Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Star Trek movies and Beethoven symphonies

Beethoven symphonies and Star Trek movies follow similar (although complementary) patterns.

Odd-numbered Beethoven symphonies are the best loved.

Single important even-numbered exception: Beethoven 6, the "Pastoral" symphony, is perhaps the first example of Romantic-era programmatic music.

Runt of the litter (weakest odd-numbered symphony): Beethoven 1 is not nearly as well-loved as 3 ("Eroica"), 5, 7, or 9 ("Choral").

SymphonyYear of
Premiere
YouTube views*
 (thousands)
11801239
21802217
3 "Eroica"18051,292
41807 281
518083,915
6 "Pastoral"1808873
718132,769
81814265
9 "Choral"18244,426

*Table of YouTube views as an indicator of popularity from Classical Convert: Ranking Beethoven.

Even-numbered Star Trek movies are good. This pattern holds through the numbered films with the original cast as well as the films with the cast from The Next Generation.

Single important odd-numbered exception: Star Trek III: The Search For Spock provides essential aspects of the Star Trek II-III-IV story arc. Also: seeing Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future's Doc Brown) as a Klingon was pretty sweet.

Runt of the litter (weakest even-numbered film): Star Trek: Nemesis, the tenth movie of the franchise.

TitleRelease
Year
Tomatometer rating*
1Star Trek: The Motion Picture197947%
2Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan198290%
3Star Trek III: The Search for Spock198477%
4Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home198684%
5Star Trek V: The Final Frontier198921%
6Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country199183%
7Star Trek: Generations199448%
8Star Trek: First Contact199692%
9Star Trek: Insurrection199856%
10Star Trek: Nemesis200238%

* Tomatometer rating from Rotten Tomatoes.  What is the Tomatometer?

Related:

http://www.yourmusicmarket.com/beethoven-symphonies/




1 comment:

Paul Muller said...

Since I started repeatedly listening to Beethoven symphonies a couple of years ago; I'd occasionally make this same comparison to star trek movies. Mostly people had no idea what I was talking about.

I'm happy to see someone else has had this thought - even though it was ten years ago!