Sometimes an artist changes the medium; sometimes the medium changes the artist. Over the past two decades, the orchestra has undergone its most extensive evolution since the expansion of the percussion section in the early 20th Century. In one of the last bastions of analogue technology, digital technology has started to change the game: first came digital audio, then came video. Both are at work in my new symphony Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra, a collaboration with director Gary Rydstrom and animator Jim Capobianco.
This concerto for orchestra and animated film, premiering this spring with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony, journeys inside the instruments to see how they work. Moving next season to the Pittsburgh, National, and Dallas Symphonies, Philharmonia Fantastique will subsequently be released on screen and television by Vulcan Productions.
The piece is a kinetic exploration of the age-old connection between music and technology, an intersection that’s been happening ever since bamboo was turned into pan flutes, or animal skin and logs were made into drums. Astonishing innovations in musical engineering have continued for centuries, from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier celebration of equal temperament to Wagner’s tubas. Guided by a mercurial Sprite that is born in the film’s opening minutes, we fly inside a flute to see its keys up close; jump on a viola string to activate the harmonic series; and zip through the tubes of tuba as its valves elongate shafts of air.
So why this, why now? A new medium has developed – film with live orchestra – that perfectly suits a new ‘guide to the orchestra.’ Over the past few decades, the orchestra has sprouted some interesting new appendages. On the audio front, I’ve witnessed first-hand how orchestras can evolve, seeing early electro-acoustic works such as Rusty Air in Carolina, Liquid Interface, and Mothership first provoke head-scratching before being widely embraced.(Symphonic-electronic soundworlds have been hitting ears since Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother and film scores, but the symphonic repertoire had stuck with its acoustic roots. We just needed to figure out how to integrate speakers into the orchestra in three rehearsals!
On my mind were masterpieces such as Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, to Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, and Disney’s Fantasia when I approached Gary Rydstrom about making a film together about ‘the making of the orchestra.’ Gary’s a master sound designer (count ‘em, seven Oscars for his work with Spielberg) and well as a gifted director of animated films such as Lucasfilm’s Strange Magic. He loved the idea and brought in gifted animator Jim Capobianco (you can spot his most recent work in the animated sequence in Mary Poppins Returns that travels inside a ceramic bowl). The three of us started meeting up at Skywalker Ranch north of San Francisco, wringing our hands over questions such as How does the Sprite get inside the cello???
A combination of animation and special-effects shots of musical instruments, the film will be performed live in concert by an orchestra enhanced by electronic sounds – an integration of a variety of artistic technologies in a through-composed symphony. We’re still working out the final trajectory of the film, when the four ‘tribes’ (families) of the orchestra must unite to resurrect the Sprite (yeah it’s got stakes!). The different instruments of the orchestra are as different as the races on earth, but they fuse together to become The Orchestra – one of the greatest human creations. Stay tuned for more about the piece and the process in the coming months!