Decasia by Gordon

This is a film that mixes deteriorating celluloid and music. Film uses exstatics of decay to explore what lasts and what does not. Originally conceived of a live environmental multimedia performance with full orchestra. The European Music Month commissioned Michael Gordon to write a symphony that would be performed by 55 piece basel sinfonietta and staged by Ridge Theater. Film was created as part of production. There was a special 3 story floor hight scaffolding build and audience looked up through the projections to see musicians illuminated from behind the scrim.  This film was first performed in November 2001 in Switzerland. Bill Morrison reedited his film to correspond to Gordons music, which became the sountrack of the film.Once the music and images were set on film, “Decasia” reached an audience that was almost unprecedented for a work of experimental cinema and new classical music. This film brings intense emotions from the past.  Now Decasia exists in 2 formats. The staged version completely alters the performance space. Morrison first showed Gordon the damaged archival film that he discovered. They were marked with corroison and riddled by pockmarks. The first thing the composer thought of was the piano that had not been tuned in 20 years, which after hearing tracks of this film I did not think he used which is a shame because I think it would of created better effect of molded memories.  The Composer instead used three flutes, one was in tune and second flute tuned 8th note higher, and third flute is tuned an 8th note lower. When the flutes play in unison the sound sounds thick. So the whole orchestra was tuned this way to get thick sound production. Through this piece Decasia, music is very simple but you can not hear it that well because it is covered up. The resulting sound changes one's bearing to tonality, melody and harmony. The music becomes unstable. You enter a realm, like standing at the gates of heaven, wondering if there are 500 choirs of angels singing, because the overtones and the out-of-tuneness creates a massive complexity of sonorities.  Decasia is dedicated to Louis Andriessen. 


This is the link to one parts of Decasia that I found very interesting


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy5HD8Ddw1s&feature=related


I think it is a really cool idea to put the dying sort of speak film into a new film. This film/music kind of gave me a feeling of running away from something in the dream and not being physically able to run.  When I first watched the documentary on this film I was not sure if the music was specifically made for the documentary or for the film when I did more research I found out it was written for the film. I love the aspect of full orchestra playing at the same time all the time because it really gives a feeling of moving forward. And when I watched parts of this film, it was really cool how the deteriorating film was showing images that looked like scientific molecules and cells, because of the way they were shaped. I found this very interesting collaboration because it was the Film director that came up to musician and they started on it together, felt like every step of the way was collaborated.