“Inextricably Intertwined”: Storytelling Through Timbral and Textural Progressions in The Mission One of the clearest examples of Morricone’s timbral storytelling comes from his Academy Award-nominated score for The Mission (1986), directed by Roland Joffé. The film is based on historical events that occurred in the borderlands of modern-day Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil during the eighteenth century. It depicts the clash between Father Gabriel, a Jesuit priest, who has come to create a Christian mission for the indigenous Guaraní, Rodrigo Mendoza, a slave-trader, who has come to enslave and export the Guaraní, and the Guaraní themselves. The film explores the ways in which the characters’ worlds become, as is said in the film, “inextricably intertwined.”19 Morricone’s score likewise intertwines disparate sonic elements. As he recounted, the film presented him with three musical constraints: 1) the onscreen performances of oboe, Western bowed-string instruments, and choir; 2) European (and more specifically Jesuit) musical traditions; and 3) “ethnic” music, or the music of the Guaraní.20 Once he had devised the separate soundworlds for each of these, he proceeded to construct the score using what he called a “modular concept” approach, mixing the timbral zones together as narrative situations dictated.21 Morricone said that this mixture was done “mostly in pairs: oboe and music of the Indians, music of the Indians and liturgical chorus,” and so on.22 As my analyses will show, his mixture often went deeper than a simple juxtaposition of sounds. Before this, however, I will introduce features of the separate soundworlds.
19
Roland Joffé et al., The Mission (Leipzig: Kinowelt Home Entertainment, 2010), 05:06.
20
Morricone, De Rosa, and Corbella, Ennio Morricone : In His Own Words, 136.
21
Morricone, Anderson, and Miceli, Composing for the Cinema : The Theory and Praxis of Music in Film, 176.
22
Ibid.
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