Encounters Between Electronic Music and Orchestras in Cinema - Text 5
Electronic music became more accessible in the 1980s thanks to the declining cost of synthesizers[8] and the shift from analogue to digital. While the use of synthetic sounds to replace symphonic orchestras (generally for budgetary reasons) led Michel Chion to call synthesizers “low-cost orchestras,”[9] some composers, such as John Carpenter, made it their trademark. In 1982, Carpenter collaborated with Ennio Morricone on The Thing. Although the orchestral and electronic music are never heard together, each has a predefined role: the orchestra echoes the emotions and feelings of the humans, in a sombre, tortured and pessimistic atmosphere, while the electronic music evokes omniscience and horror, and the humans’ confrontation with the thing. Every intra-human conflict and the reigning suspicion are amplified by silence, as are the action scenes, which are shown with a cold cruelty, and as a result even more realistic and spellbinding. Although these two musical styles never appear together,[10] they have a common theme.[11]
