PAEAN: An Accompaniment to Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry

by Heavy Duty Felt

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Marcia Stoll
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1.
Sifting 01:41
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2.
What Does It Mean to Ask for Help? 06:46
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3.
I Know You're Sorry; I'm Sorry, Too 08:03
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4.
Winding Dirt Road Blues 01:14
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5.
Is There a Better Route? 04:55
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6.
Digging Your Own Grave 06:48
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7.
Shaking the Mulberry Tree at Dawn 02:53
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8.
Shelving 01:55
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9.
Lying Down and Looking Up 06:26
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10.
Clair de Lune 06:24
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about

In 1997, Abbas Kiarostami released "Taste of Cherry." It shared the Palme d'Or with "The Eel" by Shohei Imamura. In fact, Kiarostami was permitted to leave Iran and was thereby able to receive the award in person. I saw it in Chicago in 1988, where there was a critical stir surrounding the movie: Roger Ebert, a syndicated columnist and television personality (Siskel & Ebert), wrote a scathing review of the film in the Chicago Sun-Times (which is available online) that was responded to by the then Chicago Reader film critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum, who considered Kiarostami’s film a “masterpiece” in his review (which is also available online). I sided then, as I do now, with Rosenbaum’s assessment (Chicagoans were lucky to have Rosenbaum and his perceptive criticism at their disposal for such a long period of time).

The film itself contains no proper soundtrack. There are only two pieces of music in it: a song that is playing on a radio that serves as incidental music for the particular scene, and Louis Armstrong’s rendition of “St. James Infirmary Blues” that plays over the closing credits. The film is accompanied by the corresponding sounds that occur while filming each particular scene. I believe this to be an astute aesthetic decision on Kiarostami’s part; the film would not benefit in the least from a formal soundtrack, least of all from the music that I composed.

So why am I writing an accompaniment? Because the film posits several interesting conceptual and moral questions, which go on to serve as fertile resources in evoking musical compositions. Each composition seeks to engage with or interrogate a specific theme or question that the film proposes. The central conflict of the film has the protagonist, a middle-aged man in Tehran, asking three strangers to aid him in his suicide attempt. Specifically, the man is asking each stranger to go to the grave that he has dug for himself on the following morning and cover his corpse (he plans to empty a bottle of sleeping pills) with dirt. The man is willing to nicely compensate the person who agrees. The movie never clarifies why the man wishes to end his life; he suggests that no one could ever understand his motivations other than himself. Two strangers refuse; however, one reluctantly says he will comply, even though he passionately tries to dissuade the protagonist. One of the songs I composed is entitled “What Does it Mean to Ask for Help?” Is the person who reluctantly agrees to aid the protagonist in fact helping, or are the two people who refuse to take part in this man’s demise really providing the requisite help? It’s a very complicated question with various plausible answers. The record operates in this fashion: I try to compose a song that in some way illuminates a central thematic concern that the film posits.

This is my second attempt at such a project where film evokes sound. PAEAN: An Accompaniment to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog is my first. For that project, I created a composition for each of Kieslowski’s ten one-hour installments that engages or interrogates a mandate from one of The Ten Commandments. I have another project entitled Hour of the Wolf (after an Ingmar Bergman movie), yet that project does not engage with the particular movie, but it instead tries to approximate – both from phenomenological and psychological standpoints – what the anxiety and fear may be like when one experiences such a tumultuous hour just before sunrise.

Thanks for reading this far, if, in fact, you got this far. I hope you have the time and inclination to give the project a listen. Moreover, if you haven’t seen the movie, the Criterion Collection can help you remedy that situation.

With Warmest Regards,
Tony Gudwien

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released July 5, 2020

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Heavy Duty Felt Evanston, Illinois

Heavy Duty Felt is Tony Gudwien. He lives in Evanston, IL. He tries to make the most interesting music he's capable of making.

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