Apart from the scientific and medical applications for cymatics, which the CymaScope team are passionate about, we also see a bright future for cymatics in art. In honour of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 250th anniversary, the CymaScope team created a MusicMadeVisible excerpt from his Piano Sonata Number 8, Opus 13, Pathetique, played by gifted concert pianist, Daniel Levy. The video shows some of the artistic capabilities of the CymaScope instrument. This new MMV musicology technique, when further developed, may help those who have some degree of hearing impairment or who are profoundly deaf, in their enjoyment of music.
When remembering that Beethoven was completely deaf by age 46 we can only imagine the degree to which MusicMadeVisible would have supported him in his later compositions. All of the imagery you will see in our tribute video are the actual imprints of Beethoven’s music on pure water, quite literally, his music made visible, and were not computer generated. You will see that we chose to have the initial MMV imagery emerge from Beethoven’s right eye, symbolising his mind’s-eye visualisation of this beautiful compositional idea.
The portraits used in our interpretation of Beethoven’s music include Carl Stieler’s wonderful painting, which is one of the best known and from an actual sitting. The painting by Schloesser, of Beethoven in his Vienna study, is marvellously atmospheric and we chose to have the MMV imagery emerge from his compositional sheet music.