Lecture 7: MUSIC 246

MUSIC246 - Film Scores I missed it because of cramming for STAT midterm. The following is Will’s notes: the 1950s:

• End of studio system, dissolves monopoly of 8 film studios monopolize the industry
  • Composers worked for studios via contract (freelance).
• Challenge of new media - television
  • Television become popular and threaten the film industry!

Battle with television fought on 2 fronts:

• technology
• subject matter

Technology

• Colour movies

  • Televisions stayed black and white; most films by Hollywood transition to color.

• Wide-screen image

  • Films transition from 4:3 aspect to wide-screen.

• Multiple image system in competition (just like sound) for theatres, such as Cinerama, CinemaScope, Panavision and VistaVision.

• Multi-channel sound systems for theatres.

• Epic films: Quo Vadis, The Robe, Julius Ceasar, Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra, The Ten Commandments (sandle epics).

  • Produced “sword and sandel” epics that are visually spectacular and focuses on grandeur of the sound and image.

• Ben Hur (1959) Music by Miklos Rozsa

  • Rozsa sets the model for music for ancient settings.

Ex: Youtube Example: The Parade of the Chrioteers set the sound/model for ancient sound visually spectacular / no narrative development during this scene / focus is on the grandeur of the sound and image

Subject Matter

• March 1930: The Production Code (Hays Office)
  • A list of things that Hollywood couldn’t show (i.e. a criminal cannot profit from crime, unmarried couple in bed together).
• Production Code voluntary until 1934 (makes it as rule after); films that didn’t comply met with protests and fines.
• Films from 1940s onwards start breaking production code in small ways. Filmmakers start breaking the code in the 1950s.
• Television programs were more restricted due to advertisers that sponsored the production.
• Foreign films (production code didn’t apply to Europe) had no restriction on subject matter.
• Production code formally abandoned in 1968, changes to rating system.
  • What is the rating system????

Elmer Bernstein: (1922-2004)

Forced to do B-Movies: Cat Woman of the Moon

• Agnes de Mille introduces Elmer to Otto Kreminger (who disapproved of communist hunt).
  • Elmer writes music for The Man With The Golden Arm (1955).

The Man With The Golden Arm (1955)

• Themes of gambling and drug abuse.
• Score featuring orchestra and big band.
  • Big Band, within a conventional orchestra
  • The score strongly Jazz/popular influenced
  • Jazz - urban
• Attempts to use pop music as film score, but comes off as awkward due to constant beat. Hitting the action comes off as extreme and unsubtle.

Video Example: “The Man With The Golden Army”

• Example of an attempt to use a popular style as film score - effective for the most part but awkward at times.
• `Phrasing the drama - then extreme hitting the action.

Elmer Bernstein also writes The Ten Commandments (1956) by Cecil B. de Mille

• Stylistic contrast to The Man With The Golden Arm.
• Shows Elmer’s range/flexibility as a composer (who can write a wide range of music).

Dimitri Tiomkin: (1894-1979)

• Important films include: Lost Horizon (1937), It’s a Wonderful LIfe (1946) (director for both movies ^ Frank Capra)

High Noon (1952)

• Score based on a popular song composed by Tiomkin.
• WRites a country song “Do Not Forsake Me” for the film. Was prereleased before the film, promoted the film on radio.
• Hit for singer Text Ritter
• Song was “prereleased” and established the use of “Movie Songs”.
• [Established the use of “movie songs].
• Received Academy Award for best score and best song.
• Notable for the high level of integration of the song melody within the score.

Video Example: High Noon 1 Opening Credits - Example of a movie-song

Video Example: High Noon 2 Montage - note the synchronization with the clock and the use of Frank Miller’s theme from the opening song

Bernard Herrmann: (1911-1975)

Travels to Hollywood with Wells in 1940

Citizen Kane (1941)

• Tonal music.
• Ex: Citizen Kane - The breakfast Montage: Youtube Clip

The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

• Unique set of instruments: violin, cello and bass (all three electric), two thereminsk, three electric organs, three vibraphones, two glockenspiels, two pianos, two harps, three trumpets, three trombones, and four tubas.
  • Herrmann uses electric instruments (did not need to use standardized performance ensemble due to recording technologies).
• Atonal/dissonant.

Video Example:

• Herrmann’s approach: the sound of a score depends on instrumentation
• Only required for recording session - no need to use standardized performance ensemble

Beneath The 12-Mile Reef ((1953)

• Instrumentation included 9 harps Come up with your unique sound, don’t need orchestra music

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Continues during Week8 during lecture 8

• 1955 begins collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock (specializes in horror).
  • Hermann return to using [tonal music] in Vertigo (1958), North By Northwest (1959) with romantic-era influence.

Psycho (1960)

• Based on controversial film, which resulted in not enough support/money. Hitchcock pays for the film.
  • Limited budget - shot in black and white.
• Herrmann uses only strings “black and white” score; featuers only string instruments which are flexible for different themes.
  • Lower the cost.
• Pushes phrasing the drama, most cues tend to set a single mood and show little respons to what happens minute by minute.
  • Cues use a single modd and do not change despite actions in the scene.
• The mood is bleak and has little emotional warmth.

Herrmann was very interested in Hitchcock’s intention on creating a black and white movie. He decides to create a black and white score. JUST STRINGS score. Monochromatic sound to it. Scene would change, but music will not. But your perception is that it also does. [Music plays what’s going on in her head.]

EX: Psycho 1: The Money

• Short repetitive theme that fractures and cold long notes, used for psychological refinements.

• Quiet but unsettling - represent Marion’s discomfort with the theft.

• Grows slightly in intensity as she decides to take the money. EX: Psycho 2: Flight (Marion drives)

• Music stays out of the way until she “escapes” the dealership.

• Music enters as she makes her “escape”, drives away.

• At first seems to play her fear at being caught.

• But as she changes, music seems to play her fall to the “dark” side.

• Music stays the same but holds different meaning as the scene progresses (paranoid $\to$ dark). EX: Psycho 3 Norman

• Norman’s theme uses two semitones; is not stable and cannot discern whether it is a major or minor.

  • Instability to use semitones in a theme.

• ”Harmonics” are used without vibrato to enforce coldness and lack of emotions as Norman spies on Marion. (no emotion)

• Creepy EX: Psycho 4 The Shower

• No music until the attack: adds to anxiety, the absense of music.

• No tonality - strings “shriek” - dissonant.

• Whose theme as the murder flees the scenes?

  • Norman’s theme plays as murderer leaves.

• Part company during the filming of Torn Curtain (1964).

• Bitter, he moves to Europe: Truffault: Fahrenheit 251 (1966).

• Last movie is Taxi Driver (1975).

• Hermann did not like popular music; parts ways with Hitchcock during the filming of Torn Curtain (1964)

• Moves to Europe and writes for Fahrenheit 451 (1966).

• Returns and works on his last film, Taxi Driver (1975).