Bára Gísladóttir – Prussian blue

Prussian blue

The idea behind the piece is to paint a musical painting with the pigment Prussian blue. Prussian blue is a dark blue pigment with the idealised chemical formula Fe7(CN)18. The music depicts the colour itself as well as the creative process of a painting; preparation, pigment mixing, failed attempts, splashing despair, detailed manual dexterity, from unfocused overview to a focused zoom in on the finest textures, and the question of where and how to end it all.

Prussian blue was composed for Elfa Rún Kristinsdóttir and Mathias Susaas Halvorsen in the summer of 2017 on the occasion of the festival “Deilt með tveimur” (E. Divided by two) held by the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service the same year.