Music Post: Motoric music from the classics to the movies

From Baroque to the Beatles, we like music with a beat, even when the beat is a primative, pounding pulse, what Prokofiev, who composed "Peter and the Wolf," called "motoric." Prokofiev used the term when asked to describe the basic elements in his music. You can't hear it so much in "Peter and the Wolf," but it is very apparent indeed in the finale to his Seventh Piano Concerto, which I will play on my public radio show Saturday morning, followed by the equally motoric finale to Keith Emerson's piano concerto. Give me a political message and a backbeat, John Lennon said, and I'll give you a hit. We're not talking about a backbeat here, more like a pounding four-square beat. But that is not to be taken literally. The Prokofiev is in 7/8. Earlier on the show I will play movements by Edvard Mirzoyan and Dmitri Shostakovich that are in 3/4 time but still manage to be motoric. There is plenty of pounding music in the movies but the examples I've chosen this week are from Steve Jablonsky's score to "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," becayse the Transformers soundtracks have unusually unrelenting pulses, reflecting the actual motoric story line. You'll also hear the motoric finale of Stravinsky's "Symphony of Psalms," technically a choral work but one in which the chorus replaces the strings as a body of instruments in the orchestra. Anyone who has gone to a movie where a wordless chorus figures in the musical soundtrack will get it right away. "Howard's Day Off" airs live, 5-7 a.m. HST, on Hawaii Public Radio stations on Oahu, Maui and the Big Island, and streams live on http://www.hawaiipublicradio.org . Facebook users can visit the Howard's Day Off Appreciation Society page organized by Max Cacas of Washington, D.C.