Video projectors, DVD player, video monitors
Variable dimensions
2001
Richard Humann • Eine Kleine Nachtmusik • Mixed media • Variable dimensions • 2001
For Going Home, an exhibition at Hopper House in Nyack, New York—the childhood home of artist Edward Hopper—Richard Humann created the site-specific installation Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Born and raised in a town twelve miles north of Nyack, Humann found a personal connection to Hopper through the familiar sounds of the Hudson River landscape, despite the nearly century separating their childhoods.
Humann’s inspiration came from imagining the sounds Hopper would have experienced growing up in Nyack in the late nineteenth century: boats traveling along the Hudson River, trains moving along the coastal railroad tracks, and crickets filling the air in late summer and early autumn. These sounds would have been familiar to both artists, connecting their experiences of the same landscape across generations. Through this shared soundscape, Humann established an imagined intimacy with Hopper, linking two lives through the enduring acoustic character of a place.
Installed throughout Hopper House’s converted living room, the work juxtaposed classical music with the sounds of the natural world. A silent video of an orchestra performing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (Serenade No. 13 for Strings in G Major) was projected into the covered fireplace. Instead of hearing Mozart’s familiar composition, visitors encountered miniature monitors emitting the sounds of crickets throughout the darkened room.
The contrast between the silent orchestral performance and the audible crickets shifts attention from composed music to the ambient sounds of everyday life. The fireplace, traditionally a gathering place within the home, becomes a site where music is visually present but sonically absent, replaced by a sound that connects the room to the surrounding landscape. Mozart’s serenade provides a cultural reference, while the crickets evoke the passage of seasons and the continuity of the natural environment.
Through this inversion, Humann transforms Hopper House into a space where personal memory, art history, and place converge. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik suggests that a connection across generations need not depend on direct encounter or shared time. It can emerge through the familiar sounds of a landscape that persists, linking past and present through experiences that remain remarkably unchanged.
Photo credit: Richard Humann Studio