Macbeth

Music by Third Ear Band

 

 

 

 

 

 

All adjectives of virtue alternative fit to the music of Macbeth (1971) by the Third Ear Band. You can call it cult, experimental, underground, alternative, anthologic, finally is an unparalleled work in the field of soundtracks.

Supported perfectly the depressed atmosphere of Roman Polanski's film. Macbeth (1971) was one of the most intense and striking works of the director. It was his first film after the Sharon Tate case and the film was just seen as a bloody outburst of disbelief in man. The heavy and insane aesthetic that characterizes the film is even more pronounced in the experimental work of the Third Ear Band. The group makes an unusual mix of medieval music with modern ingredients. The polyphony of winds in Inverness and Macbeth Returns bring clear medieval reference, but excluded from all possible romantic and idealized vision of that period. Electric instruments are included in some passages and even electronic (as in Duncan's Arrival) make the connection with the contemporary. During the visit of Macbeth to the witches lair, for example, (track The Cauldron), sum acoustic, electrical and electronic. Tracks like Dagger and Death and Ambush go close to abstraction. More familiar melodic moments appear in Lady Macbeth and beautiful vocal piece Fleance. Yet the general experimentation tends to dissonance and distortion as a macabre musical caricature. The association with the visual atmosphere of the film is very strong and the track sounds constantly absorbed in madness. Hypnotic, swirling, delirious.

Along with films such as The Devils, The Last Valley and others that saw the middle age in a less romanticized way, Macbeth was a rare experience as cinema, both for its brutal and musical integrity.