The Journey Itself Is Home

I’m reminded of something else. A while ago I bought the fifth season of 24 with Kiefer Sutherland (who actually came to Iceland fairly recently). In the bonus material there is an interview with the guy who composed the music (I have forgotten his name). To explain how the music is used in 24 he plays the scene where Jack Bauer sees his former girlfriend for the first time in a year. He sees her through a window at CTU - a simple enough scene. In the interview the scene is played three times, each time with a different type of music. As a result it means three totally different things.

Now, atonal music of the kind composed by some modern composers is almost never heard in film. When it does, it signifies something particularly outlandish, or perverted. You can hear such music in the scene in 24 when The Evil and Corrupt American President is kissing his wife. His wife doesn’t know his true nature, but YOU know. And the music underlines it.

In my version of the harpsichord accompaniment to Venus As a Boy, there are some dissonant chords. I put them there to create tension and have to admit that I was very pleased with the outcome. Until someone, who was at one of our concerts, wrote in his comment here that “I had messed up” in Venus As a Boy. I listened to the recording, but no, I didn’t mess up. The dissonance just sounded like I had messed up.

After that I began to wonder if maybe I were bringing too outlandish musical language to Björk’s world. Maybe, because of what dissonant music seems to generally MEAN to the population at large, people were reading something totally different to what I intend into Venus As a Boy. I even mentioned this to Björk, asking her if I should change my accompaniment.

Her answer: NO!

She is right, of course. One should always be true to one’s artistic vision.

Today I took my daughter to Disneyland. It was the first for both of us and it was totally amazing!

There were film music cliches everywhere. On one of the rides, maybe the one through Pinocchio’s world, I could hear strings playing a chromatic melody, underlining a creepy atmosphere. In another place, exotic melodies from a harp meant that you were now in another world. And a march in a major key signified a happy ending.

In Simon Frith’s book, Performance Rites (or is it Performing Rites?) he mentions a theory that the meaning of music has actually been created through the medium of the film. One has gotten used to certain kind of music in certain movie scenes, so now one makes an automatic association when one hears a particular type of music.

Of course this is an oversimplification. But there is something to it nonetheless, I think.