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The Best Music in Film
Gavin Bryars
(Minimalist British composer who composed scores for independent film-maker Stephen Dwoskin)
- S&S: What is your favourite film soundtrack music and why do you like it so much?
- "I'm afraid I have two answers to this question and perhaps you will only find one of them legitimate within the terms of the question but I'll answer anyway. The first answer creates the same kind of problem as when Elisabeth Schwarzkopf selected eight of her own recordings for her Desert Islands Disc selection.... (i) I have spent most of my professional life avoiding writing music for films preferring to write for live situations - concerts, music for dance or theatre, or writing operas. However I relented when I was working on my second opera, for ENO which was staged by Atom Egoyan. I received an invitation to write music for a film being produced in British Columbia based on a text by the poet PK Page, who is an old family friend of Atom's. He said that I should look at this proposal very seriously (PK was then 84 years old, and her husband Arthur was approaching his hundredth birthday) and so I went to Victoria to meet the Russian director of the film, Anna Tchernakova. In the event, not only did I decide to work on the film, but also Anya and I got married and now have a four year old son. I do think, though, that the music for this film (eventually entitled "Last Summer") works exceptionally well. Anya did several things which made this so. I wrote the music in response to the narrative and to the treatment which Anya had made rather than produce music for specific cues. This music was performed in concert, and the concert was filmed. This enabled the music to be both featured as concert music, and underscored for the majority of the film. But in addition Anya had cast PK Page herself in the film's central role and PK also appears, as herself, in the concert footage where she reads the opening part of the narrative. The consequent ambiguity I find quite magical. (ii) A very different, and more traditional use of music which I admire is that which George Auric wrote for Jack Clayton's film of the Henry James story The Innocents. Here we have the opposite where the music does not feature in the foreground but exists at the same level as environmental sound but in a remarkably subtle way. Auric, of course, was a follower of Erik Satie (Auric was a member of the 'École d'Arcueil') and Satie was himself an important composer for film with his pioneering music for the René Clair film Entr'acte."
- S&S: In what ways does music best enhance a film?
- "It depends entirely on the film. There are many approaches - Prokofiev's with Eisenstein, Ennio Morricone's with Sergio Leone (and Once upon a time in the West (1968) is perhaps one of the most extraordinary uses of music in film). What I despise though is the commercial expedient of assembling a sequence of pop tracks which can serve as a subsequent soundtrack album. Perhaps the only time this has been acceptable is with Tarantino whose addled brain appears to find this the norm."
- S&S: Which film either has music that you wished you'd written or is one you would like to rescore and why?
- "I wish I had written the music for Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart (1982) which has music at the centre of the film but here as a sequence of songs by Tom Waits, performed by Tom with Crystal Gayle. Not that I would want to replace the existing music, just that what Tom has done seems to me so perfect and quite exquisite. The film itself is a very simple love story but was a commercial disaster. However I love the way that the whole thing is completely theatrical - Coppola filmed the whole thing on a giant sound stage, creating an entirely artificial Las Vegas. I was actually pointed towards this film when I was first working with the American theatre director and designer Robert Wilson. His manager at the time, Lois Bianchi, told me that this film seemed to her to be almost a "pop" version of the way Bob's theatrical works looked. I was very happy - later - to have the chance to work with Tom.... I also wish that I had written the music for Twin Peaks (1990-1). But that is a longer story...."