Visual interpretation of classical art songs : A cinematic approach to Messiaen’s “Poèmes pour Mi”

Implementing visual elements in a classical music performance is a great tool for an enhanced concert experience. This master project concentrated on a visual interpretation of Olivier Messiaen’s song cycle “Poèmes pour Mi” and investigated the possibilities of using cinematography to serve a musical composition and its interpretation in a live performance. The goal was to underline the composition with motion picture elements and resulted in a synchronised performance film, premiered in January 2025. Messiaen himself had synaesthesia and his music is an invitation for all kinds of haptics and colour related associations. Investigating the different parameters in visual art helped to understand the structure and components of filmmaking, which could then be directly translated into musical parameters. This study demonstrates a broad range of possibilities when creating a visual expansion of a musical score and opens up for a new concept of live music experiences, with exact synchronisation and an active interplay between the musicians on stage and the movie on screen.