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Monday, May 21, 2012

Grey Sighs of the Fog: The Liaison of Pitch and Celluloid, An Appreciation of Film Music, Graduate Paper by Payman Akhlaghi (2007)

Grey Sighs of the Fog: The Liaison of Pitch and Celluloid
An Appreciation of Film Music (2007)
(Parts I & II, English, 2006-2007, 28 Pages)

Author: Payman Akhlaghi

Original Graduate Paper Toward Degree of PhD in Composition
Independent Research Study
Excerpts of a Projected Book on the Subject
Fall 2006 - Winter 2007, UCLA
Free to Read on Scribd

(*) Full bibliography is missing from this version.

Filmmakers and composers discussed or referenced in part include:
Sergei Eisenstein, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, Claude Lelouch, Fritz Lang, Ennio Morricone, Sergei Prokofiev, Bernard Herrmann, Franz Waxman, Gabriel Yared, et al. A comparison of different cinematic adaptations of Hamlet, as well as a commentary on Eisenstein's experience with Kabuki theater are included.

(*) Excerpts:

[1] Chapter 1‎
Yellow Wails of the Meadow
In 1928, Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) wrote in praise of the Japanese Kabuki for ‎its integration of the different sensory and intellectual elements of theater into a cohesive ‎artistic entity, one that if perceived as it had been instinctually intended, would induce a ‎unified emotional and dramatic effect in the audience. There, he spoke of “a monism of ‎ensemble”, where “sound-movement-space-voi ce … do not accompany (nor even parallel) ‎each other, but function as elements of equal significance.” The Kabuki artist employed ‎the theater as a quasi-synesthetic medium, building “his summation to a grand total ‎provocation of the human brain, without taking any notice which of these several paths he ‎is following.” As he observed, for example, once a character moved to the fore of the ‎stage, ever further away from a surrendered castle, his movement was conveyed and ‎accentuated in four stages of removal: ‎[...]