Notes on the Discography of Ingmar Bergman's Record Collection

Abstract

There is plenty of documentation that strengthens the fact that music, and music played on a record player, were a lifelong source of creativity for the legendary Swedish theatre director and filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007). Thanks to a scholarship received from The Bergman Estate on Fa°rö, Sweden in 2017, I was given the opportunity to make a thorough examination of Bergman's record collection. This resulted in a discography of a private as well as limited collection that was published in Fontes Artis Musicae in December 2018. In this follow-up article, which is an expanded version of the paper "Ingmar Bergman's Record Collection – A Discography", presented at the 2019 annual IAML Congress in Kraków, I have dug deeper into the findings. With the purpose of understanding Ingmar Bergman as a person in light of his phonograms, as well as tracing patterns between the discography and the choice of music in Bergman's oeuvre, four major themes are presented. One theme is linked to dance scenes in Bergman's productions; another relates to creativity, inspiration and mediating of emotions and atmospheres in staging. A third theme explains how Bergman used the phonogram as an artifact to spread his productions to a broader audience outside of the theatre and cinema framework. A fourth theme processes the musical influence on comfort and music as a base from which discussions that regard feelings and emotions stem. This theme is associated with music therapy.