Introduction to Pierrot at the Cinema Part III

Abstract

Carlo Piccardi has demonstrated the connection between the music for pantomime and both silent and sound film. In the first two parts published in MaMI Vol. 1, no. 2 and MaMI Vol.2, no.2 “Pierrot at the Cinema” cites a number of critics whose comments about the relationship between music, mood and physical gesture in the silent film era are still relevant today to scholars and film composers. In this part he discusses the music for pantomimes that were made into films and what happened to the music in the transformation from one genre to the other. Sometimes the necessity to follow the screen action caused the music to become exceedingly linear, a slave to the image. It could even lose its internal logic. Often, however, talented composers came up with musical solutions that caught the physical gestures and moods on screen, and, while writing good “action” music, they developed an overarching musical logic as well. Piccardi discusses Andre Wormser’s score for both the pantomime and film versions of L’Enfant Prodigue, Pasquale Mario Costa’s score for the pantomime and film versions of L’histoire d’un Pierrot, Fernand le Borne’s film pantomime L’empreinte, Engelbert Humperdinck’s music for Das Mirakel, Arnold Schoenberg’s Die gluckliche Hand, Richard Strauss’ Josephs Legende and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pierrot au cinema. The variety of musical solutions used in the silent film era are traced into the sound film era right up to Nino Rota’s collaborations with Federico Fellini. Initially, in publishing this translation of “Pierrot at the Cinema,” our aim was to call attention to the very sophisticated school of Italian film music studies and the contributions they have been making to film music history. Piccardi was the first candidate for the obvious reason that his research and discussion of sources was simply in a league of its own. Many of the sources dwelt on the way music interacted with pantomime and film action, an element that we as scholar/ practitioners find particularly fascinating. However, it would be well to note that there is no chapter on pantomime in Rick Altman’s equally well-researched Silent Film Sound (NY, Columbia University Press, 2004). In a quick review of pantomime practices in the US to 1922 via Chronicling America, a Library of Congress/National Endowment for the Humanities digital newspaper archive, I found many references to an active dance, acrobatic and mime pantomime tradition (many accompanied by elaborate music) that included both American and European individuals and troupes. Carlo Piccardi has established the connection for Europe; the connection between pantomime and cinema music in the US still remains to be established. Gillian Anderson