#like not every sad scene needs a sad orchestral arrangement sometimes you have to make the audience sit with it

[regicidal-defenestration]

As much as I love a good musical theme or motif I do think modern DW sometimes forgets that silence can be just as impactful

[advancedstudioproductionkwc]

This is an intermediate stage of the “background” to the piece I presented today in class. This is what I listened to (with a single ear effectively) whilst improvising the tentative and somewhat random sounding piano parts I added to this “background”. I’ve decided that each of the pieces I present this semester in this course will be modelled on the rather beautiful proportions of the prelude from Wagner’s opera “Tristan und Isolde” and be of that length as well.

I intend to make a full high-fidelity 4-channel recording of the failing, interrupted and “broken” file of the piece as heard after midnight outside the Coles at the end of Elizabeth Street (which is a different orchestral performance and recording to the one I have used here). I will compose a broken, fully notated and yet fragmented and tentative piece for piano to be accompanied by the fully spatialised recording of the way this “broken prelude” sounds in real space. I may then apply some of these same filtering, stretching and resonating techniques to the “realistic” recording so that gradually it acquires some of that same “oceanic” quality.

The placing of such a piece outside Coles in what I would describe as a pretty degraded and sometimes highly dangerous part of the city fascinates me. I’m not surprised (nor dismayed) to have heard Italian opera arias, Dvorak “New World Symphony” and other “warhorses” (interesting term that isn’t it?) used as sonic warfare against the drunks and "Blue Lotus” addicts that horizontally line the streets in this part of “the most livable city in the world”. I have walked many times past this supermarket and one night I noticed that this piece, the prelude to the opera I have seen the most times on stage, which I quote constantly and which is a clear point of origin for one important strand of early modernism (”expressionism”) was being played but the file was corrupted, gappy, coming in and out in a kind of microcosmic relation to the ebbs and flows of the original piece. That is, the rapid ebbing and flowing of the real sound was almost like a horrible parody of the vast ebbs and flows written into the score but which take place over long stretches of time. Even though the climaxes of each Act are positively volcanic in live performance a great deal of the music is delicate and quiet for very long stretches of time (another innovation of Wagner’s). Very little music before this piece has such a strong connection to water, the oceanic, the immersive. The 1st Act is set on a ship, the 2nd features a fountain (beautifully evoked in the music) and the 3rd act is set in a castle overlooking a calm and empty sea as a dying Tristan awaits the boat carrying his adulterous lover Isolde to him (there’s a beautiful essay by Susan Sontag about water in this opera). The words of the final “aria” where Isolde sings of the bliss of sinking into unconsciousness, singing of the breathing of the universe are an incredibly vivid image of the crashing of waves over a drowning person and re-appear repeatedly in pieces like “La Mer” by Debussy and the soundtracks of many Hollywood films dealing with the sea.

So outside Coles, after a terrible night of dealing with men wanting illicit sex, drunks wanting a place to rest, addicts begging for change, in a workplace full of all the dangers of the contemporary world I hear the achingly beautiful music of this prelude and instantly a whole world of associations opens up. My mind filled in the “gaps” of the broken file but somehow incorrectly. My piece is all about those gaps in the real that give rise to desire, by definition insatiable.

This opera is not just the world’s most pretentious “love triangle”, it is about the conflict between the world of the “day” (law, culture, property, the ego etc) and the “night” (symbolising the unconscious, the flow of desire, the impossible union of people in a community of two we call romantic love). In the story of the opera the Irish princess Isolde is carried across the sea to be married to a King by a knight Tristan (his name literally means sadness) who is the King’s nephew but they fall in love, a love which is consummated only in death and singing.

It is breathtakingly beautiful in a rare great performance. The chord in the third bar of the prelude has kept musicologists busy for more than a century and has been quoted by countless subsequent composers in a variety of ways: other than the beautiful quotation of it in Berg’s “Lyric Suite” (itself a coded love letter to his mistress) I find particularly interesting the change from Debussy’s entirely sincere usage of it to set the word “triste” in his early opera “Pelleas and Melisande” to the entirely sarcastic use of it in the “Golliwog’s Cakewalk” in the “Children’s Suite” for piano near the end of his life after his turn against Wagner in favour of a kind of French nationalism (need I point out the corrosive presence of a performative irony in the racial colouring of such a title?). It also celebrates (much like the incestuous relationship of Siegmund and Sieglinde in the Ring cycle) a revolt of desire against the merely “socially correct”.

This is a piece that attempts to avoid resolution by every means possible. It is ostensibly in A minor but look how many accidentals there are, how many times dissonances are held in suspension. The dissonant chord in the 3rd bar is really only resolved properly in the very last bars of the whole opera, some 3 hours later. Accordingly (pun intended) I had the comb filters constantly slide towards that resolution the harmonies seemingly desperately desire only to slide back again and again to the 3rd bar. At one point as well I engineered the tackiest possible resolution of the dissonance in the piano parts, poisoned by the difference in tuning between the “cultural” (and hence entirely “normalised”) tuning of 12 tone equal temperament and the second piano part which is tuned in accordance with the “natural” overtones of A (which sounds “out of tune”).

So this piece is in effect a kind of distorted memory of the original, a fantasy on its themes of intoxication and social control and an attempt to make the piece strange again now that it is safely ensconced in the “canon”.

I’m also considering making some new comb filters in Audiomulch tuned to the sometimes shockingly ugly sounds of the “Tristan chord” (B F D# G#) in other overtone tunings and making a piece out of those.

PS: this opera is also HILARIOUSLY vulgarised by Franz Waxman in the dreadful Joan Crawford film “Humoresque” from 1946. Waxman moves quickly from bits of the prelude, to the long love scene that takes up most of the second act, to the final act. He arranged these bits almost without regard to their actual harmonic and musical implications for violin and piano solos with full orchestra. It’s such a terrible piece of work that without fail makes me laugh because I recognise the harmonies enough to expect a particular consequence of a phrase then the music will jump at random to some other harmony when Wagner could probably spend 20 minutes getting from one to the other. When I first discovered this opera as a teenager (because I read that my then hero Schoenberg’s piece “Transfigured Night” was criticised as sounding like someone had smeared the score of Tristan while still wet and amusing you can hear my piece linked here as attempting exactly that) my mother who loved soppy Hollywood movies immediately recognised the music but hated the singing. Of course Wagner and this piece in particular is the source of more than 100 years of musical tropes illustrating “passion” or “pain” in music. It is of course incredibly beautiful in an overwhelming way and often reduces me to tears. Wagner is the Steven Spielberg of music but with the “machinery” as carefully hidden as the joins in phrases. He is also a masterclass in long range harmonic thinking and listening (I highly recommend diving deep into Wagner at an early age as it ameliorates your tendency to boredom and tunes your ears to resonate to harmonic moves stretched over the span of an hour or more). Of course, what makes this malignantly seductive music fascist to the core isn’t its occasional forays into a “military” soundworld but rather its dedication to aesthetic illusion above all, its beauty and its desire to flood the listener with sensation that you cannot take a critical distance from. Wagner is, as Adorno pointed out, fascist to the core not because of his terrible words about Jews but because of its commitment to art as a kind of magical spell that dissolves the individual and their borders. I also think that Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe was entirely correct to think of National Socialism as National Aestheticism: only in German does “ugly” also mean “hateful”. It amuses me therefore that Wagner’s music ended up in a ridiculous Hollywood melodrama, mutilated and stitched back together like Frankenstein’s creation by a Jewish emigre composer in Hollywood. To use one of Hitler’s favorite operas (Hitler is of course the locus classicus of the toxic opera queen) after the “victory over fascism” for a Joan Crawford movie about the redemptive power of art is camp as fuck (precisely because it is done with an entirely straight face). The fact that I have seen with my very own eyes people swoon with delight over this shoddy piece of work makes it even funnier: possibly the worst idea of Western civilisation is the neo-Platonist identification of the beautiful with the true and the good. One of the reasons for my intense interest in the fate of “culture” during the Third Reich is the manner in which the highest ideals of western civilisation are finally revealed there (by the very “people” that invented some of them) as a cheap veneer over barbarism: Adorno was correct to say that after Auschwitz both culture and its urgently necessary critique (ie. his own life’s work) are garbage.

There’s an awfully vulgar video of the Waxman “Tristan Fantasia” on Youtube that illustrates almost everything terrible about “Western classical music” and how it now functions as an ideological apparatus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOrRAvmUV2c

[2700fstreet]

CLASSICAL / 2018-2019

NSO POPS: STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE

SEP 12 NSO OPEN REHEARSAL

with Steven Reineke (conductor)

Imagine a movie stripped of its music.

Maybe you’ve never considered the role music plays in film, but think for a moment. What would Indiana Jones desperately running from a boulder be without symphonic drama and rhythmic percussion to build suspense? Would Superman, without a noble brass fanfare, seem quite so heroic? Simply put: The music of movies taps into our emotions using melody, volume, and tempo, helping the viewer experience a deeper level of anticipation, joy, fear, or sadness.

Chances are, just the mention of movies like Jaws, Harry Potter, and Star Wars not only brings a particular scene to mind but will (no doubt) have you humming. The soundtracks of films like these are not only famous; they evoke an emotional response that tells you how to feel about the movie, or at least about a special cinematic moment. Film composers like John Williams, who wrote the music for these three films, help define the viewer’s understanding through sound. Let’s face it, who can forget: bah-dump…bah-dump…bah-dump…BAH-DUMP, BAH-DUMP, BAH-DUMP...BAH-DUMP…? For sure, that shark was closing in for lunch.

From the suspenseful, warning low brass of Jaws, to the mysterious fairytale sounds of the celeste in the Hedwig’s Theme from Harry Potter, to the march-like rhythms of Darth Vader’s theme, the musical soundtracks from movies shape our motion pictures experiences along with the action on the screen.

Caption: John Williams Scoring Raiders of the Lost Ark Photo from TashTish Licensed for reuse under Creative Commons

So, What’s Going On?

A film score is music that exists to specifically accompany a movie. It both supports and extends the film’s dialogue, action, and sound effects to bring to life the director’s vision for the movie, and ultimately complete the story. Though a movie-goer might not be able to tell, scoring a movie is a complicated and intricate process.

Its Own Distinct Art Form

Film scoring has evolved as its own unique art form. First, the movie’s director must decide how music should best serve the film. This includes considering style and tone, deciding which portions will include music, and where the musical cues begin and end. Often the composer is provided a rough cut of the film along with cue notes. Sometimes the director has chosen temp tracks—existing music or audio that is used in film production during the editing phase—to provide the composer with guidelines for the film score. These temp tracks give the composer a blueprint of sorts for the tempo, mood, or musical landscape the director hopes to create in each scene.

When the director has finished providing guidelines, the composer is sent off to write and orchestrate. Then, the music is recorded before editing begins. Usually, the music is edited to match the film, although sometimes the opposite may be true. Theatrical moments in the film will be synced to the musical events in the score, a mathematical process of calculations that provides a dramatic effect for the viewer.

Check out this scene from the Indiana Jones flick Raiders of the Lost Ark. Notice how the sound effects and music work together with the action to enhance the drama of the scene.

The Changing Musical Landscape

Some of the challenges of film scoring, combined with the rise of technology, have changed the face of film music. Film scores were traditionally one of the more difficult parts of film production. It was expensive to pay not only the composer but all the instrumentalists. Scores were technical—attempting to match the tempo of live music to film scenes required methodical precision, and sometimes plain old good luck. Editing music was difficult and rerecording it was expensive. Film scores had to be the last thing completed, leaving almost no room for error in the creative process.

Enter: Hans Zimmer.

Zimmer changed movie music forever by pioneering the use of computers to make music. Computerized composition was revolutionary for film scores, allowing the film director to hear the music as it was written, tweak tempos to precisely match film action, and edit the film and music concurrently, for much less money. Zimmer embraced digital composition, working with it over time and improving it as technology simultaneously improved. Because short, sharp sounds were among the first for computer generated music to perfect (think percussion and staccato brass or strings), the “Zimmer Sound” is that of percussive, rhythmic, heavy brass. It’s more of a landscape of sound—texture rather than melodies and harmonies. Truth be told, most film scores are written with composition software today. And while some go on to be rerecorded with a live orchestra, many don’t.

The capabilities of today’s technology are once again revolutionizing how music is created. The future of music is, according to Amper Music, a collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence (AI). Amper is an all-in-one performer, composer, and producer for songs, apps, films, and videos. With Amper’s software, an artist simply selects a mood, style, and length of the music desired for a composition. The software responds with a preliminary composition, and the artist can use built-in functions to modify variables like tempo, instrumentation, and even melody. The result is a unique, fine-tuned soundtrack customized to the exact needs of the user.

Watch what the AI company Amper Music, Inc. says about the future of music:

Though technology has cemented a place in film scoring, the use and impact of music remains unchanged. Music in the movies conveys what a movie is trying to say without words and conjures an emotional response even the most inspired dialogue cannot.

Who’s Who

John Williams is one of the most accomplished and prolific film composers of all time. Beginning as a concert and jazz pianist, Williams literally played his way into Hollywood studios, at first as a way to pay the bills. Williams found work as a piano accompanist for television series in the 1950s and 60s, which eventually led to work arranging and orchestrating TV scores, then composing for television. Finally, Williams found work composing for major motion pictures, beginning with suspense and disaster movies, ultimately becoming a fixture on the landscape of American film and creating some of the most well-loved soundtracks of all time.

Williams first teamed up with Steven Spielberg in The Sugarland Express, and then the duo became a power team with the blockbuster Jaws. Williams went on to score all but three of Spielberg’s films. In fact, it was Spielberg who recommended Williams to his friend George Lucas, director of Star Wars. Lucas originally intended to use existing classical music, but Williams took Lucas’s saga about an epic space battle and provided the new music that propelled the series into the fabric of American pop culture.

The music of Star Wars weaves together the emotional high and low of the film series, helping viewers feel the movie.

Photo from Chris Devers Licensed for reuse under Creative Commons

NSO Pops conductor Steven Reineke calls Williams “a living legend” and “the finest film composer living today.” Williams bridges what critics often call the Golden Age of Hollywood, a time when film composers set movies to classical symphonic music, with the modern. While many contemporary films feature pop or synthesized electronic scores, Williams has been nominated for 41 Oscars®, nearly all with orchestral scores. From Jurassic Park to Harry Potter, to, of course, Star Wars, Williams’s impact on American film is deep and wide and Williams’s music has become virtually as famous as the films themselves.

Listen to a mashup of just some of the music of John Williams:

In addition to his more classical European orchestral sound, the music of John Williams features trademarks that even novice listeners can detect. His music includes heavy use of leitmotif, (pronounced LIGHT-moh-teef), a musical term for a recurring musical phrase (melody, chord progression, or rhythm) that is memorable to the listener, often called a motif for short. Think back to Jaws. The bah-dump…bah-dump is a two note motif that helps the viewer anticipate the danger of the approaching shark more intensely.

Like nearly all of his scores, Williams employed leitmotif heavily in Star Wars. He linked each of the main characters of the film with a motif and used instrumentation—the way the instruments are arranged to play the music—to clue the audience into subtler features of the film. For example, low brass instruments often introduce the Death Star while an energetic trumpet serves as a symbol of the heroic in the most well-known theme of the movie.

Listen to the most famous themes (or motifs) used in Star Wars: A New Hope:

(Watch beginning through 4:00)

National Symphony Orchestra is made up of 96 musicians who perform around 150 classical and popular concerts each year. The NSO is performing in its 86th season. In a way, the Kennedy Center is its home—the NSO has performed at the Kennedy Center every year since the Center opened in 1971. The orchestra is committed to music education and audience engagement. While NSO concerts typically present more traditional, classical music for orchestra, Pops concerts usually feature popular music, from classic pop standards to Broadway classics and to modern-day hits.

Photo from Scott Suchman

Steven Reineke is the conductor of The New York Pops at Carnegie Hall and Principal Pops Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Reineke has collaborated with leading artists from Kendrick Lamar to Ben Folds, and created more than 100 Pops orchestral arrangements, performed all over the world.

Check This Out…

We mentioned earlier that composer John Williams wrote a leitmotif for each of the main characters. Once a motif is associated with a character or idea, it helps the composer convey subtle shades of meaning about a scene—when it plays, its arrangement, and its timing give you clues about what a composer wants you to know or feel about the scene. Listen for these clues at important moments for each of the main characters in the film. What instruments do you hear associated with each character? How do the motifs train you as an audience member to attach feelings or ideas to each of the characters?

Soundtracks aren’t the only way that films use sound. Sound designers use sound effects to bring stories to life. What sounds does A New Hope sound designer Ben Burtt incorporate, and what are their effect? For more on Burtt, …visit The Music of Sound: Ben Burtt: The Sounds of Star Wars

Williams drew inspiration from classical composers for many of his motifs. Listen for the eerie music that occurs when C-3PO and R2-D2 are stranded on the desert planet Tatooine. What does the music foreshadow?

Now listen to the portion of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” beginning at 15:55.

Sound familiar? Though the context may be different, just as the music in A New Hope signals danger, so it does in Stravinsky’s masterpiece.

Think About This…

Did you know Williams isn’t the only composer to use motifs to introduce and symbolize characters? The term leitmotif was first applied to the operas of Richard Wagner to describe a recurring melody associated with a character, place, emotion, or idea. And much more recently, composer Lin Manuel Miranda used a musical motif for each of the major characters in his hit musical Hamilton: An American Musical. If you were a character in an opera, show, or film, what would your leitmotif sound like?

Film music often pulls from music of various genres and even older films. For example, in Star Wars, John Williams pulled from classical composers like Stravinsky and Holst, but also from old Western movie soundtracks. Why might one composer draw inspiration from another’s music? What impact do you think this has on the listener’s experience?

Ok, so you get the point: Film scoring is really important to a movie’s meaning. To totally understand this, try experiencing the effect of music on a scene’s tone and mood in this clip:

Take Action: Give Temp Track a Try

Directors often use temp track guidelines for the desired tempo, mood, or overall direction of the music for a scene. Try your hand at creating a temp track—it’s not nearly as difficult as you think! First, choose a scene from your favorite movie. YouTube is great for finding exactly what you’re looking for. Next, mute the scene and think about what music you would use to convey the mood of the scene. Consider the actions, events, and emotions that occur in the scene. Now comes the fun part. Maybe you already have a song in mind, but if not, visit sites like freemusicarchive.org to see if you can find music that “fits” the scene. If you’re a musician, you might even try composing something yourself. You can stop there or use audio/video software to put it all together.

If you feel like sharing (and you used music that can be legally shared), post your video to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, or any other platform. Tag five friends and ask them to share how music in movies impacts them as a viewer. Use #temptrack as your hashtag.

Caption: NSO Violins by Carol Pratt

Explore More

Go even deeper with the NSO Open Rehearsal Extras.

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Writer: Marcia Friedman

Content Editor: Lisa Resnick

Logistics Coordination: Katherine Huseman

Producer and Program Manager: Tiffany A. Bryant

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David M. Rubenstein is the Presenting Underwriter of the NSO.

NSO Open Rehearsals are made possible in part by the generous support of A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation; the Kimsey Endowment; The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; Park Foundation, Inc.; and U.S. Department of Education.

Major support for educational programs at the Kennedy Center is provided by David M. Rubenstein through the Rubenstein Arts Access Program.

Kennedy Center education and related artistic programming is made possible through the generosity of the National Committee for the Performing Arts.

© 2018 The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts