Capstone: Music and Story

          When writing a plot, there are two things you need to strive for. Well not really, but for the purposes of this project, let's stick with two right now. The first is a plot that is coherent; the second is a plot that is emotionally investing. The latter is where it can be easier for a creator to make his work into a film or play. In a story, musical cues can greatly amplify (or detract from) the way your audiences are immersed in your work. There's a lot of skill involved in doing it right, and those who have that skill become legends in the industry. Their reputations (and their discographies) speak for themselves; Zimmer, Williams, Hitchcock and Herrmann, etc. But before we can talk about the work they did, we have to go back in time. Really, really far back in time.

          The Greeks believed that music brought you closer to the Gods. Especially reverent an instrument back then was the lyre. Invented by the god Apollo, the lyre is a small harp-like string instrument fashioned from a turtle's shell. Traveling poets would carry their lyres, and little else, and play while they recited their poetry. One such poet was Homer, the ancient poet who was, of course, responsible for the Iliad and Odyssey. The lyre became one of the first in a long line of folk instruments, instruments that have significance in the culture of their inventor. The Indigenous Americans have animal-skin drums. The Indians use traditional string instruments like the sitar. Australian Aborigines play the didgeridoo.

          The music of Homer's lyre added a layer to the immersion of his stories. We see this behavior today in TV shows. The next time you watch a nighttime drama, or perhaps your daytime soaps, listen for the background music. You probably don't notice it half the time you're watching, but still it plays.

          Shakespeare said, "If music be the food of love, play on." By his time, storytelling had long graduated from wandering Greek poets to semi-permanent Greek amphitheaters. The musical play had not yet been invented yet, but music still played (no pun intended) a meaningful role. Sophocles' Oedipus Cycle had a Choral interlude after every scene, in which the chorus would sing a three-part ode. As they crossed the stage, they would recite a strophe, followed by an antistrophe as they crossed back. Then they would finish in an epode in a different meter than the two strophies.

          

          Music never left the stage either. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, "It was customary n Tudor and Stuart Drama to include at least one song in every play." While left out of most textual reprints, Shakespeare's Macbeth contained songs during the witches' scenes, though no actual notation of the scoring remains. Somewhat superstitious, the citizens of Olde-Timey England gravitated to sounds that were clean and easy to listen to. Lutes were considered to be good, soulful instruments to hear in the Elizabethan age. Oboes, on the other hand, played "ill winds that blew no good," and were used for dark or unsettling scenes.

          Today we have many instruments at our disposal, and the way they resonate with us emotionally in part comes down from the traditions of Shakespeare's time. Oboes, along with other low wind instruments like the bassoon and the clarinet's lower register still evoke somber, unsettling thoughts. Though contextually no more or less scary than the rest of the ballet about moving dolls and child-abducting rats, the "Arabian Dance" from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker is one of the more creepy character dances. On the other hand, the piccolo in "Chinese Dance" gives it a decidedly more uplifting feel. Have a listen:

          The tempo and key of the song helps to add that certain je ne sais quoi. I'll spare you the music theory lesson, but "Arabian Dance" is in a minor key, while "Chinese Dance" is in a major key. Minor keys are known to be more sad-sounding than major ones. Additionally, the Arabian Dance has a markedly slower pace.

          In the 1980's, directors of "action movies" have dipped into the classical pool of music for their trailers, namely the 1936 Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. Chances are you've never heard it performed as an actual cantata, but in the trailer for a big budget movie. Feel free to stop the clip after you get the idea.

          It's worth mentioning that that's Mozart, not Orff, pictured in the thumbnail. 

          

          Other than the fact that it's public domain and therefore highly cost-effective, there are a few reasons why "O' Fortuna" shows up so often to pump up its audience. It doesn't impact the story per se, but it does get people invested in hearing the story. At some point after the Romans died away, someone decided that Latin is a really dramatic, ominous language when belted out by a choir. The unfamiliar, ancient chanting has, after iteration after iteration in film, developed the ability to immediately pump the adrenaline and seemingly raise the stakes of the onscreen footage. And when the bombast of Burana is too much, baritones and trombones can up the adventurousness too. Stay tuned for that.

          Winds and brass have very distinct sounds and varying skill sets. But for the widest range of emotion, the king of the heap is the violin. Alone they can express moving sorrow, or rousing festivity. In groups, they can carry any number of styles. One duo put violins to quite good use...

  

          It's not often that a director is as in tune with the music of his film as its composer, but Alfred Hitchcock certainly fills that role. His relationship with composer Bernard Herrmann was one of the strongest in Hollywood, and together they built an empire founded on the basic human feeling of suspense. Hitchcock movies like North by North-West and Vertigo popularized the whirring strings that you hear so often today in shows like Lost.

          It just grates on you, doesn't it? The sawing back in forth of the strings just makes you want something to happen that will make it stop. Herrmann and Hitchcock also started the trend of "scare chords" when they made a little movie called Psycho.

          The harsh, piercing shrieks of the violins illustrate a picture Hitchcock couldn't show in his era of filming, speaking volumes for the violence unfolding just off-camera. The sound has yeilded countless followers and parodies over the generations. Especially for creating "jump-scares." Actually, half the reason jump-scares work is because of the scare chord. If the sudden visual doesn't alarm you, the loud noise probably will.

          

          Hitchcock also knew how to when to use silence to his advantage. There's a scene from The Birds in which a woman finds a man murdered (by the birds naturally) free of all music, leaving us nothing to focus on but her strained gasps as she tries to find the air to scream.

          In today's Hollywood, no composer is more prolific than John Williams (Superman, the Star Wars trilogies, most of Steven Spielberg's repertoire, the first three Harry Potters, etc.) Williams has a knack for giving characters their own tunes to blend into the background music. Chances are you've heard the Imperial March from the first Star Wars trilogy, the theme music for Darth Vader, the film's helmeted antagonist. Fast forward now to the prequel trilogy, telling Vader's story from humble beginnings as the boy Anakin Sywalker, and you'll get a taste for Williams's skill as a composer. This is "Anakin's Theme."

          Listen at the end of each phrase, and you'll hear the sweeping score transition into the tail end of the Imperial March. For reference I'd let you hear the real deal, but that would be against copyright law - and that would be terrible. Regardless, the result is an interesting Easter-egg that carries meaningful plot-significance.

          The emotional output of a piece depends greatly on its instrumentation and tempo. The Harry Potter series has used "Hedwig's Theme" as a theme song since its innaugural outing in 2001. The Sorceror's Stone introduced the theme with a mysterious and whimsical air, befitting of the child-friendly atmosphere the film possessed.

          The sixth film, The Half-Blood Prince, is an escalation point in the conflict with Voldemort. The theme is still recognizable, but the tempo is slightly faster, and there's a heavy focus on baritone horns. The result is a more urgent and adventurous score.

          The eighth and last film, the second part of The Deathly Hallows, takes pains to demonstrate the finality of the series. Hedwig's theme reverts back to its music-box-like sound, only tiny, distant, broken.

          Music can do, as Hans Zimmer (Inception, The Dark Knight, Pirates of the Caribbean)  puts it, "unseen things" to the stories of movies and plays. It can immerse the audience further when done right, but when done wrong it can really take you out of the experience. One British studio actually had to lower the background music of its Planet Earth-like science documentary Wonders of the Universe after too many complaints that viewers couldn't hear the host over the background music.

          The other pitfall is that old adage "you can't please 'em all." Sometimes the music in a work, or the actor portraying a role, makes the viewer turn up their nose to the point that they can't focus on the story your telling. The author of the report on Wonders of the Universe, for example, can't stand the upright base in the score to Seinfeld.
          Music's influence on story doesn't have anything to do with the way we actually understand the story; rather, it affects the emotional connection we make to the story. If we cry, it makes us sob, if we chuckle, it makes us roar with laughter. Whether or not music is the food of love, audiences eat it up, and that's not about to change anytime soon.

Citations: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.1&thid=13df5771f814e91d&mt=application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document&url=https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/?ui%3D2%26ik%3D6481424de1%26view%3Datt%26th%3D13df5771f814e91d%26attid%3D0.1%26disp%3Dsafe%26realattid%3Df_hfcwl73n0%26zw&sig=AHIEtbT-BFKDxyC3Lu_pbDEmtUu6jA4haA