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Films shot by Otar Iosseliani between 1984 and 2006

By Nicolas Zourabichvili

I have composed the music for all the films which Otar Iosseliani has directed since he has worked in France, except for the last one (Chantrapas). A compendium compiling the music of the first five films was published in Russia (Art-Business-Center, Moscow 1999).

One can find there each piece in full, even though they have been used partially (or even abandoned) in the final editing of the films. These pieces can be defined as occasional, the character of each adhering very closely to the film director's very precise demands for one or other passage during the film. Therefore, this music often belongs to the "in-the style" genre. It is precisely this constraint which, instead of weighing upon me as much as I would have expected, has seduced me in this task, contrary to my usual work in which I am the sole master. It allowed me, in particular, to learn how to deal with forms I would never have dealt with normally, such as the tango, the waltz, the java, the jig, the fox-trot, and so on, as well as to give myself up to the complete enjoyment of the delights of tonal music and its modulations that I had long ago forsaken.

Here are a few precisions about some of these pieces:

In The Favourites of the Moon (Les Favoris de la lune), the two Link shots for the String quartet were used as a substitute for music used in a scene that had already been filmed and which I had never seen or heard. Not being satisfied with it and not having had the opportunity to film a new one, Otar asked me to write music that would be recorded simultaneously with the picture projected on the screen, strictly corresponding to the musical accents and the bow-strokes that would be seen on the screen. A tricky job for me as well as for the musicians… Otar, himself a fine musician, wandered among them making sure their moves corresponded perfectly to the music being heard in order to render the hoax undetectable.

In Et la lumière fut, all the music (except the piano pieces) had to be recorded with a synthetiser. I therefore had to familiarise myself with this instrument which, I must confess, did not satisfy me in the least. To tell the truth, the synthetiser at my disposal was rather primitive and I was expecting it to imitate real instruments to create the various  fanfares that Otar wanted (later I had several opportunities to use real  brass bands, as with the Berlin Brass Ensemble in La Chasse aux papillons). However this is not the original function of a synthetiser which can be a marvellous tool to create new sounds. But here it was not appropriate.

The Valse aux oiseaux (The Waltz of the Birds) is so named because the birds in my garden can be heard in the recording, even though the windows were closed.  Similarly, the Valse des Merisiers en fleurs (The Waltz of the Blossoming wild cherry-trees) is named after the view I enjoyed through my window while writing it. The Marche communiste (The Communist march) illustrates a political meeting in a village in Casamance. As Otar did not want any trouble with Mosfilm, coproductor of Et la lumière fut, he asked me to write a text which would sound Russian but which in no way would be Russian. So I wrote absolutely meaningless lyrics.

The song Dans la Ravine escarpée (In the steep ravine) in La Chasse aux papillons also presented a challenge but of a different kind. During a funeral meal, an old lady sings a kind of romance, supposedly the late lady's favourite melody. During the shooting, Otar asked the lady to sing something and she hummed a ritornello which she remembered. As Otar wished to show, earlier in the course of the film, the deceased (whilst still alive) listening her favourite record, it had to be invented. I therefore had to complete the melody, the lyrics and write the piano accompaniment. Alas, when one can eventually hear a short extract of this "record" in the film, it is not in the situation that was planned and I could have made do with a little less work. One day when I spoke of it to Otar, he said to me: " And so, don't you believe that I, too, spend my time doing and undoing things?" What could I reply to that, especially as I had enjoyed this work?

The Valse atroce (Atrocious waltz), in Brigands, chapitre VII, is meant to be a soviet opera scene. I composed it in the "socialist realism" style of the thirties, with, on stage, Lenin and his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya. The tenor who sings the part of Lenin is arrested by the GPU while rehearsing. I wrote this piece, both music and lyrics, as a waltz with very darkly humorous harmonies - which, to tell the truth, are much more so in the orchestration than in my transcription for piano and which is included in the Russian publication.

In Adieu, plancher des vaches, Saturday's fox is so named simply because I wrote this fox-trot on a Saturday (we have already seen a number of times that the titles of the pieces are often connected with the circumstances of the time of their composition, such as the Valse des Grippes (The Flu Waltz) written while my wife was ill). The Rondo des enfants (The Children's Rondo) was meant to illustrate the piano exercices that the children were practicing at home. Unfortunately, the music is heard while they have all gathered outside for breakfast…

In Lundi matin, the Barcarolle was intended to accompany a lady in a gondola on her way to the railway station in Venice. We have not kept this music in the final editing but it will probably be used at some other time in a future film, as has already happened several times. The situation repeated itself for the Gigue which was intended for both the beginning and the final credits (this explains the tarentella in its central part). Again, the same thing happened for the Cargo allemand (The German cargo boat) but it finally found its place in Jardins en automne, in a context that has nothing to do with the original one (the embarking of the hero on a German cargo boat) and in which the challenge was the lyrics: Otar insisted that the words « spazieren » (having a walk) and « Schweinebraten » (roast pork) be included; to write a text with these two constraints while remaining coherent, was not that easy. In Jardins en automne, again, there is a banquet during a hunting party organised by a minister for his African colleague on an official visit. For this occasion, he hires a string quartet to play a divertimento of the day while wearing eighteenth century clothes. Therefore Otar asked me to compose a quartet for the occasion in Joseph Haydn's style. In fact, the different movements of this pastiche quartet (Vivo, Menuet, Nocturne and Saraband) are used on various occasions throughout the film.  It is to be mentioned too that several pieces written for this film were not used; they will probably find their place in future films. That's the way things happen in the world of cinema.