Name: Composition Colloquium: Giorgio Biancorosso
Start: 2024-12-06T15:00:00
Location: University of California, Berkeley

UC Berkeley Department of Music

Elevate your lunch break with The Loft Hour, a year-long series in that invites arts faculty to riff on their work over lunch, in an informal conversation moderated by an ARC-affiliated faculty member. Join us in welcoming our esteemed colleagues in Architecture, Art Practice, English, Ethnic Studies, Film & Media, History of Art, Music, and Theater, Dance & Performance Studies. The February program features Chris Batterman Cháirez (Music) and Cathy C Lu (Art Practice).

The Loft Hour: Chris Batterman Cháirez + Cathy Lu

University of California, Berkeley

While somewhat neglected in the English-language literature on film music, Pasolini’s daring use of pre-existing music in his early films—most notably Bach’s sacred music and Vivaldi—marked a watershed in the history of the subject. It also places him alongside such figures as Godard and Kubrick (among others) in an ideal pantheon of mavericks who broke away with the traditional division of labor that underpinned the creation of film soundtracks. Pasolini’s decision to hire Morricone for the music for The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966) could have signaled a change in direction. In fact, following that first collaboration, the relationship between Pasolini and Morricone soon turned into something of an embarrassment for the composer. By the early 1970s, Morricone’s role was to merely arrange already-existing repertoires “scavenged” on various recordings by the omnivorous and ever up-to-date poet/director. Pasolini’s gleeful embrace of reproduced music calls to mind André Malraux’s “museum without walls” and his celebration of the library as both a cabinet of curiosities and workshop. Focusing on Medea (1969) and the so-called “Trilogy of Life,” this talk examines Morricone’s work as mediated and indeed guided by Pasolini the consumer, curator and ultimately producer—for Arabian Nights (1974)—of recordings.