Music as Storytelling -

[Zeorus]

One of the French-Canadian bands I've been researching, Le Rêve du Diable, provided music for a short animated film titled "Crac!" in 1981. I've been watching and re-watching it and I'm really pretty impressed at the narrative role the music takes in only 15 minutes.

There are a lot of people here at KF with impeccable musical taste - I'm curious for your opinions. What examples of music as a storytelling device do you particularly like?

 

[autisticdragonkin]

I like the epic of Gilgamesh which was probably originally sung but the rhythm has been lost to history

 

[Steamboat_Bill]

If you will allow me to go a little classical here...

There's a form of music, the tone poem, that's supposed to tell a story using only the music alone. This is probably the most famous tone poem ever written - and I know what you're probably thinking of when you hear this. It's the story it was meant to tell anyway:

 

[Tranhuviya]

>You will never hear the Odyssey sung

 

[Zeorus]

If you will allow me to go a little classical here...

By all means! Good choice, by the way.

I like the epic of Gilgamesh which was probably originally sung but the rhythm has been lost to history

>You will never hear the Odyssey sung

I actually didn't know that either of those were originally sung rather than spoken. The knowledge that I'll never hear them is kind of depressing.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

I actually didn't know that either of those were originally sung rather than spoken. The knowledge that I'll never hear them is kind of depressing.

Most ancient literature that wasn't philosophical books such as the republic was originally sung.

 

[Positron]

Music is very good in delineating scenes and atmospheres, but generally less adept for depicting actions. This said my gold standard of music as storytelling is Belioz's Symphonie Fantastique. In the fourth movement, for example, the artist imagines himself being marched to his guillotine, and we here the cheering crowd, his dying thoughts, and even the moment the blade falls and his head rolls on the ground (drums and rumbling strings at 6'37").

Bartok's ballet music The Miraculous Mandarin is another very effective "story-telling" score, although the story is a bit fanciful. The opening moments sets the scene perfectly: the underbelly of a bustling city.