Music in Cinema by Claudia Gorbman

Author:Claudia Gorbman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press

A NEW SYMPHONISM

At the same time, symphonism has continued to exist in film, but in new and redefined form. Pierre Berthomieu describes it well:

In the 1990s, thanks to Rain Man (1988), The Lion King (1994) and a whole series of action movies (USS Alabama, The Rock, etc.), the sound created by the German Hans Zimmer achieved unprecedented success and gradually took over as a dominant, even tyrannical form. Crafted by teams working under Zimmer, this sound exudes the energy of modern electronic rock. For the complex orchestral production of symphonism Zimmer substituted immersive musical sound (horn calls, extended and repetitive string motifs, overwhelming aggressive percussion, systematic uses of minimalist ostinatos) in a style that avoids any complex development. The orchestral elements are doubled by massive samples that create a wall of sound. The style has its roots in world music and mystical minimalism (the ecstatic contemplative style of Arvo Pärt) … What does this approach fear most? Detailed orchestrations, presence that is too identifiable, and above all, grand themes … The theme that undergoes development is worrying: it’s too much like classical music … The triumph of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, with music by the Zimmer team with a lovely thematic richness (and even delicate and romantic solos in the third episode), seemingly contradicts the dread of symphonism.7

Zimmer created studios named Media Ventures and Remote Control, and after the successes of the Batman films directed by Christopher Nolan, he adopted a style Berthomieu comments on:

The power of classical symphonism attested to a transcendent presence over the narrative raw material, whereas the Remote Control sound acknowledges a world overwhelmed by sonic material and aims for the integration/dissolution of music. Music is treated like sound design, whose tracks it shares. Restricted to the registers of human voices and physical action, it literally invades space but no longer transcends it. Musical presence thus retains the omnipresence of the classical era (reconquered in the John Williams age), but cohabits with the whole range of sound design, like a relentless ambiance.8

Should we consider the taste for Pärt’s and Philip Glass’s music in films as one of the forms that this dissolution has taken? Alternatively, we might consider the trend as a reaction against it, bringing a kind of transcendence amid the world’s cruel reality through the intervention of a pure and ethereal music that seems to come from another world outside the normal lives of the characters.

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