Music Despite all of the dancing music, the highlight of tonight's Prom 68 was the exotic and strange Atmosphères by György Ligeti. Understandably used by Stanley Kubrick as part of the soundtrack for 2001: A Space Odyssey, as the Proms website describes it "eschewing melodic, harmonic and even rhythmic motifs for transformations of tone colour and dynamics. Yet it is anything but static in formal design, depending on the concept of ‘micropolyphony’ (densely interwoven textures) to direct both its shorter- and longer-term evolution."
There was nothing for it but to turn of the lights out in the room and think of monoliths and stargates and mad computers. I do wonder if I'd have found this as acceptable if I hadn't heard it so many times in a film first, but I have a sneaky suspicion I would. More and more I'm being drawn to modernist art forms, from architecture to design, to functionality rather than over design for the sake of elaboration. The clean sounds of these chords, primal, uncomplicated and yet also somehow endlessly complex. Overwhelming.
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