Ain't nothing to be scared of

2004-01-04 - 11:26 a.m.

So yesterday I watched the movie "Uncorked." Have you seen it? It's not a new movie. It's just a cute little romantic comedy, which, in my opinion was good enough for one viewing, but certainly wouldn't require multiple viewings. Let's just say it was a tad slow for my tastes. At any rate, what did impress me was the music. Most noticably a particular guitar solo, which I've linked to an excerpt there, but it actually picks up the pace quite a bit later on in the song. The soundtrack can't be found on Amazon, but I did track it down from the record label itself. And I want it. But then I just made a New Year's resolution to not give in to temptation. Ergh!

You know, the other day when Tigger and Flik spent the night at my house we had an interesting discussion about music. It was the middle of the night and we had our sleeping bags thrown out on my living room floor with our heads together in the middle of the room whispering. It's more like Tigger and Flik were having a discussion and I was just throwing in comments here and there and asking questions, since I know very little music history and they are both working on their doctorates in music. The discussion was about where do we think music is going. And by "music" they meant art music, not pop stuff. This all started because Flik's boyfriend is a composer of modern art music and none of us "appreciate" his work. They say it's "post-tonal" but I don't really know what that means. I call it "headache," but what do I know. Anyway, we got into a discussion about how people either really love or really hate post-tonal music and we were wondering if those people who claim to like it really like it because of how it sounds or if they like it because it's so methodical. Methodical isn't really the right word, but basically modern art music tends to be very mathematical. There's a lot of theory behind it and everything is just so. It's really all very intelligent and ingenius, but at the same time, music should make people want to listen to it, shouldn't it? Flik said that her boyfriend gave her a comparison to try to explain it. He compared his music to the Notre Dame cathedral. He says that way up high on the cathedral there are carefully carved statues that are perfect and beautiful, yet no one can see them because they're so high. Then why did the sculptor spend so much time on them if nobody can appreciate them? Because the sculptor knows in his heart that his art is beautiful and God knows it's beautiful and that's what really matters. But, I argued, they made the bottom part of the cathedral beautiful, too, not just the top. And I argued further that composers way back when--and I came up with names like Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, because I really don't know that much about it--they wrote music that was both ingeniusly technical and beautiful to listen to. Laypeople like their music, not just people who understand a lot of music theory. But then Tigger told me that I was wrong, back in their time, laypeople didn't appreciate these people. Laypeople, she said, listened to pop music of the time, which now we think of as folk music. The art music was mainly written for the very wealthy people who supported the arts. These people knew about music theory and they understood the technical stuff. To them at the time, Beethoven did wacky stuff too. They didn't always appreciate it when he tried to branch out. Now we think it's cool, that he paved the way for composers after him, but then, it wasn't so cool. So what about today's music? Composers of art music now think they're doing wonderful stuff and it will be appreciated after they're gone. But will it be? Everything that we know of in music history has withstood the test of time. But there must have been composers who did weird, radical stuff with their music expecting that after they were gone, someone would appreciate it, only no one did and now their work is lost forever. Could that possibly happen to music nowadays? Tigger and Flik don't seem to think so. But they did say that some people think that modern art music has hit a morass, that there's nothing new. I don't think that could be. There's always something new. Maybe this post-tonal stuff isn't it. But that's what art music is these days. If not that, then what? I suggested film music. I mean really, I couldn't name a single modern art music composer (not counting Flik's boyfriend), but I could easily rattle off a dozen film music composers. And you can't tell me that Howard Shore's scores to the Lord of the Ring movies aren't genius. John Williams, James Horner, Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, John Barry? I have no idea if this music is technically correct, but I definitely enjoy listening to it. Tigger says that it's not generally considered good music by that art community because it relies on imagery from the movies to convey its meaning and its emotion. But I don't think that's necessarily true. I think maybe that post-tonal stuff isn't the direction that music is going. Maybe film music is it. Why can't movies be part of the art? Nobody thinks any less of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker music because it's a ballet, do they? But what do I know, I'm just a layperson.