The Best Music in Film

John Luther Adams

(Composer from Alaska. Former percussionist with the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra and the Arctic Chamber Orchestra)

S&S: What is your favourite film soundtrack music and why do you like it so much?
"My favourite film music is in The Drums of Winter (1988) by Leonard Kamerling and Sarah Elder. This music was not composed for the film. The music is the subject of the film. In The Drums of Winter we see and hear traditional songs of the Yup'ik people of Western Alaska performed with dances in the intimate setting of the potlatch ceremony. The sound and the cinematography are equally strong. There is no narration, no one who tells us what to think. Rather than watching from the outside, we feel as though we're inside the dance house experiencing each moment with the community."
S&S: In what ways does music best enhance a film?
"The best thing music can do for a film is to be itself. When music illustrates a film, it lessens both. When music is complete in and of itself, both music and film are augmented. Sound and image unfold together as equivalent dimensions of a larger whole."
S&S: Which film either has music that you wished you'd written or is one you would like to rescore and why?
"For years I've dreamed of composing music for the remarkable series of films made in the early 1960s about the Netsilik people of Pelly Bay, Netsili Eskimo. The Netsilik ("The People of the Seal") were the last Inuit people to be contacted by Europeans. When explorer Knud Rasmussen visited them in 1923 they were still nomadic, living as they had for centuries -without guns, motors or other tools of Western technology. The Netsilik films were made when an extended family agreed to return for a year to the traditional ways of living, allowing a crew from the National Film Board of Canada to travel with them. The films are stunningly beautiful, strongly and sensitively composed in 16mm colour. Without relying on the usual conventions of dramatic or documentary film, they tell rich and compelling stories of life and death in a harsh and timeless land. We travel with the People by foot and dogsled through the landscapes and seasons of the Arctic, as they build kayaks, hunt seals on the ice, make caribou skin tents and clothing, construct snow houses and play traditional games with their children. In one especially memorable scene hunters kneel around the body of the first-killed seal of the season and partake in a sacrament as powerfully symbolic as Christian communion, with the primal immediacy of real flesh and blood. From the moment I first saw these films I wanted to work with them. They evoke a world parallel to the world I aspire to create in music. Their immediacy and deliberateness of tempo convey a vivid sense of being present in the light and landforms of the Arctic. There is no narration and no recorded musical score. The soundtracks consist entirely of sparse dialogue in the Netsilik dialect with natural sounds of the Arctic. Although I've been able to acquire rights to the Netsilik films, I had them in mind when I composed 'In the White Silence' -a seventy-five minute work for string quartet, harp, celesta and string orchestra. To complete the circle, I now imagine this music as the foundation for an entirely new film I hope to produce myself."
Last Updated: 29 Sep 2008