DAVID DENYER
DEN09051564
BA MUSIC YR 3
MAY 2012
AN EVALUATION OF HOW MAX STEINER’S SCORE TO GONE WITH
THE WIND, BERNARD HERRMANN'S SCORE TO PSYCHO AND JOHN
WILLIAMS’ SCORES TO STAR WARS ENGAGE WITH CLASSICAL
REPERTOIRE AND HOW THIS COMPLEMENTS AND ENHANCES THE
MOVING IMAGE.
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This work was produced as part of Minor Musicology at Leeds College of Music.
ABSTRACT
Hollywood film music is often considered to be a regressive,
applied form of music composition, lacking in quality and
substance. In fact, Adorno believed the aestheticising and
manipulative aims of the anachronistic soundworld that film
music encompassed aids “the reduction of people to silence,
the dying out of speech as expression, the inability to
communicate at all”. Film music has always been subject to
the scorn of the avant-garde intelligentsia and the Modernist
elite. However, film music should not be considered a
subpar relic of the late nineteenth-century popular idiom, but
rather as a genre connected to, but independent from,
contemporary concert music. Since Adorno, film music has
had its own history of development in loose chronology with
concert music, and therefore remains culturally relevant. The
three scores discussed here represent three distinct eras of
film music history. In analysing the links between these
films and their roots in concert repertoire, it can be seen how
the approach to the composition of film music has changed,
how trends and clichés have been manipulated yet
modernised throughout the century, and how technical
practices, such as use of the leitmotif, have changed from the
traditional Romantic-symphonic tradition into their own
idiomatic equivalent. The following dissertation seeks to
place film music in its context alongside concert music and
analyse the areas in which the two genres are inevitably
linked.
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CONTENTS
Film Music: The Roots
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Film Music: Steiner, Herrmann, Williams
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Film Music: Symphonic Links
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Gone with the Wind
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Psycho
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Star Wars
15
Conclusion
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Bibliography
22
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FILM MUSIC: ROOTS
The genre of music written exclusively for film has a very short history, spanning barely a century, but it
shares an interesting and complex relationship with its contemporary classical concert music. In many
ways, the film music genre stylistically branches off from concert music at some point in the early 20th
century, and exists as an extension, continuation, and development of Romantic music, in coexistence
with and independence from the various stylistic trends which 20th century concert music has undergone.
Film music, especially in the early period, has remained somewhat stylistically anachronistic, and has
always retained the link to late Romantic opera, specifically of the German/Russian variety, which was, at
that time, the closest and most popular model on which to base the marriage of music and drama. Before
the concept of the film composer became fully established, many of the early composers who worked in
film (such as Max Steiner, Erich Korngold and Miklós Rózsa) were émigrés from Russia, Eastern Europe,
and the German-speaking countries, which goes some way to explaining why film music leaned so
heavily towards this stylistic idiom, as these countries held the hegemony of that particular Romantic
aesthetic ideology, and these composers established the precedents which later composers would often
follow:
“Many of these pioneers moved to Hollywood from Europe, and their style was derived from the
lush romanticism [sic] of the Viennese opera [...] [Steiner and Korngold] grew up listening to the
operas of Wagner, Strauss and Puccini and the symphonies of Mahler. Both were particularly
influenced by the harmonic idiom of Richard Strauss. Both preferred large symphony orchestras,
with full, lush harmonies, extensive doubling of individual parts and expressive melodic lines.”
(Smith, 1991, p.77)
The genre of film music came into existence at about the same time as a bitter artistic feud raged amongst
the musical elite, a schism between the Modernist and the Populist. Young composers were embracing
Modernism and rejecting Romanticism as an aesthetic ideal, and composers who continued the trend from
the turn of the century, such as Rachmaninov, were shunned, and hardly taken seriously. It can be argued
that the film world chose mass culture over Modernism, not simply because the late-Romantic style
seemed more suited, but rather to oppose the elitism of the high-brow musical circles and their established
critical opinion. Franklin writes: “The music of the Hollywood dream factory was less an anachronistic
and geographically dislocated relic of institutionalized European High Art than the function of an
oppositional impulse within that institution”. Film music and concert music have therefore developed
largely independently throughout the 20th century (Franklin, 2011, p.28-37).
The earliest music that appeared alongside film accompanied the silent film and was performed by live
musicians. This was, more often than not, a pianist, playing piano improvisations or rearrangements of
pre-existing music. Publishers brought out specific anthologies of popular classical tunes arranged
specifically for accompaniment to different specific moods in films, as well as instruction books for
cinema musicians, to aid in the preparation of an accompaniment score. In 1909, for example, cue sheets
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were published in Edison Kinetogram, and Gregg A. Frelinger’s anthology, Motion Picture Piano Music
appeared (Cooke, 2008, p.15). Rather than using scores arranged for a specific film, pianists often simply
improvised from whatever music they had to hand, following a cue-sheet outlining the appropriate mood
for each scene. From the very beginning of film history, pre-existing tunes would have been the very
basis of what audiences were hearing alongside the moving image, which perpetuated the Romantic
programmatic idiom of the music. In Max Winkler’s words, “extracts from great symphonies and operas
were hacked down to emerge as ‘Sinister Misterioso” by Beethoven, or ‘Weird Moderato’ by
Tchaikovsky” (Winkler, 1951, p.10).
It was not until later that it became popular for silent films to be produced with dedicated scores (such as
the orchestral and piano-reduced scores by Gottfried Hupperz, written for Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen
and Metropolis), and with that trend the concept of live accompaniment to film started to become
impractical. It was with the arrival of the ‘talkies’ (the first films with sound) that film music as an artform fully emerged. When films gained dedicated audio tracks, it became evident that they could have
pre-recorded scores which would likely be of a grander scale and a higher quality of performance than
could be expected of local cinema musicians (Marks, 1979, p.292). These scores sustained the existing
musical idiom that had been firmly established in the silent era (Cooke, 2008, p.79). It was determined,
after a number of years of experimentation with diegetic music sources, that a full dramatic score in the
style of traditional late-Romantic drama (opera, ballet) was essential and beneficial to a film, and that the
presence of pronounced music alongside a film did not need to be justified on screen. The multitude of
early film adaptations of Romantic operas further encouraged this. It became a premise in Hollywood that
a good film score could save a bad film, and a good film couldn’t be damaged by a bad score, so this type
of film score became the norm (Pratt, 2009, p.1). Talkies became so popular that the conversion to sound
took place “in less than 15 months between late 1927 and 1929, and the profits of the major companies
increased during that period by as much as 600 percent” (Britannica, 2006).
Of course the other obvious reason for this choice of idiom in the genre of film music is that film, unlike
other art forms, has always been fundamentally profit-driven, especially since the emergence of the sound
film. Populism appeals to the largest target audience, and therefore yields the highest sales figures. Cooke
notes: “because film music’s primary purpose is to communicate something to the spectators, its
‘meaning’ must be instantly recognizable and therefore dependent far more on stereotype than
innovation” (Cooke, 2008, p.79). Gorbman confirms this: “The core musical lexicon has tended to
remain conservatively rooted in Romantic tonality since its purpose is quick and efficient signification to
a mass audience” (Gorbman, 1987, p.4). Film music, therefore, naturally inhabited the instantly
responsive and affective Romantic ideal for which it has since become known.
FILM MUSIC: STEINER, HERRMANN, WILLIAMS
Max Steiner (1888 - 1971) is often considered the father of the early genre of film music, having written
hundreds of film scores in his life, spanning many of the most popular, and the most archetypical films of
the time, including Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, and King Kong. His musical language was instantly
accessible to audiences, and was highly manipulative emotionally, therefore his approach to film
composition became standardised and was inexorably imitated. No film composer, living or dead, can
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claim to have avoided the influence of Max Steiner, as his style established the conventions of the lateRomantic orchestral film score, and the basis for a vast number of Hollywood film music clichés that
have resonated to this day. For example, the dramatic heavy brass used in King Kong (1933, one of the
very first films with pre-recorded orchestral scores), which was an orchestral effect taken directly from
Wagner (passages can be directly compared to Die Walküre), has been stylistically imitated repeatedly
throughout the entire repertoire of orchestral film score. The same applies to the lush Romanticism in
Gone with the Wind, with its soaring melodies and emotional turbulence, this time stylistically indebted to
Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.
Bernard Herrmann (1911 - 1975), in many ways, sustained the tradition set by Max Steiner through the
mid 20th century. He was, like Steiner, largely a late-Romantic in his musical aesthetic, and the majority
of the notable moments in his scores engage in the well-used and familiar tonal language. However,
Herrmann, unlike Steiner, was also a Modernist, and engaged with contemporary concert works and the
avant-garde. One of his earliest influences was Charles Ives, and he also maintained contact with
contemporary composers such as Stravinsky and Schoenberg (Smith, 1991). Much of his incidental music
looks less like symphonic music in the idiom of Steiner, and more like a Stravinsky ballet score.
Herrmann had a tendency to use the familiar, tonal, neo-Steineresque musical language for the title tunes
and the climactic moments (whether that was intentional or it happened simply through the encapsulation
of film music conventions pre-set by Steiner and his contemporaries), but at the same time exposing
audiences to 20th century Modernism at the more vague incidental moments, when the audience’s
attention was less drawn to the auditory aspect of the film. He also superseded Steiner and the
conventions of the film music genre in his sophisticated use of the leitmotif, which was used in a
thematically and symbolically different manner: “A thematic idea was used not merely for static
identification of character, but for psychological enrichment of it. Herrmann’s cues also were often
shorter, more terse than other composers’; he knew the value of understatement” (Smith, 1991, p.2). This
again betrays his more Modernist ideals, in this case not by utilising explicitly modern harmonies, but
rather by his more blunt use of the leitmotif, and the psychological impressionism that they embrace.
Herrmann was a frequent collaborator with Alfred Hitchcock, and many of his scores have become very
well-known and highly influential. Through his various innovations, he established and extended many
Hollywood clichés, not least of which is the convention for the musical language now typical of the
horror film score. Herrmann’s Psycho score, unlike his other scores, was very explicitly Modernist and
experimental throughout, retaining very little of the Romanticism inherent in his earlier works. The
contemporary ideas in that score were so effective at unsettling audiences that horror films to date have
used experimental musical language to the same effect, utilising extended techniques of instruments
drawn directly from modern music. For example, the special effects popularised by composers like
Penderecki and Ligeti have since become standard practice to create suspense for horror scores.
John Williams (b.1932), like Herrmann, is renowned for his lush Romantic melodies for title tunes and
climactic moments in his film scores, yet he also, like Herrmann, engages very much with Modernist
language during more incidental passages. The un-attentive ear could be convinced that John Williams
was a pure Romantic, when in fact he often exposes audiences to contemporary, even highly atonal ideas
without this being made explicitly apparent. Williams’ careful use of modernism retains the pure aural
effects of Modernist music, but does not adhere to the conceptual pursuit of the Modernist ideal. For
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example, his score to Jaws (1975) is very similar to The Rite of Spring (1913), retaining the brutal,
percussive effect of the dissonant and jarring harmonies. However, in the ballet this is justified as a
caricature of tribal percussion and primitive rite, but none of these themes or associations exist in Jaws to
justify its use in that context, other than exploiting the effect of building suspense. Moreover, his
Romanticism is more of a pastiche, or a homage, to the late Romantics (such as Steiner) rather than a
genuine characteristic of his own aesthetic endeavours. With his score to Star Wars, he is often credited
with sparking the return of the orchestral film score (which had lost popularity to pop-oriented
soundtracks during the late 60s and 70s). He therefore approaches both Romanticism and Modernism
with the luxury of hindsight. It can be argued that Williams’ use of Romanticism and Modernism in his
film scores, with almost literal quoting of the classical repertoire, could be described as post-modernist, in
a way that Herrmann’s use of Romanticism and Modernism could not (Paulus, 2000, p.153).
Herrmann was a successor to Steiner, whereas Williams effectively references the late-Romantic
language in a more illustrative fashion. It can be explicitly heard in John Williams’ highly dissonant and
unashamedly atonal concert works (for example, the Violin Concerto (1976), or the Flute Concerto
(1969)) that his own artistic voice is a far cry from the Romanticism heard in his film scores. This cannot
be said for Herrmann or Steiner, whose personal musical voices were near identical to the ones heard in
their film work (evidenced by their concert works, such as Herrmann’s Symphony, and Steiner’s early
operetta The Beautiful Greek Girl) and who worked to maintain their artistic integrity through their film
music composition (Herrmann himself would insist on being referred to as a composer who worked in
film rather than as a film composer). Williams’ musical language in his film scores therefore comes
across as somewhat superficial, and his Romanticism retains a thin layer of irony, or even self-mockery at
its own sentimentality. His motifs never develop according to the late Romantic symphonic tradition (in
the way that Steiner’s do) or in a Modernist fashion (in the way that Herrmann’s do). Williams’ leitmotifs
exist to explicitly remind the audience of the content of the visual, without masking that content behind
abstract development of those motifs. Williams caters directly to the mass audience and his leitmotifs
accommodate that audience without alienating them behind a veil of variation that only attentive listeners
would recognise (Paulus, 2000, p.163/172).
Steiner was, from an early age, taught by some of the great Romantics: Brahms (piano); Mahler
(composition); and Richard Strauss (orchestration). Steiner had written his first operetta at age 14, and
later worked in New York as a conductor, arranger, and orchestrator of Broadway operettas and musicals.
His music therefore retains a very close relationship with the German late-Romantic idiom (specifically
the operatic), and echoes of these three iconic composers, and overwhelmingly of Wagner, can be heard
throughout his music. His familiarity with matching music and drama within an operatic context, coupled
with his specialist training, led to his inexorably Romantic musical language which he naturally adopted
in his film scores. His extensive history with opera also led to the notably Wagnerian use of the leitmotif
in his scores. As Steiner was perhaps the most successful film composer of that early period, having
scored nearly 150 titles (Pratt, 2009, p.2), he set the precedent for the genre of film music, and the lateRomantic, emotionally intense, slightly ‘Kitsch’ orchestral film score came to define the Hollywood
sound which composers would imitate for decades to come.
While Herrmann’s Romanticism inevitably originates from the German Wagnerian tradition
conventionalised by Steiner and his contemporaries, his harmonic language can also be compared to that
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of the late-Romantic or early 20th century French composers: “His music, almost all of it programmatic,
embodied the German Romanticism of Wagner and Mahler as well as the psychological impressionism of
the French school (Debussy and Ravel especially) - perceived through the Anglo-American culture
Herrmann adored” (Smith, 1991, p.4). This ‘psychological impressionism’ is most evident in his
aforementioned use of the leitmotif, for the psychological enrichment of character rather than just the
identification of it, an exemplification of that Impressionist ideology which seeks to express the
psychological perception of experience through art. In an interview by Craig Reardon (6/4/79),
Herrmann’s brother Louis recalls:
“Since we were born at the beginning of the twentieth century, our schoolteachers were all products
of the nineteenth century; most were born around 1870, 1880. The result is that we were nineteenthcentury people. And if you’re a nineteenth-century person, where does your root of art take hold but
with nineteenth-century people?” (Smith, 1991, p.12)
As he was the product of 19th century people, his aesthetics were largely Romantic, but through his
aforementioned engagement within the circles of the intelligentsia, the conceptual nature of his music and
his use of subtext and psychology, were largely Modernist.
Williams has built a film composing career based almost entirely on reconstructing familiar classical
models:
“Although John Williams handles tonal and atonal sections with ease, although he can cope
excellently in such contexts [...], his music has nothing fundamentally new to offer. [...] [His music
was] just the sum of the endeavours of his forebears, old techniques used in the right place at the
right time.” (Paulus, 2000, p.176)
There are countless examples of score extracts that can be traced directly to classical music, most
frequently to late 19th/20th century Russian concert music:
“...Williams’ film scores often reveal the strong influence of the ballet music of both Tchaikovsky
and Prokofiev; the latter’s angular melodies and enlivenment of solid tonal harmonies with acerbic
added dissonances are two of the most prominent aspects of Williams’ style [...] ...his harmonic
idiom [was] still rooted in the polytonal chord-building techniques of composers like Ravel and
Stravinsky [...] ...the parade of the Ewoks in the third film of the trilogy [...] suggests the strong
influence of the militaristic scherzo of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony” (Cooke, 2008, p.462-3).
Also notable is the influence from the music of English nationalism; William Walton, and Gustav Holst:
“...the creation of the Star Wars music was influenced [...] by Holst, Walton, and Dvořák” (Paulus, 2000,
p.176).
FILM MUSIC: SYMPHONIC LINKS
The relationship between film music and classical music throughout the 20th century is an interwoven
one. While the two genres exist independently, they are frequently found to borrow from each other. This
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is especially notable when composers who worked in both areas are considered. Since Steiner
conventionalised symphonic/operatic music for film, subsequent films naturally followed and built upon
that trend. During Hollywood’s ‘golden era’, many successful composers were commissioned to write for
film, including Prokofiev, Vaughan Williams, Shostakovich and Walton. Further to this, some films were
scored with pre-existing popular classical music (such as Brief Encounter (1945), which was scored with
Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto (1900)). Later on in the 1960s, Stanley Kubrick revived this idea
in a more avant-garde mindset, re-working extracts of pieces by Ligeti and Penderecki (see below). In
looking at how concert composers approached film music, and at how directors used existing concert
music in film, the link between film music and symphonic music can be more sufficiently analysed.
Ralph Vaughan Williams frequently crossed the bridge between film music and concert music. Unused
themes that he wrote for Flemish Farm (1943) found themselves in his Sixth Symphony (1947), and he
arranged his score for Scott of the Antarctic (1948) as his Seventh Symphony 'Sinfonia Antartica' (1952).
Vaughan Williams was a composer of the ‘English musical renaissance’, and was largely neo-Romantic.
His harmonic idiom was perfectly suited to convey dramatic narrative in the pre-established stylistic
conventions of the film music genre (Cooke, 2008, p.235).
Prokofiev, in his score for Alexander Nevsky (1938), adopts a tonal language readily suitable for exposure
to a mass audience. This was, however, after the 1932 resolution under which ‘formalism’ and ‘elitism’
in music were explicitly banned by the Soviet Union. The effect of this was that composers and artists in
the Soviet Union were forced by the state to regulate their creative output according to the doctrine of
Socialist Realism, to accommodate the mass audience, and to spread the Soviet ideology. Shostakovich’s
opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk had been banned by the state for its dissonance and brutality (‘muddle
instead of music’, as Pravda called it in a 1936 editorial) and a paradigm shift occurred in the styles of
many composers, including Prokofiev, away from experimentation (such as his Second Symphony (1925))
and more towards populism (such as Peter and the Wolf and Romeo and Juliet). Therefore, his easily
accessible language in the score of Alexander Nevsky and other Eisenstein films was perhaps not due to
film music conventions, but more due to Prokofiev’s own creative idiom which had changed to
accommodate the socialist mass culture ideology. The aesthetics of this ideology, interestingly, also
encompassed the profit-driven world of film music, which of course was dictated by the need to
accommodate the mass culture to target the largest potential paying audience, a directly oppositional
ideological agenda. Soviet film dominated much of the European film scene in this early era, and all
Soviet films would have adhered to the Socialist Realist doctrine. This may have contributed to and
perpetuated the existing anachronistic trend in film music (Cooke, 2008, p.347-350).
The link between concert music and film music continues to this day, and there are many composers who
currently work in both concert music and in film music. Contemporary composers like John Williams,
Howard Shore, Elliot Goldenthal, John Corigliano, and Jerry Goldsmith have all written and published
significant concert works while maintaining careers in film music. Throughout the 20th and 21st century,
the majority of film music trends and styles can still be compared to pre-existing and often out-dated
conventions and aesthetics originally found in dramatic concert music. Comparisons between extracts of
film scores and similar extracts in concert music serve not to suggest that these composers explicitly
referenced or borrowed from those works, but rather to demonstrate the perpetual aesthetic and stylistic
connection that film music shares with concert music.
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GONE WITH THE WIND
Max Steiner’s score for Gone with the Wind, like his other scores, makes use of his typical late-Romantic
musical language. Of course, Steiner’s film scores, in their content and structure, can be compared to the
traditional Romantic symphonic form, and the Gone with the Wind score can be considered to be a
‘virtual symphony’ in its own right, with the various acts of the film serving as movements, and the
leitmotifs acting as themes:
“The link between films and symphonies seems instructively closer, in this respect, if we relate the
virtual symphony projected by Gone with the Wind score precisely to popular national romantic
symphonies. Here the question of ideology was often begged on discursive grounds defined by the
hegemony of the ‘German’ model with its corresponding positioning of explicit narrative as a
limiting, trivialising, and popularising of music’s universalist essence” (Franklin, 2011, p 104).
The various different leitmotif themes have strong musical ties to late-Romantic symphonies, especially
to Tchaikovsky:
“The ‘Tara’ theme speaks the language of engulfing late Romantic musical pleasure in its most
grandiose and climactic mode. There are echoes of it in, and in its orchestration, of the main ‘love’
theme of Tchaikovsky's Fantasy Overture Romeo and Juliet - a theme that performs the utopian, but
of course ill-fated, linkage of erotic fulfillment with an envisaged overthrow of repressively divisive
cultural and social norms. We might also compare it with the heroic finale theme of a more overtly
nationalistic symphony like Sibelius’s First, although the stoic insistence on the third degree of the
scale in the Sibelius melody contrasts with the more jagged outline of the ‘Tara’ theme, and its
emphasis on the dominant (more energetic in its preparation for the tonic than in its arrival
thereon). The similarly roller-coaster outline of the comparable theme in the finale of
Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony, conclusively and repeatedly descending to the tonic, more
directly celebrates achievement and arrival, in however disheveled and overwrought a state”
(Franklin, 2011, p.107).
Further to this, the ‘Tara theme’ rings with echoes of the slow movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth
Symphony (1888), with the leaping intervals inverted, and the ‘Scarlett meets Rhett theme’ seems familiar
in certain ways to Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, 'Pathétique' (1893).
(‘Tara theme’ from Gone with the Wind)
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(Tchaikovsky, Fifth Symphony, ‘mvmt 2’, bar 46-49, violin 1)
(‘Tara meets Rhett theme’ from Gone with the Wind)
(Tchaikovsky, Sixth Symphony‘Pathetique’, ‘mvmt 1’, 16 bars after figure D, Violin 1)
Besides the literal similarities between the musical languages, the way in which Steiner develops his
material rings especially true of symphonic motific development. Standard traditional symphonic
development techniques are used throughout, and the ‘virtual symphony’ becomes especially evident
when developments of Steiner’s themes are compared to similar developments of Tchaikovsky’s themes.
(Steiner/Wilson, ‘Mammy, Ashley, and Scarlett’ from Gone with the Wind concert suite, bar 201)
(Tchaikovsky, Sixth Symphony 'Pathétique', ‘mvmt 1’, one bar after figure G)
Interestingly, the main recurring theme, the ‘Tara theme’ seems to share peculiar similarities in its
intervallic and motific structure to Over the Rainbow (by Harold Arlen, 1938), pre-recorded by Judy
Garland for The Wizard of Oz (1939) only a year before Gone With The Wind was released. Although it
should be noted that The Wizard of Oz wasn’t released until after Gone with the Wind, both films were
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published by Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, and directed by Victor Fleming, so Steiner would most likely have
had access to the pre-recorded song. It was also released as a single in September 1939, three months
before the release of Gone with the Wind, which was exactly the time at which Steiner was writing his
score (Pratt, 2008, p.5). It is impossible to say whether or not Max Steiner took any amount of influence
from that song; perhaps the song itself was simply written to accommodate the style of that particular era
of Hollywood film music. The music in Over the Rainbow reflects a grandiose subject matter vaguely
similar to that of Gone with the Wind (a female protagonist from a rural American farmland undertaking a
grand, life-changing journey), therefore the similarities in their musical content (the leaping octaves
instantly capturing images of grandeur) could simply come down to coincidence based on the basic
stylistic and thematic traits of the respective subject matters.
(‘Tara theme’ from Gone with the Wind)
(The beginning of ‘Over the Rainbow’, from The Wizard of Oz)
The other obvious source for musical material in Gone with the Wind is American folk (specifically that
of The Civil War era), which, like Steiner’s own musical language, originated in Europe. The general use
of a strong pentatonic flavour, coupled with the use of dotted rhythms and the use of the scotch snap at
the ends of phrases (often sitting upon a third), are all indicative of American folk music, as established
and emphasised by composers like Dvořák and Copland. Besides the general stylistic references to
American folk music, Steiner also quoted folksong explicitly, often at establishing shots where, for
example, the first musical phrase of the folksong When Johnny Comes Marching Home resolves on a
dischord to set the scene. Transforming fragments from recognised songs into a minor key was a favourite
technique of Max Steiner’s, also used in other films like Casablanca (1942), and The Gay Divorcee
(1934), which was perhaps a relic borrowed from Gustav Mahler, who employed this technique in the
third movement of his First Symphony (1888). The quoting aurally allows the audience to become fully
immersed in the cultural setting and in the plot, and the tonal transformation allows that quote to be
manipulated to a more dramatic appropriation. In fact, the idea of transforming the folksong Dixie to a
minor key during the burning of Atlanta in Gone with the Wind came from David Selznick (the producer)
and may have been political - it has been suggested that he wanted “to steer audiences away from
“improper” (ie, Southern) political allegiances” (Flinn, 1992, 109).
As previously stated, Steiner’s strong relationship with opera and the German late-Romantic tradition
resulted in the very traditional use of the leitmotif in most of his scores, including Gone with the Wind,
which contains dozens of themes. All 11 principal characters have their own motif, and there are several
more for places, and specific situations. The prominent motif, the ‘Tara theme’ is used to represent the
house and, in a wider sense, 'homeland', known as Tara. It also serves as the main theme of the film, and
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through its extensive use, it also comes to be associated with the main character, Scarlett. Other notable
themes include the ‘Rhett theme’, and the ‘Scarlett meets Rhett theme’, shown earlier (Pratt, 2009, p.5).
PSYCHO
Herrmann’s music for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is based on his early work Sinfonietta for Strings
(1935). As that was a concert work not aimed at a film audience, the content is largely Modernist, with
nods to Stravinsky and the Bartok string quartets in its use of driving rhythms and ostinati. Unlike his
other works, which are fundamentally Romantic with Modernist elements, the score for Psycho is
Modernist throughout, with very few discernible melodies. Most of the score is constructed from
Stravinskian ostinati and abstract gestures, with harmonies that very rarely follow any kind of
recognisably ‘Classical’ progression:
“Herrmann’s music, particularly in [Psycho], is composed using cellular elements (small phrases,
often memorable, that are susceptible to being placed in different musical contexts), similar to a
technique often employed by Stravinsky, especially evident in Petrushka (1911)”(Deutsch, 2010, p6)
“At first the spectacle, like the music, is both modern and ostensibly abstract. Although
enigmatically threatening, the driving rhythm of the bold and busy string music that accompanies
the titles is not the standard thriller or horror film atmosphere setter, but a piece of ostensibly ‘pure’
music that is evidently cognizant of Bartok, Stravinsky, and American moderns like Herrmann’s
friend Aaron Copland.” (Franklin, 2011, p.157)
Because of this, much of the Psycho score can, like Gone with the Wind, also be treated as a virtual
symphonic work, but of a more Modernist flavour, utilizing block forms and block synthesis rather than
the traditional symphonic forms heard in Gone with the Wind. The French Impressionist element can also
be heard in the score. A number of cues make use of progressive unresolved seventh chords in the style
of Debussian independent vertical sonorities.
(Bernard Herrmann, ‘The City’ from Psycho)
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When Hitchcock was directing Psycho, he didn’t have much faith in the project. In fact, in postproduction, he was so displeased with the result that he was considering cutting it into a one-hour TV
film, before he heard Herrmann’s score. Hitchcock had specifically asked for the shower scene to be left
unscored, but Herrmann undermined this. On hearing Herrmann’s prepared shower scene score,
Hitchcock immediately adopted it and regained his enthusiasm for the film (Smith, 1991, p.239-40).
Herrmann embraced the leitmotif and accepted its function in the context of his music. In Psycho, the title
track serves as an overture, introducing at least three motifs in a block form which later appear in the film
at different signifying moments. His use of leitmotif in Psycho is different to the traditional operatic or
symphonic convention. Rather than using melodies or specific intervals, Herrmann’s leitmotifs are more
abstract, better described as blocks of textures. The intervals, melodic shapes, harmony and orchestrations
of these blocks change dramatically throughout the film while maintaining the same core gesture, and
therefore the same symbolic intent. For example, the ‘shower scene’ cue, the motif that represents (in
Herrmann’s words) “terror” (Smith, 1992, p.239), exists as purely a buildup of dissonant string stabs, the
stabbing bows imitative of the stabbing knife. The gesture is what makes the leitmotif, rather than the
actual notes, or the specific harmony, and when the cue returns for subsequent scenes, in which the
rhythms of the notes, the tempo of the cue, and the string articulation of the building chord is altered, the
motif retains the underlying gesture and through that retains its function.
The prelude introduces three major motives from which most of the others can be derived. If considered
as part of a ‘virtual symphony’, it can be taken to be a first movement, or an overture, and it serves that
purpose by introducing most of the material that the rest of the score sources from. Motif A begins with
the stabbing B♭ minor major seventh chord that opens the prelude (from which, it can be argued, the
stabbing shower scene motif is derived), which develops into the driven ostinato passage based on the
same harmony (with the addition of the D♭ resolving to a D♮, amplifying the major/minor ambiguity
inherent in the established chord). Motif B appears when the ostinato is dropped, and a contrasting dotted
chord figure emerges. This figure is a development of the stabbing chords first heard in the opening.
While the chords used are different (based on diminished sevenths rather than major/minor sevenths) and
the rhythm is different, the type of dissonance and the dense orchestration of the chord preserve the
underlying gesture (another example of the abstract nature of Herrmann’s leitmotifs). The third motif,
Motif C, arrives as a notable contrast to the rest of the material. Perhaps the only musical content of this
score that can be described as a ‘tune’, an arching melody appears above the continuing ostinato bassline,
which rises and falls in conjunct chromaticism (Franklin, 2011, p.158).
(‘Motif A’ from Psycho prelude)
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(‘Motif B’ from Psycho prelude)
(‘Motif C’ from Psycho prelude)
These basic motifs are found throughout the score in various metamorphoses. However, a further
prominent leitmotif appears later on, in a cue titled “The Madhouse”, a simple angular statement of
intervals (F, E♭, D), which is associated with the character Norman and the psychopathic relationship he
has with his ‘mother’. Throughout the cue it is developed extensively, using inversions, retrogrades and
enharmonic changes (indicated with brackets below). Parts of this cue emerge later on, when Arbogast
arrives to interview Norman’s mother, and at the final sequence, when Norman, acting as his ‘mother’,
tells the audience she ‘wouldn’t harm a fly’ (Prendergast, 1992, p. 141-142).
(‘The Madhouse’ from Psycho)
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The derivations of later music from the very opening material gives the score unity, and Herrmann’s
modification and elaboration of motifs in different contexts help give the audience a valuable insight into
the psychology of the characters (Prendergast, 1992, p.133-145).
STAR WARS
According to John Williams, when he was first given the cut of Star Wars Episode IV (1977) to score, it
was layered with music already cut to it. George Lucas had taken apart bits from Holst’s The Planets
(1916), and applied them to the film. Lucas wanted Williams to re-arrange The Planets to fit the film,
rather than write an original score. The reason for this has not been explained, but it can be traced to the
success of Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi cult film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was famously scored with
classical music (J. Strauss’ Blue Danube, R.Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna, and
others), which Lucas himself openly praised on its release. It is therefore possible that Lucas wanted to
replicate the effect that Kubrick had achieved, and so presented the idea of using The Planets to Williams.
However, Williams convinced Lucas and Gary Kurz (the producer) that he could write original music in
the same style, and arrange it to fit more effectively. The result is the famous Star Wars score (Davis,
2000, p.59). Therefore, much of the Star Wars music can be traced explicitly to extracts from Holsts’s
The Planets. The frequent driving snare-beat with its duality of triplets and duplets particularly references
‘Mars: The Bringer of War’. However, there are more references to classical music in Star Wars than just
The Planets. Williams, like many later film composers, appears to have also borrowed orchestral colours
from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (evidenced by his earlier score to Jaws), and he continued this trend
in Star Wars, especially in the robot auction scene, which is uncannily like the opening to the second part
of The Rite of Spring. Similarities can also be drawn to Stravinsky’s other Russian Period ballets,
especially The Firebird (1910). Besides Stravinsky, Prokofiev’s influence can be heard in the musical
language of this score. The ‘Imperial March’ (‘Vader’s theme’) shares some strong musical similarities
(especially in its use of chromaticism) to the main melody in ‘Montagues and Capulets’ from Prokofiev’s
Romeo and Juliet (1935), while orchestrated and voiced more akin to Mars: The Bringer of War. A
connection with Wagner remains, not only in the use of the leitmotif but also in the main title music,
which shares certain similarities to Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries.
(Holst, ‘Mars the Bringer of War’ from The Planets, 6 bars after fig II)
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(Williams, ‘Star Wars Main Title’ from Star Wars: Episode IV, bar 89)
(Prokofiev, ‘Montagues and Capulets’, from Romeo and Juliet, strings)
(John Williams, ‘Vader’s Theme’ from Star Wars: Episode IV, brass)
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(Stravinsky, 'Second Part’, from The Rite of Spring, fig 79 'Introduction' )
(Williams, ‘The Dune Sea of Tatooine’, from Star Wars: Episode IV)
Williams uses the leitmotif in a similar, but more instantly accessible way to the cryptic, deeply symbolic
Wagnerian tradition. The main characters have their themes and the themes are used appropriately, but
they are rarely modified melodically or harmonically. The character themes in Star Wars are often long,
and represent the characters in their entirety, reflecting all of their traits, so they are rarely melodically or
harmonically altered to fit different situations, at least certainly not to the extent that Wagner employed
(Paulus, 2000, p.172). Their use in the score is less conceptual and symbolic than Wagner’s use of
leitmotifs, and exist more as a reminder to the audience of the true essence of that character, place, or
concept. Because of this lack of motific development, Williams’ score cannot be seen as a virtual
symphonic work in the same way as Psycho or Gone with the Wind. The leitmotifs do, however, relate to
each other symbolically, in a similar manner to Wagner. For example, the ‘Princess Leia theme’ is a
retrograde of the ‘Force theme’ and from the ‘Leia theme’ the ‘Han Solo and Princess Leia Love theme’
can be derived (which was not introduced into the film saga until the second film, Star Wars: Episode V).
From all three of these, and from the ‘Luke theme’, the basic material for the ‘Yoda theme’ (similarly not
introduced until the second film) can be derived, beginning with an inversion of the opening of the ‘Force
theme’ and ‘Luke’s theme’, and continuing with a leap of a major 6th, characteristic of both the ‘Princess
Leia theme’ and the ‘Han Solo and Princess Leia Love theme’ (Paulus, 2000, p.169-70). The basic
angular shape from which the ‘Yoda theme’ is constructed is also reminiscent of the ‘Vader theme’
(shown above).
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(Williams, ‘Force theme’ opening, from Star Wars: Episode IV)
(Williams, ‘Princess Leia theme’ opening, from Star Wars: Episode V)
(Williams, ‘Han Solo and Princess Leia Love theme’ opening, from Star Wars: Episode V)
Williams, ‘Luke’s theme’ opening, from Star Wars: Episode IV)
(Williams, ‘Yoda theme’ opening, from Star Wars: Episode V)
Paulus, in her analysis of the Wagnerian leitmotific content of Williams’ Star Wars score, briefly
mentions that the ‘Force theme’ (also known as ‘Ben Kenobi’s theme’) is the only ‘good’ theme in a
minor key (the other main ‘good’ themes being ‘Luke’s theme’, ‘Leia’s theme’, and ‘Yoda’s theme’).
Further to this, however, the theme itself betrays certain symbolic traits inherent in the subject that it
represents. It can be argued that Paulus’ assertion that the ‘Force theme’ is a ‘good’ theme is misleading.
One of the main recurring ideas in Star Wars is the concept that ‘the force’ is morally ambiguous, that it
can be used for both good and bad, and this is represented in the construction of its representative musical
gesture. The ‘Force theme’ toys between the Aeolian and Dorian modes, intentionally vague as to its
moral position. The melody itself doesn’t contain the sixth of the scale, so this modal element is purely
harmonic. In the beginning of the melody, the chord used is the minor tonic (i). At the end of the first
phrase, it resolves to a major chord IV, which is one of the primary chords of the Dorian mode, as it
includes the colour tone of the major sixth (in this case, A♯). This suggests a certain ‘brightness’ which is
later undermined by the use of the major chord VI at the end of the second phrase, one of the primary
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chords of the Aeolian mode, the root of which lowers the previously raised 6th to an A♮. This ambiguity
between ‘light’ and ‘dark’ is further enhanced by the use of melodic fragments from the main ‘good’
theme (‘Luke’s theme’, shown above) at the chord IV (the triplet upbeat to the imperfect cadence at the
end of the musical phrase, indicated by bracket ‘A’ below), and the main ‘bad’ theme (‘Vader’s theme’,
shown above) at the chord VI (the minor arpeggio, rising in a dotted quaver-semiquaver rhythm, indicated
by bracket ‘B’).
(Williams, ‘Force Theme’ from Star Wars, ‘Throne Room & End Title’, bar 57)
CONCLUSION
The three composers discussed here have between them shaped the face of film music. The entire artform is built upon clichés established by these three composers, clichés from which the industry is very
reluctant to depart, and which are still being exploited to this day. The modern practice of using the temp
track determines the style and the function of film music before the composer is hired. Thus, the modern
film composer is forced to adhere to and perpetuate these clichés. While it would be easy to critique the
genre as a valueless anachronism, it has nevertheless developed its own style. Modern film music differs
from the late-Romantic idiom from which the genre originated, due to the embracement of 20th century
harmonic and orchestrational practices. Thus, while modern film music is ostensibly Romantic in its basic
expressive ideology and broad tonal language, its dramatic sense is less rooted in the over-emotional
heart-wrenching outpour from the tortured Romantic artist than it is in a fundamental need to aid the
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conveyance of drama from the visual image to the audience, and therefore it embraces Modernism as a
useful tool in the communication of appropriate scenarios: polytonality helps an audience feel unsettled;
quartal harmonies can be used to create an angular impression of chaos; synthetic or diminished scales are
commonly used to portray fast-paced action; microtonal violin tremolo glissandi are used for terror; ad lib
col legno string passages or clustered voices instantly conjure up images of surrealism. Thus, strains of
Modernism inexorably find themselves tucked away in the corners of an otherwise Romantic film score
and film music finds itself in a unique neutral position between Modernism and populism.
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