The young musician sits in front of the first painting. It is a Rothko. Large. Deep. Mostly orange. The musician has with him a journal, and as he stares at the large fields of color before him, he begins to write. But he doesn’t write musical notes. He writes words. The moment lasts a full 90 minutes. Absorbed by color, the musician leaves the painting and makes plans for the next one.

He repeats this pattern of staring and journaling with two more Rothkos. Yellow. Red. Blocks of layered color, generous and dense. Long after his own work is finished, the musician will recall his “visceral reaction” to Rothko’s work.^[1] It is intense, and he cannot explain it.

He knows which painting will be the last in his search. White and Black on Wine. This one is in a private collection. The hardest to find, but the musician’s process and purpose remain. He finds it, stands before it, and lets himself be carried into this last Rothko. He writes.

When he’s finished his hours before the paintings, the musician sits at the piano with his journal in front of him on the instrument’s music desk. He stares at the words as he begins. He improvises, a process of making music that he knows will help him lose his sense of self. The words call up the paintings, and he turns them into sound.

Adam Schoenberg’s work of music, grown out of seeing and word-writing in 2006, is Finding Rothko, a four-movement piece for chamber orchestra.^[2]

The piece’s first movement, “Orange,” gives us the “Rothko theme” of three chords, in pulsing major tenths; the musicians weave it in and out of the music. The interval of a tenth is a stretch, the tension drawing us and the players into Rothko and into color. Seamless. “Orange” is a throbbing meander, yawning, yet cloud-like, reaching into the new places given to us in Rothko’s theme.

“Yellow”: a turn; a release moving tonally in mood and pace. With more stretching, with billowing, the pulse strengthens and shimmers. The musicians then return to the theme with a streak of red.

“Red”: a bombast; as if the players and conductor are pulling out all the stops of a massive organ. Here and there a few sudden shifts into a piccolo’s tender solo, or a flutter of woodwinds, punctuated by blasts and heaves of brasses and percussion. Is the work unraveling?

“Wine” is the last movement; it was the hardest painting to find; the quiet Rothko Theme is re-introduced but this time with a lush understanding among the players. Still accessible, still approachable. But now the musicians marry the three-chord theme to what has been discovered in the journey through the earlier movements. As it climbs, the orchestra begins to glow, the players’ answer to the gift.

Publisher’s Notes:

The following links were retrieved on 17 December 2023.

[1]. From a 14-minute interview with Adam Schoenberg about Finding Rothko, broadcast by High Plains Public Radio (21 November 2013):
https://www.hppr.org/hppr-arts-culture-history/2013-11-21/interview-with-composer-adam-schoenberg

[2]. Finding Rothko as performed by ROCO music ensemble (12 November 2022), conducted by Delyana Lazarova:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho_Jo5s_Iis

3. Details about the Grammy Award-nominated composer Adam Schoenberg (born 1980, USA) and his works are available at:
https://adamschoenberg.com

Kate Flannery

is an Editor-at-Large for The Journal of Radical Wonder. She lives in a small college town where she also practices law. Her essays, poetry, and fiction have been published in Chiron Review, Shark Reef, The Ekphrastic Review, Pure Slush, and MacQueen’s Quinterly as well as other literary journals. She was a finalist in Bellingham Review’s 2022 Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction.