The Bach Violin Concerto from PERSONA

Bach and Bergman

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FOR STUDENTS INTERESTED in hearing the Bach violin concerto (E-major) used in Persona, go here. Understanding a movie means attending to all parts of an image, including the soundtrack, which defines an image, either as enhancement (romantic violins in a kissing scene), culture reference (pop songs in American Graffit), thematic commentary (the heroine's love theme heard after her death), or counterpoint (a Schubert serenade heard while images of a German concentration camp flash on the screen).
    Bergman often uses Bach at key moments in his films. There's an extraordinary moment in Cries and Whispers when he kills the dialogue soundtrack of two women talking as they embrace and replaces it with a Bach cello suite movement, so we see lips moving but hear only Bach's music!
    The function of Bach's music in Persona is as a culture reference, an anchor in a world of false values. Of course, as in American Graffiti, the music itself expresses emotion apart from its culture reference.
    Elizabeth (Liv Ullman), in a hospital bed, has just heard silly dialogue from a soap opera, and the chatter of the superficial nurse, Alma (Bibi Andersson). When Alma tunes in to the violin concerto on the radio, the music speaks directly to Elizabeth's suffering. Its lack of words help, since words can only falsify Elizabeth's suffering, as Alma's do.
    The Bach slow movement heard in the film, with a fund of musical ideas, is somber but also uplifting in its balanced presentation of moods (a complex experience of life the characters in the film deny). The sweet passage that seems to affect Elizabeth occurs at 3:09 in the youtube video. Gradually, however, as the sweetness disappears from the music, shadows become more pronounced until Elizabeth is enveloped in darkness, her hands covering her face.
    Bach's music suggests (1) the reality of the comfort it brings, as in the sweet passage for solo violin, but also (2) the reality of the tragic emotions that follow, for which the world Elizabeth lives in (unlike, perhaps, Bach's world, dominated by a Christian culture, with Christian hope) has no solution.

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