Electricka's theme music

The music you are hearing is the same as the music you hear when you open Electricka's home page. It's my theme. I play it in honor of the things I stand for. It's my theme music.

About Electricka's theme

What you are now hearing is a small portion of Electricka's theme music, which is known as March of the Dead. Why do I play music popularly believed to be about about the dead?

The March of the Dead is a major section of the Fifth Movement from Gustav Mahler's Symphony # 2, "The Resurrection." (See the Credits page for provenance). Musicologists speculate that Mahler intended the March passage to represent God's hordes, heavenly mankind and his angels marching in ranks out of the clouds and down from the heavens.

This march inspires me and I hope it inspires you. I don't see it as a march about the dead. I see it as a march about the living. I liken it to the ongoing and everlasting march of the millions of artists and their followers, past, present, and future, and to the angelic muses who have inspired them. I see them all as representatives of mankind and mankind's spirit, living forever and marching forever in part because of their art. I see them as generations as yet unborn who will do the same.

To me, Electricka's theme music symbolizes something positive, something triumphant, as I believe it did for Mahler. Mahler meant it to represent Resurrection, a rising above mortality through the understanding of spiritual life. And so do I. To me, Mahler's music represents the rebirth into a new life of the ancient and modern-day muses in the age of electricity, electronics, and the Internet—it symbolizes the power and glory of the modern and ancient arts and the potential of the Communication Age to help them flourish.

As you listen, visualize the muses, reawakened from a slumber of 2300 years, marching down from their ancient mountain home in Greece into our modern world. Can you see it?

Abbreviating and compressing Electricka's theme—the rationale

Like the version on this page, the version of the March you hear on Electricka's home page is also abbreviated; it is not the entire theme as Mahler wrote it. The abbreviated version lasts a few seconds; the full March lasts several minutes. Understandably, Electricka doesn't play the full March when you visit her home page because it lasts too long. At this page, however, I give you the opportunity to hear my theme in its full glory.

The last thing I want to do is to offend anyone by abbreviating Electricka's theme. But I instructed my staff to do so for several reasons:

• Experience shows that the typical visitor switches back and forth between the home page and other pages at a site. It is impractical to play the full March, which lasts for several minutes, every time the page is revisited, or even the first time it is visited.
• Visitors without a high speed network connection would find that it takes too long to download this much music. Upon visiting Electricka's site for the first time, they could wait and wait to see the rest of the page appear while the music plays on.

To make matters worse, not only have I instructed my staff to abbreviate my theme, I have told them to compress the file which contains the music. Compression helps reduce the time it takes to open the home page, but, unfortunately, it causes a serious reduction in sound quality.

So, not only have I clipped Electricka's theme, I've made it sound worse.

the way it should be heard

If you want to hear my theme the way it should be heard, you've come to the right place. To compensate for these shortfalls cited above, I have told my staff to provide a way for visitors to download a full rendition of the March, one which would allow them to hear it in its entirety and with better fidelity.

The method they chose was to prepare a special music file that contains a full version of the March:

• Click the link below to play the March in your media player while this page remains open, or
• Right click and select SAVE TARGET AS is the menu that opens to save the music file on your computer. Later you can play the March over and over again.

—note— about the music file Alas, even this version is not recorded with the best fidelity, as I would have liked, because of the technical considerations explained above, but at lest fidelity here is better than that heard on my home page. A better way to hear the piece is to play it on your hi-fi CD player. The best way to hear it is to attend a concert performance. You'll be amazed at the effect it can have, Even though the March is only a small portion of the entire Fifth Movement. it will take almost four minutes to play.

Take the Electricka Quiz

You've all but finished my Orientation Tour; Just one more page to go. See how easy touring can be?

What's next? Now that you've learned a lot about me and my web site, just for fun try taking my quiz. To finish the quiz, all you have to do is answer a few simple questions about the pages you've just read and you'll become a star in the Modern Muse firmament!

• If you're ready, take the Electricka Quiz now: click here.
• Or click NEXT or Page 5 at the bottom of this page or in the Feature Pages Box at the upper right corner of this page.

—navigation— leaving the tour? I'll now going to drop off the tour; I have a few things to do elsewhere. Goodbye; I've enjoyed having you; and thanks a lot for taking the time to tour with me. Hope to see you again soon —Electricka Return to the start of the tour now: click here.

ETAF Recommends

Like many other great musicians, Mahler led a fascinating life, but one that was all too brief. Explore this disappointed yet triumphant life.

...Coming.

In Vienna, where he conducted, at first the music world had a low opinion of Mahler's music; but thanks to people like Bruno Walter, who was one of his early champions, audiences have come to recognize its true worth. There are many great performances of Mahler's symphonies. Here are only a few.

...Coming.

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