# the beginning and end of the world



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Inspired by Couchie. Little green monster.

What music best embodies your sense of the beginning of the world, and what of its end?

My choices:

Beginning of the world: Rebel's "Cahos" (chaos) from _Les Elemens_

End of the world: "Night of the Electric Insects," the first movement of Crumb's _Black Angels_


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

Off the top of my head, Night of the Insects by Crumb to depict the struggle it was born out of, or Gymnopédie No. 3 for Orchestra by Erik Satie for a slowly awakening/evolving beauty. Ending would be Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima by Penderecki, maybe. Maybe I should actually give it some thought. Maybe some Philip Glass or Steve Reich would be good picks as well for me.

If I'm going for pure cliche and epicness I think I'd say Beethoven's 5th first movement and Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake Act I Finale/Act II First Scene, as I find it quite menacing.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

For the beginning:

Haydns Creation anyone?
how about Mahler's 3rd

The beginning of The Ring suggests to me that the universe is temporally cyclical and repeats creation and destruction.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Beginning: Prelude to Das Rheingold
End: Brünnhilde's Immolation


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Prelude to Act I - Parsifal
Symphony no. 10 - Adagio


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## SottoVoce (Jul 29, 2011)

Beginning of the world (probably due to Fantasia): Rite of Spring

End of the World: Contrapunctus XIV, especially the part where he uses 16th century counterpoint.

Amazing question by the way.


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

SottoVoce said:


> End of the World: Contrapunctus XIV, especially the part where he uses 16th century counterpoint.


Then, what will happen here ? Will the world not have a proper ending... or what?


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## SottoVoce (Jul 29, 2011)

Dodecaplex said:


> Then, what will happen here ? Will the world not have a proper ending... or what?


Silence and nothingness. An abrupt, eternal, non-temporal, nirvana state of nonexistence. Makes the Contrapunctus so much more powerful for me.

You know, Alan Watts in one of his lectures that Bach was the closest thing we have in Western philosophy to Zen Buddhism. I didn't understand it untill I heard the Art of Fugue and the Musical Offering. Both permeate an intense spirituality that I haven't been able to find in any other Western thought or art, although Beethoven's last string quartets also had a deeply spiritual effect on me as well, just in a completely different way.


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

Beginning - Hammerklavier sonata 4th movement, the section before the fugue.
End - Beethoven symphony #3 movement 2. The broken fragments of the theme at the end are perfect: 'This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper'


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

SottoVoce said:


> Silence and nothingness. An abrupt, eternal, non-temporal, nirvana state of nonexistence. Makes the Contrapunctus so much more powerful for me.
> 
> You know, Alan Watts in one of his lectures that Bach was the closest thing we have in Western philosophy to Zen Buddhism. I didn't understand it untill I heard the Art of Fugue and the Musical Offering. Both permeate an intense spirituality that I haven't been able to find in any other Western thought or art, although Beethoven's last string quartets also had a deeply spiritual effect on me as well, just in a completely different way.


Indeed, but I wouldn't go as far as saying that Bach is the closest we have. For example, I've found a similar flavor of Zen in the philosophy of Wittgenstein. "He who understands me finally recognizes [my propositions] as senseless" sounds amazingly close to the old koan where the Zen master concludes by saying "I cannot understand myself"; "Das Mystische" sounds amazingly close to "mu". And what about Godel's incompleteness theorems? I remember having seen a nice illustration of it somewhere being compared with these concepts.

I'd say that the connection between all of these is a mystical idea that cannot be expressed with words (for Wittgy or the Zen masters), cannot be expressed with music (for Bach), and cannot be expressed with logic or mathematics (for Godel), and so on. All of this is deliciously mysterious for me.


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## SottoVoce (Jul 29, 2011)

Dodecaplex said:


> Indeed, but I wouldn't go as far as saying that Bach is the closest we have. For example, I've found a similar flavor of Zen in the philosophy of Wittgenstein. "He who understands me finally recognizes [my propositions] as senseless" sounds amazingly close to the old koan where the Zen master concludes by saying "I cannot understand myself"; "Das Mystische" sounds amazingly close to "mu". And what about Godel's incompleteness theorems? I remember having seen a nice illustration of it somewhere being compared with these concepts.
> 
> I'd say that the connection between all of these is a mystical idea that cannot be expressed with words (for Wittgy or the Zen masters), cannot be expressed with music (for Bach), and cannot be expressed with logic or mathematics (for Godel), and so on. All of this is deliciously mysterious for me.


Very true, I agree that I think that the thing that connects them most is this self-referential attribute that they seem to share; I always thought Bach's music as meaning-in-itself, almost encompassing another plane. I'm sure the same could be said for Logic and Mathematics. I also find the same Zen flavor in Pre-Socratic Greek Philosophy, when eastern influences on philosophy were very strong, Heraclitus, Paremiendes, and Empedocles particularly. These are the ideas in Western thought, along with Jung and Freud, that are extremely close to my heart, probably because of the idea that you described; they cannot be expressed in anything but the meaning itself, completely self-referential.


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## Guest (Mar 25, 2012)

Beginning has to be Haydn's Creation. For the end, I will go with Mahler's 2nd symphony - Resurrection.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Beginning: Vivaldi - Spring from the Seasons.

End: Dvorak - 9th Symphony (all of it).

In my personal religion the End segues into the new Beginning.


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## Truckload (Feb 15, 2012)

How about an all R. Strauss answer.

Begining - Also Sprach Zarathustra

Ending - Tod und Verkalarung


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Beginning: I thought about several works but couldn't think of anything really appropriate. The work should start out loud (maybe cymbals, drums, and orchestra) but it must be VERY HIGHLY ORDERED. Any ideas?

End: Cage's 4'33" (nothing but quantum randomness)


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## sah (Feb 28, 2012)

Beginning: _De l'aube à midi sur la mer_ (_La mer_, C. Debussy).
End: The unanswered question - Charles Ives. I was also thinking in Cage´s 4'33''.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

mmsbls said:


> Beginning: I thought about several works but couldn't think of anything really appropriate. The work should start out loud (maybe cymbals, drums, and orchestra) but it must be VERY HIGHLY ORDERED. Any ideas?
> 
> End: Cage's 4'33" (nothing but quantum randomness)


Very scientific._ Poley_ will approve. One quibble: our world didn't begin with The Big Bang.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

*Beginning *- The* opening of Beethoven's 9th*, the hazy string sound (which was later to come up often in Bruckner's symphonies too). Something forming, coming to being (as opening to Haydn's _Creation_ as already stated).

*End *- The* first movement of Bruckner's 9th*, which brings to mind the day of judgement, and in that vein something like the _Dies Irae _from Verdi's _Requiem _fits the bill here too.


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## Meaghan (Jul 31, 2010)

Beginning: 1st movement of Mahler 1
End: Last (2nd) movement of Beethoven's Op. 111 piano sonata


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Beginning has to be Haydn's Creation...

Und... es... ward... LICHT!!!


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## Meaghan (Jul 31, 2010)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Beginning has to be Haydn's Creation...
> 
> Und... es... ward... LICHT!!!


I love that moment so so much, and I definitely thought of answering with the Creation. But the beginning of Mahler 1 is more how I imagine the beginning of the world. Maybe because we sightread it in youth orchestra once, and I remember my conductor saying as we played that many-octave A, "The beginning of the world! The beginning of everything!" I guess it stuck with me. But it really does sound like the beginning of the world to me - everything coming to life, gradually at first, and then irrepressibly. Maybe it's more like early spring as a metaphor for the beginning of the world.


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)




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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

La fin de la fin du monde (clip officiel).
I have no idea what's going on here!


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I want to say Mahler's 3rd 1st movement for creation because I love that movement, but honestly until I found out it was supposed to be about creation in a sense, I just thought it was about pirates or something...

The intro of R Strauss' _Also sprach Zarathustra_ seems more fitting for creation for me for some reason even though I rarely listen to that work...and don't know much about what its about other than it ties into Nietzsche.

For the end...I don't know... I'm thinking maybe Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

tdc said:


> For the end...I don't know... I'm thinking maybe Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue.


That's actually an interesting idea. I imagine some kind of modern dance ballet portrayal of the last judgment set to that music. Angels in white bounding oblivious to the music, gathering the saints who get hooked on cables and float away; demons in red shaking epileptic-ly as they pull sinners into the flaming mouth of hell. In the end, resolution, and the stage is empty.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

tdc said:


> I want to say Mahler's 3rd 1st movement for creation because I love that movement, but honestly until I found out it was supposed to be about creation in a sense, *I just thought it was about pirates or something...*
> 
> The intro of R Strauss' _Also sprach Zarathustra_ seems more fitting for creation for me for some reason even though I rarely listen to that work...and don't know much about what its about other than it ties into Nietzsche.
> 
> For the end...I don't know... I'm thinking maybe Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue.


That is brilliant! :lol:


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Couchie said:


> Beginning: Prelude to Das Rheingold
> End: Brünnhilde's Immolation


This was also the first thing that came to my mind. The Beginning can't be argued against, but the End... well, it's a very "good" end! I certainly hope that the End shall be as wonderful and hopeful as this one.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Beginning: Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps.
End: Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, mvmt VI (Abschied).


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

I want my beginning and end to be intimate..

*Beginning* - 1st movement, Schubert's String Quintet in C ( the duet between the two cellos in the second theme represents the full of life)






*End[/end] - 1st movement, Schubert's String Quartet no. 15 ( the tremolos represents the chaos of the world ending)





*


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