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twogoodears wrote:

I've been an avid original soundtracks and film music collector for most of my life, and still I didn't find the PERFECT music for a movie... the classic, Alfred Newman's, Rozsa's, Hermann's, Williams', Horner's... them all did a superb job combined with director work, but IMO what really make a film & music connection is when, too seldom, music hints instead shouting at the audience... Nyman's the master, also Jocelyn Pook in Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" and Laurent Petigand in Wim Wenders' "The Wings of Desire"... isn't a case great music comes from almost unknown composers... the director usually got trapped in some obscure music by chance and this very casual attitude is as mysterious as love and gives to these quite common practice an STP-like character and special quality. Sometimes music for films is still composed in an old-timey fashion - i.e. musicians are exposed to several views of film itself to absorb the moods, images, the message the director wished to give, etc. It's like an accelerated exposure to emotions and life which is always behind a melody or a tune... after a sunset or a travel or... well, you got the idea... the process - being a job - is only someway forced. A fascination... and a miracle if something special stands the abuse. ... then we have the skillfull Hollywood's soundtracks composers... they're clever artisans, the "know" how get tears in audience at the proper, right moment... like pressing an "ON/OFF" switch... well, they produce soundtracks. ... but what I tried to suggest above... it's different. It's true, unique, magic... it's music for films.

My “maiden profession” or something that I call the “trade from the times of innocence” was a photographer and I was very much “in tune” to think by visual images. In some occasions, completely consciously (almost like a game) I develop in my head metal visual images that represent music that I hear. In some instances they are not the metaphoric static images but rather the fragments of a virtual film that I would shoot. In some instances those fragments are purely my own script and my own “film” and in some instances they are the most beloved by me cinematic moments from the existing films. What is always very my own is the application of the specific music to the specific cinematic episode of my mind. In some occasions I take it too far and my very precise demand for musical equivalency of my cinematic ideas actually begin to dictate how I would like to have the given piece of music to sound. In fact it is not “too far” but rather exactly where it needs to be in my view (the concept of recomposition that I multiple times mentioned elsewhere) but it is a subject of other conversation.

Anyhow, why I mention it is that if I found a “right” cinematic-musical match (in my mind) with very good grip how cinematic and musical part shell be arranged then I practically always discover that my “perfect match” appears to me too cheesy and too artificial in time. I do not know if cheesy and artificial are right words, I do not know right words. It might be perfect for very short 1-3-5 second episode but then cinematic perception is going on and it has kind of different dynamics then musical perception.  I really respect what people are able to do it, I do not think I can. From what you say this Alessandro Baricco might find a way to maintain the visual and soundable in one abstract substance. It might be very interning if he can do it in duration of the whole film. The longest I have seen and was praying that I shell never stopped was in the mentioned by you Glenn Gould’s film, where they showed the kaleidoscope-like mosaic accompanied the Gould’s Bach partitas. BTW, in some instances good dancing do it to me but it must be only VERY good dancing and it is very had to get by, much more difficult then a cinematic sequence.

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