This paper presents a choreomusical analysis of the ballet exploring the intertwining relationships between music and dance. The ballet Fancy Free premiered at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1944, marking the beginning of the creative collaboration between composer Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins. My analysis of the music in L’Age d’or and Le Sang d’un poète theorizes the audiovisual elements constituting surrealist sound film it also highlights the inherently surreal characteristics of the sound film medium itself, characteristics that most mainstream filmmakers would later try their hardest to erase. This brief but productive intersection between avant-garde cinematic and musical modernist practices at a critical juncture in France’s nascent sound film production influenced subsequent French cinematic experiments, particularly those of the Nouvelle Vague. Though their approaches to the soundtrack differed, both directors experimented with film rhythm and pacing, with contrasting synchronism and audiovisual counterpoint, and with violating expectations of audiovisual unity. Buñuel incorporated preexisting classical works-by composers including Mozart, Beethoven, and Wagner-into L’Age d’or and juxtaposed them with absurd, even offensive, images. For Le Sang d’un poète composer Georges Auric wrote a score that Cocteau proceeded to cut up and reorder, an experiment in “accidental synchronization” and a means of avoiding explicit musical signification. These controversial films deliberately avoided realism, employing music as a tool for audiovisual juxtaposition, pastiche, and shock value. I examine two of France’s first sound films-Luis Buñuel’s L’Age d’or (1930) and Jean Cocteau’s Le Sang d’un poète (1930)-both of which favored an audiovisual aesthetic relying heavily on surrealist principles. I argue that music became a crucial tool in early conceptions of surrealist audiovisual cinema, when sound film’s potential energy was at its height. But the new technology also offered an opportunity for composers and directors to renegotiate music’s role in surrealist film. With the heightened realism of synchronized dialogue and the presence of a recorded musical soundtrack, music’s role in the new audiovisual form threatened to destabilize the dream logic that surrealist filmmakers had established in silent cinema. The anti-musical stance of many Surrealists (particularly André Breton), who believed that the abstract nature of music violated surrealism’s philosophical, literary, and aesthetic principles, made the very concept of surrealist sound film problematic. Some years ago we were informed that of the 25,000 books in Marsh's at least 5,000 English books or books printed in England were printed between 16.Surrealist cinema flourished in France in the late 1920s, but following the widespread adoption of synchronized sound in Europe in 1929, its future was uncertain. In fact the collection of books by late seventeenth and early eighteenth century European authors on, for example, such subjects as biblical criticism, political and religious controversy, is one of the richest parts of the Library's collections. Since there is no printed catalogue of the Library scholars are not aware of its contents. It seems surprising that this type of seminar has never been held before although the reason is obvious. Although we have hosted many special seminars on such subjects as rare books, the Huguenots, and Irish church history, this was the first time that a seminar was held which was specifically related to the books in our own collection. It was one of the most stimulating events held in the Library in recent years. Popkin in Marsh's Library on July 7-8, 1994. MURIEL MCCARTHY This volume originated from a seminar organised by Richard H.
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