Alexandre Desplat and the Renewal of the Timbre of Hollywood Symphonies: Programmed Sounds as a Form of Casting the Orchestra into Relief with Magical Effect - Text 8
The Magic Effect: The Colours of Contemporary Symphonic Music?
The sound texture that Desplat creates to evoke magic is a syncretic renewal of the symphonic timbre. This phenomenon is already perceptible in the flash-forward scene in Twilight when Aro Volturi accedes to Alice’s vision, discovering Bella as a vampire at the side of Edward. It is also present in the scene in which the Empress Aloï liberates the energy which will save the planet (“Pearls Power”) in Valérian, and in the sequence when gold is revealed in the river thanks to the chemical potion invented by one of the characters in Jacques Audiard’s Les frères Sisters (2018). These are all of a kind compositionally, consisting in creating a kaleidoscopic shattering of the separated strings, whether acoustic (Twilight, Les frères Sisters) or electric (Valérian), letting resonate only glissando harmonies (letting the finger slide the length of the string), most often sul ponticello, and recorded as overdubs. This specific texture of strings made hybrid by machines forms a pointillist halo around diaphanous timbres with a magical connotation (glockenspiel, celesta, harp, vibraphone, even flute) and enters into osmosis with shimmering objects: Bella’s face when she becomes a vampire in Alice’s vision, the electromagnetic field created by the energy released by the pearls at the precise moment when magic comes into play in Valérian, and the green reflections of the river in Les frères Sisters.
