[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Jonathan Bepler: “Desert Hymn”
From the album Music for Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 2 (1999)
Matthew Barney’s massive, five-part film series The Cremaster Cycle (1994-2002) defies easy summary. Wagnerian not only in scope (nearly seven hours in total) but also in the glacial slowness of its unfolding and the density of its symbolism, Cremaster is a unique cinematic experience. It is also an elusive one: the films have apparently been released on DVD in extremely limited numbers, and can otherwise be viewed only in officially authorized screenings. (It was thus that I saw all the films—in one day!—in Cologne in 2005.) Of course, such artificial scarcity is difficult to maintain in the age of digital reproduction.
While the quality of the films I find extremely uneven, ranging from the violent beauty of 2, to the austere, pseudo-operatic 5, to the painfully bad 4, one consistently excellent element in these films is the music, composed by Jonathan Bepler.
Bepler’s music for Cremaster 2, set mostly in Utah, amplifies the brooding atmosphere of the film, which has been described as an “epic avant-garde western.” The plot (such as it is) centers on the life and death of Gary Gilmore, the convicted murderer who was executed by firing squad in 1977. ”Desert Hymn” accompanies a scene symbolically representing the trial and judgment of Gilmore in the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City.
Played 120 time(s).
April 16, 2010, 10:07am
