STUDIES AND RESEARCH

Mostly ’Drawn’ Music

Composer Tomislav Simović

Tomislav Simović is a film score composer who perfected his craft composing scores for animated films. His liaison with the animated films is so strong that it can be felt in his work in other genres as well.

He was born on August 17, 1931 in Zagreb where he studied the history of art and went to the Musical School. He learned to play contrabass and piano, but eventually devoted himself to composing. Numerous prizes he received for his music and an abundant filmography already say enough about this artist. Apart from composing for different genres, he also composed music for radio plays and television shows, orchestral and chamber music and ballets.

Analysing Tomislav Simović’s scores the author analyses the relationship between the music of animation and motion pictures, focussing on the issue of synchronisation of music and picture, musical form as a structuring part of a cartoon and musical themes and leitmotivs in his scores.

The analysis is mostly based on the score for the animated series Professor Baltazar. Tomislav Simović composed scores for first 25 (of 59) films, which have marked the series and set its future narrative and musical form. Using a number of common elements for all the films of the series, composer Simović, along with the authors Grgić, Kolar and Zaninović, repeatedly created interesting contents of one of the most popular animated series home and abroad.

Besides the series Professor Baltazar, the author dedicates several chapters to the analysis of music in the animated films Slide-Crawl by Zlatko Grgić (1969) and Surogate by Dušan Vukotić (1961) and motion pictures I have two moms and two dads (Krešo Golik, 1968) and House (Bogdan Žižić, 1975).

On the basis of her analysis, the author concludes that Tomislav Simović is a composer who perfected his skill primarily working on animated films. This can be felt in his entire opus. The conjunction between motion pictures and cartoons is the strongest in children’s films where Simović could write ’serious’ scores composing as if they were intended for cartoons. However, composing scores for animated films turned out to be a much more complex and serious work than he might have expected at first glance.

Simović knows that children are the harshest critics. The greatest acknowledgement to the author is when children are satisfied with the cartoon and never even realize that music has led them through the story. This may be an even greater praise than the golden statue named Oscar, which was awarded by the members of the Film academy to the creative team of the animated film Surogate, a group of artists from a small country, unknown to most people. In any case, working in Zagreb film and other film studios in Croatia, Tomislav Simović greatly indebted Croatian cinema and one very neglected art in Croatia — film music.

ANALITICAL CONTENT:

Professor Baltazar — the famous Croatian professor / Music and picture synchronisation: different possibilities / Music and picture synchronisation: Starlight quartet (1969) / The consequences of music and picture synchronisation: fragmentary music / Insturmentation and tonality in the service of caricature / Themes and thematic work: Professor Baltazar’s themes / Themes for particular episodes of the series / Music as a constituent part of animated film / Slide-Crawl (1968): jazz in the service of sound creation / Surogate (1961): musical ’tapestry’ / The basis of the ’tapestry’ is rhythm / Functionality, nevertheless / Something like a leitmotiv / Philosophy, morals, view of the world / An excursion in the motion pictures: I have two moms and two dads (1968) / Opening titles and two themes / Jazz in children’s film / House (1975).

Irena Paulus