Sorry if I’m being
late to reveal theme 05, but I’ve been very busy in the last days.
Theme 05 will be “HORROR”.
Do we feel at home with this theme?
Yes, we could say so. Orgasmo Sonore project has already been devoted
to the classic music of horror cult films over its 3 first albums. We
are now well acquainted with the works Fabio Frizzi, Goblin or
Stelvio Cipriani with some of the best horror film soundtracks of the
70s. But let’s try not to fall easily in the comfort zone here.
This is the comfort zone (one of my favorite horror soundtrack) :
What if we take this theme on a pure musical sense? What kind of
music, what type of piece of music could best represent this theme
“Horror”? What direction do I give to this one? There seems to be
so many possibilities, not so easy finally. I sure want to avoid the
use of random odd synthesizer patches, low frequency drone and loudly
reverbed drums, we hear enough of this in the current uninspired
style of horror soundtracks.
I’d rather like to
point out to the work of one particular composer that is maybe one of
the most important influences of horror music, maybe you know his
name, maybe not. You certainly know is music as it’s been used in
important films like Exorcist and Shinning. I’m talking about the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki.
I want to
immediately say that I will not compose a Penderecki-like piece of
music for the theme 05. I don’t have this capacity and I’m far
from his genius. But I like to root each of my themes into something
specific and Penderecki deserves a mention here for his contribution
to some of the most out-of-this-world music and horrifying sounds that an
orchestra of classical instruments can produce, and this without the
use of synthesizers or soundscaping techniques.
One of his
masterpieces, Threnody, was composed in 1960 and dedicated to the victim
of Hiroshima. Horror of war. For this, he use very large section of
strings and create wall of sounds by assigning each player on one
note creating a cluster effect. Like it or not, his music never let anybody indifferent,
it’s pure horror of dissonance. In the example below (video), you can follow the strange
notations to see how organised his chaos was. But just replace the
notation with a slightly horrific image, and you have horror power
10.
Even with some of
the pieces he made, and the fact many of his music was used in
Exorcist and Shinning, we may overlook his real influences in the way
music for horror movie is made today. Even the modern low frequency
drone we hear so much in way of atmospheric climaxes may originated from the effect of his cluster strings technique.
Recently,
Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood used a lot of Penderecki techniques
for his score to There Will be Blood. Not necessarily a horror film,
but it was a perfect score to depict the descent of one individual in
some kind of hell.
But OK, let’s go
back to theme 05, let see what Orgasmo Sonore can do in 2 weeks with
“HORROR” !
