Below is 100 or so words from my latest essay for "The Music of Bernard Herrmann." Developing arguments about film music is virtually impossible because technological advances have changed the nature of it into something more scientific than artistic; and so everything is more clinical, sterile, logical, and, dare I say it, mathematical. This deeply disturbs me. Music is not something to calculate, not something to explore with a ruler and compass. That's what I loved about music, and why it is so fascinating. It is the not knowing, the unpredictability that you can shun or conform to your audience's expectations, that makes it so worthwhile.
“Musical time is abstract time”.[1] The implications of this are that a necessary operating condition of the music accompanying the narrative – whatever their nature – is that the music is structured in its own individual way; in other words, the inherent logic of this abstract time propels and impels the music to conclude at a temporal point in filmic space not necessarily in accordance with the logic of ‘human time’ as expressed in the diegesis.
[1] Gorbman, Claudia. Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (Bloomington, 1987, University of Indiana Press), p. 24
Our house is also throwing a fireworks & pie party on Thursday, the 4th. (£2 to cover expenses) So ... do come. If we know you.
No comments:
Post a Comment