Wanda Gág grew up in a household full of music, and it remained a source of inspiration and interest to her throughout her life. This playlist includes examples of the types of German Bohemian folk songs and zither music her family would have played during her childhood, as well as some specific classical songs that she mentioned in her personal writings. Gág’s diaries contain many references to attending concerts and playing music with family and friends; in a 1923 passage she compares the rhythmic quality of her depictions of nature to music:
“Today I played [Schubert’s] ‘Unfinished Symphony’ on the victrola and lost myself contemplating the rhythms that foliage makes. A symphony and a mass of foliage are much the same. In the foliage too, you find your motif and it is amazing how intelligently the lines and masses and forms seem to fall in place after that. There are repetitions of the motif and endless and varied ramifications of it. Lines fall and rise . . . I have also been drawing foliage rhythms this morning.”
This playlist was created in collaboration with Alexander Roth, Curator at the Wanda Gág House in New Ulm, Minnesota.
