Musical Connections in Wojciech Kilar's Score for Roman

CREATING MEANING THROUGH MUSIC: MUSICAL CONNECTIONS IN WOJCIECH KILAR’S SCORE FOR ROMAN POLANSKI’S THE NINTH GATE By Fernando Nicknich Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games Berklee College of Music – Valencia Campus July 2015 Table of Contents Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 01 The Ninth Gate: Movie Overview …………………………………………………………………………… 05 Wojciech Kilar’s Associations with Polański and the Western Film Industry ……………. 07 Plot Synopsis ………………………………………………………………………………………………………... 10 Central Elements of the Script ………………………………………………………………………………. 17 Wojciech Kilar’s Music Overview …………………………………………………………………………… 21 The Music in The Ninth Gate …………………………………………………………………………………. 24 Main Theme ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 24 Corso’s Theme …………………………………………………………………………………………… 40 First Version …………………………………………………………………………………… 43 First Version (Alternative Orchestration) ………………………………………… 45 Second Version ……………………………………………………………………………….. 47 Theme Derivation ……………………………………………………………………………. 49 Girl’s Theme ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 49 Choir Theme ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 59 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 63 Appendix A …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 70 Appendix B …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 79 References …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 80 1 IntroduCtion For some reason that probably is still to be understood by our humanly sciences, we humans have the ability to store a quite vivid and somewhat detailed memory of some particular events in our lives. Experts call it a flashbulb memory; a type of memory that is generally related to emotionally arousing moments or moments of greater significance in the generally smooth flow of our lives. This experience happened to me when I first watched Roman Polański’s The Ninth Gate. It was my first year as an undergraduate student, living on my own for the first time. Far from family and friends, I was starting to get acquainted with that bitter loneliness that no teenager thinks of when they dream about leaving their parents’ home and pursuing a life of freedom and fulfillment. I didn’t have the habit of watching television programs at that time, but by a quirk of fate I decided to turn on the television that night. I remember I was sitting alone on the sofa in the unlit living room, it was probably past 11pm and the neighborhood was quite silent. The movie started just a couple of minutes later. I still remember how astonished I felt when the first chords of the soundtrack filled up the room. It was so dark and so deep that it hooked me immediately. I had never heard about Wojciech Kilar until that moment, and I probably didn’t pay attention to his name back then, as I would only reencounter his name years later. Being myself an apprentice composer at that time, I immediately related to that music and felt that kind of sonority was something I was somehow striving to attain. Many years later, I didn’t quite develop an interest in the – so to say – minimalist style of Mr. Kilar, but his dark and deep soundscapes certainly influenced my music and became a sort of reference for me on that matter. 2 Coming from this past experience, Mr. Kilar’s score for Roman Polański’s movie The Ninth Gate became a natural choice for me as the subject for the present work, whose main goal – to put it clear since the beginning – is to shed some light on some central themes of the movie’s soundtrack while presenting some considerations regarding the role or influence of these themes in the construction of meaning in the movie. As it will be seen later on, the music plays an interesting role in connecting some elements of the plot, sometimes even bringing to the attentive spectator some hidden clues that inform the viewer of some possible underlying meanings in the development of the story. The score is quite unique in the way it was conceived, resembling very little the hollywoodish style that we normally tend to imagine when we think of film music. This uniqueness comes certainly from the fact that Kilar was a trained and accomplished classical music composer, having as such developed a very particular style and a characteristic sonority of his own. He was in fact one of the prominent concert music composers of the young generation in Poland in the 60’s, being part of the Polish avant- garde together with names such as Krzsyztof Penderecki and Henryk Górecki (they formed a group which was then called by the German critics The Polish School of Composition).1 Later on in his life he would end up abandoning the avant-garde ideas in favor of a simpler style inspired by the music of the highlanders (or, Gorals) – a group of indigenous people that had settled in southern Poland. While the music in The Ninth Gate cannot exactly be said to be an example of this Gorals music, it stands certainly closer to this style than to the avant-garde pieces from his early years. 1 LECH, Filip. Avant-Garde and Gorals – Notes on Wojciech Kilar. Published on Culture.pl on March 30th, 2015. http://culture.pl/en/article/avant-garde-and-gorals-notes-on-wojciech-kilar (Accessed on June 5th, 2015) 3 The analysis will be focused in four specific themes that were judged to be central to the soundtrack. For the sake of communicating them, they were called here: 1) Main theme; 2) Corso’s theme; 3) Girl’s theme; and 4) Choir’s theme.2 A code system will be used to address these themes as the text advances. These codes will be inserted in the synopsis together with the timing information that will inform the beginning of each cue or, eventually, the time spot where the specific theme is used inside a cue (in the case of cues that use more than one thematic material).3 With this system, it is expected that he reader will be able to quickly check the cues in the movie whenever he or she feels the need to do so. The code itself will inform two things: 1) the theme in question; and 2) the number of the occurrence of this theme in the scope of the movie. For instance, for the third occurrence of the Main theme, the code will be [Mt3]; for the fourth occurrence of the same theme, [Mt4]; and so on. The codes will be explained in more details at the chapter where they will be first employed. I will do my best to address each theme and scene in the clearest way possible. However, it is strongly recommended that the reader take his or her time to watch the movie before reading this work, as this will surely facilitate the process of understanding the story and locate the events in the scope of the movie when these events are addressed in the chapter devoted to the discussions about the music. Because of the lack of bibliography regarding this specific movie, most of the discussions will be based on virtual resources like the Internet Movie Database 2 Dean Corso is the main character of the plot, while the Girl is his main interlocutor, so to say. More details about the main elements and characters of the plot will be presented in the chapter called Plot Synopsis, as well as in the chapter that follows it. 3 All the time indications will be based on the DVD release: The Ninth Gate. Directed by Roman Polanski. 1999. Santa Monica, CA: Artisan Entertainment, 1999. DVD. 4 (IMDb.com) – the Mecca for information on the film industry –, blogs and magazine articles. The exposition starts by presenting, in the first chapter, some basic information regarding the production and release of the movie. A second chapter will present information regarding the collaborations between Polański and Kilar, as well as Kilar’s presence in the Western film production circles. The third chapter will bring the plot synopsis will be addressed. One can always return to this chapter to refresh one’s memory while reading the discussions about the music. The fourth chapter will bring a brief analysis of the script of the movie. The aim of this chapter is to present an overview of the central elements of the plot, having in mind that these elements will, in the analysis here presented, be somehow connected to the music in the film. The fifth chapter will bring an overview of Wojciech Kilar’s music, intending to give to the reader a general profile of Kilar’s own style, which will also serve as guide to understanding the particularities of the music in The Ninth Gate. Finally, in the sixth chapter the score of The Ninth Gate will be finally addressed. A general description of the music will be presented, to which the more in-depth analysis of the four selected themes will follow. As accurate as possible, transcriptions of each theme will be provided whenever they become useful for the discussion. The final chapter will bring a final discussion, summarizing all the information previously presented, thus bringing the reader to the end of this exposition. 5 The Ninth Gate: Movie Overview The Ninth Gate was based on a novel called El Club Dumas, by Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The novel was adapted to script by Pérez-Reverte’s compatriot Enrique Urbizu, from the Basque country, and the screenplay was written by director Roman Polański himself with the help of John Brownjohn.4 It was first screened on August 25th, 1999 in Spain, Belgium and France. In November of the same year it was shown in Denmark and Sweden and finally, in December it reached Finland, Germany, Italy and the United States.5 The film was co-produced by a group of Spanish-French production companies.6 With an estimated budget of $38.000.000, it ended up making a box office of around $58.000.000 worldwide.7 Overall, the movie provoked very contrasting feelings.

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