Briefest of Encounters

The Briefest of Encounters

Two introverted young people love each other enormously, but they have never met, only seen each other across the tables in a cafe. He dreams of her, she dreams of him. Do they ever meet?

My first attempt at the Librarian Theme for the comedy short Briefest of Encounters, composed after watching the filming of the scene.

Librarian Theme mp3, 2 mins 31 secs, 3.562MB - Our heroin is a frustrated hermit who works in a library, she finds it boring and repetitive and lapses into day dreams of romantic episodes as she ignores customers, stacks shelves (badly!) and secrets away mushy romantic novels for later avid reading.

Follow this link for details about its composition:

 

Production

These photographs were taken on the first day of production for The Briefest of Encounters:

In her first dream she gets something in her eye and he comes to her rescue

In her second dream, she gets her man.

In reality she works in a library

...and hates it!

She lives for stolen moments when she obsessively reads romantic novels.

Co-Produced, Co-Directed and Co-Written by:

Ruaidhri O'Mahony and Emma Biggins

Composition

I wanted to depict three types of behaviour for our frustrated librarian:

1. Working in the library - but hating it

2. Drifting off into fantasies of romance

3. Being naughty in the library - stuffing too many books onto a shelf, hiding the best romantic books away for later reading, ...

I started with the mode and harmony.  I put it into the minor and experimented with fanciful arpeggios with a harp. This seemed to work quite well and I developed a progression that I thought would support all three types of behaviour I was trying to write for.

I supported the arpeggios with sustained strings and wrote a long line theme (theme A) that would work for the drifting off into fantasies scenes.

I then wrote a second theme (theme B) that could work on its own in the drifting off scenes, but also that would work as a counter to theme A.

I instrumented theme A and theme B variously between horn and flute, throughout the various incarnations of the drifting off treatment.

I then generated a third theme (theme C) by taking themes A and B, chopping them in half and compressing them in time. I then mixed up the order of these double-speed blocks which is how I created the opening piano theme, which I put over reiterated string texture and a pizz bass line to support the working in the library scenes.

I created the naughty theme by instrumenting theme C with a staccato bassoon, with various horn and flute interjections with themes A and B providing a long line against the comic theme.