Concerto con Amore

Relationship and Ritual

While the etymology of “concerto” has long been debated, the term is generally thought to derive from the Latin concertare, meaning “to contend, dispute, debate.” The same word in Italian translates “to arrange, agree, get together,”^[1]Article “Concerto,” by Arthur Hutchings (with Thomas Walkers, et al.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1981), vol. IV, p. 627. but these seemingly contradictory definitions actually point to the heterogeneous nature commonly attributed to the concerto: at times a competitive confrontation between virtuoso soloist and orchestra, at times a co-operative union between the two forces. This dichotomy of contention/agreement is often traced back to the concerto grosso of the late Baroque period, in which a group of solo instruments interacts contrapuntally with the tutti (larger string ensemble), but the bipolar relationship becomes most pronounced in the solo concerti of the Romantic era and the early twentieth century. Here the concerto provides a performative arena for the metaphoric “battle” pitting individual soloist against full orchestra (or the “bonding” enacted by their mutually supportive ensemble), and enacts the spectacle of inner emotional struggle made both visible and audible by the soloist’s virtuosic exertions against the orchestra. (For many concert audiences today, this “drama” enacted through the concerto’s performance still provides a higher degree of vicarious pleasure.) It was also during the Romantic era that the piano emerged as the favored concerto instrument (over the violin), largely due to technological developments enabling the soloist to produce a volume and variety of sounds that could both complement and compete with the massed orchestra.

In his book Concerto Conversations^[2]Joseph Kerman, Concerto Conversations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). Hereafter CC. and an earlier article on the subject, “Representing a Relationship”,^[3]Joseph Kerman, “Representing a Relationship: Notes on a Beethoven Concerto,” Representations 39 (Summer 1992): 80-101. Hereafter RR. Joseph Kerman explores how the concerto as a musical form establishes “a duality of concerto agents”^[4]CC, 83. —soloist and orchestra—and sets them into interaction with each other. Through the course of a concerto, their dialogue or “conversation”^[5]CC, 1. with each other traces “the course of a relationship”^[6]RR, 98. that develops as the work unfolds. “At issue is the relationship between the solo and orchestra,” Kerman argues, as evidenced in “musical syntax, … the way notes and groups of notes, harmonies, and rhythms follow one another and ‘make sense.’”^[7]RR, 82. In Classical concerto form, an opening orchestral ritornello typically establishes tonality and themes according to the first movement “concerto-allegro” form; the subsequent solo entrance then responds in some manner to what has come before. “The second element somehow refers to the first,” Kerman explains. “The second may act as a varied repetition of the first, a sort of echo, a response, a rebuttal, a correction, a completion, or some combination of these things.”^[8]RR, 83. Thus begins the particular concerto’s “relationship story”—that is, “a musical process that can be read as narrative”—as plotted by its composer and enacted by its performers.^[9]CC, 52.

Such musical dialogues between solo and orchestra are commonly labeled “statement and response” or “question and answer,” but Kerman seeks “fresher tropes” to describe the musical relationships between concerto agents. He proposes descriptive associations, “derived by analogy from human relationships,” to “personify” concerto agents.^[10]CC, 50. (Such metaphoric interpretations were once common in music criticism, but have been out of fashion for most of the twentieth century.) The musical relationships inherent in the concerto’s compositional structure thus invite analogies to the human relationships effected through the performance of the work. Kerman writes,

Concertos not only bring dissimilar musical forces into play, they also enact scenes of human activity. Men and women and groups are brought into conjunction, cooperation, confrontation. Hence the common tendency to personify the solo and the orchestra in concertos—as conversationalists, as debaters, as antagonists, as Orpheus and the Furies.^[11]CC, 3.

In such anthropomorphizing analyses, the concerto becomes a drama playing out lived relationships. The soloist and orchestra become “agents who attempt, guide, accept, succeed, and enjoy or suffer a relationship;”^[12]RR, 82. their interactions may be “playful, antagonistic, supportive, exploitative, and so on”—any variety of “human action-qualities.”^[13]CC, 50. The analogy of concerto soloist and orchestra to the mythological protagonist and chorus of Greek drama already has a long history, but it does invite consideration of a further aspect of the concerto’s dramatization which is rarely discussed: the mythic significance of the relationships enacted between concerto agents in performance.

Cultural myths about the relationship of humans to the Divine, to Nature, and to each other are enacted through rituals, be they religious or political, commemorative or celebratory. Christopher Small, in Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening,^[14]Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1998). argues that performances of classical music works such as the concerto have become a type of social ritual, in which acts of music-making and listening provide us with models of interpersonal relationship, and perpetuate these ideals through tradition. He regards any musical performance as “an encounter between human beings that takes place through the medium of sounds organized in specific ways”—^[15]CC, 10. not a far leap from Kerman’s notion of the concerto relationship as an encounter between “concerto agents” through the medium of musical syntax. The relationship Small sees enacted by “the people who are taking part” in the ritual of a concerto is one of struggle between soloist and orchestra—or, in the broader perspective of myth, the struggle of the heroic individual against the greater collective or a higher power. As a musical analogy to dramatic narrative, the concerto can be seen as one of numerous representations of this mythologized struggle found throughout literature and the arts.^[16]For example, novelist-philospher Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged (New York: Random House, 1957) presents her heroic protagonist John Galt as a composer writing a great piano concerto, “the Concerto … Continue reading

Other commentators have also considered the concerto a musical enactment of the struggle between “the powerful and multicolored orchestra and its weak but high-spirited adversary,” as Chaikovsky once described it.^[17]Cited in Kerman, RR97. David Owen Norris recognizes “the complex ritual” of the concerto’s performance, and he considers the “gladiatorial” model of many Romantic-era piano concerti as a product of the hero mythology surrounding the concerto soloist. The nineteenth-century piano soloist, as “Lonely Genius,” became “the picture of rational humanity, [and] stood alone against the blind forces of Nature, represented (aptly enough on occasions) by the orchestra. He struggled, they struggled back. The soloist’s science and skill led to his inevitable triumph.”^[18]David Owen Norris, “The Long March of the Gladiators,” Piano & Keyboard 182 (September/October 1996): 31. Bernard Holland considers the piano concerto in a political context with regard to certain twentieth-century works by Soviet composers. “Struggle is native to the concerto format, so why not political struggle—where the individual tames the inchoate mob and leads it to crashing major-triad victory.”^[19]Bernard Holland, “The Solo Concerto As a Paradigm of Social Struggle,” The New York Times 136/2 (December 21, 1986): H23.

But in the mythic ritual of the Romantic-era concerto, soloistic heroism is not appropriate for just any pianist. The role of concerto conqueror demands a culturally-sanctioned type to affirm the “lesson” of the ritual, or suffer the consequences of a hubristic resistance.^[20]Cliches about the “heroic” concerto have not surprisingly prompted numerous parodies. Pianist-comedian Victor Borge spoofs the “struggle” associated with the Chaikovsky … Continue reading Norris’s masculine “Lonely Genius” hero can bring the concerto to Holland’s “crashing major-triad victory,” but such an attempt at performative battle is frequently problematized for the concerto heroine. As Small asserts, the ritualized conflict enacted by the concerto is predicated on “the need to preserve the integrity of the social fabric,”^[21]Small, 181. and gender hierarchy is admittedly one of the foundations of the Western social order. In his essay on the 1945 British classic Brief Encounter, Richard Dyer notes the extensive use of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto on the film’s soundtrack, and considers the Romantic piano concerto in general as a cinematic device conveying “the idea of the individual (the soloist) seized by overwhelming emotions.”^[22]Richard Dyer, Brief Encounter, BFI Film Classics (London: British Film Institute, 1993): 17. He notes the significance of such concerti in so-called “women’s films” of the 1940s, in which the music’s evocation of struggle is paralleled to a narrative of romantic strife endured by the female protagonist. As we will see, melodramas such as Brief Encounter and a host of 1940s “concerto films” such as The Great Lie and Dangerous Moonlight established the Romantic piano concerto as a soundtrack signifier for romantic struggles resolved according to gender and social hierarchies—a tradition still informing feature films to this day.^[23]The cinematic applications of Baroque and Classical-era concerti on film soundtracks is a topic beyond the scope of this article, but mention can be made of the so-called “Elvira Madigan” … Continue reading Small cites the concerto performance—a ritual involving musical performers as well as the listening (and, if a live concert, watching) audience—as one example of musicking, but what about representations of the concerto performance as film scene or as soundtrack device? To take Small’s theory one step further: cinema is also a site of musicking, for it combines musical signification with the visual and dramatic aspects apprehended by a film audience. The site of a concerto performance, “the place where it is happening” (13), is not only Small’s concert hall, but the cinematic scene as well, in which sight and sound (including both dialogue and music) serve as representational devices to establish setting, character, action, and narrative. Kerman notes that “concertos are viewed, witnessed as well as heard”^[24]CC, 3. in their performance. A film can utilize the concerto both musically and visually to tap into the mythic associations of its performance-ritual and the drama of its “relationship story.”

Chaikovsky's First

If “concertos are viewed, witnessed as well as heard,” what does the beginning of Chaikovsky’s Concerto no. 1 in B-flat minor, op. 23, look like in performance? This work, described by its composer as “a duel rather than a duet,”^[1]Cited in Small, 182. is probably the most popular piano concerto in the classical music repertoire. In the Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso which opens the first movement of the concerto, sight and sound combine to tell a “relationship story” of musical confrontation:

A massed orchestra occupies the stage, an impersonal phalanx of instrumentalists focused on its dominating leader, the conductor on his podium. In front of them all is the soloist, commandeering an impressive grand piano. After a subtle nod between soloist and conductor, indicating that both are prepared for the performative ritual ahead, the conductor’s upbeat triggers the orchestra’s opening fanfare, a descending four-note motive in the French horns, followed by the tutti chords that punctuate the statement like affirming shouts. Meanwhile, the pianist waits. Small credits the soloist with “subversive energies” during a concerto’s orchestral exposition: “In the concert hall, the sight of the soloist, still and silent, sitting at the piano …, waiting for the moment of entry, warns the audience of the potential for disturbance that exists behind the bland surface of the opening tutti. His or her absence of movement bring a rare visual element to the symphonic drama.”^[2]Small, 181. (But this concerto’s short introduction is hardly bland!)

Suddenly, then, the pianist launches into sonorous D-flat major chords bounding majestically across the keyboard, a soloistic opening salvo equally as famous as the orchestra’s melodic theme. This entrance provides an excellent example of what Kerman calls “the physicality of the concerto,”^[3]CC, 21. for it enacts bodily, through pianistic gestures, a visual as well as acoustic confrontation between the “concerto sound-bodies” of the soloist and the orchestra. Delivered by the pianist’s powerful arm motions, these chords convey a sense of strength and assertion on the part of the soloist. Within a single measure of playing, the “identity” of the soloist as a concerto agent has been established: strong, determined, dignified. [media unavailable] Though the two concerto agents seem to be at odds here—the piano hammers out strict “vertical” chords while the orchestra plays a sweeping “horizontal” tune—these chords actually buttress the orchestral melody rhythmically and harmonically.^[4]This “confrontational” relationship between the two concerto agents was not the original compositional conception. As Norris describes it, “The opening was originally accompanied by … Continue reading

But in the course of this opening section, the initial relationship of concerto agents is called into question as the musical “battle” unfolds. What had been an aggressive initiative on the part of the soloist becomes a less impressive thematic reiteration when the piano attempts to take the melody itself. Kerman considers the piano replay of the tune an “anticlimax” because a solo piano, despite its melodic embellishments and “twitchy acciaccatura rhythms,” cannot produce “effusive melody” as richly as orchestral strings can: “The piano cuts its losses, fails to finish the tune, and drifts into a rather petulant cadenza instead.”^[5]CC, 7. Though Kerman does not continue further with his descriptive analysis, the subsequent orchestral resumption of the theme indicates that the concerto’s opening musical drama has ultimately been decided. After back-and-forth bantering with the piano over the four-note fanfare motive, the orchestra triumphantly regains the melody, and the original melody/accompaniment hierarchy of the concerto agents is restored. The aggressive challenge of the soloist’s opening volley has been contained by the greater ensemble, and the struggle is over: “After the opening tune is heard two and a half times it disappears, notoriously, forever.”^[6]CC, 9.

The dramatic potential of this “relationship story” enacted musically and visually through the opening of the Chaikovsky First Concerto has not been lost on Hollywood. The Great Lie^[7]Directed by Edmund Goulding, starring Bette Davis (Maggie Patterson), Mary Astor (Sandra Kovak), and George Brent (Pete van Allen). (1941) showcases the concerto both in its plot and on its soundtrack to signify a similar “duel” between the female soloist-protagonist and the social and romantic relationships she must battle. The opening credits, for example, bring in the concerto directly with the Warner Brothers studio logo, and the music continues along with a visual backdrop of a pianist’s hands performing the part with vigor. During this credits sequence, nine different shots of the hands and the keyboard are spliced together, each with dramatic over- and under-lighting to enhance the black-and-white contrast of the grand piano, the keyboard, and the playing hands. This will clearly be a story about a pianist, and the confrontational musical relationships enacted by the concerto’s introduction seem to forecast a similarly melodramatic narrative.

The Great Lie is a story about the fierce rivalry between concert pianist Sandra Kovak and Southern belle Maggie Patterson over the affections of playboy Pete van Allen. Sandra—not only a “great pianist,” but also a “great beauty”—is characterized as an impulsive and “extravagant” woman who flouts conventions of appropriate feminine behavior. She indulges in drunken bacchanals, and she proclaims lines like “Oh, I shouldn’t, but how I love to do things I shouldn’t!”^[8]The portrayal of Sandra Kovak as a pianist is pure Hollywood invention. In the original 1936 novel by Polan Banks, The Far Horizon, the corresponding character is an actress. Director Edmund Goulding outlined her character with three attributes: “A piano, brandy, and men. In that order!”^[9]Quoted in The Motion Picture Guide, ed. Jay Robert Nash (Chicago: Cinebooks, 1985): 1098. Her character embodies the transgressive liberated woman who is nevertheless a sympathetic figure at heart: her admirable talent and self-sufficiency balance her temperamental, irrational nature.

As the story opens, Sandra’s just-consummated marriage to Pete turns out to be invalid, as her divorce from her previous husband had not yet been finalized. She makes no claim to be an ideal wife, anyway (“You’ve got to be patient with me, Pete. I’ve been a bachelor so long—so have you, for that matter. I should really have been a dutiful wife and whipped up a little home dinner for you today”). Pete wants to remarry the day Sandra’s divorce becomes finalized, but this happens to be the same day she is scheduled to play the Chaikovsky concerto in Philadelphia. He declares his proposal an ultimatum; she refuses to cancel her performance; he leaves her. In a scene enacting the concerto’s dramatically “visual” introduction, Sandra retreats to the piano and angrily pounds out the opening solo chords. The orchestral melody subsequently joins in as the scene shifts to the Philadelphia performance. In this short (1-1/2 minute) encapsulation of the concerto, the music cuts from the opening theme directly to Sandra’s closing cadenza in the last movement, the final theme played in unison by both piano and orchestra, and the brilliant virtuosic passages of the coda. Sandra, an undaunted and heroic soloist, receives a rousing ovation for her determined performance.

After several turns of the melodramatic plot,^[10]Disillusioned Pete takes the opportunity of Sandra’s professional dedication to run off and marry Maggie, his erstwhile fiancée, instead. Some days later he is off on a government expedition to … Continue reading Sandra attempts to reclaim Pete’s love through her child, but she is finally thwarted when he learns the truth of the deception and chooses to stay with Maggie, his long-suffering and devoted wife. In the closing scene, the concerto’s visual drama is presented again, but with a deciding “moral.” Sandra retreats to the piano, and again pounds out the concerto’s defiant introductory chords, but this time her gestures signal her resigned acquiescence and defeat in the battle over Pete and the baby. The orchestra enters with the opening theme as the camera falls back on Maggie and Pete, the couple now restored to domestic bliss. This triumphant melody underscoring the closing credits provides a musical signification of their victory (as “orchestra”) over the no-longer heroic pianist. Both the story and the soundtrack of the film confirm the lesson of the concerto-ritual—the reconciliation of the appropriate relationship as part of the “social order.”

The Great Lie enjoyed a successful run in theaters and further popularized the Chaikovsky First Concerto through its romantic story and star actors. Mary Astor (Pictured at piano, with Davis) won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for her role as Sandra Kovak, and at the awards ceremony she thanked two people: her co-star Bette Davis and Chaikovsky.^[11]Whitney Stine, Mother Goddam: The Story of the Career of Bette Davis (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1974).

Within a year, at least two arrangements of the concerto’s opening melody—”as featured in The Great Lie“—were published for amateur pianists,^[12]Theme from Tschaikowsky’s Concerto no. 1,” arranged by Hugo Frey (New York: Robbins Music, 1941), and “Melody from Tschaikowsky’s Piano Concerto in B-flat Minor,” arranged by … Continue reading and an unprecedented number of popular song adaptations of this theme appeared: in 1941 and 1942 alone, at least ten different popular songs based on the Chaikovsky concerto were published. The most popular of these, “Tonight We Love,” became a best-selling instrumental hit for dance bandleader Freddy Martin (featuring pianist Jack Fina), and a “top ten” success in its vocal version featuring Clyde Rogers.^[13]Arranged by Ray Austin, lyrics by Bobby Worth (Hollywood: Maestro Music, 1941). Frank Sinatra also sings a portion of the song in Anchors Aweigh (1945), with Jose Iturbi playing the piano. When … Continue reading

While these Tin Pan Alley song adaptations feature the typical trite rhymes, in each case they assign a quality of romantic desire to the opening tune, as in “No Greater Love”^[14]Lyrics by John Digges (New York: Robbins Music, 1941).:

No greater love can I feel, Than I am feeling for you,
All other loves are unreal, Your love alone is always true …

Certain songs acknowledge the compositional origins—or even the non-diegetic soundtrack applications—great lie of the borrowed tune, as in “Concerto for Two” (Arrangement for “The Great Lie” pictured above):^[15]Arranged by Robert C. Haring, lyrics by Jack Lawrence (New York: Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., 1941).

And when we kiss there’s a sound, Like violins all around,
And then the moment when we kiss again,
Our song becomes a thrilling concerto for two, for me and you.

Whether or not this flood of popular, romanticized song settings of the Chaikovsky concertoAdditional published song adaptations of themes from the Chaikovsky concerto: “Dream Melody,” lyrics by Claude Lapham (New York: Claude Lapham, 1941); “The Song Tschaikowsky Wrote,” lyrics by Artie Jones (New York: Mills Music, 1941); “The Stars Look Down,” music by Robert Stolz, lyrics by Gladys Shelly and Judith Byron (New York: Alfred Music, 1941); “Lilacs and Love,” by Con Carr and Ted Larrson (San Francisco: Harmony House, 1941); “Silent Love,” arranged by Carl Deis, lyrics by Margaret Bristol (New York: G. Schirmer, 1941); “Down Thru the Years” [a fox trot in cut-time!], lyrics by Bill Livingston (New York: Stasny Music, 1941); “A Million Years,” lyrics by David Ormont (New York: Congress Music, 1942); “My Heart Is Yours,” arranged by D. Savino, lyrics by Ted Fetter (New York: J. J. Robbins, 1947).[/ref] can be credited to the success of The Great Lie, still they demonstrate the role of popular culture in establishing and perpetuating the associations of romance and desire surrounding the piano concerto repertoire.

Aside from the famous introduction, another moment of dramatic relationship between concerto agents in the Chaikovsky concerto has been appropriated for a melodramatic film story. In the development section of the first movement, the soloist takes over a repetitive four-note pattern from the orchestra, and plays it in rapid octaves which then lead into a cadenza. In Kerman’s analysis, this passage is another example of “replay” (like the piano’s assumption of the first theme in the concerto’s opening), specifically here an instance of “aggressive” replay. At this moment of “great confrontation” between the concerto agents, “[the piano] finally breaks in—crashes in—with double-octave scale passages replaying material from the orchestral climax … The increasingly heavy-handed orchestral development is cut off, rejected violently (but so idiomatically) by solo replay.”^[16]CC, 43. It is this musical “confrontation” that serves as the climactic moment of relationship in another cinematic dramatization of the Chaikovsky concerto, from the 1951 French film Ombre et lumière/Shadow and Light.^[17]Directed by Henri Calef, starring Simone Signoret (Isabelle Leritz), Maria Casarès (Caroline), and Jacques Berthier (Jacques Barrois).

Like The Great Lie, Ombre et lumière is a love-triangle story that pits a female pianist against her rival (this time, the pianist’s mentally disturbed half-sister) over the love of a man they both desire, but here—in a reversal of Sandra Kovak’s fate—the pianist-protagonist does marry him, and thus may succeed in her musical/romantic struggle.

As the story begins, Isabelle Leritz performs the Chaikovsky concerto repeatedly on a concert tour, until one evening her left hand cramps up from tension just before the octave passage. Frightened by dizzying hallucinations during the orchestral tutti, and physically unable to play the demanding passage at the appropriate moment (even after the conductor repeats the section), she suffers a nervous breakdown and collapses onstage. Isabelle cannot counter the challenge presented by the orchestra in this moment of “aggressive replay,” and this precipitates her initial defeat.

Later, after further plot machinations involving mental illness and her vindictive half-sister Caroline,^[18]After recuperating in a sanatorium, Isabelle learns that she is prone to a relapse of hereditary insanity. She falls in love with a handsome young man, unaware that he has recently jilted her … Continue reading Isabelle determines to face her demons in public by performing the dreaded concerto once again. In the climactic concert scene, Caroline looks on smugly, expecting Isabelle to fail once again in the “aggressive replay” passage, but Isabelle now has the reassurance of her husband’s love and support. When the decisive moment arrives, she begins the octaves too slowly, but quickly picks up tempo and conquers the passage. After the successful performance, the happy couple celebrates Isabelle’s achievement, while Caroline sulks out of the hall, defeated in her own way by the concerto-struggle.

One of the advertising slogans for Ombre et lumière described Isabelle as “a famous female pianist who must choose between fame or love.” The identical catch-phrase could apply equally well to “Concerto,” a short story by Borden Chase published in 1939 in the mass-circulation American Magazine.^[19]”Concerto Story,” The American Magazine 128 (December 1939): 53-148. “Concerto” relates the romantic struggles endured by the young pianist Myra Hassman as she studies under—and falls desperately in love with—a temperamental Russian virtuoso named Goronoff. In the course of her concerto-struggle, Myra must ultimately decide between an impossible reconciliation with her master, or renunciation of her career for true love.

In the story, Myra’s climactic concert début is a performance of the Chaikovsky concerto in Carnegie Hall, with Goronoff himself conducting. Chase depicts the confrontational interaction of concerto agents enacted in the opening of the work,^[20]”’Da, ta, ta, ta-a-a—da, ta, ta, ta-a-a—da, ta, ta, ta-a-a!’ Myra was singing the orchestral opening! Then, one, two, three—and one, two—her hands caught the keys and the first … Continue reading and parallels the progression of Myra’s and Goronoff’s “relationship story” to the structure of the Chaikovsky concerto itself, wherein a “masculine” theme—the opening melody—competes for domination over the concerto’s “feminine” themes. “In every concerto one theme must predominate,” Myra is told, “and that is the heroic—the male theme.”^[21]”Concerto Story,” The American Magazine 58.

“A concerto is like that, Myra. There is a beginning, then a blossoming out … what you call the exposition. Then, in the end, like a man who has lived, you see the result of his life.”^[22]”Concerto Story,” The American Magazine 128.

This gendered contest of thematic material hardly works as a formal analysis of the composition (the opening supposedly “masculine” theme is missing from the rest of the work!), but it is one example of how musical passages can be personified, and how a relationship between performing human agents can be represented through the interaction of concerto agents. While the relationship between Myra and Goronoff is hierarchical, it is initially sympathetic: when the orchestra threatens to overwhelm the soloist in its speed and volume, the conductor is there to empower her.^[23]”Soon she had caught them. Caught the orchestra. They were both racing along in a mad and wild chase. Hand in hand, each straining to lead. But Myra forged ahead. It was her night. She was … Continue reading

All goes well in the performance until Myra’s “master” begins to imagine a personal affront in her surpassing musical and technical mastery of these themes; suddenly their collaboration becomes a confrontation enacted between the two concerto agents, soloist and orchestra. Myra, sensing Goronoff’s anger and insecurity, realizes that to gain the performance would be to lose his love, and she attempts to convey her devotion through the second movement’s “feminine” theme.^[24]”And, as the movement swept on to the cadenza that would herald the return of the first theme, Myra answered. With the skill of a thousand nights of practice she rounded the theme and tried to … Continue reading The second movement brings Myra’s moment of glory, for its opening theme is “her” theme, “the one she loved,” represented as a feminine and maternal melody.^[25]”First, a few plucked notes from the strings, delicate, hesitant, and filled with promise. Then, like a woman coming over a far green hill, the theme moved into being. And with its coming Myra … Continue reading Myra’s melody con amore bears some comparison to yet another popular song based on the same theme from the concerto, “Darling I Love You”^[26]Adapted by Justin Ring, lyrics by Fred Hager and Lillie Keyser (New York: Edward Schuberth, 1942).:

Darling, I love you! What more, dear, can I say?
Except you’re lovely, You’re more than lovely, You are my inspiration …

But this performance proves to be a decisive turning point in Myra’s life, for she unintentionally alienates the jealous Goronoff, and then, out of grief and dismay, decides to abandon her concert career altogether. She marries George, a childhood friend who has always loved her, and together they raise a daughter, a pianist who makes her own Carnegie Hall debut with the same concerto years later. Chase’s story would be filmed seven years after its publication as I’ve Always Loved You, but featuring the Rachmaninoff Second Concerto instead of the Chaikovsky as the music of Myra’s romantic struggle.

Rachmaninoff's Second

The piano concerto’s cinematic signification need not always be depicted through a musical “performance” in the film. It can also function as referential non-diegetic music on the soundtrack, so that the musical relationships “concerto agents” enact within the composition can be paralleled to the dramatic relationships that unfold within a particular story. Brief Encounter^[1]Directed by David Lean, starring Celia Johnson (Laura Jesson) and Trevor Howard (Alec Harvey). (1945) provides an exceptional document for the analysis of such musical/narrative correspondences because its soundtrack consists almost entirely of excerpts from one particular work, the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto in C minor, op. 18.^[2]There is additional music heard occasionally throughout the film, but this non-concerto material has a specific function as “public” music—music of a public space encountered by Laura … Continue reading Specific themes and passages from the concerto are mapped onto the female protagonist and her experience of nostalgia, alienation, and loss, while other concerto excerpts are assigned to the relationship between the film’s two main characters.

Adapted from a Noel Coward play,^[3]”Still Life,” from Tonight at 8:30 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1936). Brief Encounter relates the passionate but frustrated love affair between Laura Jesson, a devoted housewife and mother, and Alec Harvey, a married doctor. On one of Laura’s weekly shopping outings to a nearby town, she meets Alec at the railway station when he helps her remove a piece of grit from her eye. Over the six subsequent weeks their chance acquaintanceship grows into an intensely romantic bond. For her part, Laura is torn between the awakening of true romantic feelings and extreme guilt over her adulterous situation. Recognizing the impossibility of their love for each other, Alec decides to move abroad with his family; Laura desperately considers suicide, but ultimately returns to her husband and home.

As with the Chaikovsky concerto incipit opening The Great Lie, the beginning of Brief Encounter brings in the Rachmaninoff Second Concerto immediately with the main title and credits. Here, too, the correlation of film-beginning and concerto-beginning establishes a parallel narrative progression between the two “relationship stories,” the dramatic story enacted in the film, and the musical one unfolding through the concerto.^[4]The work itself is prominently announced as an integral component of Brief Encounter: the credits name Sergei Rachmaninoff, his Second Concerto, and the soundtrack performers (pianist Eileen Joyce, … Continue reading As an express train rushes through the dark railway station, the eight-measure piano solo introduction emerges from the roar, followed by the opening C minor theme in the orchestra [media unavailable]. This theme can be considered the film’s “train station” motif; it is heard twice more in connection with that locale. The low melody in the strings is accompanied by the piano’s rising and falling arpeggios, which lend a turbulent and unsettled “locomotion” churning away below. This opening concerto excerpt ceases just at the highpoint of the second half of the first theme (as the next express train rushes by in opposite direction), and the unresolved dominant seventh chord creates anticipation for its harmonic resolution at some point later on the soundtrack.

Brief Encounter’s story unfolds almost entirely through a flashback narrative which is related via Laura’s interior monologue as she sits in her living room on the evening of the final day of the affair, reminiscing about Alec and their weekly trysts. During the first thirteen minutes of the film, the concerto excerpts on the soundtrack seems to function non-diegetically, but it then becomes clear that the music’s source is located within the narrative frame of the story. While her husband is engrossed in a crossword puzzle, Laura tunes the radio to a broadcast of the Rachmaninoff concerto; at this point her reminiscences begin, apparently triggered by the swelling music.^[5]Flashbacks initiated by music are a common device in the film melodrama. As Caryl Flinn writes, music invites a return to the idealized past, providing “gates of refuge from the diegetic … Continue reading The concerto excerpt heard here is from the first movement’s recapitulation, the return of the opening C minor “train station” theme which now continues past the corresponding dominant seventh climax into the second theme in A-flat major. The soundtrack thus establishes a relationship between the two locales of Laura’s story (railway station and living room) and “resolves” the incomplete statement heard in the opening of the film. Later this same theme returns again when Laura’s husband interrupts her reverie, begging her to turn down the radio at the “deafening” fortissimo recapitulation; here, too, the music serves as a link to the dramatic events at the railway station (Alec and Laura have just shared their first kiss as an express train roars past). In this excerpt, however, the formerly supportive ensemble between the orchestral melody and accompanying piano figurations has given way to a tense opposition between soloist and orchestra. The long melodic phrases in the orchestra are set in contrast to a completely different theme in choppy eighth-note octave chords, marked “alla marcia,” in the piano part [media unavailable]. This is a quintessential moment of “struggle” between the two concerto agents, paralleling Laura’s own struggle to reconcile what happened at the station with what her marriage and home life demand of her—but it is an impossible reconciliation, as mirrored in the polarity (to borrow Kerman’s terminology) between piano and orchestra.

Aside from her husband, who also hears the concerto broadcast in the frame of the story, Laura alone mediates the music that accompanies her flashback narrative. All the music heard during Laura’s reminiscences is filtered through her own subjectivity, thus the viewer comes to identify the concerto with her psychological perspective.^[6]This auditory perspective is explicitly confirmed twice through soundtrack editing. Laura makes one telephone call to her friend Mary, to set up an alibi to cover her tryst with Alec, and another, … Continue reading Throughout Brief Encounter, excerpts from the first movement of the Rachmaninoff concerto are used exclusively for moments of Laura’s interior monologue without the interjection of other characters’ voices; the first movement is solely “her” private music. The motif most frequently employed in this capacity is the second theme from the recapitulation, played by the solo horn over quiet string chords [media unavailable]. This phrase is heard four times in the film, each time accompanying Laura’s private thoughts about her alienation from those around her and her inability to communicate her true feelings;^[7](Laura thinking about Dolly during their train ride home) “I wish I could trust you. I wish you were a wise, kind friend instead of a gossiping acquaintance I’ve known casually for years and … Continue reading as a referential soundtrack cue, the wistful “solitude” of the solo French horn phrase parallels the aloneness of Laura’s interior life. Interestingly enough, the same melody was adapted for the popular song “I Think of You”^[8]Music by Jack Elliot, lyrics by Don Marcotte (Embassy Music, 1941). The song was recorded by Frank Sinatra in 1941 (with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, on The Song is You, RCA Victor) and again in 1957 … Continue reading in 1941, just a few years before Brief Encounter was released. The song’s lyrics provide a remarkable intertext with the way this particular theme is employed in the film to accompany Laura’s nostalgic reminiscences as she sits at home in her living room:

In the hush of the evening, as shadows steal across my lonely room, I think of you…
From afar the music of violins comes softly through the gloom…
So when dusk is falling, I live again the loveliness we knew, I think of you…

The other concerto excerpt in Brief Encounter that is strictly Laura’s “own” is, appropriately enough, the solo cadenza passage from the second movement. After Laura deliberately misses her train and follows Alec back to his friend’s apartment, the awkward lovers are interrupted by the owner’s unexpected return. Guilt-stricken by the appearance of her situation, Laura runs away in the pouring rain: “I know it was stupid to run, but I couldn’t help myself. I felt so utterly humiliated and defeated and so dreadfully, dreadfully ashamed” (the excerpt heard here is the “running” piano passages that lead up to the second movement’s cadenza). Soon Laura stops, leans on a lamppost to catch her breath, and comes to terms with her predicament—at this moment the cadenza begins:

“After a moment or two I pulled myself together, and walked on in the direction of the station … I suddenly realized that I couldn’t go home, not until I had got myself under more control, and had a little time to think.”

This cadenza moment brings “defeated” Laura a temporary respite from her struggle with the surrounding ensemble of emotional stimuli, marital and familial obligations, and social conventions. It also provides the audience a momentarily more intimate (and perhaps sympathetic) relationship to Laura herself [media unavailable]. Here, as in a concerto performance, attention is suddenly focused fully on the soloist in his/her moment of improvisatory thought and “solution.”^[9]As Kerman writes, the concerto cadenza involves “a disruption” in the normal relationship of concerto agents (72), for it provides a moment of soloistic assertion “set apart from … Continue reading

Aside from the musical cues which underscore Laura’s private reminiscences and moments of introspection, other excerpts from the second and third movements of the Rachmaninoff concerto are “shared” by Laura and Alec. These passages accompany moments of dialogue—”concerto conversations”—between the two lovers, and they reveal through the musical relationships of their “concerto agents” information about the relationships between the characters they accompany.

For example, the main theme of the second movement, with its juxtaposition of two “irreconcilable” rhythms (duples and triplets) between orchestra and piano, accompanies scenes in which Laura and Alec discuss the impossibility of their being together any longer. During one of the lengthiest concerto excerpts on the soundtrack, the two lovers promise to meet each other again the following Thursday, but also recognize that their ultimate farewell is foreseeable and unavoidable.

(Alec tells Laura) “I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you, but now I see it’s got to happen soon anyway. It’s almost happening already.”

(Laura tells herself) “Today was our last day together—our very last together in all our lives.”

Underscoring such dialogue is the 2-against-3 duet between melody and accompaniment; here the rhythmic disjunction between soloist and ensemble parallels the incongruous relationship between the two lovers. The coda of the second movement presents the climactic statement of this musical disunion, in which the theme is heard in a slow, drawn-out melody in the strings while the winds (in triplets) and piano counterpoint this with rising and falling chords. “I want to die. If only I could die,” sighs Laura with resignation during this final musical representation of their impossible relationship.

The other concerto excerpt shared by Alec and Laura is more optimistic: the famous “love theme” of the concerto’s third movement, which is heard three times in the film. (This melody too was appropriated for a popular song, “Full Moon and Empty Arms,” published in 1946 and recorded by numerous artists through the 1950s and 60s.^[10]”Full Moon and Empty Arms,” music by Buddy Kaye, lyrics by Ted Mossman (New York: Barton Music, 1946). Among the vocalists to record this song are Eddie Fisher (on I’m in the Mood for … Continue reading) Its first occurrence on the soundtrack accompanies their chat in the railway station café as the two begin to fall in love. Entranced by Alec’s quiet enthusiasm as he describes his medical work and professional ideals, Laura comments, “You suddenly look much younger, almost like a little boy”—whereupon this theme begins quietly on the soundtrack [media unavailable]. Soon it crescendos to full volume when Laura agrees to another rendezvous the following week. The second occurrence of the “love theme” is heard when Laura and Alec drive out to the countryside and share a romantic moment on a stone bridge over a small stream. Here the concerto excerpt begins with the chordal piano solo “lead in”, and continues through the orchestral statement of the melody and the subsequent piano entry. Their dialogue, set against the “love theme” in the piano, culminates in a kiss just at the climax of the phrase.

The third and final statement of the “love theme” on the soundtrack is a significant moment both structurally in the concerto and narratively in the film. It is heard immediately after Laura’s aborted suicide attempt at the railway station, as the scene shifts back to her living room. At this point, however, Alec is no longer in the story; rather it is Laura’s husband who rouses her from her reverie and comforts her, suggesting that “it wasn’t a very happy dream” his wife had been having. The soundtrack cuts to the grandiose final statement of the “love theme” at the Maestoso. In this culminating Maestoso, soloist and ensemble are finally united and reconciled in a shared statement of the theme: the soaring melody is in the orchestra, while the piano complements it harmonically with blocked chords, resonating with the basses in low octaves and with the violins in eighth-note articulations of the line in the upper treble [media unavailable].

Kerman describes such a triumphant moment of musical reconciliation—a typical ending for the late-Romantic piano concerto—as the climax of a “mutual rondo” movement: “An expansive tune that has been played by the orchestra and then replayed by the piano comes back in the coda, sounded forth by both agents simultaneously, in ecstatic unisons and octaves,” Kerman writes, characterizing this final statement of the theme “as upbeat a consummation as anyone could wish” (114). At the melodramatic conclusion of Brief Encounter, the Rachmaninoff “love theme,” previously the musical cue for Laura’s and Alec’s (unconsummated) relationship, is here assigned to Laura’s husband, who rescues his wife from her strangely depressive reverie and redeems her adulterous experience through his compassionate and unconditional love. The soundtrack music appoints Laura’s husband—not Alec—as the ultimate hero of her romantic struggle by assigning him final control of the Maestoso’s “mutual rondo.” “You’ve been a long ways away,” he tells his wife at the conclusion of the film. “Thank you for coming back to me.” The marital relationship and ordered domesticity have triumphed over Laura’s short-lived romantic affair.

The same moment of “mutual rondo” from the Rachmaninoff concerto—and a similar affirmation of the social order—figures prominently in the film version of Borden Chase’s story “Concerto,” I’ve Always Loved You (1946).^[11]Directed by Frank Borzage, starring Catherine MacLeod (Myra Hassman), Philip Dorn (Leopold Goronoff), and William Carter (George Sampter). The film follows the original story’s plot closely, maintaining Myra Hassman’s love triangle dilemma, her musical struggle against the domineering conductor and “master” Goronoff as a parallel to her romantic struggle, and the gendered associations of the concerto’s thematic structure. On the soundtrack, however, the concerto chosen to enact Myra’s romantic struggle is not the Chaikovsky First, as in the original story, but rather the Rachmaninoff Second. This switch invites a comparison with Brief Encounter, which premiered just a year before I’ve Always Loved You. Like Laura in Brief Encounter, Myra must choose between her duty to a dedicated “good” husband and her uncontrollable romantic passion for another man.

The Rachmaninoff concerto is heard in two lengthy performance sequences in I’ve Always Loved You. The first of these is Myra’s Carnegie Hall debut, which features a 12-minute abridgment of the concerto (a remarkably long segment of continuous musical performance for a Hollywood feature film). While playing the Andante sostenuto solo passage from the second movement (m. 503 onward), Myra gazes lovingly at Goronoff, who has paused in his conducting to watch her. But when the orchestra enters, the melody in the strings is heard more softly on the soundtrack than the accompanying piano figurations. To the listener/viewer it might seem as if the orchestra and its conductor have been rendered secondary as the piano soloist has taken the musical spotlight; indeed, the script explicitly highlights this dynamic, as a man in audience remarks excitedly, “She’s taking over! Stealing the show from Goronoff!” Gradually, however, the orchestral melody—identified earlier in the film as the concerto’s “heroic” and “masculine” theme, thus “Goronoff’s theme”—begins to overpower the piano figurations as Goronoff conducts with increasing vigor over Myra’s accompaniment (from m. 517 onward). “We know that the soloist’s energy and individuality will always be contained by the orchestral texture,” Small writes, “and that it will not be overwhelmed by the orchestra” (181). Here, however, the orchestra deliberately overpowers the soloist in volume and tempo as an acoustic demonstration of Goronoff’s power and displeasure over Myra’s abilities. This musical disunion enacts the breakdown of their relationship, just as the same theme marks Laura’s and Alec’s impending separation in Brief Encounter.

The intentional dissynchronization of concerto agents is further exaggerated in the closing section of the movement, as Myra struggles to stay together with the orchestra. As the movement ends, she pleads in a voiceover, “What is it, Maestro? Why are you angry? Don’t be angry with me, don’t fight against me, please!” It seems that Myra has been musically “defeated” by Goronoff, who has “taught her who was the master.” Then in the concluding Maestoso, supposedly the unifying and affirming “mutual rondo” of the concerto’s “love theme,” Goronoff and the orchestra speed up in tempo, rushing ahead of the struggling soloist, who cannot keep up in tempo or volume. At the end of the performance, Myra, in tears, runs offstage humiliated. As a result of her crushing defeat in the concerto-struggle, she forsakes her professional concert career, marries her childhood friend George, and settles down to a quiet domestic life on the farm.

The second concerto scene in I’ve Always Loved You comes at the melodramatic conclusion of the film, when Myra and Goronoff confront each other again in the same concerto and the same hall many years later. Myra agrees to this second performative confrontation to set the record straight. When Goronoff reminds her “I am your master!” she stands up to him: “You’re wrong, very wrong!” Her master is now her good husband George, even if Myra might not love him with the same passionate intensity she had once felt for Goronoff. From the podium Goronoff taunts her, “You say I am not your master! Then play!” In this scene, which devotes 8-1/2 minutes to the concerto performance, Myra performs with greater assurance and determination than before. Now “the shoe is on the other foot,” as a stagehand remarks, and Goronoff has to admit, “I was wrong, Myra. There is a woman in music.” But this “mutual rondo” does not affirm the relationship between Myra and Goronoff, as it does not affirm Laura and Alec’s romance in Brief Encounter; instead, it is once again the music of the established matrimonial order. In the middle of the Maestoso conclusion, when Myra sees her beaming husband waiting backstage, she gets up from piano and walks across the stage to him. “I love you, George! I’ve always loved you!” she exclaims as the orchestra continues on without her part. Here, too, the female protagonist is reunited with her long-suffering loving husband, the real hero of the concerto-struggle.

In two additional films from the period, the same “mutual rondo” from the Rachmaninoff concerto enacts a pianist-protagonist’s romantic conflict resolved through recourse to the matrimonial order. In each case, the film’s concerto performance scene follows a particular model of soundtrack editing: the opening or exposition of the first movement cuts directly to the third movement’s final cadenza leading into the triumphant concluding “mutual rondo.” In Rhapsody^[12]Directed by Charles Vidor, starring John Ericson (James Guest), Elizabeth Taylor (Louise Durant), and Vittorio Gassman (Paul Bronte). (1953), a climactic performance of the Rachmaninoff concerto (another 8-1/2 minutes of music) reconciles the troubled relationship between pianist James Guest and his wife, Louise. (Portrayed by John Ericson and Elizabeth Taylor, pictured below)^[13]Louise has long suffered from a romantic infatuation over Paul, a caddish and selfish violinist, but after he jilts her she marries James on the rebound, though she does not love him. Her … Continue reading

In September Affair^[14]Directed by William Dieterle, starring Joan Fontaine (Manina Stuart) and Joseph Cotton (David Lawrence). (1950), unmarried pianist Manina Stuart and a married engineer, David Lawrence, carry on a secretive affair in Italy, accompanied on the soundtrack (as in Brief Encounter) by the concerto’s “love theme” at certain dramatic moments: a passionate kiss, a farewell departure, a final moment of nostalgia during the plane trip home. One evening when she is alone, Manina plays an arrangement of the concerto’s “love theme” interpolated with phrases from Kurt Weill’s “September Song,”^[15]”September Song,” music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Maxwell Anderson; the arrangement in the film is by Leonard Pennario. a popular song about a May-to-December relationship, which brings associations of longing sadness and nostalgia to the concerto melody. As with Myra in I’ve Always Loved You, Manina’s climactic performance of the Rachmaninoff concerto in Carnegie Hall provides a decisive moment of renunciation in her relationship to David: realizing that his rightful place is with his own wife and son, she decides to leave for South America immediately after the concert to put the affair behind her. “Our love was built on deception,” she tells him with finality. “It had to end.” In the film’s closing credits, the “love theme” is again interpolated with the melody of “September Song,” signifying a bittersweet victory for the social order.

Excess and Illness

The 1940s “concerto film” is typically classified as melodrama, and also frequently a “woman’s film.” This is a category of film story produced primarily for a female audience, about a female protagonist, and centered on aspects of domestic life (home and family) and romantic relationship (marriage, affairs, adultery, the “fallen” woman, love triangles, and so forth). The film melodrama provides a further context for the enactment of concerto “relationships” according to the formal, social, and psychological determinants that shape its narrative and cinematic style.^[1]These theoretical categories are discussed in three important essays on the Hollywood melodrama: Thomas Elsaesser’s “Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama,” … Continue reading On the formal level, concerto excerpts provide musical “punctuation” to emotional situations or settings, as well as “structural significance”^[2]Elsaesser’s terms (50). Theorists of film melodrama have tended to focus on elements of mise en scène (composition of frame, lighting, décor, color, gesture, and “the symbolization of … Continue reading in conjunction with particular narrative events or characterizations, as in the case of Brief Encounter’s “separation theme,” or the “mutual rondo” scenes closing many concerto films.

Melodrama’s social determinant involves the representation of power relations, particularly (in the woman’s film) the relationship of a female protagonist to some manifestation of the patriarchal social order (a husband/father figure, the bourgeois family/home ideal, or the range of social conventions which shape and control a woman’s identity and agency). The story of her struggle within or against the social order can be paralleled to the metaphoric struggle enacted musically through the concerto, particularly when this character is a pianist who “performs” the confrontation “publicly.” But her act of desire and defiance entails a certain degree of suffering, the emotional impact of which is heightened when the narrative and/or musical perspective of the film belongs to the story’s “victim” (as in Brief Encounter).^[3]Elsaesser writes, “Melodrama confers on [the characters] a negative identity through suffering, and the progressive self-immolation and disillusionment generally ends in resignation: they … Continue reading The resolution of this valiant but doomed endeavor comes about through her ultimate capitulation in the face of those greater forces: renunciation of the object of desire (her child in The Great Lie, her lover in Brief Encounter, her career in I’ve Always Loved You) and reconciliation within the matrimonial or domestic social order.^[4]Nowell-Smith writes, “What is at stake (also for social-ideological reasons) is the survival of the family unit and the possibility for individuals of acquiring an identity which is also a … Continue reading

But to thus constrain the protagonist’s agency and desire—to pre-ordain the impossibility of her struggle—is to generate a degree of emphatic, overwrought (“melodramatic”) emotional tension within the story,^[5]Elsaesser writes, “A typical situation in American melodramas has the plot build up to an evidently catastrophic collision of counter-running sentiments, but a string of delays gets the … Continue reading hence the psychological determinant in the melodramatic narrative. As Geoffrey Nowell-Smith explains, the impossibility of a “happy ending” which resolves all the accumulated desires and conflicts generates a melodramatic excess, and “the more the plots press towards a resolution the harder it is to accommodate the excess.”^[6]Nowell-Smith, 73. This over-the-top pressure does have a cinematic outlet, however:

The undischarged emotion which cannot be accommodated within the action, subordinated as it is to the demands of family/lineage/inheritance [the patriarchal social order], is traditionally expressed in the music and … in certain elements of the mise en scène. That is to say, music and mise en scène do not just heighten the emotionality of an element of the action: to some extent they substitute for it.^[7]Nowell-Smith, 74.

In musicals, Nowell-Smith asserts, music and dancing are the means for “the siphoning of the excess” (74) generated by the plot’s push for resolution. In the concerto film, by extension, the soundtrack music or “performance” itself can convey this emotional release, often in the story’s climactic or concluding scene.

Nowell-Smith further theorizes this mechanism of the film melodrama in Freudian terms, linking it to the psychopathology of hysteria. Just as psychic trauma is somatized into physical symptom according to psychoanalytic theory, the melodrama’s “unaccomodated excess” repressed at the narrative level is transferred onto or into “the body of the text” itself,^[8]Nowell-Smith writes, “In hysteria (and specifically in what Freud has designated as ‘conversion hysteria’) the energy attached to an idea that has been repressed returns converted into a … Continue reading including the musical soundtrack. As a “hysterical” soundtrack device, then, the concerto can embody or enact a character’s psychological interiority and represent relationships within that character’s body, or between “sides” of the body or mind—another manner of “personification” of the dialogue or conflict between concerto agents. With the social order of patriarchy idealized as the female’s “natural” or “healthy” state of relationship, such conflict may be portrayed metaphorically as psychosomatic illness. In Ombre et lumière, for example, Isabelle’s Chaikovsky performance induces her physical paralysis and mental hallucinations. In Brief Encounter, Laura Jesson considers herself a “neurotic creature”—she breaks into unpredictable, unexplainable fits of laughter or tears, and suffers debilitating faints which her husband and friends cannot understand. Her lovesickness is equated with hysteria by her husband’s question regarding the crossword puzzle (in which “romance” fits in with “delirium”), and as an explanation for her “fainting spells” she suggests with resignation, “I suppose I must be that type of woman.” The Rachmaninoff concerto, as soundtrack music tied directly to her interiority, carries the melodramatic excess of her psychosomatic affliction and her gradual nervous breakdown culminating in a suicide attempt.

The basic narrative formula for the melodramatic “concerto relationship” is evident in the following films:

• Stress and strain: Gefährtin meiner Sommers/Companion of My Summer^[9]Directed by Fritz Peter Buch, starring Anna Dammann (Angelika Rink) and Paul Hartmann (Manfred Claudius), (Germany, 1943).^[10]Pianist Angelika Rink is exhausted by the demands of international concertizing. She plays a concerto in the Beethoven Hall in Berlin, but collapsfes onstage at the end of the performance. Press … Continue reading
• An affair of the heart: Love Story (A Lady Surrenders)^[11]Directed by Leslie Arliss, starring Margaret Lockwood (Felicity Crighton/Lissa Campbell) and Stewart Granger (Kit Firth)., (UK, 1944).^[12]Pianist Lissa Campbell learns that she has only a short time left to live because of heart disease. She decides to quit performing and spend her remaining months resting by the sea in Cornwall. There … Continue reading, (Germany, 1944).^[13]Self-sacrificing pianist Anna Alt tries to support her husband Joachim’s composing career in any way possible. She decides to concertize again, though she tires easily in performance because of … Continue reading
• Hysteria: The Seventh Veil^[14]Directed by Compton Bennett, starring Ann Todd (Francesca Cunningham) and James Mason (Uncle Nicholas), (UK, 1945).^[15]In a melodrama rife with Freudian subtexts, pianist Francesca Cunningham is dominated by an overbearing mentor/manager, her “uncle” Nicholas, and tormented by a neurotic fear of injuring … Continue reading
• Tuberculosis: The Other Love^[16]Directed by André de Toth, starring Barbara Stanwyck (Karen Duncan), David Niven (Dr. Antony Stanton), and Richard Conte (Paul Clermont). Music: Miklos Rozsa., (1947).^[17]Pianist Karen Duncan is diagnosed with tuberculosis after she collapses during a concert tour, and she must quit her career to recuperate at a Swiss sanatorium. (The script credits an unpublished … Continue reading
• Amnesia: While I Live^[18]Directed by John Harlow, starring Audrey Fildes (Olwen Trevelyan), Sonia Dresdel (Julia Trevelyan), and Carol Raye (Sally Grant/”Miss Olwen”). The film’s title was changed to The Dream … Continue reading, (UK, 1947).^[19]Pianist Olwen Trevelyan’s accidental death leaves the composition of her own concerto unfinished. Twenty-five years later, a mysterious young woman arrives at the Trevelyan estate and immediately … Continue reading

A female pianist-protagonist struggles to assert individual agency and desire against the confines of the surrounding patriarchal social order (represented variously by her husband, doctor, mentor, manager, teacher, conductor, and so forth). A physical or psychological illness afflicts the protagonist, its effects coming to the fore in a climactic moment of confrontation, the concerto performance itself, which culminates in her physical and/or emotional capitulation. As resolution to this defeat (when there is the usual “happy ending”), an appropriate romantic relationship alleviates the psychosomatic distress and restores her proper place within the social order. It should be noted that such narratives of concerto struggle are not limited to Hollywood productions.

The afflicted female protagonist who “performs” the excessive piano concerto need not even be a pianist per se. In The Story of Three Loves^[20]Directed by Gottfried Reinhardt, starring Moira Shearer (Paula Woodward) and James Mason (Charles Coutray). Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is the music for acclaimed choreographer Charles Coutray’s new ballet. Paula Woodward is a talented ballerina who yearns for the leading role, but she collapses unexpectedly in the middle of the audition. Her doctor informs her that she suffers from a serious heart condition, and must never dance again—but after attending the ballet’s premiere, Paula stays behind and dances alone on the deserted stage as the music echoes in her mind (here, as in Brief Encounter, the concerto discloses the female character’s psychological interiority and conveys the narrative excess of her emotion). Unbeknowst to her, Coutray has been watching. “You’re dancing itself,” he tells her, “You’re music itself!” (Paula embodies the concerto struggle and its melodramatic excess within her own mortally ill body). Flattered by the maestro’s attention, but aware too of the dangers of her condition, she decides to give all to one last dance of her life, just for Coutray. Before her inevitable death, however, the two enact a sort of marriage vow accompanied by the “mutual rondo” of the Rhapsody’s Eighteenth Variation.^[21]Charles: “Am I going to lose you again? Promise me I shan’t! I want us to be together. I want us to do these things together. I want you to be with me always!” Paula: “I’ll be … Continue reading

But even without an afflicted concerto “performer” as female protagonist, the film melodrama can enact the mythology of struggle and capitulation through a piano concerto-style soundtrack. This is evident in the following four films about the “fallen” woman, a female character-type who has challenged the social order and must suffer the consequences:

• Franz Waxman’s “Appassionata”^[22]Like Miklos Rozsa’s “Spellbound Concerto” two years before (from another Hitchcock-Selznick production), Waxman’s piano concerto-style “Appassionata” is a concert work … Continue reading in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case^[23]Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Gregory Peck (Anthony Keane) and Alida Valli (Maddalena Paradine)., 1947.^[24]Waxman’s melody becomes the musical leitmotif for the character of Maddelena Paradine, a mysterious woman with an “unattractive” past (she describes herself euphemistically as “a … Continue reading
• Brahms’s D Minor Piano Concerto, op. 15, in The L-Shaped Room^[25]Directed by Bryan Forbes, starring Leslie Caron (Jane Fosset) and Tom Bell (Toby). (UK, 1962).^[26]In this tragic romance about a young woman pregnant with an illegitimate child, one passage from the Brahms concerto is heard during the opening credits as Jane walks through the gritty neighborhood … Continue reading
• The “Swedish Rhapsody” in Ross Hunter’s production of Madame X^[27]Directed by David Lowell Rich, starring Lana Turner (Mrs. Clayton Anderson/Holly Parker) and Keir Dullea (Clayton Anderson, Jr.)., (1965).^[28]The “Swedish Rhapsody” by Charles Williams sets the melodramatic stage in the opening credits of this film, a frequently-remade story of a woman wrongly accused of adultery and the murder … Continue reading
• The “Theme” from Billy Wilder’s The Apartment^[29]Starring Shirley MacLaine (Fran Kubelik) and Fred MacMurray (Jeff D. Sheldrake)., (1960).^[30]Young Fran Kubelik has an affair with her married boss, but soon realizes that he will not actually divorce his wife as he promises. When Fran arrives at a restaurant for their rendezvous, the … Continue reading

But female characters are not the only ones to struggle through a piano concerto in the film melodrama. Nowell-Smith notes that the melodrama “often features women as protagonists, and where the central figure is a man there is regularly an impairment of his ‘masculinity.’”^[31]Nowell-Smith (72). As in While I Live, in which the female protagonist’s inability to complete her own concerto leads to her frustration (even death) as well as the subsequent disruptions to marital/heterosexual order caused by her alter ego, the following four films present an uncompleted piano concerto as a representation for the identity crisis of a male pianist-protagonist:

• Shell-shocked stupor: Dangerous Moonlight^[32]Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst, starring Anton Walbrook (Stefan Radetzky) and Sally Grey (Carol Peters)., (UK, 1941).^[33]In what is probably the best-known “concerto film” of the World War II era, Stefan Radetzky is a Polish pianist who composes his “Warsaw Concerto” for his fiancée Carole. … Continue reading
• Disfigured desire: Phantom of the Opera^[34]Directed by Arthur Lubin, starring Claude Rains (Erique Claudin), Susanna Foster (Christine DuBois), and Fritz Leiber (Franz Liszt)., (1943).^[35]In this re-telling of Gaston LeRoux’s familiar tale, Enrique Claudin is a violinist in the Paris Opera orchestra who harbors a secret love for the singer Christine DuBois, and pursues another … Continue reading
• Psychosis and pyromania: Hangover Square^[36]Directed by John Brahm, starring Laird Cregar (George Harvey Bone), Faye Marlowe (Barbara Chapman), and Linda Darnell (Netta Longden)., (1945).^[37]Pianist-composer George Harvey Bone is trying to complete his long-awaited concerto (Bernard Herrmann’s “Concerto Macabre”) with the encouragement of his fiancée, Barbara. Her father, … Continue reading, 1947.^[38]Dan Evans is an embittered pianist who cannot complete his own half-written concerto because of an accident that has caused him to go blind. “It’ll never get finished … because the … Continue reading

(This plot line may owe some of its inspiration to the well-known story of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s psychological breakdown in connection with the composition of his Second Piano Concerto.^[39]In 1898, Rachmaninoff suffered a nervous breakdown generally attributed to the critical rejection of his First Symphony. Plagued by doubt and insecurity, he gave up composing until Dr. Nicolai Dahl, … Continue reading) His “masculinity” called into question by some form of mental or physical impairment, the would-be composer is unable to complete or perform his own concerto just as he is unable to consummate his relationship with a female character and thus enter into the patriarchal social order.

Even though films such as Dangerous Moonlight and Night Song feature male pianist-protagonists struggling against illness to achieve musical and romantic conquest, these two melodramas can still be considered examples of the woman’s film because of the starring roles played by Sally Gray or Merle Oberon, respectively, as the afflicted male’s benefactor, muse, and love interest. Publicity for Night Song demonstrates that this is also a story of a woman’s struggle to achieve idealized romantic relationship. In a direct appeal to female viewers, one poster proclaimed that “Only another woman’s heart would understand why she dared this strange deception to win his love!” One newspaper review of Night Song called the film “A Concerto for Miss Oberon,” assigning the female protagonist possession of the man as well as his piece.^[40]A. E. Wilson, “A Concerto for Miss Oberon,” The Star [Los Angeles] (August 6, 1948): 6.

The reputations of the actual pianists who performed concerti on the soundtracks of 1940s melodramas (Artur Rubinstein in Night Song, for example) was a promotional selling point, but could also play a role in the reception of such films for the female audience. Richard Dyer asserts that the announcement of British pianist Eileen Joyce as the performer of the Rachmaninoff Second Concerto in Brief Encounter lends “a particular female inflection to the music” for the film’s audience. Joyce also recorded the soundtrack for The Seventh Veil the same year, while British pianists Harriet Cohen and Betty Humby-Beecham played for Love Story and While I Live, respectively. Audiences could identify with not only the female protagonist and “her” concerto, but perhaps also with the films’ behind-the-scenes female concerto soloists as the “real” women who endured “real-life” professional and musical struggles.

These “concerto films” could also provide a fantasy or escapist entertainment for the female audience identifying with the female concert star or metaphoric “soloist” (Sandra Kovak in The Great Lie, or Laura Jesson in Brief Encounter) who performs independently, assertively, and expressively within the patriarchal social order. Furthermore, such melodramatic romances could vicariously provide “an extramarital dalliance in all its achingly brave and honourable middle-classness,” as Alexander Walker describes that of Brief Encounter, “[offering] absolution for folk of Laura or Alec’s age, in or out of uniform, who had ‘let their standards drop’ and wanted to repent before peace compelled a return to respectability.” But if “A Lady Surrenders” (alternate title for Love Story, poster pictured) in this endeavor, perhaps it is the lot of “ordinary, moral, high-thinking citizens” (such as Laura Jesson) to endure “the pain and grief caused by having one’s desires destroyed by the pressures of social convention.”

Scholars frequently discuss the abundance of melodramas and women’s films during the 1940s—during and after World War II—in light of that era’s significant social, economic, and ideological changes affecting women’s place in the patriarchal social order (Elsaesser, for one, notes melodrama’s “interiorization and personalization of what are primarily ideological conflicts”). Many aspects of public and private relationship were in a state of flux and reconfiguration during this period, from career opportunities and professional relations to domestic and familial concerns. The soundtrack concerto, representing the concept of relationship in musical and performative terms, could provide a musical and cinematic metaphor for such conflicts and their possible resolutions.

In addition to heightening the emotional “excess” in these melodramas, perhaps the high-art classical-music trappings of the soundtrack concerto could also vouchsafe the social acceptability of such tales of adulterous love and subversive desire, and validate the emotional investment audiences felt for their “fallen” female protagonists. In a 1950s survey of British cinema audiences which measured the emotional impact of particular films in terms of whether they caused viewers to cry, not only Brief Encounter’s subject matter prompted an emotional reaction: respondents also mentioned the power of the film’s soundtrack music to bring forth tears. In his autobiography, Stewart Granger (Kit in Love Story) gives his frank appraisal of that film’s plot (“the biggest load of crap I’d ever read”), but also admits the emotional impact of the film’s melodramatic music: “Margaret Lockwood is dying of some unnamed disease. We meet. I don’t tell her I’m going blind. She doesn’t tell me she’s dying. The audience knows all this but we don’t. … She is a pianist/composer and writes the ‘Cornish Rhapsody’ … It was a smash hit and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Cinematic Recapitulations

The mythologized tropes of romantic struggle surrounding the soundtrack concerto—confrontation resolved through reconciliation or renunciation, affliction overcome through loving relationship—have prompted multiple retellings in films over the decades. A recent example is Shine^[1]Directed by Scott Hicks, starring Geoffrey Rush (David Helfgott) and Lynn Redgrave (Gillian), also Sonia Todd (Sylvia), Googie Withers (Katharine Susannah Prichard), Beverley Dunn (Beryl Alcott), … Continue reading (1996), purportedly the “true story” of pianist David Helfgott’s early career, his struggle against mental illness, and his redemption through the nurturing woman who “saves” him and eventually marries him.^[2]One of Gillian Helfgott’s descriptions of David’s condition recalls the image of Karen Duncan trapped in the Swiss sanatorium in The Other Love: “Imagine him locked up in an institution … Continue reading

As a further narrative about confrontation with the patriarchal social order, Shine fits Nowell-Smith’s assertion that “the Hollywood melodrama is also fundamentally concerned with the child’s problems of growing into a sexual identity within the family, under the aegis of a symbolic law which the Father incarnates” (73). In the film, David struggles against the social order represented by his excessively overbearing father and the “battleground” environment of his childhood home. David is convinced that he will be “punished for the rest of [my] life” for his disobedience in leaving (and thus “destroying”) the patriarchal family unit, and for the disappointments he has caused his ambitious stage-father. In contrast to the castrating paterfamilias, several sympathetic females (replacing his own weak and ineffectual mother) nurture David’s agency and desire: the waitress Sylvia (who takes him in from the rain and gets him a job), the maternal Katharine (who supports his plans to study abroad), the volunteer social worker Beryl (who takes him out of the sanatorium), and finally the loving Gillian.^[3]Other male leadership figures in the story—Ben Rosen, David’s gay piano teacher in Australia, and Cecil Parkes, his one-armed professor of piano in London—are presented as similarly supportive, … Continue reading Thus Shine as well leans towards the category of the woman’s film, for Gillian can be regarded as the ultimate heroine of David’s concerto-struggle.

The composition used to signify David’s struggle in Shine is Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto in D minor, op. 30. Part of the film’s hype involved fetishizing the technical difficulty and musical challenge of this piece (witness popular press articles such as “Between the Rach III and a Hard Place: A Notoriously Brutal Concerto Stars in a New Film”^[4]U.S. News and World Report 121/22 (December 2, 1996): 78.) in order for its practice and performance scenes to carry dramatic impact. “It’s a piece for elephants, elephantine!” David chatters. His piano teacher warns David’s demanding father, “Whatever you do, don’t you inflict bloody Rachmaninoff on him! He’s not ready!” The professor exhorts David to imagine the “monumental Rach 3” in terms of a confrontation between concerto agents: “Think of it as two separate melodies jousting for supremacy!” The concerto performance itself is presented as a dangerous interaction: “Performing is a risk, you know! No safety net!” his professor warns him. “Make no mistake, David—it’s dangerous. You will get hurt!”

To complete the melodramatic mythology around the soundtrack concerto, an element of psychosomatic affliction is central to the plot and to the characterization of David:

(Professor) “No one’s ever mad enough to attempt the Rach Three!”
(David) “Am I—mad enough, Professor? Am I?”

Indeed, the psychologically disturbed soloist is no match for this intransigent concerto. As he crouches over the keyboard, sweat pouring from his face, David’s fingers race through the virtuoso passages almost with a mind of their own, but his loss of mental command is cinematically presented as a loss of hearing (for the film viewer as well), and the soundtrack music fades away into a dull thumping of the keys against the piano keybed. David is physically and emotionally ailing as he struggles valiantly through the concerto, and he collapses onstage as the ovation begins. His glasses also fall as he reaches for them, compounding his deafness with blindness: the castration is complete. David’s confrontation with the patriarchal social order (represented by the father, professor, composer, conductor, orchestra) has rendered him senseless and broken. Indeed, Shine’s “moral” as spoken by David, is that “It’s a life-long struggle to survive undamaged … A struggle to keep your head above water and not get it chopped off.”^[5]Later, in the scene of David’s return to solo performing near the conclusion of the film, the second theme of the concerto’s first movement—the calm, flowing melody in major—is used as a kind … Continue reading

In its mix of melodramatic fable and real-life biography, Shine inspired popular interest in the real David Helfgott and motivated impressive sales of his recordings of the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto.^[6]Shine: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Polygram, 1996), and David Helfgott Plays Rachmaninov Piano Concerto no. 3 (RCA Victor, 1997), with David Helfgott, piano; Milan Horvat, conductor; … Continue reading The film’s story also prompted magazine articles and a book of memoirs by his wife, Gillian Helfgott, Love You to Bits and Pieces^[7]Gillian Helfgott, with Alissa Tanskaya, Love You to Bits and Pieces: Life with David Helfgott (New York: Penguin Books, 1996). See also her article “He’s … Continue reading (perhaps an unintentional allusion to the mythology of “going to pieces” over a concerto). The book was marketed as “an enriching, inspiring tale of the triumph of love over adversity,” and its advertising copy celebrates the connection between the concerto struggle and spousal support: “When David achieves his dream of once again performing Rakhmaninov’s Third Concerto in 1995, it is a moment of overwhelming personal affirmation, and the culmination of Gillian’s unswerving belief in his brilliance” (from the cover). As a result of this romantic relationship, David Helfgott is able to conquer the concerto—a breakthrough instead of a breakdown—and restore the relationship of the “concerto sound-bodies” now healed and potent: “This monumental work, considered by many concert pianists as the most difficult of all piano concertos, seemed to pour out from his soul. He was surrendering to the music. The keys appeared to be an extension of his self, as the man, the music and the piano became one.^[8]Ibid, 8.”

“Becoming one”—technically and musically with the concerto, or physically, psychologically, and romantically through the concerto—is the basic plot of the melodramatic “concerto film.” But the numerous recapitulations of this theme have also inspired a fair share of parodic treatments, as well.^[9]A prime musical example is Franz Reizenstein’s “Concerto Popolare (The Concerto to End All Concertos),” which premiered at the Hoffnung Music Festival Concert of 1956, and is included … Continue reading In his classic spoof of the concerto-ritual and the solipsistic identification of concerto, instrument, and self, Oscar Levant daydreams about a performance of Gershwin’s Concerto in F in An American in Paris^[10]Directed by Vincente Minnelli, with Gene Kelly (Jerry Mulligan) and Oscar Levant (Adam Cooke). Levant also plays the Concerto in F “straight” in the George Gershwin biographical … Continue reading (1951). Here the soloist-protagonist takes on the roles of all concerto agents involved in the performance: not only the virtuoso pianist, but the conductor, string section, percussion section, and even audience members shouting “Bravo!” It is a struggle whose ultimate victory is guaranteed, since all forces are simply the megalomaniacal hero himself—but this masturbatory dream does not get Levant’s character anywhere in terms of romantic relationship.

That conquest is achieved by Gene Kelly, Levant’s co-star in An American in Paris, who further plays up the role of romantic “concerto agent” in a classic homage to Hollywood musicals and composer films, Les demoiselles de Rochefort/The Young Girls of Rochefort^[11]Starring Catherine Deneuve (Delphine Garnier), Françoise Dorléac (Solange Garnier), and Gene Kelly (Andrew Miller). (1967) by French director Jacques Demy. Here Kelly plays pianist Andrew Miller, an American in Rochefort who happens to meet the woman of his dreams one day on the street, but cannot find her again. Solange Garnier, his love interest, is a pianist who teaches “solfège et l’art de l’arpège” in the provincial town and composes her own piano concerto (Michel Legrand’s “Theme du Concerto”). A page of her score falls into Andy’s possession, and he soon begins to sing it, appropriating its melody to his own lyrics as an expression of his desire for this elusive woman:

Sol, mi, fa, la, sol, sol, Où sont les jolies mains qui tracèrent ces notes?
Mi, ré, mi, si, mi, mi, Il me faut sans tarder leur passer des menottes!^[12]”Where are the pretty hands which traced these notes? Without delay I must release them from their shackles!”

Meanwhile, of course, Solange is seeking the missing page of her unfinished concerto. The two lovers finally find each other in the town’s music shop, where Andy is at a white grand piano playing Solange’s concerto, now “his” as well. Reunited, the pair consummate their relationship in a stylized dance to the swelling strains of the restored concerto.

A scene in Brief Encounter may have provided Billy Wilder the plot inspiration for his film The Apartment (about a man who loans his flat out to amorous couples desiring a discreet rendezvous), but it definitely inspired the quintessential spoof of the soundtrack concerto as melodramatic masculine conquest, in Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch^[13]Starring Tom Ewell (Richard Sherman) and Marilyn Monroe. (1955). When Richard Sherman’s wife and young son go out of town for a few weeks in the summer, temptation arises in the form of a charming and voluptuous upstairs neighbor (Marilyn Monroe). Richard struggles with his passions and his morals, while fantasizing that he possesses “a kind of animal thing” that attracts women. He even holds imaginary discussions with his wife over the appropriateness of these affairs: “This is not a thing that one likes to discuss with one’s wife, but you might as well know that women have been throwing themselves at me for years” (an echo of Laura’s hesitance to confess everything to her husband in Brief Encounter). François Truffaut notes that The Seven Year Itch is full of irreverent homages to classic films by other directors,

but the film Wilder constantly refers to, so that each scene becomes a vengeful slap, is David Lean’s Brief Encounter, with its streams of tears and its amorously awkward couple—the least sensual and most sentimental film ever wept over. Some people even weep thinking about it—inexhaustible tears from English crocodiles. “Rachmaninoff! His second concerto for piano and orchestra never loses its effect,” Tom Ewell declares, just because he’s seen Brief Encounter and he has figured out that Rachmaninoff is infallible in affairs of the heart and body.^[14]François Truffaut, The Films of My Life, trans. Leonard Mayhew (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978): 160.

The concerto is heard in “stereophonic sound” not only on the soundtrack, but in Richard’s (as in Laura’s) interior fantasies of romantic conquest. Richard imagines seduction scenarios involving his secretary Miss Morris (“deeply, madly, desperately, all-consumingly” in love with him), his night nurse (“poor Miss Finch—she fought it as long as she could”), and Elaine, his wife’s best friend and bridesmaid. The concerto’s “love theme” accompanies their beach seduction scene amid the crashing waves, a spoof of From Here to Eternity (1953) as well as Brief Encounter.^[15]Elaine: “What is this strange animal thing you have? It bothers me, it’s bothered me since the first time I saw you, and it’ll bother me always, from here to eternity!” Richard … Continue reading

In the highly-camped seduction scene, the would-be virtuoso pictures himself performing Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto on the living room piano. In his imagination, his alluring upstairs neighbor descends, wearing a very low-cut “ice-cold gown,” and proclaims breathlessly about the music, “Every time I hear it I go to pieces!”—precisely the reaction of all the other women in films (and film audiences) who swoon and “fall apart” to the power of this concerto. In dialogue that plays up the compositional relationship of “concerto agents” for comic effect, Monroe’s character insists “Don’t stop! Don’t stop! Don’t ever stop!” just as the solo part comes to a brief rest (at m. 75) while the orchestra continues playing:

“Why did you stop?” (she asks, crestfallen)
“You know why I stopped!”
“Why?”
“Because now I’m going to take you in my arms and kiss you. Very quickly, and very hard.”

But Richard’s passionate embrace results in the piano bench tipping backwards and crashing underneath them, another moment of “collapse” in performance. The piano concerto remains a daunting affair.