Music Mosaic

My creative process was like whittling. I have always loved how the composers of the 20^th century reimagined the instruments used for centuries, making them unique and disturbing, so using that type of music was an obvious choice. However, before I decided on a piece of music I decided to go and take pictures. I have recently had a fascination with photography of decay, and so that was what I decided to focus on. I packed up and headed to South Provo, which is just a hot-spot for dilapidated materialism. I tried to apply the concept of “truly seeing” as examined in the reading—I looked for color, beauty, and interest, where I might not normally have seen it.

When I came back with the pictures, I listened to my favorite pieces again while looking at the pictures. It was actually a fascinating process, as I realized that many of the pieces could work for the pictures, but would end up making very different statements. I finally settled on Vaughan Williams “Romance for Strings, Piano, and Harmonica,” and then chose my final pictures from the many I took according to this piece.

The focus of this piece of music is the harmonica. Instead of being set in the tradition folk sense, Vaughan Williams sets it in a more “upper-class” setting, using the harmonica’s fluidity to create, long melodic phrases. This is primarily what I tried to reflect in the pictures. First, I used many pictures from the railroad, which I felt was an obvious choice to be paired with the harmonica. Second, I edited the pictures so certain colors would pop out, and others would fade away. In the music, I saw this with the instrumentation. While it is nice to hear the timbre of the piano and strings behind the harmonica, the piece does not feature a wealth of different sounds. This is why I tried to limit the colors of the photos. Third, I focused on the long, wandering melodies of the harmonica. The lines of the photos I chose are long, emphasized, and most are diagonal. I feel like this emphasizes the wandering melodies, and their unresolved, slightly uncomfortable nature. Lastly, I felt like the harmonica was a very lonely sound. It reminded me almost of a train whistle in the distance, or someone sitting along by a fire. Therefore I did not have any people in my photos, instead trying to emphasize how empty all of these subjects were: lonely highways, deserted stores, trash, etc.

I also tried to incorporate the whole idea of the instrument being reinvented in a modern setting. The harmonica feels almost out of place in this piece, and I tried to reflect that in the pictures by depicting how strange, beautiful, and uncomfortable the things humanity has left behind can be. It is interesting to me that a harmonica is suddenly art when paired with strings, and so is a piece of trash once it's in a photo.

P.S. As distant inspiration, I looked at a YouTube video that sets Steve Reich’s piece “City Life” with images of New York City. It's awesome. I loved the how the frantic energy of the music was reflected in the video depicting a busy, messy city. Find that video here.