Film Music

‘I feel that music on screen can seek out and intensify the inner thoughts of the characters. It can invest a scene with terror, grandeur, gaiety, or misery. It can propel the narrative swiftly forward, or slow it down. It often lifts mere dialogue into the realm of poetry. Finally, it is the communicating link between the screen and the audience, reaching out and enveloping all into one single experience.'

Bernard Hermann

Music can obviously have a strong effect on how we interpret images - for example.

Basic Categories: On-screen – Off screen – non diegetic (M. Chion)

On-screen – sound that has a clear source in the frame (door opening, radio playing, people speaking)

Off-screen – sound that is part of the plot but the source isn't seen (environmental noises, characters not in the frame)

Non diegetic – sound not heard by the characters.

(Diegesis – inside the narrative, in general things the characters see, hear, or do).

What about the music in the opening of this scene?

The Sound of the Cinema is a 3-part BBC programme about the history of film scoring. You can view it through Box of Broadcast (need to login university ID).

Leitmotif - “A musical fragment, related to some aspect of the drama, that recurs in the course of an opera”

(New Harvard dictionary of music)

A listener learns to associate the motive with a character/object/event in the drama. The idea was developed by Richard Wagner in his operas where he used leitmotivs to enrich the drama (hinting at hidden connections, suggestions inner thoughts of characters). Wagner's music also had a very strong influence on the musical idiom composers adapted for early film music and that subsequently became standard practice.

“If you look at the composers of the Golden Age they understood perfectly – the balance between theme, style and orchestration – planting the seeds of the theme so you could use it full grown when you want at the end of the film”

(Interview with Danny Elfman)

-> understanding themes and the development of thematic material is essential for film scoring.

Some aspects to consider:

  • Continuity – discontinuity (for example Eisenstein's theory of Montage)

  • Rhythms: music – beat, phrase. Visuals – motion, editing.

  • References (external/stylistic; internal; between media).