Event overview
Tony Pryer gives this free evening lecture on Frank Darabont’s film "The Shawshank Redemption and Mozart: The Importance of not knowing what the music means"
The 1994 prison movie 'The Shawshank Redemption' is famous for a climactic moment when the hardened criminals are stopped in their tracks by hearing over the loudspeakers a duet from Mozart’s opera 'The Marriage of Figaro'. The prisoners are deeply affected but freely admit that they do not know what the music is about. Moreover, Pryer will argue, neither do the singers and that is what makes the music so empathetic – and gives it its diegetic mobility. Curiously, this central event, which motivates the characters and advances the story (a type of device that Alfred Hitchcock called – for convoluted reasons – a ‘MacGuffin’), is not in the novella upon which the film is based (Stephen King’s Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, 1981), and that raises interesting questions of adaptation theory.
The Music Research Series is designed to help postgraduate students advance their research and careers. The events stimulate exchange, hones skills, facilitates the creation of professional networks and helps to consolidate the department’s postgraduate community, all over a glass of wine!
Anthony Pryer is a Reader in Historical Musicology and Aesthetics in Goldsmiths’ Music Department. He served on the executive committee of the British Society of Aesthetics for many years, and has published widely on the works of Monteverdi and Mozart, and also on the philosophy of music.
Image: Still from The Shawshank Redemption
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 23 Feb 2016 | 5:00pm - 6:30pm |
Accessibility
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