| Pacific 231 | |
|---|---|
| Orchestral music by Arthur Honegger | |
 The composer in 1928 | |
| Other name | Mouvement Symphonique |
| Composed | 1923 |
Pacific 231 is an orchestral work by Arthur Honegger, written in 1923. It is one of his most frequently performed works and inspired two film adaptations.
The piece is commonly interpreted as depicting a steam locomotive, as is indicated by the title and has been illustrated by film versions of it. [1] However, in an interview, Honegger denied that this was his intended purpose and chided critics who interpreted it thus. He commented,
As he further explained elsewhere, he was not attempting to imitate the literal sounds of a locomotive, but rather that he wished to convey through musical composition a sense of the visual power and "physical pleasure" ("une jouissance physique") he experienced with trains. [3]
He originally titled it Mouvement Symphonique, but after it was finished he changed the name to Pacific 231, a class of steam locomotive designated in Whyte notation as a 4-6-2, with four pilot wheels, six driving wheels, and two trailing wheels (in France, where axles rather than wheels are counted, this arrangement is designated 2-3-1). [4] Honegger was widely known as a train enthusiast, and once notably said: "I have always loved locomotives passionately. For me they are living creatures and I love them as others love women or horses." [5]
The work consists of five main sections, all of which are delineated consecutively through musical motifs, ostinatos, and other textural demarcations. [6] Each of the sounds are elements of a train and the different soundscapes generated before, during, and at the conclusion of its trip.
Accompanying the 1923 published score, Honegger described the long-range form of the work: [7]
"The quiet breathing of the machine at rest, its effort in starting, then the gathering speed, the progress from mood to mood, as a 300-ton train hurtles through the dark night, racing 120 miles an hour.”
Pacific 231 is orchestrated for two flutes, piccolo flute, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four French horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, four percussionists (tenor drum, cymbal, bass drum, and tam tam) and strings. [8] [3]
The piece is the first in Honegger's series of three symphonic movements. The other two are Rugby and Mouvement Symphonique No. 3. Honegger lamented that his "poor Symphonic Movement No. 3 paid dearly for its barren title." [2] Critics generally ignored it, while Pacific 231 and Rugby, with more evocative titles, have been written about in depth.
Soviet filmmaker Mikhail Tsekhanovsky created a film titled Pacific 231 in 1931. It intercuts shots of a locomotive with an orchestra performing the piece.
A 1949 award-winning French film, Pacific 231 , directed by Jean Mitry, used the orchestral work as the soundtrack for a tribute to the steam locomotive, and included close-up footage of the SNCF 231E 24 ex Nord 3.1194. The 10-minute film includes shots of the driving wheels, running gear and railroad operations, mostly taken at speed, and is edited to the music. [9] [10] It was awarded the Short Film Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival—the Festival's highest award for a short film.
Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. A member of Les Six, his best known work is probably Antigone, composed between 1924 and 1927 to the French libretto by Jean Cocteau based on the tragedy Antigone by Sophocles. It premiered on 28 December 1927 at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie with sets designed by Pablo Picasso and costumes by Coco Chanel. However, his most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which was inspired by the sound of a steam locomotive.
A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material to heat water in the locomotive's boiler to the point where it becomes gaseous and its volume increases 1,700 times. Functionally, it is a steam engine on wheels.
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 4-6-2 represents the wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles and two trailing wheels on one axle. The 4-6-2 locomotive became almost globally known as a Pacific type after a locomotive built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia was shipped across the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand.
The Whyte notation is a classification method for steam locomotives, and some internal combustion locomotives and electric locomotives, by wheel arrangement. It was devised by Frederick Methvan Whyte, and came into use in the early twentieth century following a December 1900 editorial in American Engineer and Railroad Journal.
In railway engineering, the term tractive effort describes the pulling or pushing capability of a locomotive. The published tractive force value for any vehicle may be theoretical—that is, calculated from known or implied mechanical properties—or obtained via testing under controlled conditions. The discussion herein covers the term's usage in mechanical applications in which the final stage of the power transmission system is one or more wheels in frictional contact with a railroad track.
Jacques François Antoine Marie Ibert was a French composer of classical music. Having studied music from an early age, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire and won its top prize, the Prix de Rome at his first attempt, despite studies interrupted by his service in World War I.
Lima Locomotive Works was an American firm that manufactured railroad locomotives from the 1870s through the 1950s. The company took the most distinctive part of its name from its main shop's location in Lima, Ohio. The shops were located between the Erie Railroad main line, the Baltimore & Ohio's Cincinnati-Toledo main line and the Nickel Plate Road main line and shops.
The Pennsylvania Railroad's S2 class was a steam turbine locomotive designed and built in a collaborative effort by Baldwin Locomotive Works and Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, as an attempt to prolong the dominance of the steam locomotive by adapting technology that had been widely accepted in the marine industry. One was built, #6200, delivered in September 1944. The S2 was the sole example of the 6-8-6 wheel arrangement in the Whyte notation, with a six-wheel leading truck keeping the locomotive stable at speed, eight powered and coupled driving wheels, and a six-wheel trailing truck supporting the large firebox. The S2 used a direct-drive steam turbine provided by the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, geared to the center pair of axles with the outer two axles connected by side rods; the fixed gear ratio was 18.5:1. Such design was to prevent energy loss and S2 achieved a mechanical efficiency of 97% which means only 3% of steam energy was lost within the propulsion equipment. The disadvantage of a direct-drive steam turbine was that the turbine could not operate at optimal speeds over the locomotive's entire speed range. The S2 was the largest, heaviest and fastest direct-drive turbine locomotive design ever built.
On a steam locomotive, a trailing wheel or trailing axle is generally an unpowered wheel or axle (wheelset) located behind the driving wheels. The axle of the trailing wheels is usually located in a trailing truck. On some large locomotives, a booster engine was mounted on the trailing truck to provide extra tractive effort when starting a heavy train and at low speeds on gradients.
Jean-René Pierre Goetgheluck Le Rouge Tillard des Acres de Presfontaines, whose pseudonym was Jean Mitry, was a French film theorist, critic and filmmaker, a co-founder of France's first film society, and, in 1938, of the Cinémathèque Française.
The Milwaukee Road Class "A" was a class of high-speed, streamlined 4-4-2 "Atlantic" type steam locomotives built by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) from 1935 to 1937 to haul the Milwaukee Road's Hiawatha express passenger trains. Numbered from No. 1 to No. 4, they were among the last Atlantic type locomotives built in the United States, and certainly the largest and most powerful. The class were the first locomotives in the world built for daily operation at over 100 mph (160 km/h), and the first class built completely streamlined, bearing their casings their entire lives. Although partially supplanted by the larger class "F7" Hudsons from 1937, they remained in top-flight service until the end. Locomotive No. 3 was taken out of service in 1949 and cannibalized for spare parts to keep the other three running until 1951.
Masamichi Amano is a Japanese music composer, arranger and conductor. He studied at the Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo and completed master's degree in 1982.
Factory: machine-music, Op. 19, commonly referred to as the Iron Foundry, is the most well-known work by Soviet composer Alexander Mosolov and a prime example of Soviet futurist music. It was composed between 1926 and 1927 as the first movement of the ballet suite Stal ("Steel"). The remaining movements of Steel, "In Prison," "At the Ball," and "On the Square" have been lost, and Iron Foundry is performed today as a standalone orchestral episode.
The Short Film Palme d'Or is the highest prize given to a short film at the Cannes Film Festival. Since the creation of the Cinéfondation section in 1998, a common Official Jury awards the Short Film Palme d'Or as well as the prizes for the three best films of the Cinéfondation.
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Le Roi David was composed in Mézières, Switzerland, in 1921 by Arthur Honegger, as incidental music for a play in French by René Morax. It was called a dramatic psalm, but has also been performed as oratorio, without staging. The plot, based on biblical narration, tells the story of King David, first a shepherd boy, his victories in battle, relationship to Saul, rise to power, adultery, mourning of his son's death, and finally his own death. The work has 27 musical movements consisting of voice solos, choruses, and instrumental interludes. A narrator unifies the work by providing spoken narration of the story of King David.
Boris Koutzen was a Russian-American violinist composer and music educator.
Pacific 231 is a 1949 short film directed by French film theorist Jean Mitry.
Loco is an orchestral composition in one movement by the American composer Jennifer Higdon. The work was commissioned by the Ravinia Festival of Highland Park, Illinois to commemorate the Ravinia train as part of the Train Commission Project. It was first performed on July 31, 2004, at the Ravinia Festival by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
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