This Saint-Saëns piece is called "Aquarium," but I first heard it without knowing its title, and it always made me think of the scene in one of the Narnia books where Lucy awakens in moonlight and feels that the trees are just about to wake up. This short film has something of the same feeling.
I heard "Aquarium" on the radio coming home this evening and noticed that the announcer pronounced the final "s" in the composer's name. An internet search suggests that this is a result of the diaresis over the "e" in Saëns.
That's a very curious film. What do you make of it?
ReplyDeleteNo idea! It evokes a mysterious tone, just right for the music. The loss of identity attendant on sexual obsession? Revenge of the female principle? The id (alluring power from the deep) swallows up the ego? I think it's aimed at the right brain.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I asked, because I wouldn't have thought of any of that. It's a very interesting piece.
ReplyDeleteThe boy is walking through the forest, and then comes out of the woods and makes a difficult climb to where he can see the sea. He finds a necklace with what looks like a pearl (i.e., a gift from the sea). When he wears it, he can see the girl.
Yet he willfully removes the necklace so that she disappears, not once but twice. The third time she comes out of the sea, takes the necklace from him, and uses it to make him disappear. Then she throws away the necklace, clearly not concerned that she'll never be able to make him appear again.
Perhaps it's to the next person to find the necklace and take his place inside it? A kind of genie in the bottle story, except that the genie can trap you in his (her) place? And a genie who is a creature of the water, not a spirit of the air.
It was odd how he had to climb to get to the sea. I thought they might have been trying to evoke a large dune, but it probably was just funky editing.
ReplyDeleteI definitely took her for a repeat offender. Someone else will always come along and find the pearl.
Maybe she wouldn't have bleeped him if he hadn't kept taking off the necklace.
It reminds me of "All That Jazz," where Faye Dunaway plays Death. Early in the movie, she wears a veil and long sleeves, keeping her distance while she flirts with Bob Fosse. Just before his heart attack, which he's been courting by his smoking and amphetamine-popping, she lifts her veil.
Tex, I'd bet my right arm you're a fan of Bach. These pieces you're posting are in tune with nature in that they are of simple components, but placed in interaction with each other, create incredible but euphonious complexity. To me, they start to key in on the 'secrets of the universe' as it were, and they do have a 'mystique' to them, or non-specificity as they aren't trying overtly to be entertaining or dramatic. They tend to lack the typical symbolic/dramatic effects composers go to to send messages to the audience. I've never been much of a romantic at heart (though I'll admit that following Grim over the years has softened me on that, as has had having kids), so I've always been drawn to things that have this sort of structural simplicity, but compositional complexity. There's a 'truth' to it, in my mind. I'm betting this sort of lines up with an aesthetic view that there's an alignment with some universal truth or with what beauty is buried in this.
ReplyDeleteAll Bach is a cut above the average, but only some Bach really transports me, like the Concerto for two harpsichords, etc., in C minor.
ReplyDeleteFor me the most beautiful music in the world may be Strauss's Four Last Songs, especially the second half of the third one. I think Strauss is considered late Romantic/early modern? I'm also a big fan of Chopin and the later (ergo more Romantic?) Beethoven, as well as Prokofiev (esp. Romeo & Juliet) and Tchaikovsky. Mozart leaves me completely cold.
So I don't know where I fit. I like harmonies made of combinations of tunes each of which is beautiful in its own right, like the second movement to the 7th Symphony or many parts of the final movement of the 9th.