, for piano (Weimar, 1921-22)
Fuge IV in C major, for organ (Weimar, 1921)
Fuge V (lost)
Fuge VI in C major, for organ (Weimar 1922)
Fuge VII in B flat minor, for organ (Weimar 1922)
Fuge VIII in D major, version B, for organ (Weimar 1922)
Fuge IX in E minor, for organ (Weimar 1923)
Fuge X in A minor, for organ (Weimar 1925)
Fuge XI in E flat minor, for organ (Weimar 1926)
Fuge XII in G minor, »Ahasverus«, for organ (Weimar and Dessau, 1926)
Fuge XIII in D major, for organ (Dessau 1927-28)
 Scores from »Das musikalische Werk von Lyonel Feininger«, published by Hans Schneider Verlag, Tutzing: 1971

 

Wolf D. Seufert, piano and electric organ ©2009