If you can watch 2001: A Space Odyssey 10 times for the story, you can watch it 100 times for the music and the complementing visuals (don't ask me how I came up with the numbers, you get the point!). The music selection is a mix of hopeful, happy pieces, and very dark, eerie, confusing and frightening pieces.
The choice of the music is great, both for augmenting the visuals, and for the philosophical reasons. It is intense and hopeful at the same time.
After watching the movie, the music gets fixated with a new imagination and mood that haunts you forever (in a good way!). It is almost as if the music was incidental composed just for 2001. Three of the songs that are used over and over are "Also Sprach Zarthustra" and "The Blue Danube Waltz" and "The Atmospheres".
Also Sprach Zarathustra is a piece by Richard Strauss. The choice of this piece is apt in the sense that the book "Thus Spake Zarathustra" by Neitsczhe discusses the concept of current man as a bridge between an ape and an "overman". The film in some sense depicts this connection between the ape in the beginning, and the "star-child" or the foetus like structure shown in the movie at the end, which is sybmolic of the overman (I think!).
The most striking part , and probably the part you identify the piece by, is a three pair progression you notice in the beginning of the piece. Strauss used a C Major followed by a C minor (a rarely used progression), which creates heavy tension filled atmosphere in the first two lines. In the third line however, he returns to a C Major followed by the F Major, which is a well-known "nice sounding" sequence, and you can feel the release in tension, albiet only for a short time, immediately after you listen to the F. The first two lines, although use similar chords, are subtly different as the second line uses the second inversion of Cm where as the first line uses the first inversion (this is my analysis from the piano solo score presented here, and when I say inversion, I ignored the bass note).
The Blue Danube, composed by Johann Strauss II, is the other song you can't miss. All the scientific moments, and the achievements in the movie, especially the space travel scenes. The music is a waltz, and we can feel man waltzing with success when he luxuriously basks in the technological advances he made right from using bone as a weapon to the construction of advanced space ships.
Most importantly, I have discovered a great musician after I watched this movie. Gyorgy Legeti. He is a revolutionary music composer, who has transcended the commonly observable regularities in music. His music is fresh and genius in terms of both ideas and execution. The two major tracks in the film composed by him can scare a person to death, even without visuals. The most scary piece is the Requiem. The other piece, Atmospheres, is not outright scary, but creates a very dark and eerie effect.
Gyorgy Ligeti is well known for his piece (not from the movie) Musica Ricercarta. This set of 12 pieces is composed such that the first piece uses only one note 'A' (of course, uses only one occurrence of 'D', at the end, just to mark the entrance in to part two may be?). The second piece uses 3 notes, and the third uses four, and so on, where the eleventh piece is composed in complete chromatic scale. Musica Ricercarta - I is the definition of a piece that can be both complex and simple at the same time. It is just a single pitch (A), played in different time intervals and octaves. It is however, so amazing that such a full scale piece can be created using just a single note!
The whole music selection in the movie is great. However, these are the must-listen-before-one-dies songs:
The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss II
Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss
Here is a special section for Liegti:
Atmospheres by Gyorgy Ligeti
Requiem by Gyorgy Ligeti
Musica Ricercarta 1 by Gyorgy Ligeti. This song is composed using just one note all through - A - and only the last note is D.
Musica Ricercarta 11 by Gyorgy Ligeti. This song is composed using all the 11 notes in the chromatic scale. You are free to search and explore all the intermediate pieces (2 - 10).
Artikulation Just to sample his genius.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Korla Pandit : The Godfather of Exotica
This is my $n$-th blog ;). This time, the motivation to start this blog was generously provided by the musician Korla Pandit. Often, I share my thoughts on music with different groups of friends over email. Given so much music and so many artists to talk about, I thought a blog would be more convenient.
Korla Pandit, (1921-1998) is a musician of Indian origin (or so it appears to be). There are two different theories about his birth. The first proposes that he was born John R. Redd, to Dosia(?) and Rev. Ernest Redd, in Columbia, Missourie, USA. The other says that he is the Son of a french opera singer and Hindu Brahmin born in New Delhi, India, and obtained his music education from Chicago. Looks like the first one is true, as per the extensive biography provided here.
The musical arrangement consists of solo performance of an Organ and a Piano, which he keeps alternating between segments of a song, sometimes simultaneously playing both of them. However, we cannot miss noticing the way he emulates drums from the piano and organ! I have not seen any other performer doing this till date! He can produce a variety of drum sounds from his instruments, ranging from the melodic drum patterns of a Hangdrum to the percussion sounds of instruments like Xylophone, or even to the sounds of a Timpani or Jazz Toms (when played softly, of course).
His musical pieces consist of a central theme (motif) and a sequence of amazing variations around the theme.There are several intelligent and subtle chord harmonizations (sure must need a heavy theoretical understanding of music), and interesting key changes all through, which makes each variation unique and interesting. He earned the name "Godfather of Exotica", since western music classifies the standard scales of Asian (Indian, Chinese, Middle eastern) music as exotic.
Intrestingly, Korla Pandit was one of the first persons to make music videos for television. Not many people seem to know him given the rate at which we ingest music videos these days (well, I don't complain, I am one of them!). He recently made his entrance on to Youtube (Youtube FTW!), and I am sure he will be on top of the charts very soon! He could very well be called the "Father of Music Videos" too :). Many comments on youtube tend to suggest that this was one of the first programmes they have every watched on television!
His videos have a very characteristic style. He just stares into the camera all the time oblivious to his fingers that keep producing some of the most amazing music I have ever heard. Most of his music has an Indo-persian and Middle-eastern feel to it. Of course, we can say that a lot of Carnatic scales fit well in describing his music too, I need to sit and figure out more about what scales he used (if I can!). I will update this post accordingly.
Here is a list of must-listen-before-one-dies songs (I would say all his songs!). Also, I suggest listening to the songs in the order given below for best experience ;).
Korla Pandit, (1921-1998) is a musician of Indian origin (or so it appears to be). There are two different theories about his birth. The first proposes that he was born John R. Redd, to Dosia(?) and Rev. Ernest Redd, in Columbia, Missourie, USA. The other says that he is the Son of a french opera singer and Hindu Brahmin born in New Delhi, India, and obtained his music education from Chicago. Looks like the first one is true, as per the extensive biography provided here.
The musical arrangement consists of solo performance of an Organ and a Piano, which he keeps alternating between segments of a song, sometimes simultaneously playing both of them. However, we cannot miss noticing the way he emulates drums from the piano and organ! I have not seen any other performer doing this till date! He can produce a variety of drum sounds from his instruments, ranging from the melodic drum patterns of a Hangdrum to the percussion sounds of instruments like Xylophone, or even to the sounds of a Timpani or Jazz Toms (when played softly, of course).
His musical pieces consist of a central theme (motif) and a sequence of amazing variations around the theme.There are several intelligent and subtle chord harmonizations (sure must need a heavy theoretical understanding of music), and interesting key changes all through, which makes each variation unique and interesting. He earned the name "Godfather of Exotica", since western music classifies the standard scales of Asian (Indian, Chinese, Middle eastern) music as exotic.
Intrestingly, Korla Pandit was one of the first persons to make music videos for television. Not many people seem to know him given the rate at which we ingest music videos these days (well, I don't complain, I am one of them!). He recently made his entrance on to Youtube (Youtube FTW!), and I am sure he will be on top of the charts very soon! He could very well be called the "Father of Music Videos" too :). Many comments on youtube tend to suggest that this was one of the first programmes they have every watched on television!
His videos have a very characteristic style. He just stares into the camera all the time oblivious to his fingers that keep producing some of the most amazing music I have ever heard. Most of his music has an Indo-persian and Middle-eastern feel to it. Of course, we can say that a lot of Carnatic scales fit well in describing his music too, I need to sit and figure out more about what scales he used (if I can!). I will update this post accordingly.
Here is a list of must-listen-before-one-dies songs (I would say all his songs!). Also, I suggest listening to the songs in the order given below for best experience ;).
- Kumar
- Miserlou (Greek rebetiko song, however, people on Youtube fight if it is of Greek/Turkish/Arabic origin).
- Trance Dance
- Song of India
- La Comparsita
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