A Celebration of the Piano: Selections From the Archives of American Art

Spring 2001
Online exhibition prepared in connection with the Smithsonian’s Piano 300 exhibition.

The musical and visual arts have always gone hand in hand, particularly in the way that each medium inspires the other. Chopin wrote nocturnes; Whistler painted them. Kandinsky created symphonies with color, and Debussy used notes to create two sets of tone pictures for the piano, appropriately titled Images. Both music and the visual arts have a dual nature: there are technical and theoretical aspects to both, but at the same time, they can be evocative and emotional.

It is no wonder then that visual artists take inspiration from music, or that they might try their hands at the musical arts—particularly the piano, which provides challenge and delight to both the novice and the professional.

As the 300th anniversary of its invention is celebrated, the piano still remains one of the most popular instruments today. This exhibition was prepared to compliment the Smithsonian Institution’ exhibition Piano 300: Celebrating Three Centuries of People and Pianos, at the International Gallery of the S. Dillon Ripley Center

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Louis M. (Louis Michel) Eilshemius to Hyman Kaitz

A Celebration of the Piano: Selections From the Archives of American Art

Louis M. Eilshemius, ca. 1940

An artist, poet, composer, self-proclaimed Mahatma and "Mightiest Mind and Wonder of the Worlds. Supreme Parnassian and Grand Transcendant Eagle of Art," Louis Eilshemius [sometimes spelled Elshemius] is one of the most unconventional persons represented in the collections of the Archives of American Art. Eilshemius."

Writing in his pamphlet Some New Discoveries! in SCIENCE and ART, Eilshemius claims that: "My compositions are utterly original in their new tempi, their incomparable exquisite and dramatic conceptions to move the soul-ecstasy any one sensitive to music's finder sounds and harmonies. This will suffice. Order my compositions! from me."

He includes a poem, Darkness in the Room, on the back cover. "From forth my fingers rare tunes come fast/ No mortal's melody recalls/ but all your feelings fill/ With heaven's dream and bring sweet joy to last."

According to William Schack's 1939 biography, And he sat among the ashes, the first set of pieces that Eilshemius composed for the piano was Six Musical Moods. Eilshemius felt that these pieces were some of his "best in print," noting that he had to publish them himself when some of the larger music publishing houses passed because they were "too classical for the market." Six Musical Moods could be purchased directly from the composer for $1.50.

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