For all the craziness and chaos of cities, or at least that is how we sometimes feel about them, their aural representation is consistently rhythmic, repetitious, and with a strong beat. Specifically, scores to visual representations of cities–and here I am mainly thinking of film–are never random or noise-based, but have an industrial (in the classic, not genre, sense) feel to them. Why?

The message in the association of this type of music with city scenes is two fold. First, because of the strong beats and repetition, cities are portrayed as being orderly and routine. In many ways, this is the case. For example, traffic–both human and vehicular–are patterned through a set of legal and social rules. Because of schedules and repeated patterns, traffic also becomes routine. The second message being communicated through what might be called traditional forms of music is a sense of interconnectedness. That is, one part–measured through both time and space–is connected to another. This is conveyed through the same or evolving rhythms of a given score and the music’s continuity from one measure to another. Specific examples of this type of aural representation of life include The Man With A Movie Camera, numerous scenes from other silent films, Goldie’s Inner City Life, and a piece partly created by Trey Reynolds.

I should take a moment to talk about Trey Reynolds. Reynolds is mostly a violinist, although his repertoire extends significantly beyond that. When I saw him perform during the fantastic 930 Club show where he opened (and later played with) The Books, he played mostly minimalist pieces that were emotional, grand, and above all excellent. During his set, he included a number of audio-visual pieces including one that used edited film from (I think) the early 1900s of a New York subway train going the entire route of its line. The footage was made by (again, I think) British guys, but edited and re-composed by a current visual artists for a (yes, yes, I think) Museum of Modern Art installation. Reynolds composed the score to this fascinating footage. As described above, he uses poly-rhythmic sounds with a very industrial feel. For all his envelope pushing during most of his set, he reverted back to the tried and true form of standard scoring for city scenes.

After the show I asked him why footage of videos are consistently scored in this manner. I also asked him if he could think of any pieces that used noise (genre sense) or random sounds. He did not seem too interested in what I had to say so I never received a serious response, but his non-answer as well as his performance had me thinking, which is why I am posting it here.

I certainly do not want to deny the rhythmic character of cities, but there is also something chaotic or, better put, alienating about them. In terms of chaos, it is nearly impossible for any given individual to predict who she will run into throughout the day or who that person is (in terms of background). In this way, we are a large number of jumbled-together data points with little to no relation to each other. So why the strong sense of connection in current musical reflections of city life? Furthermore, the alienating power of a city–through the type of work being done, the lack of traditionally conceived neighborliness, and what we might simply call the atomization of life and society–is tremendous but again missing in its music.

The point is not to say that cities are or are not rhythmic, but that they can be interpreted as both. And although our academic and even visual accounts of cities reflect this, I can not think of a single score that does. Can you? Regardless of your answer, why is this tilted treatment so?