Don’t get me wrong, Fantasia’s a great cartoon for what it is. But the “Rite of Spring” section is marred, in one way I knew about already, but also in another way that I didn’t know about until just now. The way I knew about is the music: Stravinsky objected — and quite rightly — to the performance, which isn’t quite right — but especially to the changes they made to the music: cuts, rearrangement of material, and so on. But that’s the price you pay for mass media entertainment, and the big bucks, I guess. The other marring is …
Month: March 2012
“The Rite of Spring” and Story Research
When I was still delivering newspapers (er, okay, fliers) for pocket money, I discovered Stravinsky’s masterpiece, Le Sacre de Printemps, known in English as The Rite of Spring. I immediately found the music somehow bizarrely familiar and comfortable, despite its dissonance, its extremity, the unnatural use of the instruments, and so on. This is hardly surprising, of course: anyone who watches a lot of film knows how influential this ballet by Stravinsky has proven to be on the work of film score composers, and some of what Stravinsky did even entered the common language of orchestral music afterwards. The premiere …
The Music of Jo Hyeja — “Music” Finished, Sort Of
The last mention I made of this project was to note that we’d done some recording with the haegeum player from the band 잠비나이 for the soundtrack. Since then, I’ve been off and on constructing music tracks from samples — both of the haegeum, and of other sounds I collected over a 48 hour period: water going down a drainpipe, the hum of car engines, growling, and so on. As of right now, my work on the audio is done except for one step: the audio post-production work, which we’re scheduled to do on Friday at a studio. (I’ll have …
Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: The Ur-Cantos
For those who don’t know, I’m writing a series of posts about Ezra Pound’s massive book-length poem The Cantos as I work my way through the poems. If you scroll down to the bottom of this post, there will be a menu where you can go back to the beginning of this series. Well, then: having worked our way through the official, final versions of Cantos I-III, it seems it’s time to go have a look at the “Ur-Cantos.”
Coming to Seoul: Dance Performance of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival
In the first week of May 2012, the New Zealand group Red Leap Theater (a dance company, by the looks of it) will be performing their rendition of Shaun Tan’s award-winning (and wonderful) wordless graphic novel The Arrival. I’m a huge fan of the book, and have tickets booked for Miss Jiwaku, myself, and our friend Sanko. The performance will be at the LG Arts Center, and you can book tickets here. It’s selling out quickly, so if you are in Seoul and like fantasy or SF, this is a special treat unlikely to be repeated. Tickets are 30,000, 50,000, …