Painting nature: from chaos to harmony

Rebel’s Les Élémens, Rameau’s “Ballet des fleurs” from Les Indes galantes and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons are works that have always moved me through their shared ambition to depict elements of the natural world through music alone, without the aid of words. In them, sound and image intertwine with an almost cinematic quality, even though they are the creations of composers from rival musical nations of the Baroque era: France and Italy. They unfold a richly descriptive imagination – at once seemingly naïve, yet underpinned by great skill and compositional mastery. It is no coincidence that The Four Seasons remains one of Vivaldi’s most celebrated works: at once immediately accessible to the listener and, when examined closely, immensely sophisticated.

It is this evocative, often pastoral dimension that Grégoire Pont captures in his live drawing. A succession of visual and sonic worlds emerges before our eyes and ears ever-changing tableaux, journeys traced by the bow and the pencil alike.

Christophe Rousset