To what degree Tarkovsky himself was aware of these parallels is a question that his own writing provides only few hints on, even though it does include detailed reflections on cinema’s relation to literature, theater, and also music. While he evidently discusses the latter from a perspective of tender passion, he does not reflect in much detail on concurrent developments in experimental or electronic music – perhaps due to boundaries between disciplines (film; music), geographic-political contexts (East; West), and professional roles (director; composer; sound designer). Looking beyond Tarkovsky’s oeuvre, it appears to me that more often than not, aesthetic discourses in music and film follow separate trajectories with surprisingly little overlap. ​4​ For example, Tarkovsky’s text has, to my knowledge, not been widely discussed in the field of electroacoustic music composition – even though its notion of sculpting in time seems particularly relevant in such a context. For Alexander’s little son, as for the witch, Maria, the world is filled with unfathomable wonders, for they both move in a world of the imagination, not that of ‘reality’. Unlike empiricists and pragmatists, they do not believe merely in what they can touch; but with the mind’s eye they perceive the truth. Nothing that they do complies with the ‘normal’ criteria of behaviour. They are possessed of the gift that was recognised in old Russia as the mark of the ‘holy fool’: those pilgrims or ragged beggars whose very presence affected people living normal lives, and whose soothsaying and self-negation were always at variance with the ideas and established rules of the world at large. That was cinema, what about “art” in general? Tarkovsky considered art to be a yearning for the ideal. He wrote:

I tend to approach the world at an emotional and contemplative level. I don't try to rationalize it. I perceive it as an animal or child can do - not as an adult who draws his own conclusions.” was a bare response of Andrei Tarkovsky when asked what was his attitude to the world. David Kollar's guitar is marked with AT initials along with the title of one of the most significant European movies - "Stalker". Sculpting in Time is a beautiful, diverse and contemplative work of aural art. It serves as a remembrance of and reflection on one of Kollar’s closest friends who passed away before his time. The recording also includes material inspired by and derived from the spiritual and metaphysical work of famed Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. It features performances by Erik Truffaz, Christian Fennesz, Arve Henriksen and Pat Mastelotto, all of whom contribute their unique voices supportive of the meditative context. A wonderful recording designed to temporarily pause the swirl and din of modern life’s demands." At the time I was simply a sunburnt young boy, entirely unknown, son of the distinguished poet Arseniy Tarkovsky: a nobody, merely a son. It was the first and last time I saw Landau, a single, chance meeting; hence such candour on the part of the Soviet Nobel Prize winner.

The book's main statement about the nature of cinema is summarized in the statement, "The dominant, all-powerful factor of the film image is rhythm, expressing the course of time within the frame." It contains a great deal of poetry written by the filmmaker's father Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky along with a fair amount of Tarkovsky's personal writings on his life and work, lectures and discussions during making of Andrei Rublev with a film history student named Olga Surkova, who later became a professional critic and helped in writing of this book. Attempts to harness such a poetry of observation among twentieth-century audiences have, however, not been without friction in either film or music. Tarkovsky repeatedly points to the difficulties that his audiences had with giving themselves over to the poetic logic of raw observation, instead latching onto symbolism and trying to identify hidden meanings in his films that, often to their surprise, were never consciously placed there by its author. ​50​ A similar discourse unfolds around twentieth-century experimental music practices. John Cage responded to the frustration that audiences expressed about their inability to decipher a composition’s ‘meaning’. ​51​ Finally, I would enjoin the reader — confiding in him utterly — to believe that the one thing that mankind has ever created in a spirit of self-surrender is the artistic image. Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act? Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God? — Tarkovsky

a piece of magical sound metamorphosis in which the single “clink” of two whisky glasses [borrowed from Jonty Harrison’s piece et ainsi suite…] gradually metamorphoses into a multitude of other sounds, eventually alluding to the sounds of birdsong, a junkyard gamelan, the ocean and the human voice, but never entirely abandoning its links to this minimal source.Tarkovsky for me is the greatest (director), the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream,” said the acclaimed Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) of the legendary Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky. Born in 1932 in the village of Zavrazhye in western Russia to poet Arseny Tarkovsky and his wife Maria, Andrei Tarkovsky attended the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. He made a total of seven feature films: Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), The Mirror (1975), Stalker (1979), Nostalghia(1983) and The Sacrifice (1986) – the last two being produced in Italy and Sweden, respectively. Tarkovsky died in Paris in December 1986 at the age of 54. art, like science, is a means of assimilating the world, an instrument for knowing it in the course of man’s journey towards what is called ‘absolute truth’. I once talked to the late Soviet physicist Landau on this subject. The setting was a shingle beach in the Crimea. Once seen and recorded, time could now be preserved in metal boxes over a long period (theoretically for ever).” (Photo: Pexels)

Such a “direct observation of life” can be regarded as “the key to poetry” not only in cinema. ​47​ Many sonic artworks, in a similar fashion, aestheticize sound without dramatizing it in the context of a performance on musical instruments. Some instead frame everyday listening in public spaces by minimalistic architectural or graphical interventions. In Peter Ablinger’s Listening Piece in Four Parts (2001), rows of chairs set up in an urban parking lot, a desert wind farm, or on an ocean beach remain the sole reference to the concert hall and otherwise stand by themselves as an invitation to remain and listen. In Akio Suzuki’s oto-date (1996), stencil markers on the pavement simultaneously resemble the shape of feet (as a suggestion to stand in this place) as well as a pair of ears (as an encouragement to listen). ​48​ The Sonic Meditations by Pauline Oliveros achieve a similar goal by simple textual instructions. ​49​ For the first time in the history of the arts, in the history of culture, man found the means to take an impression of time. Time, printed in its factual forms and manifestations: such is the supreme idea of cinema as an art, leading us to think about the wealth of untapped resources in film, about its colossal future.

Interesting books

Perhaps other scenes—the dream sequences or the barren tree—are more significant from a certain psychological point of view than the one where Alexander burns down his house in grim fulfilment of his vow. But from the start I was determined to concentrate the feelings of the audience on the behaviour, at first sight utterly senseless, of someone who considers worthless—and therefore actually sinful—everything that is not a necessity of life.