Legendary Scenes: The Problem with Werkmeister's Harmonic Principles

NOTE: The overdubbed voice is SUPPOSED to be out of sync with Fitz's mouth. Half of the actors in the film did not speak Hungarian during the shoot, so their voices were overdubbed in ADR.
"Legendary Scenes" is a new series dedicated to showing the best (and least known) scenes in cinema.
The first entry is from Béla Tarr's masterpiece, "Werckmeister Harmonies". The film was released in 2000 and is often considered to be one of the greatest films released in the 21st century. In this scene, composer György Eszter (played by Peter Fitz) records his main concerns of the musical scale set forth by the famed music theorist, Andreas Werckmeister.

[@beflygelt]

I really wish I was more familiar with music theory. I'm trying my best but I just can't Quite follow what he's talking about. Given the film's title this is probably supposed to be the key scene of the movie so I'll definitely try to figure all of this out one day. I already LOVE the film regardless

[@balinttakacs4529]

to me, it's an allegory. maybe about how we used technology, "insteumental reason" to strive for divine power, but it alienated us from our authentic selves, from our pure existence. so we should go back or shift towards more simple ways of living once again. "evem if it excludes the use of certain higher sigantures" - so we will have to give up on some things. bht i would be very interested what was the creators intention here. maybe i should read the book it was based on. ita by László Krasznahorkai: The melancholy of resistance

[@meruscales]

Bálint Takács it’s a discussion on just intonation (harmonies derived from the pure harmonic series) and 12EDO temperament (dividing the second harmonic by the n/12 powers of 2). Somewhat mundane idea at the core of it

[@michelakadoner2590]

I think the basic point is this:
the way instruments are tuned now (equal temperament), the ratios between notes are not 100% pure.
So if the interval between two notes is a fifth, the ratio of the frequencies of the tones (in Hertz) is not the perfect 1,5, but something like 1,4983...
because of mathematical/physical reasons you can just play more stuff and combine more notes on the instrument that way.
So the guy is saying it's some kind of hybris to not be content with the stuff we can play on a purely tuned instrument but to use our technological knowledge to strive for more, even at the expense of pure tuning

[@JohnAbraham1987]

" I have to make it clear that not even for a moment is there a doubt that it is not a technical, but a philosophical question. "

[@Spiritchaser93]

@@michelakadoner2590 i may not be familiar with music theory but approaching this from a philosophical/metaphysical lens (afterall thats what his uncle is urging us to do) reminds me alot about Godel's incompleteness theorems and the tradeoff between totality and consistency. While the ancient greeks opted for consistency and purity, while not minding to sacrifice totality, modern music in certain cases like Werckmeister wanted to express totality while holding onto consistency (which is an impossibility). This is an allegory of totalitarian ideologies, which is condemned as attempting to propose a final coherent solution once and for all to the problems of reality - but when they express totality they must become inconsistent and contradictory.

[@EndreBarathArt]

incredible * Pi