Bernard Herrmann and Orchestration

Bernard Herrmann was a composer who resolutely orchestrated his own compositions.  Then as now, a trend existed for film composers to use orchestrators yet Herrmann was insistent that the process of composition is inseparable from orchestration.  “Color is very important. This whole rubbish of other people orchestrating your music is so wrong.  You know, they make everything shit… To orchestrate is like a thumbprint.  I can’t understand having someone else do it.”[1].

Herrmann responded to the narrative of a film with imaginative orchestrations not only taking into account the colour of the instrumentation but also aspects of the performance.  In Citizen Kane, Herrmann composed an aria for an operatic sequence (Salaambo) but put it in a key too high, forcing the singer to strain for the notes.  Herrmann’s colleague David Raksin recalls Herrmann saying he wanted to convey the impression of “a terrified girl floundering in the quicksand of a powerful orchestra.”[2]

With Vertigo Herrmann was presented with a film that provided opportunities for almost Wagnerian thematic orchestrations.  In fact, many authors have commented on Herrmann’s allusions in the Vertigo score to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde (Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde, with it’s theme of doomed passion, was one of Herrmann’s favourite pieces[3]).   Hitchcock based Vertigo on the French novel D’Entre les Morts by Pierre Boileu and Thomas Narcejac, a novel itself a version of the Tristan story that is the source of Wagner’s opera.  Perhaps this is a clue to the rationale behind Herrmann’s orchestrations and his use of leitmotifs.  The way in which Herrmann uses the leitmotif technique is partly what gives the score to Vertigo its “modern” sound.   It differed from the archetypal thematic leitmotif found in a Wagner opera, which due to the scale of the musical work, were through necessity an almost blatant thematic signpost for the audience.  Instead, Herrmann would utilise orchestral colour as leitmotif. An example of this can be found with each death in the film.  These pivotal points of the film are accompanied by a fortissimo deep brass motif highlighting tragic loss and a doomed helplessness.    Herrmann’s choice of instrumentation – cellos, basses, trombones, bass clarinets, timpani and tam-tam create a very dark orchestral colour.

After this first death in the film, Scottie’s police force colleague, this dark motif is segued into a piece from Mozart.  On one level the Mozart piece is diegetic music underscoring the audience’s introduction to the post-incident Scottie – here we see a man who is attempting to amuse himself in his crippled state by playing a cane balancing game (portentously ending in failure and pain).  However the use of Mozart repeated later in the film, again following the death motif (this time Scottie’s own although only in his nightmare) and used to underscore a recovering Scottie, indicates it is more than simply diegetic music.  In fact, Mozart’s music here is pointed out by Midge as being part of a new psychological therapeutic technique called Music Therapy, something that can “sweep the cobwebs away” but states later while in conversation with the doctor, “I don’t think Mozart will help at all” before slowly making her gloomy exit from the film.  The clarity, light and hope of Mozart is overshadowed by the Wagnerian melancholia of Herrmann.  Midge’s footsteps as she makes the slow walk down the darkened hospital corridor are accompanied in perfect time by Herrmann’s cue.

More orchestrated darkness can be found in the Forest Scene.  Here Herrmann has removed the emphasis from the string section and enlarged the winds and brass.  Set in a moody and dark Redwood forest, Herrmann employs an instrumentation of flutes, English horns, clarinets and bass clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, trombones, tuba, Hammond organ, vibraphones, cymbals and muted basses.  The brass is played mainly con sordino and the flutes without vibrato (an orchestration technique he used with the strings in Psycho and which became one of the defining characteristics of the Psycho score).  The music for this scene starts with a bed of low muted trombones, tuba and contrabass, alternating with muted horns.  Gradually trumpets with cup-mutes and woodwinds are introduced until a sync point in the action is hit (Madeleine leaves Scottie’s sight) whereby Hammond Organ, bass clarinets, vibraphones and cymbals become the prominent colour.

On one level, in using this instrumentation Herrmann is reflecting what is happening on-screen – the dark moodiness of the setting is an unavoidable factor.  However there is more going on in this cue.  In this scene Scottie is beginning to catch glimpse of what he thinks is the force that is driving Madeleine’s psychosis.  Out of her stoic reticence we and Scottie are starting to see that Madeleine has something to tell us that will explain what is going on, and ominously cannot do so. Musically we have a dark ever-present bed of low instruments mixed with the other-worldly sound of the Hammond organ, an out-of-place musical colour that not only infers there is something not quite right going on, but is a sound that has been previously associated with Scotty following Madeleine into the Mission Dolores graveyard and it’s inference of a connection with the dead.  Meanwhile, impressionistic woodwind chords and vibraphone stabs are constantly shape-shifting, metaphorically clouding the truth that Madeleine hides.  As Scottie frantically interrogates Madeleine the lightness of the woodwind attempts to pull away from the darkness of the deep brass, organ and bass.  Madeleine, after stating her desire to go “somewhere in the light”, walks with Scottie out of the darkness of the forest, the music however concludes with what could be described as surrendering woodwinds falling to a final dark chord from the tuba and English horn.

Music plays a significant part in the depiction of the shifting layers of truth and reality in this scene.  It is a scene that has been influential in shaping other films which wished to evoke the same déjà vu like state, from Chris Marker’s La Jetée, which employs visual and very close musical pastiche, to Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys in which the lead characters actually watch the Vertigo forest scene in a cinema.

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[1] Brown, Royal S. Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music, p. 292

[2] Raksin, David.  David Raksin remembers his Colleagues.

[3] Smith, Steven. A Heart at Fire’s Center, p. 220

Thoughts on Herrmann and Hitchcock

Bernard Herrmann helped change the face of film music from that of the popular classical Hollywood film score style of the thirties and forties, to a type of music which encompassed the psychological infrastructure of the film, placed importance on the transference of the inner thoughts and psychological compulsions of characters.  The pastiche and scene-painting style of the composers that dominated the classical Hollywood film model of the thirties and forties tended to be one that “explicates, underscores, imitates, emphasizes narrative actions and moods wherever possible” [1].   Such composers drew on a well-established repertoire of emotive musical signifiers, the scope of which rarely involved elaborating on the human psyche.   Despite music expressing “inner thoughts” existing in the world of concert music and opera many years earlier, it wasn’t until the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century that film music explored similar territory.

During this time in North America, social and technological advances were changing the film industry and these factors played a role in instigating this new type of film and film music.  Television was gigantically popular and the ensuing war between television and the big screen provided an incentive for innovation in cinema.  Film production technology advanced at a rapid pace and soundtracks became more advanced due to improvements in microphone and recording technology.  Problems such as the one described by Hitchcock in the Truffaut/Hitchcock interview where he talks about recording a 30 piece orchestra behind a bathroom set for the 1930 film Murder as it was not possible to add the music in the post production stage[2], no longer were an issue.

Not only was film changing but audiences too.    The evolution of cinema has always had a close relationship with psychology, the phenomenon of film projection itself encompasses the cognitive psychological concepts of Roget’s 1824 Persistence of Vision[3] theory, and Wertheimer’s gestalt theorizing on stroboscopic effects[4] .  The Twentieth century was a time of increasing awareness of the human condition and a time of intense developments in the study of psychology.  The connection between film and it’s audiences were being examined.  Interest in the psychological and philosophical effects on viewers of film was reaching a peak with theorists and critics realising that film represented an uneasy reflection of human psychosis.

It was during this time that Herrmann began working with Alfred Hitchcock, a collaboration that spanned eleven years and nine films.   Psychology and psychiatry were featured subjects in the work of Hitchcock.  Many of Hitchcock’s films feature psychiatrists, from Spellbound and The Wrong Man to Vertigo and Psycho, and Hitchcock films often deal with the theories of psychoanalysis.  Subjects ranging from repressed memory (Norman Bates’ relationship with his mother in Psycho and Marnie’s repression of childhood events in Marnie); Oedipal complex (again Psycho); dream analysis (Vertigo and Spellbound); split personality (Psycho).

Even the “MacGuffin”, a device favoured by Hitchcock can be associated to Freud.  Freud stated in his text Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, that for a “tendentious joke” to be effective, there may first be the need to create a receptive mood in the listener through the use of non-tendentious “sub” jokes.

The presence of numerous inhibited instincts, whose suppression has retained a certain degree of instability, will provide the most favourable disposition for the production of tendentious jokes[5].

In an interview with the New York Times, Herrmann espoused what could be labeled a credo, revealing why Herrmann was so especially suited to work with Hitchcock:

I feel that music on screen can seek out and intensify the inner thoughts of the characters.  It can invest a scene with terror, grandeur, gaiety or misery.  It can propel narrative swiftly forward, or slow it down.  It often lifts mere dialogue into the realm of poetry.  Finally, it is the communicating link between the screen and the audience, reaching out and enveloping all into one single experience[6].

This commitment to transfer the inner thoughts of a character to the viewer in a single experience matches Hitchcock’s own commitment to make his films emotionally relevant.  As revealed in several interviews, Hitchcock injected himself totally into his films[7], from his personal views and feelings, to his fleeting appearances, so it is not surprising he had definite views on how music can be useful.

It is in the psychological use of music, which you will observe, they knew something about before talkies, that the great possibilities lie. It makes it possible to express the unspoken. For instance, two people may be saying one thing and thinking something very different. Their looks match their words, not their thoughts. They may be talking politely and quietly, but there may be a storm coming. You cannot express the mood of the situation by word and photograph. But I think you could get at the underlying idea with the right background music… The basis of cinema’s appeal is emotional. Music’s appeal is to a great extent emotional, too… Words and incidental noises and ‘song numbers’ are surely not all the sound track was invented for?[8]

Hitchcock’s interest in the human psyche combined with Herrmann’s insistence on avoiding scoring the obvious created fertile ground for the composing of music that would transfer the inner thoughts of characters.   It could be said that with this type of film music scoring, Herrmann peaks with Psycho (1960), perhaps proven by the fact we hear a marked difference in the quantity and type of music following Marion’s death from that which precedes it.  As music was so integral to maintaining the tension and anxiety of the lead character, once she is killed off, the role that the score plays is greatly diminished.

Preceding Psycho in the Hitchcock/Herrmann output, separated only by North by Northwest, is Vertigo (1958). Vertigo is a masterpiece examination of what could be summed up as obsession.  In fact this film doesn’t merely investigate obsession, but produces obsession and uses it intrinsically throughout.  Scottie Ferguson, the once ambitious now forcibly-retired acrophobic detective and his obsession with the Kim Novak character represents a spiraling psychotic state based on different levels of perceived realities.  The Novak character is a tabula rasa, a blank canvas on which Scottie paints his fevered art – his own Carlota Valdez, the pursuit of which will deliver him from his haunting past.  From Scottie’s first gaze upon Madeleine in Ernie’s restaurant he is infected with an obsession that until the final plummet to reality from the bell tower, he cannot explain.

Judy:      Cause I remind you of her, and not even that very much.

Scottie:      No, no Judy it’s you too, there’s something in you…  The colour of your hair…

With Vertigo, Herrmann has nearly completed his transition into a composer that locks in on the psyche of the characters in the film.  In Psycho, the tension is maintained primarily by the music, however in Vertigo, Herrmann’s music works in conjunction with swirling camera work, Saul Bass’s geometric patterns, the editing and mise-en-scène.  How Herrmann handled this interaction makes Vertigo a film worth analysing.  Representing a point on a continuum that progresses on to Psycho, Vertigo is a major indication of Herrmann’s ability to hone in on the inner thoughts of a film’s character.   Showing a development from the likes of Hangover Square with its abundant music diegetised as the product of a character’s psyche, the emotional angst of On Dangerous Ground and the strange atmospheres of The Man Who Knew Too Much, for Vertigo Herrmann composed an economical and modern sounding score.

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[1] Gorbman, Claudia. Unheard Melodies, p. 7

[2] Truffaut, Francois. The Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock, p. 75

[3] Roget, Peter Mark. Explanation of an optical deception in the appearance of the spokes of a wheel seen through vertical apertures

[4] Wertheimer, Max. Drei Abhandlungen zur Gestaltstheorie

[5] Freud, Sigmund. Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious

[6] Christopher Palmer, The Composer in Hollywood, p. 253

[7] Truffaut, Francois. The Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock, p. 346

[8] Sidney Gottlieb (ed), Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews, p. 243

Silence part 1

Silence

“In Hitchcock’s world, reticence at its extreme is emotional paralysis, a psychological state indicated by total silence.”[1].

In her book The Silent Scream, Elizabeth Weis sees a communication continuum in the work of Hitchcock with silence at one pole and screams at the other.  There is a clear effort in Hitchcock’s work to find a language of heightened representation beyond the conventional.  In Rope, the failure of communication, alienation and collusion is depicted and achieved through silence.  In Birds, the siege like state is achieved through the constant association of silence with the birds so that in an almost Pavlovian way, the audience is constantly reminded of danger through silence.

Having established such a continuum of emotional communication in his films, Hitchcock often transformed the opposites of silence and sound through swapping sound for music and vice versa.  In Psycho, Marion’s screams are replaced with shrieking violins.  In Vertigo, sound effects are muted as Scottie falls in love with Madeleine in Ernie’s, and are replaced with Herrmann’s “Madeleine” cue.  Conversely, in the North by Northwest crop-dusting scene, a scene that could be treated as a classic Hollywood style action scene, there is no music for majority of the scene.  Throughout these films there is a tension between what is scored, and what is not.

It is unclear who out of Hitchcock and Herrmann was responsible for such music and sound related decisions and the two men would often go against each others wishes.  For example Hitchcock originally intended the shower scene in Psycho to play without music[2] but Herrmann scored this scene anyway and the music won Hitchcock over.  We do know however that for Vertigo, according to the sound and music notes, Hitchcock wanted to use more music than in previous films[3].

Vertigo presents us with a good example of the use of musical silence in the Tower scene towards the finale of the film.  In this scene Scottie takes Judy back to the tower where in his words, there is one final thing to do following which he’ll be free of the past.  This is the start of the denouement.  For Scottie it is his second chance – this time he will climb the tower.  Almost perversely, at the point during climbing the stairs at which Scottie last time failed to climb above, the music stops with a unison resolution.  From here on, as Scottie and Judy climb, we know things are different because we can hear that it’s different.  On screen we see in a claustrophobic close-up the two actors struggling up the stairs and as an underscore we simply hear the wind and creaking of wood.  This is a new Scottie, one who has overcome his repression and who is perhaps now as strong as his old-self.  Significantly, as Scottie looks down the depths of the stair-well, there is no vertigo theme.  The obsession and acrophobia has abated, and so has the music.  As the detective in him returns, he realises his new-found strength – “I made it… we’re going up to look at the scene of the crime… come on Judy”.   The next thing we hear is the music of the finale.

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[1] Weis, Elizabeth. The Silent Scream – Alfred Hitchcock’s Sound Track, p. 154-155

[2] Smith, Steven. A Heart at Fire’s Center, p. 237

[3] Ibid., P. 220

L’Idée

via Shaun at Mew Lab:

“In 1930 Bartosch moved to Paris and created the 30 minute film entitled The Idea to which he is most remembered for. It is described as the first serious, poetic, tragic work in animation. The film’s characters and backdrops were composed of several layers of different types of paper from semi-transparent to thick cardboard. Special effects like halos, smoke and fog were made with lather spread on glass plates and lit from behind. The film was based on a book of woodcuts from Frans Masereel, The idea. The Idea featured a score by composer Arthur Honegger, including an Ondes Martenot, which is believed to be the very first use of an electronic instrument in film history.”

The soundtrack also includes some sax which is interesting as it predates the saxophone’s seemingly unbreakable connection with film noir and on-screen coquetry.  Ok so there is a naked female form present within the imagery, but Honegger has composed for the saxophone a theme portraying ideas of a complex psychological nature.   A style of film composing – scoring the psyche rather than simple scene painting – that was championed by Bernard Herrmann, especially in films such as Vertigo 30 odd years later.

Silent Light

dir. Carlos Reygadas | Mexico |  136 minutes

There are so many things to write about with this film, but one aspect of this incredibly special movie, the cinematography, needs special mention.   Silent Light‘s DOP Alexis Zabe has achieved through the poetic use of the wide shot, a form of narrative that almost single handedly removes the need for music in this film.  I’ve always maintained there was a close relationship between the cinematography and the music in regards to the narrative territory each covers.  Occasionally they will encroach on each other’s patch, in Silent Light, Zabe says it all through the lens.

As the film’s narrative progresses, the wide shots tell more and more of the story through metaphor and minimal imagery.  The rigid symmetry and thorough structure of the Mennonite’s lives, the open frontier potential of their surroundings and it’s beautiful fertility.

We see two lovers meet in a Tarkovskian upshot.  God is not looking down on these two, we watch them from below:

We come to a T junction and choices must be made:

But the future is obscured:

Perhaps the future is but a reflection of ourselves and mortality:

Time moves on regardless:

Also, just how did Reygadas find the black and white archive footage?  The austere woman at the end of the scene who cannot fathom why everyone is so enthusiastic in their applause is incredible:

[view Silent Light trailer]

Is this the best 80s high school movie montage?

The Donnie Darko Head Over Heels montage:

Are there better examples of this in cinema?  A montage that can summon pleasant thoughts in a sentimental way but also unearthing demons and emotions from the darker parts of your long term memory.  Possibly confined to western culture or those cultures that have lived under the influence of American media for the last 30 years, but it definitely brings to the surface  feelings born out of attending a high school in the 80s.

The teasing, the politics, failure, sucess, love, lust, loneliness, friends you’ll never see again, parts of your life you’ll never live again and if you could live it again, would it be the same?  Would you do it the same?

Blindness

dir. Fernando Meirelles | Canada, Brazil, Japan | 120 minutes | cert. R

The best criticism of this film was given by a pair unwitting critics during the dénouement of Blindness.  The couple’s arrival in the cinema during the last few minutes of the film would normally have been infuriatingly distracting and enough to fill other patrons with anger as these people arrived too early for the next feature but the fact that their mistake was caused by the similarity of the end of Blindness with the type of advertisement played before a screening, led me to forgiveness, and them to what was probably a spoiler moment.  Unfortunately it was the film as a whole, not just the final cathartic moment that failed to deliver the same level of profundity as Jose Saramago’s source novel.  So while viewing Blindness, I couldn’t help but be aware of consistent excruciating attempts by the director to manipulate moviegoers into accepting his vision.  However, while gimmicks such as testosterone fueled sound design and shocking imagery constantly hit the audience, it simply reminds us of the film’s shortcomings.

The score can play a major part in the furthering of the narrative of a film.  One could say that it is an integral part of the process by which the audience is manipulated into traveling down certain trains of thought in relation to the themes and plot of the film.  In Blindness, Meirelles seems to make use of the composed music in a way which is designed to confuse the audience’s geographical awareness by relating the themes of the film to not just one culture but seemingly every culture.  Sure enough, with each different ethnic instrument, from didgeridoos to thai gongs, the director’s ambition of clouding the geographical location is drummed into us, in every sense of the word.  Incidentally, the film’s composer Marco Antônio Guimarães is founding member of Uakti, a group I am a fan of.  He has done some interesting work in the past, but not as a film composer.  His album Aguas da Amazonia is a beautiful collection of arrangements of music by Philip Glass played by the Uakti ensemble on traditional instruments.  I imagine it is such work that played a part in his commission as composer for Blindness, as the stylings of Philip Glass is a favourite for directors who want to add emotional integrity and momentum to films at risk of lacking in that area.   Perhaps though it is unwise to blame a composer for their work that ends up on screen, as it’s such a collaborative process, the director being the one who stands responsible at the end of the day.  The music of Blindness feels like it never really reaches the level of scoring the psyche of the film.  It has the feel of a score that was orchestrated before the actual composing happened. It was so fixated on using certain ethnic instruments, that the actual music (melody, harmony, emotion, meaning) was left out of the process.

The opening scenes of Blindness were impressive and promised the delivery of a solid Meirelles film, nicely mixed with the more abstract of film making techniques.  Unfortunately it was not only the music that undermined the director’s ambitions.  Aside from an overly enthusiastic, bordering on tasteless use of surround sound and aural gimmicks (such as the bell heralding the onset of blindness), there was what could be considered a major miscasting in using Mark Ruffolo.

Ruffolo is an actor who is probably the opposite of who I imagined the doctor character to look like.  A solidly built man who looks like he can handle himself well in physical situations, he is not the kind of person one would imagine allowing a situation to get to the point where his wife is gang raped.  The doctor in Saramago’s novel was a beacon of wisdom and rationality trying to avoid the descent into savagery, Ruffolo’s doctor just comes across as a coward consistently trying to avoid confrontation, allowing servility from his wife and spouting banalities about avoiding war.

The screenplay, through excluding a third of the novel, fell short of delivering major plot points needed to convey the profundity of their situation.  The survivors roaming of the city not only explored the remains of a broken infrastructure, but also explored the depths of a broken humanity, in themselves and the humans (and dogs) they meet.  Meirelles never allowed this exposition on the wandering survivors.  The book did this excellently, for example, the old woman living in the prostitute’s apartment.  Moments like this in the book helped further the ‘everyman’ element of their tragic situation and frailty.

As well as abridging the novel, the film should simply have been subtitled.  This would have allowed the viewer a margin of tolerance for the poor translation of the original work.  What comes across as poetic in the original Portuguese, comes across as a strange proverb-like aphoristic pithiness.  For me, this was a giant distraction and constantly interrupted the flow of the film.

Saramago’s novel contains rape scenes which are disturbing and graphic.  In Meirelles’ film, the same scenes are presented appropriately.  It’s just that the surrounding scenes have reduced the film to something flippant and abrupt, totally undermining his handling of the more difficult shots.  Importantly, this causes one to view his treatment of rape as just yet another manipulation, severely wrong footing the film, and making me wonder if Meirelles has the emotional maturity as a film-maker to pull such a movie off.  A conclusion that was overwhelming reached by the end of the film.

[view Blindness trailer]