Seeing is believing
Composer Zhou Tian is in town – the Orchestra had commissioned him to write a piece for the Young Peoples Concerts we’re doing this week – and we had a chance to sit and do coffee after a busy couple of days. Tian and I went to music school together (he went by “Zhou” or “Joe” then, and the name change has been a little confusing), and it was nice to catch up, gossip about mutual friends and talk about Portishead. (You didn’t think we just sat around all day thinking about Mahler, did you??)
We also talked shop, and one of the many topics that we alighted on was how we reacted to music in films. Not “film music” – John Williams, Howard Shore, et al. – but music used in films. Tian’s example was ”Being John Malkovich", which at one point features Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste. He had heard the piece before, of course, but had no feeling of connection to it until he heard it in the film. As he explains it, it’s not that he remembers the movie now when he hears that Bartok, it’s more that it brings back the emotion and engagement he felt while hearing the music in context of the movie. It went from a piece that he didn’t particularly like to one he enjoys immensely.
My example was ”Amadeus”, which I’d seen in the theater as a kid. Before seeing the film, I had never encountered Mozart’s Requiem, and so “Amadeus” was my first exposure to this piece- it had a tremendous impact on me at the time, and my mom will tell you I would run around singing “Confutatis maledictis!” (I must have been a weird child…) I still feel a sense of connection to this piece, particularly because it still evokes the powerful emotions I felt when watching the film. Again, it’s not that I recall the film or any specific imagery – it’s all about the associative emotions.
Of course we all have music that we adore because of associations – the song playing on the radio when you had your first kiss, that piece you played in high school orchestra when the world seemed so full of promise – but Tian’s example struck me particularly. The context of that particular Bartok piece within that movie made him hear the music in a different way. And it makes a lot of sense that in an increasingly visual world, visual impact necessarily influences auditory impact (MTV proved that in the ‘80s – I mean, would Britney Spears be a star without music videos?).
That always raises the question of the visual impact of concert music, which, all things considered, is not tremendous. Yes, there are 90 or so people on stage at any given orchestra concert, which gives a sense of scope, and conductors and soloists are generally interesting to watch, but is that enough? Some orchestras have experimented, with modest success, with video screens mounted above the stage and cameras onstage to give closer views of musicians as they perform - it certainly does something to upgrade the visual impact. Is this something that should concern us in the orchestra industry? Or is it our responsibility to educate people in the much more reflective art of sitting and simply listening to music?
We also talked shop, and one of the many topics that we alighted on was how we reacted to music in films. Not “film music” – John Williams, Howard Shore, et al. – but music used in films. Tian’s example was ”Being John Malkovich", which at one point features Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste. He had heard the piece before, of course, but had no feeling of connection to it until he heard it in the film. As he explains it, it’s not that he remembers the movie now when he hears that Bartok, it’s more that it brings back the emotion and engagement he felt while hearing the music in context of the movie. It went from a piece that he didn’t particularly like to one he enjoys immensely.
My example was ”Amadeus”, which I’d seen in the theater as a kid. Before seeing the film, I had never encountered Mozart’s Requiem, and so “Amadeus” was my first exposure to this piece- it had a tremendous impact on me at the time, and my mom will tell you I would run around singing “Confutatis maledictis!” (I must have been a weird child…) I still feel a sense of connection to this piece, particularly because it still evokes the powerful emotions I felt when watching the film. Again, it’s not that I recall the film or any specific imagery – it’s all about the associative emotions.
Of course we all have music that we adore because of associations – the song playing on the radio when you had your first kiss, that piece you played in high school orchestra when the world seemed so full of promise – but Tian’s example struck me particularly. The context of that particular Bartok piece within that movie made him hear the music in a different way. And it makes a lot of sense that in an increasingly visual world, visual impact necessarily influences auditory impact (MTV proved that in the ‘80s – I mean, would Britney Spears be a star without music videos?).
That always raises the question of the visual impact of concert music, which, all things considered, is not tremendous. Yes, there are 90 or so people on stage at any given orchestra concert, which gives a sense of scope, and conductors and soloists are generally interesting to watch, but is that enough? Some orchestras have experimented, with modest success, with video screens mounted above the stage and cameras onstage to give closer views of musicians as they perform - it certainly does something to upgrade the visual impact. Is this something that should concern us in the orchestra industry? Or is it our responsibility to educate people in the much more reflective art of sitting and simply listening to music?
Labels: composers, film music, visual impact
posted by Sarah at
6:28 PM
1 Comments:
Funny - I had almost the exact same experience with Amadeus and the Confutatis movement from the requiem. (I was also terrified of the climactic scene in Don Giovanni until I was 14 thanks to that movie.)
The classic example, of course, is what Oliver Stone's Platoon did for Barber's Adagio, which wasn't nearly so well known at the time as it is now, and certainly wasn't the national mourning music that it has become. Honestly, can you hear that piece without thinking of death and loss? I can't...
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