Notes full of images (2/5): Hearing cinema

We discovered it in the first article in the Des notes pleines d’images series, madrigalism laid the foundations for a revolutionary idea: music can illustrate, music can tell. But this idea didn’t stop with the refined salons of the Renaissance. It grew, evolved and enriched over the centuries… until it became a universal language at the heart of the 7th art.

What would Psycho be without its strident violins? Life is beautiful without Nicola Piovani’s music, which contributes to this philosophical tale universe? Or Star Wars without its heroic brass?

In this article, we delve into descriptive music in cinema. Let’s move forward a few centuries and sit in a darkened theater. The lights go down, the screen lights up, and the music begins to narrate….

In cinema, descriptive music takes on a new dimension. It no longer merely paints or suggests: it accompanies the image, commenting on it, reinforcing it, anticipating it, explaining it. It becomes a parallel language, an invisible narrator guiding our gaze and, above all, our emotions.

The power of this music is immediate. Even before we understand what we see, we feel it. A few notes are all it takes to immerse the spectator in an atmosphere, to conjure up fear, expectation, tenderness, wonder.
Two notes were enough for John Williams to evoke terror in Jaws (1975). A small, haunting, repeated musical and rhythmic cell. Each time the terrible fish prowls, it returns, implacable, lurking beneath the surface. The monster is not yet visible… but the music has already brought it to life in our minds.

Other times, the music doesn’t describe an imminent danger, but an entire universe. This is the case in Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001), where Yann Tiersen’s score creates a sound world full of sweetness, joyful melancholy and reverie. Accordion, piano, discreet percussion: everything is light, mischievous, a little hazy, like a daydream. Music replaces dialogue: it thinks, feels and imagines in the place of the character.

Yann Tiersen, La valse d’Amélie (piano version)

Descriptive music in cinema thus acts as a memory, an inner voice, an emotional thread. It doesn’t just follow the film. It gives it direction, color and psychological depth.

Discover the next article, on October 8, 2025: Notes full of images (3/5): The power of the Leitmotiv