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Vilnius, Sokio theater - Gaïda Festival - october 28 - 2009, 19h
John Eckhardt, bass guitar |
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Luis Buñuel, who knew he would become a filmmaker when he saw Lang's film, stated that Metropolis was actually two films in one. The first, he felt, is a relatively uninteresting story (which in Matalon's opinion was constructed on the same lines as a romantic symphony), while the second is a visual poem, a marvel of the plastic arts capable, according to Buñuel, of "satisfying all the viewer's expectations". Matalon, who agrees with the latter viewpoint, zeroed in on the purely visual aspect, the "second film". He took apart twenty scenes and analysed the rhythms of the editing, the image, the interplay of light and shadow, the plastic aspects and the pictorial composition as if he were dealing with a musical score. He then worked on the musical aspect, and attempted to balance the relationships between tension/release, density and buoyancy, complementarity and difference.
The score attempts to explore every possible relationship between music and images. These range from parallels to total divergence. A sound image was given to each visual image, consisting of "veritable figures in the listening space: intersecting axes and rotations in contrary movement that move away from each other and then come back together at varying speeds". The violent, dynamic and densely populated flood scene, on the other hand, is somewhat surprisingly accompanied by a static, introspective musical atmosphere
The orchestration is another area in which these types of parallels were used. They lighten the film's expressionist atmosphere by adding sounds that come from other styles, including jazz, to the orchestral instruments. The completely unsystematic musical representation of the film's characters is created by the orchestra rather than by traditional leitmotivs. A fretless bass is sometimes associated with Freder, the pure sound of the electric guitar with Maria, and the distorted electric guitar with her evil double.
Electronics plays an essential role in the piece's instrumentation. Through musical trompe l'oeil it insinuates itself into the acoustic realm to such an extent that it is almost impossible to dissociate the two. Electronics is used to multiply and expand the potential of the acoustic instruments. A cello solo, for instance, is refracted into a multitude of virtual cellos. Spatialization of sound into four points opens up a new dimension, offering the composer a formal parameter that gives rise to a host of possibilities.
Pascal Ianco
Information :
Gaïda Festival : Vilnius Festival
With the support of CulturesFrance within the framework of the Baltic Sounds French Festival
