aworks :: "new" american classical music

Koyaanisqatsi (1983). Philip Glass /buildings/

Carey Cuprisin has a short but funny description of the film Koyaanisqatsi. Me, I've been listening to the 1998 recording but deliberately not watching the video. I'm trying to disassociate the music from the film to determine if the score is as dramatic as I think it is. Reading Carey's post refreshed my memory of the buildings being blown up, though.

Koyaanisqatsi. Philip Glass (1983)

Steve Greenlee and June Wulff write in the Boston Globe

The twisted and delicate balance between pop culture and coolness has tipped the wrong way and made it fashionable to dislike composer Philip Glass. His chiming Grammy-nominated score for ''The Hours'' was roundly derided last year, yet we find it (and just about all of his other scores, including ''Koyaanisqatsi'') mesmerizing.

Ok, maybe "Koyaanisqatsi" is mesmerizing, but just about all of his other scores?

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Kyle Gann discusses memorability and simplicity and quality (and the lack thereof in most music by Eliott Carter and Pierre Boulez).   

And it wasn't just listening. In the '70s every young composer analyzed Carter's Second String Quartet, and I was no exception. I started with loads of enthusiasm, but increasingly found the ideas unmusical: especially that the tritones were all in the viola, the perfect fifths all in the second violin (or whatever - I disremember the details), which isn't something one can hear in a polyphonic texture. It's a stupid idea, really. And as fanatical as I am about tempo contrasts, Carter's seemed mechanical and musically unmotivated. I came to think that Carter had invested a lot of time in overly literal aspects of music that didn't appeal to the ear. As I'm always reminding my students, art isn't about reality, it's about appearances.

I'll suggest Koyaanisqatsi is an example of music better in the moment than upon later reflection.  Which then raises the question of whether or not remembering the film while listening to the music enhances the experience?  The music has poignance and some sense of foreboding.  Would it have even that if one hasn't seen the film or known the premise of the story?