How does Twittering Machine elucidate its Legacy?
The son of a musicologist, Klee himself drew parallels between sound and art, and Twittering Machine has been influential on several composers. In fact, as of 2018, Klee's painting has inspired more musical compositions than any other single piece of art, with more than 100 examples, from full symphony orchestra to solo piano. The first such work is the 1951 orchestral work Die Zwitschermaschine by German composer Giselher Klebe; probably its two most famous appearances are as movement four in David Diamond's 1957 four-movement "The World of Paul Klee" and as the fourth movement of Gunther Schuller's "Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee", composed in 1959. According to Time magazine, the two composers drew very different interpretations from the piece, with Schuller's work consisting of a "snatch of serial music in which the orchestra beeped, squeaked and rasped like a rusty hinge while the muted brasses burped out shreds of sound" while Diamond drew on "more somber tones: muted, dark-hued movements of the strings, with the picture's more jagged lines delineated by scampering woodwinds and brasses."Larson wrote in New York Magazine (1987) that the image was then "embedded in childhood prehistory", commenting that it "always seemed to be taped to kids' bedroom walls, next to Rousseau's The Sleeping Gypsy".
Paul Klee Giselher Klebe New York Gunther Schuller The Sleeping Gypsy Time