Uploaded October 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
ANIMATED SOUNDS Short film (2011)
Excerpts from the stage work The Musical Seminar (1982)
Animation of composer's drawings in the score, with audio from a live recording;
The excerpts use an audio from the 1982 Tanglewood Festival performance of the stage work The Musical Seminar and animation of the composer's drawings within the musical score. The purpose of these drawings is to depict and stimulate the performers’ actions on stage.
The first scene is the opening of the play: four of the five main musicians join the Trombonist who, already on stage, is sound asleep and snoring. The next scene, from the part of the play in which the musicians practice musical styles on a given theme, is dedicated to Arnold Schoenberg. It features the organist-soprano feeling “much better since this theme became a row.” In the scene that follows, three critics (or academics) lecture in English, German, and French about musical creativity, innovation and tradition, and the “absurd necessity” of various esthetical movements. Then, a polyglot crowd invades the stage, shouting contradictory slogans about orientations in the arts. The clashing crowd members start to agree with each other. They shout the word “ism,” which becomes “sm––” and then just “m––.” The moo-ing crowd walks more and more bent-over until literally crawling off the stage.
Finally, a loud hammering is heard from backstage, and the electronically-produced sounds of the “Crickets of New England” bring the play to a close: the Trombonist leaves the stage, the remaining musicians fall asleep on their instruments, while the cricket sounds and the lights are dying out.
composers.com
ANIMATED SOUNDS Short film (2011)
Excerpts from the stage work The Musical Seminar (1982)
Animation of composer's drawings in the score, with audio from a live recording;
The excerpts use an audio from the 1982 Tanglewood Festival performance of the stage work The Musical Seminar and animation of the composer's drawings within the musical score. The purpose of these drawings is to depict and stimulate the performers’ actions on stage.
The first scene is the opening of the play: four of the five main musicians join the Trombonist who, already on stage, is sound asleep and snoring. The next scene, from the part of the play in which the musicians practice musical styles on a given theme, is dedicated to Arnold Schoenberg. It features the organist-soprano feeling “much better since this theme became a row.” In the scene that follows, three critics (or academics) lecture in English, German, and French about musical creativity, innovation and tradition, and the “absurd necessity” of various esthetical movements. Then, a polyglot crowd invades the stage, shouting contradictory slogans about orientations in the arts. The clashing crowd members start to agree with each other. They shout the word “ism,” which becomes “sm––” and then just “m––.” The moo-ing crowd walks more and more bent-over until literally crawling off the stage.
Finally, a loud hammering is heard from backstage, and the electronically-produced sounds of the “Crickets of New England” bring the play to a close: the Trombonist leaves the stage, the remaining musicians fall asleep on their instruments, while the cricket sounds and the lights are dying out.
composers.com
