Duet

When, how, where, does a mark become a musical note?
What alchemy occurs to transform a symbol into sound: a song; a symphony; a chorus? Music is interwoven into the fabric of our lives. We listen to it, some of us play it, but throughout history, humans have also attempted to capture it visually, from the musical images of Ancient Sumer, to Frozen's Elsa standing on the side of a mountain, her voice making crystals in the air. In this startlingly original history of music, Eleanor Chan takes us on a journey through sound that encompasses the 35,000-year-old flute found in a German cave, Kandinsky's kaleidoscopic paintings, illuminated manuscripts and haute couture. Classically trained musician and art historian, Dr Eleanor Chan, opens up a world of sound and vision, exploring different ways to think about listening and seeing. Ultimately, this book asks the reader what it is, and what it might mean, to truly see music.

Eleanor Chan grew up in Brighton & Hove, and is currently a research fellow at the Warburg Institute, University of London. She has studied at the University of Cambridge and the Courtauld Institute of Art, has taught at the Universities of Cambridge, Doshisha, Sheffield and Manchester, and held fellowships with the Leverhulme Trust, Society for Renaissance Studies, Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art and the Renaissance Society of America. She is the author of Mathematics and the Craft of Thought (Routledge, 2021) and Syrene Sounds: False Relations in the English Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 2024); her first non-fiction picture book for children, Art is Everywhere, was published by Big Picture Press in 2022. Chan is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker.