Encounters Between Electronic Music and Orchestras in Cinema - Text 7
The violins line is isolated from the others in the harmonic spectrum (bars 10 to 15 of “Humanity Part I”), which may suggest the humans’ isolation, both physical and psychological (each is alone against the thing, not being able to trust in anyone). This idea of indistinctness is also present in the rhythm, especially the rubato quality of “Humanity Part I,” with the music slowing down and speeding up and the changing of carrures. This instability is also characterized by the systematic return of the low strings on the keynote (F) before a new intervention by the woodwinds, and not simultaneously. In addition, the lines of the violins also appear rhythmically independent and autonomous, because they are isolated in the high note. Finally, each woodwind part playing the theme changes notes at a different moment from the others.
The same technique is used for the two thematic lines of “Humanity Part II,” with the lower part always changing notes one beat after the higher part. In addition, the shifting of the theme to be off one beat when reprised modifies the relation with the rhythmic support of the bass. The short-long rhythm of the electric bass line suggests the beating of a human heart, like the thing which tries to reproduce a human body, while the second bass suggests an attempt to imitate the first without succeeding in reproducing the same rhythmic schema identically.
Finally, we can see in the repetition inherent in this large-scale music a foreshadowing of the film’s story and cyclical conclusion. These two pieces of music present constant micro-transformations, whether rhythmic intervals or melodic slippages, but also a horizontal musical conception by means of both a contrapuntal approach (heard also in other orchestral passages in the film) and a repetition of melodic or rhythmic cells. The musical elements and their positioning in the film give them great psychological impact, focusing on the protagonists’ feelings and their reception by the viewer. We could sum up this film’s project with the question “How to describe the indescribable?”[12] It is probably the film’s music which reveals this to us the most.
Until this time, the orchestral music employed in film generally adopted a post-Romantic form. With Hans Zimmer film music would undergo profound change, in particular with respect to incorporating electronics into the symphony orchestra. His choices can be accounted for by his self-taught musical background and his involvement as the keyboard player in the synth-pop band The Buggles. In his earliest compositions for film, electronics had a striking presence, but beginning with Randal Kleiser’s White Fang (1991, co-composed by Basil Poledouris),[13] the symphony orchestra was supported by arpeggios, or rhythmic electronic loops, but also doubled up by synthesizers to create a novel colouration which would become one of his signatures. Here we see also the gradual disappearance in some films of woodwinds from the orchestra, one noteworthy example being Gore Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003, music co-composed with Klaus Badelt).[14]
The music for Chrsitopher Nolan’s film Inception (2010) sowed confusion between pit music[15] and sound design. The low-frequency rumble heard in the film, later called “Inception sound,”[16] has become a musical benchmark in super-productions and trailers. The source of this sound is subject to debate, with opinions divided between recorded brass instruments and a piano and the extreme slowing down of the Édith Piaf song “Non, je ne regrette rien.” The film is based on the interweaving of dreams, and this song acts as a wake-up signal to alert the characters that they are about to emerge from sleep.
