STUDIES AND RESEARCH

The Film Music of Ivan Brkanović

Composer Ivan Brkanović was born in Škaljari near Kotor on December 28, 1906. His primary field of activity was composing music for the concert podium. However, he did have a number of opportunities to write film music which he composed for three documentary films: Branko Belan’s Electrical Energy, Ivo Tomulič’s A Miner’s Greeting and Sleeping Beauty by Rudolf Sremac. In addition to the abovementioned film scores, Brkanović also cowrote, with Ivo Kirigin, the music for Branko Belan’s film Heather and Corn-cobs.

The score for the films Electrical Energy (1948) and A Miner’s Greeting (1949) have a number of similarities. In addition to the fact that the foundation for both of the scores lies in a precell that develops and varies, they also share the same musical construction design as well as an occasional association with folk music.

Brkanović created his best film score in 1953 for Sleeping Beauty (1953). The music was so successful that, in the same year, the author reworked the score into the first movement of his orchestral composition The Dalmatian Diptych. The modernity that this score evokes represents the composer’s relationship to the film: music is not just a neutral background that has nothing to do with the film image, but rather an active participant in the film’s story. The documentary film images, through the music, which would be photographically stationary if there was no music, succeed in coming to life and impel the viewer to begin imagining dramatic events and characters in empty streets and squares.

Through the course of only a few years and in only a few films, Ivan Brkanović transformed his cautious approach to the film medium into an approach marked by the insight of when and where to enhance the film image, document its atmosphere, and depict even the invisible. Although the function of his film music can be primarily classified as descriptive and illustrational, i. e., a quite simple approach to music that could not endure on the concert podium, this type of approach to film allowed for an effective collaboration between the narrative text, music, image and other elements of the film.

Irena Paulus