Page 330 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

328
IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
Music and multimedia
BEFORE
1910 In Prometheus: The
Poem of Fire, Alexander
Scriabin calls for a “color
organ” to fill the concert hall
with colored light.
1952 John Cage’s Theatre
Piece No. 1, with paintings
by Robert Rauschenberg and
dance by Merce Cunningham,
is staged in North Carolina.
2003 Olga Neuwirth combines
video, music, and theatre in
her adaptation of David
Lynch’s film Lost Highway.
AFTER
2010 Michel van der Aa’s
Up-close combines video opera
(incorporating video images)
and cello concerto.
2016 Everything Is Important
by Jennifer Walsh uses music
and film to explore modern life.
US_328-329_Ades_Whitacre.indd 328
THE MUSIC USES SIMPLE
BUILDING BLOCKS AND
GROWS ORGANICALLY
FROM THERE …
IN SEVEN DAYS (2008), THOMAS ADÈS
isual accompaniments to shapes, patterns, waves, and flows,
music have been known yet these are actually derived from
V for centuries, becoming pictures of London’s Royal Festival
ubiquitous and infinitely more Hall and the Los Angeles Walt
varied in recent times. In British Disney Concert Hall, which jointly
composer Thomas Adès’s In Seven commissioned the work.
Days, a depiction of the biblical Adès and Rosner call their work
creation story, his collaborator Tal a “visual ballet,” and when used,
Rosner’s video illustrates, enriches, the video is generally projected on
and expands on the music—a set screens above the orchestra. The
of variations on two themes, for music can also be played alone, but
piano and orchestra. Adès adds together the two create a powerful
an unusual twist. His themes are multimedia experience. ■
not introduced at the beginning
but at the end, in a short final
movement, which distills the
core essence from the earlier six
movements corresponding to the
six days described in Genesis.
In this music, creation evolves The better you play it,
from chaos into order. and the closer you come
to his idiosyncratic vision,
Images enhancing sound the more wonderful
In Rosner’s visual accompaniment it sounds.
to In Seven Days, images dance Simon Rattle
and spin in time with the sounds,
echoing the music’s kaleidoscopic
depiction of the balance between
chaos and order. The video is
mostly abstract, with geometrical
See also: Ives’s Symphony No. 4 254–255 ■ Janá cˇek’s Sinfonietta 263 ■
Pithoprakta 308 ■ Ligeti’s Études pour piano 324
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