There is a long tradition in cinema of Directors finding their musical voices in one composer and continuing to work with that person over a long period of time or even a career. It is a symbiotic relationship; the filmmaker gives vision to the composer’s orchestrations and the composer gives voice to the filmmaker’s vision. Picture and sound; this is the divine marriage that marks the medium and separates it from all others. Fellini and Nino Rota, Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, Tim Burton and Danny Elfman, Spielberg and John Williams, the list goes on. Martin Scorsese even uses the same Rolling Stones song in three separate films (Goodfellas, Casino, and The Departed). However, the most naturalist joining of the two sides is perhaps the long collaboration between the great Polish minds; Krzysztof Kieślowski and Zbigniew Preisner.
Beginning with the film 1985 No End (Bez Konca) Preisner became a near ever-present force in Kieślowski’s work. For the next decade they, along with screenwriter Krzystof Piesiewicz, produced a number of films, each with the ability to be described as a sheer masterpiece. 1989’s The Decalogue (along with its splintering projects A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love), The Double Life of Veronique (1991) and the Tree Colors Trilogy: Blue (1993), White (1994), and Red (1994). Typically Preisner began to score the films while the script was still being written and continues to modify and match through the editing process, which he is involved with. This approach undeniably meshes the fabrics the story into the music, which is why the Preisner/Kieślowski collaborations look, sound, and feel like pure distilled emotion.
Born in 1955 in the city of Bielsko-Biała in southern Poland, Preisner never formally studied music; he rather was a student of philosophy and history. He leaned how to play and write music by listening to records and transcribing them. He style is haunting and romantic, always with a repetitive melody throughout a pieces sections. It was while working on the film Weather Report by Antoni Krauze in 1981 that Preisner and Kieślowski first met.
Ever since Preisner made his presence in Kieślowski works, there has also been another composer whose face appears from the shadows now and then. His name is Van den Budenmayer and he is a traditionally classical Dutch composer. You can even see Irène Jacob’s character Valentine Dussaut in Three Colors: Red browsing a vinyl’s at a record shop and picking up one by Van den Budenmayer, which she briefly listens to. So why has no one ever heard of this divine composer? Why does he not rank with the likes of Debussy, Bartók, and Mahler? The reason is quite simple; Budenmayer and Preisner are one and the same.
In an interview Preisner Zbigniew once explained, “Many people ask me about him. When Kieślowski shot the movie [The Double Life of Veronique], he originally wanted to use some of Mahler’s music, but this proved too expensive to license. He asked me to compose something original in Mahler’s style, and we were looking for the name of a composer – something different, something to be taken seriously as ‘proper’ music. Both Kieślowski and I liked Holland, and the name Van den Budenmayer looks as if it comes out of Holland, so we chose that. Afterwards, we got thousands of questions about Van den Budenmayer. We gave him my birth date but 20 years earlier and he even started appearing in music encyclopedias! At one point, someone wanted to take me to court accusing me of stealing his music! Nowadays, if I write bad music, I accredit it to him!”
Just as the scores brought the films to life and the films breathed life into the scores, Preisner’s music and love for Kieślowski gave wings to the director even in death and allowed his memory to rise up like a phoenix from the ashes. After Krzysztof Kieślowski’s death in March of 1996, Preisner composed the magnificent Requiem For My Friend, whichpremiered in 1998 to wide critical acclaim. It includes sixty-piece orchestra and forty-piece choir. The works sounds the way Kieślowski’s movies feel; drenched with love and sorrow, loneliness and longing. It is here that Preisner’s love for his collaborator shines through with rays of golden light. This is the mark of a great composer, a great man, and a great artist. As Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart said, “Neither a lofty degree of intelligence, nor imagination, nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”
by Robert Kolodny
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