In this artwork, how is the Creation, style and themes discussed?
In the first five years of working on the series, Williams experimented with different systems of notation: first a formal system, then a system based on colour-notation.  He subsequently abandoned the idea of notation completely, but remained, in his words, "lost in a miasma of structural rendition".  Shostakovich's death in 1975 prompted further reconsideration and intensified his pursuit of an approach that was more attuned to the "rich humanity and surrealistic mystery" of Shostakovich's work.  The final series was created between 1980 and 1981.Williams described Shostakovich as an exploration of "common concerns and perceptions in our work". In particular he stressed his admiration of Shostakovich's "world aesthetic" which was "open to all forms of music he heard" including jazz, Indian music and African drumming (he noted, for example, the presence of Samba in Symphony No. 11).  He also regarded the series as an effort to find the "right connection" between music and painting – a problem that he thought had not been solved "even by Kandinsky".The series is painted in an abstract expressionist style. In 1981, art critic Guy Brett described the paintings as combining "prominent and defined" forms that "convey the idea of musical structure" with "less defined and more suggestive areas of colour and texture".  He also noted that the paintings incorporate iconography inspired by the pre-Columbian cultures of indigenous peoples of the Americas – a signature motif in Williams' work.  In 2010, Leon Wainwright described the series as "rooted in a sensorial project" that explores the "tactility of vision" and reveals "the ability of music to create spatial depth that can be pictured and played with.
Symphony No. 1 Symphony No. 11 iconography indigenous peoples of the Americas abstract expressionist Kandinsky Samba Symphony Guy Brett pre-Columbian