Schubert's Moments musicaux and Whistler's Six Projects: A Lecture-Recital by Arabella Teniswood-Harvey

Around 1872, James McNeill Whistler inscribed the frame intended for his painting The Three Girls with a four-bar quote from Franz Schubert's Moment musical No. 3 in F minor, Op. 94 for solo piano. The painting was never completed and no longer survives intact, but sketches such as The White Symphony: Three Girls remain. This work has traditionally been grouped with 5 other unfinished sketches to form a set known as the Six Projects. In this lecture-recital I explored the possibility of each of the Six Projects being linked to one of Schubert's six Moments musicaux, thereby proposing a new viewing order for the paintings. The lecture-recital began with a performance of the third Moment musical, and following discussion of the correspondences I performed the entire set of six pieces whilst the audience viewed the corresponding images. Funded by: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution