Archive for October, 2013

2001: A Space Odyssey

Why do people say they cannot describe why they like this movie — and for the record, I don’t –? I can describe exactly what it is. Strip away all the garbage and you are left with a picture of space itself. The experience is exactly like what you would get by gazing into the night’s sky and pondering the connection of man and universe. The movie just forces you to do that for nearly three hours. You fill in the void with your own dreams. That’s all. Some people fall asleep instead.

The creepy artistry sticks with you a while, but in terms of methodological novelty — and I use that term lightly — John Cage’s 4’33″ from 1952 predates it by 16 years.
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what’s wrong with art music

By art music I mean contemporary classical music. I could say that everything is wrong with it, but that’s probably too glib. Instead I’ll break it down into progressively deeper reasons.

1. The soundscape
Noise, texture, gesture over pitch, rhythm, harmony. You thought serialism was information poor. Well contemporary music is possibly worse.
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