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Performance

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Music in Contemporary French Cinema

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Abstract

This chapter explores female performance of the piano, showing how the music mediates the relationship between the principal protagonists. This can be a heterosexual relationship (Un peu, beaucoup, aveuglément; En équilibre; L’Étudiante et Monsieur Henri), a lesbian relationship (L’Accompagnatrice; La Tourneuse de pages; Je te mangerais), or a complex and violent relationship (La Pianiste; De battre mon cœur s’est arrêté). The films articulate the “coming out” from the domestic space to the public space: the woman is lacking in self-confidence, practises assiduously at home, and then demonstrates what she can do in a public performance. The “coming out” is linked to her sexuality, whether heterosexual or lesbian. Performance is not just musical in these films; it is also sexual.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The link between Bach and numbers goes back at least to the mid-1700s; see Tatlow (2015).

  2. 2.

    See also the early feminist monograph by Drinker published in 1948 (1995).

  3. 3.

    “A standard image of the nineteenth-century female musician is that of a bourgeoise sitting at her piano, in the cocoon of a salon smothered in trinkets and draperies.”

  4. 4.

    “The Abuse of the Piano in Girls’ Education.”

  5. 5.

    The term is used by Ben Winters: “Just as the characters a film star plays infect the star, so might the real-world object (the musical work…) be ‘infected’ by its cinematic presentation” (Winters 2014, 45). Winters admits that his approach, which attempts to account for the disruption felt between the music and its actorly performance by “a small group of viewers with real-world knowledge of instrumental performance” is “niche” (48).

  6. 6.

    “You don’t play Chopin like that.”

  7. 7.

    “I’ve never played like that before.”

  8. 8.

    “An exaggeratedly complacent use of the most ridiculous clichés of classical musical performance (the neurotic pianist who ‘liberates’ herself by untying her hair and unbuttoning her blouse…for pity’s sake!).”

  9. 9.

    “If you think that untying your hair and unbuttoning your blouse says that you’re expressing yourself when playing the piano, you’ve not understood anything at all, my poor darling.”

  10. 10.

    “Music allows you to say things that words can’t express…Maybe, as long as you’ve got something to say.”

  11. 11.

    “Life moves next to you, as if outside of you. It rubs around, stirs other people, without taking you.”

  12. 12.

    “I want to become indispensable to her, irreplaceable.”

  13. 13.

    “I love you more and more, I hate you more and more.”

  14. 14.

    The performances are as follows: Strauss, “Wiegenlied” (“Lullaby,” 0.2); Schubert, Trio “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen” (“The Shepherd on the Rock,” 0.33); Mozart, “Laudate dominum” (0.47); Berlioz, “Villanelle” from Les Nuits d’été (“Summer Nights,” 1.20); Massenet, “Dis-moi que je suis belle” from Act II of the opera Thaïs (“Tell Me I Am Beautiful,” 1.23).

  15. 15.

    “Your eyes tell me that you can be quite hard.”

  16. 16.

    “Dream, dream, my sweet life,/of the heaven that brings flowers./Shimmering there are blossoms that live on/the song that your mother is singing.//Dream, dream, bud of my worries,/of the day the flower bloomed;/of the bright morning of blossoming,/when your little soul opened up to the world.” Translation copyright © Emily Ezust, from The LiederNet Archive, http://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=4398, accessed 10 May 2016.

  17. 17.

    “I am consumed in misery,/Happiness is far from me,/Hope has on earth eluded me,/I am so lonesome here.” Translation copyright © Emily Ezust, from The LiederNet Archive, http://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=36619, accessed 10 May 2016.

  18. 18.

    “Everything happened without you.”

  19. 19.

    “I want to see you again, I love you, now my life is starting again.”

  20. 20.

    “Have you noticed how she looks at you…so intensely.”

  21. 21.

    “There’s something odd about your page-turner.”

  22. 22.

    “We see the concerts from the pianist’s point of view, and only secondarily from the point of view of the page-turner, whether they are a success, or whether they are a disaster.”

  23. 23.

    He makes the point that in these functions he has frequently taken the same role as judge as Ariane (Diaphana 2006, 6).

  24. 24.

    “The Well-Tempered Clavier.”

  25. 25.

    “A page-turner can upset a carefully achieved equilibrium.”

  26. 26.

    “The pieces we chose are the soundtrack to her states of mind.”

  27. 27.

    “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

  28. 28.

    “Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp.”

  29. 29.

    “Pavane for a Dead Infanta.”

  30. 30.

    “Feels good.”

  31. 31.

    “In darker moments.”

  32. 32.

    “It’s your exam piece…it’s hard.”

  33. 33.

    “I can’t do it.”

  34. 34.

    “Avoids the sentimentalism that would not match this tough character with his brusque and nervous gestures.”

  35. 35.

    Carayol’s detailed musicological analysis leads to the more optimistic conclusion, that Tom has put violence behind him; but this does not take the visual component into account as I am doing here (Carayol 2012, 227–249).

  36. 36.

    Wood (2002), Sharratt (2004), Birchall (2005), Wyatt (2005), Wheatley (2006), Thakur (2007), Wigmore (2007), Wheatley (2009), Ma (2010), Naqvi and Koné (2010), Sharratt (2010), Warren (2010), Gural-Migdal and Chareyron (2011), Landwehr (2011), Palmer (2011), Ritzenhoff (2012).

  37. 37.

    “The dogs are barking, their chains are rattling./People are sleeping in their beds,/Dream of much that they do not have,/Delighting in good and evil.//And tomorrow morning everything will have vanished./Still, they have enjoyed their share,/And hope to find once more upon their pillows/Whatever remains.//Let your barking send me on my way, you wakeful dogs,/Do not let me rest in the hour for sleep!/I am through with all dreaming. /Why should I tarry among sleepers?” (Feil 1986, 104–105).

  38. 38.

    “It’s the rhythm of the stubborn petit bourgeois.”

  39. 39.

    “Look after her, play the protector.”

  40. 40.

    “Playing was astonishing.”

  41. 41.

    “I have done no wrong,/That I should shun mankind–/What senseless desire/Drives me into the wilderness?” (my translation).

  42. 42.

    “Why are you trying to destroy what might bring us closer together.”

  43. 43.

    “What you’re doing there is totally sick.”

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  1. University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, United Kingdom

    Phil Powrie

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Powrie, P. (2017). Performance. In: Music in Contemporary French Cinema . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52362-0_4

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