FILM MUSIC

Miljenko Prohaska: With Music from Experimental to Animated Film

Miljenko Prohaska is a composer actively involved in music (he is also a performer, a conductor, and a score-writer). He is a very versatile musician with special interest in jazz. He was born in Zagreb on September 17, 1925. He learned to play the violin in primary school and the contrabass in the secondary musical school. He studied at the Theoretical-teaching department of the Musical Academy in Zagreb where he graduated in 1956.

During his studies he worked as a contrabassist in the Zagreb Philharmonic, Yugoslav Radio-Diffusion Orchestra, Symphony and Chamber Orchestra of the RTZ. From 1957 till his retirement in 1989 he was the conductor of the Dance Band of the RTZ. Besides conducting and composing, he was also involved in pedagogical work and score writing. He is a longstanding member of the Zagreb Jazz Quartet and the Zagreb Jazz Quintet. Composing light orchestral, jazz and modern music and interweaving his various experiences, Prohaska surpasses the limits of genre and often trespasses into the area of the so-called serious music. He is the co-author, together with Ivica Krajač and Karlo Metikoš, of the rock opera Gubec Beg. However, one must emphasize his enormous opus of film music: a series of animated and short films, and some twelve scores for feature films.

Miljenko Prohaska entered the world of film thanks to the animated film. His first film score dates from 1954 for the animated film Little Red Riding Hood. Afterwards, Prohaska created music for other animated films like The Theft of Jewels by Mladen Feman, Dragon by Boris Mikšić, Šagren Skin by Vlado Kristl and Ivo Vrbanić, The Tamer by Darko Gospodnetić, a few episodes of the serial Inspector Mask by Josip Duielle, and many others. Among the motion pictures, one must single out the score for the film Gravitation or the Amazing Youth of the Clerk Boris Horvat (B. Ivanda, 1966), and the films Prometheus from the Island of Viševica (1964), Monday or Tuesday (V. Mimica, 1966), The Return (1979), Cyclopes (Antun Vrdoljak, 1982), The Great Transportation (Veljko Bulajić, 1982/1983), etc.

The author of the article analyses film scores for animated films Little Red Riding Hood (J. Sudar, 1954), Thumbeline (Milan Blažeković, 1979), The Good Hearted Ant (Aleksandar Marks, Vladimir Jutriša, 1965), and the scores for motion pictures Gravitation of the Amazing Youth of the Clerk Boris Horvat (Branko Ivanda, 1968) and Monday or Tuesday (Vatroslav Mimica, 1966). In these films Prohaska displayed all his musical versatility respecting the ideas of film authors, composing a wide variety of musical scores that went from the variations of classical themes to transferring contemporary music into jazz and the music of nature.

In the animated films, the author of the article focuses her attention on the application of the ’mickey-mousing effect’, while in the opus as a whole, she analyses caricatural and distinguishing characteristics of his music, particularly composer’s inclination towards the use of contemporary music and shifting of tonal and non-tonal music. She also emphasizes the role of the way in which Prohaska separates musical blocks with silences (pauses for speech) that he links with the technique of collage instead of cutting.

Irena Paulus