Oct 1, 2008

Something new

I was at a concert in Amsterdam's Concertgebouw today. The first half was Beethoven's 6th, the second half Bartok. I find baroque and classical music easy to listen to, and Beethoven's 6th is both familiar and pleasant. It's the first time I've ever listened to Bartok - up till now I've pretty much dismissed any "modern" composer as unlistenable.

The first thing that struck me is that it sounded a lot like movie soundtrack music. I guess Bartok must have had a significant impact on current movie soundtrack composers. While listening and thinking about it, pieces began falling in place. Compared to the Beethoven, the Bartok piece seemed extremely disjointed, mostly missing any sort of melody, and instead featuring dissonant chords.

Although all the chords don't form a musical piece that draws me a long, they're very moody. The modern classical sets the mood instead of providing a tune to hum along to - which it makes sens that it's influenced a lot of today's movie music. However, I still think it doesn't stand well on it's own - without the clear melody, it's hard to follow. I do keep trying to picture the movie scenes that would go with the music though.

Apparently I had an awesome seat, I was told that I was sitting right in front of the mayor of Amsterdam!

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