Music’s ability to express feelings, suggest images or represent reality has long been debated. There are those who acknowledge this power, while others claim that the principles and content of music are purely abstract. The aim of recreating reality through music – shared by many composers and in some ways characteristic of certain musical eras – has been pursued in different ways at different times, generating a range of styles and codes of interpretation and listening.

The attempt to describe through music, as well as the idea of music as an expression of feelings, may be found in the musical production of any period, although it was only in the 18th century that this idea was officially formulated; indeed by the second half of the century, musical scores started to contain instructions referring to emotional contents (espressivo, dolce, mesto, dolente, etc.). Is music then able to express a precise emotional situation or even to reproduce a specific object or event? Music is the most abstract of the arts and at the same time the one most capable of penetrating the listener’s emotions.

How can a listening experience become a visual or emotional one that evokes concrete images or sensations? The answer is that it occurs by means of an illusion achieved by the listener. Music is made up of sounds, with no concrete reference to either a real or imagined world, yet the listener loads it with non-musical meanings. This mechanism is supported by commonly accepted conventions and works at an unconscious level, inducing the listener to imagine or experience feelings and situations, in the same way that at the cinema the audience identifies with the ‘reality’ presented on the screen and accepts its artifice.

By way of example, let us consider a descriptive piece of music, Bydlo, from Pictures at an Exhibition, a suite for piano by Modest Mussorgsky (1839–81) that was orchestrated in 1922 by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937). Mussorgsky’s work consists of 10 pieces inspired by the same number of paintings, and seeks to evoke the scenes they depict. In this particular piece (describing a heavy cart pulled by oxen), Mussorgsky’s compositional solutions (especially with regard to the rhythmic pattern) and Ravel’s orchestration produce the realistic impression of an object (the cart) approaching and leaving a fixed position (the listener). The simulation is inevitably connected to the visualization of that event, produced by perceiving the musical elements as narrative elements. The association of the timbre of the tuba – which introduces the theme at the opening of the piece – with the oxen carrying their heavy yoke is aided by the listener’s knowledge of the picture’s subject. The tuba does not actually refer to or imitate an ox, but in this context it effectively gives the impression of heavy and difficult movement; the listener’s imagination, conditioned as it is, then associates this movement with an ox. This demonstrates that music’s narrative and dramaturgical dimension is in fact reliant on universal codes of interpretation that favour the association of certain sounds with gestures, figures and situations. However, the identification of an instrument with a specific object is, in this case, not as remarkable as the effect accomplished: namely dropping the listener into a narrative, where the listener has become viewer.

The illusory power of music can go beyond the mere mimesis of an event or an object and push at the subtler boundary between external and inner dimensions, just as the editing of a film can allow rapid shifts between objectivity and subjectivity.

The following examples highlight similarities between the structural techniques used in two well-known Lieder of the 19th century and in three films from the 20th. The first Lied, Die Stadt, comes from the Schwanengesang (Swan Song) song cycle by Franz Schubert (1797–1828); the second, Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht, by Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), is the opening Lied of the song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer), based on poems by Mahler himself. In these Lieder the marriage between poetry and music becomes in effect a dramatization, which can usefully be described in cinematographic terms. The musical gestures not only amplify or define the text, they also determine ‘shots’ and different spatial-temporal levels, thus avoiding the traditional narrative pattern in favour of ‘continuous present’, where reality can move backwards and forwards simultaneously. As R.E. Jones describes in his The Dramatic Imagination (1969):

 

[Motion pictures] flow in a swift succession of images, precisely as our thoughts do, and their speed, with their flashbacks – like sudden uprushes of memory – and their abrupt transitions from one subject to another, approximates very closely the speed of our thinking. They have the rhythm of the thought stream and the same uncanny ability to move forward or backward in space or time, unhampered by the rationalizations of the conscious mind. They project pure thought, pure dream, pure inner life.

 

In these examples it is music alone that creates the continual shifts between the objective or exterior dimension (described or implicit) and the subjective or inner dimension. How are these ‘scene changes’ perceived? What are the key factors?

Die Stadt is one of six Lieder based on poems by Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) in the Schwanengesang cycle, written in 1828, the year of Schubert’s death. The narrative in this cycle, and especially in the Heine Lieder (strongly connected with one another both in terms of narrative and musically), often transcends the mere recounting of facts and moves into the realm of symbolism. Indeed, the entire cycle can be considered a journey in the protagonist’s mind, ending with the contemplation of death. In Die Stadt the representational meaning of the lyrics is replaced by the symbolism of its particular musical elements, expression and formal structure, filling the poetry with new meanings.

In Die Stadt the hero is returning to a town – presumably his beloved’s town, but also his final resting place. This journey, as we learn from the text of the poem, is by sea, and it is from here that the narrator catches a glimpse of the far-off town. The scene shows Schubert’s structural logic and also introduces one of the most recurring elements in his Lieder: water. Water, “that grey, deadly water wake [die grauer Wasserbahn] one has to cross in order to reach the town” (Lo Presti, 1995) or “the dark heinean sea, surely a Northern sea, misty and flickering” (Bortolotto, 1984), appears not merely as a backdrop but as interlocutor and character in its own right. In Schubert, nature mirrors the composer’s own mental and spiritual world, and water is the mind’s favourite element. Its flowing alludes to the time passing between the extremes of birth and death, grief and joy. And in this stream, present and past, reality and memories or dreams alternate and then join in one single course directed to the final destination of death:

 

Am fernen Horizonte erscheint,/wie ein Nebelbild,/die Stadt mit ihren Türmen/in Abenddämmerung gehüllt./Ein feuchter Windzug kräuselt/die graue Wasserbahn;/mit traurigem Takte rudert/der Schiffer in meinem Kahn./Die Sonne hebt sich noch einmal/leuchtend vom Boden empor,/und zeigt mir jene Stelle,/wo ich das Liebste verlor.

 

 

The formal structure of the Lied consists of two contrasting sections which alternate: the first is based on one chord, played alternately as an arpeggio and a broken chord; the second section has the solemnity of a funeral march. In the first section, the undulation of the arpeggio brings to mind both water and the rolling boat. The broken chord recreates the strokes of the oars. Obviously this precise matching of music and poetical images becomes clear only once the singing begins, introducing the narrative. In this first section the music is static: the obsessive repetition of the same chord is used to magnify its sonority, enhanced further by the prolonged use of the piano’s sustain pedal. This provides a resonant glow that rises and thickens like mist, constructing a setting more from the sound itself than from any symbolic association.

The second section starts from the lowest tone of the chord, and from this point the music can be described as becoming more discursive. The move from one section to the other is most disturbing; the musical texture radically changes and the singing begins (Am ferne Horizonte…), introducing a new entity, the first-person narrator. The grave and choral-like progression of the music makes this apparition ghostly. It is worth underlining that the dramatic tone of this Lied is not due to any unique harmonic solution or audacious modulation, for all that this would be typical of Schubert’s music, but rather to its structural ‘editing’. Between the two sections there is an interposing rest; this short absolute silence separates the objective, descriptive level from the subjective, inner one. Without this suspension, the passage from one dimension to the other would not have the same effect. The contrast could not be perceived nor the psychological implications understood. The surroundings do not disappear; they are overwhelmed by or channelled back into the narrator’s interior world.

Structural editing is used cinematically to similar effect in the Stanley Kubrick film The Shining (1980). In a critical scene, the main character, Wendy, starts climbing backwards up the stairs connecting the hall to the first floor, in order to escape her deranged husband. At the beginning of the sequence, these stairs, visible behind the protagonist, are simply part of the background. The camera then moves behind Wendy and films from the top of the stairs, focusing on the husband’s foreground as he slowly approaches, step by step. The audience, at first watching the scene straight on, is now seeing through Wendy’s eyes; the objective representation of reality is distorted by the protagonist’s emotional state, which the audience now shares. At this point the objective, ‘real’ perspective disappears completely: the distance between the ground and the position of the two characters on the stairs increases disproportionately, so that they appear to be standing at an enormous height. The unnatural perspective gives an impression of dizziness that mirrors that experienced by the woman, frightened and bewildered by her husband’s changed behaviour. It is a visual illusion created by special effects, and is reinforced by the audience sharing both the protagonist’s viewpoint and, through this, her mental state. In Schubert’s Lied the same mechanism occurs: the shift in perspective, accomplished by purely musical methods, is made possible thanks to the listener’s instant identification with the narrative voice, expressed in song. The lyrics describe the narrator’s physical surroundings, while the music recreates the emotional state of his interior journey. In Die Stadt as in The Shining, the narrative space is an abstract space: “the reality it refers to belongs both to an exterior and inner context, where the physical and mental world exist in immediate interpenetration” (Pezzella, 1996).

 

In the Lied Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht by Mahler, the shift in perspective occurs by means of a flashback. This change, as sudden as it is rapid, is accomplished by inserting a particular melody, previously carried by the piano at the very beginning of the Lied (the cycle was originally composed for piano and voice; it was later orchestrated by Mahler himself). The tune has a dance-like rhythm and creates an apparently festive atmosphere. It not only alludes to a specific situation – a wedding party – but is also a metaphor of the narrator’s past happiness, and thus acquires a symbolic function.

 

Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht,/Fröliche Hochzeit macht,/hab’ich meinen traurigen Tag!/Geh’ich in mein Kämmerlein,/dunkles Kämmerlein,/weine, wein’um meinen Schatz,/um meinem lieben Schatz!/Blümlein blau! Blümlein blau!/Verdorre nicht! Verdorre nicht!/Vöglein süß! Vöglein süß,/du singst auf grüner Heide./Ach, wie ist die Welt so schön!/Ziküth! Ziküth!/Singet nicht! Blühet nicht!/Lenz ist ja vorbei!/Alles singen ist nun aus./Des Abends, wenn ich schlafen geh’,/denk’ich an mein Leide, / an mein Leide!

 

The instrumental introduction is followed by the narrator’s mournful singing. This maintains the same rhythmic­ and melodic contours but twists its mood by doubling the rhythmic values and adding a fixed accompaniment, the pattern of which (a dyad of a fifth, preceded by a grace note) recalls the hurdy-gurdy or accordion, instruments traditionally used by wayfarers. By introducing musical patterns often associated with this figure, Mahler not only calls to mind the wayfarer archetype of German Romantic Literature, he also distorts the musical imagery of the opening section and turns an expression of gaiety into one of profound sadness, nostalgia and regret. The emotional transfiguration of the motive creates an immediate and powerful link between opposites: past and present, happiness and unhappiness, objectivity and subjectivity. (In the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, also by Kubrick, two extreme temporal dimensions – prehistory and modern times – are linked together in the same narrative scheme by a similar procedure: the rotating movement of the club hurled by the hominid is taken up by the movement of the spacecraft.) But it is the way in which the wedding tune overwhelms the narration that makes this Lied so interesting.

 

 

On the final word of each of the first lines (macht, Tag, Kämmerlein, Schatz), the original version of the tune begins again. Returning like an obsessive thought, it literally cuts off each musical phrase; in some cases, this refrain is introduced by a short accented dyad that sounds like a painful cry, emphasising further the contrast already strengthened by repeatedly associating the wedding leitmotiv to negative verbal expressions (traurigen Tag, dunkles Kämmerlein). This small element thus acquires both expressive intensity and a dramatic function within the narrative, just as a particular facial expression can take on a structural function in a film sequence.

 

With the connection between the wedding tune and the protagonist’s emotional state made clear, the shift into metaphor takes place, namely happiness (others’) versus unhappiness (his own). The obsessive thought interrupts the narrative stream with constant and sudden shifts between present and past and between emotionally contrasting states. This section is followed by a central part where memories of the past are predominant. (Blümlein blau! Blümlein blau!/Verdorre nicht! Verdorre nicht!/Vöglein süß! Vöglein süß,/du singst auf grüner Heide./Ach, wie ist die Welt so schön!/Ziküth! Ziküth!). Here the descriptive style is more explicit: the protagonist revels in recalling the sound of bells and bird singing in an almost ecstatic crescendo, with the composer inverting phrases used earlier (the gloomy repetition of the interval of fifth becomes a cheerful tolling of bells). This setting, which belongs to a time of happiness now lost and exalted by memory, fades back into the present, like a cinematic fading. This technique is most evident at the instrumental ending of this Lied, where the wedding tune gradually refines texturally, progressively breaking and fading, until it dissolves into a single tone.

Mahler certainly adopts rhetorical musical figures and codified melodic patterns used to describe or express non-musical content. In this case, however, he is using them merely to create an emotional illusion, just as film music “[supplies] momentum, the muscular energy, a sense of corporeity ... Its aesthetic effect is that of a stimulus of motion, not a reduplication of motion” (Eisler and Adorno, 1947).

 

 

 

Memories interfering with the present is a commonly recurring theme in cinema. In Wild Strawberries by Ingmar Bergman (1957) and Death in Venice by Luchino Visconti (1971), the passage from reality to memories and dreams is structural. In both cases, this passage is brought about by repeated reminders, using a technique similar to that used by Mahler in his Lied.

In Wild Strawberries it is dream as well as memory that intersects with the narrative. The protagonist’s journey to his destination (where he will be awarded the Nobel prize) is also a mental journey through memories, analysing his life. Particular events (seeing his family home, meeting some young students) spark off the shift from reality to imagination and interiority. The ‘editing’ is less concise than that in Mahler’s Lied, but the technique is the same. It is in Death in Venice (the soundtrack of which is Mahler’s Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony) that the similarities to Mahler’s Lied are more evident. The emotions caused by seeing young Tadzio makes the protagonist recall the most important moments of his life and live through them again in his present emotional state. These memories intersect with events, counterpointing them constantly; the sight of his beloved causes him distress, altering his behaviour and emotions, shifting constantly between reality and symbolism.

 

Editing is the structural element of representation. A camera movement can link a scene in the present to one in the past. In a film shot the past and present are directly exhibited in an unnatural simultaneity. Editing focuses attention from the single event to the relationship between two different and discontinuous events. This relationship is derived from comparing two different elements or making them clash, thus transcending them. (Pezzella, 1996)

 

What conclusions can be drawn? Clearly not that certain film techniques derive from musical composition or vice versa.

Some similarities between the two arts are notable, though they operate according to their own methods and techniques: movement and, hence, time, mimesis, embodiment and discontinuity. The fact that the musical works we have examined contain effects or procedures we may define as ‘film-like’ demonstrates music’s dramaturgical power, especially when it adopts figures and gestures easily transferable to non-musical contexts. The narrative contents of a text, in this case, fill the various musical figures with meaning, which transforms listening into an almost visual experience.