# tick... tick... tick...



## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

The clock. Machine that keeps track of time. Epitome of Enlightenment-era engineering, or of uncaring mechanical modernity.

Musicians live with two similar time-keeping mechanisms: the metronome, a tool for creating arbitrary and perhaps endless ticks, and our hearts, whose pulses we can control only slightly and which only have so many beats allotted.

Here are two thought-provoking clock pieces to get things started. Both are deeply mechanical and deeply human.

Harrison Birtwistle, "Harrison's Clocks". These things are mighty but then they break...




(I like the pianist in the video but I like Joanna Macgregor's interpretation better; she captures the human side of the clocks)









The clock music from Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella, which is the moment we realize it's not just Cinderella who has limited time for her adventures


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

There are a lot of pieces that come to mind with "clock" or "time" in the title, but when you describe the concepts of "deeply mechanical" and yet "deeply human" in your post the first composer that comes to mind for me is *Bach*. For example one of his pieces that makes me think of the march of time is his _Passacaglia and fugue in C minor_. The word Passacaglia derives from the Spanish _Pasar_ - 'to walk', the steady rhythm and repeating themes found in this form can be likened to cyclical time, or the cycles we experience while experiencing time ie - the seasons, or the ups and downs, and the highs and the lows etc. This piece makes me think of the slow steady march of time (the slow and steady bass note intro) yet simultaneously contrasts with this the infinite, and the eternal (the theme repeats in different cycles, these cycles can be likened to a circle, a circle has no end and no beginning therefore can symbolize infinity), providing inspiration and faith for those receptive to this other world. Like life itself as we are experiencing "time", things can get a little heavy at times, perhaps even seem a little chaotic, likewise the variations in this piece get a little heavy and wild and crazy and seemingly out of control at times, yet at the same time there is a profound sense of inner logic, structure and order underlying all this. I think this piece goes beyond what can really be described in words, but the concept of time is among the primary concepts it conjures for me.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Ravel!






Loved that Birtwistle video: "With minimal music... my ear gets there before the piece... It's simple-minded" - YUP!!! Straight-talking northerner ;-)


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

The fist thing that comes to mind is Ligeti's _Clocks and Clouds._ It's dreamlike and rhythmic too. The female chorus Salonen is discussing in this video begins to sound as much like crickets as a clock ticking to me, but that is just another indicator of time.

Part 1.





Part 2.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

The clock scene from Boris Godunov, of course.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Their are lots of ticking clocks at the beginning of Ravel's opera L'heure espagnole. Set in a clockmakers, of course.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Baroque music represented this enlightenment concept with it's steady rhythms, the classical period already saw the beginnings of the undermining of that perhaps.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Another Russion clock-stopper (literally) is in Stravinsky's _The Rake's Progress_, when Nick Shadow stops time... the orchestrated clock chiming there is magical.

And, shouldn't Ligeti's _Poème Symphonique For 100 Metronomes_ get at least some honorable mention in the "Tick-Tick-Tick" category?





There is a piece, precedent the Ligeti _Poème Symphonique_ for multiple Newtons balls, who by, I've forgotten....


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

And if we're just looking for examples of clocks in music, there is the countdown to midnight in Prokofiev's Cinderella. Somehow I don't think that is exactly what hreichgott had in mind though.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

In opera _Straszny Dwór_ the old clock plays prominent role in plot and several musical numbers. Here, starting from 2:27, one of characters sees it suddenly starting to work at nightime and recalls the telling about spirit that dwells inside it and occassionaly puts the ancient mechanism on move. The music in mentioned fragment depicts this happening. Then recitative ends and aria follows. It includes carillion tune of the clock (first appearance at 3:02):


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

hreichgott said:


> The clock music from Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella, which is the moment we realize it's not just Cinderella who has limited time for her adventures


No, just her. :tiphat:

It's a great exit piece.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

The Andante from Haydn's 'The Clock' symphony:


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Weston said:


> And if we're just looking for examples of clocks in music, there is the countdown to midnight in Prokofiev's Cinderella. Somehow I don't think that is exactly what hreichgott had in mind though.


The Prokofiev scene from Cinderella is the other clock piece mentioned in the OP


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

Well I'm now suitably distracted by all these great pieces  BTW L'heure espagnole is definitely the silliest Ravel I have ever heard, or seen.


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## Dustin (Mar 30, 2012)

And now for the comment that has nothing to do with music but reminded me of one of my favorite lines. 

"Tick... Tick... Tick.... That's the sound of your life running out" - Jordan Chase, Classic Dexter line!


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

PetrB said:


> And, shouldn't Ligeti's _Poème Symphonique For 100 Metronomes_ get at least some honorable mention in the "Tick-Tick-Tick" category?


The metronome piece, of course. It is quite frightening when they start to run down.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

I may be the only one, but I hear a clock or metronome-like sound in the pendular harp parts of the finale of Das Lied von der Erde as well as that of Mahler's Ninth, but it's a broken clock, I suppose, because the rhythm is uneven at times....

_No programmatic interpretation implied._


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

In a rare set of incidental musics for a banned play in Russia, Glazunov wrote a demented chiming-clock tableau. Yeah, it's not just demented for Glazunov, it would be demented if anyone wrote it. It's polytonal.  That whole incidental set has some wack things in it, you wouldn't believe it until you heard it.


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## csacks (Dec 5, 2013)

At the beginning of the Danza Macabra, by Camille Saint Saens there are bells indicating midnight. At the end, there is a rooster singing. It is all delimitated by marks of time. My kids, specially my youngest daughter, 15 now, loves it, so I have to listen it quite often in the car


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

Anderson's Syncopated Clock? 
...hardly the sound of Father Time tapping on your shoulder


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## DrKilroy (Sep 29, 2012)

Holst's Saturn fits nicely in this category.

Best regards, Dr


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> In a rare set of incidental musics for a banned play in Russia, Glazunov wrote a demented chiming-clock tableau. Yeah, it's not just demented for Glazunov, it would be demented if anyone wrote it. It's polytonal.  That whole incidental set has some wack things in it, you wouldn't believe it until you heard it.


From Masquerade (Act 3. Tableau 3: Chiming Clock). I'm still not convinced that the Naxos recording is a complete representation of the score. Too many unanswered questions and missing parts.

There are Latvian's examples of this:

Janis Ivanovs' Fourth Symphony (towards the end of the first movement). Eerie.
Adolfs Skulte's Fifth Symphony (towards the end of the third movement).


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

dholling said:


> From Masquerade (Act 3. Tableau 3: Chiming Clock). I'm still not convinced that the Naxos recording is a complete representation of the score. Too many unanswered questions and missing parts.


Isn't the wordless choir stuff really creepy too?? It sounds like something Philip Glass would have written, only... this was at least 50 years earlier.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Isn't the wordless choir stuff really creepy too?? It sounds like something Philip Glass would have written, only... this was at least 50 years earlier.


Yeah! My thoughts exactly when I heard it the first time.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Pacemaker: the best of both worlds. The organic heart controlled by a precise electric current.

Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit with its incessantly repeating note (Bb?) gives me a sense of being "trapped" in some fearful mode of existence, like the tolling of a bell...


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> In a rare set of incidental musics for a banned play in Russia, Glazunov wrote a demented chiming-clock tableau. Yeah, it's not just demented for Glazunov, it would be demented if anyone wrote it. It's polytonal.  That whole incidental set has some wack things in it, you wouldn't believe it until you heard it.


Oo, which play is it?



millionrainbows said:


> Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit with its incessantly repeating note (Bb?) gives me a sense of being "trapped" in some fearful mode of existence, like the tolling of a bell...


You mean the middle movement "Le gibet" ?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

hreichgott said:


> Oo, which play is it?
> 
> You mean the middle movement "Le gibet" ?


Yeah, that's the one. A very hypnotic piece, yet it conveys a sense of unease to me. If it's a meditation on death, no wonder.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> Yeah, that's the one. A very hypnotic piece, yet it conveys a sense of unease to me. If it's a meditation on death, no wonder.


Yep, that's a cheery one. Actually, more fitting the meaning of "lugubrious" would be a bit of a task.

This is a gibbet (Fr. Le gibet)








Here is the poem which the piece is based upon....

Le gibet
Que vois-je remuer autour de ce Gibet?
Faust.

Ah! ce que j'entends, serait-ce la bise nocturne qui glapit, ou le pendu qui pousse un soupir sur la fourche patibulaire?
Serait-ce quelque grillon qui chante tapi dans la mousse et le lierre stérile dont par pitié se chausse le bois?
Serait-ce quelque mouche en chasse sonnant du cor autour de ces oreilles sourdes à la fanfare des hallali?
Serait-ce quelque escarbot qui cueille en son vol inégal un cheveu sanglant à son crâne chauve?
Ou bien serait-ce quelque araignée qui brode une demi-aune de mousseline pour cravate à ce col étranglé?
C'est la cloche qui tinte aux murs d'une ville sous l'horizon, et la carcasse d'un pendu que rougit le soleil couchant.

What do I see stirring around that gibbet?
Faust.
Ah! that which I hear, was it the north wind that screeches in the night, or the hanged one who utters a sigh on the fork of the gibbet?
Was it some cricket who sings lurking in the moss and the sterile ivy, which out of pity covers the floor of the forest?
Was it some fly in chase sounding the horn around those ears deaf to the fanfare of the halloos?
Was it some scarab beetle who gathers in his uneven flight a bloody hair from his bald skull?
Or then, was it some spider who embroiders a half-measure of muslin for a tie on this strangled neck?
It is the bell that tolls from the walls of a city, under the horizon, and the corpse of the hanged one that is reddened by the setting sun.


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