Burwell and Space: Inner, Outer, Environmental and Acoustical

Abstract

Burwell transcended the limitations of his earliest work in punk and art-rock while retaining its unvarnished simplicity, putting it in the service of a specific dramatic point of view. Whether the source material of one of Burwell’s scores lies in folk music (as it often does), or hymnody (almost as often), or a kind of generalized, rock-based harmony refracted through an orchestral setting (most of the time), they all impart an immediate sense of place and of the varied, complex human relationships that unfold within it.

A Burwell score varies repetitions of a simple yet strongly physical set of musical gestures combined and recombined with image to produce a wide range of emotional and dramatic significations. This chapter follows this process through four Burwell films: Miller’s Crossing (1990); Fargo (1996); Gods and Monsters (1998); and True Grit (2010), with an ear towards a deeper understanding of this process and the expansion of the narrative’s potential, which it represents, revealing aspects of place, time and character that would otherwise remain inaccessible to us.