In film and music, an interlude is a brief, intervening pause that separates main sections, functioning as a transition, moment of reflection, or thematic shift, achieved through music and/or visuals, or even silence. The purpose is to build atmosphere, introduce a change of mood, or guide the audience’s emotional journey.

I like to share two famous interludes today, one classical and the other, a movie score. The classical piece is Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, a short, one-act opera that lasts around 80 minutes. The most memorable section of that opera is the famous interlude or Intermezzo, a lush, strings-dominated piece that offers a moment of calm before the tragic finale. The intermezzo is often used in films for its evocative beauty, most notably as a key musical motif in the films of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.

Cavalleria Rusticana’s stunning 1890 debut in Rome made Mascagni – until then an obscure composer – an overnight musical sensation. In less than a year, his work was performed all over Europe. Unfortunately, this was his last hurrah as none of his subsequent compositions could match Cavalleria Rusticana’s popularity. As Mascagni ruefully recounted at the end of his life, “It is a pity I wrote Cavalleria first, for or I was crowned before I became king.”

Here is Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni, set to landscape images of Tuscany, Italy (3:18 mins).

Theme from Out of Africa (1985)

Seldom does a musical interlude blend so perfectly with a movie scene. Here is the lush and expansive soundtrack from Sydney Pollack’s Oscar-wining film, Out of Africa (1985), scored by the legendary John Barry (1933-2011), featuring the famous aerial scene of the beautiful Kenyan landscape.