Prometheus: Musical Symbolism

Very interesting, I didn't think that Chopin's prelude would tie into this so much. It certainly makes me feel like Prometheus was only a prelude when I listen to it. A small beginning. I think this is another very interesting piece of the puzzle, especially since there's a disjointed theme about music throughout the movie. The engineers use flutes etc... Music is a big part of culture, and with the Engineers it appears as a small part of their technology. Janek is attempting to convey a message to Vickers through his song choice... He doesn't really like Vickers but she is somewhat like him. Although she's too robotic at times, not really in control (like he could be), and doesn't somewhat know the song he's attempting to play or even really care about it. And with her apparent wealth of knowledge in her cabin + the piano, Janek might have thought she may know who Steven Stills was. Not that she was supposed to know, but if she did it wouldn't have only been about sex for Janek. He wanted someone he could share his cultural interests with and thought Vickers was all about music on some levels. He still decided to go meet her in her room, because "if you can't be with the one you love, love the one your with". Because Vickers is there and they do somewhat share a bond, it doesn't matter to him that Vickers is all surface, and Janek is a character with a lot of hidden depth. The set of preludes that this comes from is very interesting. Originally they were criticized for going against some of the standards for preludes. They were said to lack a thematic musical structure, but the pieces do contain what's called motives in music... When you apply this concept to the movie motives going on and the apparent lack of a clear set of connecting themes, then the choice seems to make even more sense. Some background info from wiki: "The brevity and apparent lack of formal structure in the Op. 28 preludes caused some consternation among critics at the time of their publication.[4][verification needed] No prelude is longer than 90 bars (No. 17), and the shortest, No. 9, is a mere 12 bars. Robert Schumann said: "They are sketches, beginnings of études, or, so to speak, ruins, individual eagle pinions, all disorder and wild confusions."[5] Franz Liszt's opinion, however, was more positive: "Chopin's Preludes are compositions of an order entirely apart... they are poetic preludes, analogous to those of a great contemporary poet, who cradles the soul in golden dreams..."[5] More recently, the preludes have been the subject of more positive criticism. Musicologist Henry Finck said that "if all piano music in the world were to be destroyed, excepting one collection, my vote should be cast for Chopin's Preludes."[6] Biographer Jeremy Nicholas writes that "Even on their own, the 24 Preludes would have ensured Chopin’s claim to immortality."[7] Despite the lack of formal thematic structure, motives do appear in more than one prelude. Scholar Jeffrey Kresky has argued that Op. 28 is more than the sum of its parts: Individually they seem like pieces in their own right ... But each works best along with the others, and in the intended order ... The Chopin preludes seem to be at once twenty-four small pieces and one large one. As we note or sense at the start of each piece the various connections to and changes from the previous one, we then feel free to involve ourselves – as listeners, as players, as commentators – only with the new pleasure at hand. —Jeffrey Kresky in A Reader's Guide to the Chopin Preludes[8] The Op. 28 preludes have become standard fare for pianists of all types, and many have recorded the set, beginning with Alfred Cortot in 1926. Chopin himself never played more than four of the preludes at a single public performance.[2] Like Chopin's other works, the Op. 28 preludes are not named or further described, in contrast to many of Schumann's and Liszt's pieces." I hope they use what some refer to as the Hades prelude in Paradise.

I also find it hilarious that Lindelof was talking about encores and Rolling Stones concerts at one point. This tells me they know part of this is about music. He was talking about new songs and classics, and how you always want to hear some of the oldies at a rock concert but bands like Rolling Stones need to keep creating new stuff. And then a very interesting music video comes out starring Noomi Rapace.... A new Rolling Stones song. In some small ways the new Rolling Stones song doom and gloom is part of Lindelof's viral for this movie... He was only speaking about the Rolling Stones specifically, because Noomi's in that video and he knew beforehand that she would be... With one of the lyrics asking "What's it all about? Guess it just affects my mood" There's always more to the artists intent/hidden meaning when a song is being played. Especially when lyrics are involved. Artists don't like to make the true meaning of the lyrics too obvious. Sometimes double meaning, unclear metaphors/references etc. come into play. Most of Chopin's preludes do seem to be leading to more powerful themes on the minor side of things, and give one a sense of doom and gloom approaching.

Im not quite sure if this ties in properly with your thread but I was looking around the net and came across this old interview with Scott and Lindelof.... I thought it was really interesting and wondered if it has been covered already ?? QUOTE [DL] So there’s basically… there’s a message in the movie that they’re transmitting to the engineers, with the girl playing the violin, and David and Holloway have the scene where they haven’t responded to the message. That message is another piece of viral which we may or may not release. [RS] Did you get what the message was about? [It was a message to the engineers.] That would be a constant, from takeoff you’d be constantly replaying that, hoping that somebody’s gonna say “don’t come any further, I’m gonna to blow you out of the sky.” In there, there would be every conceivable form of mathematics equation, and anyone who is superior is going to look at that for three seconds and say “we’ve got chimpanzees on the way.” So, it’s an assessment of who’s coming, basically, it makes sense. [Q] Is that a reference to the original Voyager probe, which obviously had Bach records, drawings, that kind of mix…? [RS] Yeah. SOURCE: [url=http://www.slashgear.com/ridley-scott-talks-prometheus-with-slashgear-candid-uncut-02231334/]Slashgear.com[/url]

This is the Background idea to Chopins work I especially LOVE playing this piece myself : ) QUOTE: Some, though not all, of Opus 28 was written during Chopin and George Sand's stay at a monastery in Valldemossa, Majorca in 1838. [2] In her Histoire de ma vie, Sand related how one evening she and her son Maurice, returning from Palma in a terrible rainstorm, found a distraught Chopin who exclaimed, "Ah! I knew well that you were dead." While playing his piano he had a dream in which He saw himself drowned in a lake. Heavy drops of icy water fell in a regular rhythm on his breast, and when I made him listen to the sound of the drops of water indeed falling in rhythm on the roof, he denied having heard it. He was even angry that I should interpret this in terms of imitative sounds. He protested with all his might – and he was right to – against the childishness of such aural imitations. His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds."[3]

The analysis of the work also has srtong points of reference for the Prometheus story.. Niecks says, "This C sharp minor portion...affects one like an oppressive dream; the re-entrance of the opening D flat major, which dispels the dreadful nightmare, comes upon one with the smiling freshness of dear, familiar nature – only after these horrors of the imagination can its serene beauty be fully appreciated.[6]

That makes even more sense now--the stuff about the message the crew were sending. Thanks for that interview Tankgirl. Early in the movie they're indeed trying to send some sort of message and something reads message not received. If you look on the screen in the movie I think it does actually show the violin, a bunch of equations or something, and other things they were trying to send. So for whatever reason the Engineers weren't picking up that signal, maybe just because the Engineer was asleep and the rest are dead, the transmitters were off or something. It totally seems like Voyager or other cultural messages shot out into space. LOL We sent a Dorito's commercial to space in 2008... It was aimed at parts of Ursa Major. I guess we're trying to announce the other sides of our culture to the aliens in real-life too. Lure the aliens here with munchies. Expand the customer base. Corporations need to suck in more money from the vacuum of space. Even from the aliens by stealing their business.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Doritos'!! well actually all our radio and Tv signals are heading out there now.. thats a scary thought!! O-O the Voyager probes are just leaving our solar system now and we are still receiving data So cool!! I wish we had got to hear the reply that Scott said they were going to use I guess it was that viral Engineer voice message that came out much later?? I hadnt heard about the voilin piece being a message I had only thought it was related to David reading Elizabeths dreams from her past so thats kinda interesting : )

There is a clear evidence of two planes: opposed to the dream or illusion reality: all the characters and their dreams are doomed in that hellish place. For Weyland, finding an inescapable death because is seeking in the wrong place = false paradise; for Shaw, her unquestionable femininity (under the patronage of the Cross). Therefore, for the characters in the film are dreaming is presented as a punishment for not assume (their) reality. And that is the clear sentence. The film is recreated in a stubborn reverse symbolism, if we realize it, there is a false God=Death (Deacon mural) or false heaven. For example, quotation: [i]"In Vickers quarters there is a Grand Piano. A Grand Piano is a symbol of a life that is harmonious. But it’s the reverse. There is nothing harmonious with Vickers or her ship. The Piano is never played. While her quarters seem to be the nicest room on the ship, it’s a false heaven".[/i] (Prometheus, Part 10: Adam & Eve) The end of the scene when the piano finally sounds breaking its silence, is symbolic and transcendental, and as I have highlighted in the quotation above, it's a clear elegy, is a lament for the humanity. For those who are lost and do not know the meaning of that term: * [i]An elegy is a meditative lyric poem that has a very mournful and melancholy tone. It is usually written to mourn the death of a close friend or loved one, but also occasionally mourns humanity as a whole.[/i] (wikipedia)

On a less serious note(no pun intennd) I would have included the following music: *Running Engineers doing it Gangham style *Millburn singing to the Hammerpede 'First I Time Ever I Saw Your Face' *David first talking to the Engineer,"What's Your Name' *As the storm is risng... 'Dust In The Wind;.. Seriously I am sure we could have worked Crazy Train into the soundtrax.

Dust in the Wind* by Kansas?

Yea it was just a song that sort of fit the scene,,but not a favorite of mind. I am sure more creative types could match songs to scenes in our movie. I do find that the movies music is not dramatic enough for me to remember it in the various scenes, The main theme is kinda nice just not memorable, I did enjoy the piano pieces and the posts relating to the various titles and the themes that connect with the film though it was interesting to instrumental music discussed as if they had lyrics.

I was thinking about the various musical instruments presented in our movie. *PIano in the Survivial shuttle *Flute in the Orrery *Sqeezebox from Stephen Stills *Violin in the videos(REd Violin was suggested by a poster) Not a synthesizer in sight

I'm a huge fan of [i]Dead Can Dance[/i], and I remember seeing an interview with the band lead (Brendan Perry) explaining the meaning of the group's name. He says that the name [i]Dead Can Dance[/i] "describes the actual process of creating music - of drawing animacy out of inanimacy (….) we saw the interaction of a human and a musical instrument as essentially making something which was inanimate – for instance, like a drum or a guitar – resonate in such a way that it divulges its own natural, latent, dormant properties in sympathy with the musician." And this is restated in [url=http://eyesore.no/html/interview/DeadCanDance.biography.html]another interview[/url]: [i]"The album artwork, a ritual mask from New Guinea, attempted to provide a visual reinterpretation of the meaning of the name Dead Can Dance. The mask, though once a living part of a tree is dead; [u]nevertheless it has, through the artistry of its maker, been imbued with a life force of its own.[/u] To understand why we chose the name, think of the [u]transformation of inanimacy to animacy..[/u] Think of the processes concerning life from death and death into live. So many people missed the inherent symbolism".[/i] All musical instruments are crafted out of dead & inanimate things - trees, animal hides, metal - and then we "breathe life" into them, either literally (wind instruments) or figuratively. [i] And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ~ Genesis 2:7[/i] [i]Prometheus and Epimetheus (....) were given the task of creating man. Prometheus shaped man out of mud, and Athena breathed life into his clay figure. ~ [url=http://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/The_Myths/Creation_of_Man_by_Prometheus/creation_of_man_by_prometheus.html]Greek Mythological Account[/url][/i] So maybe the musical references aren't so disjointed after all. I think they fit it in beautifully w/the theme of creation & creating life (both artificial & biological). ETA: Since raindrops precede a storm, I think Vivaldi's Summer, Presto (also called [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=uNGA3RISEIg&NR=1]Storm[/url]) would be a great follow up to Chopin's Raindrops Prelude in Paradise (also keeps the violin meme alive).