Director Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy-Blue (1993), White
(1993), and Red (1994)-is one of the great achievements of European
film. A meditation on liberty, equality, and fraternity, these three
films marked the culmination of the director's career, as well as the
zenith of one of the most important creative collaborations in
20th-century cinema-between Kieslowski, scriptwriter Krzysztof
Piesiewicz, and composer Zbigniew Preisner. Thanks to their close
working relationship, music for the Three Colors trilogy achieves both a
focal narrative and philosophical function. At times, Preisner's music
advances the narrative independently of the films' other codes; at other
times, it creates a metaphorical space into which the audience is
invited in order to read for "deeper" messages. As the first major
scholarly treatment of Preisner's music, Nicholas Reyland's Zbigniew
Preisner's Three Colors Trilogy: A Film Score Guide fills an important
void in film score scholarship. In this guide, Reyland analyzes the
historical context of the film scores, the life of the composer, the
hermeneutic and narrative role of the music within the film, and the
musical scoring techniques used for the trilogy. This volume also draws
on an interplay of established "classic" approaches to analyzing film
music and more recent approaches in the exploration of its themes and
readings. In addition, the composer's willingness to be interviewed by
Reyland enhances the musicological scholarship of this book, giving the
reader privileged access into the process of scoring. A significant
contribution to both film studies and musicological literature, this
book celebrates one of the great cinematic achievements of the last few
decades.
