An Interview with Pierre Jansen

An Interview with Pierre Jansen by Jeannot Boever and François Olivieri
Interview conducted in Paris on February 21, 1981
Pierre Jansen Photo by Jeannot Boever

Most composers seem to start out in film music by chance. Is this also the case for you?
It's always a bit of a coincidence to become a film composer, because it's difficult to make your first film when you've never worked in cinema before. Generally speaking, when someone asks you, it's because they know the characteristics of your music, and think it's suitable for this or that film; if you don't have any references, it's difficult. I started by learning music. First I studied piano, then composition; I learned harmony, counterpoint, orchestration and fugue. At the Brussels Conservatory, where I did part of my studies, my teacher was André Souris, who had himself done film music and who got me very interested in audiovisuals. I wanted to do film music, but not exclusively, of course.

Usually, in this profession, you start by making short films. That wasn't my case; I went straight into feature films. Friends had told me to go and see Chabrol, who was preparing À DOUBLE TOUR. He received me in his office, and we started talking about music. Chabrol is passionate about music; in fact, he has sometimes said that, if he hadn't been a filmmaker, he would have wanted to be a conductor. We quickly found that we had a lot in common: after half an hour, we started singing Stravinsky themes, and not the most famous ones! He told me he couldn't entrust me with the music for his film, because he already had a composer, but that we'd certainly meet again. I left a little taken aback, telling myself that he would never call on me again.

A few months later, I was informed that Chabrol, who was directing LES BONNES FEMMES, wanted to meet me. He was shooting on location on Boulevard Beaumarchais in Paris. Seeing me coming from afar, he motioned for me to fetch a cut-out (decoupage) . Chabrol told me that in LES BONNES FEMMES there would be two kinds of music: realistic, variety music, to be written by Paul Misraki, and dramatic music, which he was going to ask me for, because he had understood that this was my mode of expression. In fact, I'm a composer of essentially dramatic music; I don't do comedy music, or else it would be gritty comedies. Misraki, of course, was a little disappointed when he told Chabrol that, in short, it was up to him to do the accordion. That was true, although "doing the accordion" isn't quite so simple. I was entrusted with the credits and a number of important sequences. It's music that makes me shudder now, so bad do I find it, too Stravinsky-influenced and badly played to boot; but that's to be expected, and it doesn't stop LES BONNES FEMMES from being an excellent film. In any case, Chabrol was happy and entrusted me with all the music for his next film, LES GODELUREAUX. For this score, I had a large orchestration (it was a time when you could use large ensembles, it's not like now); if I remember correctly, there were at least forty musicians on the recording set. After that, I continued to work regularly with Chabrol, but occasionally I worked with other directors, like Schoendoerffer.

Isn't the composer's work made more difficult by the fact that the director, as seems to be the case with Chabrol, has a precise idea of the music, and perhaps tries to impose it on the musician? Doesn't this create tension?
No, because the fact that a director can talk to a musician facilitates dialogue. This dialogue is very difficult for several reasons. Firstly, because we're talking about two creators. The director is the creator in his own right: he's the one who signs the film. It's his work, and to make it, he calls on actors, dialogue writers and technicians who are entirely at the film's service. At some point, he turns to another creator, a composer, whose language is an autonomous one, because music is a creation in its own right. As creators are always a little megalomaniacal, there is sometimes a struggle between the director and the musician.

A director who knows music well can, at first sight, find the right language to talk to the musician and tell him he'd like to have this or that kind of music. It goes without saying that film music composers have to know how to do a lot of things, as they are obliged to bend their language to cinematographic intentions. When composers write music for themselves, there's nothing wrong with expressing themselves in their own style; but in the cinema, there's a choice to be made among the writing styles available to us, and this choice is generally made with the director. If the director is able to explain what he wants, it facilitates dialogue.

Any friction that occurs is due to the director's lack of confidence in the musician. The musician necessarily trusts the director, because by the time he intervenes, the picture editing is practically complete, and he knows whether or not he'll be able to do the music. But the director is obliged to give the musician some freedom, because film music is not a manufactured object, it's a creation, and part of the composer's personality inevitably comes into play in his writing.

We know that you are practically Chabrol's exclusive musical collaborator. Beyond a simple relationship between a composer and a director familiar with music, mustn't there also be certain affinities of musical taste and conception of the role of film music?
You have to understand Chabrol's cinematic climate. I've made I don't know how many films with Chabrol, and it's certain that I've given them a tone that's repeated from film to film. Even if the music is as different as that of LE BOUCHER, scored for keyboard instruments, and that of LA DÉCADE PRODIGIEUSE, written for a baroque organ and string orchestra, there is a common climate of - the term is a bit silly - suspense and a somewhat gritty side. Obviously, my collaboration with Chabrol is entirely different from that with Serge Moati, for example. With Moati, I made LE PAIN NOIR, a huge fresco in 7 or 8 hour-and-a-half episodes. Then I made NUIT D'OR with him, a film that unfortunately didn't do very well, and 5 or 6 television films. I do things for Moati that I absolutely couldn't do for Chabrol, because he wouldn't stand for them, even though he holds Moati in high esteem.

Working with an occasional director is obviously very stressful, because you have to talk a lot. When I worked with Claude Goretta on LA DENTELLIÈRE, there was a great exchange of opinions between him and me, and we worked a lot together. That's interesting too, but you have to have the time to do it. The composer then has to sound out the director's intentions with regard to the music, because I may not always have a precise idea of what he wants. Changing director from time to time can breathe new life into your inspiration. I remember when Chabrol was making a lot of films, I said to myself at a certain point that it was no longer possible, that I wouldn't make the next film. I was going in circles. And then the films got spaced out, and when I met Claude again for LE CHEVAL D'ORGUEIL, I was delighted. I have to say that he has always made good use of music in his films, which isn't always the case with other directors. There's a great respect for the musical score with Chabrol, and also with Moati, for that matter.

Let's move on to your conception of film music. Do you believe that music should be reduced to a few easily discernible features, or should it be more elaborate and subtle?
I'm in favor of subtlety, perhaps wrongly so, I don't know. But there's no general rule, and it all depends a little on the film you want to make. Far be it from me to say, for example, that the music in THE THIRD MAN isn't good film music! It belongs to a very characteristic branch of film music, namely the use of a very simple theme, which recurs often and ends up bewitching. If the theme isn't simple, it won't captivate. That's not to say that all film music has to be like that. But it's obvious that when you make a melody that's easy, with arrangements that don't make a fuss, you can exploit that music outside the film and do some interesting business with it. If, on the occasion of an extremely simple and effective piece of music, this phenomenon of exploitation outside the cinema occurs, good for you, but we shouldn't try to do it. You should only think of the cinema when you're making film music. But I also believe that music must above all remain true to itself, it must remain music. The musical discourse itself must be completely coherent, which means that it can be listened to even if the images are removed. But the construction, the sequence of musical ideas must necessarily follow from the sequence of images, i.e. the musical form must be found from the form of the image, taking into account the difference between visual and auditory perception. Musical time and visual time are two totally different times, and this is why, if you really want to use film music as it should be used, the interventions of music must be thought out before shooting, and the director must know when he shoots a shot that this shot is going to receive music, because he is obliged to bend his rhythm to that of the music. Otherwise, you can't find room for it, because the image follows the rhythm of vision, not the rhythm of hearing. Of course, I'm not talking about spoken language, or dialogue, whose rhythm is exactly the same as that of the image: my lip movements correspond to the words I'm saying. But musical discourse doesn't correspond to anything visual: where does the music you hear in a forest scene, for example, come from? The director can create a forest atmosphere in 5 seconds, but that's not enough time to create a musical atmosphere, because you have directors who don't realize this, and who tell you, for example, that at the beginning the music must be lyrical, because you need an atmosphere of suspense, and then violent music, all in 5 seconds!

It seems to me that the film musician finds himself in a certain dilemma. A very elaborate, very subtle score runs the risk of confusing the viewer, who already has to assimilate several parallel discourses. On the other hand, if the music makes thunderous entrances and uses easily discernible 'leitmotifs', there's a risk of musical pragmatism. You could say that film music is only good when it's effective, and therefore immediately understoo
I don't think there's a dilemma, because the subtlety I'm referring to shouldn't prevent effectiveness; it should be a means of being more effective. Music can be effective because it's subtle. On the other hand, music obviously doesn't have to be loud; it's a question of knowing where to place it, and whether it has a role to play, otherwise you don't need it. I've seen films where there was no music at all, and nothing was missing from the soundtrack.

In your opinion, what should a film composer's attitude be towards music in general?
I don't think he should just write film music, I think he should absolutely have a creative activity outside cinema, whether it's important or not, whether he gets played a lot or not. Writing for the cinema can be frustrating for a composer, because music, which is an artistic expression in its own right, ends up in a global context, i.e. with dialogue and sound effects. If a composer wants to write something subtle, and he can't do it in a film, and if he doesn't write it nevertheless, he'll never rest until he's placed it in the film. I experienced this myself at a time when I didn't like to write music outside the cinema. I've often reviewed film scores that I've done and found that I didn't like them, because I'd wanted to put in things that I shouldn't have, but that I needed to write to satisfy a simple creative need. You'll end up doing things that are ten times too subtle, and then lose their effectiveness.

I believe you claim film music as a musical genre in its own right, which could have the same artistic value as a symphony or a string quartet?
Yes, why not? I'd even go so far as to say that film music could be a vast synthesis of our entire musical culture, because when you write it, you can use any language. I've used lots of different languages, depending on the requirements of the film, from very classical to avant-garde music. The music for LE BOUCHER is one of the most daring I've done, in that it's very much based on serial music, is totally thematic and uses quarter-tone instruments. I have to say that, at the time, there weren't many mass-market film scores with music like this. Gilbert Amy wrote one for L'ALLIANCE; for L'ARGENT DES AUTRES, Patrice Mestral also wrote a score very much oriented towards new writing techniques, but that's all. In 1970, the music for LE BOUCHER was very daring, and some people wondered what that bell music at the beginning was all about. And the musical idea wasn't mine, it was Chabrol's! He had told me that he wanted vibrating music that would prolong the sound of ringing bells; that he didn't want themes, but vibrations. It was a real "filmmaker-musician" idea, and I take my hat off to him! In LA DÉCADE PRODIGIEUSE, I did a totally different kind of music, very late 19th century French. It's in this spirit that I say that film music can be a synthesis of our entire musical culture.

I think I've guessed that you have a certain predilection for atonal or serial music?
I'd like to talk a little about serial music, since you've given me the opportunity. I must tell you that for several years, from 1952 onwards, I regularly attended the "Ferienkurse für Neue Musik" in Darmstadt, and particularly Messiaen's classes. There we met Stockhausen and Boulez, and heard Webern's quartets, which we didn't know very well at the time. I was drawn into the post-serial movement, in which, paradoxically, I never felt very comfortable, having been trained in admiration of Stravinsky and with a certain mistrust of Schoenberg and the twelve-tone school. I suppressed this mistrust within myself, because I believed in serial music for more than ten years of my life; I played scores of serial music for which I was never satisfied. I was lucky enough to be able to write film music, where I wrote in all the styles that pleased me. Then, faced with the impossibility of writing something I liked outside film, I stopped writing; until one day, when I realized that serial music was leading to a bunch of dead ends, that even the most purist composers of serialism were capitulating one after the other. We didn't give a damn about what used to be an absolute rule, and ended up writing just about anything. One day, I started writing music outside cinema, which was no longer serial at all, but tonal again. If you listen to the scores I'm doing now, they're almost completely free of serialism; for some critics, they'd be downright retrograde and anachronistic.

Nevertheless, at certain times and for certain films, I have used serial writing. Apart from LE BOUCHER, there's another film, a TV film, by Chabrol, whose music also contains many serial elements. In Claude Lallemand's LE CRI DU COEUR, there are two kinds of music, one of which is totally post-Boulezian. But that's all there is to it. For film music, it was remarkable, because serialism had no place there, and all of a sudden, I was introducing it.

In the films you've just mentioned, the serial music seems to suggest that there's something much more disturbing in the characters than the images let on.
Yes, that's true. I think my use of serial music in films has created a certain uneasiness, but one that could also have been created by other means. In fact, I think that music, as I see it, always leads to a certain unease in the film, because it's something foreign to the film. Music must always be a little disturbing, otherwise it serves no purpose. That's why I say that the beginning of the music, the way it enters, is an extremely important thing. It's not just a question of the quality of the music, it's a question of staging, which is discussed between director and musician. The director needs to know where a piece of music begins, just as he needs to know where a tracking shot begins.

There are several types of music: with or without dialogue, with or without sound effects. Music with dialogue is one of the most difficult to practice well, as is music with sound effects. The simplest thing, of course, is music on its own; that's the case with the credits, but within the film, the noises sometimes disappear too. If you take, for example, the end of LE BOUCHER, where the injured Jean Yanne is taken to hospital in the Citroën 2CV, you'll notice that at first the music comes in softly, but then fades out completely with the noise of the 2CV. The sequence lasts more than two minutes; if the noise of the 2CV had been on all that time, it would have been dull. But the noise gradually disappears, and the music stands alone, without any sound effects.

Godard would probably have done the opposite, he would have put in the sound of the 2CV for ten minutes.
Yes, but he wouldn't have shot the film in the same way! Godard uses music in an extraordinary way, for example in this marvelous scene from WEEKEND, where Antoine Duhamel's music, which is admirable, covers the dialogue in which a woman recounts a sort of appalling orgy, of which only a few words can be distinguished. I haven't worked with Godard, but it must be fascinating, because he has ideas like that, and he knows how to use music.

In your film scores, you seem to avoid using easily memorable themes, unlike most composers.

That's true, but it doesn't mean I'm not a melodic composer. I think that melody is extremely important in music, and that we can't do without it, as we thought we could at one time; because the melodic line, i.e. the horizontal relationship between two sounds, no longer exists in serial music. I believe in finding melodies and developing them. So I'm an advocate of musical melodicism.

When we listen to your music, we realize that you often use small ensembles whose composition varies from film to film. This may be due to budgetary considerations, but even in L'ÉTAT SAUVAGE, where you had a large orchestra, the music is never loud and uses orchestral resources sparingly.
L'ÉTAT SAUVAGE is a bit of a borderline for me. Initially, I was asked to write a "Bernard Herrmann-style" score, which is why I used a large orchestra. Francis Girod's use of the music is debatable, as he changed a lot of what was originally intended. Since I work with extremely precise durations and take into account the input of dialogue and noise, it's difficult for my music to move around. I was very surprised by the way Francis Girod used the music, and wondered how it could satisfy him. For example, he didn't use the planned credits, but replaced them with music that comes at the end and is anything but credits music. But he liked the tuba solo, with its heavy, muggy sounds, which he said perfectly captured the mood of the film. I had no way of stopping him, because once the director has his music, he can obviously use it as he likes, but sometimes that doesn't produce very convincing results.

On the record, however, the music gives the impression of a perfectly coherent work. Generally speaking, what do you think of the use of film music outside the cinema?
This use can be very interesting, because if the music is written with a musical logic, it must be possible to listen to it outside the film. But it's necessary to plan segues. There are several ways of doing this. Either, as was the case for L'ÉTAT SAUVAGE, you have all the takes made during the recording, and you look for the colors to be used. It may be that the film's music suddenly follows on from music 4, which in turn follows on from music 6, at which point we have to create possible connections. There's another solution I used for a film by a Swiss director called Simon Edelstein, which unfortunately never came out. In the score, I'd included sequences that would allow you to go from one piece of music to another, and we'd do a special take at the recording stage, where we'd sequence the first four pieces of music, for example, with added bars. It's a very elegant solution, which unfortunately we don't always have the opportunity to do.

For the reasons we mentioned earlier, musical time is much slower than other speech. Look at the labels on film music discs: you'll see 1:15 of this, 0:30 of that; these are not musical times! If you want to have a coherent musical discourse, you have to include long tracks. So either you cheat, and put music on the disc that isn't in the film, as I did for L'ÉTAT SAUVAGE, or you add bridges, or you make sure that there are no false connections between two pieces of music that you think you can link together in the edit. Another problem is that the commercial demands that drive producers to make records are often incompatible with the quality of film music.

What do you think of jazz music on screen? Have you ever used it in a score?
I wanted to do it once for Chabrol, for a film called LES LIENS DE SANG. I suggested a formation that was more or less that of a big-band, but he said to me: "You're not going to give me jazz, I want string orchestra and waltzes. He wanted waltzes so much that the Anglo-Saxon buyers didn't want the music, because they felt it didn't fit in with the film; so there were two versions of the film: one circulating in French-speaking countries and one done, I think, by a variety musician. But I had the opportunity to play jazz in another film, by Stéphane Kurc, called L'ŒIL DU MAITRE, which takes place in television circles. When I saw the film for the first time, I heard these sounds, and I said to myself that I could write for a big-band formation, i.e. a formation comprising 2 alto saxophones, 2 tenor saxophones, baritone sax, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, a double bass, a piano, a drum kit, instruments to which a clarinet, bass clarinet and contrabass clarinet section is added. So, in this film, I created a soundtrack very similar to the jazz arrangements of a certain period. I recruited both jazz and classical musicians, because I don't feel quite up to the task; jazz appeals to me in that way, it fascinates me, but I've never played it, and it's not my world. I can nevertheless make inroads into it, and I confess I'd love to do so again.

What's your opinion on the use of pre-existing music in films? I believe you experimented with this with Claude Chabrol in QUE LA BÊTE MEURE?
Yes, there was a Brahms Lied that was quite appropriate, since it even hinted at the film's title; so the external music was part of the mise-en-scène. In ALICE OR THE LAST FUGUE, there was a Mozart concerto, used as a record. But in general, I'm very wary of using music from the great symphonic repertoire in films. It's sound illustration, and what's more, it's music that's full of connotations. There are cases where music can come with connotations, for example, Mahler's music in Visconti's MORT À VENISE. Obviously, it's extremely reassuring for a director to have pre-existing sound material of good quality. But even if the original score may not be as great as the music of Beethoven, Brahms or Tchaikovsky, it at least has the merit of being shaped exactly to the dimensions of the film and taking all its components into account.

Do you follow the work of other film composers?
I have friends who do film music, like Georges Delerue and Antoine Duhamel, and I'm very interested in what they write. I go to their recordings, and sometimes I go to the cinema just to hear Delerue's or Duhamel's music. There are a lot of things that differentiate us, we have very different musical positions, but I think we share the same concern for a certain quality of film music. I also sometimes go and see American films, because I find that they are much better mixed and know how to use music much better. French directors, who often show so much admiration for American cinema, would do well to open their ears a little and look at what's being done with music on the other side of the Atlantic.