Revisiting music from the past with different approaches can have extraordinary results.

 

In Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No.1 “Titan”, the composer changed the folk-tune “Brother John” to a funeral march by changing the tonality from major to minor, and slowing down the tempo.

 

To continue this “revisiting” idea, I chose all 64 bars from this movement which used the tune of the minor version “Brother John”, and re-ordered those bars by drawing lots in a Taoist way - I Ching. The placement of each hexagram on each bamboo stick is based on the different directions of the original systems of Eight Trigrams (Bagua).

 

The title of this movie comes from the folk song "Brother John" which is used by Mahler. "Brother John" also known in French as "Frère Jacques", is a nursery rhyme of French origin. By reversing the consonants and vowels, we can get "Cage" from "Jacques", a tribute to one of the most avant-garde composers and artists -- John Cage.

 

Because Gustav Mahler himself included ancient Chinese poetry in his Symphony No.10, combining I Ching methodology with unexpected order of 64 bars of Mahler's short passage of his Symphony No.1, presenting the music in a different and unique way.

Before the deconstruction starts, the first 8 bars appear as in the original work.