Music Mosaic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKzWLUQizz8

Genesis begins with the dawn, heavy reverberating blasts herald the coming of a cosmic event; the birth of a new world. In my mind’s eye I could see the magma riddled planet emerge from the darkness of space. Similar thematic connections were popularized by Kubrick’s use of Also Sprach Zarathusstra in the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Like Kubrick’s film I wanted to establish a sense of reality to my narrative and thus employed the use of photography and fabricated miniatures to root my story in the realm of quasi-feasibility. With both the medium and stage for my narrative set I waited for my next musical cue.  

                The trumpeting planetary introduction of Genesis is short lived. Humming arcs and static sounds intermittently sweep through the drum beats and horn blasts, unsettling the quiet between notes. As the intro draws its last deep sound the audio dives into a screaming base. Now we are plummeting toward the red scarred planet. The music writhes and sparks with wriggling synthetic noise. I tried to evoke this idea by simulating, the best I could, the volcanic turmoil of the charred world. Bright reds and searing whites fill the spaces where only darkness used to be.

                The music retains this violent flavor as the song progresses almost as if the whole score is on its way to beat the crap out of someone. Shrill jabs quicken in rhythm and skewed electrical cuts rise and drop to create a further sense of discord. Something new is making the world violent; some other force is wielding the flame that forged the planet. Man has emerged; skipping the millennia of oceans and undisturbed woodlands, our tale follows violence and fire. Though the world has now cooled to the deep blacks and browns of night, the Cro-Magnon man wields a troch in his hunt for prey. Innovation has made man the new force of chaos, and as the music rises with the tine like hum of steel, we see him swallowed in his creations of wire and gears.

                Tension is starting to build as the music pushes toward its climax. We experience the same unsettling feeling that Annie Dillard described in her experience in the Virginia river bottoms when the dusk came and she began to realize some of the spectral horrors of night. Genesis’ dawn is over and dusk has come. The hissing whir of saw can almost be heard as the song spins into hysteria. Electric strikes transform the theme from its original bass to an alternating twist of shrill overtones and haunting gasps. War has come to man.

                The flames of early man have died and smoke fills the skies behind armed soldiers. The muddied landscape speaks of death and a ravaged world. Genesis closes as the music regresses to pounding piano keys and horn blasts, a funeral procession for a violent era. Colorless gravestones mark the burial of a chaotic life and as Genesis rolls into the next song in its album Let there be light, a sign of new life springs up between fallen snow and yellowed decay.