The Red Violin: An Interview with John Corigliano

By Doug Adams

This interview with John Corigliano was originally conducted shortly before the 1999 Oscars, whereThe Red Violin won Best Original Score.

Doug Adams: Let's get into the meat of the score a little bit. You've always done such a wonderful job of marrying musical concepts to extra-musical ideas: the Eastern inspirations in your Oboe Concerto, the wave effects at the end of your first symphony. How did you come to attach the chaconne to The Red Violin?

John Corigliano: I felt that the film needed to be tied together with something that could work, harmonically, for an entire film. In other words, if I could take a set of chordal relationships that, continued, would give a kind of immovable quality to it -- and also a fatalistic quality. In the screenplay, at the end of every one of the sequences there's a death. The fortuneteller [in the first story] is telling the fortune of the violin when the woman is thinking it's the child. So the idea of this fate unchangeably moving through the film needed a very solid basis, musically.

Focusing the entire score on seven chords was the idea I had. I could use a chaconne, which is basically a repeated series of chords -- and although it's an early form, it's been used ever since the Baroque into the present. It also is a form which has a sense of cumulative power because of not only the repetition of the harmonies, but the variety of the melodic material above it. So that was the way I would deal with it. The first thing I wrote was the seven chords. Then all the thematic material is composed above those chords, the most important one being Anna's theme, the one she hums that becomes the violin's theme. That was written on top of those seven chords. The death theme, which [is heard] when she dies, and when the little boy dies, when Pope dies, and for the various deaths, was written as a part of the structure. I felt like the whole thing had a very organic quality, which I think was important because of the diversity of the story. Even the travel to China -- the boat ride -- is basically the chaconne with expanded chords. Again, it's just the chaconne moving into another realm of harmony still using those seven chords as the basis.

Then all the caprices and the things that were written to be played live were written with a variation of either the seven chords or Anna's theme. That meant that even though the audience was not necessarily consciously aware they felt, through the whole thing, that there was unity.

DA: It's very cyclical, isn't it?

JC: Yeah, and I think for a film like this, that was absolutely essential to do. Because if you didn't do that, especially in using different languages let alone different locations, one would get a very scattered feeling about it. So, [Francois] agreed to that and we did it.

DA: Let's talk about your orchestrations a little bit. You're known for often using very colorful orchestrations, and even here with a much stricter palette, you keep things so creative. How did you deal with that?

JC: The strings are remarkable. If you look at an orchestra, 50 percent of an orchestra is strings. The first orchestra was strings; all these other instruments got added. If you take a violin, you can make it sound 50 different ways. Not just pizzicato and played by the bow, but ponticello, and harmonics, and tremolos. If you take an oboe and play it, there's about one way you can make it sound: like an oboe. All these other instruments are very colorful, but they all have fewer things they can do with color whereas the strings have an enormous amount of variety. If you take a string orchestra and you divide it up, you can have some of the orchestra playing tremolo ponticello and other people playing harmonics and then pizzicato. It'll sound very orchestrational. They're just remarkable instruments that way.

The other thing is that, because you have to have more strings to balance, say, a trumpet in the orchestra, the size of the standard symphony orchestra is about 50 strings. We even used more. And if you subdivide those you don't have to do it the standard way -- first violin, second violin, violas, cellos and basses. You say, I have 60 strings, now what do I want to do with them? Then in those divisis, you can get clusters and all sorts of incredibly unusual sounds. Slow glissandos and clusters fading into one note -- all of this can be done because they all have the same basic sound and [because] there are so many of them. So orchestrationally, strings are a very fertile place. I might say that Psycho was written for string orchestra too. Listen to that score and see how remarkable it is and the many things the man did with strings.

DA: Absolutely, yes. So you almost treat it like one choir rather than a series of four or five choirs.

JC: Well, usually all the groups of the orchestra are brought into the standard vocal pattern of soprano, alto, tenor and bass -- four voices so they can make chords, because standard chords are usually four voice chords. So we have the first violins, the second violins, the violas, and the cellos and the basses usually double each other to provide a bass in an octave. That's standard harmony. But, in Altered States, and in this film, too, when you don't want to necessarily divide things up into standard chords, instead of having sixteen people playing the same note in the first violins, they could play 16 different notes. Or you could have 32 different notes if you have them play double stops. And that's just in the first violins. This gives you a tremendous palette, and since the first violins and second violins are identical we're talking about some 30 odd instruments that could be playing different notes or ways. So you can see the possibilities, whereas in an orchestra if you have two oboes, you're limited to that. You don't have 30.

DA: How did you adapt your ideas on orchestration when you got to the period musics and the ethnic gypsy musics?

JC: Well, [for] the gypsy music I did have to use a few different instruments. That's because Francois wanted to film it with other instruments. There was clarinet, there was accordion, and we used cimbalom. You know, those gypsy instruments that could be used. But as far as the rest of it, when he was playing source music that was absolutely in the style, usually it was unaccompanied. There's only one case where it was accompanied and that is the little boy's playing with the string group. That I wrote mainly because when he comes in playing, he's playing the Red Violin theme in a Vivaldi-like variation against the rest of the group. I wanted to have that in there and therefore wrote that music.
 
 

To be concluded in the next Lost Issue...

Doug Adams can be reached via e-mail at DAdams1127@aol.com

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