Paulus, Irena. "Animation Experienced through Music: Tomislav Simovi# and the Zagreb School of Animation." Global Animation Theory: International Perspectives at Animafest Zagreb. Ed. Franziska Bruckner, Nikica Gili#, Holger Lang, Daniel Šulji# and Hrvoje Turkovi#. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 177–196. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 1 Oct. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501337161.ch-011>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 1 October 2021, 12:28 UTC. Copyright © Franziska Bruckner, Nikica Gili#, Holger Lang, Daniel Šulji#, Hrvoje Turkovi#, and Contributors and Cover image Zlatka Salopek 2019. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 11 Animation Experienced through Music Tomislav Simovi´ c and the Zagreb School of Animation Irena Paulus To match visual modernism: music with its own imaginary space Since cartoons can, by defi nition, do things that we can’t (or shouldn’t) do, the music exaggerates and celebrates that difference. Cartoon music does more than simply add life to cartoons – it makes cartoons bigger than life. GOLDMARK and TAYLOR 2002 : xiv This may be said for American animated shorts made in the fi rst half of the twentieth century (the 1930s and 1940s), but is even more valid for movies made within the so- called Zagreb school of animation. 1 The fi rst animators 1 The term Zagreb school of animated fi lm was associated with the group of enthusiasts who, during the 1950s, gathered in Zagreb, Croatia, in the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. Part of the ‘team’ were Borivoj Dovnikovi c´ , Aleksandar Marks, Zlatko Bourek, Boris Kolar, Zlatko Grgi c´ , Vlado Kristl and Du š an Vukoti c´ , who, alongside Vatroslav Mimica, became a leading fi gure of the fi rst phase of the school’s development. They were primarily interested in animation as a way of artistic expression and they found their home in the Studio for Animated Film (est. 1956), within the newly formed Zagreb Film company (est. in 1953). During the 1960s, 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s others joined them, for instance Nedeljko Dragi c´ , 177 178 GLOBAL ANIMATION THEORY in this group developed their skills through trial and error. Their reduced animation and tendency towards avant- garde graphics, refl ecting contemporary tendencies in the visual arts of the 1960s and 1970s, led them to develop their stories around the ‘common man’, but also around his ‘horrors of existence’, the ‘desperation of man caught in the web of modern civilization’ and especially as a critique of the ‘trivialities of popular (American) culture’ ( Bendazzi 2016 : 70). These animated fi lms were considered the summit of world animation of the twentieth century; they FIGURE 11.1 The Substitute’s Oscar for Best Short Subject (Cartoon). Photographer unknown. Courtesy of Croatian State Archive/Zagreb Film. Ante Zaninovi c´ , Vladimir Jutri š a, Pavao Š talter, Zdenko Ga š parovi c´ and Još ko Maru š i c´ . They worked as freelancers (none of them was employed in Zagreb Film) and each of them preserved his own approach ( Majcen Marini c´ 2014 : 14). ANIMATION EXPERIENCED THROUGH MUSIC 179 brought numerous awards to their authors including an Oscar for The Substitute ( Surogat/Der Ersatz ), made in 1961 by Du š an Vukoti c´ . 2 Also, stylistic, aesthetic and narrative solutions of the Zagreb school of animation were adopted by the international animation scene during the 1960s and 1970s. Majcen Marini c´ concludes that the Zagreb school may be considered the best articulated ‘modernist movement’ in animated fi lm of the era (2014: 9–10). With regards to music, this meant the usage of modern means of expression: short motives instead of long themes, unusual chords instead of consonant ones, merging with other sounds (i.e. Foleys), accentuated rhythms, using unusual ‘live’ and synthetic instruments separately or altogether, using unusual techniques of playing, sometimes in conjunction with electronica and tape music. Beyond the merging of sounds, animated fi lms from the Zagreb school allowed for the merging of different musical styles and different musical genres, enabling the usage of modern classical music, together with folk music, jazz, different types of dance music, rock, pop, etc. It is interesting that this kind of musical writing is attributed only to one man: Tomislav Simovi c´ , often listed as Tomica Simovi c´ (1931–2014). Just like some other ‘sound people’ who occasionally worked in Zagreb Film (such as the creator of artifi cial sounds, i.e. ‘Foley genius’, Miljenko D ö rr, and music supervisor and music editor Tea Brun š mid), Simovi c´ was considered a part of the Zagreb school team (Majcen Marini c´ , ibid: 11–12). Even so, some people think of Simovi c´ as the author and equal member of the Zagreb school of animation, not only because of the enormous quantity of scores he produced (175 of them just for animated fi lms, altogether 300 fi lm scores) but because of his careful re- thinking of animated material. 3 Simovi c´ ’s music education was elementary (he went to music school where he learned to play double-bass and piano), 4 but in terms of composition, especially the composition for animated fi lms, he was self- taught. For example, he passionately followed news about jazz, buying magazines and listening to American radio shows, notably ‘World of Jazz’, which was apparently recorded and sent to him by friends from the United 2 The Substitute was the fi rst non- US animated short to win this award. 3 Other composers also made their contribution to animation in Zagreb. Before the school started, Duga fi lm, the very fi rst studio for animation in socialist Yugoslavia, hired Eduard Gloz ( The Big Meeting/Veliki miting , 1951; Merry Adventure/Veseli dož ivljaj , 1951), Vladimir Kraus-Rajteri c´ ( How Ki c´ o was Born/Kako se rodio Ki c´ o , 1951; The Enchanted Castle in Dudinci / Za cˇ arani dvorac u Dudincima , 1952), Ivo Tijardovi c´ ( Revue in a Courtyard/Revija na dvori š tu , 1952) and Milutin Vandekar ( Gool! , 1952). When Zagreb Film came to prominence, the composers were also An d¯ elko Klobu cˇ ar, Vladimir Kraus-Rajteri c´ and Ž ivan Cvitkovi c´ , all of whom previously worked for Dubrava fi lm, but also Aleksandar Bubanovi c´ , Miljenko Prohaska, Igor Savin and Ozren Depolo. 4 The Vatroslav Lisinski music school in Zagreb. 180 GLOBAL ANIMATION THEORY FIGURE 11.2 Tomislav Simovi c´ . Photographer unknown. Courtesy of Ju cˇ er Danas Sutra. States ( Paulus 2016 ). As a composer, he showed a considerable amount of imagination and creativity: his musical approach to fi lms was never the same. By accommodating the style of the visuals and the story (if there was one), Simovi c´ developed his own philosophy: The image of animated fi lm needs its own imaginary space that, as opposed to the music which is surrounded by silence, has its determined structure within which fl uctuate variations, variability of colour, free perspectives, concentration that swiftly jumps from object to object and creates an impression of fantasy. Looking for similarities in visual and auditory is not the rule, and that is where, for me, writing the music for animated fi lm starts. PAULUS 2011 : 41 Musical modernism of Diary Simovi c´ ’s description of Zagreb Film’s animated visuals, which he sees as inseparable from the music, may be a description of any animated fi lm from the Zagreb school, but is particularly close to the perception of Nedeljko ANIMATION EXPERIENCED THROUGH MUSIC 181 Dragi c´ ’s Diary ( Dnevnik , 1974). As the ‘suppression of believability’ and the ‘creation of a continuously moving and mocking universe’ ( Bendazzi 2016 : 265), and as extremely subjective, but also extremely vivid description of the author’s impressions of his visit to the United States, Dragi c´ ’s highly praised Diary brings music solutions that refl ect the stylization and fragmentation of the visuals. It can be said that the style of music is highly modern, but it escapes any categorization. The score combines several contemporary music styles – such are serialism, pointillism and bruitism – which were, at the time, accepted by many composers, scholars and intellectuals. 5 But contemporary classical music with combined modernistic styles is not the only layer of the score. Rather, it is ‘one of the many’ since it merges with jazz, popular music, old medieval music, musical folklore, etc. Moreover, the perception of some parts of the score changes if listened to with the movie than if listened to without it – one example is a short transition with a red car and symbols of traffi c where a sound, like the buzz of bees, could be interpreted as a pop melody when heard without images. The simultaneity of musical styles and genres goes even further: at times, the sound of musical instruments becomes unrecognizable and many times we are not sure if we are listening to a sound effect, speech, or music. For example, in a middle section of Diary , a cat appears in a highly stylized, almost antique apartment – here, a kind of plucked, maybe string, maybe electrical, instrument is heard. This instrument sounds like a harpsichord, but could be anything else. Earlier in the fi lm, a head turns into an egg, and there is a sound which could be identifi ed as a wooden percussive instrument, but it has the semblance of a voice. A roughly sketched bird comes out of the egg, and it sounds like a jumping ball. At the fi rst sight of a sketched party of business people, music babbles like human beings and acts like speech, even a quarrel, although we are aware these sounds come from blown instruments, perhaps trumpets.