Visual Music

This book traces the evolving relationship between the abstract moving image and music, from the eighteenth century to the present, across media including film, concert projections, and kaleidoscopes.

Although the term visual music has become widespread among artists, curators, and scholars over the past three decades, its meaning remains unsettled. Is it a translation of musical form into visual representation, or a musical response to images? This book offers a critical redefinition of the term, grounding visual music in the category of the abstract moving image.

Close readings of seminal films by Mary Ellen Bute, Jordan Belson, Oskar Fischinger, Walter Ruttmann, and James Whitney are complemented by analyses of contemporary work by Joanna Priestley, Takashi Ohashi, and Clayton McCracken. These films are examined through multiple critical lenses, including middlebrow modernism, mysticism, transmediality, and the relation of abstract art to music.

By bringing theoretical precision and historical depth to the subject, the book offers fresh perspectives on visual music and provides a valuable foundation for students and scholars in musicology, film studies, and art history, as well as those working in the growing field of audiovisual studies. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the fertile terrain where music and the visual arts converge.

Author Biography

Henry Balme holds teaching positions at Universität der Künste and Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. His research has been supported by the American Musicological Society and a John F. Enders Fellowship.