The Joy of Illusions ‒ Martin Smolka’s Music for DIE PUPPE

ion becomes concreteness In the first scene, there is another appealing visual and musical moment that shows Lancelot’s blindness towards the obvious. The aristocrat splashes into water and the ensemble performers instantly follow this happening by onomatopoeically shouting »PLUMS«. This shout bursts into the established pattern of glissando – whistling – beat and therefore surprises not only rhythmically, but also via the suddenness of a graphic phonetic clearness. Musical Example 4: PLUMS (Score, p. 3/m. 45-47), © 2010 by Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden. Smolka’s instruction for such voice usage: »The given word (e.g. »PLUMS«) should be spoken or rather called with full voice, clearly pronounced.« (Smolka: Player instructions) Kieler Beiträge zur Filmmusikforschung 15: Music in TV Series & Music and Humour in Film and Television // 260 After Lubitsch has built the artificial stage it remains clearly synthetic even when the real Lancelot and his nurse are walking through it in true scale. The pond in which the fearful protagonist will fall is not revealed as such until the moment he splashes into it. In fact, within this unnatural setting, the rectangular pond itself appears as an abstract geometric structure just like the movie screen in a cinema. The empty two-dimensional squared surface is filled with concrete imagery once it is set in motion. The moment Lancelot touches it the object becomes water and marks the sudden appearance of reality. As for the audience, the abrupt shrieking of »PLUMS« by the ensemble shows that the moment of physical humour and surprise can reach out of the surface of the movie into the space of the spectators. Since the whistling was still musically structured, the scream is unexpected. Although the musicians are visible and audible, the shouting is as sudden as the water on the screen. The discernibility of the ensemble is as a part of the cinematic presentation of the staging. This process blurs the distinction between the internal and the external, which constitutes the cinema and expands what Chion confines within barriers of on-screen and offscreen sound. Here, at the latest, the abstract form of non-diegetic musical dramatization becomes permeable in favour of a constant play with the artificial nature of the setting of both Lubitsch and Smolka. The acousmatic inhabits an area that is beyond the established frame. Kieler Beiträge zur Filmmusikforschung 15: Music in TV Series & Music and Humour in Film and Television // 261 The pond reveals its identity. 0:01:44–0:01:45. This scene foreshadows Lancelot’s unawareness of Ossi’s genuine identity when he drops unerring into the dark world of the unknown. At the pro-filmic level, several visual motifs also refer to an illustration of meaning that appears in Lubitsch’s world represented by artificial spaces rendered by proverbial means and symbols: German sayings, for example, like »Sich keine grauen Haare wachsen lassen« (avoiding the growth of grey hair as a sign of worrying too much) (0:40:43) or »Jemandem rutscht das Herz in die Hose« (your heart is dropping into your pants as a sign of fear) (0:20:42) are then visualized on a concrete surface. This pictorial humour as a simplified application of a particular phenomenological experience is viewed through a sound accomplishment of refreshing naïve quality and youthful charm when preverbal language is produced to emphasize sounds of childish astonishment like »Jaaa, Oooch, Aaaach«. The variable degree of schematization in film and music tends to evacuate the relation to a professional »reality« to stress the constructed character of the filmic representation. Kieler Beiträge zur Filmmusikforschung 15: Music in TV Series & Music and Humour in Film and Television // 262 Filmic Example 5: 0:40:43; Filmic Example 6: 0:20:42 A Wedding as Refusal of Tradition? The central scene in THE DOLL is the wedding between Lancelot and the false (yet genuine) Ossi. Since a wedding is the main goal for the happy ending in almost every operetta, it seems like a break from tradition when this symbolizes Lancelot’s wish to shed responsibility. And yet appearances are kept up in the ceremony. Smolka decides to underpin this with a minuet-like dance. Very soon it is clear that the whole minuet consists of small modules or, as we established before, auditory snapshots. But that is not the only feature; each module can be traced back to the Lancelot motifs, which are extended to a continuous ceremonial procedure. For example, the main flute motif is a dance-like variation of the Kieler Beiträge zur Filmmusikforschung 15: Music in TV Series & Music and Humour in Film and Television // 263 whistled third step. So, the structure of the minuet consists of the following 18 auditory snapshots (the various percussive strokes are summarized as one): 1 – Whistled motif, Flute-variation 2 – Cadential answer of snapshot 1 in the violin 3 – Cluster on the accordion 4-10 – Linguistic snapshots: »Mm« ; »Öch« ; »Ooh« »Jaa« ; »Ach« ; »Mmm« ; »Miauu« ; »Ö«

be an (alleged) illusion of formal coherence that unveils transgressive elements within orthodox musical settings.
Whilst this process of musical translation plays a basic role, the context of the performance is also of crucial importance.
Through careful selection of phonetic and conceptual possibilities (the auditory concept includes elements of fragmentation, popular music, industrial noises and repetitive sonic material whilst the ensemble KONTRASTE performed live in front of the screen for the premier), the composer doesn't just refer to the traditional double staging of film and music in silent cinema; yet he integrates the ensemble as an acoustic expansion of the visual framing, which is already prone to transcend the usual screen frontiers in Lubitsch's oeuvre.
In addition, the musicians are not only working as neutral performers but also as a very living and breathing body of sound, using their voice for ludicrous effects. Therefore they react to the comic relief of the movie in an exaggerated way by intentionally playing »poorly«, adding microtonal »commentary« or onomatopoetic transpositions.
As the following details will show, it is not only the artistic context between old pictures and new music but also the cinematic content of artificiality which is a key part in Smolka's musical form.  (Frazer 1979, 87). In another Méliès film, ILLUSIONS FUNAMBULESQUES (EXTRAORDINARY ILLUSIONS, 1903), a mannequin comes to life after being touched by a wizard. The old Jewish myth of the Golem was put on screen in the year 1915 by Paul Wegener followed by two sequels (1917,1920)  Willner. In this operetta there is a major deviation from the Hoffmann plot, as well as from all matters concerning artificiality which we have discussed so far.
It is no longer the anthropomorphic projection of an automaton which blinds or astonishes the romantic main character. By reversing the Hoffmann tale, in which the protagonist Nathaniel considers the doll Olympia to be a human, Whereas Nathaniel appears to have found perfection in the artificial Olympia and an ideal counterpart and soulmate in Hoffmann's tale, Lancelot continues to seek artificiality to overcome the norms of society.
Even though the subject contains some satirical aspects for which Lubitsch was later famous, it also provides a perfect complement to the comic effect of masquerading. In this case, it is presented by the motif of a mirror image (the doppelganger) and is often to be seen in his films, such as DIE LUSTIGE WITWE (THE MERRY WIDOW, 1934)

Lubitsch Touch and Operettas
When it comes to comedy, it is amazing how often operettas served as a basis  (THE WILD CAT, 1921) can be included in these operettabased works, his American productions, from which his greatest success came, include three movies: OLD HEIDELBERG (1927), THE SMILING LIEUTENANT (1931), and THE MERRY WIDOW (1934). Apart from these, seven more sound movies after 1928 were musical productions (Huff 1947 As René Michaelsen stated, the elusive quality of Lubitsch comedies, later to be known as the Lubitsch Touch, may be a result of adapting the playfulness of the early Jacques Offenbach operettas with their allusions to sexual activities and biting criticism of society. These, to some extent, could be additionally called anti-illusionistic in their quality of renouncing the theatre of delusions (Michaelsen 2017). The staging is no longer envisaged as a realistic scenario, which can be seen in anachronisms or funny cross-cultural references (Michaelsen 2014, 162). Indeed, there are many cases in Lubitsch's films that explore the relationship between the real and the virtual. Unsurprisingly, especially musicals, with their sudden singing moments as a form of escapism, are a signifier of the blurring boundaries between these two levels. MERRY WIDOW mirrored the transformation from a self-referential operetta to a more convenient one. 1 The contradictory situation between tradition and escaping boundaries can also be identified in the dual requirement of Viennese operettas to satisfy the audience's needs without insulting the established order (Gromes 1967, 34). Choreographing the brief flirt with escaping society standards is fulfilled when the girl Zorika in Franz Lehár's operetta Zigeunerliebe (Gypsy Love, 1910) fulfils her intended purpose by marrying the less interesting Jonel. However, only since she learned in a dream how miserable her marriage to his passionate brother Jozsi would be. Such dreamlike moments are literary illusions, but at the same time they prepare the spectator for a return to the ordinary world. In Lubitsch's famous light opera adaptation of Lehar's globally successful THE MERRY WIDOW (1943), the brief excursion to morally risky places and back again to normality is exemplified in a quotation of a former sentence by the womanizer Danilo. The end of the statement »Any man who could dance through life with hundreds of women and chooses to walk with one should be... hanged!« is transformed (in a prison!) by the intervening widow into »Any man who could dance through life with hundreds of women and chooses to walk with one should be... married!« In THE DOLL, the situation is rather the reverse, as normality is the state which is to be avoided. Is the Lubitsch Touch then just the after-effect of former extravagance still holding allusive implications in the American years?
By intellectualising what shapes the Lubitsch Touch, we may lose its very character, which Lubitsch himself described as a childlike aura that would vanquish once it's unveiled (McBridge 2018, 4). And this characterisation fits also perfectly with the aura of an illusion, whose condition is often or even usually to be beyond our conscious perception. Given the inclusive form of the cinema dispositive, we recognize a spatial »distance« that is the perspective from which we observe the representation and the limit. There is always a perspective that compares the retention of the representation with the limit (and vice versa). Lubitsch plays with these patterns of correlation between illusion and perspective by destabilizing this inclusive form. Sabine Hake points to two important aspects of his films: »the emphasis on sexual difference and the active participation of the spectator.« (Hake 1992, 14) Consequently, the wit and the intellectual thought of Lubitsch comedies escapes even the on-screen/off-screen regularities and puts actors and spectators on the same footing. According to Elsaesser's analysis of MADAME DUBARRY (1919), the

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German Lubitsch handles the cinema as both the Weimar art cinema and as the classical American cinema. Whereas American cinema was eager to create the illusion of a perfect mise en scène and thus provide a superior overview (for example as a formal marker of sexual difference), the Weimar productions caught the spectator in a »cross-fire of protagonists seeking to control on-screen space by occupying off-screen space«. (Elsaesser 2009, 217). The ongoing fluctuation between these poles ensures that the spectators' point of view is constantly being challenged.
Whatever the form of the Lubitsch Touch may be, it cannot be reduced to just the physical space between the actors on the stage/screen or a single period of Lubitsch's film opus. It transcends ethnic, gender, and sexual politics by folding together stage/screen, the public, the historical and ironically twisted distance to the current affairs of the plot, or the geographical distance to foreign or mythological places.
Since such diversification of genre that constitutes the joy in Lubitsch's film derived from European musical culture, the choice of Martin Smolka in his unorthodox, anachronistic yet modern attitude provides an exciting question of how his auditory adaptation will bridge the gap between the past and the present and master the films visual virtuosity. This ability to love inventions like a child, to mobilize a pure naivety in oneself, to touch mystery playfully and with humour, and even to handle with unhappy facts (the guns and violence in this film!) without becoming unhappy -all that I tried to keep and underline with my music. (Smolka 2004) The phenomenon of playful surrealism appears to be related to Lubitsch It is a very playful movie involving a clever kind of humour. The plot is funny and includes surprising non-realistic elements.{…} The movie was the perfect playing field for myself and promised to include a large variety of craziness. (Smolka 2011) This approach characterizes the composer's playful entry towards a host of musical traditions 2 , and must not be misinterpreted as disrespect but as the result of a (ironically) self-certified musical inconsequence towards the heritage of different composition styles (Smolka 1999, 29). 3 This can lead to a very personal reflection of sound elements of the past, which is often shown by the interplay between two contrasting periods. 4 Besides recreating the historical fascination for exoticism, the choice of a Chinese connotation is not at all accidental. Shadow play and puppet theatre is deeply rooted in Far Eastern culture. Even though the origins of this specific form of theatre are not clarified, numerous legends refer to different artificial creations of women to deceive mighty men (like generals on a war field) as an inspiration for this genre (Liu 1967, 129-130). The woman's body, depicted as a weakness of (mighty) men, seems to be an overall cultural phenomenon that is represented in this musical trend.

Lancelot -Auditory Snapshots of an Antihero
Before we take a closer look at this opening, we should examine the musical theme picturing Lancelot, who, although (or precisely because) seeking a machine as answer to all problems, is characterized in a similar manner like Charlie Chaplin as a victim of the so-called machine age (Stephens 2011).
Unlike his legendary grail-seeking namesake, the hero in Lubitsch's film is not equipped with a lot of courage. His insecurity and his childlike behaviour are constantly accompanied by two short and contrasting musical motifs, often followed by a percussion beat through the whole movie.
The first motif is rather short to put it mildly and much more simple. It involves a (mostly) upwards glissando. Contrary to the tonal certainty of the cadencelike fall of the following motif, it starts from nowhere and leads to nowhere. Since the whistling has the charm of an everyday sound, it is of diegetic quality surrounding Lancelot's naïve character and refers in this case also literally to a world outside the frame by being produced by the ensemble members. 5 The explanation for this motif to be not only funny but of hilarious effect is that it starts perpetuating in ongoing loops around Lancelot. In contrast to, for example, Morricone's popular usage of whistling, human voice and whips as bonds via the musique concrete in the Western context of corporal heroism, it is much more narrowed. It appears fragmented throughout the whole score with no real permutations. This repetitive non-development has a Becket-like tragicomic about it: nothing happens. The redundancy of overstretched sound modules is characterizing the ongoing dally challenges surrounding the overtaxed hero.
5 The German expression for whistling, »pfeifen«, points to general environmental qualities and does not even distinguish between the sound of a locomotive, a bird or a walker, and thus uses the term as a sound-related, music-related or signal-related one.

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The circling nature of this theme is enhanced by a tonal sequence a major second below. Overall, all three of these main elements that come along with his character (the whistling, the glissando and the percussive noise) seem to be the result of orthodox comedy music and are, in fact, abstract and simplistic toys of a musical construction set. This characterization could be applied to a box that reproduces music: the musical automaton. Since such automata were perfected in the eighteenth century, and musical performers were compared to them, the uncanny aspects of the mechanized musicians circling Lancelot suggest that the motifs are comical reflections on human subjectivity in music and its loss in mechanical reproduction.

Musical
What is striking is that the music that plays with self-identity in this sophisticated, artistic way still manages to function within the content-element of artificiality. One of the most obvious specifications of the musical parts as  (Kracauer 1963, 50-64).

Abstraction becomes concreteness
In the first scene, there is another appealing visual and musical moment that shows Lancelot's blindness towards the obvious. The aristocrat splashes into water and the ensemble performers instantly follow this happening by onomatopoeically shouting »PLUMS«. This shout bursts into the established pattern of glissando -whistling -beat and therefore surprises not only rhythmically, but also via the suddenness of a graphic phonetic clearness. After measure 92, the tempo is doubled and the 3/4 bar becomes 6/8. This moment is like a musical comment on typical speed-ups in comedy silent movies as the duration between the images is shortened. Likewise, it is not easy to hear all these musical modules and the levelling of timbres is now put to the extreme, but since the human mind recognizes patterns, the dance structure allows the composer to combine any sounds together, for we begin to believe that we're hearing the minuet.

Musical
This musical illusion elucidates the perception of society standards by illustrating tradition as an endless repetition of the same patterns. As Schiller stated, the price of societal order is the mechanization of human beings, and established rules and orders are assembled in the precision of clockworks. In his thoughts he is searching for a stabilizing aesthetic factor; a voice of reasoning between an archaic natural state and an organized rational state of society. In the score, the vast noises of sound and the well-tempered melody structures are balanced through a third component, the human voice. Only the words remain purely fragmented, and thus lack reasoning.
There is also another device that combines certain humorous aspects with the ruling stability of time: the cuckoo clock. It is no surprise that Smolka used the traditional cuckoo's call of the third downwards as a major motif in the movie.
The audio elements of the cuckoo clock are also arranged as a combination of idiophone (bell, opening flap) and aerophone (cuckoo's call) elements.  (Snapshot 14) to the principle of durchbrochene Arbeit, or »pierced work« in the development, which ultimately leads to the recapitulation and the calming in the coda (the cat's meow in the night closes the scene), one can assume that we are at least unconsciously reassured within a familiar internal balance. So the patterns are not laid out at random but within rules of continuity and coherence which complement the various fragments. Due to the experimental nature of the usage of sound in this movie it is nowadays regarded as a hybrid between silent and talkie films. The situation becomes interesting when the original music for this film (written by Chaplin himself) in the director's own words should be regarded as romantic and not comical to avoid some collision course to the visual slapstick on screen.
Therefore, it is no longer the musical melody that is most relevant for the humour in the movie. Instead, the strongest comic effect on the auditory level Kieler Beiträge zur Filmmusikforschung 15: Music in TV Series & Music and Humour in Film and Television // 269 comes by using noises of gone-mad machinery to contrast with any sentimental mood the score is providing.
A logical step forward is taken by Jaques Tati in his film PLAYTIME (F 1967) 30 years later. Non-diegetic music works here only as a nostalgic symbol of a forgotten time. The noises of the futuristic city, but even the intradiegetic jazz bands and the frazzled dialogues are building the auditory material that Chion describes as faltering and punctual (Chion 2012, 46-47) 6 and it can somehow be seen as significant for the deadpan humour which is exemplified in the dehumanizing texture of this isolated and isolating setting of Tativille.
Interestingly though, the simplest recognizable (pre)verbal expressions are pure noises of joy and astonishment, like we explored in Smolka's score (for example such as Jaaaa or Oooh).
David Lynch admitted Tati's funny use of sound inspired the dark humour of the elevator scene in his debut ERASERHEAD (1977), and even the musical At the same time, the staged situation during the live performance constantly plays with the spatial perception of the spectators and the interchange of the onscreen/off-screen situation, therefore creates a comic effect when changing between diegetic and non-diegetic meanings.
Particularly in the use of cross-cultural and methodical polystylism, the rescoring corresponds very well with the playful cinema personality of Lubitsch.