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82 Green
the cinema as an essentially visual medium which was seen (not heard)
by spectators (not auditors).2 By distinguishing dialogue, noise, and musicall auditory channels of informationas important pieces of film, Stam,
Burgoyne, and Flitterman-Lewis support Metzs assertion that the cinema
possesses various dialects, and that each one of these dialects can become
the subject of a specific analysis.3 Once audiences and critics consider music
as one of the fundamental dialects of film, it then makes sense to understand music as an essential part of communication and argument in film.
But is the film score more than just a reflection of a characters sadness or
the exciting chase music that exhilarates audiences? While most audiences
would certainly be able to cite numerous instances of music reflecting the
feelings of characters or the general mood of the film, some people might
be surprised by the extent to which film music shapes and affects meaning
in film. Stam, Burgoyne, and Flitterman-Lewis define several types of music
that can be used in scores: redundant music, which reinforces the emotional
tone; contrapuntal music, which runs counter to the dominant emotion; empathetic music, which conveys the emotions of the characters; a-empathetic
music, which seems indifferent to the drama; and didactic contrapuntal music, which uses music to distance the audience in order to elicit a precise,
usually ironic, idea in the spectators mind.4 Though these terms can be
limiting because music often fulfills more than just one role in a scene, they
do demonstrate that music is making an argument or working to convince
or persuade the audience, proving that film music is behaving rhetorically.
Though film music does often fulfill the basic roles of conveying emotion
and suggesting connections or themes in the film, film music also works in
more complex roles to affect the meaning in film. Through musics development of specific leitmotifs, themes, and cues, the calculated use of film
music in conjunction with the other channels of information helps to create
the narrative and control the way that the audience interprets a film.
Musics Basic Functions
Convey emotion
To start with the simple functions of the score, one of musics most basic
roles in film is to convey emotion to the audience. Current research points to
the fact that audiences can understand the emotions or qualities that music
is portraying even when the music is divorced from the image it was created
to accompany. In a study designed to prove whether or not listeners would
uniformly associate a selection of music with abstract qualities, researchers had listeners write down their responses to ten different musical film
and television themes. For example, the theme to the TV series Miami Vice
was played to 105 respondents, who produced a total of 328 verbal-visual
associations. While no one reported recognizing the tune, the music
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84 Green
for Pianists and Organists, music during films ranged from lullabies and
love themes to exciting chase music and the sound of sinister and grotesque
themes guaranteed to frighten even the strongest viewer.8 Later scores
were written for specific films, and finally sound (including music) came
packaged with the film.
Though some might argue that music simply reflects the drama on
screen, because the audience is listening to the score as they are watching
the film, the music automatically affects how viewers interpret what is happening. Veteran composer Leith Stevens taught that Music must assume an
attitude of partnership with the other elements concerned in the story.9 In
its most basic functions, film music works with the image to help the audience feel the emotions of the characters and to understand the larger themes
at work in the film. By working with other channels of information, music
moves beyond the role of simply reflecting or filling the background to the
role of actually affecting and creating meaning in the film.
Musics Ability to Identify and Suspend Reality
How important can music be in the development of the film if, as often
happens, the music is unconsciously heard and easily forgotten? Instead of
trying to understand musics purpose while other channels distract us, Kay
Dickinson suggests we rate musics importance in terms of what the film
would be without it:
The majority of film-goers would not be able to tell you much about
movie scores. Even if you were to catch a group leaving a movie theatre and ask them about the score they had just heard, many would
admit to not really having noticed it. However, if the same ensemble
had been asked to sit through that material minus the music, they
would probably feel frustratedly disconnected from the film and its
characters precisely because of the lack of musical prompts to guide
them towards a set of expected responses.10
It is this tendency of audiences to use the score as a tool for understanding
the meaning of other channels of information that makes film music so
integral to the film-viewing experience. When using the music to help determine the meaning, the audience becomes less questioning, and more accepting, of what is happening on screen. In her book Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music, Claudia Gorbman argues that film music functions to
lull the spectator into being an untroublesome (less critical, less wary) viewing
subject.11 How does the music accomplish this? By helping the audience
make the correct interpretations of the words and actions of characters,
especially when other channels of information might be hard to understand. Gorbman further argues that the classical film score encourages
identification: emotional proximity through the use of culturally familiar
musical language and through a matching, an identity of sound and image
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86 Green
hunt, the music creates an atmosphere where the audience can quickly realize
some important facts. Through the unity of the strong brass title theme, the
audience realizes that Hawkeye/Nathaniel is one with Chingachgook and
Uncas despite his white heritage. The proud trumpets proclaim that the Mohicans are experts and can exert dominance over the wilderness. Modern
viewers might initially feel distanced by the unusual clothing or the fastpaced experience of hunting for deer in a vast forest, but the music draws the
audience into the foreign world of preRevolutionary War America.
To fully enjoy the cinematic experience, the audience must first set aside
their demands for reality and accept the fictional world of the film, and
music functions as an important part of this process. Gorbman writes that
Music lessens defenses against the fantasy structures to which narrative
provides access. It increases the spectators susceptibility to suggestion.14
Kassabian agrees with this notion, stating that music crosses over the
boundaries between unconscious and conscious processes; it contradicts or
shifts what seem like heavy-handed meanings in the visuals.15 Though it
would only take an image of the Mohican party hunting for deer to communicate to the audience that the film is set in the past, by combining these
images with the title theme, music bridges the gap and helps viewers situate
themselves in the grand wilderness of the Mohican world.
Musical Conventions
To understand how music creates meaning in film, the audience must
understand how musical conventions shape film. Kassabian reports that
musical [c]ompetence is based on decipherable codes learned through experience. As with language and visual image, we learn through exposure
what a given tempo, series of notes, key, time signature, rhythm, volume,
and orchestration are meant to signify.16 In the same way that even children can understand a change from color to black and white as representing
a flashback in time, film audiences can also analyze the ways that music
can signal different responses. Dean Duncan, in his book Charms that Soothe:
Classical Music and the Narrative Film, writes that The specificity of these
cues, and the specificity of their identification, are very important. They can
cause us to interrogate our affective responses as they simultaneously engage our intellects and increase our knowledge, so that feeling and thought
can profitably coexist.17 To understand how music is functioning rhetorically within a film, audiences must stop listening passively and begin to
unravel what differences in tempo, rhythm, and volume mean in terms of
the plot or character development.
Leitmotif
In musical scoring, repeated themes have a specific term: leitmotif. A concept
derived from Wagners use of themes in opera, the leitmotif could be
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88 Green
to warn the couple that life will not be kind to them through its minor tones
and the orchestras rapid crescendos and diminuendos.
Thematic transformations
Once basic identifications are made with different themes, however, the
leitmotif can be modified or altered in order to reflect the changing status
of the character, place, situation, or emotion. Roger Hickman discusses the
importance of the changing leitmotif in his book Reel Music: Exploring 100
Years of Film Music: Thematic transformation helps to create variety and
gives support to dramatic situations. In the simplest terms, a leitmotif can
be altered when it recurs during a film. The alteration can be a change of
instrumentation, tempo, or harmony. Through these transformations, the
changing mood or state of a character can be depicted.22 Changing leitmotifs, then, signal development in characters and situations.
Murrons theme changes significantly throughout the film as Wallace
both mourns his wife and seeks to redress the wrongs done to his family. At
Murrons burial, the phrasing of the repeated theme varies from mourning
(slower oboe), to rage (more forceful brass orchestration), to resignation
(fluctuating volume of the string-dominated phrase), to eventual peace
within himself (plucked notes of the harp that resolve). It is apparent from
the number of times that the theme is repeated throughout the film, though,
that Murron is not forgotten in Wallaces thoughts. Though the notes of
Murrons theme stay consistent enough that they are easily recognizable, each
time the theme is played, the music represents both the changes in Wallaces
thoughts and concerns as well as his unswerving diligence to duty.
Music often illustrates the complex changes that point to transformations
of character. One means of assessing the relative importance of music,
Scott D. Paulin writes, is to consider the melodic ideas or leitmotifs and
the extent to which they are linked to texts that thereby provide them with
associative meanings that are then retained or developed on the motifs subsequent appearances.23 Although one leitmotif may be introduced with a
specific character, when it is combined with another characters leitmotif,
the audience should wonder what is trying to be communicated with the
combination. Is the character beginning to resemble the other character, is
he experiencing the other characters most prominent emotion, or is he sympathizing with what the other character is feeling?
Murrons theme is also an example of a leitmotif that is used to portray
two characters in Braveheart. Despite the fact that Murron is killed relatively
early in the film, Murron continues to be a significant force both in the
course of Wallaces life and after his death. One example of Murrons theme
taking new meaning is when the Princess and Wallace meet together at the
cottage, and the Princess becomes Wallaces love interest. The leitmotif that
had represented Murron now adapts to suit the Princess. As she watches
Wallace ride away, the woodwinds and strings transition from Murrons
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90 Green
Playing counter to the image
In relating the music to what is going on in the images and dialogue of the
film, one of the most basic distinctions is whether the music is playing with
or against the image. Gorbman states that Either the music resembles or
it contradicts the action or mood of what happens on the screen. Siegfried
Kracauer, for example, writes that counterpoint occurs when music and
picture convey different meanings that meet in a montage effect.25 Larry
M. Timm, in his book The Soul of Cinema: An Appreciation of Film Music, also
discusses this technique of music play[ing] against the action . . . Generally, this occurs when the composer uses music that opposes what is being
seen on screen. For instance, a director may wish to tone down an extremely
violent segment of his or her movie by accompanying it with an opera aria
or a slow ballad.26 Though this might seem like a fairly simple distinction,
by hearing music that seemingly opposes the mood of what is happening
on screen, the audience must make sense of the contradiction and what purpose it serves.
Though many of film musics conventions are learned simply through
watching a variety of films, often a film will teach its audience what specific
musical cues and prompts mean within that film. In understanding a potentially confusing scene,
music serves to ward off the displeasure of uncertain signification.
The particular kind of music used in dominant feature films has connotative values so strongly codified that it can bear a similar relation
to the images as a caption to a news photograph. It interprets the image, pinpoints and channels the correct meaning of the narrative
events depicted. It supplies information to complement the potentially ambiguous diegetic images and sounds.27
Functioning in much the same way that a caption narrates a photograph,
Gorbman argues that music tends to shed light on the meaning that the director would have you glean from the film. Instead of stringing together
words to communicate, music creates meaning through a multitude of varying factors such as instrumentation, tonality, key, and phrasing that work
together to create a mood or feeling that suggests or emphasizes something
that the audience might not have paid attention to or realized. Though it
might be difficult to come up with the narrative solely based on the film
music, with the help of other visual or auditory channels of information that
direct the meaning, film music can comment on the drama and even persuade the audience to feel a certain way about the action or characters.
One example of music working on many levels is the final scene from
Braveheart. The audience listens as a single flute plays the outlaw theme
while the Scotsmen assemble with Robert the Bruce at their head. By using this particular theme, the audience recalls all of the other instances
of this theme, both the failures and the successes that the Scotsmen have
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92 Green
coincide or differ from the mood being portrayed by the image, can allude
to ideas not explicitly stated in dialogue, can reveal the purpose of words
or objects displayed on screen, or can work with sound effects to explain
what is really happening. An important principle to remember is that music is a cogenerator of narrative affect.30 Leith Stevens advises that During dialogue scenes, for example, music should promote an understanding
of the characters motivations, give color and depth to their mood, help to
explain reactions and attitudes by reminding the audience of some earlier
dramatic development that has bearing on the present scene, or emphasize
some quality of the characters background which has bearing on his reactions in the scene.31 Such a partnership between music and other channels
of information will not only clarify the purpose and meaning of the scene
but also influence the audiences understanding of the action. Through the
same way that the editing of images affects the audiences interpretation of
the film, so the way that music helps to create the narrative of the film will
change how audiences respond to the film. Music works in conjunction with
the other channels of information (image, dialogue, text, sound) to give the
audience a more complex understanding of what is happening in the characters minds and how decisions are being made.
One of the scenes most affected by the contribution of musical scoring in
conjunction with the other channels of information is the climactic resolution of The Last of the Mohicans. During the discussion of the Huron wise
man and Magua that will determine the fate of the two Munroe girls, no
music plays, the lack of music pointing instead to the focus on the words
and arguments being presented. As Hayward volunteers to take Coras
place at the burning stake, a steady drum beat begins, marking the beginning of events that cannot be reversed. As Cora is traded for Hayward and
Alice is dragged off by Magua, a lone fiddle begins to play the same eight
measures over and over again. The unusual 12/8 time signature drives
the fiddle tune and gives the audience the feeling that all the characters
are being pushed forward into courses of action that were unforeseen.
Low bass notes are added as the repetitive music sweeps the characters
along, Uncas chasing after Alice with Chingachgook, Hawkeye, and Cora
following behind. The tempo and beat of the music are working here in
conjunction with the montage of images that indicates the quick speed of
the action taking place.
One by one instruments are added to the mix until the whole orchestra
sounds together as the camera cuts to a panoramic view of the mountain,
slowly moving until at the bottom left corner we can see the cliff face that
the Huron party is crossing. Trumpets dominate this majestic view of nature, but as the camera cuts back into a closer shot, the trumpets drop out
and once again the fiddle dominates, with countermelody played by the
low brass. At this point Uncas attacks the Huron party alone, cutting down
several men before he in turn is cut down by Magua. As the focus of the
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94 Green
c hannels of information to rhetorically influence the audiences interpretation of the film and the message that the viewer takes from the film.
NOTES
1. Christian Metz, Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1974), 58.
2. Robert Stam, Robert Burgoyne, and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, New Vocabularies in
Film Semiotics (Routledge: New York, 1992), 59.
3. Metz, Film Language, 93.
4. Stam, Burgoyne, and Flitterman-Lewis, New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics, 63.
5. Anahid Kassabian, Hearing Film: Tracking Identifications in Contemporary Hollywood Film Music (New York: Routledge, 2001), 19.
6. Ibid.
7. Larry M. Timm, The Soul of Cinema: An Appreciation of Film Music (Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice Hill, 2003), 5; emphasis in the original.
8. Ibid., 60.
9. Leith Stevens, Film Scoring: The UCLA Lectures, Journal of Film Music 1, no. 4
(2006): 345.
10. Kay Dickinson, introduction to Movie Music: The Film Reader, ed. Kay Dickinson
(New York: Routledge, 2003), 13.
11. Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1987), 58; emphasis in the original.
12. Ibid., 108.
13. Claudia Gorbman, Why Music? The Sound Film and Its Spectator, in Movie
Music: The Film Reader, ed. Kay Dickinson (New York: Routledge, 2003), 40.
14. Gorbman, Unheard Melodies, 5.
15. Kassabian, Hearing Film, 9.
16. Ibid., 23.
17. Dean Duncan, Charms that Soothe: Classical Music and the Narrative Film (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2003), 137.
18. Gorbman, Unheard Melodies, 3.
19. Justin London, Leitmotifs and Musical Reference in the Classical Film Score,
in Music and Cinema, ed. James Buhler, Caryl Flinn, and David Neumeyer (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan, 2000), 87.
20. Ibid., 88.
21. Gorbman, Unheard Melodies, 27.
22. Roger Hickman, Reel Music: Exploring 100 Years of Film Music (New York:
W. W. Norton, 2005), 43.
23. Scott D. Paulin, Richard Wagner and the Fantasy of Cinematic Unity: The Idea
of the Gesamtkunstwerk in the History and Theory of Film Music, in Music and
Cinema, ed. James Buhler, Caryl Flinn, and David Neumeyer (Middletown, CT:
Wesleyan, 2000), 61.
24. Timothy E. Scheurer, Music and Mythmaking in Film: Genre and the Role of the Composer (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), 121.
25. Gorbman, Unheard Melodies, 15.
26. Larry M. Timm, The Soul of Cinema: An Appreciation of Film Music (Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice Hill, 2003), 10.
27. Gorbman, Why Music? 40.
28. Kassabian, Hearing Film, 138.
29. Royal S. Brown, Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 30.
30. Ibid., 32.
31. Stevens, Film Scoring, 345-46.
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