The Return of the Romantic via the Red Carpet

MUSC 23 Rebirth The Return of the Romantic via the Red Carpet The last unified style of classical music was the Romantic style in the 19th century. During the 20th century, classical music became experimental, losing the interests of the Church and the upper class. Without the support of these institutions, classical composers struggled to find patrons for their ventures. The invention of film in part helped replace the patronage of the Church and upper class. As the film industry grew, so too did the importance it played in the classical music world. Now in the early 21st century, composers such as John Williams are leading the way in a revival of Romantic music in the classical world with the backing of the biggest patron of classical music since the Church. For the first moving pictures, black and white silent films, a piano or organ player often would accompany the movie live. The musician played whatever music he knew that could fit the scene. This often consisted of classical pieces to match a chase scene or a dramatic moment. Even though nickelodeon players were put out of business as film technology advanced to include its own recorded soundtracks, these advances created new and lucrative opportunities for classical composers. Walt Disney’s cartoons continued to provide a venue for classical composers, using music from Rossini, Strauss, and Tchaikovsky. When Hollywood was in its formative years in the early 20th century, German composers were immigrating to America to escape the economic disaster in Post-War Germany. With them came their musical traditions, which would dictate the style of filmic music for at least the next century. John Williams “At the beginning of the century, composers were cynosures on the world stage, their premieres mobbed by curiosity seekers, their transatlantic chronicled by telegraph bulletins, their death bed scenes described in exquisite detail. On Mahler’s last day on Earth, the Viennese press reported that his body temperature was wavering between 37.2 and 38 degrees Celsius. A hundred years on, contemporary composers have largely vanished from the radar screen of mainstream culture.” –Alex Ross John Williams is perhaps the only modern composer to achieve celebrity status equal to composers in the pre-jazz era. This is an encouraging sign that classical music can survive despite the creative plateauing in the late twentieth century of many classical composers. As previously demonstrated through the historical narrative of classical music, only those composers able to cater to tastes of the most powerful and influential group could survive. From Viennese waltzes to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, music’s economic success has always been and will continue to be measured by the reception of the audience. Regardless of which pieces the Frankfurt school of thought identifies as truly artistic, the type of music that will win patronage, and thereby be preserved in tradition, will only ever be popular music. John Williams has ensured his musical success by using techniques that have persisted through decades of musical history with large public and financial support. Williams looks to the once wildly popular Wagner for inspiration. Wagner’s operas provided Williams with methods of writing that could easily be transferred from the stage to the silver screen. Wagner’s use of leitmotiv was one of the musical traditions brought over during the rise of the film industry by the German immigrants. A leitmotiv is the association of a musical theme with a particular character or place. Wagner’s Parsifal gives many examples of Wagner’s use of the leitmotiv. Most prominent is the Grail’s leitmotiv introduced in the beginning on the piece. The use of the leitmotiv was successful in the opera and was later incorporated into movies to become an industry standard. Strauss emerged directly out of the tradition of Wagner and introduced a new theatrical technique in his tone poems, which Williams now often uses. Strauss continued to make use of the leitmotiv, such as in his tone poem, Ein Heldenleben, when he introduces the hero’s theme in the opening in the horns and cellos. The trumpets soon play a fanfare to indicate the beginning of the hero’s journey. While this is not quite the same as a leitmotiv because it is not a recurring theme and does not only hold significance to character or place, it serves a similar theatrical purpose. The trumpet fanfare enters abruptly, just as a scene would change in a movie. John Williams uses this scene changing musical technique extensively in his later film scores. Williams’ transitions to war scenes are particularly vivid because of his personal experience in the Air Force in the 1950s. Williams conducted the Air Force Band as part of his duties, influencing his later writing to include many military fanfare features. The military band pieces incorporate more trumpets and drums than other band pieces do because historically, field bands were only composed of trumpets and drums. Williams’ extensive use of brass and percussion in his film scores reflect his years spent in the Air Force. The iconic Star Wars theme draws from Williams’ experience conducting the Air Force Band, as well as from his love of the Romanticism of Strauss. The trumpet immediately states the main theme, which contains many triplet figures, artifacts of Williams’ training as a military band conductor. In the Imperial March, Williams continues to almost exclusively feature the brass playing triplet figures, drawing from the military tradition. Williams also draws on the Romantic tradition by using expressive phrasing and large chords. The Romantic aspect in his music helps to dramatize the Star Wars movies and was a defining factor in their success. Williams’ leitmotiv in Jaws has been so influential that it gave a new universal meaning to the minor second. The repeatedly alternating minor second Williams used to portray the approach of the shark in Jaws is now almost universally associated with impending danger. Giving audiences images with which to associate sounds has been proven to leave them with a stronger impression of those sounds, as demonstrated by introductory level music theory teachers all over the world. Williams’ use of a simple interval as a leitmotiv for a memorable image ensured that the audience would always recognize when the shark was coming by the background music in the film. This technique greatly increases the film’s suspense. Moviegoers are willing to pay for suspense, as Williams was well aware of when he wrote the leitmotiv for Jaws. Even though opera has largely fallen out of style among the general public, the selfselecting economics of the classical music industry have allowed some of its techniques to persist. The popularity of the books ensured in advance the success of the Harry Potter film series. Whatever Williams wrote for the film scores would reach millions and continue the progression of film music. So far, Williams has only written the scores for the first three movies, though he may return for the seventh. He was invited to write the others, but declined because of his schedule. When Williams declined to write for the other movies, first Patrick Doyle, and later also Nicolas Hooper, were hired. In writing the scores for the Harry Potter films, these composers too were given the chance to shape the future of classical music. In the film scores for Harry Potter, Williams uses distinctly less of the leitmotiv than he did in previous scores. Realizing that this was going to be at least a seven part series, he used the leitmotiv less because the audience may have found it distasteful to hear the same theme for each character for at least seven movies. In the first movie, some broad leitmotivs were used, such as the emergence of “Hedwig’s Theme” whenever the camera panned the Hogwarts castle. In general, most of the music in the Harry Potter scores of John Williams consisted of music to indicate scene shifts, rather than leitmotivs. Williams used significantly more of the Strauss style mood changes to indicate scene changes or entrances of characters than he used leitmotivs. The length of the series made this style of composing important. Using a mood change in the film score kept the music from becoming repetitive, or simply a reiteration of leitmotivs throughout the series. In the first movie, as the students approach Hogwarts for the first time, the camera switches between views of the castle and an aerial view of the students in the boats. Williams’ soundtrack switches between a festive celebration, which corresponds to the castle, and a lightly orchestrated eerie mood featuring mysterious wordless vocals, which corresponds to the students looking at the castle with wonder. When the students walk up the stairs inside the castle, the camera shows the tapping fingers of Professor McGonagall as a violin begins to play a gypsy tune, similar to the Bartók string quartets, indicating the entrance of a new character without attaching to her a leitmotiv. By writing film scores according to the audience, Williams’ music was met with the popular reception that enables music to enter lasting tradition, in this case perhaps directing the style of film music away from the use of leitmotivs. Williams has attained success that has evaded other classical composers because he has written for the people who have money and influence, while simultaneously using techniques that have proven against the test of time and economics to be pleasing to the audience. In the wake of failing interest for new classical music in the 20th century, the widespread support 21st century composers like Williams are now finding in exposure from the film industry—analogous to the former patrons in the Church and upper class—is allowing for the continued progress of classical music. Successful modern composers understand that to win the support of patrons, they must write with a balanced regard for the successful traditions of the past and the progressions evolving with the changing audiences of today.