Original article @ and more about Tan Dun - http://www.tandunonline.com/
What is film music?
To me film music exists under many stories, underscoring what’s happened on the surface. It gives another dimension of character, another dimension of story to the film. This dimension has the same goal, but it’s different than the facts that are trying to be expressed in the film. Film music has a different kind of mask in its character. There’s a mask of a real character, a parallel going on within the film. Then there’s another mask that doesn’t fit with the story that’s happening. It shows the real side of the story, but it also shows the surreal side. It has different functions, climaxing with the picture and driving the rhythm of it. Also there’s a spiritual function that can tell what the director cannot tell in words and actions.
When did you first get involved in scoring?
I’m telling you a lot of secret things now. I have scored six films in America, but you also need to know that when I was in China I scored many films as well. When I composed my first score for a feature film, I was twenty-two and a composition student in my second year at the conservatory. They were making a huge movie about the Forbidden City. Scoring this historic feature film is how I got started.
Your career mainly highlights you as a classical composer. Where does film scoring fit in your life?
Film scoring to me is like coffee. I have to have my coffee every day, but I think the opera and symphony are my main dish at this stage. I was trained in dramatic music, Peking opera for example, so I’m very interested in film music because it’s one of the most exciting dramatic forces, the same as opera. When I’m working with different media, sometimes I’ll bring those together. Now when I’m doing opera, I try to bring multimedia into the operatic theatre. We’ll bring film, video, and slides into the opera. So everything starts out with coffee, but this becomes part of my big meal and dessert. When I’m composing for film, opera, and the symphony, it all blends into one thing as a composer though.
How did you get the job to score Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?
About three or four years ago when Ang Lee finished The Ice Storm he contacted me, we were actually good friends in New York. He asked me, “do you want to work on a film with me?” I said, “What?” He said, “For my next film, I want to do a kung fu film.” I was totally surprised and said “What!” Ang responded, “It’s a different angle, it’s a different way of making a kung fu film. You will love it.” We started to talk about the high and low cultures, east and west, world instruments and the western symphony orchestras, all those types of things we wanted to use in the score. Then we said, “We have to have a bridge here, who’s the bridge?” We both immediately said, “Yo-Yo.” So Yo-Yo became the bridge between high and low instruments. That was our idea that started this thing about four years ago.
When you work with Ang Lee what does he want from you as the composer?
When you work with Ang lee you can’t just get a key idea, you have to have two things ready in order to be perfect. First it’s the passion and secondly it’s the mathematics. He doesn’t count the music by frames, he counts the music by seconds, and so every second has a function of its own movement. When working with Ang, he’s totally open with me, he’s the one artist where passionately it’s one hundred percent, you have to get it, and then you have to mathematically understand the structure. He counts every second just to get the right match with his film and the feeling of it is essential.
What was the key idea in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that opened up the door for your score?
With the opening landscape of the Chinese villages I realized this was a dream and a part of China that doesn’t exist anymore. This raised incredible feelings in me; most of that emotion went into Yo-Yo Ma’s cello solos. Also it was the calligraphy of the martial arts in this picture. Ang lee’s martial arts or the movement in this story is like calligraphy, Chinese brush writing. It’s like a ballet. As soon as I saw this I was immediately inspired.
Was the film temped, if so, how did you deal with this?
This was a very interesting case. I worked on the film with Ang before it was temped with anything. Even after he finished the film he still didn’t temp it. I asked him, “Do you have any specific ideas or know what kind of musical colour you want here?” He said, “Sometimes I have.” I responded, “Do you want to temp the film?” Ang said, “I’m not so sure, because sometimes when you temp the film, it’s misleading, and you can never get out of it.” I totally agreed with him because sometimes you just can’t find a good substitute music to work with, so in this case we temped the film with my music. I gave Ang a lot of my recordings, like A World Symphony for the Millennium and Symphony 1997 to use. His editor listened to a lot of my music and thought it would work as a temp.
But doesn't this make it even more difficult because you have to recreate yourself?
Yes, sometimes (laughter). It’s very interesting because even after we temped the film, I still had to find out what Ang wanted for me. This time I didn't mock up the film with keyboards, it was a very, very special case. First of all because I did the whole score in only ten days. When I started to write, the only thing I did was sing for Ang Lee because we didn’t have time. After recording it was amazing because Ang said, “I’ve never done anything like this before in my whole life.” All the music we recorded was completely used and none of it was re-recorded, all this was done without a mock-up or even a test. It’s amazing, even for Fallen, when we had a lot more time and space, we still had to re-record about three to five minutes of the score, but for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon we had very little time and it was perfect. This turned out to be a great test of the chemistry between Ang and I.
Are you a good singer?
My singing wasn’t really about the singing, but I think so. When you hear the fingering of Yo-Yo’s lines in the score, the fingering, those special sliding things, can you believe this can be done by playing piano? That’s why I have to sing, you can demonstrate sitar and other things with your voice.
What was the key when working with Ang Lee that made you succeed in scoring his vision?
The key to working with Ang is communication. We have to fully understand each other, where we’re going. Are we heading in the same direction? That’s definitely the most important thing.
When composing, what techniques do you use.
First I write the score and then I go back and check it with the piano afterwards.
Can you define the structure of your score?
Besides writing my normal musical lines in the score, I also use a system that talks about or describes the picture. Even if you are the conductor, you don't know beforehand what’s happening. When you see the score, there are specific lines defining certain parts of the film, certain rhythmic things, these are always mocked up in the score. The most important thing to me when writing a film score is the power of structure. If you want to have a powerful structure, you have to treat the whole piece as one. You can’t write your score out piece by piece, you have to write the whole thing out as one thematic relationship.
Ang Lee said that he conceived the film’s martial arts sequences in the manner of a film musical, how did you deal with this?
These martial arts parts have been musically matched within an accuracy of every second, every second has been choreographed. When I got these parts to the picture to score, Ang Lee told me, “You can’t even be off one half of a second when they are moving around, that’s it!
Did the stunning locations filmed in China influence the outcome of your score?
Of course. When they shot the two women fighting on the to of the rood I was there. That took place at three in the morning in a suburb of Beijing. It was extremely cold, minus ten degrees. Thus gave me a very percussive or hard feeling about the scene. At the location Ang had a lot of fires burning because it was so cold. He was around these fires watching his tiny camera monitors to see what was happening. In the meantime there was this huge robot or crane flying people around, it was quite surreal because this was in a wild suburb in the middle of Beijing. Suddenly you’re seeing this huge cinema factory in the middle of nowhere. The night fight scenes as well as the forest fantasy scene were the two parts that inspired me most when writing the score.
Even in Fallen, your scoring signified a hybrid of Chinese music and traditional orchestral song. Is this part of your scoring technique or style?
An artist’s creation more or less always comes from his life experiences, his imagination comes out this way. My imagination always comes out from my experiences in life. I’ve been living in the United States for fifteen years, but I was living in China for more than twenty years. All those experiences crossing together is what comes out of my music. So of course yes, in all my early experiences I was trained in Chinese theatre and music, this has somehow become very interesting because it comes out of my music today.
How vital was Yo-Yo Ma’s performance in your score?
Yo-Yo had a very spiritual impact on both Ang Lee and myself as well. It’s hard to believe that when we were recording Yo-Yo for the score in New York, Ang Lee was in the recording booth with his hands shaking, he just couldn’t help himself from moving. He really got into it. When Yo-Yo was recording with the picture, sometimes he’d be watching the film, but most of the time Yo-Yo closed his eyes. He would watch the film on the first take, but then on the second take e would close his eyes just to play it. Yo-Yo always would put in things naturally into himself.
How many solos did Yo-Yo Ma perform in the score?
He performed solos on about six tracks, it was about thirty minutes of music. It was quite a lot.
Why did you record him separately in New York from the orchestras in China?
Originally Yo-Yo was going to record in Shanghai, China, but right before his departure he had a Visa problem. We decided to drop the idea of recording him in Shanghai and do it in New York. Later we took Yo-Yo’s recordings and then synched it up with the orchestral parts that were recorded in China. This worked perfectly because I was the conductor. Being the composer and the conductor gave me total control and the ability to do this tempo-wise. However, I did use another conductor, Chen Xie Yang, because we used three ensembles in the score. We recorded with the Shanghai National Folk Instruments Orchestra, which was forty pieces, we had the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra which was eighty pieces, and finally there was the Shanghai Percussion Ensemble which was twenty pieces, plus there were a number of soloists. I was the main conductor, but because the music had to be scored in ten days a lot of the time when I had to go back to the booth to talk with Ang Lee I wanted the scoring process to continue, so my other conductor was at the podium ready. The Chinese orchestral material and the percussion I had to conduct myself, but for certain kinds of things like just brass or winds, normally my other conductor can conduct this.
Did Yo-Yo’s performance highlight the romantic and traditional elements of your score?
Absolutely! Yo-Yo was the seed of that haunting feeling in the romantic theme, also he’s the bridge.
What did you learn by working on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?
The most important thing I learned is to try and see things from a different angle. Four years ago when the news came out that Ang Lee was going to make a martial arts film people thought, “what is he doing?” Actually no one knew what kind of angle Lee was going to take in this film. After he made the film, people saw it and said, “Oh my God, that’s what he was thinking of.” Martial arts in film has been developed in Hong Kong for the last twenty years, but has gone nowhere. Not until Ang Lee made Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was there a new conclusion. He planned his film quite well from a worldly cultural point of view and showed martial arts to the world in a completely different way.
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