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Tuesday, February 07, 2006
LA DOLCE VITA
Nino Rota
La Dolce Vita
(Frederico Fellini)
CAM : 1960
[Buy Soundtrack]
TERRA LONTANA
Nino Rota
Rocco & His Brothers
(Luchino Visconti)
CAM : 1960
[Buy Soundtrack]
L'HAREM
Nino Rota
8.5
(Frederico Fellini)
CAM : 1963
[Buy Soundtrack]
FACETTE SCINTILLANTI
Nino Rota
Giulietta Degli Spiriti
(Frederico Fellini)
CAM : 1965
[Buy Soundtrack]
When it comes to film scores, today's directors and studios seem stuck in a few different modes. There's the nostalgic, Big-Chill-Model, in which archivists mine the music vault for feel-good chestnuts like "You Can't Always Get What You Want." If you like the song, the logic goes, you'll also love the scene upon which it is overlaid. (Quentin Tarrantino is a big fan of this tactic.) Even more cynical are the films that fit into what could be termed the WB Paradigm. Like musicals whose characters never actually sing, the plots of these movies are propped up and interrupted at regular intervals by various would-be pop hits. In effect, it's a cross-marketing scheme. The film markets the song and the song's MTV video markets the movie. Both usually suck. Finally, there's the Grand Style used by industry giants like John Williams and Danny Elfmann, and their pay-by-the-hour orchestras and sound stages. These composers know how to knot your stomach at the appropriate moment, or rip that tear from its duct on cue, but what often results is an easily forgettable piece of music that's not much worth listening to when the lights go up.
Given this climate, it's all the more satisfying to go back and reconsider the output of the Italian composer Nino Rota.
According to his friends, Rota, who died at the age of 68, literally worked himself to death. Over the course of his life, he produced 10 operas, 23 stage and ballet works, 3 symphonies, 3 cello concertos, dozens of chamber and choral pieces, and-his greatest legacy-80-odd film scores. No one in the history of cinema-with, perhaps, the notable exception of Ennio Morricone-ever captured and advanced the feeling of a film like Rota. He is best known for his work with Frederico Fellini.
From 1952, to 1979, Rota and Fellini collaborated on twelve films, starting with "The White Sheik," and ending with "Orchestra Rehearsal," which was released the year Rota passed away.
Rota's soundtracks (especially those written for Fellini's storylines) are never the gratuitous, emotionally manipulative, after-the-thought appendages we've come to expect from the Hollywood hacks, and his music was as important a part of Fellini's final products as Marcello Mastroiannini's acting. "The most precious collaborator I have ever had, I say it straightaway and don't even have to hesitate, was Nino Rota," Fellini said after the composer's death. "Between us, immediately, a complete, total harmony." At times, Rota's music itself seems to guide the film's direction, as in the operatic "Cassanova," and, most notably, "Orchestra Rehearsal."
In the latter, which is the allegorical story of a conductor at odds with the musicians in his orchestra, music and dialog, at times layered, at times cutting back and forth like a conversation, are inextricable. The soundtrack recording is full of character dialog, treating the script itself as part of the musical score.
Fellini himself was intensely sensitive to music: So much so that, outside of the cinema, he never listened to it. Rota, on the other hand, saw the world entirely in musical terms, and was just as perplexed by Fellini's visuals: "When I asked [Rota] about the melodies he had in mind to comment one sequence or another, I clearly realized he was not concerned with images at all. His world was inner, inside himself, and reality had no way to enter it."
Rota's primary compositional approach was to thread a melody line throughout a piece using a variety of voices. One instrument begins a phrase, another picks it up, and still another finishes it. Rather than layer and create complex textures (the way his good friend Igor Stravinsky did) Rota strove to create a free-wheeling, spontaneous vibe in his music. You get the sense that anything can happen, and it usually does: Rota melded jazz, opera, the popular tunes of the day, Italian folk, and classical music in his compositions. The juxtapositions were startling, but never out of place and, somehow, the collages made perfect sense. As you'll hear in the selections above, Rota's film music is worth seeking out whether or not a movie is part of the deal.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the writer Alexandre Tylski, who wrote a great piece on the film "Orchestra Rehearsal" on the website www.cardage.net where I pilfered some info and the Fellini quotes.
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David Knowles is the author of The Secrets of The Camera Obscura and The Third Eye.Labels: david knowles, writer's week
posted by Alex
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