Original scientific paper
Claude Debussy and Film Music
Irena Paulus
; Franjo Lučić Art School, Velika Gorica
Abstract
During French composer Claude Debussy’s (1862-1918) lifetime, the film just appeared as a new art. Nevertheless, possibilities of the “moving photograph” preoccupied his imagination. There are no data that he composed anything for early films, but his picturesque music, often inspired by paintings and literary works, shows that he his thoughts were inspired by manners similar to film language. Debussy’s compositions (especially Clair de lune from Suite bergamasque) was often used in different film genres – from animated and science-fiction movies to crime films. Composition techniques used by Claude Debussy also helped film composers to articulate their music in different visual surroundings. Among them are: Bernard Herrmann, who used Debussy’s idea of “parallel sonorities” in Vertigo (1958) and other Alfred Hitchcock’s movies; and John Williams, who adopted usage of modal music and bitonality in order to show unusual situations in many of Steven Spielberg’s science-fiction stories, especially in Artificial Intelligence (2001). Among analyzed films, the most fascinating is usage of Clair de lune in Stephen Soderbergh’s Ocean’s 11 (2001). There the music doesn’t only point out narrative and metaphoric references to visuals, but also participates in creating the structure of certain film scenes. This kind of usage of Debussy’s music shows that it doesn’t function well only in special settings of unspecified stories; despite its poetic and lyrical content, Debussy’s Clair de lune functions in a more contemporary context, even side by side with contemporary popular music.
Keywords
Claude Debussy; Impressionism; image; film; film music; painting; literature; Clair de lune
Hrčak ID:
213395
URI
Publication date:
19.12.2018.
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