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- All Subjects: Music
- Creators: Ryan, Russell
- Creators: Feisst, Sabine
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
Director Wes Anderson enlisted the talents of composer Mark Mothersbaugh for his first four films (1996-2004), but suddenly decided to turn to composer Alexandre Desplat for the following five films (2009-2021). The question arises as to why this would be the case. In this paper I explore the career backgrounds of Mothersbaugh and Desplat including their musical influences and styles. I then examine Mothersbaugh’s music for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Desplat’s score for The French Dispatch. I analyze the use of music in these films and how it relates to the characters, their feelings, and their thoughts as well as how the music is intertwined with Anderson’s unique direction style. Part of this investigation will highlight the musical styles used, the mixture between composed and borrowed music, and the function of the music in the film to discover the similarities and differences between the two composers. With this paper I hope to fill a gap in the literature on film studies focused on the work of Anderson.
Jaime Mendoza-Nava (1925-2005) was an important Bolivian composer. In addition to writing music for the concert stage, he worked as a composer of film music in Los Angeles during the second half of the twentieth century. His life and work remain greatly unstudied, with the majority of his compositions existing only in manuscript form. The present study surveys the available biographical information on the composer and supplements it with new data collected through interviews with the composer’s family. The information presented here focuses on the composer’s American period as well as his personality traits. The study also examines the development of musical nationalism in Bolivia and other important aspects of Bolivian culture and society, thus creating a historical context through which key influences on the composer are identified. This historical and cultural information also contributes to an examination of Mendoza-Nava’s song cycle País de sombra (1988). A close study of this work reveals Mendoza-Nava’s sensitive setting of the poetry of Ricardo Jaimes Freyre (1868-1933) and his musical references to his Bolivian heritage. A recording of the song cycle by soprano Andrea Ramos and the current author and an edited copy of the musical score conclude the study.