I first heard this piece as a part of the amazing soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It might interest you to watch the scene it was used in the movie. I've never listened to the entirety of Khachaturian's ballet suite, but I'm keeping with only the Adagio as to start our experiment with a short piece.
It sounds to me as if it was composed for the emptiness of outer-space. This might be why James Horner seemingly "copy and pasted" the theme into his score for James Cameron's Aliens. And then again in Patriot Games. And yet again in Clear and Present Danger (theme starts at 16:00).
-Tyler
Hello, my name is Ryan- I am a friend of Tyler's. I have had little formal musical instruction.
ReplyDeleteIn 2001, I believe this piece is used right after Dr. Floyd joins with colleagues in conference over the monolith found on Jupiter's (or Saturn's?) moon. It does seems to convey the theme of emptiness, and beyond that, I would add the spatial emptiness, in terms of the vacuum of space and the cold expanse that Bowman and Poole are travelling through, is paralleled with something akin to human loneliness. The piece sounds as if a large part of the orchestra had moved on, and all that is left are those few lamenting on an empty stage; not really a mourning of the human loss as much as confrontation of the austerity and vastness of the now empty space- a sentiment that might happen sometime before nostalgia.
You're right about the scene, I linked it in the OP. FYI it's Saturn in the book and Jupiter in the movie.
DeleteI agree with Ryan. The orchestra is extremely lonely: only one voice until 70 seconds in, then two voices appear, but they rarely move at the same time - they just answer each other every other bar while the other voice sustains. There aren't three voices until the last 45-ish seconds. In addition to the melancholy melody, the second voice moves mostly by half steps, as if it's just slowly falling away with no direction. Also, there's nothing in the lower register to give it any sonic richness. This all gives the feeling of emptiness, of floating alone through the dark, cold, indifferent void of space.
ReplyDeleteI love the above observations, they really helped me get into a good mind set as I listened to this for the first time. I'm working at my desk with this playing repeatedly and on about the 4th listen I suddenly am struck at minute 4 with the violin solo. I listened to the lead into the solo (from about 3'54 to 4')and I am really impressed with how the orchestra melds into this solo. I'm really digging (technically it's aesthetically pleasing) the "Figaro" motif that is continued from violin solo to orchestra. This motif may be earlier in the piece as well.
ReplyDeleteI started by reading your comments and listening to only the audio of the piece. At first glance, this piece does seem to convey a message of emptiness. It is not so much the emptiness that comes when someone or something that we hold dear is lost, but rather the type of emptiness that is associated with the absence of life. This message is consistent with the first minute of the second video (Tyler’s “watch” link) in which all we see is shots of the space station on the black canvas of space.
ReplyDeleteHowever, about a minute into the video, the mood of the video changes, while the mood of the piece does not. The piece still reflects this empty void, but in the video we see that this empty void does in fact contain life in the form of a crew member. And yet, even this life seems rather insignificant, and the music reminds us of this. The crew member is limited to doing seemingly unimportant, mundane tasks to combat the nothingness.
After listening to this, I wanted to find a video of the piece in context of Gayane (it would have been nice if I had find a video with the music and the dancers). Fifteen minutes of Googling yielded little results, but, I was able to find a piece similar to this by the same person.
This piece is Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia. The scene opens up with Phrygia, Spartacus’ wife, alone and waiting for her lover, who has been taken captive by and enemy king (Phyrgia is a captive in the courts of the enemy king). We are once again overwhelmed with a feeling of lonliness. but are also given the hint of anticipation of an “AAHHH” moment. The “AAHHH” moment finally comes in about 3 minutes (3:12) into the piece where Sparticus comes out and picks up his wife in what is truly a beautiful 4 minutes (sadly it will be the last four minutes the man and wife share together).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYVR_P8Hmw4
Complete Ballet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9jbn27wIew
DeleteAdagio shows up at 13:00 and 25:30.