Excerpt from the book “Art Retreat 2020-21 – Living with pictures”

One chapter of the book “Art Retreat 2020-21” is dedicated to the 210th anniversary of birth of the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin. During his stay with the French writer George Sand on the island of Mallorca, he wrote the world-famous “Rainbow Prelude”. Chopin’s dreamy Mallorca pieces flow into the creative contemplation of the pictures as musical recommendations. The editor of the book has assigned a selection of Chopin’s Mallorca Preludes op. 28 to the colors, both according to their key and according to their musical statement. Chopin had a copy of the preludes from the “Well-Tempered Piano” of Johann Sebastian Bach in his luggage and was inspired by it. It starts with C major and moves clockwise through the circle of fifths, which basically corresponds to the tonal order of colors in this book. When leafing through the color chapters, readers experience a relaxing effect. The shortness of the Préludes allows small-format paintings and haiku poems equally to appear often only as snapshots of a mood.