Scoring with Sound, the Aesthetics of Reticence, and Films of Peter Strickland
Chapter 3 focuses on methods of replacing diegetic sound with electroacoustic music and/or musique concrète, or their seamless merging, arguing that they represent a significant development in the practice of erasing the line between score and sound design. The main case studies—Katalin Varga and Berberian Sound Studio—come from the work of British director Peter Strickland, whose methods of “scoring with sound design” are informed by his interest in avant-garde and experimental music. Connecting Strickland’s methods with a growing tendency among some filmmakers to reject the conventions of traditional scoring and its values of passive spectatorship, this chapter introduces the aesthetics of reticence as a conceptual framework embraced by artists who encourage the audience’s active intellectual and emotional engagement with the text.