Astuarco
06-30-2015, 05:03 PM
I'm back. There has been a CD release of the score for Josep Maria Forn's COMPANYS, PROC�S A CATALUNYA (1979), a biopic on Llu�s Companys (1882-1940), the ill-fated president of Catalonia during the Spanish Second Republic (1931-1939). The CD is identical in content to the LP that appeared in its day, except that one track has been split into two and two other tracks have been merged. Here, I have corrected these errors.
The composer, Manuel Valls i Gorina "Nani" (1920-84) was more active in the concert hall than in the cinema. His most famous composition is the anthem for the Barcelona football team.
The CD retains Valls's notes, which I have translated:
It is no secret that film music, conceived as accompaniment for existing visuals, must be composed with a ruler in one hand and a stopwatch in the other. The composer must accurately hew to the duration allocated to each musical passage (block) as well as achieve a correspondence of the mental unity of each fragment with a certain morphological unity.
The score for Companys, CATALONIA ON TRIAL is no exception to this. The film’s director, Josep Maria Forn, had not only calculated the duration of each musical passage to the minute (or, to be more precise, to the second) but even determined their character, making a distinction between those fragments of particular significance in which the music becomes part of the film’s text from those others in which the score simply serves as an atmospheric or decorative backdrop.
The first aspect- that of music that is integral to the text – applies to a series of variations on the popular melody THE PRISON OF LLEIDA (as suggested by Antoni Freixas, co-writer of the film), which accompany the ordeal of successive imprisonments that followed the arrest of President Companys. This theme serves as the film’s main leitmotif, linked to Companys’s fate, and aims to translate the mental climate emanating from the images into musical terms.
Those pieces within the second category (playing a transitory atmospheric function) encompass a wide palette of moods and aesthetics, ranging from the light-hearted nostalgia of a faubourg waltz (French Waltz) to the abstract formulation of a desolate subconscious (Mystery), in addition to a diversity of psychological situations, such as the evocation of past times as conveyed in flashbacks (Evocation), feelings of pessimism (Anguish-Sorrow) and the illustration of Companys’s walk towards the firing squad (Prelude and Death March), not to mention a few measures of admittedly pompous optimism to underline a fleeting moment of victory (Fear-Triumph).
Listeners should not expect these brief musical fragments to produce the same emotional impact as that of a musical piece proper since, divorced from the images they sought to accompany, they lose much of their aesthetic sense. I do, however, believe them to be of interest in that they illustrate a particular compositional style in which inspiration gives way to calculation, resulting in a series of brief, formally concluded pieces whose presence, moreover, must adapt to the requirements of a specific function.
I would like to add that the order in which the variations of THE PRISON OF LLEIDA are presented in the film is unlike that of the present recording, as I have rearranged them into a rhapsodic structure in order to bring cohesion and sense to the scattered thematic fragmentation with which they appear throughout the soundtrack.
These are the notes by Josep Maria Forn, the film's director:
I believe that Manuel Valls has found just the right music required for the images of Companys, Catalonia on Trial. That use of the “prison of Lleida” theme that serves as a counterpoint from President Companys’s Lleida accent… that updated orchestration of a popular theme that is nostalgically incorporated into the remembrance of the tragedy… that nostalgic French waltz… that atonal funeral march that brings forth the coldness of the stones in the Montjuic pits… they all blend with the wind, the footsteps of the soldiers and the roaring sounds of the seaport in a score that enhances, and is enhanced by, the images of the film.
The composer, Manuel Valls i Gorina "Nani" (1920-84) was more active in the concert hall than in the cinema. His most famous composition is the anthem for the Barcelona football team.
The CD retains Valls's notes, which I have translated:
It is no secret that film music, conceived as accompaniment for existing visuals, must be composed with a ruler in one hand and a stopwatch in the other. The composer must accurately hew to the duration allocated to each musical passage (block) as well as achieve a correspondence of the mental unity of each fragment with a certain morphological unity.
The score for Companys, CATALONIA ON TRIAL is no exception to this. The film’s director, Josep Maria Forn, had not only calculated the duration of each musical passage to the minute (or, to be more precise, to the second) but even determined their character, making a distinction between those fragments of particular significance in which the music becomes part of the film’s text from those others in which the score simply serves as an atmospheric or decorative backdrop.
The first aspect- that of music that is integral to the text – applies to a series of variations on the popular melody THE PRISON OF LLEIDA (as suggested by Antoni Freixas, co-writer of the film), which accompany the ordeal of successive imprisonments that followed the arrest of President Companys. This theme serves as the film’s main leitmotif, linked to Companys’s fate, and aims to translate the mental climate emanating from the images into musical terms.
Those pieces within the second category (playing a transitory atmospheric function) encompass a wide palette of moods and aesthetics, ranging from the light-hearted nostalgia of a faubourg waltz (French Waltz) to the abstract formulation of a desolate subconscious (Mystery), in addition to a diversity of psychological situations, such as the evocation of past times as conveyed in flashbacks (Evocation), feelings of pessimism (Anguish-Sorrow) and the illustration of Companys’s walk towards the firing squad (Prelude and Death March), not to mention a few measures of admittedly pompous optimism to underline a fleeting moment of victory (Fear-Triumph).
Listeners should not expect these brief musical fragments to produce the same emotional impact as that of a musical piece proper since, divorced from the images they sought to accompany, they lose much of their aesthetic sense. I do, however, believe them to be of interest in that they illustrate a particular compositional style in which inspiration gives way to calculation, resulting in a series of brief, formally concluded pieces whose presence, moreover, must adapt to the requirements of a specific function.
I would like to add that the order in which the variations of THE PRISON OF LLEIDA are presented in the film is unlike that of the present recording, as I have rearranged them into a rhapsodic structure in order to bring cohesion and sense to the scattered thematic fragmentation with which they appear throughout the soundtrack.
These are the notes by Josep Maria Forn, the film's director:
I believe that Manuel Valls has found just the right music required for the images of Companys, Catalonia on Trial. That use of the “prison of Lleida” theme that serves as a counterpoint from President Companys’s Lleida accent… that updated orchestration of a popular theme that is nostalgically incorporated into the remembrance of the tragedy… that nostalgic French waltz… that atonal funeral march that brings forth the coldness of the stones in the Montjuic pits… they all blend with the wind, the footsteps of the soldiers and the roaring sounds of the seaport in a score that enhances, and is enhanced by, the images of the film.