Spaces Real or Imagined — Benjamin Krause

Some notes on Spaces Real or Imagined, a set of five pieces for clarinet and piano, commissioned by the Michigan Music Teachers Association and premiered at its state conference on October 10, 2025:

This collection of five pieces was inspired by a special exhibit of the paintings of Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908—1992) at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. Each movement responds to (and is titled after) a particular painting, and, in a sort of musical ekphrasis, aims to translate its visual language into the sonic. The titles themselves, in some cases mysterious or ironic (for example, “Spiral Interior” features grid- or box-like figures rather than swirling or circular), often suggest their own musicality.

Vieira da Silva’s work grapples with the tensions between realism and abstraction; between the world as it is and the world as it may be imagined. It is within these tensions, sonically conceived, that the pieces of Spaces Real or Imagined live.

1. The Card Game (1937)

2. Maze (1975)

3. Passage of Mirrors (1981)

4. Nocturne (The City at Night) (1950)

5. Spiral Interior (1949)