Partly because of the almost bi-monthly frequency of our
updates at Film Music on the Web, our reviews often include multiple works by a
particular composer. Our February update, for example, focused heavily on John
Williams, with strong reviews of three of his albums. I feel it’s worth making
a point when a situation like this arises, because it means in the medium term
that we have an opportunity to assess the various contributions of a composer
to modern film music. We won’t necessarily be doing this every update (quantity
does not always translate to quality for one), but more often than not there’s
a name or two that stand out from the pack in a given month, and it’s a
fortunate coincidence that two of my favourite modern composers were remarkably
prolific of late.
Mychael Danna
Born in 1958, this Canadian-born composer has continually
impressed with his work in international arthouse cinema. Danna’s background in
music began as a student of composition at the University of Toronto, followed by a stint at the McGlaughlin Planetarium as composer-in-residence. His
ongoing creative relationship with fellow national Atom Egoyan is legend,
having recently resulted in their tenth feature film score together, Where
the Truth Lies (reviewed in this edition). And it is in the high tide of
Egoyan’s work – Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter, Felicia’s Journey, Ararat –
that Danna’s work seems mostly skillfully bonded to the tone and arc of film
narrative. Probably the most effective scene produced by the two is the final
scene of Exotica, where the mystery at the heart of the damaged
characters is revealed to an emotionally-crushing reprise of Danna’s opening
theme. The scene and its score work because of the superb structure of the film
and score prior to that conclusion. Informed by aesthetics from Middle Eastern
and Indian music, the theme is typical of Danna’s lateral thinking in terms of
what comprises the ideal film ensemble – it depends of the film, an orchestra
is by no means chosen by default, and instrumental ideas from outside the
western canon are a frequent feature of his work, whether motivated by the
setting of the story or not.
Though the Egoyan collaboration initiated Danna into film
scoring, another collaboration equally contributed to the development of his
status as an arthouse composer. Ang Lee chose Danna as collaborator for The
Ice Storm, where the composer blended minimalist orchestral ideas with
gamelan textures for an allegorical reading of the failure of family structures
in the Nixon era. The two also collaborated on Danna’s most exciting score, Ride
with the Devil, part-Civil War sideshow, part-Western, part-bildungsroman.
(The banjo never sounded so thrilling.) And while I don’t know the score,
I’ve heard great things about the mixture of baroque and Tibetan styles (!)
Danna created for Lee’s contribution to the BMW short film series starring
Clive Owen. Though his work for Lee’s Hulk never reached fruition, his
demo ideas showcasing Middle Eastern vocals and duduk as colours became a
credited part of Danny Elfman’s score for that film.
Other collaborators are a proverbial who’s-who of world
arthouse cinema, and an astonishing catalogue of Danna’s versatility of style.
Directors Danna has worked with include Scott Hicks (the ‘American
transcendentalism’ of Hearts in Atlantis), James Mangold (the
glass-based ensemble of Girl, Interrupted), Mira Nair (the idiomatic
Indian classical sound of Kama Sutra, the more pop-oriented Indian sound
of Monsoon Wedding, the Mozart aesthetic of Vanity Fair), Istvan
Szabo (Being Julia), Gilles Mackinnon (early 20th century
British chamber composition in Regeneration), Tony Bui (the ethnic Vietnamese
solos with orchestral backing of Green Dragon, with brother Jeff Danna)
and forthcoming work for Terry Gilliam (Tideland, again with Jeff
Danna). Though the composer has flirted with more commercial material – Joel
Schumacker’s 8MM, and Denzil Washington’s Antwone Fisher – he
seems to have deliberately steered clear of films that are less likely to
accommodate his eclectic approach to scoring. (And those two assignments
certainly did.)
Though Danna is often labeled something of a ‘chameleon’
among those who prefer less subtle scoring, he has a voice that is distinct and
runs through all these works. The phrasing of his melodies, their subtle
relationship to screen action, the genuine adoption of foreign musical
aesthetics and not merely strong-arming exotic colouration into an otherwise
western romantic approach – these are all characteristics that give away a work
as being penned by Danna. (And I accidentally tested it once – I recognized
themes from both Monsoon Wedding and Vanity Fair as Danna’s work
without knowing he had composed them.) Worth noting in any discussion of
Danna’s career is his ongoing professional relationship with orchestrator
Nicholas Dodd, who collaborates with Danna on the orchestration of the scores,
and conducts the work himself.
This month we present three soundtrack albums, cut from the
scores of three recent films by directors of interest. Ian Lace reviews the
album mixture of Danna score and Truman Capote narration from the acclaimed
Bennett Miller film Capote. Amer Zahid considers Water, Danna’s
score for the long-delayed final work in Deepa Mehta’s trilogy about Indian
society. Also reviewed is the most recent collaboration with Atom Egoyan, Where
the Truth Lies, an arthouse approach to potentially-potboiler material.
While all three of these reviews were positive in their reflections on Danna’s
score as a dramatic work, I have decided to pick out the latter score in my
Recommendations for the month, simply because it feels like new territory for
its composer, and he traverses it impressively.
For further information on Mychael Danna, I recommender his
website (http://www.mychaeldanna.com)
and the page on him at Movie Music UK (a valuable resource as ever).
The archived interviews with Doug Adams on the composer’s own website are good
reading for those interested in the composer’s process.
Capote
RCA/Legacy BMK678151
Water
Varese Sarabande VSD-6695
Where the Truth Lies
Varese Sarabande VSD-6696
For those interested in reading more on Danna as well, we
also have a range of reviews of previous titles, including Bounce, Monsoon
Wedding, Regeneration, Ride with the Devil, and Ararat: C-D Reviews
Gabriel Yared
I’m always amazed when I hear that Lebanese-born French
composer Gabriel Yared (born in 1949) never underwent formal study in
composition. His background was as a songwriter and orchestrator for popular
performers in the 1970s before he turned to film scoring. I’m surprised,
because his voice as a film composer is very classical in its influences. (To
the extent that he has written a number of ballet scores – including Clavigo
most recently.) It’s something of an inspiration that someone can reach those
sorts of heights without the obvious starting points that are generally
considered essential.
Whatever his beginnings, Gabriel Yared has found a niche in
European and American film scoring that encourages expressive music for
orchestra. His early European films are probably his most artistically
ambitious, featuring titles by auteurs Jean-Jacques Beneix (Betty Blue, La
Lune dans de Caniveau), Jean-Jacques Annaud (L’Amant, Wings of Courage),
Bruno Nuytten (Camille Claudel) and Costa-Gavras (Hanna K).
Though his work for western directors preceded Anthony Minghella’s The
English Patient (Vincent Ward’s Map of the Human Heart stands out),
it was the deserved acclaim and Oscar sweep of the Ondaatje adaptation that put
Yared in demand in the west.
Initially this acclaim resulted in frustrating assignments.
Those who anticipated great things on seeing Yared’s name connected to Bille
Auguste’s Les Miserables and Iain Softley’s Wings of a Dove were
also among the frustrated, as they went to cinemas to hear scores (however
fine) by replacement composers Basil Poledouris and Ed Shearmur respectively.
(Though to be fair, in the case of the latter, it has come to light in recent
interviews that Yared was the replacement composer.)
Though Yared’s work with Minghella continued to accrue Oscar
acclaim and test his range (the tragic thriller modes of The Talented Mr
Ripley, the hymnal style of Cold Mountain), more often that not his
assignments were melodramas. Much like Georges Delerue, another romantic voice
relegated to genres beneath his considerable talents, Yared’s expressive
orchestral writing was used for a series of assignments that betray the
typecasting – City of Angels, Autumn in New York, Message in a Bottle, The
Next Best Thing are among the many. However varied the composer’s scores
were for these films, the homogenous inspiration must have been a frustration.
And so in recent years, Yared has increasingly taken on
European-set or financed projects. Australian director Samantha Lang’s L’Idole
produced one of his finest scores, a subtle work for a strange film, with a
small ensemble incorporating Chinese instrumentation to represent one of the
film’s main characters. Neil Labute’s adaptation of Byatt’s Possession
and Christine Jeff’s awkward poetry-less film Sylvia also stand out
among recent assignments for their scores. Surely the most radical genre shift
for the composer would have come with Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy, and
his score for it seems comparable to Profokiev’s Alexander Nevsky cantata
in its self-contained power. Sadly the score was rejected, despite the music
Yared wrote for the execrable film being substantially more interesting than
just about any other contribution in the sword-and-sandals genre since perhaps
Miklos Rozsa.
Unlike Danna, Yared has been rather quiet of late in
American cinema. Likely the fallout of the personal and professional
disappointment of the Troy incident, there are no American titles in the
immediate future, and his scores of late have been for Cedric Kahn’s L’Avion
(available on Colosseum Records) and the German film Das Leben der
Anderen (also on Colosseum), with forthcoming scores for David Leland’s Decameron
and Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering.
What we feature this month is something of a retrospective
on Yared. Kindly, French company Cinefonia Records has supplied us with review
copies of three titles in their six CD collection on Yared’s 1980s work in
film, titles that have long been out-of-print and are now available again for
online purchase. So I’m pleased to include reviews of these titles in the
current update, the three titles showing off Yared’s impressive dramatic range.
Camille Claudel, for Bruno Nuytten’s film, is an essential work – stern,
dramatic, passionate, erotic. His divisi writing for strings is recorded
beautifully in one of our Editor’s Choice selections for this update.
La Lune dans de Caniveau comes from the near
forgotten Jean-Jacques Beneix film, and its eclectic timbres are about as far
as you could get from the textures of Camille Claudel, but the contrast
is more exciting than jarring. Thirdly, Yared’s emphasis on Middle Eastern
colours in his writing is covered in Tim Lines’ review of the compilation Les
Orientales. All three albums are reviewed positively – despite recent turns
in Yared’s Hollywood fortunes, it seems there’s never been a better time to
access his rich body of work. (And it is to the credit of Cinefonia that they
collaborated with Yared in releasing them.)
I’m looking forward to featuring an article in the near
future on Yared’s score for Troy, based on observations derived from
synchronizing the music on the promotional album of Yared’s rejected score to
the Wolfgang Peterson film. Until then, as with Mychael Danna, for further
information on Gabriel Yared, his website (also that of his publishing company,
Yad Music - http://www.gabrielyared.com)
and Jon Broxton’s page at Movie Music UK
are good places to start with this exceptional romantic composer.
Camille Claudel
Cinefonia-Yad CFY-002
La Lune dans de Caniveau
Cinefonia - Yad CFY-004
Les Orientales
Cinefonia - Yad CFY-003
For those interested in reading more on Yared, we also have
a range of reviews of previous titles in our archives, including The English
Patient, The Talented Mr Ripley, Sylvia, Possession and Message in a
Bottle among others: W-Z Reviews
Michael McLennan