La música de Rainer Viertlböck en la versión restaurada del film Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari de Robert Wiene (1919)

Abstract

In the article are summarized the most important This article summarizes the most important results of a study integrated in one more general research on music as a narrative element in the cinema of the Weimar Republic. This contribution has been limited to the musical study of the film which is considered the masterpiece of the German cinematographic expressionism, Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari by Robert Wiene (1919). The text penetrates into the complex study of the musical composition realised, in this case, by Rainer Viertlböck in 1993, for the restored complete version based on the colour restoration of the film. Methodologically, this is a historical-descriptive, analytical-qualitative and hermeneutical approach. Through a scrupolous musical-filmic analysis of the scenes, it shows the structural elements, the stylistic and aesthetic recurrences, the movements and the tendencies derived, as well as the instruments used in the musical composition of the above mentioned film. Viertlböck’s music, with reminiscences of jazz and free jazz focuses on atonality, where the continuous leitmotivs identify instruments with characters, their actions and feelings, while bringing musical unity to the film story as a narrative element. A rich composition in effects (loop, riff, delay or bending) that combines instruments of electronic music with wind-wood and piano. Music in the Weimar Cinema is a field which has been Little researched in contrast to the diversity of existent studies from other disciplines, the contributions on the musical composition of these films are scarce and musical-filmic studies of the nature that is presented in this contribution can’t be easily found.