Although I have suggested a couple of times that I am not overly fond of abstract animations, unlike Lichtspiel Opus 1 where the on screen shapes bear little or no relation to the musical soundtrack, Oskar Fischinger's 1935 film Komposition in Blau uses the music as a frame of reference, with the geometric shapes expanding, appearing and moving in correspondence with changes to volume, pitch and tempo. Without much musical knowledge it is difficult to explain, but Fischinger manages to capture the nuances of an orchestral piece perfectly.
Indeed, it is possible to imagine that if the soundtrack were removed, one might be able to at least decipher a rhythm from watching the animation, whereas with Lichtspiel Opus the animation did not seem to flow and change along with the music, as though the soundtrack is incidental or vice versa.
Having watched the animation several times, to me at least it seems that there are small hints of traditional ways of reading music included in the film; small cubes move up and down coloured bars which almost resemble the keys of a xylophone or glockenspiel, and later as the music moves up and down a musical scale, the cubes move up and down over a screen marked with horizontal lines as though marking where the notes would be written. Consequently, although the abstract imagery within the two films is somewhat similar, Fischinger's work is considerably more enjoyable, at least to me, thanks to the harmony of the synchronised animation and music.
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