Film Music and Beyond [antikvár]

Introduction As a matter of strictly scientific, psychological possibility, music and moving pictures could penetrate deeper than music and words' Hans Keller 1 Having and Eating To edit the vi^ritings of Hans Keller (1919-85) on film music is to be like poor Joan in Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco (1845), caught between two choruses, one of devils, the other of angels. With Joan, of course, there w^as no doubt who would win, even though the angels spelt death. But in the ease of Keller, it is less clear which chorus is which, or whether victory is even necessary. "These are historical texts!" cries the chorus of archivists, "Print the lot! After all, the book is called Writings on Music and the Screen, 1946-591" Resolute as they are, we still hear dissent in their ranks: "Arrange them chronologically!" insists one party. "No!" retorts the other, "Keller was a columnist: arrange them by joumal - Sight and Sound, The Music Review, Musical Opinion." At which point the chorus of thinkers, filmic and musical, join in, albeit more laconically: "But why not heed the main title. Film Music and Beyond!" they inquire. "After aU, it's Keller's - and he meant it. Doesn't Beyond lay out the demands that 'competent film music criticism' makes of composers, directors, performers, sound recordists, projectionists and even listeners? Doesn't it map out for cinema the kind of intra-artistic morality Friedrich Schiller described in his great essay Über der Pathetische of 1793 (and let us not forget Keller's lifelong admiration for this thinker)? Indeed, doesn't it assemble, uniquely, item by item, a poetics of film, empirically derived from the most scrupulous attention to the greatest era of British Film Music, the 1940s and '50s? Away, then, with chronology! Lead us into the Beyond and arrange the texts accordingly! (And by the way, do you reaUy have to reprint everything? Didn't Keller once say that selection was the key to comprehensiveness?)" After which, the two choruses continue their cries, heedless of each other, like debating politicians. Bewüdered by the cacophony, the editor turns to Keller's Jerusalem Diary. For this intellectual autobiography opens in 1977 with a 'world-saving' favourite story: Two litigating Jews appear before the rabbi. "You are right," he says to the first, having heard his case. The other puts his. "You are right," the rabbi says to him, too. "But rabbi," says the rebbetsen (rabbi's wife), "they can't both be right at the same time!" "And you're right, too" the rabbi says to her, leaving no doubt about the psychological wisdom of his illogicality.