Shostakovich's 8th Quartet

I think this quartet is the musical composition I'm going to use for my video. I found this interesting article on the history of the quartet that claims "its genius is that it transcends individual pain to address all human despair. This is the reason for its success. The torment that it voices is the tragic, human agony of all those who have experienced grievous loss whether it be due to fascism, war, or personal bereavement. Shostakovich's Eighth String Quartet resonates with this bitter universal experience"


http://www.quartets.de/compositions/ssq08.html

Project Ideas

I've long been interested classical music and the historical context surrounding it, particularly the music of Shostakovich. For my project I would like to take a least one piece of classical music (5-15min long) and research the social and political history behind the piece, as well how it connects to modern social and political issues. Then, I would use that information to create a stop-motion visual narrative that would be set to that piece of music. I would use drawing, photography, found objects

and digital effects to create the stop-motion. I collaborated on a similar smaller scale stop-motion in the past. However, for this project, I would focus on how the images relate to the social and political context surrounding the piece of music in addition to the music itself. I envision creating a stop-motion similar to this video, but incorporating aspects of drawing, printing and other mediums beside just photographs.