It’s here! This lovely digital tome of film music knowledge I have constructed is finished!
Now, that’s not to say that there won’t be, oh, a sequel, and maybe some tie-in merchandise, but you look now at an essentially finished product.
Go ahead and pick a category on the left, then start reading. Remember, the oldest stuff is at the bottom of a category. Enjoy!
With Star Wars, John Williams launched the contemporary film score era. Much information about this time period can be found in the rest of the posts on this blog, but let me hit on a few key points here:
1. The symphony orchestra is still a favorite. They’re practical, for one thing. According to John Williams, “they’re elegant and the symphony orchestra itself is one of the greatest inventions of our artistic culture. Fabulous sounds it can produce and a great range of emotional capabilities” (Byrd).
2. More contemporary musical styles are used. The minimalist approach—extremely repetitive rhythmic motifs and slowly shifting harmonies—has been used by Philip Glass, and Rachel Portman often synthesizes many different genres like jazz and modernist impressionism (Chihara).
3. Composers are working harder and harder to create an entire sound world out of the score for a major film, rather than just an accompaniment. Star Wars started this trend that was continued by Lord of the Rings and even Avatar. All three scores are all about immersing the listener in the fantastical world of the story, not just underscoring the action. Instead of mirroring, this music “comments on a scene, or provides that viewer with additional information or insight into the situation or characters” (Oppenheim).
So that’s the present of movie scores in a nutshell. Who knows what will happen in the future? If the current trajectory continues, we will certainly see (and hear!) some great music.
That’s “a star shines upon the hour of our meeting!” It’s a greeting in one of Tolkien’s invented Elvish languages, Quenya.
One of the most important aspects of any work of art is making it realistic. Even fantasy literature and surrealist paintings need to be realistic and believable, in that the listener can completely buy into what the artist is trying to do.
One of the ways Howard Shore made his score to the Lord of the Rings scores is by including many of Tolkien’s fictional languages in the choral passages.
Quenya, the oldest Elvish tongue still spoken at the time of the Lord of the Rings, is “associated with pomp and ceremony” (Adams 3). Shore uses it when the most ancient of all the Elves we see, Galadriel, is on screen. The Quenya choral passages are often supported by lush string arpeggios and Eastern instruments (Adams 186).
Sindarin is the common Elvish tongue, and it is used in Shore’s score to represent Rivendell, one of two Elvish strongholds at the time of the War of the Ring (the other being Galadriel’s Lothlorien). The music accompanying the Sindarin texts is also lush and sounds very Elvish, but it is a little more comforting and not as exotic as Quenya’s accompaniment.
The language of the Dwarves is the rough Khuzdul, whose very name gives an example of what it sounds like. Khuzdul is used extensively when the Fellowship is in the old Dwarvish mines of Moria. It is often supported by heavy bass lines and metallic percussion, representing the industriousness and bluntness of Dwarvish culture (Adams 176).
For the land of Rohan, Tolkien often used Anglo-Saxon, also known as Old English. Howard Shore does likewise, using a solo chanting in Anglo-Saxon over strange, exotic harmonies during the scene of the funeral of the King of Rohan’s son (Adams 227).
Emotional chanting in Anglo-Saxon provides a powerful background for the scene of Theodred's funeral.
There are still further languages used in the scores, like the Black Speech and Adunaic, but the ones listed above are the most common and the most Tolkienesque. It is this complex use of the same languages Tolkien used in the novels that makes Shore’s score so realistically compelling.
The picture has been spotted. The composer knows what kind of music the director wants and where it should go. Now comes the real work—actually writing it.
One common myth is that the composer has to be extra careful to fit all of the music gestures to the action on the screen exactly. This isn’t true—most modern scores are not meant to simply duplicate what’s happening in the movie, and any minor adjustments can be made quickly, without rewriting large portions of the score (Copland 216).
Rather than doing this “underscoring”—fitting the music exactly the action—most composers like to create a theme for each main character and/or idea (Oppenheim). The composer can then fit these themes together based on what significant events are happening in any particular scene. When assembling the themes like this, a film composer has an advantage over more classical types of composers because they have technology on their sides. “[T]he composer has other possibilities, some of them tricks, which are unobtainable in Carnegie Hall” (Copland 217).
Composer can choose how many of these electronic effects they would like to use in their scores. Hans Zimmer uses many, John Williams very few, James Horner somewhere in the middle.
Once the composer has figured out what music is going to play when, it’s time to orchestrate it. Most composers have orchestrators who work under them to assign the different musical lines to different instruments. Others prefer to orchestrate most or all of their own music. “Williams understands the instruments and so he knows how and when to use them much like a good chef knows how to combine the right ingredients to make an amazing meal” (Leggett).
Either the composer or (more likely) a hired orchestrator assigns each musical line to individual instruments on a full orchestral score.
And once the music’s orchestrated, it can be recorded.
In the world of academia, plagiarism is a four-letter word. (Perhaps with the exception of spelling classes). Copying someone else’s work and advertising it as one’s own is sure to result in some harsh consequence like, oh, expulsion.
But what about in music? Mozart wrote fugues; does that mean he was plagiarizing Bach? Most would say no. Shostakovich’s scherzos closely resemble Mahler’s—is he a plagiarist too?
So let’s bring this bach home to film scores. (I think I’ll leave that typo there). Many film composers, of whom John Williams in considered a prime suspect, are accused of plagiarism by musical experts. The evidence certainly is there; parts of Star Wars sound very much like Holst’s The Planets, for example. Which seems fitting, since they are both about space. But, “did Holst have pictures of space and stars in mind when he wrote The Planets? Absolutely not. He was actually writing about astrology – Greek and Roman gods – NOT about astronomy – but that gets mixed up all the time” (Nordling).
Gustav Holst's Planets suite is a common target for modern "plagiarists."
Musical influences are inevitable. Every single composer who ever has lived had precursors he or she looked up to. Take the Mozart and Bach example given above. Writing in the same style as another composer is one form of influence. “As you study arranging and scoring you would typically go to the classical greats to look at structure and form. Because of this classical music will always influence contemporary music including film scores” (Leggett).
But often, someone like John Williams will use a piece of music that goes far beyond resembling another composer’s style; rather, he more or less copies an entire phrase verbatim. We could debate for hours whether or not this is okay, but that’s not the point of this discussion. Yes, modern film composers’ music often closely resembles classical pieces, but these composers still have to decided when and how and why and where to use the music. It’s still up to them. They’re still the composers.
Classical music is seen as a dying genre. Sure, new classical music continues to be composed, but it hardly has the popular following it did in Mozart’s or even Mahler’s day. And yes, new performances and recordings are widely celebrated each and every year, but not nearly to the extent of other musical genres. That said, perhaps classical music does live on in the genre of film music.
So how does today’s film music compare to the classical music of the last few centuries? Both types use the symphony orchestra and well as chamber ensembles as a medium. But classical music often existed on its own—a form called absolute music, where the composer doesn’t intend for the music to represent any extramusical image. By definition, film scores are not absolute music, but rather program music.
In this way, film music is “probably closer to the opera music of old. It helps facilitate stories” (Leggett). In operas, the music is the driving force of the narrative. In films, the dialogue and visuals perhaps take that role, but the entire film is still upheld by the score. The music helps tell the story.
On the other hand, there are many who would say that film music is too “simple” too be considered a successor or continuation of classical music. Perhaps the music, rather than standing on its own as a composition, is simply a symbol of the film itself:
“Audiences that cheer and applaud ecstatically the moment Williams launches the Boston Symphony into the first bars of the ‘Star Wars’ music, are not really applauding the music itself — well, in part they do, naturally — but are most of all releasing the excitement they feel as a result of the many emotions and associations which this music invariably stirs up” (De Ridder).
When most people listen to film scores, it’s while they’re watching the movie. The music isn’t the main focus most of the time. “The term classical is difficult in itself – having several different meanings – but suffice to say that when we think of classical music the musical sounds are the primary art form” (Nordling).
That’s the line a film composer must walk—the music must be complex enough to be considered excellent music and art, but it must also be simple enough to provide a pop-culture-ready identity for the film.
In our brief and extremely abbreviated summary of film score history, we have now reached, oh, roughly the 1960s. Enter Maurice Jarre. Perhaps it’s an unknown name for many casual film music listeners, but perhaps not. He is famous for his score to the 1962 epic film Lawrence of Arabia, and his work is, according to the American Film Institute, worthy of the title of third-best film score every written (“AFI’s 100 Years”).
Remember how we talked about how Korngold used an extensive array of themes and instruments when scoring The Adventures of Robin Hood? Jarre did that times ten with Lawrence. In addition to the regular orchestra, he throws some Eastern and Middle Eastern instruments that add to the exotic, desert feel of the movie.
Like Korngold, Jarre was trained as a classical composer, so his considerable use of layered rhythms and adventurous harmonic progressions is only natural (Chihara).
In addition to looking back and showing influences from Korngold, Jarre’s score looks ahead to the scores of John Williams with its main theme that instantly brings to mind images from the movie. This central idea for Lawrence is a broad, majestic, two-against-three fanfare that embodies adventure in far-off places.
Maurice Jarre's score is all about creating an atmosphere of adventure in the desert.
In between Maurice Jarre and the more contemporary scores, we have scores like Nino Rota’s masterpiece for The Godfather, as well as influences from popular music (Chihara).
Then came Star Wars.
With the dawn of the semi-modern film era came the career of the master of early film scores—Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
Born it what is now the Czech Republic, Korngold was a famous composer of classical music before he ever got involved with film scoring. He wrote many operas and other works and was complemented on his musical ability by Gustav Mahler himself.
So after a very successful compositional career, Korngold was invited to Hollywood to adapt Mendelssohn’s celebrated A Midsummer Night’s Dream incidental music into the background music for a film version of the Shakespeare play. Soon, he was hired to compose other Hollywood scores. For a while, he lived dual lives—a “serious” career in Europe and his film scoring in America. With the rise of Nazi Germany, however, Korngold took his family and fled from Europe to the United States permanently (Dixon).
Then came Korngold’s masterpiece, the dramatic, florid, adrenaline-laced score to The Adventures of Robin Hood, recognized on the American Film Institute as one of the top twenty-five score of all time (“AFI’s 100 Years). Its operatic style can be attributed to Korngold’s past works. He gives a theme to each character, which is a very operatic move. There is no vocal work in the film score due to legal reasons, but if this were not the case, the score would certainly resemble opera even more closely (Carroll).
Korngold’s extensive experience in composing shows through in his compositional style:
“Because he composed the music as a whole rather than in individual chunks, the separate cues flow one from the other, with key relationships observed, even when scenes without music are placed between. In this way, much of the score can be performed sequentially, end to end, with little editing required” (Carroll).
In other words, Korngold’s music was more “classical” than most of his contemporaries, especially in the case of Robin Hood.
Korngold, around the time of the composition of the Robin Hood score
Korngold’s compositional style and use of the orchestra paved the way for the film composers of the future, like Maurice Jarre, Howard Shore, and John Williams. Next, we’ll go forward in time and see how Maurice Jarre crafted his 1962 score for Lawrence of Arabia in the wake of Korngold.
It’s always a good thing to get input from outside sources. And, usually, the more different the perspective is from one’s own the more useful it is.
So here is a video by Brian Lee of http://www.videogameanthropologist.com that lists his ten favorite John Williams scores and explains why he likes them. I know almost nothing about video games, so it’s very interesting to hear what the scores from Williams mean to someone who doesn’t have the classical music background that I do.
Enjoy!
I know, I know, time travel again. Sorry, no fancy Latin name this time. (For those of you not “in the know,” my last project prominently featured a time machine known as the Tempus Viator Duo Milia.)
Anyway, today we will travel to the dawn of film music, to the dawn of films themselves.
In the beginning, films were silent. Or were they? No, they were accompanied by music. And this made the music even more important than it is now, for it was the only thing the audience heard. Scores of this era were also very specific to different genres, with orchestral sound effects for slapstick and lush string for drama (Scaruffi).
There was a recent return to this style of film composition with the film The Artist, for which Ludovic Bource won the Academy Award for Best Original Score. It was the first silent film to win Best Picture for over half a century, and perhaps Bource won the award because he had a role so much larger than most modern composers.
A blast from the past: Ludovic Bource accepts his Oscar or scoring a silent film.
Then, the world of films opened up. There was sound, there was color. Technicolor, to be precise. “The Golden Years of Hollywood were typified by this Technicolor (visually and musically speaking) style: a sort of Der Rosenkavalier approach to lavish entertainment” (Chihara). All of the sudden, film music went from being the piano accompaniment of the silent film era to the lavish orchestrations of Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
And that’s where we’ll leave off right now. We’ll return to our friend Korngold later.
Allegro con spirito 