Exploring Themes of the Song & Inspiration

Themes to Explore and Ispirations

Since the lyrics of the song suggest searching for a lost love, we will look to create a narrative predominantly exploring this theme. We have taken some of our ideas directly from the lyrics (e.g. early on in the song the lyrics say "I was walking down the street", we can have scenes of the protagonist walking along a street and searching for the girl) whilst others were inspired by seeminlgy unrelated sources. One elemental theme that we have decided on is to use recurring scenes of fantasy or dream, revealing both the male protagonist's love for the girl and his paranoia/ angst of losing her. This idea has partly been derived from the fantasy scenes in Sam Mendes' 'American Beauty' (1999), which portray male desire and yearning. Another, perhaps more unlikely, source of inspiration for this idea comes from Hector Berlioz's 'Symphonie Fantastique/An Episode in the Life of an Artist' (1830).

Dream scenes from American Beauty, with Kevin Spacey and Mena Suvari

Also, here is a link to the first dream scene from the movie, with further links to the others:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTZDQWEiOVU

Another source of inspiration for our fantasy scenes was Edvard Munch's painting 'Madonna' (1895), an expressionist painting depicting the Virgin Mary in an uconventional way; her closed eyes and calm expression connoting modesty, whilst the light, red halo and sensual pose also signify her vibrance, love, pain and sexuality.

Edvard Munch's 'Madonna' (1895)

Berlioz and the Symphonie Fantastique

Hector Berlioz was a French composer of the Romantic Period, this is his most well-known piece and is acknowledged to be one of the most important and representative pieces of its time. The symphony itself has five movements, contrary to the traditional four, and is a programme piece with 'explanotary notes' for each movement. The symphony essentially tells the story of a young man falling in love and the way in which his emotions vary as he goes through both being in love and through life itself. One of the essential themes of the piece is that the protagonist fantasises positively about his love as well as feeling paranoia and fear of betrayal, untill his love is lost and the imagery of the music becomes bitter and vulgar.

- The movements:

1. Rêveries/ Passions

Berlioz wrote in his program notes (1845):

The author imagines that a young vibrant musician, afflicted by the sickness of spirit which a famous writer has called the wave of passions (la vague des passions), sees for the first time a woman who unites all the charms of the ideal person his imagination was dreaming of, and falls desperately in love with her. By a strange anomaly, the beloved image never presents itself to the artist’s mind without being associated with a musical idea, in which he recognises a certain quality of passion, but endowed with the nobility and shyness which he credits to the object of his love.

This melodic image and its model keep haunting him ceaselessly like a double idée fixe. This explains the constant recurrence in all the movements of the symphony of the melody which launches the first allegro. The transitions from this state of dreamy melancholy, interrupted by occasional upsurges of aimless joy, to delirious passion, with its outbursts of fury and jealousy, its returns of tenderness, its tears, its religious consolations – all this forms the subject of the first movement

2. Un Bal/ A Ball

Berlioz wrote:

The artist finds himself in the most diverse situations in life, in the tumult of a festive party, in the peaceful contemplation of the beautiful sights of nature, yet everywhere, whether in town or in the countryside, the beloved image keeps haunting him and throws his spirit into confusion.

3. Scène aux champs/ Scene in the Fields

Berlioz wrote:

One evening in the countryside he hears two shepherds in the distance dialoguing with their 'ranz des vaches'; this pastoral duet, the setting, the gentle rustling of the trees in the wind, some causes for hope that he has recently conceived, all conspire to restore to his heart an unaccustomed feeling of calm and to give to his thoughts a happier colouring. He broods on his loneliness, and hopes that soon he will no longer be on his own… But what if she betrayed him!… This mingled hope and fear, these ideas of happiness, disturbed by dark premonitions, form the subject of the adagio. At the end one of the shepherds resumes his ‘ranz des vaches’; the other one no longer answers. Distant sound of thunder… solitude… silence...

4. Marche au supplice/ March to the Scaffold

Berlioz wrote:

Convinced that his love is spurned, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution. The procession advances to the sound of a march that is sometimes sombre and wild, and sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts. At the end of the march, the first four bars of the idée fixe reappear like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.

5. Songe d'une nuit de sabbat/ Dreams of a Witch's Sabbath

Berlioz wrote:

He sees himself at a witches’ sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter; distant shouts which seem to be answered by more shouts. The beloved melody appears once more, but has now lost its noble and shy character; it is now no more than a vulgar dance tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who is coming to the sabbath… Roar of delight at her arrival… She joins the diabolical orgy… The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies irae, the dance of the witches. The dance of the witches combined with the Dies irae.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonie_fantastique

The key feature of the piece is the concept of the 'idée fixe', a recurring melody within the music that always represents the protagonist's emotions regarding the girl, at first the 'passion endowed with the nobility and shyness' and finally it becomes 'vulgar... trival, trivial and grotesque'. This range of emotions is what we want to convey in our music video, as they all form the complex emotion that is love. One possible way that we will lok to explore this is with the use of masks. Actors could wear masks of the face of the girl. At first, the protagonist is shocked and afraid, but they are harmless fragments of his imagination, but then his imagination spirals and the masked 'characters' appear in greater number, mock him, taunt him, perhaps corner him in a narrow street.