TY - JOUR
T1 - Dark Virtuosity
T2 - Violin Symbolism in Alberto Iglesias's Score for Pedro Almodóvar's Film The Skin I Live In (2011)
AU - Alonso Tomás, Diego
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press.
PY - 2024/2/28
Y1 - 2024/2/28
N2 - Singled out as one of the finest and most original works by the leading film-music composer Alberto Iglesias, the score for Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In (2011) stands out for its inclusion of a (neo-baroque) virtuoso part for solo violin with key symbolic functions in the film. This part is largely derived from the composer's post-minimalist string trio Cautiva (c. 1990). The present article analyses Iglesias's reconfiguration of key materials from Cautiva to express the relationship of domination, violence, and desire between the film's villain and the heroine as well as the role played by violin virtuosity in establishing links to the (gothic) horror genre and in the exaltation of the artist's power as creator that Almodóvar ultimately reflects upon in The Skin I Live In. The article adds to recent studies on the centuries-old symbolism of the violin as a topos of the demonic and otherworldly by analysing these meanings in one of the finest contemporary film scores. The study is part of a recent upsurge of critical assessments of Almodóvar-Iglesias's work from cultural and musico-analytical perspectives.
AB - Singled out as one of the finest and most original works by the leading film-music composer Alberto Iglesias, the score for Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In (2011) stands out for its inclusion of a (neo-baroque) virtuoso part for solo violin with key symbolic functions in the film. This part is largely derived from the composer's post-minimalist string trio Cautiva (c. 1990). The present article analyses Iglesias's reconfiguration of key materials from Cautiva to express the relationship of domination, violence, and desire between the film's villain and the heroine as well as the role played by violin virtuosity in establishing links to the (gothic) horror genre and in the exaltation of the artist's power as creator that Almodóvar ultimately reflects upon in The Skin I Live In. The article adds to recent studies on the centuries-old symbolism of the violin as a topos of the demonic and otherworldly by analysing these meanings in one of the finest contemporary film scores. The study is part of a recent upsurge of critical assessments of Almodóvar-Iglesias's work from cultural and musico-analytical perspectives.
UR - https://ddd.uab.cat/record/301601
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85185784690&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/e3c84092-22c3-3ca4-98fb-e6c2da561d2b/
U2 - 10.1017/S1478572222000421
DO - 10.1017/S1478572222000421
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85185784690
SN - 1478-5722
VL - 21
SP - 49
EP - 73
JO - Twentieth-Century Music
JF - Twentieth-Century Music
IS - 1
ER -