The Bigger picture

I spent much of this morning making my way through Stockhausen’s Aus den Sieben Tagen (From the Seven Days), a huge electro-acoustic work that spans 7 CDs. This was prompted by some disparaging remarks I read yesterday by Klaus Schulze about Stockhausen and with my back up, I made a plan to listen to the great German composer today. The reason for selecting a lengthy work like Aus den Sieben Tagen was to do with my increasing enjoyment of long-form art - work that’s created on a large scale, whether it be something like Béla Tarr’s film Sátántangó or Rembrandt’s Night Watch (which I stood in the thrall of at the Rijksmuseum in 2013). Digital technology is so intent on squashing space and time, immersing oneself in a slow pace or a large canvas seems more vital than ever. This interest was further energized by my recent screening(s) of Jacques Rivette’s 12hr masterpiece Out 1 and there are a number of similar things I’m looking to at the moment - Masaki Kobayashi's epic trilogy The Human Condition (a BR from Arrow is due in May), Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's 7-hour magnum opus Hitler: A Film from Germany, and returning to music, composer Max Richter’s 8-hour hypnagogic work Sleep...