Tag: Film music analysis

Film, Film Music and Sound

Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Kubrick’s 2001- Part 4 (Conclusions)

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Conclusions “The link between art and real history is the fact that works of art are structured like monads.  History may be called the content of works of art.  Analysing them is the same as becoming conscious of the immanent history stored up in them.” Adorno (1970, p.126). The bedrock of this essay has been to show how Ligeti’s … Continue reading Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Kubrick’s 2001- Part 4 (Conclusions)

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Elemental Chaos and Eternal Return in Scriabin and Andrei Tarkovsky – Part 4 (Zarathustra).

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. The Eternal Return and Zarathustra’s Gift. “-and must we not return down that other lane out before us, down that long, terrible lane – must we not return eternally?” – Nietzsche (1883/1986, p.241). The final section of this argument refers back to Nietzsche and his writing on the Eternal Return.  His work on the subject, both philosophically in The … Continue reading Elemental Chaos and Eternal Return in Scriabin and Andrei Tarkovsky – Part 4 (Zarathustra).

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Kubrick’s 2001- Part 3 (Musical Narrative)

Part 1. Part 2. 2001: Narrative and Musical Parallels. “Ultimately, 2001 is a film that suspends that coordination of the human body, and thus human nature, in such conditions- even as it suspends our final judgments about human nature in its open-ended conclusion about our future development.” Decker – (2007, p.101). One of the biggest omens that a piece of music is given preference in … Continue reading Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Kubrick’s 2001- Part 3 (Musical Narrative)

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Elemental Chaos and Eternal Return in Scriabin and Andrei Tarkovsky – Part 2 (Chaos)

Part 1. Elemental Chaos. “The Mountains, Fields, Meadows, Forest, and Wilderness of the Preparatory Act text symbolize the mineral kingdom and natural kingdoms of the Earth, the first three “Rounds” of the Wheel of Cosmic life.” (1998, p.303) – Stephen Morris. It is not revolutions and upheavals That clear the road to new and better days, But revelations, lavishness and torments Of someone’s soul, inspired … Continue reading Elemental Chaos and Eternal Return in Scriabin and Andrei Tarkovsky – Part 2 (Chaos)

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Kubrick’s 2001- Part 1 (Introduction)

Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Introduction. “First in Cologne in 1957 and later during my long stay in Vienna in the ’60s, I gradually evolved a musical style in which I abandoned structures conceived in terms of bars, melodies, lines and conventional forms.  In this respect my first two orchestral works, Apparitions and Atmosphères, are the most … Continue reading Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Kubrick’s 2001- Part 1 (Introduction)

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Elemental Chaos and Eternal Return in Scriabin and Andrei Tarkovsky – Part 1 (Introduction)

Elemental Chaos and Nietzsche’s Eternal Return in the Music of Alexander Scriabin and the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky. Introduction “It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.” (1625/2002, p.344) – Francis Bacon. The cyclic nature of life and the process of destruction and rejuvenation has been a subject of … Continue reading Elemental Chaos and Eternal Return in Scriabin and Andrei Tarkovsky – Part 1 (Introduction)

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Peeping Tom (Michael Powell,1960) – Aural Perspectives of Murder.

In spite of its very energetic reappraisal and various analyses, Michael Powell’s career destroying masterpiece, Peeing Tom (1960), is a film whose musical eccentricities and sound design contain hidden depths. For a film that appears on the surface to be almost excessively Freudian, this was normal yet, when looking at some of the detailed reappraisals and even some of the high-end re-evaluations of its narrative … Continue reading Peeping Tom (Michael Powell,1960) – Aural Perspectives of Murder.

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Analysis of Sound and Music in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) – Part 4 (Conclusions)

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.  Combining the Readings: Similarities, Contradictions and Cross-Over. “It’s as if the film were pinpointing the very essence of the unfilmable: the entwined couple, monstrous, the two-backed beast of the primal scene, the impossible couple of body and voice.” – Michel Chion (1999, p.149). While Murphy and Fenimore examine and address different points and issues, their resulting essays not only … Continue reading Analysis of Sound and Music in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) – Part 4 (Conclusions)

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Film

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) – Occult Sexuality

Strange undercurrents of sexuality pervade the films of Stanley Kubrick. Though not always present explicitly, the raw presence of dark desire and physical wanting seems scattered throughout his work. From Dr Strangelove‘s ideas of selective breeding based on the “sexual characteristics that will have to be of a highly stimulating nature” to The Shining‘s most surreal haunting of a man receiving oral sex from another … Continue reading Eyes Wide Shut (1999) – Occult Sexuality

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Analysis of Sound and Music in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) – Part 3 (Acousmatic Concepts)

Part 1. Part 2. Emphasis on Acousmatic Concepts in Ross J. Fenimore’s “Voices that Lie Within”. “Psycho almost didn’t happen.  This is a unique case of music literally saving a film.” – Sullivan (2006, p.246). Like much literature around Psycho, Fenimore’s “Voices That Lie Within” begins its argument with setting the scene. “Psycho begins with a theft.”(2010, p.80) he begins as so many often do.  … Continue reading Analysis of Sound and Music in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) – Part 3 (Acousmatic Concepts)

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