Angel music (iconography)
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The angel music (or the angel concert ) is a motif of Christian iconography as well as a component of many paintings in European painting from the late Gothic to the Baroque ; it underlines the festivity and solemnity of the respective main scene.
history
How far back the topic of the “Angel Concert” has not yet been researched. Trumpet angels can already be found in the sculpture of the High Middle Ages , although they mostly stand individually and can only be recognized as a group at a clear distance from one another; they belong as accompanying staff to the world judgment representations in the respective tympana ( Mt 24,31 EU ). As a group sitting next to each other holding various musical instruments, only the elders of the apocalypse appear - if at all - (e.g. in Oloron ). It was only with the increasing importance of “court art” from the 14th century onwards that angels increasingly took over the musical accompaniment of heavenly-earthly events.
Strasbourg Cathedral - Detail from the Angel Pillar (around 1235)
La Chaise-Dieu Abbey (14th century)
An angel making music (around 1520), Museum Schnütgen , Cologne
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Examples
One of the first painted “angel music” can be found in the “Baroncelli Polyptych” (around 1334) by Giotto di Bondone , the central theme of which is the Coronation of Mary ; An angel concert also takes place in the Ghent Altarpiece (around 1430). The examples became more common in the late Gothic period and can be found in numerous portraits of Mary from the 15th century (e.g. in several pictures by the Aragonese painter Blasco de Grañén (around 1400–1459) or by Hans Memling (1433–1494) The version of the theme comes from Matthias Grünewald and is located in the open middle part of the Isenheim Altarpiece (1512–1516); the concert takes place here on the occasion of the birth or incarnation of Christ . El Greco also took up the theme around 1608, resolved it However, it removed its traditional connection to Maria and made its own pictorial theme out of it. Even with artists of the Baroque period it was still popular, for example in a drawing by Gaspare Diziani (1689–1767) and in 19th century art the theme appears several times .
See also
In 1933/34 the composer Paul Hindemith created a musical version of the theme “Angel's Concert”; it forms the first movement of the Mathis der Maler symphony and the overture to the opera of the same name .
literature
- Björn R. Tammen: Angel music in book illumination of the 14th and 15th centuries. Appearances and functions of an all too familiar image motif. In: The Middle Ages. Volume 11 (2006), pp. 49-85, Akademie Verlag, Berlin, ISSN (online) 2196-6869, ISSN (print) 0949-0345.
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