Simple music notes become a neon light orchestra in this James Turrell-style CGI animation of J.S. Bach's classic "The Well-Tempered Clavier," created by artist Alan Warburton. A long single-shot leads you through a dreamlike, hyperreal museum devoted to the legendary composer, complete with portraits, busts, instruments, and fluorescent music notes that light up in time with the music. As the song transitions from delicate "Prelude" to the impassioned "Fugue," the viewer leaves the pristine white walls of the imaginary exhibition for a grittier, dirtier parking garage.
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The setting is integral for the effect Warburton is trying to achieve, he explains in the video's description, saying, "In 1722, Johann Sebastian Bach began one of his most ambitious works: a 24-part comprehensive guide to the keyboard, demonstrating the musical qualities of every major and minor key. The first part, C Major, saw Bach create two masterful compositions that explore musical structure in very different ways."Titled Bach: The Well Tempered Clavier, the new film "draws inspiration from minimalist sculpture and graphical notation," in the same way that his previous video, Psychometrics, grew from late-captialist aesthetics and office space culture. As a composer as well as an animator and artist, the juxtaposition of a classic composition designed to teach the Baroque-era basics against post-WWII art and musical notation is exactly the kind of tongue-in-cheek collision of contexts we've come to expect from Warburton.Watch the Bach: The Well Tempered Clavier below:
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