Why Must Music Be ‘Authentic’?

In a Dec. 21 Counterpunch (“Early Music Gets Short Shrift in ‘Elizabeth’ ”), professor Ross W. Duffin bemoaned the lack of period music in period films. As the composer of the original score for “Elizabeth,” I’d like to present another side of the argument--not that there really is an argument, because in art there is no right and wrong, there are only opinions.

It’s easy to understand professor

Duffin’s negative reaction to some of the scoring choices made in “Elizabeth” and Kenneth Branagh’s “Henry V” when you consider that he is first and foremost a musicologist, and clearly an early music enthusiast. It is probably safe to say that professor Duffin’s purist point of view would be representative of a very small audience minority.

Feedback during the previews for “Elizabeth” indicated clearly that the vast majority of audience members were very moved by the closing scene featuring Mozart’s Requiem--the selection of which, incidentally, was not my idea. The fact that I have actually received the occasional misguided congratulations for composing Mozart’s Requiem (!) also suggests that I successfully fulfilled my function, at least with regard to ensuring seamless dovetailing between the “source” music and my original music score. It also testifies that the spiritual essence of the music marrying with the picture far outweighs academic considerations such as stylistic anachronism.

The point that professor Duffin seems to have missed in relation to the film “Elizabeth” is that it was never intended to be merely another biographical account of the life and times of Queen Elizabeth I. It is Shekhar Kapur’s stylized and very individual vision of the woman behind the myth.

Shekhar made it very clear to me right from our first meeting that he didn’t want to limit the palette of the score to the sound of Elizabethan music. Other than moments when the script required music of the day, Shekhar’s wish was for the music to evoke the subtleties of the subtext and to resonate with the timelessness of the emotional narrative. Sometimes he wanted the music to contradict the pictures in order to create a heightened sense of intrigue; other times he wanted the score to underline the drama. This style of filmmaking is bold, unpredictable and devilish--just what the audience is looking for.

Basically, when a film is a film and not a documentary, the filmmaker has the artistic license to put any ingredients on that screen that are deemed to be most effective in enhancing the story. As professor Duffin himself wrote: “Films depend a great deal on the effect of the music. . . . Take away the music track and a lot of the movies today might seem . . . a whole lot less . . . moving.”

Getting back to the “early music” argument, music of the Renaissance and earlier can be some of the most ethereally sublime music you’ll ever hear (when performed and/or recorded well). However, this music (by nature of its limited harmonic language and the comparatively small sounds of the authentic instruments) often fails to provide us with the qualities that are intrinsic to the dynamic range, the musical language and the instrumentation of the late 18th, 19th and early to middle 20th century symphonic music, which has become the generally accepted tonal language of film music. A director will always go for what “works” rather than what’s academically “correct.”

David Hirschfelder is a film composer whose credits include “Elizabeth,” “Shine,” “Sliding Doors” and “Strictly Ballroom.”