Curves : flowers, foliates & flourishes in the formal decorative arts /

Music is an auditory experience, yet much of what complements and surrounds it is visual. Album covers are the most obvious example, but musical notation itself is a graphic language. Graphic artists create pictorial compositions that have melodic sensibilities, and interpreting music through image is so common that some visual artists are said to orchestrate their works. These books show a range of musical inspirations, derivations and exaltations. Walls of Sound Brian Eno, whose Roxy Music hits exemplify the best of glam, created tantalizing performances that combined music and visual spectacle. His career as a hybrid techno musician began in art school, and for more than 40 years he "has explored the complex relationship between light and sound," Christopher Scoates writes in BRIAN ENO: Visual Music (Chronicle, $50), a beautifully designed though dense analysis of how Eno became "completely enveloped in new and unorthodox ways of thinking about the world, visual ideas and music." This is a catalog of awesome accomplishments, in which we see how Eno's "parallel practices have often informed each other" and how his "formal visual arts education provided the theoretical tools that have served him so successfully as both a musician and a visual artist." (Below, "77 Million Paintings," 2006.) Scoates follows Eno from his early experimentation to creating architectural soundscapes to his computer-originated generative music, which takes some of the composing process "out of Eno's hands - and mind." High Fidelity Verve is the perfect name for one of the most successful jazz record labels in the world, founded by Norman Granz in 1955. It is also the best word to describe the album covers made for the likes of Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday. Record covers are only a portion of VERVE: The Sound of America (Thames & Hudson, $75), Richard Havers's history of the company, but the collection hits all the high notes. It's a fascinating portrait of Granz, who fought a war against segregation through music, and of Verve artists. The studio and documentary photographs are a draw, but nothing can beat the covers for eye appeal, even though most go uncredited. City of Splendors As the poet Gabriele d'Annunzio had it, "When one is in Venice, one cannot feel except through music or think except through images." ART AND MUSIC IN VENICE: From the Renaissance to the Baroque (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts/Hazan, $65), edited by Hilliard T. Goldfarb, is a lavish exhibition catalog that shows just how omnipresent music was in Venetian art and life. The church encouraged the processions that filled Piazza San Marco and gave soul to the exquisite musical manuscripts on painted parchment. (Below, a manuscript from the Museo Correr.) Venetian printing, which began as early as 1469 and reached its storied greatness in the work of Aldus Manutius between 1489 and 1494, developed a music publishing industry, producing books like "Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A," which "established a modern, standardized printed musical notation." Full Bloom Although there aren't references to music in Lisa DeLong's CURVES: Flowers, Foliates and Flourishes in the Formal Decorative Arts (Wooden Books/Bloomsbury, $12), a slim book packed with stunning black-and-white illustrations, it's flush with harmony and rhythm. In fact, there is an extremely harmonic aesthetic behind the vintage, intricate patterns on textiles, furniture and architecture. (At right, ironwork from a 19th-century catalog, and a centered-composition ornament.) "The urge to adorn and beautify sacred things and ordinary objects is universal," DeLong writes in the introduction to the principles of symmetry based on the complexities of nature. It is music to the eye. Speaking With Pictures DRAWING AUTISM (Akashic, $22.95) highlights an "area where individuals with autism can have great abilities." Jill Mullin, a clinical therapist, began the project with an artist named Glen Russ, who at an early age developed a passion for music and art. His drawings of the Temptations and the Jackson 5 inspired Mullin to explore the recurring themes in art made by people with autism. Russ's pictures are primitive but not naïve, while other works in the book are more advanced, notably Noah Schneider's "The Fiddler" (above), painted when he was 13, which combines a little Chagall with comic flair. Display Type In FIFTY TYPEFACES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD (Conran Octopus, $20), John L. Walters, editor of the design journal Eye magazine and a music critic for The Guardian, discusses influential typefaces, among them the Aldine Italic, commissioned by Aldus Manutius and designed by Francesco Griffo. "Venetian publishers were obliged to pursue a more economical approach after the collapse of the credit market in 1500," Walters writes. "Griffo's slimline design was intended to permit more words in less space." The book also singles out Cheltenham, designed in 1896 by the architect Bertram Grosvenor, the type for headlines in The New York Times.