Whenever you see classical music on Music Arcades it's there because of some popular culture association. If you can call the lesser known films of Werner Herzog popular culture. Or, in this case, Peter Greenaway via Michael Nyman.
Nyman's sleeve notes to Drowning by Numbers explain how he kept returning to the second movement of the Sinfonia Concertante as a source for several compositions.
It was Peter Greenaway who first drew my attention to the brief but stunning melody with which Mozart closes the exposition of the slow movement of the Sinfonia Conertante for violin, viola and orchestra… The resources I discovered were rich indeed: I had already noted the internal symmetry of bars 58-61, but as I broadened my focus the large-scale symmetries attracted my attention: the melody of my favourite bars (in E flat major) are repeated at the end of the movement in C minor, which suggested the possibility of alternating chords from each sequence to create an entirely new harmonic continuity.
I love that coming together of the sensual and formal, the lush melody and a dry, witty intellectual playfulness; like blue-stocking women with tight sweaters and an intimate acquaintance with volumes and volumes of dense continental literature — tasty!
I love following creative works back to their sources, trying to get an idea of how they were constructed. This is indeed very beautiful music, and I wish I had the understanding to appreciate its large-scale symmetries. I put on Drowning by Numbers again, just to get a handle on the similarities and differences. Philistine that I am, I still kind of prefer Nyman's postmodern pastiche: he's added a twist or two of his own to the melody of Drowning by Number 3 to make it quite exquisite.
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