The director Jane Campion chose the composer Michael Nyman to write the score for her film ‘The Piano’ because of his ‘ability in 5 or 10 seconds to create an emotion, to create time, a sense of place…’
I was first struck by the power of Nyman’s music in films such as ‘The Draughtsman’s Contract’ and ‘The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover’ – the fruit of an enduring collaboration between the great English filmmaker Peter Greenaway and the composer, a working partnership so intertwined that you can’t think of Greenaway’s films without thinking of Nyman’s scores.
Rather unexpectedly, the music often comes first. For example, Greenaway was so affected by Nyman’s piece ‘Memorial’ (originally written to commemorate the deaths of football fans in a stadium tragedy) that he modelled parts of ‘The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover’ around the composition. I saw the film as a child (technically, far too young!) and even now I can recall the effect of the music’s hypnotic repetitions.
In fact, so memorable is Nyman’s music that it often has a life outside the confines of the film that popularised it. The beginning of the Pet Shop Boy’s song ‘Love is a Bourgeois Construct’ is taken from Nyman’s piece ‘Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds’ from ‘The Draughtsman’s Contract’ which he himself based on an excerpt from a 17th century opera by Henry Purcell! A kind of musical recycling of which Nyman ardently approves.
However, the film that cemented his reputation as one of the greatest composers for the screen, was his collaboration with Jane Campion on her 1993 masterpiece ‘The Piano’. As the lead character Ada is mute, she expresses her thoughts only through music. Nyman’s score is her voice. He would ask Jane Campion ‘what would Ada say at this moment if she could speak?’
Nyman is credited with first coining the term minimalism to describe music. In writing of his work, I’m conscious in keeping my own words to a minimum. Finally, it is best to simply leave the silence in which to listen.
