DOI: 10.24308/iass-2014-067

University of Helsinki, Finland

Julia.Shpinitskaya@helsinki.fi

Abstract

The article explores meaning and function of musical quotations in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, the context of their appearance in a particular film space and their relationships with the visual images and onscreen situations. Quotation forms a vastly significant part of the new cinematic sound language that Tarkovsky was creating in his work, relating its function to the mechanisms of the poetic logic. Holding a multiple and variable meanings, the quotation is an open semantic space that produces a series of senses. Current observations departure from the original ideas concerning approach to the historical musical material from Tarkovsky’s own notes in Sculpturing in Time and the interviews of his musical collaborators (composer Eduard Artemiev and sound-mixer Owe Svensson), which are extended by findings made in case studies.

1. The law of quotation

Starting from his third film, Solaris, Andrei Tarkovsky practically expelled regular film music from cinema and did not make a film featuring a regular music track. Instead, he aimed at exploring new relationship of sound and image and foundation of new expressive senses as if the new genre has not created its own visual and audio language as he thought of cinema. Ideally he was thinking about a film with no music at all. The sounding was purposed to reach a realistic soundscape: absence of film music was compensated for by electronic music, a new sound in 1970s, often disguised as organic sounds, purified of their origins on the director’s demand, as well as by natural sounds and urban noises. And even his ideal model of a composer was a “sound-mixer with composer’s hearing”, an expert in rustles, rumbles and echoes, as mentioned by Eduard Artemiev (Petrov 1996), the composer whom he worked with on majority of his films. On this path of achieving natural sounding Tarkovsky escaped into another music realm – quotations, which appear almost in every film[i], even in abundance. Andrei Tarkovsky’s only Musical Offering is exclusively musical quotations, and they become a rule of a film.

Emergence of a real musical piece, a quotation, in the context of natural and electronic sounds and noises within a film, is justified by its semantic value. It takes music to the symbolical level, calling to the particularity of the moment. Some quotations serve as refrains, repeated in a film, and besides sometimes they are transferred from film to film. However, not only art-music of classical heritage can be taken as quotations in Tarkovsky’s films, but a pre-existent musical material in a broad sense serves as quotation as well whether it is a Russian folk song, forest herding cаlls from Sweden, or a traditional Japanese flute performance. The function of this musical material in the films is identical with the function of classical quotations: it marks film episodes as key points. After Solaris Tarkovsky applies the newly discovered strategy of quotation again and again, on a regular basis, and in the meantime he approaches entrance of the quotations in divergent modes, attempting to mask them in a film and blend with other sound content. Above all, the appearance of the quotations in general in the film space is greatly intriguing, not to say that the case of emergence of one or another specific quotation in particular is arresting, and therefore, a film moment shared and highlighted by a musical quotation is inviting to understand the strategy of quoting, the meaning and function of quotation, or the aspects of quotation that become activated for interaction with the film body.

2. Levitation scene

I would like to start with a quotation confluence in The Sacrifice: two musical quotations that are solved as a polyphonic sound space[ii]. There is a series of images that depart from a real event, but followed by surreal episodes until it ends in awakening from sleep. Both audio and visual channels support ambiguity of the event and leave unresolved whether it is a dream, vision or reality. This is a central scene of the film, the sacrifice per se. The course of events suggests that Alexander comes to Maria for a sacrifice, a love ritual. Before, Otto reveals to him that Maria is a witch and that Alexander must go and persuade her to love him: it is likely the only way to rescue the world from the upcoming war.

There are two musical elements involved into this series of episodes as a pre-existent material: Japanese bamboo flute hotchiku played by Zen master Watazumido Shuso and traditional Swedish forest calls to call home livestock, a recording by Swedish Radio in the countryside. They start during Alexander’s visit to Maria and interweave over a series of images. The sounds enter during the levitation, which represents love and make a counterpoint. Correspondence of the quotations is well determined. The flute defines personality of Alexander, while the calls are a token of Maria. Sound works as a representation of a personage. The calls and flute appear in the film many times but before the levitation they do not come together. The hotchiku sound is bound to the image of Alexander, fascinated by Japan: planting a Japanese tree, listening to Japanese music, wearing a kimono, and supposing that in his previous life he and his little son were Japanese. The calls are, most likely, the only representation of mysteriousness of Maria. These are not only typical sounds of Swedish countryside but they obtain real sense of signals and their true destination is to call. Owe Svensson, the Sound Mixer, who worked in The Sacrifice interprets this sound in its relation to Maria:

The important thing was that there was this woman and she comes into the film quite early and then she enters the dream and that represents a connection with human emotions, which of course a contrast to the threat of war. Both Otto – the actor Allan Edwall – and Alexander are in contact with her. Otto seems to receive her call when he suddenly collapses on the floor while walking through the house telling strange tales (Sundström).

The scene preceding Alexander’s visit to Maria drops a clue about the calls, too. Otto tells about Maria’s magic power insisting that Alexander must go to her. In this moment a single call is heard and both of them receive the signal:

Otto: Have you heard?

Alexander: What?

Otto: What is it?

Alexander: I don’t know. I seemed that there was music.

Then Alexander escapes to Maria’s dwelling[iii] – the sequence starts as an actual event. The interaction of the flute and calls endures through next scenes and after that Alexander wakes up at home. Thus, the matter is resolved in favour of a dream but the question remains open: it is unclear whether everything was a dream or dream was only a part of the sequence, and when the reality deviated into a dream.

3. List of quotations

Before venturing into a discussion on the meaning and function of quotation, let us overview the long list of works explored in Tarkovsky’s films.

•        Ivan’s Childhood:

§     A Russian folk song[iv] anticipating the quotation strategy.

•        There is an only quotation in Solaris but it returns four times.

§     Bach’s Choral prelude in f-minor, Ich ruf’ zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ (I call to you, Lord Jesus Christ) BWV Anh. 73-2.58, a variant of the famous prelude BWV 639 from the Little Organ Book of W. F. Bach.

•        Five quotations in The Mirror:

§      J. S. Bach, Das alte Jahre vergangen ist (The Old Year...), from Orgelbüchlein BWV 614. Refrain, sounds twice.

§      G. B. Pergolesi, Quando corpus (When the Body…) from Stabat Mater.

§      H. Purcell, song They Tell Us That Your Mighty Powers from the opera Indian Queen, Act 4. Refrain, sounds twice.

§      J. S. Bach, Recitative of Evangelist Und siehe da, der Vorhang im Tempel (And Behold, the Veil of the Temple...) from Johannespassion BWV 245.

§      J. S. Bach, Choir Herr, unser Herrscher, dessen Ruhm (Lord, Our Redeemer, Thou Whose Name [in All the World is Glorious…]) from Johannespassion BWV 245.

•        Four quotations in Stalker, with a distinct technique of setting them in film:

§     J. S. Bach, Aria of alto Erbarme dich, mein Gott (Have Mercy, My God, [for My Tears' Sake…]) from Matthäuspassion BWV 244, Part two. Appears in a short whistling.

§     R. Wagner, theme of sacred love from the Overture to Tannhäuser.

§     M. Ravel, Boléro.

§     L. van Beethoven, Ode to Joy from The 9th Symphony. The three latter quotations come out of train noise. The theme of the Ode also sounds in Nostalghia, twice.

•        Three quotations in Nostalghia, two of them sound twice:

§     G. Verdi, Libera me from Requiem Aeternam, Requiem. Refrain, sounds twice.

§     L. van Beethoven, Finale of The 9th Symphony: Refrain, it sounds twice. (And in Stalker once).

§     A Russian folk song sang by the Writer (There Somebody Walked down the Hill).

•        Four quotations in The Sacrifice:

§     J. S. Bach, Aria of alto Erbarme dich, mein Gott (Have Mercy, My God, [for My Tears' Sake…]) from Matthäuspassion BWV 244, Part two. Refrain, it sounds twice. And it also sounds in Stalker as a short motive.

§     Traditional calls, chants from Swedish forests to call home livestock. It sounds many times.

§     Japanese bamboo flute hotchiku performed by Watazumido Shuso. It sounds many times.

§     J. S. Bach, Prelude from Praeludium et Fuga in d BWV 539. The beginning of the Prelude is performed on organ by the main character.

There one would reveal a large tribute to Bach and Baroque music and a portion of Romanticism in later Stalker and Nostalghia, including application of quotations from Verdi and Beethoven as refrains. He retains a short Bach’s motive together with the romantic quotations in Stalker, but the mode of quoting Bach differs from quoting other music in this film. Stalker is quite unique in Tarkovsky’s filmic sound technique, being the closest to his declaration of not having music. The mode of quoting has passed a strong modification: quotations are well-concealed, masked from being evident: the Bach’s motive appears in passing, in a whistling, while other quotations reach one’s ears from behind the train noise. Later he returns to a straighter quoting and a more open appearance of historical music.

4. The meaning of quotation

Attempting to approach the meaning and function of musical quotation one would inevitably find oneself wandering about in a labyrinth of sense. The meaning of quotations is unresolved, and while there is much to think that quotations function as metaphors, Tarkovsky himself rejected this meaning. Therefore, to investigate the function of quotation is to explore his reasons to quote. And the starting point on this path could be the meaning of the key notion in Tarkovsky’s film aesthetics, the poetic logic.

4.1. Poetic logic

In Sculpturing in Time the film director introduces his strategy of quotation and relations between quotations and filmed images as poetic logic and poetic links (Tarkovsky 2002: 111–114, 123–125). Poetry for him is a specific attitude to reality, a way of life, and the poetic links bring emotionality to what is seen on screen. The poetic logic is an art of associations that shift from one object to another. It is the building principle of memories and dreams, however it also represents patterns of thinking and thus the ordinary reception of reality. The link between quotation and another object – a filmed image, quotation, or visualisation – opens by association.

Tarkovsky thought that the poetic logic is an approach to a more realistic cinema: he relates it to the attributes of human memory and distinguishes that some phenomena, like dreams and recollections, could not be represented otherwise than by means of the poetry. He applies the associative thinking to represent man’s personality through memories and dreams: once he refers to Proust’s idea of reviving “a huge building of recollections” (Tarkovsky 2002: 158). Another time he says: “I wanted to demonstrate possibilities of cinema observing life, sort of, without gross apparent interference in its course. Because this is the way I see the authentic poetic essence of the cinematography” (Tarkovsky 2002: 315–316)^[v].

4.2. Building emotional ties

While emotionality is mentioned as one of the effects resulted form the poetic logic, it may be one of the clues to read the essence of quotation. Musical quotation is tied to the filmed image by emotion: thus, once, Tarkovsky determines that the western tradition speaks from the emotional and personal viewpoint, full of subjectivity and a strong self:

Compare eastern and western music. West shouts ‘It is I! Look at me! Listen how I suffer, how I love! How unhappy I am, how fidgety! I! My! To me! Me!’ East keeps quiet about itself! A total dissolution in God, Nature, Time. To find yourself in everything! To hide everything in you! The Taoist music. China of 600 years before Christ (Tarkovsky 2002: 348).

The quotation is an emotion that a viewer may share when at the same time observing an image. Also that emotion may be connected to the inner state of a character since Tarkovsky clearly recognises that he wants to show the inner world of a man:

I was not interested in surface movement, intrigue, content of events – from film to film I needed them less and less. I have always been interested in the inner world of a man – and it was far natural for me to make a trip inside his psychology, feeding it philosophy, those literary and cultural traditions, on which his spiritual fundamentals are rested (Tarkovsky 2002: 324).

4.3. Establishing identity: historical roots and belongness

One more clue is pointed out when discovering that by his search of the cinema language Tarkovsky wanted to establish historical roots of cinema and to demonstrate continuity of arts and connection of times, as mentioned by Artemiev and implied by Tarkovsky himself: “Andrei told me that he needs Baroque music and paintings of old masters in order to create an illusion of roots of this new (only a hundred years!) genre, the cinema. This is because, when a man hears Bach or sees painting of Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci, the ‘connection of times’ springs up in him subconsciously” (Petrov 1996)^[vi].

In The Mirror I sought for communicating the feeling that Bach, and Pergolesi, and letter of Pushkin, and soldiers forcing a crossing over Sivash, and home quite small-scale events – all these in some sense are equal for human experience. It may be equally important for a man’s spiritual experience what happened with him yesterday and what happened with the humankind a century ago… (Tarkovsky 2002: 314).

Besides the general timeless aspect of the cinema as a stage in the art continuum, given by the use of historical quotations, an art object quoted in a film refers to one’s personal roots and creates the aspect of belonging of a man, or a character, speaking also of his personal background: “In all motion pictures that I made, the topic of roots, of connections with ancestral home, with childhood, with motherland, with Earth, has always been very important for me. It has always been very important for me to establish one’s belongingness to a tradition, culture, range of people or ideas” (Tarkovsky 2002: 314).

Quotation enters as a part of a man’s universe. It speaks of a man, his community and personal world: “I am interested in the man, in whom the entire Universe is enclosed, — and in order to express the idea, the sense of man’s life, it is little necessary to build some storyline on to this idea” (Tarkovsky 2002: 324).

4.4. Metaphor versus poetic logic

There was an exception once, when Tarkovsky recognised the sense of quotation as a metaphor, speaking of a particular case in Nostalghia:

Perhaps, I can agree that the final shot of Nostalghia is partially metaphorical, when I place a Russian house into the walls of an Italian cathedral. This constructed image contains a too much touch of literary effects. This is a modelled inner state of the hero, his division into two that does not let him to live as before. Or, if you will, on the contrary, his new integrity, organically including into itself, in one and indivisible sense of home and blood, hills of Tuscany and a Russian village, which the reality commands to divide on returning to Russia. […] This is a result, as it seems to me, quite complex and ambiguous, figuratively expressing what was going on with the hero but still symbolising nothing more, extraneous, needing a solution (Tarkovsky 2002: 333–334).

On the same pages he excuses his inconsistency by saying that an artist devises a principle but also breaks it.

Nevertheless, despite Tarkovsky’s theoretical constructions against the metaphorical sense of quotations, it is impossible to completely negate their metaphorical sense. The abundance of associations, references and symbolic representations supports work of metaphorisation but the sense of metaphor does not depart far from the sense of the poetic logic. It is not that the mechanism of metaphor does not belong in there. The dilemma is the borders of the notion and precision of a definition. The poetic logic covers the meaning of metaphorisation but exceeds it, richer in signification. Tarkovsky did not want his images or sounds to work in the mode of metaphors, as objects with an exact ultimate sense.

4.5. The sense of haiku (polysemanticism and observation)

With the poetic logic approach, in which the meaning of quotation multiplies, becoming ambiguous and polysemantic, Tarkovsky interprets the meaning of quotations akin to the principles of haiku, Zen or Japanese music that were points of his interests and aesthetic reference: representation of everything or nothing, either endless series of senses or nothing more than pure images in observation. The poetic logic becomes a method of observing an image. “What does mean, for instance, Leonardo or Bach in the functional sense? Just nothing but what they mean per se, – that much they are independent. They see the world as if for the first time, as if they were not burdened with any experience. Their independent gaze becomes similar to the gaze of newcomers” (Tarkovsky 2002: 223).

Tarkovsky’s idea suggests that observing is a basic principle of the cinematographic image, and that the image is an art of posing your own sense of an object as observing the object (Tarkovsky 2002: 214—215). In the episode of weightlessness in Solaris, when, during Bach’s Prelude one looses sense of temporal frames, the historical quotation represented out of actions and dialogues brings the viewer to a state of contemplation. It activates the function of the observer that makes the viewer stand still and provokes a sort of meditation on a subject. In it there is no eventual sense of an image that could be deciphered like a charade:

Haiku grows its images in the way that they do not mean anything but themselves, at the same time expressing so much that it is impossible to catch the ultimate meaning. I.e.: the less possible fits the image of it [haiku] into a conceptual speculative formula, the more accurately the image corresponds to its destination. A man reading haiku must vanish into it like into nature, immerse in it, and be lost in its depth like in cosmos, where there is neither top nor bottom (Tarkovsky 2002: 213).

4.6. The interplay of contexts

In the labyrinth of sense signified by use of quotation it is relevant to determine that although Tarkovsky defends independency of quotations from experience, however, it is not only pure music that co-operates with the image emotionally or by means of the poetic logic and polysemantic expression, but it is the original context of music that provides signification for the screen situation – and this is a strategy by which a quotation enters the film body. It is relevant to list a number of examples to demonstrate how this correspondence is created between the musical context and the visual context.

•         Wagner’s theme that introduces spiritual ideal love in Tannhäuser[vii], in Stalker is a token of feelings that connect Stalker and his wife[viii]. In the opera this theme also becomes the theme of a pilgrim’s choir (I act II part). The topic of pilgrimage finely refers to Stalker himself: a devotee, with a vocation to guide the unhappiest people to the Zone, he has to live ascetic life in poverty, to suffer a lot of oppression[ix], and to remain pure and unsullied.

•         The quotation from Mathew Passion in Stalker is distinguished by its ironic use. Have Mercy My God is a cynical excuse whistled by the Writer, a disbeliever, walking through the dangerous Zone, a sacred place, with disrespect.

•         However, the same theme in The Sacrifice – Have Mercy My God – turns to be a prayer of forgiveness that corresponds to the entire topic of sacrifice and to the circumstances of Alexander. The quotation frames the film and though it does not attend the image of Alexander, it correlates to his asking forgiveness for sins of the world and to the vow to sacrifice everything he possesses for rescuing the world from the catastrophe of the last war.

•         Ravel’s Bolero is employed in the long last scene in the Zone from Stalker, where three personages, Stalker, Writer and Professor, are sitting in the floor through the day before returning to the world, after the bomb to destroy the Zone has been disarmed. The link of this quotation is the topic of technical progress: as it is known, on composing Bolero, Ravel imagined a factory. He left enthusiastic impressions out of gigantic urban creatures associated with metal, fire, crash and rumble.

•         Beethoven’s Ode to Joy accompanies Stalker’s disabled daughter when she reveals a gift of telekinesis: the triumph of spirit.

•         Two cases of the same theme in Nostalghia may be considered as one quotation, interrupted but continued in other part of the film. They are both related to Domenico, obsessed by ideas of unity and rescue of mankind. The first sounds in a dialogue with Andrei, whom Domenico is conveying to rescue the mankind. The second marks the episode of Domenico’s self-immolation preceded by his propagation on the Capitol in Rome. Both times Beethoven is played by Domenico himself for demonstration of his ideas. This musical representation restores cultural and historical reference of Domenico’s statements: “One drop and one more drop make one big drop, not two”, “At first I was an egoist. I wanted to rescue my family. But one needs to rescue all. All world”, “People have to come back to unity and not to remain separate”.

•         The sense of Verdi’s Requiem during Andrei’s flashback in the beginning of the film, when he sees his family and house in Russia, is obtained in the final shots in return of the quotation at his passing away: thus, his opening memories are disclosed as a farewell.

•         One of the quotations in The Mirror is used as a musical portrait. Purcell’s song from Indian Queen implies the power (They Tell Us that Your Mighty Power) that a red-haired girl had for Alexei, back in his childhood. In both of the girl’s episodic appearances Purcell’s theme follows her. It reminds of the strategy of female images in his visual quotations serving a mirror of a personage.

5. Open semantic space

Musical quotation is one of Tarkovsky’s sound forms used among natural sounds, noises and electronic sounding that shape the soundscape of his films; sometimes mixed or blended into those other sound forms. Whether it is historical art music of a pre-existent musical material, quotation forms a significant part of the new cinematic sound language that Tarkovsky was creating in his work and is the only part that brings conventional music into his films starting from Solaris.

Tracing connections between musical quotations and onscreen situations and images in the films exposes a framework of relations between them that work on several semantic levels and aim at emergence of diverse effects. The very use of quotation seems an exploration of its creative senses for the film director. Quotation represents a multifunctional strategy, holding a variable and mobile semantic space, while the meaning of quotation multiplies, producing series of senses and is not meant to be defined by precise boundaries or ultimate meaning.

The functions of quotation shift between creating identity, linking to an emotion, bringing in a metaphoric reference, entering the state of observation (as a extended moment when time freezes up), and suggesting an interplay of contexts (as the original context of the quotation and the onscreen context). The aesthetics of the poetic logic is not only responsible for emergence of quotations on screen but it is what governs the series of senses and functions produced by quotation, supporting semantic field of quotation as an active open space. Connections between the filmed reality and quotation or between quotation and quotation open by association in the likeness of memories evoked by smell of madeleine for Proust. However, despite of the contextual links between quotation and film reality that can be found, the meaning of quotation is not fixed and oversteps the meaning of metaphor, forming a wider sense and allowing polysemanticism.

The strategy of quotation becomes a looking glass. Poetic logic and the moments it marks by quotation are gateways to an alternative reality related to dreams, memories, visions and meditative states, just to remind of the analysed above episode of levitation from The Sacrifice departing from reality and heading for the realm of surreal, while leaving the viewer with unanswered ambiguity. And yet, according to Tarkovsky, this endless series of senses, in which the viewer must vanish, is the most natural device the most likely embodying reality of life.

References

PETROV, Arkady. 1996. Edward Artemiev and Andrei Tarkovsky (“I do not need music in films”). Salon Audio Video 5.

    http://www.electroshock.ru/edward/interview/petrov3/index.html (accessed 7 January 2015).

SUNDSTRÖM, Joakim. Sound in Tarkovski’s Sacrifice: Interview with Owe Svensson, Swedish Sound

    Mixer. Transcript of TV-interview for The School of Sound Seminar.

     http://filmsound.org/owesvensson/ (accessed 7 January 2015).

TARKOVSKY, Andrei. 2002. Zapechatlennoe vremia. [Sculpturing in Time]. In Andrei Tarkovsky. Arkhivy, Dokumenty, Vospominaniia. [Archives, Documents, Memoirs], 95–348. Moscow: Eksmo-Press.