Beyond the notes, the canvas, and the words: Evocations of Childhood in Piano Music, Paintings, and Poetry

Abstract

As a pianist and educator, I am deeply curious about the stories behind musical works and the inspirations that lead composers to create them. I am particularly interested in understanding not only how music sounds, but what it expresses, what images, emotions, and experiences lie beyond the notes.I chose the central theme of childhood because it is a powerful source of artistic inspiration. It is a period we can never return to, yet one that continues to shape how we perceive the world. Childhood is often associated with freshness, innocence, and unguarded imagination, but it can also carry elements of nostalgia and distance. At the same time, it is a universal human experience, something that connects artists and audiences alike. This dissertation explores the evocation of childhood across three artistic domains—specifically focusing on Eurocentric music, painting, and poetry—by bringing together a group of artists whose relationships to childhood are shaped by different historical and cultural contexts. I deeply believe that art forms are interconnected, each form influencing and enriching the others. By placing these disciplines in dialogue, this study offers a perspective that is relatively rare in academic research: a sustained conversation across music, visual art, and literature, demonstrating how a shared human impulse can be expressed through different artistic languages. Art is subjective. Every listener, every viewer, every reader brings their own experience to a work and receives something shaped by that encounter. This dissertation discusses the historical context and personal experiences of each artist, and offers my own interpretation of how these circumstances find expression in the works examined. By understanding the human lives and historical moments that gave rise to these works, by moving closer to the conditions in which they were made, we find that our own responses become richer, more layered, and more fully alive. My humble interpretations in this paper are not presented as definitive answers. Art is by its very nature open to multiple readings, and every reader, listener, and viewer brings their own life and understanding to each encounter. I hope this dissertation might offer a new angle of vision, inviting readers to look again at a painting they thought they knew or listen differently to a piece of music they have heard many times, and find there something they had not seen or felt before. The purpose of this paper is to show that art is rich in what it can evoke in the human response. There is no end to the number of responses one can have to a piece of music, a painting, or a paragraph of a poem.